Yes I know all about Neils projects, and I read his autobiography last year. Its delusional and he clearly has no concept of mp3 bitrate. I'm all for alternate platforms but his is a scam, sorry.

Now I doubt this is the case but if you are talking about "old records just sounded better and then I got a new CD of the doobie brothers and it sounded horrible!" Thats probably a true fact for many reasons.

First, any music recorded on tape (1940s to 1990s) is going to be much better represented on an original vinyl pressing. Because those master tapes had the hell beat out of them for decades and then when CD came along those master tapes were tired out and shot. Not to mention, when CD first came out DACs were shit. That makes a big difference. A 1 cent Chinese DAC today is 100000x better than a 400 dollar DAC from 1985.

A fun side note for all the "anaL0G is beTTER!!11" stupid crowd, Night Shift by the commodores was recorded on a digital Mitsubishi tape machine and is one of the best sounding albums of all time. So, yeah.

I'll agree that a 300k reel to reel setup sounds better than someone's airpods. Thats obvious. But an average persons turntable vs HQ digital? No chance. some records will sound better due to the mastering as previously stated. But on the whole its a dumb argument.

If youre talking about low bitrate mp3s, yep those sound like shit. But no one has been listening to those since 2010 YouTube rips at 240p stopped being a thing. Streaming is mostly CD quality 44.1 or higher. The whole "you lose 70% of the sound because the file is smaller!!" Is an idiotic take with zero comprehension of file compression techniques.

I'm sick of people spreading these lies and it makes educated experienced audiophiles look stupid.

Lastly, anyone espouting that they can hear the difference between flac and a 320kbps mp3 probably hasn't even been to an audiologist to get their hearing checked. Or doesn't have a properly measured calibrated room and setup.

*also I'm not raging at you in particular, mostly just that these lies have not been debunked in 2026 when we have the knowledge and tools to know better.