Young People Prefer "Sizzle Sounds" of MP3 Format 743
Hugh Pickens writes "Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford, tests his incoming students each year by having them listen to a variety of recordings which use different formats from MP3 to ones of much higher quality, and he reports that each year the preference for music in MP3 format rises. Berger says that young people seemed to prefer 'sizzle sounds' that MP3s bring to music because it is a sound they are familiar with. 'The music examples included both orchestral, jazz and rock music. When I first did this I was expecting to hear preferences for uncompressed audio and expecting to see MP3 (at 128, 160 and 192 bit rates) well below other methods (including a proprietary wavelet-based approach and AAC),' writes Berger. 'To my surprise, in the rock examples the MP3 at 128 was preferred. I repeated the experiment over 6 years and found the preference for MP3 — particularly in music with high energy (cymbal crashes, brass hits, etc) rising over time.' Dale Dougherty writes that the context of the music changes our perception of the sound, particularly when it's so obviously and immediately shared by others. 'All that sizzle is a cultural artifact and a tie that binds us. It's mostly invisible to us but it is something future generations looking back might find curious because these preferences won't be obvious to them.'"
Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is probably no different than older people who prefer the sound of a phonograph over modern high quality digital recorded mediums like the CD. Warmness of sound on phonographs may be the equivilent to the mp3 sizzle that he talks about. People are used to hearing music over lower quality mediums like FM radio, streaming internet connections and real player. Its good that he is doing this research though because its time dependent and you won't be able to do it later.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:4, Insightful)
that is an odd statement at best.
Most people like what they are used to and don't like what they aren't used to. Saying that can't tell what they like from what they are used to shows an in-depth lack of understanding of other individuals.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
He could have phrased it better: People don't know why they like what they like, particularly they can't tell if they like something because they're used to it or because it has other likable qualities.
This is an important realization for requirements engineering: Don't ask people what they want. To want is to have an anticipation of liking. As people can't tell if they like something because they're used to it, they will often tell you they want something but later don't like what they wanted because, since it's new, they're not familiar with it. So either you give them something familiar with small tweaks or you have to use another way to find what people "really" want.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Kinda like food...if you grow up eating spam or fast food all your life, a fine meal at a high end restaurant might now be what you think is any good.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
No it doesn't make any sense.
Why would people prefer the distorted sound produced my MP3-128??? As I just said - it's distorted. I grew-up listening to AM and FM, but I certainly don't prefer either - too noisy. I prefer the uncompressed FLAC or CD because it's as close to live as one can get.
I can only conclude the college students are nuts to prefer the "buzz" of digital artifacts. I can tolerate digital artifacts, but I definitely do Not like them. Screw MP3-128 and give me MP3-320 or a CD, since both are superior.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Interesting)
MP3-320 may be better than MP3-128, but it's generally overkill. Most people's impression of the quality of 128kbps MP3s comes from the era where most MP3s weren't encoded with VBR. VBR makes a massive difference in quality per unit size. I've seen three or four blind comparisons between VBR mp3s at different bitrates, as well as conducted one of my own. The results, in general, are that about half of people can tell the difference between 128kbps and 160kbps or 192kbps, and beyond that, there's generally little to no ability to accurately tell the difference, even among self-described audiophiles.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I find that VBR often makes dumb decisions - namely not providing enough bits to certain "difficult" passages so I can hear artifacts. I'd rather just use CBR at the maximum 320, since storage media is now dirt cheap, and we're no longer limited to squeezing everything on a tiny 1 gig drive.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
MP3-320 may be better than MP3-128, but it's generally overkill. Most people's impression of the quality of 128kbps MP3s comes from the era where most MP3s weren't encoded with VBR.
I don't think that even fixed bitrate 128 mbps is inherently quite as bad as people used to claim. I understand where it got this reputation, because I've listened to downloaded 128 mbps MP3s (*) which are quite clearly compressed with artifacting, etc. and demonstrate why some people used it as the benchmark for convenience-over-quality music.
Yet I encoded stuff for myself at 128mbps fixed-rate around the same time, and it sounds miles better. It's still not hifi, but the difference in quality is noticable.
Why? Good question. It's possible that the crappy downloaded MP3s had been re-encoded, but it's more likely that they were simply done using a low-quality encoder. I used notlame, which was supposedly one of the better ones. IIRC a few years back, the quality of encoders *did* vary quite a bit. Nowadays I'm guessing that the ones in use are much better and much closer in performance- not to mention that higher bitrates and use of VBR make any differences less obvious.
Back to the point; you won't get hifi at 128mbps, but neither should you damn it completely by the quality of a mislabelled MP3 you downloaded from Napster in 1999.
