[tmiku]

I always thought audio quality was something for snobs, but recently my car's aux input died and I burned a few CDs with yt-dlp rips and I get it now. Youtube's 128kbps makes me wince on some of the quieter recordings, even compared to my previous setup of Spotify over a lackluster LTE connection.

[BobaFloutist]

It might be relevant that you're burning them at a set volume, and your only way to increase volume is by bumping up the output volume, whereas any sort of mp3 player you can bump up the volume of the source independently from the output. Maybe if you burn them at a higher volume and keep CD player's volume lower you'll have better luck?

Disclaimer: I'm far from an audiophile, I just know from personal experience that if your source is low volume and your output is cranked up you get a lot of...distortion? Interference? Artifacts? I don't know, it just sounds staticky and worse.

[squarefoot]

> if your source is low volume and your output is cranked up you get a lot of...distortion? Interference? Artifacts?

Mostly noise because you're amplifying it as well, and possibly artifacts because material converted at too low levels (which is the case of old CD rips that weren't normalized before encoding) wouldn't use all the available headroom, therefore losing one bit.

[letitbeirie]

I managed to collect a rather massive digital music collection when p2p was en vogue.

I still listen to it every day because it's highly curated and has tracks unavailable on any service, but quality-wise it definitely feels like I'm plumbing the depths of a DVD collection when everyone else is watching Netflix.

[tmiku]

Yeah, I used to do a lot of p2p too, I miss it. I used it heavily in HS but fell to the convenience of Spotify in college.

It was really a shame when what.cd went down, that was arguably the most complete archive of recorded music anywhere.