a Case for CDs

Originally posted elsewhere 16th March 2016

I enjoy CD's. I enjoy actually owning a physical copy of the music. It's so much more than just having the item however. There are some benefits of being patient and getting the CD vs obtaining the songs ASAP.

For example, here are some similarities with movies. If you're really excited to see the movie, it can be tempting to watch it via a downloaded cam version or even a review copy with warning text at the bottom occasionally. The thought that you get to see it early is enthralling. Aiming to be the first person you know to have gathered this new "thing" to start watching and discovering. You are cheating yourself, however. Like a child cheating on a test just to pass won't fully learn the lesson. You won't get the fullest experience.

There have been many people that have seen it before you. Same with the music. Through out the process of being; written, recorded, mixed, mastered, manufactured, transported, reviewed, and any other steps along the way, there have been quite a large amount of people who have already experienced it. For this article, I wish to compare it to the sense of discovery. By rushing the gate, you are not the first one to discover anything. Instead all you have done is diminished the quality of what you can discover. Like a movie, in order to rush and see it (often but not always), there is a large amount of quality loss. If it's a handycam version, then it's not going to look right. Part of the information conveyed to you is lost. As with music, if it's a "web rip", purchased from iTunes, or "normal" quality stream, it will suffer information loss too. Not including the physical aspects and just looking at the amount of information available, music purchased through iTunes is less than 20% of the information on the actual disc. This was needed in the times of dial-up and low data caps but is a slap in the face of the consumer in today's market.

It can be argued that analogue is the purest form of information transfer in regard to audio (tape, vinyl). Analogue is not digitised, so there isn't really the same kind of numerical measurement of difference between its intended quality and conveyed quality. It has its own "information loss" too. It can be argued that it makes it sound warmer. The same can be said for older projectors, video/audio tapes, and photographs. By presenting a warmer representation of something not designed with that in mind, it has been altered. What you are getting is not the truest representation of the experience as it has been designed.

Now to return to a previous point. The feeling of discovery. When you wait for the product, you are not being robbed of discovering it early. Instead, your discipline is rewarded with a fuller, more engaging immersion in your initial experience. First impressions are important; the experience that has been created does not get another at your initial reaction. You now get to listen to what has been created while looking through the supplied booklet. Inside can be accompanying art, lyrics, sometimes even hidden secrets within parts of the casing, or differences between the track list and the CD's internal Table on Contents creating hidden pre-gap tracks. A great example of this can be found on the album Prisoners by The Agonist. Around 5:55 into the track Ideomotor, a CD player will change over to track 7, counting up if the player can handle negative timing; otherwise, the track will stay at 0:00 for 2 minutes while a sweet instrumental plays, before kicking into Lonely Solipsist. This creates a hidden track that can not be directly selected, but must be heard through the albums progression. When the album is ripped to individual tracks, however the instrumental song is just tacked onto the end of track 6.

Most audio CDs are in the "Redbook" format. I'm sure some of you reading this may remember hybrid/enhanced discs that came with video clips, games, or other extras for when the CD was used in a PC. This is defined as the "Bluebook" format. On a side note, some video game discs employed the "Blackbook" format. This simply means they didn't conform to a standard format. Making the discs harder to make an exact copy of on consumer-grade disc burners. One example used by Sony for the PSX includes "Bad Blocks" Many blank discs were wasted trying to get around this DRM (Digital Rights Management). Too many.

To further go into the sense of discovery you can find in a music CD, I'll take the article into the scary realms of... Dun dun dun... Subjective taste! I like metal. I like that you can't hear and interpret the lyrics on the first listen. If you have the disc and it came with lyrics, then you have the resources to find them. Metal lyrics can take weeks to be put online after release, so the only way you'll be able to know is if you participated in the release. It's almost like a form of time-sensitive DRM. You can even give it a listen without the lyrics. Try to pick up what you can. Then cross-check with your book and see what you got right and wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Book_%28non-standard_disc_format%29

http://consolecopyworld.com/psx/psx_cd_info.shtml