(*) Downloaded via, erm... "non-favoured" channels circa 2001 when most people still used fixed-rate 128mbps.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's quite true. The simplest mp3 encoder implementation -- a route taken by many -- was just to throw away the weakest DCT signals. But there are two big improvements you can do on that: 1) throw away the weakest DCT signals weighted by average human sensitivity, and to combine remaining signals that are close together. There's no use keeping a spike at 2031Hz and 2032Hz; nobody's going to be able to tell the difference, so you might as well just combine them.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would people prefer the distorted sound produced my MP3-128??? As I just said - it's distorted.
The same reason people prefer the "colorized" (ie distorted) sound of a tube amp, or the "compressed and limited" audio of a radio announcer.
"Sounding good" has nothing to do with the faithful reproduction of the source material. It is a perception.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Interesting)
The comparison only seems fair. Vacuum tubes distort sound in a way that can be easily understood as favorable - harsh frequencies are softened, etc. The idea that the sound has been "improved" by tube distortion can be perceived, but also explained in technical terms.
I have a hard time understanding how MP3 distortion can be seen as favorable. With MP3 compression, the "distortion" is artifacts and interference. The flabby, washy, sizzle effect. Yuck. I find it to be especially *bad* on extreme high frequencies like cymbal crashes and horns.
I have noticed that MP3 (file) compression can sometimes have a similar effect to dynamic range compression, which recording studios over-use to make all of the levels as loud as possible. The desired effect is that the song is louder coming over the radio, but trained ears also notice that there is no variation in the dynamic range. Trained or not, ears get fatigued listening to music that is over-compressed (dynamic compression, not file compression).
I think it could certainly be possible that students simply perceive the MP3 song as louder.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't hurt that the SM57 can be had for under $100 and is nearly indestructible. There is no fragile cage over the element (that's what the SM58 is for), and though the reproduction is colored, it is generally adequate onstage. They also Just Work, every time. I have personally switched to using a Sennheiser MD-421U for these jobs, but they cost at least three times as much and aren't nearly as bulletproof (mostly because of the stupid clip design).
Don't rule out plain old cheapness and ubiquity when it comes to gear choices.
Mal-2
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I grew up through the phonograph era to CDs and now various digital formats.
Remember any of the phonograph expiriments in the 70s? Piling on pennies until the stylus pressure was the better part of a quarter-pound, and skilled listeners unable to hear the difference? The Bose demonstrations pointing out the human ear's sensitivity to distortion that varies with frequency? Actually, AT&T might have more information on this, since they wanted to send only what was needed to be intelligible. But I digress.
I always preferred the 'West Coast' sound, even on LPs. The JBL L100 speakers delivered this sound the best, IMHO, and the more accurate the amp the better. Headroom was my god. But I sacrificed the tube amps for solid-state very early. Warm response = less high-end. While I transcribed LPs onto reel-to-reel, I used Revox decks and usually ran them at 15ips, spewing tape but I saved my LPs. It wasn't about money. I was into heavy metal before it was called that. I also developed a taste for Mahler, but that's another story. And I was a bass freak, not to the exclusion of high frequency response. Tape hiss destroyed it, no matter what flavor or Dolby processing or companding I tried. I wanted it all, defined as everything but mids....
CDs were welcomed by me, first 'cause they didn't wear like LPs, and of course the s/n won me over. No more tapes! I loved the wide response, the cleaner highs, the impossible lows. Platter rumble limits your bass response. At this point I was listening to stuff through 30" EV drivers and eithber Phase Linear or Crown amps, 3-5KW of them(This suited disco). Some of the stuff I fell in love with would be in the 12-18Hz range, impossible with phonographs unless I built a room just for that purpose. I bought CDs instead. Of course, portability won me over too, though there was one big problem with portable CD players - the headphones were generally terrible. My Koss Pro-4AAs fit the bill. And I would never hear that car coming. Instant death, oblivious to all but the music. I survived, of course.
But the headphones I migrated to were all pitiful. Not sealing the ear canal meant no bass response - can't get much out of a .7" open air driver. Think the free air resonance must have been around 300Hz. So CD players were half a loaf.
MP3s offered the future or massive amounts of music in packages even more resilient than portable CD players. Nice! Of course, most of them I first heard on my computer, and the speakers on that were weak, so I upgraded as much as I dared, then plugged it into the stereo. Ick! Tinny, sibilant, bass like mud. I was distraught. this was not an advance.
I learned, of course, about bitrates, and now I listen to nothing below 256kb/s, and usually 320kb/s. I use a lot more space, but it is worth it to me. A while ago I had a revelation - 128kb/s sounded like FM radio, which is usually not that good after the station gets finished limiting/shaping/twisting the audio for their own purposes. I realized shortly thereafter that FM radio is mostly driven by computerized stations now. They use MP3s. FM radio *is* 128kb/s. Sadly, it is ruined, probably forever.
So kids today prefer the sizzle of 128K MP3s? I'm learning to turn down those classic albums I remember, and hear all sorts of amazing stuff going on that would be lost in the din ordinarily. My apologies to all those artists whose work I so diminished for so long.
