Mussina does not make my HOF ballot

[atomic]

Digital > Vinyl.

Vinyl sound quality is better than CD and MP3 quality.

[Bradysburns]

I respect your ability to be pretend that "first ballot Hall of Famer" is a thing, but you know that it isn't, right?

And I respect your attempt at dismissive mockery... sort of. I would respect it more if it made sense, or something. What do you mean? There is no such thing as a first ballot HOF'er? Are you some kind of advanced Sabermetrician who denies the existence of balloting on purely mathematical terms?

[DrungoHazewood]

Vinyl sound quality is better than CD and MP3 quality.

There's no technical reason for that to be true. CD and MP3 quality, at least high bitrate MP3 quality, contains all the information necessary to reproduce the sounds. There are poorly mastered CDs and MP3s and low-bitrate MP3s that sound crappy. There are CDs and MP3s that were mastered for loudness instead of sound quality. But there are millions of poorly-produced or scratched/damaged records that sound bad, too. And when vinyl gets a scratch that's it, it's scratched forever. Digital has error correction and unless you've put a gouge in the CD you'll never hear it.

But take two well-done recordings from the same source, one analog, one digital, and play them both on good systems and there's no difference in quality. And the minute the analog/vinyl recording has a single flaw introduced through damage or dust or whatever the digital becomes better.

[DrungoHazewood]

Depends on what format the digital recording is in.

Sure. If you rip a poorly-mastered CD as a low-bitrate MP3 it'll sound bad.

[weams]

You only buy they heavyweight stuff right?

My stuff mostly comes from when it was all heavy.

[Can_of_corn]

Sure. If you rip a poorly-mastered CD as a low-bitrate MP3 it'll sound bad.

I'm not a real audiophile but from what I have heard from real audiophiles is that good vinyl is superior to MP3s and what you will get from the streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/16/neil-young-officially-unveils-new-high-tech-music-player-and-streaming-service/

From Mr Young:

Although Young didn’t demo the gadget, he said the Ponoplayer’s quality will bring music back to the way it was intended to sound. He decried what he called the awful sound of CDs and digital formats like the MP3.

“Music has been turned into background noise. It’s the 21st century,” Young said. “It’s time to feel the technology.”

Supposedly if you want high end digital sound you need to use FLAC files that come in at 70MB. Me, my hearing isn't good enough to worry about it.

[Old#5fan]

Because it did not result in championship, people forget that Mussina was at his most dominant in the 1997 post-season. He was basically Madison Bumgarner in the 2014 post season. He pitched 29 innings, gave up 4 runs and struck out 41.

Yeah and it wasn't good enough. True HOFers are usually good enough and then some.

[Old#5fan]

Incredibly long career. He was the last player born in the 40's I believe to retire I believe and he was born in '47.

True which is why he is pretty much in a class to himself. All the elements of greatness that Mussina lacks he has in abundance and show imho why he doesn't belong.

[Frobby]

True which is why he is pretty much in a class to himself. All the elements of greatness that Mussina lacks he has in abundance and show imho why he doesn't belong.

Interesting take.

Mussina: 270-153, 123 ERA+

Ryan: 324-292, 112 ERA+

Ryan pitched forever, and surely did some things no other pitcher ever did with respect to strikeouts and no-hitters. He remained a very good pitcher when a lot of guys are retired. Still, when I look at who had the better ERA compared to his peers, and who had the better winning percentage, it's Mussina who easily comes out on top. Easily.

I personally feel that while Ryan deserves to be in the HOF due to his unique accomplishments, he is probably the most overrated pitcher of all time. You could pick any 10-year stretch of his career and his ERA+ and winning percentage wouldn't come anywhere close to Mussina's. But hey, who cares about winning a high percentage of the time and preventing the other team from scoring runs? Chicks love the strikeouts!

[DrungoHazewood]

I'm not a real audiophile but from what I have heard from real audiophiles is that good vinyl is superior to MP3s and what you will get from the streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/16/neil-young-officially-unveils-new-high-tech-music-player-and-streaming-service/

From Mr Young:

Supposedly if you want high end digital sound you need to use FLAC files that come in at 70MB. Me, my hearing isn't good enough to worry about it.

