A year or two ago, I purchased a new pair of Apple AirPods after my first pair finally quit. The first pair (the very first release of the AirPods) lasted several years with daily use for both music and conference calls. They finally quit when the batteries held a charge for no more than a few minutes.

The new AirPods were the “pro” version which have improved noise isolation compared to the original AirPods which helps keep environmental noise down.

This model had ear tips that lowered outside noise, allowing for more of the detail to be noticed when listening to music. They also have active noise cancelling, but that is not a feature that I use all that much.

The reduced outside noise and improved sound quality in general had allowed for even more detail and frequency response with the updated version.

Of course the Apple AirPods are light years ahead in terms of audio quality when compared to the type of headphones which were commonly available for portable players in the 80s and 90s.

With higher sound quality in headphones these days, most of us can discern the difference in the sound quality of the source. In prior decades, audio quality in the average pair of headphones was not nearly as good as it is today.

With the new AirPods came a free 3 month trial of Apple Music. I have thousands of tracks on my iPhone storage already, all in MP3 format that I encoded over the years.

I started the 3 month trial of Apple Music, and as I listened to lossless audio tracks, I was taken back to a time when audio quality was far better, instantly realizing how audio quality has become lessened over the years without realizing how much so.

This post describes my experiences with various audio formats starting from vinyl all the way to today’s streaming formats and why I came back to the compact disc as the best of them all.

Vinyl

My first player for music was a toy “suitcase” style record player which came with a few books and 45 RPM records, which narrated the books. I was perhaps 5 or 6 years old at the time, and this was the format that was most cost effective as a toy, unlike today’s toys which have screens, processors, and enough flash memory to store several hours of music and video.

As a side note, most wind-up “talking” or singing toys of this era actually had miniature vinyl records inside – when you pull the string and let go, the record would spin and a stylus would amplify the sound from the record.

I would later acquire a few singles (45s) and albums (33s) from the era, and played them enough times where they eventually developed predicable static and skips from wear. It was a bit disappointing to have had that happen.

Vinyl LPs have an excellent frequency response from at least 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. The medium itself is not the limitation for frequency response. Keeping the stylus in the groove and mastering process are the practical limitations with vinyl. Frequencies too low or near the resonance of the tone arm need to be avoided for example.

Vinyl continues to be a dominant preference for HiFi enthusiasts for many reasons, from nostalgia to its sound quality. However, vinyl does have some drawbacks as well.

Even with the best turntable, the best stylus, and the best vinyl pressing available, repeated plays of an album inevitably result in wear over time, which reduces the audio quality.

Not only does the vinyl wear, but so does the stylus. After a certain number of hours of play time, the stylus needs to be replaced.

Anyone who is seriously into vinyl will have experience cleaning albums, cleaning or changing the stylus, changing belts on a turntable (unless it is direct drive), adjusting a tone arm, storing albums correctly and more.

Similarly, different pressings of the same album can vary. Depending on the pressing method and master creation, these variations can occur not only as a result of the specific process used, but also within the process itself. For example, a record pressed closer to the first runs might have a better result compared to those toward the end of the run.

Sometimes albums are pressed in more cost effective ways by secondary publishers after the first run. After the first few rounds of sales, the album might no longer be pressed by the same publisher and may then be pressed by other publishers afterwards.

Cassettes

My first cassette player was built into a “boom box” style portable unit. It had the standard AM/FM broadcast bands, played cassettes and even recorded. Of course, one could not record their own copy of music on a vinyl record the same way. This was a new feature of the format – you could record many times onto the same cassette.

This boom box unit would record not only from the station that was tuned-in on the receiver, but it also had two microphones for recording in stereo.

There was a local radio station that would play full albums on Friday evenings, which is how I ended up with some free music on cassette back then.

The frequency response of the average consumer playback deck was about 40 Hz to 10,000 Hz. Of course tape formulations and the playback deck could vary slightly from these specifications.

Lower price, ease of playback, and portability propelled the cassette tape forward as a replacement for vinyl for the average consumer.

Soon cassette decks were available in portable “boom boxes”, toy cassette players for kids, portable units you can take with you, such as “walkman” style players, and even in cars. Clearly vinyl would not be a good match for these uses, although they did have record players for cars.

The cassette ushered in portability, the ability to “dub” or copy at home with dual cassette decks (not legally of course), and a much lower cost compared to vinyl.

