Does Going Digital Mean Missing Music? 751
arlanTLDR writes "The Seattle PI is running a story about how the MP3 format is the sign of a musical apocalypse. Apparently, many top music producers are 'howling' over the fact that files in a compressed format contain 'less than 10 percent of the original music on the CDs.' Is this just sensationalist FUD, or is there something to the assertion that listening to an MP3 is like hearing music 'through a screen door?'" The article mentions that the iPod and its cheap earbuds bear some of the responsibility for rendering this degradation in sound quality less objectionable.
Sounds we can and cannot hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't bode well for the planned obsolescence system and it's efforts to shift us to new hi-def hardware.
Whining. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it's quite possible to make an MP3 that sounds like a tin-can telephone with one end held underwater, and I'd argue that many of the consumer-ripped files floating around the P2P networks fall into this category, but these files only exist *because* there aren't legitimate, professionally-made, DRM-free MP3s. (And because some people like getting stuff for free and don't much care about the quality when they do. But I do think there is a market for and profit in digitally-delivered music, for the people who can do it right.)
As more music begins to be distributed as MP3s, sound engineers will doubtless (if they have not already) begin studying the codecs and encoding procedures in order to wring the most quality out of a particular bit rate. Many amateurs and enthusiasts have already done this, and there is a sizable body of work devoted to the topic -- including the LAME encoder itself.
Also, looking towards the future, while CDs have pegged the standard for digital music as 2 channel, 44.1kHz, 16-bit PCM, there is no reason why an appropriately-crafted MP3 file cannot *exceed* it in terms of quality. The Apple iPod already supports (slightly) higher sample rates, I believe, and if consumers desire it [2], there's no reason why modern digital formats cannot encapsulate very high-definition audio.
The only people who I hear whining about MP3 are those with either an ulterior motive and a desire to try and keep the industry from moving away from a distribution model that revolves around physical objects, or those who just don't understand the technology. (There are a very small core of audiophiles and techies who seem to dislike MP3 because they prefer some other format, usually either for ethical/political reasons or technical ones, and there certainly is an argument in favor of using lossless formats in lieu of MP3 for distribution, but overall MP3 strikes a good balance between quality and portability. [3])
[1] One 'competition' that pitted serious self-described audiophiles against modern codecs is described in detail here: http://www.geocities.com/altbinariessoundsmusiccl
[2] Which is a big 'if.' The buying public, to date, has shown little interest in high-definition audio as such. The only exception to this is multichannel audio, but that only in movie soundtracks for surround sound.
[3] This does raise the question, though, of why the legitimate music-download sites don't take a cue from the late, great, AllOfMp3.com and just allow the *customers* to choose their format of choice for their downloads. There's really no particular excuse not to at least offer a few different quality/size options, particularly for popular music that is going to be enjoyed in a variety of settings (automobiles, portables, home stereos -- each lends itself to a slightly different EQ and compression).
So sell us FLACs (Score:1, Insightful)
Background noise (Score:4, Insightful)
pff, sure, it's all about the music.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Ear of the Beholder (Score:2, Insightful)
It's true, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact remains, however, that most listeners, in most situations, don't care. For one thing, popular music has, since the 50s, been designed for listening to on cheap equipment. The dynamic range is enormously compressed, the sounds are often fuzzy to begin with, the voices are straight front and center. This can explain the dwindling popularity of classical and jazz, and the rise of the louder, simpler, more beat-oriented music like rock, rap, or pop. Note that I'm not saying the music is of lower quality, but that it can be reproduced "faithfully enough" on lower quality equipment.
I don't have any statistics, but I would bet that most music listening happens while the listener is doing something else: driving, working out, coding python scripts, etc. In those circumstances, an average listener is not going to notice a little swishiness in the cymbals, or lack of crispness on the trumpet's timbre.
Those who care (like me) will shell out the extra bucks for higher fidelity. Those who don't care, which are in the majority, will use whatever technology is most convenient.
