Tymeg

We had an 8-track player when I was little, it confused me - but I didn't care since we didn't have any "albums" I liked. Now what about obscure formats that never took off like the digital compact cassette...

One semi-obscure format that I did buy into was SACD.  I've got the player and a bunch of dics, and while my ears can't discern the higher quality, I did enjoy those that were remastered with 5.1 surround.  Like the Dark Side of the Moon...

I remember you mentioning SACD before:

Quote:It's really too bad that the sacd format didn't take off.  Granted, those discs don't get ripped and added to my streaming library, but my three fave sacds are DSOTM, Wish You Were Here, and Dire Straits Brothers in Arms.

My hearing isn't what it used to be either. I can't hear the flyback from the color TV, but I can still hear when an old school camera's flash is getting charged. But for audio, two things that bug the hell out of me are low bit rate such as listening to SiriusXM - I can't do it, the cymbal crashes sound horrible. And the other is the stupid loudness wars. It's one of the main reasons I can't listen to Metallica. I tried St. Anger and Death Magnetic and the clipping is atrocious. It makes me irrationally angry...

Oh, we are definitely in agreement with the loudness wars and the horrible lossy compression rates that streaming services use.  That's one reason my library is all flac; I wanted an archive that could recreate a CD with 100% fidelity.  When I first started ripping my CDs and was looking for a lossless format, the only real two options at that time were WMA and FLAC.  While WAV was another option, it really wasn't if I wanted to conserve space.  Then WMA was Microsoft's format and while at the time it was more popular and I didn't need special drivers, I much preferred the open source route and jumped on the FLAC bandwagon.

I kept 99% of my collection as MP3 and nothing under 320kbps. And don't get me started on autotune. What an atrocious invention for people who can't sing. There's a reason they can't sing and there shouldn't be any technology to let them think they can. This could have been a good album if they didn't get all stupid with the autotune...

Autotune is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.  One of the channels that I follow on the Tube of You is Rick Beato.  He's a producer but goes in deep with theory and how/why a particular song is great.  Some of his stuff I understand, some of it I am just a little too short for.  But it's funny to hear him talk about modern music and why it sucks.  And autotune is up there with one of the primary reasons.

I wonder if the inventor of Autotune feels as much remorse as the guy who invented browser pop-up windows. At least with the blank tracks you don't have to add them to your playlist. It's a little more difficult to remove that dead air within a track...
(and Eraser from The Downward Spiral just started playing)

Hmmm, I don't know if he feels remorse for the overuse of his product, but I do believe he feels remorse for putting the "zero" setting in that makes it obvious.  But his thought was to give users the option.  His initial intent was to allow minor tweaks without making it obvious and allowing artists to reduce time in the studio by having to avoid the innumerable takes when they don't get it right...

Humans cannot control themselves. Given the option to use moderation or just go straight to 11, they'll always go straight to 11 even when they know that's not what was intended. But who are the goobers that hear bad auto-tune and say, "hey this sounds really good"...?

Well, yeah.  We wouldn't be human if we didn't just go straight to eleven....

I think you're right on both aspects...

I think moderation only comes with age.  For the most part....

Remember our ski trips? I won't forget that one time I had 8 hot dogs, a quart of whole milk and a salad using a whole head of lettuce for dinner and Deb walked by and made the comment, "Oh, you're one of those health freaks." Of course I had that "what the fuck you talking about" look on my face as I emphasize the fact that I had 8 hotdogs on my plate.

But I remember way back (80's) when McDonald's would run those specials on Big Macs for $1.00 or the cheeseburgers for $0.39. I would absolutely stuff my face with them. I think I demolished about 20 cheeseburgers one time and another time I did 13 Big Macs...

Ya know, I vaguely remember that incident on the ski trip.  My burgers always have the lettuce and tomato, so yeah, I consider that a salad...  And growing up, the two-fer-a-dollar Big Macs were a god send!!  And occasionally one girl would work the drive thru at the McD's by Gerber and she would always load up the bag with extras...

I haven't done fast-food in at least a decade if not longer. And we don't really go out to eat that often because it's annoying to get an "eh, it's a burger" at a nice restaurant and be charged almost $20 for the experience...