The Demise of disc formats

[Owen Smith]

DAB just never took off with the public, most people have no ideal with it is or was.
Both my Marantz AV7701 & 7703 Pre-Pro had it built in but a couple generations back they dropped it. Now latest 7706 has completely dropped the AM/FM tuner.

DAB is moderately successful in the UK in terms of the number of people listening to it, though the sound quality is dire because bit rates per station have been reduced so much. And yet most who've heard it say DAB sounds great, when what they mean is they never had a decent FM antenna and they like the lack of FM hiss on DAB and are ignoring everything else bad about it.

Also the listening numbers are deliberately confusing. What is quoted is digital listening, which bundles together all of internet streaming, DAB, terrestrial TV and satellite TV for radio. This is widely believed to be done because if not DAB share of listening would still be well below 50% whereas the combined digital figure is above 50%. These are all pre covid figures, I've seen nothing newer.

 

[MagnumX]

I've never even heard of DAB. I've got HDRadio in my car and on my older Marantz 7010 (which Google is telling me is not the same as DAB). There's perhaps a half dozen stations that use it (even one AM station that sounds like FM with it on) and it definitely sounds better when it turns on over the analog broadcast, but given I absolutely despise commercial driven radio (and TV), I don't hardly ever listen to it. Even when it's not commercials, I find myself surfing the dial for something I like. I bought a 6-disc changer back in the '90s to get away from FM. Now I use a USB stick (why drain the phone?)

 

[Sonik Wiz]

I would much rather just take out a disc and put it onto/into a player and play it than dink around with copying. downloading, and manipulating files, and trying to get various formats to work.

Doug

I'm quite comfortable with down loading high res audio if that's the best or only way to get something but I never stream any kind music only entertainment. I do stream, Netflix, VUDU, & I guess YouTube counts. I agree nothing is as easy as plopping in a disc & press play. Unlike others here I've had very good disc longevity so I don't ripp for fear of disc rot, etc. I live in a decent size house with plenty of room for physical media. At 70 yo I( don't feel the obsession to spend most of the future ripping, labeling, cue sheets etc. It is not my loss, it is my gain.

 

[jefe1]

I like your sign off line Sonik. I cant help but think we have passed thru a golden age of music not to be repeated for another few generations.

But maybe somebody here can boast about seeing Milli Vanilli in their prime

 

[MagnumX]

I agree nothing is as easy as plopping in a disc & press play.

...
At 70 yo I( don't feel the obsession to spend most of the future ripping, labeling, cue sheets etc. It is not my loss, it is my gain.

Being able to go through my entire music catalogue by Artist, album or song and play something us pretty "easy" IMO. Trying to find a specific song on a disc and then having to change it again 4 minutes later because it's the only one on that album I like meant even with a six disc changer, I would still tend to simply not play most songs for that reason and worse yet would often listen to the same artists that did have several songs per disc I liked (e.g. Pink Floyd) all the time.

It got far worse when I moved and wanted music in several rooms of the house. Now I had to locate and then carry discs between the living room and home theater, den, bedroom and exercise room. I'd had enough of that.

Once I ripped, I found myself listening yo songs and artists I hadn't listened to in years. I've got 60+ 5.1 -> Atmos albums now as well I can click in two surround enabled rooms as well.

Ripping CDs is cake. ITunes will look up the titles and album art for you automatically. I just watched TV while doing it (just grab the next disc from the storage case every few minutes and pop it in the drive).

Once done, I kept a backup of everything (some off site now as well in case the house burns down or whatever and takes all the media (and photo albums) with it. I was surprised how little time it took. DVDs in 2007 took WAY longer by comparison. But today, I don't normally need a disc for anything.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

My lord, I hope you guys have reinforced those floors. LOL
Y'all disc collection would fill my whole house.
Had to convert all my discs to files before I could move to FL after retirement.
Well worth the trade.

That was only half of my collection , not pictured are 8 or 9 crates of quad LP'S . Plus some dvd bluray movies on shelves.
That floor should hold , unless i get lucky and find an armored truck full of Gold bricks free for the takin'.



Also I have some hook straps on two slanty shelving units .

 

[MidiMagic]

As I wrote before, they’re not having trouble calibrating supply or demand.

