{"id":2290,"date":"2012-09-29T09:03:51","date_gmt":"2012-09-29T13:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westwoodvalley.com\/?p=2290"},"modified":"2012-09-29T09:03:51","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T13:03:51","slug":"my-musical-evolution-part-283-roach-days-revisited-loving-the-compact-disc-format","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/2012\/09\/29\/my-musical-evolution-part-283-roach-days-revisited-loving-the-compact-disc-format\/","title":{"rendered":"My Musical Evolution – Part 283 Roach Days Revisited Entering The Digital Domain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Compact<\/a>It is hard to\u00a0assess the true impact of the Compact Disc on My Musical Evolution. <\/em>This was a significant change in technology.\u00a0 Remember My Musical Evolution – Part 92?<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>It was then that I had decided to switch from vinyl LP’s to factory cassettes. I then switched back to vinyl after three years of accumulating cassettes. The I spent the next three years regretting the decision to switch to cassette. Do you remember all that?\u00a0 Well that regret became pointless on the day that I bought my first Compact Disc player.\u00a0 I would be on a mission to replace all of my music with Compact Discs.\u00a0 It would take 10 years to get most of it done. Another 15 to fill in the gaps, and I may\u00a0never be able to find CD versions of some\u00a0things.<\/p>\n

I love the Compact Disc format.\u00a0 It was compact and it was a disc. No, actually, it was the crystal clear sound and potential longevity that was the initial draw.\u00a0 There is currently a movement that suggests vinyl is actually superior in a purist’s sense.\u00a0 I understand the concept of why they say that. Sampling rates and slicign and dicing.\u00a0 Digital music uses the same basic concept\u00a0for your ears that movies use for your eyes. What you are really hearing is a bunch of static snapshots\u00a0in rapidfire succession that give the illusion of continuous sound.\u00a0 I’ll concede the warm of tube driven amplifiers and all that. The problem I have with vinyl is the overhead.\u00a0 My\u00a0copy of Dark Side Of The Moon <\/em>is 26 years old \"Digital<\/a>and it sounds exactly the same today as it did the day I bought it. The nature of vinyl, a stylus coming in physical\u00a0contact with the groove, depends on friction to create the sound.\u00a0That means that every time you\u00a0play that record, you are changing it as the stylus minutely erodes the groove.\u00a0\u00a0Add to that,\u00a0environmental issues like dust and handling.\u00a0 I’m not saying that Compact Discs are impervious to abuse, just that\u00a0day to day\u00a0use is not as hard on them.\u00a0 I’ve heard the stories of CD Rot but fortunately I have not experienced it firsthand. I have always treated my CD’s as Master Tapes. <\/em>That is, I never carried them in a cd wallet or played them in the car. Basically, I treated them like I treated my vinyl LP’s. I’d play them in the house but when it came time to go beyond casually listening, I’d copy them to cassette and let the cassette do all the stunt work.<\/p>\n

The Compact Disc also added a dimension to making mix tapes, with the ability to switch the elapsed time display to countdown mode, I new how long\u00a0I had before a song was going to end. A small thing maybe but I appreciated it.\u00a0 In 1999, I found a whole new reason to love Compact Discs, remind\u00a0me to tell you.<\/p>\n

In the early days of Compact Discs, we were all paying attenition to the type<\/em> of Compact Disc it was. They came in DDD,\u00a0 ADD, <\/em>and AAD.<\/em> The DDD meant that the content on the disc was digitially record all the way through the process. AAD meant that the recording was converted from analog\u00a0source material. Did it really make a difference? To some perhaps but we all paid attention to it for a short while.<\/p>\n

My friend Scott got his first Compact Disc player shortly thereafter. His first Compact Disc was Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here.<\/em> That is how I first heard it. He also bought a Compact Disc called The Digital Domain<\/em>. This was a recording design to demonstrate the capabilities of this new digital optical format. It was a collection of wierd stuff, some of it musical some of it sound effects like a racquetball game or helicopters taking off and landing. There was also a scientific section where they would play Square waves and such to help audiophiles calibrate their sound reproducing instruments.<\/p>\n

As I feared, there do not appear to be many examples from The Digital Domain<\/em> on YouTube. This could pose an even bigger problem near the end of the year when a good deal ofMy Musical Evolution goes off road.<\/p>\n

Lions Are Growing<\/em><\/p>\n