MP3 not successor to CD Jul08 '04
I’m almost at the point of having all my audio CDs transferred to my Mac, in MP3 format, to be played and/or recorded via iTunes. At this point, I have in my catalog 1,062 songs, which is not a lot. That many songs takes up a mere 4.84 GB. It’s a good thing I have my 120 GB external hard drive to contain my entire music collection. I shouldn’t run out of real estate any time soon.
In any case, initially I thought this would be the end of those cumbersome CDs.... (so heavy and burdensome they are ;)... But I have realized lately that I am wrong. The MP3 format will never fully replace CDs, simply because the CD is a perfect digital recording.
The CD will become the official "backup," or "hard copy." Some people may disagree, and may already have their stacks of CDs in the garage for the next garage sale. I have come close too.
The problem is... I’ve heard songs in iTunes skip, or "jump," if you will. Well, you say, maybe the CD was scratched, and it was imported in that way. Could be. But I’ve heard it too many times to justify that reasoning.
Also, I’ve bought many albums off of the iTunes music store, which also "jump" at times. How could THOSE songs jump!? It certainly is not on my end. It has to be on Apple’s end. However they get the music into the database, and to be available for download – something may be going wrong during that transfer process.
I don’t know for sure. I can’t make assumptions.
I do know that the MP3 format certainly provides efficiency and organization. Not to mention "space saving." But it seems shabby. Or sloppy. After all, when a song is converted to MP3 format, it LOSES quality. Sure, it is very hard to notice this loss in quality, but my point stands.
There is something so "fresh" about opening a new CD for the first time, and noticing the shiny surface, with no finger prints or dust. Then you pop it in the CD player, and out comes fresh, high quality sound.
Sometimes I think we are moving backwards, rather than forward. I will still convert all my songs into MP3, and I will still purchase albums via the iTunes music store, but only because it saves space, and I become a more organized DJ.
I certainly don’t do it because of the quality.
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