Of course, popular music today for teens is so electronic that encoding a higher bitrate wouldn't make the same difference as it would for say Mahler, or Glass, or even Pink Floyd. Drum machines aren't the same as animal hides. I doubt I could hear enough difference myself. Kids' ears already ruined by in-ear drivers and iPods with enough power to deafen you (thanks, Steve) are probably already hearing-impaired at 16, if not earlier.
I modify my music a lot, but not having the sound to modify is the real crime of 128kb/s MP3s. It's why I prefer
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Informative)
I am continually fascinated by the number of "pedals" and "effects" that electronic guitar players apply to the output of their instrument. Why would people prefer that distorted sound?
There are different levels of distortion. There are different kinds. The ability to detect distortion is a skill, in many cases, and in many cases 'distortion' is part of the desired sound. (Why do trombone players stuff a cone in the bell of their instrument, it's DISTORTION!?)
I prefer the uncompressed FLAC or CD because it's as close to live as one can get.
When I first read that, I assumed you meant the "made smaller" meaning of compressed, since you were talking about MP3's and a major factor in MP3 production is the "make smaller" compression. I was going to point out that very few CDs come without the "remove level excursions" kind of compression, and that this compression is hardly as close to live as you can get.
Even so, many CDs don't come out without multi-track mastering and postprocessing to include reverb and flanging and all kinds of other "effects" being added to the sound. None of those effects are what you would hear live, and some of them are digital attempts at making a studio recording sound more like live.
I can only conclude the college students are nuts to prefer the "buzz" of digital artifacts. I can tolerate digital artifacts, but I definitely do Not like them.
Many people don't hear them (either because they aren't trained to hear them or are using less-than-gold equipment like ear-buds). They don't spend hours listening to live music in sonically pure environments so they could learn what a pure sound is. (Hearing a guitar amplified to 120dB is NOT hearing a pure sound, it's hearing your eardrums, and every loose object in the room, rattle.) What they hear on the MP3 is what they learn to expect, and if the sound is "odd" then it's a distraction.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"I am continually fascinated by the number of "pedals" and "effects" that electronic guitar players apply to the output of their instrument. Why would people prefer that distorted sound?"
Just so we're clear here, those pedals and effects create a new sound. It isn't distorted in the way you seem to mean it. Yes, it distorts the 'original' string sound, but since it's an electric guitar, the pickups already 'distorted' that. 'Rendered' is a better concept.
And the pedals and effects render a new, intention
Think "simplified" not "distorted". (Score:3, Interesting)
I can hear the difference in several songs between compressed digitized formats and the CD I have of them at home. Some I like better, others not so much. (Although in my case, it's ogg, not mp3).
For example, The Cars' "Just What I Needed" sounds "cleaner", and I hear musical details in the right-hand guitar track I'd missed before, probably because the fuzz in the electric guitar tracks is simplified, and the stereo separation of the two guitar tracks is exaggerated. So it's probably a less accurate
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not just that they prefer Coke, but that it actually tastes better. Clearly the taste doesn't change, but how people perceive taste is dependent on other factors than the actual taste.
Even more interesting: Play people the "bottle opening, followed by fizzing of soda" sound that's used in the Coke ads, and a lot of people will insist the soda tastes better - e
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I find his works rather interesting. I used to do a classical show on a college radio station, and we'd always play something at the end that bent people's minds a little. Quite often, it was a Glass number. The idea was that if people didn't experience different styles of... I guess I'd call it neoclassical music... then they would never grow to appreciate it.
That said, young people's preference for hyped, brittle highs is a bit like most Chinese-manufactured condenser microphones (for precisely the same reason). When you first get one, you love the bright, crisp highs because it is new and sounds exciting, edgy, etc. Then, once you've experienced good-sounding hardware, you fairly quickly realize just how harsh and abrasive that sizzling sound is by comparison and run away screaming. I would say that any kid who likes that sound hasn't been to enough concerts in the real world---probably because they're sold out to the stupid scalpers before they get a chance to buy tickets. Real concerts don't sound like that.
Which brings up my thoughts for solving the scalping problem. Require that all tickets be in the name of a particular person. Print it on the ticket. In order to change it, you have to go to the box office and show a copy of the receipt from an authorized reseller or from the box office. Otherwise, when the name on the ticket doesn't match your photo ID, you don't get in. Scalpers at that point would be unable to buy up large blocks of tickets and resell them at astronomical prices because the tickets would be worthless without the person being able to show a sales receipt from the box office or an authorized reseller. But I digress.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Funny)
As for scalpers, the simple fact is that prices are too low. If you have people willing to pay often ten times the face value of a ticket, why in the name of god are you selling them so cheaply? Sell them at what the market considers a fair price and the scalpers will be out of business.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Funny)
>>>close your ears when assorted fellaters of Beelzebub pollute the airways, lest you get used to their massproduced, RIAA-pocket-lining crap.
Agreed.
