i was so psyched about the quality of vudu that i gave my blu-ray player away. i am really amazed at the quality of streaming video. i may not be very discerning, but i dont care all that much that blu-ray is better. i am more than pleased with the HD streaming video i get from amazon and vudu and netflix. i am gonna once again declare that physical media sucks.
Their HD is good. I've had an occasional streaming problem but just waiting a minute or so and it resolves. They have a fair collection of 3D movies as well.
vinyl is still the coolest, and the only sort of physical media i want to own, apart from 20 or so books i really want to have around. i definitely do not want to own any cds or dvds or blur-rays, and i dont want to have to hold them and carry them around, when i could just stream them. even vinyl is starting to annoy me, because i accidentally bent some of my records they sound goofy now. a bit of a hassle. and i only want really great records, like the mars volta and radiohead. the rest of my music can stay on the computer.
are there any digital formats that sound as good as vinyl? anything close? what about this lossless thing audiophiles yap about. also martin, can you not find espn streaming online when needed?
Theoretically nothing can match analog sound. It is a true curve with all the nuances. The problem is that analog media has either surface noise or tape hiss, usually both. The best digital sound uses super-high sampling rates like the SACD. It pixelates the sound curves, but so small that humans cannot hear the difference.CD-quality pixelates the sound more crudely, but adequate enough that the average person doesn't care. MP-3 and similar formats compress the signal to make it small and fast. This creates noticeable loss of sound quality when expanded because the newly created digits do not exactly match the original ones, they are a formulaic reconstruction that has artifacts that disturb audiophiles. Lossless compression makes bigger files, but it only compresses silences, never the music, so there is no loss of the original digits when converted to analog audio. I rip everything in AAC-lossless at the highest sampling rate possible. And I still spin vinyl. I like to clean the record and the needle, I like to drop the needle slooowly onto the disk. I like to flip the disk and play the other side. I like to turn on the WOW filter to cut the rumble from the turntable motor. I like to adjust the HISS filter to cut the tape noise. Spinning a disk on a turntable compared to playing an MP3 file is as a real woman compared to a transvestite.
i notice mp3s or whatever format i download often sucks. and this is even ones i buy which isnt all that often. and by sucks, I mean when I stream it in my car sounds hollow in comparison to what i expect. im looking to avoid this. I am an audiophile without the knowledge. But i know substandard quality when i hear it. is there a way to convert these up? I assume I have to start with something better to begin with. shouldnt everything off itunes be of almost equal standard post-1990? doesnt seem like it.
