Opinion
We’re all suffering from qualitynesia now
Borne along on the tide of technology, it is far too easy to forget that CD players sounded better than Spotify.
Sarah O'ConnorColumnistOn my 13th birthday, my parents gave me a portable CD player and the masterpiece that was Fresh Hits 1997. Like more than 600 million other people, I have long since swapped my box of CDs for the Spotify app on my phone. But I found my old birthday present recently and discovered it still worked.
Even using headphones from the 1990s, I was staggered by the richness of the sound. My ears didn’t deceive me. CDs have a bit-rate of 1411 kilobits per second, which is a measure of how much data is used to represent sound. Spotify Premium ranges from 24 kilobits to 320 kilobits, while free Spotify listeners are limited to 160 kilobits at best.
Financial Times
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