Ever since 1750, music has been going downhill. People like Mozart claim to be "making music for the masses" but I just call it noise. Now Bach - there was a man who could compose REAL music, with multiple levels of chords overlapping, it was truly music for the nobility. Anything else is just simplistic twaddle for the uneducated commoners. Bah. Humbug.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I think that it really just points more to the fact that most people can't tell the difference between what they like and what they are used to.
Wait, that makes no sense. If somebody voices a preference for the "sizzle" of mp3, then isn't precisely because they like it?
Or is there an objective preference function somewhere deep in each of our souls that we need to learn to access?
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Funny)
What Dishevel is trying to say is that you plebs have no right to have an opinion about music unless you hear it, from uncompressed studio masters in 188kHz form, on his $45k audio equipment with gold wires, sound-dampened walls, perfectly tuned speakers, and cleanroom-like air filtering so that the very DUST ITSELF cannot disrupt the purity of the music (make sure to wear your protective suit as you walk into the studio!). Only then will you truly know what you "like", only if you agree with Dishevel.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
oh, wait.
No, no, I've got it. I listen to it in a room full of pure helium, so that everything sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Funny)
Gold is only good if the component will be unplugged and plugged back in a lot, or will spend a lot of time sitting around.
As opposed to components that spend a lot of time jogging.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's funny...I'm an audio engineer and I have been using both the WAV and MP3 formats for the past ten years. I used to listen to CDs but for the past 8 or so years I have been using Winamp to play MP3 and more recently the iPod.
Nowadays, when I finish a track, the wav doesn't sound right until I encode it to mp3. The mp3 sounds better to me. It's not due to a lack of knowledge of the distinctions between the two...I'm familiar with all the boring technical differences...it's due to ear training. You consistently hear your reference material (other well recorded and or well written songs on an iPod or some other device) in the mp3 format, and so you end up coming to prefer the mp3 format.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not buying it. I too listen to a lot MP3-128s on my ipod, but I definitely prefer the uncompressed FLAC or CD sound. There are nuances to the music, especially in the high frequencies, that can not be heard on MP3-128 encodings. I prefer more sound, not less.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one possibility, another is that there's a huge incidence of hearing damage in young people. Mostly from playing music too loud or listening through ill fitting iPod earbuds. Or listening to music that's too loud and through ill fitting earbuds.
A couple years back I tried listening to some of my oldest MP3 files and they sounded terrible, at 128. These days I listen pretty much just using the typical Lame preset. I think that comes out at a bit rate of 192kbps variable and basically identical to the original for most purposes.
The other possibility is that people listen through crap equipment which really can't properly convey the encoding. I know when I moved up to my Shure e2c and Sennheiser HD 477 that suddenly higher compression rate files were unbearable to listen to. I'd guess with really good equipment like Grados that it would be even more pronounced.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Funny)
Also, get off my lawn.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
french press ... is acknowledged as infinitely better
... by those that prefer french press. Those that prefer Sanka clearly do no acknowledge french press as infinitely better.
Your argument is totally circular: You should prefer french press because if you prefer french press then you'll find that you prefer french press.
(not to mention the hints of elitism).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fuck that, any european barista knows their shit way better than any of us non euros could wish for. Turkish coffee is easily the worlds best though, preferably right next to Cuban cigars.
Actually, Cuban cigars are crap now. Lack of proper farming techniques have rendered their crops crap. The only reason they still sell is on reputation alone. Dominican cigars are now top of the line, fwiw.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wine and cigar aficionados have certain standards they use, but it is only within that circle they are true standards. Outside that circle they are irrelevant. Saying one has to be 'educated' to appreciate it is also elitist. I smoke plenty of cigars, and use the ratings as a guide to try new things, not as 'oh
I love high-end tequila and bourbon, but that doesn't stop me from having a shot of Sauza or Wild Turkey sometime. There is something about their bite that I love. Given the choice between Red Breast or Wild Turkey it would be unlikely for me to choose Wild Turkey. But that doesn't mean it doesn't taste good to me.
What I have found is people assign 'fine' standards to items that are expensive, rare, or seem to be liked by a few people. Lobster used to be used as fertilizer because it was deemed 'trash food' and apprentice contracts were written that forbid having to eat it more than a few times a week. Now it's a 'delicacy' to some. As someone who lived in Maine for 20 years, I think it tastes like crap except in a lobster roll with plenty of mayo.
I can enjoy an Oscar Mayer bologna sandwich on white bread with store brand yellow mustard as well as I can a fine steak served with a blue cheese butter. Neither taste is better than the other, they are tastes and I am perfectly capable of finding something good in both of them.
Maybe those that don't like the bologna sandwich just don't have as refined a palate as I do to appreciate the subtle flavors and textures.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus there is not enough information.
An mp3 on a crappy set of iPod earbuds for from a car stereo sounds far better than the same audio source played over a high end amp and high end speakers in a listening room.
it's amazing how a real set of speakers will bring out the "omg that is crap" even in a 192K encoded mp3 file.