They (or rather the distributors who play a much larger role now) are just managing inventory much differently and tighter now.

Yeah! They demand that you accept what they supply.

 

[Sal1950]

I've never even heard of DAB. I've got HDRadio in my car and on my older Marantz 7010 (which Google is telling me is not the same as DAB).

AFAIK they are one and the same, DAB Digital Audio Broadcasting. ???

 

[Sal1950]

I agree nothing is as easy as plopping in a disc & press play. Unlike others here I've had very good disc longevity so I don't ripp for fear of disc rot, etc. I live in a decent size house with plenty of room for physical media. At 70 yo I( don't feel the obsession to spend most of the future ripping, labeling, cue sheets etc. It is not my loss, it is my gain.

I'm also 70 and could sit in my lazyboy and play over 2500 albums from my hard drive without ever getting up. They include nothing less than Redbook flac quality rips going up to 5.1 24/96 lossless LPCM and Atmos files. That's not even inclusive of my small concert and movie collection, I'm not a big video guy.
So getting up and down for each and every disc is easier?
Most CD's will rip with no more manual input other to put it in the drawer and take it out, once. I'm not sure I understand your comments on labeling, cue sheet's and all that. I've never done anything like that for a simple CD rip in my life, the ripper does it all.
In any case as long as your happy that's all that counts. I just choose the convenience of computer files over a room full of disc.
YMMV

 

[MagnumX]

AFAIK they are one and the same, DAB Digital Audio Broadcasting. ???

As near as I can tell, DAB is a European standard that replaces analog FM radio completely. HDRadio coincides with traditional analog FM (used in the USA and it's optional still).

I read this (linked and quoted that section below):

HD Radio Vs. DAB

Some countries have implemented Eureka-147 Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) or its successor DAB+. DAB broadcasts a single station that is approximately 1500 kilohertz wide (≈1000 kilobits per second). That station is then subdivided into multiple digital streams of between 9 and 12 programs. In contrast FM HD Radio which requires 400 kHz bandwidth is assigned to the traditional 200 kilohertz channel spacing used in the United States, with capability of 300 kbit/s in pure digital mode.

The first generation DAB uses the MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2) audio codec which has less efficient compression than newer codecs. The typical bitrate for DAB stereo programs is 128 kbit/s or less and as a result most radio stations on DAB have a lower sound quality than FM does under similar conditions.[34] Many DAB stations also broadcast in mono. In contrast, DAB+ uses the newer AAC+ codec and FM HD Radio uses a codec based upon the MPEG-4 HE-AAC standard.

Before DAB+ was introduced, DAB's inefficient compression led in some cases to "downgrading" stations from stereophonic to monaural, in order to include more channels in the limited 1000 kbit/s bandwidth.[35] Digital radio, such as DAB, DAB+ and FM HD radio currently often have smaller coverage of markets as compared to analog FM, radios are more expensive, and reception inside vehicles and buildings may be poor, depending on the frequencies used. HD Radio shares most of these same flaws (see criticisms below). On the other hand, digital radio allows for more stations and less susceptibility for disturbances in the signal. In the United States, however, other digital broadcast technologies than HD radio (such as DAB+) have not been approved for use on either the FM or AM band.

 

[Doug G.]

Your loss

No, I have done both. I didn't write what I wrote flippantly.

Doug

 

[Soundfield]

I've never even heard of DAB.

Conversely I’d never heard of HDR. Turns out it is only really used in a handful of countries (principally Mexico, the US and Canada). Looks like an interesting system but is pretty much incapable of being adopted anywhere else in the world because the digital sidebands impose a large bandwidth requirement. FM channel spacing in the US is an unusually wide 200 kHz which is sufficient to accommodate it, but almost everywhere else in the world FM channel spacing is 100 kHz which does not give enough space for such a system.