Even with so many advantages to cassettes, they never completely replaced the vinyl record. The sound quality of cassettes was quite a downgrade compared to vinyl in almost every aspect. Not only was their frequency response more narrow, cassettes had a measurable amount of wow and flutter (changes in speed of the tape across the head), there was also the issue of background noise or hiss. This really was more noticeable with cassettes over vinyl especially at higher volumes.

Turntables had an advantage of heavy platters that acted as a flywheel, keeping wow and flutter below that of cassettes generally speaking.

In addition to the limitations of the medium for cassette tapes, they also degrade over time and with playback. The plastic tape itself can stretch over time, can be damaged by jams inside the cassette player, and slow degradation of the magnetic pattern recorded to the tape itself occurs over time.

The frequency response of cassettes was less than vinyl, which was a big step down in terms of audio quality in that respect. There were various attempts at correcting for the limitations with the magnetic medium such as Dolby noise reduction, Dolby B, Dolby C, and various formulations of magnetic tape, such as normal, chrome, metal, and others.

For compatibility with the average playback deck, these various formulations and recording methods were available on consumer decks for their own recorded cassettes, but commercially produced cassettes were designed to be played back on a cassette deck without compatibility with any of these variations.

Compact Disc

I remember when we got our first compact disc player when I was a kid, because it eventually led to the old HiFi equipment being handed down to me – the Pioneer SX-626, the Fisher cassette deck, and the floor speakers that accompanied these.

The compact disc player was part of a modern (at the time) rack system with separate components. The CD player was one of the components, along with the cassette deck, tuner, turntable, preamp and amp.

I remember the first CD played on that new CD placer. The CD was around $35, and the album was U2 “War”. The cost of CDs was significantly higher than cassettes.

I remember the sound quality was completely unlike anything I had heard prior. Further, you did not need to flip the CD (they have only one side), and there was no rewinding necessary.

This meant you can listen to an entire album without having to flip over the record or the cassette half way through.

As if those benefits were not enough, you can skip around the CD tracks nearly instantly. There was no wait to fast-forward or rewind and no stylus to carefully lift and move to the desired track on a vinyl album (if you even dared to perform that feat).

Further, CDs do not wear (at least not from playback), since nothing actually touches the surface of the disc during playback. Sure, CDs can be scratched, warped, or can degrade over time, but compared to all mediums that came before them, they certainly are the most durable.

CDs stored music or sound at a fairly high bit rate and resolution (44 KHz at 16 bits). Their frequency response (the average CD player itself) is specified to be 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, and at this specified frequency response, the bit rate and resolution provides no less than that. There are actually two distinct channels for an audio CD for stereo, providing for completely independent left and right audio streams. This was an improvement over vinyl for example, which did not provide for completely independent stereo channels in the same way.

CDs being digital had the advantage of increased dynamic range, absolutely no background noise, and a level of clarity that was never before heard in average household equipment.

CDs did not necessarily provide the best possible sound quality the format could provide. For example, at the time, studio music recordings were, for the most part, not yet digital. Most studio recordings were reel to reel (tape). These would eventually be mixed to a master recording, which was analog, and then digitally sampled for CD pressing.

Eventually digital mastering was widely used, but even if the master recording was tape (analog), the CD provided a high quality copy which would not degrade over time.

The disadvantage to the CD (at the time) was that they were more expensive than cassettes, not playable in cars nor portable, and you could not record on them. Of course these disadvantages slowly disappeared over the years.

I would eventually acquire more cassette tapes because they were far less expensive than CDs. Eventually, I ended up getting a portable CD player when they became affordable to a kid with an allowance and money from mowing the lawn.

I would then begin to slowly replace my favourite albums on cassette with the CD versions over the years.

Compressed Audio Formats

Fast forward to the mid nineties, and a friend sent me a file via email. This was when we had dial-up internet, and the file was just over 3 MB. It had an MP3 extension and I had to figure out what format it was.

I downloaded a program called Winamp and opened the file. When I first heard the music from the file, I thought it was a trick – either the file ended up being a link to a stream, or it was only a few seconds of the song. It ended up not being a trick, and it was the full song.

I spent the next few hours researching the MP3 format and experimenting with encoding my own MP3s, which on the PC I had at the time, was painfully slow.

MP3 format can vary in terms of quality by varying the bitrate. The maximum bitrate for MP3s is 320 kbps. MP3 format can be mono, stereo, or joint stereo. Of course, to save space, most MP3s are likely joint stereo, which, similar to vinyl does not provide for two full independent channels of audio information.

On average, an MP3 sounded better than cassettes, but not quite as good as a CD.

