Pretty much sums it up....
- Thread starter Not A Duster
- Start date
thrashingcows
Drowning deep in my sea of loathing...so I'm
Corporate greed....:shifty:
Not A Duster
Well-known member
No.
The music business, (or any business) only delivers the product that the public demands.
If no-one bought shit, they wouldn't make shit.
Wal*Mart has grown into a giant entity by catering to the public's insatiable appetite for cheap shit. It's no different in any other industry.
We have no-one to blame for the tasteless music that is taking over the world but the tasteless people buying and going to the concerts.
68R/T
I got drunk and swallowed my teeth, now
restoman
The paint fumes have cleared so I'm
I'm not too sure about that.
In the never ending quest for profits, large buyers like Wal-Mart have a tremendous influence over the quality the sell. They bring in the cheapest shit they can get (in quality and price) because they know that if that's all that's available in their store, people will buy it.
Most people really are stupid when it comes to quality - they think the comparison between garbage and quality is the same as apples to apples... they quality is the same, only one store wants $10 for that item and Wal-Mart sells it for $7.
I call it "The Wal-Mart Mentality".
Keep hammering away that you sell the same for less money, people buy into it, not knowing the differences.
Everyone would still be selling metal pails if some one hadn't figured out that they could get the same money for a plastic one...
68R/T
I got drunk and swallowed my teeth, now
It started well before Wal-mart. Many of you may be old enough to remember when the phrase "cheap Japanese shit" was uttered almost daily.
Not A Duster
Well-known member
It started well before Wal-mart. Many of you may be old enough to remember when the phrase "cheap Japanese shit" was uttered almost daily.
True.
But Wal*Mart refined it to a much higher level.
Resto: While I agree with much of what you say, fact is "best price" or "best deal" has been the prime motivating factor among consumers for decades. Wal*Mart just found the most efficient way to package it.
The percentage of people who actually look for quality shrinks almost yearly. And then there is the fact that many of us confuse "quality" with "convenience."
As far as "taste" is concerned, particularly in music, we have the media to blame for that. Music has been "American Idoled" to death, we are taught that what the judges on that show think, is what we should be thinking. (Wasn't one of them Niki Minaj for a while?) Add to that the death of the music industry, which for all of it's faults exposed us to things that we would never have heard before, because when the business was profitable, they weren't afraid to risk signing stuff likeTool, The Tea Party, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Nirvana or other things that don't colour withing the formula of Pop-Rock. Artists like those I have mentioned would never, ever get signed in today's environment, so they remain regional artists because "The X Factor" hasn't endorsed them.
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restoman
The paint fumes have cleared so I'm
The truly sad part of all this is that many people don't even know the difference between quality and crap anymore, let alone where to find it.
They just know that they can get the best price at Wal-Mart, or Target, or Canadian Tire... the money they save there will let them buy more crap somewhere else.
Even former bastions of quality like Lee Valley or Snap-On tools are offering cheaper lines of merchandise, because the primo stuff is only sold to a very limited market anymore. They always did have a restricted sell-to market, but now the big-box places are selling stuff that they claim is just as good (it isn't, no matter what the guarantee says).
My neighbour is a great example: she's on her fifth or sixth vacuum cleaner in the 13 years she's lived beside us. Always buys cheap shit from the cheapest place she can find. Laying out more than $100 for a vacuum cleaner would kill her, I'm sure.
My Mother in law bought Marieanne a Kenmore cannister vacuum for Christmas 21 years ago, when Kenmore was still a decent name. It still not only looks pretty good, it still sucks. Mom-in-law paid $400 bucks for it...
Now, even Kenmore is marginal quality. Corporate has figured out that they can get more profit by selling a lesser quality product, so that's what they sell.
They just know that they can get the best price at Wal-Mart, or Target, or Canadian Tire... the money they save there will let them buy more crap somewhere else.
Even former bastions of quality like Lee Valley or Snap-On tools are offering cheaper lines of merchandise, because the primo stuff is only sold to a very limited market anymore. They always did have a restricted sell-to market, but now the big-box places are selling stuff that they claim is just as good (it isn't, no matter what the guarantee says).
My neighbour is a great example: she's on her fifth or sixth vacuum cleaner in the 13 years she's lived beside us. Always buys cheap shit from the cheapest place she can find. Laying out more than $100 for a vacuum cleaner would kill her, I'm sure.