 

[audiomaster]

Well, I did use an Apple server (i.e. Oddly a used 2002 PowerPC Digital Audio tower upgraded to a single 1.8 GHz processor from dual 400MHz ones with dual 2TB hard drives with a Sata card adapter and maxed out ram over a gigabit network) and iTunes, but what I had in mind was whole house audio whereby I could play any of my music in at least 4 rooms (later 6 rooms) of the house using 1st Gen AppleTV units and Airport Express units and control it with the then brand new iPod Touch using Apple's "Remote" app. I actually had an AppleTV for a couple of years that wasn't connected to a TV in the living room just to use for audio (ironically the 1st Gen was 16/44.1 accurate while later generation AppleTVs were limited by iOS's 16/48 limitation and had to upmix the sample rate, which meant DTS music CDs no longer played back (they did on the 1st Gen AppleTV units without any support from Apple other than ALAC was lossless and it was bit-accurate output to 16/44.1).

For 2007, I thought this system was basically ahead of its time and worked great. From iTunes, you could even output whole house audio to all speakers at the same time and they were time-aligned. I could walk around the house with say Christmas music playing and it would just be everywhere I went. Now with iOS versus older Airport Express and ATV 4K, they seem to somehow get slightly out of sync due to HDMI timing difference and the like (ATV Gen one had optical output available). The old system worked better.... But I rarely used the whole house sync thing anyway (I tend to listen in one room).

From there, I started renting 720p HD movies for my 720p projector. Over time, resolutions went up on the newer models and I eventually got a newer projector (still only 1080p at the moment; it downscales 4K with a little scaler box I bought). But I went through and converted all my VHS tapes (using a pretty nice Pro VCR setup), scanned all my 35mm prints (and negatives with a slide scanner when possible) and removed all the artifacts and discolorations, etc. while I was at it (talk about spending some winter weekends with Photoshop) and first all my DVDs and then eventually Blu-Rays and now UHD Blu-Rays and 3D Blu-Rays as well. I'm using a quad-core i7 Mac Mini now instead with 10TB of storage and 16GB of RAM as the server and I use KODI or Xidoo instead of the Apple players most of the time, but it's still basically the same concept.

I no longer need an Apple server, though. I can boot into Windows 10 on the same computer (Boot Camp) even and it can serve the same stuff to the KODI/XIDOO players around the house or even iTunes using Windows version of iTunes. The only trick was to buy a software package that could read the Mac drives in Windows and the same for Windows drives on the Mac side to make drives to directly connect to the Xidoo (3D and UHD don't go so well over WiFi here just yet; a direct hard drive works more reliably). So, I don't need Apple anymore. All the players can play ALAC, AAC, etc. now regardless and the contents of the Mac formatted drives can be copied to any format drive (Linux, Windows, etc.)

It's just exhausting to read this! I just drop the needle on the LP, thread the tape on the RS1520 or slide the cd/dvd in the slot on the Samsung 4K player and sit back and listen!
If I want "whole house" I just leave the door to the theater open and turn it up!
I don't even have a PC connected to my audio system unless I jack in my laptop to play an online video once in a while.
When do you guys have time to do all this ripping and copying and backing up etc. I'm retired and I'm still too busy to do that!

 

[audiomaster]

I would much rather just take out a disc and put it onto/into a player and play it than dink around with copying. downloading, and manipulating files, and trying to get various formats to work.

Doug

Amen! Love the smell of that old Ampex reel to reel tape after baking!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

So getting up and down for each and every disc is easier?

Gotta refill the drinkypoo anyway...

 

[Owen Smith]

I started ripping all my CDs to FLAC about 8 years ago. A year in I was about half way through but I got so bored and fed up with doing it that I stopped. I found it was pointless work gaining me nothing.

 

[ar surround]

I started ripping all my CDs to FLAC about 8 years ago. A year in I was about half way through but I got so bored and fed up with doing it that I stopped. I found it was pointless work gaining me nothing.

I was selective. I only ripped those discs and/or tracks that were really of interest to me. I found that doing so lessened the burden quite a bit.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

It's just exhausting to read this! I just drop the needle on the LP, thread the tape on the RS1520 or slide the cd/dvd in the slot on the Samsung 4K player and sit back and listen!
If I want "whole house" I just leave the door to the theater open and turn it up!
I don't even have a PC connected to my audio system unless I jack in my laptop to play an online video once in a while.
When do you guys have time to do all this ripping and copying and backing up etc. I'm retired and I'm still too busy to do that!