Real Music Worth Listening to is Out There (Score:5, Insightful)
Pot calling kettle black, 10% b.s. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, these same producers compress the living bejeezus out of their music during the production, killing all the dynamics. So frankly, the effect of a lower-bitrate mp3 isn't quite the castration of full-on sonic fidelity that's portrayed in the TFA.
10% of original music is an overblown claim, because the music is not just filtered down, but is also compressed. In truth, the article should be comparing against equivalent lossless audio compression formats, which yield about 60-70% of the original size (so does that mean that a FLAC file contains 60-70% of the original music? No!)
The bit about the compressed music affecting the perception in a different manner is an interesting one, but I really struggle to see how the difference can come through the average consumer equipment. It just doesn't. For example, things such as SACDs or high-quality vinyl records allow the recording to retain a lot of the "air," ambience of the room, which gives a perception of larger-than-life sound, makes it sound more full, gives it an impression of better dimensionality, really puts you there. But shit, you can only hear that on high-end equipment with the entire signal chain made out of quality components, and you sure as hell won't hear the difference on a consumer system.
Most people also do not listen to the music in an environment that allows for such an engaging listening experience.
I too am sad to see the consumers ignore higher-quality audio (as I want that higher quality for myself, being an audio geek of sorts), but I completely understand where they are coming from.
It's about the music... the MUSIC! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got a beautiful violin recording from the 20s or 30s. It's very low-fi, scratchy as hell, but the playing is magnificent. Ask any jazz fan whether they'd prefer to listen to a well-used John Coltrane LP, or Kenny G in 192 kHz / 24-bit, DVD-A.
People, listen to the music -- not the equipment! Otherwise you're a hifi-collector, not a music fan.
Too bad we don't work for the RIAA (Score:2, Insightful)
Ambient noise changes things (Score:2, Insightful)
It is said that Phil Spector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Spector [wikipedia.org], one of the most successful music producers of all time, made a point of listening to his music on a crummy car radio. That was where most teens listened to music and that was where it had to sound good. The same logic applies to MP3 players. Most people spend much more time listening to their MP3 players than they do listening in the quiet of their living rooms. Music that sounds good on an MP3 player will get listened to. Concert quality music that sounds bad on an MP3 player might get listened to once before it gathers dust forever more.
So, for all you musical purists out there, suck it up dudes. Fighting against the MP3 format (and the players) is like King Canute trying to push back the tide.
NO! only crappy digital is crappy, but actually... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you heard any recent CD?!
I'd say that 90% of all new CDs have less than 6dB of dynamic range... and clip at every crescendo. I think they're mastered by people whose previous careers had them working with jackhammers without protection.
We can record in 24/192 all we want, but compression of the final product is rather moot when most of the damage was inflicted during mastering... where the "engineers" make the song as loud as humanly possible, so it could be used to silence thoughts while blasting 100dB through $5 earbuds.
Perhaps CDs are just over-specced (Score:3, Insightful)
There's probably a sweet spot somewhere between MP3 and CD where you would not notice the difference.
Clearly MP3 is good enough for most people. To use the car analogy: sure, a Rolls Royce might be technically better than a Toyota, but where is Rolls Royce now? Does Rolls Royce actually deliver a vehicle that is useful to anybody?
Re:If it contains only 10% of the original music . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds we can and cannot hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
True, decently encoded mp3s are barely distinguishable from their CD counterparts to the vast majority of listeners.
Also true, even poorly encoded mp3s are capable of sounding vastly superior to the collection of cassettes and 4-tracks, which formed previous generations of portable music. Still, the record companies charged more for those formats than vinyl and the music producers didn't complain about their paychecks back then.
The real difference that is affecting the livelihood of music professionals these days has less to do with the quality of the format than the quality of music produced these days. That and the end of the music industry's archaic and monopolistic distribution model.
RE: MP3 Compression (Score:4, Insightful)
To make the best sounding MP3s, download iTunesLame and start making the best-sounding 320 kb/sec MP3 that the algorhythm can make. If that isn't good enough for you, you can always copy the original AIFF file off of the CD and drag it into iTunes, or use Apple's Lossless format to have the same quality at 1/2 the disk space.