My Mother in law bought Marieanne a Kenmore cannister vacuum for Christmas 21 years ago, when Kenmore was still a decent name. It still not only looks pretty good, it still sucks.
Mom-in-law paid $400 bucks for it...Now, even Kenmore is marginal quality. Corporate has figured out that they can get more profit by selling a lesser quality product, so that's what they sell.
Not A Duster
Well-known member
They also don't care Mr. Resto. Cheap and convenient trumps any kind of quality. Better a cheaply built device that does dozens of things instead of a handful of devices that each do one thing well.
I'm really going to sound like an :nodda: here, but this is largely youth - driven: Try talking to pretty much anyone under 30 about the difference between listening to MP3s in their iPod's earbuds and audio gear that delivers real sound quality. They don't even get the concept of quality audio, because it's not as important to them as the convenience given them by a music library in their phone. They won't even hear the difference...and frankly if all of their music is shitty sounding downloaded MP3, it's no wonder that the delivery system becomes less important.
Same goes for music - or movies - or television. The easier it is to consume, the more likely it is to succeed. Anything that actually challenges the listener in any way is rejected in favor of that which easily consumed. So in an environment where the consumer accepts only pablum, industry is forced to generate more pablum, or risk going out of business altogether. Those businesses who stubbornly reject serving pablum and who would rather continue to serve tasty meals either go out of business, or are reduced to niche markets only.
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v8440
Well-known member
I bought a quality vacuum cleaner for $40. It's an electrolux I bought used at a local vacuum cleaner repair shop/store run by an old couple. Looking the model up, we found that it was made from 1960 to 1964. I found 50 bags for it delivered to my door for $16 on amazon. A few months ago, it suddenly quit working. I took it back to the shop, and the guy fixed it and had it back to me later that same day. He cleaned and polished the brushes, which was the problem. They weren't worn out after 50 years, they just needed cleaning. He also oiled the motor bushing. He charged me just under $30 to do these things. I won't be surprised if that vacuum outlasts me. As a bonus, it's also considerably quieter than most vacuums I've heard. I guess the motor runs at a lower rpm than new ones, so it's not screaming in your ears. Ditto on the quality of mp3 vs cd's, though an mp3 made at a high bitrate is pretty much indistinguishable from a cd to my ears.
Not A Duster
Well-known member
Depends on what you are listening to it through. I add music to my digital library using "apple lossless" and when the computer is plugged into my good stereo system, there is still significant sizzle and two dimensional mushiness to the audio as compared to compact disc or even vinyl. Some of this is due to the format, and I'm sure some has to do with the bottom drawer digital-to analog converters found in a computer's audio card as cmpared to a quality CD player.
Listening to the music via earbuds or through computer speakers (no matter how good) is sure to yield different results. iPod docks are even worse.
restoman
The paint fumes have cleared so I'm
No arguments there... see anything good on tv or in the theatres lately? Limited selection, for sure.
Dr.Jass
Pastor of Muppets
On the MP3 thing: neither Apple- nor Windows-generated music files are actual MP3s. Apple's files are AAC and Windows are WMA; MP3 seems to have become a generic term for compressed music files. However, if you're using a non-OS ripper to make them with the actual, far-superior (and patented) Fraunhofer MP3 codec, you can achieve excellent results. However, expect big honkin' files as a result. Both Apple and Microsoft "improved" upon the Fraunhofer technology by getting the same bitrates jammed into files that are much smaller a proper MP3. Quality suffers accordingly, but kids look at bitrates as a sign of audio quality with knowing nothing of compression algorithms or technology. I have a dedicated audio amp (no tuner), an excellent old-timey EQ, a proper component CD player and a laptop. My Fraunhofer-encoded 320kB/s files are virtually indistinguishable from an actual CD unless you push the volume to levels that make the dog howl. From outside. A block away. In someone else's doghouse. Behind a brick wall. My variable-bitrate MP3 files with a max of 384kB/s take up less space but sound about the same; VBR compresses very hard during silent, very-quiet, and very non-complex areas of the music but widens out for the really loud and/or technical topographies. Despite quite a bit of futzing around with them, I have never been able to make an AAC or WMA file sound nearly as good. Literally every song available on iTunes is AAC format, regardless of what the file extension says when you download it. As an added "bonus", there are millions of other non-Fraunhofer-codec compressed files that actually use .mp3 file extension, but with a non-patent-infringing variation on the original. Well, they missed the mark on the CO but nailed the DEC (codec is short for "compressor/decompressor"). I actually paid what I considered a hefty fee to have the real deal many years back. It's probably been bootlegged to death now, but I know I've got it and it does make a difference.
