Stompin at the Savoy

Maynard Ferguson definitely expensive. Mildred Bailey is also generally priced quite high. The whole thing is skewed by people who put absurd, astronomical prices on some sets. The big Ellington Orchestra set used to be very expensive and then one day I found one on ebay for $130.

I kind of agree that some of the concept albums were dumb and wish there had been more sessions like Solid.

Lovely cat there! I had cats about 50 years ago in college but this is the first after a long succession of dogs. This one is interesting and different because he has lived on the property, probably under a shed, for at least a couple years and hunted mice, birds, lizards and what not. When he smacks something with his front paw the force is way beyond any house cats I've had. Quite a tough cat. He can be wonderfully tender and cuddly but I have to take care when he starts to play because he scratches the heck out of me without even trying. Will try that!

Back when my dog was younger and could still hear he seemed to particularly favor a gentle waltz played on acoustic guitar and would show up and snooze whenever I played something like that. I have been playing a bit around Freddie H. Cat and he doesn't seem to mind it. Get's a little upset by me holding the guitar and walking around near him. His ear is tipped and I guess he got trapped, neutered and released and gets triggered by me holding large objects above him.

I live in a rural area and after some elderly dogs I had died, a feral cat became more evident. I started feeding him and adopted him. For these several months I have been using headphones to listen to music when he was in the room because in the beginning everything spooked the heck out of him. It took some time for him to understand the operation of doors. Sneezes sent him flying for cover. But he is getting used to indoor things after a few months and I think it's time to introduce this cat to jazz. Starting at somewhat low volumes. He took some of Bud Shank's Blowin' Country in stride just now and barely looked up from his sleep. Recommendations for a newbie cat? He is doing alright with some Hank Jones now - Just for Fun.

Well, I agree with you that you have a superior system there. I think you are somewhat confused about why and the bigger picture in digital audio. If you are going to proclaim that you prefer physical cds you should make clear early on that you are actually talking about SACD disks and equipment.

An audio signal is really really different from digital data. We need to be clear on this or we are just confusing ourselves.

I don't disagree. This is audio technology and not new. The digital end of the process does not work the same way. Whatever is going over optical cable is very likely encoded and not audio.

At the point where "bits aren't just bits but electrical pulses" in fact there are no bits and bytes; the cables are carrying audio signals. Prior to that, when the information is encoded in the form of bits and bytes, there actually isn't a whole lot of problem getting the information from one place to another without loss regardless of whether its DSD or PCM. You have a tendency to mix up digital audio files (and sometimes the media that contains them) and the sounds that result from playing them. The files are the same regardless; the audio coming out of different systems playing those digital files might not be the same. SACD disks and hardware aren't really compatible or comparable to other media.

Actually if it's digital audio the present is files too. CDs contain files. Hard drives, flash storage, etc are also containers for files. Even a SACD contains files but in a vastly different format than CDs and requiring very different handling. They all require some physical storage. What you are searching for is: the distribution system and the physical file storage are moving towards no longer being the same thing. For young people that appears to already be true. IMHO that is a very good thing for the ecology of our planet.

I always turn McAfee off and use Microsoft Defender Antivirus. Free, typically already on a Windows machine, and probably the same stuff as McAfee.

No, we are still talking about different things. You are talking about conversions, transfers, masterings. I'm talking about what happens when you copy a file with the operating system, which is how a cd-r is made. You are talking about what they have decide to put on the cd-r and how it was processed beforehand. I'm talking about the CD-R medium itself and whether the copy you are getting is identical to the source. You are talking about the source. No doubt you are correct about the sources.

I think we are talking about different things. I was talking about copying digital files. Straight copy. On a computer this is the same regardless of the type of file. It's done by the operating system. You are talking about analog to digital transfers, I think.

That does sound pretty great! SACD, of course, is not a CD. It's a different medium which offers very hi res files.