The MP3 format is a “lossy” format, meaning that the compression used does not retain an exact reproduction of the source. The compression discards detail that is claimed to be less perceivable to the human ears.

Eventually I ended up with thousands of tracks in MP3 format that I acquired over the years. About a decade later, Apple introduced the iPod. This device catered directly to those who wanted a portable player which can store an entire music library inside it.

For those who already had hundreds or thousands of MP3s, or CDs, they can easily copy them to the iPod. Soon after the iPod was released, the iPhone was released, which combined the best of a smartphone with the iPod.

For many years thereafter, I had several thousand music tracks on my phone, mostly from CD rips I made back in the mid 90s and early 2000s.

The portable music players (iPod, iPhone) were an upgrade to the portable cassette and compact disc players since you can now carry your entire music library with you.

With the quality of the average headphones which were available to accompany these portable music players, the sound quality degradation from the compressed music format stored on them was not as noticeable.

Digital music files can be played over and over without any loss of quality or degradation, just like a CD. They can be quickly and easily copied to multiple devices. They can be electronically purchased directly from the playback device the second they are released by the artist.

Gone were the days of ordering CDs or cassettes from the music clearing houses or music stores, malls, and other sources.

Unfortunately, with all of the conveniences of lossy digital music formats, audio quality was the sacrifice.

Streaming Services

Once bandwidth became inexpensive and fast on smart phones, streaming services became popular. Perhaps the first that I recall was Pandora and soon after many others popped up.

Streaming services provide a vast library of music and instant access to virtually any song at any time for a monthly fee. Of course, streaming requires internet access or you would need to cache a copy locally, if allowed by the streaming provider.

Streaming makes it easy to start playing music on any device that supports the format. This can include whole house systems, wireless speakers, HiFi amplifiers and more.

Streaming had become the next iteration of music format, replacing all formats that came before it. Or had it?

There are some drawbacks to streaming. Streaming services have a monthly fee, and the quality is varied. That fee often varies with the quality and features you need.

The quality of streaming is lower than with CDs because of the lossy compression used by all but a few streaming providers. As of the writing of this post, only Apple Music and few other streaming services provide lossless audio quality.

Further, some artists may not be on every streaming service. I have also heard that sometimes artists do not agree on terms with streaming providers during contract renewal periods and they can be dropped from the service. Sometimes this is temporary, other times it is permanent. Anyone familiar with cable and/or satellite channel lineups have seen these disagreements, and sometimes they are drawn out in public view.

In some cases, newer “mixes” of tracks replace the original versions. In many cases “remastered” versions of entire albums replace the originals. This of course results in versions of tracks that are different from what the original musicians approved and released – and they are different than what you remember, if you notice these differences.

FM Broadcast

It is worth noting that FM broadcast, mainly in the era of vinyl, cassette, and CDs, could be included in this comparison.

Even though FM broadcast did not allow for music on demand, it was a very popular format for listening to music back when vinyl, cassettes, and CDs were popular.

I vividly remember hearing my first FM broadcast. I was perhaps 6 or 7 years old and had a stereo FM Walkman. It was also the first time I ever heard stereo headphones. It was quite remarkable hearing this compared to AM stereo that most of our junk cars had built-in. Not every car in the mid to late 70s had FM stereo tuners.

Eventually every car had an FM tuner, HiFi receivers had FM tuners, and even portable Walkman style players had FM tuners.

FM stereo had a frequency response of 30 Hz to 15,000 Hz. This narrow frequency response is the result of channel spacing on the FM broadcast band and the method for which stereo is broadcast for compatibility with mono receivers and unfavorable reception conditions.

This frequency response is a bit better than average cassettes, but certainly not better than vinyl nor CDs.

FM broadcast was also heavily compressed, which means the dynamic range was reduced and volume levels were more “averaged”. This was done primarily to improve the perception of the loudness and quality when listening in cars and portable receivers.

What Format to Choose Today?

Now that I was reintroduced to near perfect quality music (via lossless Apple Music), I wanted to replace my old MP3 music collection with higher quality versions.

My daily playback device (AirPods) actually have really decent quality playback. I can actually detect the difference between lossless format and my old MP3s quite easily. I could also hear the difference in playback on vintage HiFi and modern HiFi equipment as well.

I did not want a streaming service due to the perpetual fees, potential for altered versions of tracks, risk of losing access to tracks (for spats between artists and services, political reasons, etc), and ties to a specific ecosystem.