My point is, make the best possible sounding MP3 file you can, because eventually, you will upgrade you MP3 player to something better and you will find that upgrading the quality of your MP3 library is a very arduous task and a waste of time. Hard drive space is cheap, and getting cheaper. Just make the best sounding MP3 you can make, and be happy with it. Actually, most people are not missing all that much from the MP3 format. Even I, an audiophile, don't analyze every nuance of a music I listen to in MP3 format - I just ENJOY IT, hell, Journey, REO Speedwagon, and Van Halen aren't going to sound any better on my iPod as opposed to the radio in a 1976 AMC Gremlin or 1981 Chevy Chevette.
MP3 format was designed for maximum music quality with music loss and compression - keep that in mind... You want to hear the 'real thing' without loss? Then go to the recording studio or the concert with no hearing loss.
Re:P.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lossy compression sounds bad on classical music, period, and the same tends to be true for similar sources like solo acoustic guitar, piano, etc. Lossy compression assumes that most of the data is unimportant, which in a dense mix tends to be true due to masking. In a thin mix, though, that assumption falls apart, and so does lossy compression. Of course, that's not the only pathological case where lossy compression sounds bad; it's just the most common case.
Re:Sounds we can and cannot hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, what's the point of recording at a bitrate of 320kbps if you don't do it in true stereo? The overall effect may well be that sort of 'listening through a screen door' that the submitter was talking about. Joint stereo is okayish at 64kbps, but please turn it OFF at anything higher. If you are to listen to the result on anything better than an iPod, that is. Don't forget that the audio outs of an iPod are not that much better than the cheap ear buds anyway.
Re:Exactly - I defy anyone on two legs (Score:3, Insightful)
Can I choose the source audio? If so, then I choose white noise. If not, then of course you'll pick a source that is almost indistinguishable even at 128 kbps and assure your victory, proving nothing.
:-)
Re:If it contains only 10% of the original music . (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The internet is a series of tubes:
2. These aren't the DRM you're looking for. Move along. (EMI's deal to do iTunes plus will be "indistinguishable." But, for me, it is DRM-free and that's all that matters! Why don't they mention DRM?)
3. Leading comments about how this new-fangled "HD Audio" thang will fix it for you like magic. Just keep spending, spending, spending.
I won't be buying...
Re:Sounds we can and cannot hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, the people who say they can tell the difference would never pull it off in a blind comparison. They convince themselves that they can tell the difference. Heck at 500kbps or so you can have lossless - and the music industry would still claim you're only getting 50% of the music on the CD because it suits their interests to make that claim.
I'd like to see an mp3-type format encoded against 24/96 source material. Odds are that even at ~256kbps you can get better-than-CD quality if you use better-than-CD source material. Sure, the 24/96 source sounds better, but you can't actually buy that anywhere so it's a moot point.
Re:Sounds we can and cannot hear. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just for the record - the FM radio modulation process, transmission process, and demodulation process do not compress. Compression today is applied as a pre-RF step to the audio itself, and then that audio is sent to the transmitter. There is no technical reason whatsoever you could not have a compression free FM broadcast.
The reason that FM stations today use compression is because some (idiot) somewhere decided that it was a "bad thing" to "not be as loud" as other stations.
FM can reproduce 20 Hz to 15 KHz with low noise and surprising dynamic range when the transmission and reception chains consist of high quality components and signals. Especially in mono, but stereo doesn't sacrifice too much.
None of this solves the problems that (a) there are very few FM stations on the air that actually use the medium with the idea of providing the listener with a high fidelity experience, and (b) there are very few FM stations on the air that offer programming that consists of much more than a severely restricted playlist. I miss the days of progressive rock stations like WNEW in New York; DJ's like Allison Steele and Chris Fornatelle (spelling could easily be wrong there) would dig into the station's library and pull out something you'd never even heard of and then tell you all about the people involved. At the same time, at the other end of the dial, there were classical format stations in or near NYC that were absolutely compression-free; you could count on them for excellent audio.