Whereas a HD audio recording that is a full 24 bits per channel recorded at 48Khz and a crazy high bitrate sounds no different than a crap mp3 in earbuds but sounds spooky clear in a decent
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Gourmet or some such magazine had an article recently about bourbon. The article's main point is that bourbon quality is counter intuitive. The mass produced stuff is often better than the boutique stuff and the cheap brands compare well to the expensive ones. Their thought is that small batches just can't replicate some of the conditions of mass production that give it good flavor.
On a related note, I had a tequila expert/snob tell me to never ever ever use good tequila in a margarita. A waste of money.
As you said, it's a preference thing that shouldn't be justified by some metric such as price.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Interesting)
That explains the continued success of Coors and Busweiser.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Funny)
It's freedom press, you insensitive, unpatriotic, red clod!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
French press preparation is actually one of the least expensive and least time-consuming brewing methods. Compare the cost of a French press to a pump-driven espresso machine or even quality drip-coffee.
For French press, all you need is the plunger pot itself ($20-30), plus a good blade grinder (~$50). You can use a burr grinder to get somewhat more consistent results, but it's not really necessary at all, especially if your blade grinder has a timer.
Now for espresso, the absolute cheapest cost of entry i
Re:Taste is subjective, Sound waves aren't (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no accuracy in coffee that expensive coffee is closer to than Sanka is.
Who says 'accuracy' is a desirable quality of a musical recording?
Certainly not the musicians who "punched in" re-takes of passages where they were unhappy with their first performance, or the producer who demanded that the singer's performance be processed with autotune, or the engineers who applied reverb, compression, and EQ to each recorded part individually, made volume adjustments to everything during mixdown, and then applied more compression and EQ to the finished product, or the CD duplicator that took the 48kHz/24-bit master DAT and transcoded it down to a 44.1kHz,16-bit master...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point. Actually, our perception that tone quality should be pure is mostly based on western music. In an ethnomusicology class I took, they noted that the African perception of sound quality is different because they put pieces of metal that rattle or clink together when they play, so the sound should have more of a gritty quality to it to sound "correct".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I have no idea what he's talking about in the first place. Unless it's an abysmally low-quality rip, MP3 sounds just like any other format. No sizzle, nothing.
Play that decent-quality song over a set of high end speakers, then play something in FLAC and you will hear the difference.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
For those that might notice the difference I bet you the marginal benefit of getting to the next level does not out weight the marginal cost so people don't care.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I couldn't hear the difference for years listening on my computer speakers and earbuds.
Then I bought a decent $70 set of headphones (Grado Labs, in case anyone cares) to listen with at work and my whole mp3 collection sounds like crap.
At least the few CD's I own sound amazing, though :(
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe the value (benefit - cost) an average user would get out of replacing all their digital mp3s with a better format and getting the better speakers will not be greater then the value of staying put because the cost will still be greater then the benefit.
The exception to my rule of course will be the people who do care about the be
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Low quality mp3s sound more like you're listening to music with cotton in your ears.
That is the case for music which has been decimated with a low-pass filter (i.e. the high frequencies are not "passed" through). But there are other artifacts like pre-echo (before a sharp attack like from a cymbal or castanet there is kind of a echo or "smear" added to to the music).
If you dare, check out this page in order to train your ears to be more sensitive to lossy compression artifacts:
http://ff123.net/training/training.html [ff123.net]
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah.. there's nothing more fun than taking something enjoyable and pointing out all the flaws until you can't stand it anymore. Hey, if you're not busy later, maybe you could come over and criticize my wife too.
Re: (Score:2)
The preference was for a 128Kbps MP3 rip, which is abysmally low quality and sizzles like bacon.
Re: (Score:2)
I used to think that. Then someone gave me a £70 sound card, and I bought spent £300 on an external amplifier and a couple of decent speakers.
Switching between the on-board sound and the decent sound card makes a massive difference, the on-board sound is really flat.
I can tell the difference between a normal (128, 192) MP3 and FLAC. It's even more noticable to compare FLAC with something from YouTube.
People don't all care as much about their music though -- my flatmate was pleased wi
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I have no idea what he's talking about in the first place. Unless it's an abysmally low-quality rip, MP3 sounds just like any other format. No sizzle, nothing.
Most people don't notice it consciously. That's why MP3s are such a great invention. However, certain sounds, most notably cymbals, sound distinctly different on an MP3.
I first noticed this back in the Napster days when I would accidentally download multiple copies of the same song at different bit rates. I would say the difference between 96 kbit/s to 128 kbit/s is more noticeable than 128 kbit/s to 192 kbit/s. However, a 320 kbit/s file sounds far superior to a 128 kbit/s file. In other words, the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Could it also be the difference between cheap ear-buds and good quality speakers?
Re: (Score:2)
It is a pity though. This makes music fit into the frequency range that is compressing it. It could kill any music that uses a lot of symbol sounds, as they sound like crap in a highly compressed format.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that's a whole different ball of wax (bad pun intended).