The only truly lossless digital music format is the original Microsoft WAV file. It is totally uncompressed and there is no loss of sound quality whatsoever. Of course, the downside is that if you take your favorite CD and rip it to the WAV format, your CD now occupies a couple of GB of space. Burned onto a CD but left in WAV format, you'd need about three CDs to hold one album. Raw musical CD data appears in your OS as a CDA file (extension .cda) and your computer doesn't like those very much. Despite all the things you can do with a CD and a computer, Sony has still got the CD thing by the short & curlies.
No one cares about that, though... they just want to pack as many crappy-sounding songs onto their phone/iPod/max-iPad/whatever device and more means gooder, and even gooderer if it looks cool to boot. I mean, Beats headphones are a Snoop Dogg creation. Why would you buy gear for the reproduction of music from someone who knows nothing about music at all, much less accurate reproduction thereof? I let a longtime friend of mine listen to the same song on her iPad, first with her Beats earbuds and then with my ancient Sennheiser HD433 headphones, which are far from top-level Sennheiser gear. She got a look on her face like God was speaking to her personally... and that was still an AAC file @ low bitrate. I'm pretty sure had it been vinyl or a CD, her brain would've melted. She has literally forgotten what music should sound like.
I was originally going to rant about vacuum cleaners, but ultimately decided that they all suck.
The only truly lossless digital music format is the original Microsoft WAV file. It is totally uncompressed and there is no loss of sound quality whatsoever. Of course, the downside is that if you take your favorite CD and rip it to the WAV format, your CD now occupies a couple of GB of space. Burned onto a CD but left in WAV format, you'd need about three CDs to hold one album. Raw musical CD data appears in your OS as a CDA file (extension .cda) and your computer doesn't like those very much. Despite all the things you can do with a CD and a computer, Sony has still got the CD thing by the short & curlies.
No one cares about that, though... they just want to pack as many crappy-sounding songs onto their phone/iPod/max-iPad/whatever device and more means gooder, and even gooderer if it looks cool to boot. I mean, Beats headphones are a Snoop Dogg creation. Why would you buy gear for the reproduction of music from someone who knows nothing about music at all, much less accurate reproduction thereof? I let a longtime friend of mine listen to the same song on her iPad, first with her Beats earbuds and then with my ancient Sennheiser HD433 headphones, which are far from top-level Sennheiser gear. She got a look on her face like God was speaking to her personally... and that was still an AAC file @ low bitrate. I'm pretty sure had it been vinyl or a CD, her brain would've melted. She has literally forgotten what music should sound like.
I was originally going to rant about vacuum cleaners, but ultimately decided that they all suck.
thrashingcows
Drowning deep in my sea of loathing...so I'm
I've really enjoyed were this thread has gone. And all the knowledge, comparisons, and comments just make me smile. :2thumbs:
Not A Duster
Well-known member
Uh - huh. I get similar reactions when I fire up the old hifi downstairs. And my stuff is far from extreme high end esoteric gear, just good quality 25 year old built back when people cared about reproducing music. Mind I'm not sure that there is much reason to get so bent out of shape over audio gear becoming disposable junk. It only makes sense when you consider how disposable music itself has become... Which takes us back to the original post in this thread. :doh:
At any rate the only way it will ever get better is if we as consumers make it get better: Start buying music again instead of stealing it off the net. (I know, I know, unpopular position...and it'll never happen....) And when we buy music demand better....stop supporting the Justin Beiber/David Foster/Taylor Swift/American Idol Machine. Only by voting with our dollars will we as consumers change things.
Same deal with vacuum cleaners.
thrashingcows
Drowning deep in my sea of loathing...so I'm
I recent years I've started buying CD's again. I much prefer to have those playing in the garage when I'm out there working.
dustergal
I have serious issues, so I'm
My mother still has a record player. The last time I was at her house I dragged it out and found an Elvis record (live at Madison Square Garden), put it on and let my music crazy 19 year old listen to it. Yup, I understand exactly what Jass said about that look.
I bought that album last month at a flea market.
I forgot to check the actual label on the record inside. It was not Elvis.
At least the jacket is cool.