Personally, I play CDs or Sirius satellite radio into a reference Dolby FM transmitter (25 uS) and pipe it around the house using 75-ohm coaxial cable, then into various tuners from Marantz. I have a 2130, a model 10, a 2120, and a couple of receivers, a 2325 and a 2285B. I can't hear much above 15 KHz any longer anyway; I'm 51, a rock musician, and the ears are definitely going. Not that most recordings provide much audio above 15 KHz, especially in the rock genre.
Otherwise, I'd have one FM station to listen to which plays a horrifying mix of country and pop, compresses the living daylights out of all of it, and intersperses the musical content with the farm report, insanely badly produced local commercials, and (mostly incorrect) weather predictions. The station is automation based, and commercials cut off the news announcers in mid-word, music cuts off commercials, and so on in every combination you can imagine. If there's a worse way to run a radio station, I'm afraid my imagination fails me. In this part of the country, you learn to be very grateful for Sirius and XM, believe me.
Re:Damn (Score:3, Insightful)
Is ClearChannel really a "nightmare"? (Score:4, Insightful)
I freely admit that ClearChannel and the four-company record label oligopoly have both been bad things for the music industry. But isn't the RIAA proof enough that the music industry isn't something that any of us should mourn? If ClearChannel is helping to kill it -- if ClearChannel is standing right in front of us, plunging a butcher knife into the music industry over and over -- then I say all we need to do is point and laugh.
The death of the music industry doesn't seem to be doing anything to slow musicians down. Not the real ones, anyway. Maybe I just live on the fringes, but more and more I'm hearing about how the major labels are struggling, cursing, and biting their nails, while at the same time independent labels are experiencing a boom time. It's certainly been true of punk and metal for a long time that the really important new artists are all going to be on indies. Some of the best rock bands of recent years -- bands that 20 years ago might have been deemed "radio rock" -- have emerged from the indie scene. And lately, more and more hip-hop artists have been releasing so-called mix tapes (many of which violate copyrights, bringing hip-hop proudly back to its roots) and putting out records through independent labels (and I don't mean "bespoke 'independent' subsidiary of Interscope created as a vanity imprint for a particular artist," I mean real indie labels).
Meanwhile, other people sign to major labels and what do they get? In effect, they get to go into debt via a whopping big bank loan that someone else gets to spend to record, release, and market an album and a tour package. And then every penny of that loan has to be paid back by the artist before the artist sees a dime. Why do these musicians put up with it? Because they are not really musicians ... they are wage earners who made up their minds to go and work in the music industry. They don't see anything wrong with being the equivalent of a character from Office Space, working 9 to 5 in an industry than churns out factory-manufactured pap like Velvet Revolver, Audioslave, 50 Cent, Limp Bizkit, Avril Lavigne ... made-to-order music cobbled together in a studio by cynical marketers who don't differentiate music from any other disposable consumer good. The so-call artists don't care because they get to buy pretty clothes and date pretty girls, and that's it. So who needs 'em? If that's the music industry we're talking about, let's let it die.
The real damage done by the recording industry cartel, unfortunately, has been to the independent retailer. Very few mom n' pop record stores can survive selling CDs that Best Buy and Wal*Mart are going to discount 30 percent. MP3s are also doing damage to indie retailers' sales, for sure ... but MP3s are surely only another nail in the coffin. The damage has been done by the industry itself, which is more reason to say "good riddance."
MP3 (or pick your format) as a channel for legitimate music distribution is still only in its infancy. Who among you is going to tell me that digital downloads aren't going to continue to play a bigger and bigger part in music distribution of all types, though? It's a shame that this might effectively pull the rug out of the customer-friendly, independent retailer scene before it really puts the screws on ClearChannel et al, but nobody is better positioned to take advantage of the changes than the people who aren't paying off their student loans on their MBAs by getting piggy-back rides from other people's music.
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds we can and cannot hear. (Score:2, Insightful)
http://harmsy.freeuk.com/mostync/ [freeuk.com]
192KBPS seems OK (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are younger in your teens or twenties, use 320K bps to get all the high frequencies that may be present in CD recordings. High frequency hearing diminishes with age.