Records provide analog sound which does sound more more natural and warm if the original recording was also analog (using good equipment). This is an extremely hi fidelity medium.
And 128 mp3's are an extremely lo fidelity medium. I can't stand listening to them because it actually cuts out audible portions of the music that I can hear if listening to the cd or a high quality rip.
I think a part of this equation that is being left out is the volume at which the listeners were playing the music. Also, with some of these kids doing nothing but listening to their ipods 24/7, I'm wondering if their earing isn't temporarily damaged.
I would be curious to see what these kids would think about the different samples if they went a month without listening to any music. They like the hiss because they're not used to hearing anything without it (on crappy headphones none-the-less). I wanna know what happens when they "reboot" their ears. This isn't just a matter of some people prefer sennheiser headphones and some people prefer grado headphones, this is a matter of some people liking how things actually sound vs. some people liking distorted music with hiss laid over it. That's kind of unsettling to me.
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean this sincerely and with jealousy: Ignorance really is bliss.
I really don' think that's true (Score:2)
If the older generation actually preferred the sound of records then why did they rapidly adopt CD technology? Records would still be king!
Re: (Score:2)
People are used to hearing music over lower quality mediums like FM radio...
Not to mention that fact that many FM radio stations store their music in compressed formats these days. Also, many syndicated radio shows, and even entire programing for some stations, is produced somewhere else and streamed to local stations over the internet.
Thanks Clear Channel for degrading the quality of our FM radio even more.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A perfect example is the making of the Beatles Anthology last decade where producer George Martin insisted on remixing the 5.1 soundtrack using a vintage mixing desk of the late 60's period because it was part of "the Beatle sound".
You could argue that a modern/neutral desk would more accurately reveal the source material, but it wouldn't sound the same to the target audience who grew up on the original issues.
A counter-example is the Beatles Let It Be...Naked release,
Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the question is why is music this way and, say hi-def video NOT this way?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the reason is that music is not audio. I'd expect if the question was centered around, say more generic audio quality, say listening to recorded conversations, or bird sounds or whatever the higher quality may be preferred, in a manner that's analogous to preferring higher quality video.
In other words it may be the difference between Content and Delivery. Higher quality DELIVERY is almost always preferred, but when aspects of that delivery work their way into the CONTENT then the content preference will win.
No one ever talks about the warm feeling of low-def TV, but you may find lots of folks who prefer hand drawn cartoons vs "higher quality" computer generated cartoons.
In my case regarding music I do know that I have a preference for recordings of live music vs studio recordings. It evokes in me a sense of a shared experience (even though I know this is a fantasy), it's like I'm there in a concert with others. A studio recording, on the other hand seems more like a solo experience. I suppose I'd prefer higher quality live recordings over lower quality ones, but I also suppose I'd prefer lower quality live recordings over higher quality studio recordings.
Cool news but... (Score:5, Funny)
I think the Jonas Brothers already proved this.
Digital Artifacts.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Annoy the hell out of me personally. Both audio and video.
Bring back analog, the real thing.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The quality won't deteriorate over time like your analog.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Digital Artifacts.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Deaf? (Score:5, Interesting)
this sounds like a peference for high treble... probably related to hearing loss.
Re:Deaf? (Score:5, Funny)
high freq is the first to go, so a distorted high end combined with a loss of any real soundstage (which is compounded by turning the LA2A compressors up to max to pump the sound even more at mastering) feeds the material effect of the sound for the sociological issues described in TFA.
In 30 years, when the oil's gone and hordes of cannibalistic zombies wander the ruins of Western Civilisation, these young punks will be easy pickins. Deaf as posts, obese, incapable of complex or convoluted thought, lazy, self absorbed, crybabies with a massive bolt of self-entitlement. Yep. They won't be able to feed themselves and will either join the zombie hordes or be eaten by them.
All thanks to the iPod and the Xbox.
Yep yep, I tell ya. Things just haven't been right since the Coolidge Administration. Zombie hordes back then? Fuck - we'd hear 'em from MILES away...
ghmgnghnhgmghhngmhngmhnmghng...
The sound of zombies. Heck - we'd just sit on our porch with a shovel and beat the fucking crap out of them. None of this "Oh, I'm sorry, did that hurt?"" No way. It's more like "I'M (smack!) GIVING (smack!) YOU (smack!) THE (smack!) BEATING (smack!) YOUR (smack!) MOMMY (smack!) AND (smack!) DADDY (smack!) NEVER (smack!) GAVE (smack!) YOU, (smack!)YOU (smack!) STUPID (smack!) FAT (smack!) FUCK! (smack!)(smack!)(smack!)
Yep. THAT would teach them fat zombie fucks a thing or two.
S, if you wanna do something for the future that's REALLY worth doing, do this to your kids:
1. DON'T be their friend. Be their PARENT. And sometimes the parent has to be the avatar of the kid's bad karma. Punishment is good when doled out judiciously and without mercy.
