I think some elements on the debate must be separated:
Portability/comfort: I have an iPod in which (besides rock music) I've got stuffed the Rubinstein Collection (got 76 out of 82 cd some double and one triple), the emi karajan edition (88 cd) and some Bartok
I know, it sounds strange, but from time to time I need that particular mood 
. Explanation: I travel quite a lot in public transport for meetings, court hearings (I'm a lawyer, not a criminal in case some of you were concerned 
) and have a very wide range of music I like, so it is comfortable to skip from one thing to another easily. So essentially is comfort and, up to a certain extent, a "whim" (I had a walkman in its time, and a discman too).
Sound quality: When I moved 3 years ago I decided to buy a so-called high-end amp, speakers, cd, turntable, etc... (actually among the lower range of high-end, for budgetary reasons
). I never even considered to listen music at home through the ipod since I presumed sound quality of mp3 is poor (despite the fact that try to convert cds with highest sound quality if I have enough HD available).
But once I had a party and decided to connect the hard-disk where I stored the mp3 library to the amp to create a long playlist and forget about the record changing, etc... and, literally, I thought for a while that something wrong happened with the amp, and so thought my friends: "is the amp wrong? why does this sound like that?" (one even said "the repair of this will cost you a fortune...")... All but the telecom engineer smartass that said the maxim (literally) "this valve amp is showing us the s*** we are getting in our ears when listening to mp3s".
Apparently the more compressed the audio is (that is, the smaller the file is), not only are eliminated the highest or lowest frequencies as "non-relevant" (so details are erased), but also the more concentrated the sound is on the central channel because headphones by themselves are supposed to create the stereo effect... which, when listened properly at home without headphones was enough to scare me because I thought the amp was "dying".
Physical support: I think there is a bucle: If we make the abstraction of the sound quality and space-saving, some people don't give a damn about the "object" itself, the record, the cd, the boxset, whatever, and some do. Some of those who don't care about owning a record/cd/dvd/whatever, care about sound and end owning a record/etc... And I think that the fact that LP sales are growing mean that many people (and young people too) care at least about one of the two elements and care less about confort when walking, being on the bus, etc...
Like LP almost died and now have reemerged, cds were the best and now are criticised in some ambiances, digital files (I mean sold, not shared) may languish in some time, why not?
Portability/comfort: I have an iPod in which (besides rock music) I've got stuffed the Rubinstein Collection (got 76 out of 82 cd some double and one triple), the emi karajan edition (88 cd) and some Bartok
I know, it sounds strange, but from time to time I need that particular mood . Explanation: I travel quite a lot in public transport for meetings, court hearings (I'm a lawyer, not a criminal in case some of you were concerned ) and have a very wide range of music I like, so it is comfortable to skip from one thing to another easily. So essentially is comfort and, up to a certain extent, a "whim" (I had a walkman in its time, and a discman too).Sound quality: When I moved 3 years ago I decided to buy a so-called high-end amp, speakers, cd, turntable, etc... (actually among the lower range of high-end, for budgetary reasons
). I never even considered to listen music at home through the ipod since I presumed sound quality of mp3 is poor (despite the fact that try to convert cds with highest sound quality if I have enough HD available).But once I had a party and decided to connect the hard-disk where I stored the mp3 library to the amp to create a long playlist and forget about the record changing, etc... and, literally, I thought for a while that something wrong happened with the amp, and so thought my friends: "is the amp wrong? why does this sound like that?" (one even said "the repair of this will cost you a fortune...")... All but the telecom engineer smartass that said the maxim (literally) "this valve amp is showing us the s*** we are getting in our ears when listening to mp3s".
Apparently the more compressed the audio is (that is, the smaller the file is), not only are eliminated the highest or lowest frequencies as "non-relevant" (so details are erased), but also the more concentrated the sound is on the central channel because headphones by themselves are supposed to create the stereo effect... which, when listened properly at home without headphones was enough to scare me because I thought the amp was "dying".
Physical support: I think there is a bucle: If we make the abstraction of the sound quality and space-saving, some people don't give a damn about the "object" itself, the record, the cd, the boxset, whatever, and some do. Some of those who don't care about owning a record/cd/dvd/whatever, care about sound and end owning a record/etc... And I think that the fact that LP sales are growing mean that many people (and young people too) care at least about one of the two elements and care less about confort when walking, being on the bus, etc...
Like LP almost died and now have reemerged, cds were the best and now are criticised in some ambiances, digital files (I mean sold, not shared) may languish in some time, why not?
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