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Old 08-07-2010, 10:09 PM   #59
HamsterRage
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HamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notesHamsterRage can name that song in three notes
 
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Analog, by definition, is going to have issues with noise. It also depends heavily on the quality of the media and the playback equipment.

Digital, on the other hand, only has the noise that came along from the recording equipment itself. The digitizing process itself, though, loses some of the qualities of the original sound - it's only an approximation.

It should be noted that CDs are an obsolete format. They were designed to store the data on a media with what we would consider today to have an extremely small capacity. The reason that they haven't been replaced with newer technology is because nobody is going to invest in playback equipment for a newer physical media, especially when people are moving toward downloaded music.

For the vast amount of pop and rock music, it isn't really possible to hear much difference between a CD and an MP3 at 192kbps, and even harder at 256kbps. There's really no reason why digital formats in the future can't run at much higher sample rates or use more bits per sample, all of which will shrink the difference between analog and digital.

A quick Google search came up with an article that indicated that digital sales would outstrip CD sales in 2010.
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