2. Take away the iPod. They want to listen to music? They listen over speakers and at a reasonable volume, because they have to live with others.
3. Get rid of your TV set.
4. Read books, and have your kids read books.
5. Teach them how to grow food gardens.
6. Teach them how to play an acoustic instrument.
7. Teach them to be as good as their word and to not lie. Ever. Their word must be their bond and they must be held accountable. No excuses.
That's a start.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
RS
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
8. Invest in companies making hearing aids. I foresee the iPod generation needing these as they get older.
9. Forget investing in hearing aid companies, because adults my age who all had Sony Walkmans as children didn't turn out needing hearing aids by age 40.
Not Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not Surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I recall something about tubes effecting odd and even harmonics differently and imparting an effect described as "warmer" on the music. Tubes have a non trivial variance in performance so don't get an audiophiles starte
Re:Not Surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Screw that. I grew up listening to LPs and the scratches, pops and skips were like murder to the music. That's not 'soul' or 'character', it's shit.
Now, throwing the imperfections of the medium aside, the thing that's been killing music for the last 20 years is over compresssion. Kills the dynamic range, sounds like hell on digital formats, and just plain tires out the ears after a while.
I'm always amused when modern bands record and entire album on analog tape and mixing gear to get a 'vintage' sounds, and then the final mix is compressed to death; makes the whole exercise pointless!
we're doomed (Score:5, Funny)
Dick Cavett said "As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it." Little did he know that if all people know is crap they actually begin to prefer it.
If all they know is crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
Little did he know that if all people know is crap they actually begin to prefer it.
And that's why 2009 will not be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How much benefit do I really gain from switching over my digital collection (and the devices)so I can have a better perceived "Value" of sound?
What is the cost of this? First need to replace all Mp3s with a higher quality format. So this costs time and money. More then likely most people are listening to said music through crappy headphones or speaker systems. What wi
People tend to not prefer quality (Score:5, Informative)
People have really weird internal processes that shape their preferences. Preferring shitty, hissy sounding music is just one of those odd results. I would not equate it with the perceived "warmth" of vinyl when compared to CDs. The warmth is not the snaps and crackles, but a different quality that I can't imagine anyone would think as a loss of quality. Just a change of tone.
The hissy music on the other hand is primarily as a result of poor or excessive compression that reflects a lost of information, not just a change in tone. And it just so happens that like in every other arena of human opinion most people prefer crap. :)
P.S. I am not an audiophile but I love clear, full range sound when it comes to music. I prefer digital over vinyl because I can't stand all the defects that come with vinyl, even though I grew up with them.
Re: (Score:2)
but a different quality that I can't imagine anyone would think as a loss of quality. Just a change of tone.
It's still a distortion from the original, not easily correctable. Overall, it's still a loss in information, just different than MP3
And it just so happens that like in every other arena of human opinion most people prefer crap.
People tend to prefer what they're used to. Witness building trends down in Florida. You get people building/buying cheap reproductions* of Northeastern style houses down there because that's what they prefer - despite that being a lousy way to build a house in Florida. As would the inverse of building a house suited for Florida in the North.
*IE missing the insulation, amo
Market-driven format (Score:2)
Since people are willing to accept that (young and old), they're just going to adapt to it and enjoy what they have. Hopefully someday we'll see the market push better formats but, for now, I'm not counting on much to improve amongst music players.
(Full disclosure: After getting a 1TB hard drive, I go lossless or I don't
Tubes vs Transistors (Score:4, Insightful)
Every generation has their favorite audio artifacts. Vinyl lovers like the warm sound despite the hiss and pops, im sure back in the day someone thought that wax phonograph cylinders sounded better than those new fangled gramaphone disks. Each generation gets accustomed to the sound they are most familiar with. I remember as a kid arguing with my dad who thought 8-track was much better than casette tapes.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I remember as a kid arguing with my dad who thought 8-track was much better than casette tapes.
In theory they should have been better - they had double the transport speed, and should have had nearly double the frequency response. In practice, however, they weren't. The reason was that they were illogically fated for cars and their bad acoustics (worse than today's cars) and the labels didn't bother with fidelity.
The thing I hated about eight tracks was they would interrupt a song in the middle of the tape
Similar (Score:4, Funny)
I encountered the same feeling when I walked into a Best Buy the other day. I don't generally go into places like that, so when I did and I saw all of the flat-scren TV's, my GF and I couldn't get over how BAD we thought they all looked. The looked too sharp and too bright. I need another TV but I'm having trouble finding anyone that sells good CRT's any more!
Re:Similar (Score:4, Interesting)
Its best to do your homework online, then when at the store ask the salesperson if you can adjust the settings to something that you find more acceptable. I've never been turned down when I've asked this. It gives you a better representation of the quality (but not a full representation, as the lighting at your house will be different).