All the audio on cd's started out as, well, audio files. They did not come from another cd. They either came from converting analog tape or disk to digital or were recorded directly to digital files. The resulting raw files are mastered and then a cd master is created. There is nothing special about cds. They are a storage medium for digital files. The bytes of data stored on them are not different from bytes of data stored on a hard drive, memory stick, etc. Many of us oldsters are used to files stored on cd and have better equipment to handle cds than files on other media but there is no inherent advantage to cds besides the existing stock of equipment to play them. In fact, hi-res downloads are actually superior (more detailed) to what can be contained on a cd, which is limited to 16 bits. (Whether these old ears can actually detect the difference is another question). To get back to the original topic, I don't have much of a problem with CD-R. They are cds with a slightly different creation process. To me they are just another container for digital data. There are reports that the quality is inferior to a regular cd or that they won't last as long as a cd. Since I usually only play cds once while I copy the files somewhere else, this is not a big concern as long as the cd is not defective and plays ok. When you copy a digital file from one place to another, including onto a cd, there is a lot of verification and checksum procedure to determine that each group of bytes that was just transferred matches the source. So if the copy gets a good return code it is pretty much guaranteed to be accurate. You can lose data after that if the cd is physically damaged, scratched etc. Should Amazon notify customers when they are going to get a CD-R instead of a CD? Yes.

What Lon says makes perfect sense to me. I believe he has a high quality cd player with top quality digital to audio conversion. Couple that with excellent tube amp, good speakers, etc and the files on the cd sound good. Next to that, even using his good amp and speakers, the sound card on his pc is probably inferior. Of course you can also obtain very high quality digital to audio conversion equipment and use it on files stored in media other than cd and it would probably sound similar but since he has invested a lot in his current cd setup and is committed to the physical formats it makes sense to not be interested in using the files outside of their cd format. If it works for you, it's good.

The source file is the same. The differences occur 1) because your cd player has its own digital to audio conversion which you are not using if you play some other way; 2) the signal chain after the signal leaves your cd player is probably different from when you play a file on your pc. As I said, and I am moderately well informed in these matters, the source file is identical if you ripped it to a lossless format. You can reconvert the digital file to a cd and the files on that cd will be completely identical to files on the original cd. I don't doubt that your cd setup sounds better than playing files on a computer but the reason is not because the files are different on a cd than on a hard drive, memory stick, etc.

When you rip a cd to disk, the files on your hard drive are identical to the files on the cd. If you feed the output from cd and output from the files through the same converter, pre-amp and amp setup, the result will be identical. A file is a file regardless of where it resides. To your amplifier there is no difference. It will sound different if you send the signal through a different amplifier/speaker setup. As for the cd booklets - I just photograph them, so I can probably play the recording and pull up the notes on my screen while most of you are still trying to find the cd, take it out of the case, put it in a player... As for showing my collection to a friend - letting them look at my collection on screen in player software like iTunes is actually quite a bit easier than trying to view all my thousands of cds: they can search for an artist, title, player etc, browse by artist, title, player, etc. There is no wrong way to handle your music files. You like cd's or vinyl - go for it. There are other ways to look at and organize music files, that is all I am trying to say.

I am in the minority on this but to me the cd is packaging or delivery system. I no longer think of recordings as cd's. What really matters to me are the files on the cd. The first thing I do when I get a cd is to rip the files to my hard drive and copy to backups. The cd itself is just another form of backup for me. Having been read once, the cd goes in pristine shape to a storage unit.

Jim Hall? Joe Pass? Tal Farlow? Kenny Burrell? Howard Roberts? Barney Kessel and Johnny Smith could be considered bop but had long careers post-bop.

Really? That doesn't seem right to me.

They did issue Up at Minton's, which has some nice jazz playing by Green.

I think it's putting it a bit strong to say Blue Note "tainted" jazz history. They put Grant Green on a lot of records. This was a record label. They made all sorts of decisions based on presumed profitability, personal esthetics, budgetary considerations, etc etc. We cannot hold them criminally responsible for this or that decision about what and whom to release. They gave musicians opportunities. In some cases, yes, they failed to extend opportunities that in retrospect seem regrettable.