> When CDs first came out, people argued that they sounded "cold," even though they're near-perfect recreations of the music that was recorded. People like the hiss and compression of records and tapes.
> This is also the same reason why people like Instagram filters.
This sounds more like "hipsters like flaws." CDs absolutely ROFLstomped both vinyl and cassette very quickly once they became affordable for normal people. People had the option of buying CD or cassette in the mid-'90s, and they generally preferred CDs. MP3 did the same thing despite similar complaints.
I think you're pretty close on this point. I share most of the views from the post above you, but I'd like to expand on them a bit.
First of all, I don't think people like flaws. If you take someone who has never listened to a vinyl record and ask them to listen to one and compare it with a CD recording, I'd bet they would cite the CD as being the better experience.
What people like is what they are comfortable with, and not just because of habit: distinctive patterns, especially in highly emotionally charged areas such as movies and music, generate emotional connections and attachment. Those who grew up listening to vinyl associate it's "fuzzy/scratchy" sound with the moments they spent listening to them. There's very potent emotional attachment to those flaws, and that's why people are attracted to them. When I hear the warbly sound and see the poor quality visuals of old VHS's, I'm taken back to watching Disney movies as a child.
As explained in this article[0], these emotional attachments are the reason why people enjoy Instagram to the degree that they do. The washed out, blurry, grainy photos generated by Instagram hit on the emotional connections to old photographs of our parents and of our childhoods.
Similarly, I think the same follows for 24 fps vs 48 fps movies; think of all the intense moments you've had while watching a movie in your lifetime. How many times have you laughed or cried or gasped at something happening in a movie shot in 24 fps? Given that any movie you've watched up till now has been shot at 24 fps, you've probably done it many times. Each time you feel those strong emotions, every aspect of that moment is associated with that feeling: the smell of the popcorn, the low lighting, the chair you where sitting in, the people with you. All of those details are now associated with that memory and that experience.
Now repeat that process of strong emotional association for every single movie or TV show you've ever seen. With this information, it's obvious why people are so attached to this small aspect of a movie: because there are strong emotions associated with the 24 fps frame rate.
> People had the option of buying vinyl, CD or cassette in the mid-'90s, and they generally preferred CDs.
While agree with you, you haven't proved that this is due to a CD's objectively better sound quality. CDs are also more convenient than either tapes or vinyl: vinyl is bulky and much easier than a CD to damage. Tapes are smaller but also easy to damage. Both wear out with use faster than digital media.
Case in point: MP3 also took off massively despite objectively worse sound quality due to lossy compression. Because they were more convenient than CDs, and this convenience was boosted each time hard drive sizes and internet speeds increased.
> While agree with you, you haven't proved that this is due to a CD's objectively better sound quality.
I hadn't intended to, as that would be impossible. My point was more that "people preferred records and tapes for their flaws" is only clearly true of some early enthusiasts.
And it was not my experience that tapes were much easier to damage. Tapes were relatively durable unless you pulled the actual tape out of the cassette — and even then you usually got away with just minor signal degradation. CDs were extremely vulnerable to scratching, any scratch could render them pretty much unlistenable, and they were fairly brittle with a wide, thin surface area.
CDs are not all that vulnerable. If they're either in the case or the machine, they're fine. You can wipe dust off with a lot more vigour than with vinyl.
I've had tape machines that would pull the tape out and scrunch it up. Strands of tape everywhere is more than "minor signal degradation". CDs are not prone to repeated signal degradation or to turning into spaghetti.
Except in the case of MP3 it was a while before the encoders and bitrates became good enough that MP3 sounded as good as the CD. In this case, people weighed the convenience of portability of MP3 over the sound quality.
Of course, these days it's pretty much impossible to tell which is the MP3 and which is a CD recording but there was a long period of time when this was simply not the case.
> When CDs first came out, people argued that they sounded "cold," even though they're near-perfect recreations of the music that was recorded. People like the hiss and compression of records and tapes.
> This is also the same reason why people like Instagram filters.
This sounds more like "hipsters like flaws." CDs absolutely ROFLstomped both vinyl and cassette very quickly once they became affordable for normal people. People had the option of buying CD or cassette in the mid-'90s, and they generally preferred CDs. MP3 did the same thing despite similar complaints.