Generally, flatscreens are better than CRTs when calibrated properly. I know you couldn't pry my DLP out of my cold, dead hands (though DLPs are not true flatscreens). For true flatscreen, you can't go wrong with a properly calibrated Sharp Aquos.
live music is so much richer (Score:2)
Hisss of the 80's (Score:5, Insightful)
Pops of the 70's phonograph
Hiss of the 80's magnetic tape
Sizzle of the 00's MP3s.
Sounds like we had a perfect format in the optical disc - now we just need audio engineers that don't fuck up the mastering with everything cranked to 11.
Previous Generation Tube Amps (Score:4, Insightful)
Could a similar phenomenon (Score:2)
be behind the preference of some people for LPs over CDs?
Were any of the kids surveyed members of HS bands? (Score:5, Interesting)
No time to RTFA, but were any of the kids polled members of high school bands, or musicians on their own? As a drummer for 25+ years, I know the first thing I noticed about poorly encoded MP3s was how crappy the cymbals sounded. And I knew that primarily on account of knowing exactly how a real, live cymbal really sounds, in person, with the naked ear. Having been in a high school band, I know that the experience changed my own understanding of how all the instruments should really sound, as contrasted starkly against how they sound on many recordings, even pre-MP3 era.
representative sample? (Score:4, Insightful)
Were the to pool the opinions of students of Julliard rather than Stamford he'd likely get a completely different result.
If the young person in question is fond of mass produced music -- as most are I guess -- then the sound quality probably isn't important to them, just as tonal nuances wasn't important to the original musicians. For kids that are musicians themselves, and especially jazz or classical musicians, the sound quality matters a great deal.
Basically this is just a badly designed study, skewed in favor of the modal average.
Audiophile? (Score:4, Interesting)
My brother-in-law is a bit of an audiophile. He's not totally neurotic about it, but he's much more obsessive than me. We're talkin' low-middlish-end B&W speakers (I would've bought a car for that kind of money, personally), DVD players to play CDs, NAD amp, shielded, expensive cabling, and those pointy things that you put under your speakers to poke through the carpeting to get to the hard floor below.
I sat in his "listening environment" at a preselected place (he actually had his speakers placed according to a formula to derive the best location for listening) and listened to a CD he put on. Closed my eyes, and I have to say if I didn't know I was sitting in his apartment, I would've sworn I was sitting in a club, six feet from the singer sitting on the piano serenading me. It was stunning how much difference there was between my Pioneer multi-disc Best Buy special and his equipment. I was blown away.
I think the folks in this study just haven't heard stunningly good music and have no idea that it could/should be better.
The Mind's Ability to Process Sounds (Radio Lab) (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the most interesting segments of the show recounted the near-riot that occurred when Stravinsky debuted his "Rites of Spring" in 1913. The music was so discordant to Parisian audiences, that they reacted -- in some cases violently -- to the oddness of the new music.
Check it out -- the entire show is awesome. Entirely consistent with the professor's findings here.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My Skullflower anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's my Skullflower anecdote about MP3s:
Back in the days when I was working for an incarnation of eMusic (several buy-outs ago), I noticed that they had a release from Skullflower in the collection, and I listened to it at work. Skullflower has a pretty seriously noisy sound, but sometimes I like serious noise, and the Skullflower mp3s sounded pretty good to me. That seemed a little funny, because I was pretty sure I'd listened to the CD before down in KZSU's library (I was a DJ at KZSU in those days), and the CD hadn't grabbed me.
But the next time I was on the air, I pulled the Sullflower CD out of the library on impulse, and tried playing a track. It struck me as horribly annoying. Hm, must've picked a bad track. I played around with fading the CD down, fading something else up, and skipping to another Skullflower track. I did that several times, and found them all horribly annoying.
My conclusion: this particular "music" is full of screeching high-frequencies that drive me up the wall, and the mp3 format's compression does a good job of screening them out.
In general I prefer CDs to mp3s, but then, myself I preferred the sound of vinyl to CDs... There's been a trend in the CD era toward a very clean and bright sound that I don't think very much of. Myself, I prefer a sense of "warmth" and "depth", but for that you need some fairly serious speakers, and along with CDs came a fad for minaturization, and people don't listen to music on those major sound systems much any more.
My conclusion: it's impossible to talk about the merits of different sound formats in isolation, because music production practices change as the characteristics of the formats and audio equipment change. If you expect people to be listening on wimpy speakers via a lossy compression format, then you're going to things like lean on the highs to punch through those barriers. And then if someone takes barriers away, you're going to be blasted by the highs.
Grandparents and grandkids think alike (Score:3, Insightful)
Weird how that principle works out again. I always tell people I don't mind mp3s because I remember when AM was the norm, particularly in cars. More than that, 196 kbps and above is better than table top FM and many of the stereos I've listened to in my life. So, no worries.
lack of detail (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that when you miss some details things appear better. People tend to look better at a distance before you get detail. Lowered senses probably contribute to "beer goggles" as well, though there are other factors.
Stripping detail does not make art but it may make pop.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)