So, In Regard To This New EP......

[KenB]

But that's wht I'm saying: I've been listening to music for 30 years, many hours a day. And I listen closely, not as background music. Yet I can take a song I've heard 200 times on CD - say, "Never Going Back Again" - and play it as MP3, and I can't tell the difference. I'd just like to understand why. Is it just that we're all different in the way our ears work? Or is it a function of the fact that I've never had high-end audio equipment? I actually envy the people who can hear the difference; it makes me feel like I'm missing out on something!

Originally Posted by RockawayBlind

Congratulations on that. You are among a rare breed, and I envy you for that. No irony here, believe me.

However, perfect pitch and the ability to discern CD sound from MP3s are really unrelated qualities. I know for most people it doesn't make a difference, but it does for some. I can honestly walk into a retail store, hear a song and know immediately it's being piped in through an iPod or some such device. I can hear clipping on certain notes and I hear compression that, especially with songs that I am familiar with, changes the sound.

There is a difference. I actually used to laugh at people who were so insistent on the difference between vinyl and digital, and I'll be damned if I can't hear it now. It's, I suppose, a function of three and a half decades of listening to a lot of music.