Remember those things?

 
Before I got my first CD player, that's similar to what we had to listen music on. MP3 at 128 kbps are an audiophile's dream by comparison.  Even those of my friends whose parents had a bit more money didn't own anything that would qualify as audiophile quality.
 
I remember the first music tape I made using my little tape recorder (because my parents didn't have a tape deck, only an 8 tracks) - the album was KISS' Creatures of the Night that I'd borrowed from a friend. I had brought the living room's turntable speakers into my room, pressed record and closed the door behind me, ran back to the living room and then put on the vinyl. 
 
I listened to that crappy tape so often that I could hear music backwards between the songs. Eventually it just fell apart. But as crappy as it was, that tape completely changed my life. Those drums that sounded like thunder, the heavy guitars, Gene Simmons growling voice and those wailing guitars - everything so heavy and dark. It all transcended the audio quality.
 
If we did a comparison, I'm actually convinced that ordinary people now have access to much better audio quality than they ever did. 

just read these:
 
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
 
http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_emperors_new_sampling/
 
 
if you go to the link at MIXONLINE....

you'll find this:

"But something is causing people to say they are hearing differences.
If a double-blind test can't confirm those differences, then what's going on?
For one possible reason, let's go back to Moorer's paper that I quoted earlier (called “New Audio Formats: A Time of Change and a Time of Opportunity,” which can be found on his Website, http://www.jamminpower.com).
Later in the paper, Moorer noted that humans can distinguish time delays — when they involve the difference between their two ears — of 15 microseconds or less. Do the math, and you can see that while the sampling interval at 48 kHz is longer than 15 µs, the sampling interval at 96 kHz is shorter. Therefore, he says, we prefer higher sampling rates because “probably [my emphasis] some kind of time-domain resolution between the left- and right-ear signals is more accurately preserved at 96 kHz.”
 
 
It's an interesting starting point for a discussion, but to my knowledge it's never gotten past that point — as a theory, it has never been expanded upon or tested.

i think there is more to it, and no one has really pursued it beyond the Meyer/Moran experiment
 

Yes and do on a regular basis.
 
The problem today I feel is that music has become a throwaway commodity and as such people really do not listen any more. 
 
 
Theses furry paws can be a real PITA really

I'm pretty sure I can still hear the difference between even a 320 mp3 and a .wav file.  At least in the mix room at the studio.  Perhaps I'm just kidding myself.  I also think I can hear a difference between 44.1 and 48 in my Sonar projects.  I'm sure I'm kidding myself on that one.  When I watched the promo vid for Neal's new PONO thingy and saw so many folks I admire for their music and/or audio expertise waxing up a high sheen about how night and day the sound was I got pretty depressed.  Double blind testing would sort that out fairly quickly.

remember..
 
high fidelity PLAYBACK....
 
and high fidelity RECORDING.....
 
are two completely separate issues.
 

Of course, with the way most stuff is squashed now-a-days, who needs a high-end stereo anyway? 
 

you know, funny story...
 
long time ago, when radio stations ruled, and crushed everything that was broadcast with several limiters...
 
a buddy of mine heard the song 'Over the Hills and Far Away', by zeppelin, play on the radio..
at the end of the song, is the very quiet section, where the clavichord-sounding keyboard plays very softly...
 
and of course, on the radio, the limiter was so NUKING the signal, that it brought that little end-of-the-piece portion up to the same volume level as the loudest part of the song....
 
and he said 'why does it sound so much better on the radio than when i play the album at home?"
 
LOL

Or when car stereos had that "Loudness" button that basically raised the lows and the highs so you could hear the music better at lower volumes (to combat the Fletcher-Munson curve effect).  Then people started playing music loud with the button in... 
 
 

Rain
 
I remember the first music tape I made using my little tape recorder (because my parents didn't have a tape deck, only an 8 tracks) - the album was KISS' Creatures of the Night that I'd borrowed from a friend. I had brought the living room's turntable speakers into my room, pressed record and closed the door behind me, ran back to the living room and then put on the vinyl. 
 

 
 

Rain
........... distributing copyrighted material without permission is theft, plain and simple. 
 
 
 ...........no matter who you are stealing from - it's theft. 
 
 

 

craigb
Of course, with the way most stuff is squashed now-a-days, who needs a high-end stereo anyway? 
 

 
I say hang on to those precious 90s remaster.
 
 
Just two nights ago I was listening to my ripped Highway To Hell CD and I was stoke at how good it sounded (all things being relative). After doing a quick verification online, it appears that it's not the most recent remaster. Man, what a waste!
 
So not only am I buying practically only old music but now I have to find older versions of those CDs.
 
Looks like the industry won't be making a dime as far as I am concerned.