Further, there is no mechanism currently in the market where I can purchase a lossless album without requiring some tie to an ecosystem, like iTunes with an Apple ID or the equivalent in other ecosystems such as Amazon, Google, and others. I would need to maintain those accounts and hardware in order to be able to play those tracks.

I have heard that it is possible to download lossless music on torrents, and from what I have heard from others is mixed results on quality. Some tracks are from remastered albums but not labelled as such, and others are from different versions of the same track. Many times they are not really ripped from a CD, many seem to be streamed from an online service and into an audio capture device and encoded as lossless.

This leaves one choice that stands out for many reasons. Of all the formats that came before, CDs were the obvious choice for both quality and durability.

CDs as the Preferred Medium

I did not want to go back to the days of carrying CDs along with a portable CD player. With today’s lossless file formats, I could rip CDs again, but this time to a lossless format rather than a compressed format like MP3.

These days phones have plenty of storage for entire libraries in lossless format. I could rip my entire CD library to my iPhone in lossless format, storing it on the device itself. This allows for playback without any cell service or WiFi, such as when on airplanes for example.

Further, for home playback, I could either stream the lossless files from the iPhone to any room in the house or all at once. If streaming to an Apple AirPort Express, that stream is lossless over Airplay 2, if the source is lossless.

Technically, playback over Bluetooth to the AirPods is not lossless. However, it uses far better compression than 128 or 192 kHz MP3 as a comparison.

Lastly, I could always play the actual CDs on a CD player, bypassing the quality loss of wireless streaming.

In summary, the lossless streaming format is most ideal and convenient, and CDs provide for the best quality source to convert to lossless files.

Finding a CD Drive

In order to rip my CDs to lossless files, I needed a CD drive, or “CD-ROM” as it was called in the early 90s. Very few if any computers or laptops come with CD drives these days. Computer software is downloadable and the added expense of the CD-ROMs has been removed quite a few years ago.

Inexpensive USB CD readers (and writers) can be found today for around $30 USD or less. These can be used to rip the CDs to lossless files via iTunes or many other applications.

For actual CD playback, today’s BlueRay players can play CDs along with DVD players, and many game consoles can as well. Those can be connected to amplifiers for playback of physical CDs. Many of these players include a digital output which allows connection to an external DAC.

A drawback to playing physical CDs would be that it would be limited to a single amplifier at a time without major efforts to distribute the source to multiple zones or amplifiers, something streaming can easily do.

Another drawback would be the inconvenience of actually loading the CD into the player.

CD Playback Quality

Because the CD itself does not wear from playback over time, has enough bandwidth to reproduce a frequency response of 20 – 20,000 Hz, is an excellent digital copy of the source, the only real variable in playback quality is the DAC.

The DAC (digital to analog converter) converts the bitstream during playback of a digital source (in this case CDs) to an analog output suitable for amplification and output to speakers.

There is a wide range in terms of audio quality with DACs. Some cost pennies or a few dollars for the components, others perhaps thousands. Of course there are diminishing returns on more expensive DACs, but there certainly is merit to more expensive units compared to the DAC built-in to the average or inexpensive CD player.

DACs are available as a standalone unit, which allows you to purchase an inexpensive CD drive as a “transport” connected to the DAC and then to your amplifier. This of course results in better sound quality compared to simple inexpensive DACs built into average CD players. The best example of this is an inexpensive DVD or BluRay player with a digital output into a decent quality DAC.

Regardless of your playback DAC, starting with the highest possible quality digital source (in this case CDs) is superior to vinyl and cassettes. Even with the DAC built into the average CD player, the audio quality in my opinion surpasses most streaming services and cassettes.

Finding CDs

I doubt many live near a store which sells CDs these days. Surprisingly there are still many ways to purchase CDs and most are inexpensive. CDs are still available new from online retailers. This is the most expensive option, but also comes with the downside of secondary or remastered pressings in most cases.

There are shops that sell used CDs (along with vinyl and cassettes). This is by far the least expensive option. In many cases CDs can be had for anywhere from $5 to $1 or even less, depending on the artist.

Lastly, auction sites are the most convenient way to purchase CDs, and bargains can still be had, even with shipping, depending on the artist. My cost of acquiring CDs from auction sites are between $3 and $10 on average, plus shipping.

Because of the relative durability of the CD, there is little risk of a damaged CD or wear that would affect playback in any way. This is completely different than purchasing vinyl or cassettes used.

Original Versions

My experience with remastered releases is that they seem as if someone in the mixing studio pressed the “loudness button” and recorded the result. While this might “sound better” to those in a car, using inexpensive headphones and/or speaker systems, it often results in listening fatigue if played back on a HiFi system or better headphones.

