[Sonic dB]

Interesting and timely thread....cause just lately
Ive come to my own personal conclusion that:

IPOD IS THE GREATEST ELECTRONICS INVENTION OF THE 21ST CENTURY (so far).


Ive been in the process of capturing all of my CD collection
to digital. Playing them on the IPOD in Shuffle MODE so I never
miss the "deep album cuts"...its just AWESOME what the IPOD
comes up with sometimes.

Shuffle can take me from Van Morrison - Joe Sample - Nick Drake -
ACDC - Vladimir Horowitz - Dave Grusin - Chris Issak - Led Zeppelin - Stevie Wonder and back to Van Halen....

And you know what....? It doesnt matter cause its all good...
and its all music.

Sound Quality??

Well...as Nostatic mentioned... CDs are compressed as well...
Starting in the Studio when the songs are cut, there are many
devices in the recording chain...starting with the microphone, to
the preamps, board, processing, compression, to digital recording...etc. ALL of which affect the sound quality and if the
engineer sucks (as many of them do these days) and if the producer does not have "ears"...the sound quality will suffer...

Hell... lets be honest: Digital does not sound nearly as good, nearly as punchy, nearly as honest and nearly as "musical" as
recording to tape used to.

Q) "Is it Live or is it Memorex"?

A) Its Neither.

And don't even get me started on CD mastering.
Most pop or rock CDs are compressed to Hell and back, in order
to try and get them to sound "louder" for broadcast and TV and
digital streaming etc.

That + not many "mastering engineers" are worth a crap these
days anyway... for example...that Jackal who
is responsible for personally Ruining the MoTown Catalog with his
incredibly inept "digital re-mastering"... I hold him responsible for
the digital sound-crime that became the remasters of "Whats Going On" and "Songs in the Key of Life"...

But I digress...
None of this matters because the IPOD does not Care.

It just plays.