CDs are heavily filtered above 16KHz-18KHz to avoid digital aliasing and this affects the sound. It's why musicians say that vinyl sounds better. Plus musicians get full audio range very loudly and clearly from their stage amps. Johnny Winter says that CDs sound like shit. He has been standing 10 feet away from an amp playing the sounds that come from his guitar for 40 years. Compared to that, well yes, everything else pales in comparison. You probably won't hear any difference.
What the top-flight music producers are really saying is "look, we get $50,000 - $100,000 plus percentage from every no-talent fuck band that walks in our studio off the top. Whether they sell ten or ten million albums, we still get ours. And this MP3 shit is causing people to not buy albums like they used to because instead of five friends buying the same 100 albums, now five friends buy one album each and make near-perfect copies for each other. So the record companies aren't signing as many no-talent one-hit wonder bands than they did ten years ago and this is beginning to affect our bottom-line as producers. And, as producers our greatest concern is to bring great music to the album-record-CD buying public, and we have to issue a statement saying that MP3 sucks. So there it is."
The real question here is why do the record companies demand that the bands that they sign use a top-flight $100,000 (plus percentage of sales) producer? Because it's the only way that they can be assured that they will get the same crisp homogenized Clear-Channel sound that will most-likely get profitable record sales from each of the no-experience bands that they have signed.
Of course the band pays the $100,000 to the producer up front out of their advance and they have no choice over who the producer is or what he (always a he) does to their sound.
The big issue here is the centralization of musical recording distributorship. This is a 20th century phenomenon. The best musicians and bands sign to one of a half dozen or so companies. The company then records the band, makes the recording sound good, embeds the recording into the medium (vinyl, tape, or CD disk) and distributes it around the world. This worked for 100 years. But it's failing now due to both technological change (home recording studios and MP3 distribution) and overwhelming levels of greed and corruption on the part of the record companies. All well documented on Slashdot over the years.
Re:Sounds we can and cannot hear. (Score:2, Insightful)
I've had people tell me they can't tell the difference between antialiasing and no antialiasing in games, they have no idea what it does. To me it's a horrible jaggy mess without AA, because I know what good quality video looks like.
It's the same with you - you just simply don't know the difference between good quality and bad quality audio. Your ears aren't good enough, or your brain doesn't know what it's supposed to be listening to.
Then again, I'm a musician so I'm used to picking through the fine parts of sound. I'd say it's in much the same way that a mechanic could hear something going wrong with my car's engine long before I'd hear the a problem.
Re:Sounds we can and cannot hear. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was younger, I was obsessed with sound quality. And it was frustrating because that was when all I had was tapes and sound quality perfection was impossible. CDs came along and the biggest problem with the early ones--especially in cars--was that they skipped. So even "perfection" wasn't perfect.
Compared to the problems of the past, the imperfections of sound quality in MP3s is nothing. I'll take a 256kbit MP3 to a cassette tape or a skipping CD any day of the year, no question. And that same MP3 is played from my hard drive at home, from a CD-ROM in my car, or to an iPod Nano strapped to my arms when I'm riding my bike. And when I hear some nifty music I like in a song I'm listening to, I often load it in Goldwave and slow it down to 80% speed to hear the intricate details of the section of music. Am I missing music? Nope, I'm enjoying it a lot more and a lot more often than I did 10-20 years ago.
I agree with you. This guy sounds like someone that is worried about the future viability of his career more than any real concern about music. Music is a lot more than 5Hz to 20,000Hz. The fact that he's apparently more concerned with the encoding than the content that is being encoded speaks volumes.
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure my dad's parents said the same thing to him when they heard him playing the Beatles. In fact, I know they did, because I used that story he told me against him when he complained about me playing The Cult in the late 80's.
Face it, you've fallen victim to the most tired, played-out cliche ever - absolutely every generation believes as teenagers that they're listening to the best music ever, and when they're old, they declare current music is "crap", and it happened in the 1920's, in the 1950's, and you get the idea.
