[Mark Burgess]

I gave up Vinyl and Cassettes when CDs came along, and I gave up CDs when digital FLAC came along.

I was always a HiFi buf, so I went through stages of having NAD 3020/Dual turntable to now having a Linn Akurate/B&W setup.

I ripped all my CDs and replace those versions as remasters come out. The remasters are usually the same 16/44 resolution but are able to push that to the max when remastered. Initial masters from the 80s/90s were often very poor. Especially for some film music, though varies enormously.

For instance, I have 4 versions of the Captain Scarlet music, for instance, each one better than the last. The restoration of old tapes is also much improved. I have multiple versions of the first three Star Wars scores, too. They did not improve as much as other things, and the latest 192/24 sampling is just silly. It’s no better than a 16 bit remaster, because there simply isn’t more information in the tapes.

We should all celebrate the fans orgs/companies who restore old soundtracks. They do a fantastic job, even though it’s annoying that they won’t sell digital FLAC instead of having to buy a CD.

I never listened to MP3 (ugh). I did buy a couple of iTunes albums that were out of print elsewhere in Apple’s awful proprietary format, but now I have a subscription to Qobuz, which I am very happy with. They serve max resolution digital quite reliably (bar a recent bug in CDN replication), and I like that they pay musicians better than the other platforms do. I’m happy to support them.

I listen on loudspeakers mostly. Only use headphones if travelling or listening to something specific. Speakers have far superior dynamic range (at least with a good amp).