Steve Litchfield

I grew up with LPs (1970s) You know, huge, fragile things that wore out quickly but did at least have big, colourful album art and (usually) sleeve notes. Then I moved to cassettes (1980s) Small, fragile things that wore out quickly and had quite titchy (but still colourful) album art and (even titchier) sleeve notes. Then along came the CD (1990s/2000s) Slim, rather robust discs that never wear out. And which sound AMAZING. And the album art is reasonably readable and just as colourful. Great for collecting and for ripping at any quality I like. And so we come to the download generation. Music stores (e.g. iTunes). Almost faceless MP3 and AAC music files. If you're lucky you get a tiny thumbnail graphic. Sound quality is a lot worse than CD if you listen closely. Just as expensive as CD, but you can find popular albums for free in the shadier corners of the (cough) Internet. But you know what? I'd rather buy the CD for music I like than a collection of computer files that I...

As someone who started with vinyl records (LPs) back in the 1970s and graduated through cassettes to CDs, I get fed up with so-called audiophiles who say that vinyl recordings sound better than the same pieces on CD. They're simply talking rubbish. In favour of their argument, they suggest that the 44kHz sampling rate of digital music means that the 'full' analog waveforms of music aren't stored when on CD. They'd be right, but unless we're talking about piano music and the listener is a 20 year old afficianado with perfect hearing the difference is completely inaudible. Certainly for 99.999% of people, and especially those who like listening to music a lot (and fairly loud), hearing won't be perfect. Even more so as we all get older. In favour of CD 44kHz sampled music, there are many factors, including: These days, most CDs are either recorded digitally in the first place, or digitally remastered, which means ZERO hiss, ZERO wobble/wow, PERFECT graphic equ...