Re:Hearing tests aren't the whole story (Score:3, Insightful)
I go to live music all the time, play a lot of music myself, and typically only listen to mp3s and cds of bands I go to see live.
You know what? It all sounds the same to me.
The audiophile crowd just amazes me. Have they never played a musical instrument? Been to a live concert? Been to a church?
It's a unique phenomenon of self delusion I just find quite fascinating. Such people derive such a sense of POWER being one of the few to understand the "real" music. It's the mindset of a religious cult.
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:5, Insightful)
It's strange that you should mention The Cult because the 80's was responsible for producing some of the crappiest as well as some of the best music ever written IMHO.
I was with a band signed to the same label as The Cult in England, Beggars Banquet records, and they seemed to pick pretty good bands making pretty good music. They had a relatively small budget so they couldn't take as many chances as the likes of RCA, WB and other majors. So you tended to get a lot of crap music basically designed for people to dance and get drunk to, build walls to, shit to and anything else you can think of apart from actually listening to music to.
Bottom line is Britney Spears is a steaming pile of crap compared to Kate Bush, but you try telling that to kids today
At what bitrate? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no point comparing MP3s to CDs without stating the bitrate. We all know low-bitrate MP3s sound like crap, but I've done my own tests on 320kbit/s MP3s (with some fairly expensive stereo equipment), and even switching between them and the original source, I couldn't pick it.
Oh, and it'd need to be a blind comparison too. Misleading judgments due to the placebo effect are very common (see: Monster cable).
Re:Sounds we can and cannot hear. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm, ok
" . . . (or better yet, a vinyl record)"
Oops, you were doing quite well up until then. Too bad that last bit lost you whatever credibility you might have started the post with.
Correction (Score:3, Insightful)
However, most people can tell the difference in a blind test.
That really should read:
However, most people with expensive stereos that consider themselves 'audiophiles' can tell the difference in a blind test.
People with expensive stereos that consider themselves 'audiophiles', however, do not constitute "most people". And everything I've ever seen or read doing any kind of blind test came to essentially the same conclusion: that "most people" simply cannot tell the difference. If you've seen or read otherwise, I'd love to see it myself.
Personally, I'm basically in the same boat as you. If I pay attention, I can (usually) hear distinguishing bits to where I can tell. But I noticed too that if I'm just listening to the song as the whole, rather than the individual components, I rarely ever notice a difference. And I think that is more than likely why most people never notice a difference, either.
Hi Fidelity or MP3? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a world out there today that desires to preserve the high fidelity of their music. We're talking a world that still uses tube amplifiers and a new generation of vinly LP -- the 180-200 gram vinyl. Variable reluctance and moving coil carts are still the top of the HiFi chain. Vintage turntables like the Technics servo drives are still in high demand. These people listen to their music on full sized systems through full size speakers.
While it is true that MP3 and iTunes made music portable, they did so at the expense of quality. It is good to see both worlds in existence but the portable world is gradually leaving the HiFi world behind. It is interesting that while CD sales are dropping, LP sales, as small as they are, are actually on the increase, according to the RIAA.
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:3, Insightful)
And don't ask me what that current music is - I'm 35 and I already find myself listening to my old stuff more than the current stuff. But I don't tell kids like my nephews that everything they're listening to is crap, because it's probably not. Most of it? Maybe. But then again, who are you or I to say? It'd be like asking your parents, when you were a teenager, "out of the stuff I listen to, what's crap and what's good?" They'd probably tell you it was all crap. Just like all the old farts here complaining that ALL the current music on the radio is crap. Same old trap.
Nobody likes getting old, and this discussion deals with one of the surest barometers of aging.
Another Thing to Consider® (Score:4, Insightful)
Let us not forget that even though 'crap' applies to every generation of music, the most recent generations have been subjected to far greater mass marketing, production and exploitation. This certainly translates into the quality of the music, I'm sure.
Being a super star musical act no longer requires any sort of talent and being found can easily just be luck of the draw, more so than any other generation. This increased musical exploitation undoubtedly results in a greater percentage of... junk.