Sometimes it can be difficult finding an original (non remastered) CD pressing. One of my reasons for preferring CDs over streaming services is to avoid remastered or altered tracks.

If purchasing CDs online, the descriptions sometimes indicate that the CD is remastered. If not, verification can be done, provided the seller posts pictures of the disc itself and/or the cover.

It is most often easy to see whether the disc is an original or early pressing by the publisher, copyright dates, and number on the disc itself. If you know the original release date of an album, there should be similar dates on the copyright and publishing date.

There should not be any dates after the original release date, and if there are, this indicates a re-release. An example is shown below where both a later date and new publisher are listed on the disc:

There is quite a bit of information available on discogs for releases of albums on CD, cassette, and vinyl. Plugging in the number on the label will bring up that version if searching on discogs. Of course there are often discussions on different versions of albums, the differences, and what to look for in some cases.

Ripping CDs

Now that I have rambled on about why I prefer the compact disc over all other formats for music playback, how I acquire CDs, avoiding edits and/or remastered discs, I can share some detail on how I rip the CDs and prepare the tracks for import into the Apple ecosystem. This would work just as well for other platforms.

After my free trial of Apple Music (which I cancelled shortly afterwards), I was spoiled with not only high quality lossless streaming, but album art and lyrics.

Of course for me, iTunes was the first platform I experienced which would automatically find or fix album artwork and track names from both MP3s and CDs. This was when I first got a iPod back in 2006. Other platforms might perform the same tasks, such as the android platform for example.

Once the tracks from a CD are ripped (using any program that would export to a lossless format), I use two programs (for Windows) that assist in the automation of album artwork and metadata as well as with lyrics.

MusicBrains Picard is what I use to fix up track metadata and album artwork. It has the ability to “find” matches based on the acoustic thumbprint for the tracks, similar to Shazzam. This is helpful for cases where the track does not have enough metadata for a match.

Once I have the track meta data cleaned up and matched correctly, with album artwork, I then drop the files into MediaHuman Lyrics Finder. If it finds a match for the track, it will pull the lyrics and place them into the track’s metadata.

Once these steps are complete, I then import the tracks into iTunes. I then have the same quality as Apple lossless, and I also have the artwork and lyrics.

From this point, I can stream the albums to any of the Apple devices with Airplay 2, which is convenient. I also have the physical CDs, in case I wish to play them directly or in case I switch ecosystems or playback formats in the future.

In fact, I recently picked up a vintage Kenwood CD player from the mid eighties, which still works perfectly.

Final Arguments

CDs, in my opinion, are the highest quality option for reproducing the source at home or for portable playback, compared to cassette, vinyl, and in most cases, streaming.

Even if your streaming source is lossless, it still can be altered – it can be a “remaster” or edit. I have never been a fan of a remastered album. I often find the experience of listening to a remastered album similar to someone simply turning on the “loudness” button or adjusting the bass, treble, or midrange.

I have heard some remasters which actually adjust the mixing of the individual tracks, such as drums, bass guitar, vocals, etc, to correct for uneven balance of the sources. In rare cases, remasters undo the original master which was tuned for playback in a car or other lower quality system. This results in exaggerated sounds when listening to the album on a HiFi system. The remaster can correct for this, and allow for a more neutral sound, which is better for HiFi systems.

After decades of not playing CDs and listening to lossy music formats such as MP3 and streaming, hearing CD quality these days highlights how sound quality has steadily declined over the decades.

Until all streaming is lossless format, it would seem CDs have yet to be completely replaced in terms of audio quality.

If we consider convenience of being able to play any album we would like at any time, vinyl was the first popular format for home playback. Streaming as the most recent iteration is certainly far more convenient, and for most, cost effective, depending on how expansive your music preferences are.

I suppose the argument that it is best to own a physical copy of our favorite albums can be compared to the same with our favorite movies. Few pay attention to the fact that scenes can be and actually are cut from movies as time goes on. This can be done for political reasons, cultural norms or movements, or any other reasons. If you own a physical copy, scene cuts will not affect your copies.

There are many instances of changes or alterations to tracks which have become accepted or even unnoticed over the years with older music. Even a remastered album or track can slip into your playlist, altering the way it sounds. If you own a copy of the album, it remains original, or exactly the way you remember it sounding.

I would also argue that there really is something to be said for owning a physical copy of music. The cover art and small booklet that came with the CD, cassette, or vinyl album are always interesting to look through.