What's the best physical media format for music?

What's the best physical media format for music?

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Vinyl

CD.
>inb4 muh loudness wars
It's impossible to know what modern vinyl is pressed from CD masters by looking at how the soundwave looks in audacity. All you have to do is apply the RIAA EQ and lower the level and you legitimately can't tell. Because vinyl pressing plants are backed up with Walmart 5$ bin reissues (Beatles, Metallica, Van Halen, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, etc), they really have to shit it out. As a result, there's a lot of QC issues. I don't know how many albums I've had to return because the label is misplaced and covering the groves or warped from the factory. That, and the loudness war is SLIGHTLY overblown. If you don't hear clipping or any audible distortions, it's fine. I'm sorry, but the fact I paid 3x to 4x more than the equivalent CD release to have to get a refund 1/4th of the time is completely unacceptable. If it wasn't for the QC issues, I could get behind it.

Cassette is fine, but I'm not buying new releases. The audio fidelity isn't bad, but it isn't as good as CD or vinyl. The difference isn't night and day. I'm not getting rid of my tapes, and if I find something rare enough cheap enough I'll buy it.

CDs. Vinyl is just object art at this point. Cassettes are fun, but horrible for audio quality.

Thanks for sharing, Hitler. You saved me hundreds of dollars.

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my 128gb microsd card

>Cassettes are fun, but horrible for audio quality.
70s kid here. cassettes were never fun. they were barely tolerated because there was nothing else.
>but horrible for audio quality.
wasn't too bad. depended on a few factors for it to sound good. quality of cassette, noise reduction/compression techniques (dolby system) etc.etc. digital recordings transferred to cassette usually sounded pretty good.

Minidisc.

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Cassettes are best for small batch releases

CD. Though I'd welcome a more re-useable (for eco reasons) 24/48 replacement.

stereo 1/4" reel to reel

CD by far. Vinyl are too expensive, too big and a pain in the ass to use and take care of, cassettes have shit quality and are also a fucking pain in the ass

The recent revelations over mobile fidelity sourcing digital masters to vinyl seems to suggest digital master and vinyl copy is the best format outside of r2r

Sacd
> uses dsd128 which is transparent vs reel to reel tape at all feasible price levels including some snake oil ones
> i2s exists, and there's thumb drive sized dacs capable of decoding dsd256, so there's literally 0 (zero) excuse against a portable sacd player
> sacd had a cd backwards compatibility layer
> you need higher than room temperature iq to copy a sacd, so there's no need for copy protection
> you can sell the equipment to audiophools

Analog: vinyl
> the vinyl revival showed us that mixing and mastering exists after the loudness war
> laser vinyl pickups existed before cd took over. Snake oil salesmen sell needles for 10k, which was the cost of a laser turntable at the 80s. Since then, electronics improved 40 years

>Sacd
Killer when done right in purest form. Some of the output is derived from digital PCM and companies are not always forthcoming about the source.
Check the wave forms on Aerosmith Oh Yeah and Alice in Chains greatest hits and and if you own you'll want to sell.
>Vinyl
Also killer when done right. Educate self on pressings and mastering engineers and buy used.

Techmoan pls go

You're own mind of course

Objectively it's super audio CD. Subjectively it's vinyl.

obviously reel to reel

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Digital to Vinyl product from a company like MFSL might be due to the possibility that the analog master has deteriorated passed usability, skipped the vault via black markets, or accidentally destroyed.
A lot of music source material not just film prints were destroyed in the Universal fire and I've seen reports where buildings from other companies were sold and entire vaults dumpstered.

Thing to look for in CDs are those manufactured pre-loudness wars.
Have a friend who is a world class mastering engineer and he cut his teeth at the hit factory mastering 1st or 2nd gen masters, flat eq, no compression or other treatments. Only downside for some is that selection is limited to 80s 70 60 50s 40s music