I'm not going to claim to know everything about audio engineering, but I am a EE who knows a bit about Nyquist's sampling theorem and some of the circuit design stuff. My general opinion is that audiophiles get really wrapped up in tiny, incremental gains for insane amounts of cash. Or even nonexistent gains for insane amounts of cash. Most of the time we have imperfect ears listening in very imperfect, noisy environments, and in most contexts that the difference between a pristine vinyl record on an ultra-high-end turntable and a $20k audio system is going to be only trivially better than a CD from Wal Mart on a $1000 system from Crutchfield.

And I've seen examples, such as a supposedly "tuned" hardwood volume knob that costs hundreds of dollars, that apparently are just marketed to audiophiles with far more cash than technical knowledge.

[weams]

I'm not going to claim to know everything about audio engineering, but I am a EE who knows a bit about Nyquist's sampling theorem and some of the circuit design stuff. My general opinion is that audiophiles get really wrapped up in tiny, incremental gains for insane amounts of cash. Or even nonexistent gains for insane amounts of cash. Most of the time we have imperfect ears listening in very imperfect, noisy environments, and in most contexts that the difference between a pristine vinyl record on an ultra-high-end turntable and a $20k audio system is going to be only trivially better than a CD from Wal Mart on a $1000 system from Crutchfield.

And I've seen examples, such as a supposedly "tuned" hardwood volume knob that costs hundreds of dollars, that apparently are just marketed to audiophiles with far more cash than technical knowledge.

I own none of that type of equipment. My copy of Mad Dogs and Englishmen is from 1970.

[DrungoHazewood]

True which is why he is pretty much in a class to himself. All the elements of greatness that Mussina lacks he has in abundance and show imho why he doesn't belong.

Ryan is truly in a class by himself: even 20+ years after his retirement he has 52% more walks than the #2 guy on the all time list (Steve Carlton). He walked more batters than Steve Carlton and Dwight Gooden combined.

Daniel Cabrera led the AL in walks in 2006 and 2007, with 104 and 108. Ryan had 10 different seasons with at least 108 walks, and twice topped 200 walks. In 2006 Cabrera walked 104 in only 148 innings, but in both 1970 and 1970 Ryan walked more batters per inning in 152 and 131 innings.

[Frobby]

I'm not going to claim to know everything about audio engineering, but I am a EE who knows a bit about Nyquist's sampling theorem and some of the circuit design stuff. My general opinion is that audiophiles get really wrapped up in tiny, incremental gains for insane amounts of cash. Or even nonexistent gains for insane amounts of cash. Most of the time we have imperfect ears listening in very imperfect, noisy environments, and in most contexts that the difference between a pristine vinyl record on an ultra-high-end turntable and a $20k audio system is going to be only trivially better than a CD from Wal Mart on a $1000 system from Crutchfield.

And I've seen examples, such as a supposedly "tuned" hardwood volume knob that costs hundreds of dollars, that apparently are just marketed to audiophiles with far more cash than technical knowledge.

This is true for almost any type of top-end luxury item, IMO. Wine is a great example. Very few people can tell the difference in quality between a $100 bottle and a $1000 bottle. Certainly, I can't.

[DrungoHazewood]

This is true for almost any type of top-end luxury item, IMO. Wine is a great example. Very few people can tell the difference in quality between a $100 bottle and a $1000 bottle. Certainly, I can't.

Double-blind tests of wine usually end up with the $500 bottle indistinguishable from the $50 bottle, except maybe to the sommelier who's spent many, many years training himself to look for very subtle differences.

Someone ran an experiment where they poured identical bottles of mid-grade wine into bottles marked something like $15 and $150. Then they ran CAT scans of people's brains as they consumed the wine. The people drinking what they thought was $150 wine actually had more activity in the pleasure centers of their brain than when they were drinking the (identical) $15 wine. So just put your MP3 player underneath a high-end turntable and you'll think everything is better.

[Can_of_corn]

Double-blind tests of wine usually end up with the $500 bottle indistinguishable from the $50 bottle, except maybe to the sommelier who's spent many, many years training himself to look for very subtle differences.

Someone ran an experiment where they poured identical bottles of mid-grade wine into bottles marked something like $15 and $150. Then they ran CAT scans of people's brains as they consumed the wine. The people drinking what they thought was $150 wine actually had more activity in the pleasure centers of their brain than when they were drinking the (identical) $15 wine. So just put your MP3 player underneath a high-end turntable and you'll think everything is better.

Seriously?

Come on!

You are clearly going to have to get someone else to put it under there if you expect it to work.