I agree with your sentiment though - Every generation thinks their music is the greatest and the one before it thinks it is garbage - whether it really is or not.
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. Does it matter that the music producers who are howling are as much to blame [wikipedia.org] as Apple's shitty cans.
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I'd say it's most certainly a bad thing, and I'd wager it's largely a new phenomenon tied to the exploitative music business of the last century. I suspect it's an unavoidable artifact of heavy marketing of specific genres, targetted advertising and faux cultures. When people get older they get less susceptible to being told what to listen to by the industry (and is thus no longer a profitable segment to exploit), and as the industry isnt providing what they want, you get the age fracture.
"And don't ask me what that current music is"
See what they've done to you? The fact is, there is no 'current' music anymore, that's just a desperately projected last gasp of the corps. Sign on to some music social networking sites and/or emusic and have them build a profile over your taste, and you'll discover hundreds or thousands of new groups you'd never heard of that produce 'new' stuff appropriate for your taste in music.
Re:Today's records ARE technically inferior (Score:3, Insightful)
If music is compressed, limited and clipped like it is on many records today, there really isn't much argument for the need of an extra quality carrier. The quest of the artists, producers or record labels to GET THEIR MUSIC LOUDER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE, causes the dynamic range of music to be sacrificed in order to bump the sound as close as possible to the zero dB boundary. This loudness war causes severe digital clipping, and the distortion you get from it is much MUCH worse that what you get from the MP3 conversion with a decent bitrate.
Not only that, but the music loses every punch, melding all elements in one flat sound, tiring your ears. It's the same with the super audio CD. why needing a carrier with more bits and higher sample rate if you're even using what's available on a CD today?
- Loudness War [wikipedia.org]
- everything louder than everything else [austin360.com]
Really, there's no need for ultra high fidelity equipment or sound carriers if the signal is broken by design at the factory!Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:5, Insightful)
Crapometer (Score:1, Insightful)
Now, you have little or no experimental stuff and unless you like Boy Band RnB or Nigga Rap (where ghetto black speech is used, irrespective of the colour of the originator) you are SOL. If you DO like them, then you'll like some of it but not all. And the variation within means that you never get any real highs. So it all seems more dreary and after a while, boring (read: crap).
Evey now and then something new will come along (Nora Jones, Lilly Allen etc) but it will be hyped and aped so often you'll go off it damn quick and it's crap again.
You used to get some TERRIBLE stuff along with the great stuff (average: crap) but when you're only getting the average (all crap) you aren't any worse than before (crap on average) but you aren't getting anything worth it.
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:4, Insightful)
To a certain extent, this is another aspect of the tyranny of choice. Given a limited amount of time and a near infinite number of options, I find myself retreating to the tried and true. An occasional new band makes it through the filters through some non-standard channel (that video by OK Go, for example) but for the most part I find myself re-buying the old hits from 10 and 20 years ago.
I'm also in my mid-thirties. Where should I go to find the music that is new and relevant? The radio is a non-starter since there is no college radio in my town, MTV is just reality television every time I happen to check it out, I'm not hip enough to hang out at the local record shop, and at the iTunes store I can't tell which bikini-clad singer actually has talent and which is a corporate creation in the 20 seconds of preview that they give me.
Re:Darned whippersnappers (Score:5, Insightful)
What your forgetting is that in the 50's, 60's, and to an extent the 70's were delving into completely new areas of music. In large part this was a result of an entirely new way of producing music (electronically) as well as an entirely new sound. Heck, many of the rock bands were using blues riffs that were truly revolutionary. So the older generations alive then wailing against this new genre of music are more akin to those that rejected the powerful and revolutionary concert musics brought about by amazing new instrumentation such as the piano and differing opinions on the role it should play.
The difference is that today's 30+ year olds know very well what this new fangled thing called "rock" is. Electric guitars. Electronica. We grew up with it our entire lives. When we comment on the quality of contemporary music we aren't speaking from nearly the same "old foggy commenting on revolutionary new way of making music" that those railing against rock did a few decades ago or the sounds of Beethoven 100's of years ago.
