ENDA Episode 45→ The time when ENDA learned about audio quality

When I started to listen to music I started with CDs because they were the only way of listening to music in my home. Not even when I started using a computer that changed and if you know my history with floppy disks (https://lnkd.in/eafWcfqP), you’ll know where this will lead.

However one day I learned that it was possible to download music to the computer. I was 16 at that time, so yes I started very late. I had 100 songs in MP3 format at the beginning and I naively thought that was the end, but then every new finding made me increase the number:

➡️When I found out about the metadata (name of the album, year, compositors, etc) I became obsessed with it and thanks to that new information I discovered more songs by the few artists I liked. I reached 300 songs.

➡️Then I found out that behind every good single, there was an incredible album, and my music library grew exponentially. I reached 1000 songs.

➡️Later I learned about the difference between 128 and 320 kbps, so I decided to switch most of my songs to 320 kbps. During the process, I found new songs too and I surpassed the 1000 songs by a lot.

➡️Then I learned about true audio quality, I realized that MP3 was a compressed format and killed a lot of the quality of the original recording. I confirmed it when I heard a song in a FLAC format (a lossless format) and the difference was bigger than I thought. Since then I have most of my songs in FLAC and during the process, I give the change to artists that I tended to ignore in previous years. I reached 2000 songs and I had to expand my storage for that.

➡️Suddenly and just like with the MP3, I found out that there were two types of FLAC: 16-bit (CD quality) and 24-bit (Vinyl quality) and when I did the test, the difference was especially noticeable in the voices. So I downloaded again all the possible songs in 24-bit FLAC. I reached 3200 in that time.

To summarize the rest: I retook my love for the piano, I started playing with a group and then with an orchestra specialized in anime songs. So my library grew…

But then I learned French, I moved to Canada, I’m learning German and I keep listening and seeing new animes and films. So my current number has increased with artists in different languages other than English or Spanish. The number? Well… 7788 songs up to date.

I confess that I did not like music streaming for a while, because there was no high-quality offer. Thankfully, platforms like Amazon Music offer today plans to listen to songs at a high bitrate.

Nonetheless, I will still advise that if you can, please download music, not only because that way you won’t depend on your internet connection but because it will be yours and for the process of creating your library. Trust me, it is not the same when you do it on a platform.

What is your story about music downloading?