Audio folks as bad as us...

[CD55]

Do you mean "poorly recorded CD"? A well recorded CD is pretty good...

We're working on a generation that may never have heard music on anything but a compressed file. Will they be like the folks years ago who, when given a properly vine ripened tomato, didn't like it?

Adding to this is the Loudness War when recording CDs nowadays. Here is a video that explains it really well.

http://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ

When you take a badly recorded CD and then compress it even more for convience, there is no way anybody is going to hear what was recorded at the studio. Heck even if you do have one nicely recorded CD, the kids today have no way of knowing how it's suppose to sound. This happens every time a car passes by where all you hear is basically the bass with some of the other music in the background. It's too bad as I was sort of that way until my co-worker who is a big audiophile asked me to come to his house and listen to his stereo system. The first time I sat in his sweet spot he played a Parlophone vinyl Beatles album and it just blew me away. I felt as though the Fab Four was right in front of me.

Even a modest system will be better than what most kids use to listen.

[Alan Klein]

I had AR-2A's speakers for 40 years. Played them with my Fisher Stratokit, a tube driven amp-pre-amp that I built in the early 60's. Tubes! With my record player (forgot which one). Dragged the whole setup when I went to Japan in 1965 in the USAF and then home again with an Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder I bought while over there. Then I upgraded to electronic amps, tuners and such but kept the speakers. However, two years ago I finally gave them up realizing the bass cones had separated and probably hadn't played in years. Of course being so much older and losing hearing like other old folk, I didn't even realize it. You might want to verify your AR's just to hear you're really getting the bass OK.

[Trask]

Alan, don't give up on the AR-2A's. Lots of audiophiles simply put new surrounds on the cones and get the speakers back into use. My AR-5s and AR-6s are both refoamed and work just like new, especially as I also upgraded the capacitors in the crossover. For more info and to meet people who share your interest in AR speakers, try visiting www.classicspeakerpages.net

[Bill Burk]

Alan, don't give up on the AR-2A's. Lots of audiophiles simply put new surrounds on the cones...

You don't have to be an audiophile to appreciate how much better old AR's sound with new foam. Terrible sound -> Great sound. Major difference. No skeptic can say you are deluding yourself about that upgrade.

[MattKing]

I find it both interesting and frustrating that many, if not most, of Sony's recent consumer market priced Blu-Ray players Sony are now including SACD compatibility - interesting because it gives me reassurance that at least some thought is being given again to the format, and frustrating because it is tremendously difficult to find a variety of music on SACD.

IIRC Neil Young really promoted SACD when it was new.

I've always thought that if SACD versions were as easily found on the internet (Amazon?) as regular CDs, way more people would be willing to buy music on a physical medium.

[PeteZ8]

But is it really any worse than esoteric agitation schemes for film, experimenting with film/developer combinations or discussing the colour or contrast renditions of different lenses?

That only costs about $5-$10

[Alan Klein]

Thanks for the suggestion about fixing the AR-2A's. But I made a deal with my wife and gave them away. We'd got rid of all the old stuff and made space for 52" Samsung LCD and PS3 Playstation with Blu-Ray and a 5.1 sound system. Although the speakers in the 5.1 aren't as good (Sony) as AR-2A's, it was too good a deal too pass up. Now I also have all my videos and photos loaded into the PS3 hard disk or on DVD disks for playing on the HDTV which is also pretty sweet. Hey, I got 40 years out of those AR's.

[polyglot]

Our local stores don't have SACDs but bittorrent does. Says something about the state of publishing when the only way you can get hold of the good-quality copies is illegitimately. There is hdtracks though they have very very little selection.

[Paul VanAudenhove]

The downside of competing formats is that local shops have to duplicate inventory - which many of them didn't. Also, there was a quick turnover from vinyl to compact disc. There has been no such push to phase out regular cds in favor of any of the new formats (SACD or DVD-A).

[CGW]

Beware of the recent (post 2000) so called "remastered" CDs. I have found that in most cases the older the CD edition the better sounding is the digital transfer.

That's just too sweeping a generalization, even for APUG. Ever hear the first CD re-issue of Miles Davis Kind of Blue? Guess not, since the re-re-mastered version is incomparably better.