If brittany spears invented a instrument or was the first to use an electric guitar. If she used her own musical chords that were a different way of making harmony and progression. If then I took a step back and said "that sounds like shit to me". I'd have to begrudgingly admit that has harsh to my ears as her sound is, it is as least innovative. New.
But our judgments on music doesn't need to be so conflicted. She making the same "type" of music I've heard all my life. A little more 90's and a little less 80's, but still the same old stuff I've been hearing since I can remember.
And it sounds like tripe. Is not innovative or unique. It's a cookie cutter one woman "boy band" style music. It's entertainment backed by a bit of vocal talent and a flare for the stage...but nothing else.
Please point me to a single bubble gum pop boy band that has withstood the test of time as anything more then a chuckle and a laugh to those that listened to them as children?
Progress compromises quality (Score:3, Insightful)
I've noticed what I believe to be an important and prevalent consequence of technological innovation: many recent technological advances entail lowering the qualitative expectations of consumers. For example, the average quality of cell phone calls is significantly lower than anything that would have been deemed acceptable by a land-line customer twenty years ago. Even using a high-end cell phone, you often have calls where there's lots of static, words get "dropped"--or maybe your whole call gets dropped because you're in a poor reception area. Airplane trips have gone from a near-luxurious experience to something like being run through sheep dip. Audio quality, as discussed in this thread, is another clear example of quality suffering at the hands of technology.
Time was when "audiophiles" spent thousands of dollars on then-exotic "hi-fi" gadgetry to achieve a sound that was a "life-like" as possible. (As I recall, some of my friends thought that listening to a recording of a steam locomotive on their hi-fis at top volume was the ultimate auditory experience. I never quite figured that one out.) The ultimate objective of those who were truly "into sound" was to extract every note from their cosseted vinyl recordings with ultimate "fidelity".
Then came the Compact Disk--a development greeted by apocalyptic horror on the part of many audiophiles. I'm aware that this topic has been discussed ad nauseam, so I'm not going to pursue at great length the question of whether CDs per se deliver sound inferior to that of vinyl. All I know is that I've listened to CD and Vinyl recordings of the same musical performances, and the vinyl sounded distinctly better. Maybe this is due to inherent technical limitations of the CD format--or perhaps the studios who produced those CDs just didn't exercise as much care in their making as they might have.
Now we have yet another quality regression: MP3. Nobody is going to tell me that a 128kbps recording of a decent piece of music sounds as good as that same piece played from either a vinyl or CD recording on high-quality equipment. I know that for a fact because I've compared 128 and 256kbps recordings on mediocre equipment (my car stereo), and I cold tell that the 256 sounded way better than the 128. I'd be lying if I said I tried comparing 256kbs against vinyl on good equipment, but I have a hunch that the vinyl would win.
Where am I going with all this? Well, probably not where you think I am. I recently MP3-ized my entire collection of Vinyl and CD recordings (at 256kbps), and the MP3 recordings are the only thing I listen to any more. Why? One word: convenience. I can carry a lot of music around with me on my little 130Mb USB disk. I can stuff many hours of music onto my MP3 player that I listen to at work. I can do the same in my car. At home, the stereo stands idle...I'm always listening to music via my computer's MP3 player while I play games (who needs to hear explosions, anyway?) or read. In other words, I'm willing to trade quality for other benefits, such as the ability to organize my entire music collection into playlists, to instantly find and play whatever song I feel like, or to be able to listen for hours and hours of music without having to get up and fiddle with finding a disk and putting it on the player.
Likewise, I've always got my trusty cell-phone clipped to my belt--it's better to have a static-riddled conversation than not be able to talk to a person at all when time is of the essence. I sure think the airlines suck, though. (Actually, that's a red herring--the quality of airline travel cannot be said to have been improved in any way by technology in the last 20 years.)
As another telling example of sacrificing quality for convenience via modern technology, consider this posting (or article or whatever the heck you call it). A few decades ago, I would have written a carefully polished essay. Now I toss off a piece of schlock while my employer thinks I'm working. Now that's progress!