Its like a lot of things. Pay me now or pay me later. Yes, when I ripped my whole collection it took some time. But especially for CD's the process is fast. A couple of minutes to rip. A couple more to tag. In the time it would take to play a track or two, the process is complete. I would typically do it while watching TV. Once the collection is ripped, one only has to worry about new product coming in the door. And that is just simple to keep up with.

But that time spent ripping has been paid back many time over during playback. Like others have said, imagine access to any music you own with the click of a button, from your favorite chair. No cleaning discs, no finding them, no putting them back.

It has changed how I listen to music forever. I used to play entire disks at one sitting and just sat through the selections I didn't care for. That never happens now. Playing one track leads to a different artist, then another, then another all in succession. All effortlessly. The presentation is better as well. I get full album art, on a background of artist photos with scrolling lyrics.

I will never go back to disks.

 

[MagnumX]

It's just exhausting to read this!

I gather short stories aren't your thing, let alone novels?

I just drop the needle on the LP, thread the tape on the RS1520 or slide the cd/dvd in the slot on the Samsung 4K player and sit back and listen!

You "just" ??? I listen to a song or two on an LP, hate the rest of the album and so I have to get up and change the record. And change the record. And change the record. And change the record. To listen to 8 songs! THAT is exhausting. I get a workout just doing the squats up and down from the listening chair (heaven forbid I had to do that in my home theater where my primary chair has motorized recline as it would take forever and put a lot of wear on the motor). How many records or movies do you have? I have boxes and boxes and boxes of Blu-Rays. I'm wasting an entire room in my house for BDs/DVDs because I'm out of storage for them. I'd like to just sell them all, but that would be illegal if I've kept the ripped copies. Now imagine trying to find the movie I want to watch in trash bags full of Blu-Rays. And then I have to lug it upstairs or downstairs to watch in the room I'm in. Oops. I accidentally touched the disc surface and left a fingerprint/smudge. Now I've got to find the disc cleaner system.... Ugh.

If I want "whole house" I just leave the door to the theater open and turn it up!

Seeing my theater is on a different floor, it really doesn't sound too good in my den one floor up on the opposite side of the house or even the living room right above it. I care about sound quality. But imagine having to go up/down the steps to change that record or CD to play a different song or when the disc runs out. They used to make 200-300 disc CD changers. I guess that could help, but the remote probably wouldn't work too well a floor away and good luck remembering what album is in which slot, etc. without the "catalog" list of what's where (which was the size of a photo album).

I don't even have a PC connected to my audio system unless I jack in my laptop to play an online video once in a while.
When do you guys have time to do all this ripping and copying and backing up etc. I'm retired and I'm still too busy to do that!

My PC has its own audio system. It's called the Klipsch 2.1 Pro-Media system. I have like three of them in the house including my bedroom (I play a brown noise sound like Niagara Falls from a hotel room kind of sound when I sleep. It masks out "most" outside sounds, particularly helpful if you sleep in or are on a different shift. It's a phenomenal sounding system for $150 (well it was $150 and even on sale for $125 in the past; I think it has Blue-Tooth added now and what not so I can't say if it's the same sound quality, but for a small room or computer, it's pretty amazing compared to all those horrible computer speaker systems they made over the years. I've got three rooms of full size speaker systems as well (17.1 speaker home theater room, Carver 6' tall ribbon speaker system in the living room (with Klipsch surrounds for 4.1) and some DefTechs in my exercise room with a ProLogic old receiver connected plus 3 Pro Media system rooms and some somewhat cheaper speakers in a guest bedroom (that's network connected and can also play music or sleep sounds).

As to how, I and others have said how. I have my CDs in "case logic" cases and just brought them to the computer room/den and watched TV on my 2nd monitor as I fed it discs. Maybe 3 minutes a disc on average. iTunes automatically labeled and added artwork. All I had to do was feed it another disc when one was done. That's not hard to do while watching Family Feud or whatever. I had like 350+ discs and I was still done in one weekend. I could have spread it out over several weekends doing it just a couple of hours a day. Compared to using Handbrake (having to rip and then re-compress movies, check for which soundtracks and subtitles, etc.), it was a breeze.

 

[Doug G.]

So, you file guys like to just sit back in a chair and click, missing out on much needed exercise as we grow older. I hope your legs keep working.

Doug