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Music Media

Alternative view of MP3s 210

Posted by Hemos from the think-about-this dept.
A reader sent us an alternative viewpoint of the MP3 craze. Although the writer likes MP3s for their ability to allow small artists to get their material out, or to catch those last few B-sides, he still wants to collect actual physical media.
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Alternative view of MP3s More

Alternative view of MP3s

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  • WE GET MUSIC TO LISTEN TO IT, FORE WHICH MP3S ARE THE BEST OF THE CHOICES


    Here it seems that we disagree on the meaning of listen. When I want to LISTEN to music LP's are the only things that will really do (Although a well recorded CD is pretty close). Compared to vinyl, everything else just sounds flat and boring. If I just want to hear some music in the background then CD's are fine and MP3's might do if the music is fairly dynamicly flat to start with, and it's done with a good comp. rate.


    No matter how you argue, you will never get away from the fact that MP3's are of lousy quality. They have little dynamic range and lack true stereo. Their only feature is they are convenient if you have a computer handy and sound quality is irrelevant.


  • Face it, Mp3's will not kill records and CD's. Nobody puts Mp3's on for critical listening or for listening to clasics (like Oldies or Classical Music).

    Mp3 are great for disposal music, like the lastest 'craze' song like 'Millienuim' (robbie williams) or 'Get A Job'(offspring). Songs like those die quickly, and you never want to here them again.

    But then again, you can listen to songs like 'Yesterday' (beatles) or 'I'll be Back'.

    I don't plan on replacing my records or CD's with mp3's, that's silly. Mp3's don't dent my CD purchases at all. Mp3 are fun to play for non-critical listing, but just don't compare in value to Records or Mp3s.

    And NO, I don't own tapes. Tapes are evil, records (Lp, Ep, 72s) and Compact Discs rule!
  • >Other than that, help me understand why everyone
    >within a few hundred feet should have to listen
    >to your car stereo, anyway.

    Squarepusher. And that's the only reason. The rest of that stuff... yeesh.

  • MP3? (Score:1)

    by Rozzin ( 9910 )
    My feelings, personally: screw MP3--I want a portable mod-player.
  • The only thing that DVD audio offers is a higher bits per sample rate. It will make a difference, but its significance will not warrant replacing current technologies. Lets say it samples at 88 kHz. Whoop dee doo, it can accurately reconstruct a signal up to 44 kHz (but a safe frequency would be 40 kHz). What good is 20 kHz you can't hear going to do?

    The sound quality upgrade (190+kHz/96 bits if I recall, compared to CD's 44kHz/16bits) will be noticeable, but only to people with good systems and who know what to listen for. But that is not what they are using to market DVD audio to the masses. The main selling points are 5 channel surround music and extra info on a DVD.
    A DVD can hold a lot more data than a CD, but people are not going to start recording 5 hour albums, just because of it. So the record companies are going to use the extra space to include things like interactive info and pictures about the artist, music videos, lyrics scrolling by as the song plays and other extra bits, just like they do with DVD movies now. They are assuming that most DVD players will be connected to a TV so they are going to use this to offer a more mulitmedia presentation.

    Trying to argue higher music quality with people who think MP3s are good is a waste of time and they realize this. Thus they are focusing on the "added value" they can bundle with DVD's.

  • Yes, you can spend your days complaining about the quality and formats of MP3/CD, but no sound quality is better than a live group of musicians playing right in front of you. No amount of technology will ever be able to change that.
  • I have to laugh a bit at some of this "binary data can't be art" stuff. By the same token, how can a bunch of molecules on a canvase be art? Art is about communicating a mood or feeling or an experience - true art tends to trancends the medium on which it is recorded.

    But I understand wanting something tangeble to hold. I also like the liner notes, cover art, etc. But the reason I like it is because I first became attached to the music contained within. The liners improve my experience of the music and my feeling of connection with the artists.

    I don't read liner notes while driving in the car. I do read them while relaxing at home or at a friend's. Surfing for liner notes is a reasonable substitute. Saving pictures and lyrics with the music is pretty easy. So in my opinion, as long as I can play the music where and when I want, the rest of the present day packaging can go.
  • Actually 74 min is a standard for CDR because they are not as accurate writing as the mastering plants, a CD can hold upwards of 80 mins of music.
  • Actually, the audible range of hearing goes all the way down to about 20 Hz. It is easy to hear frequencies this low, but it is very rare for a sound system to be able to produce these frequencies at the volumes that it can produce higher frequencies. It is quite an experience to hear frequencies this low when they are well represented... it's almost more like _feeling_ them.
  • well, that being the case, thank you.
  • DAVEO SMOKES CRAK!

    you many want to be accepted as having some sort of logical thought in your messages, however, you can compare your style of writing to the fact that if you walk into job interview wearing a burlap sack you're not gonna get a job

  • This is to both of you. I have Boston Acoustics 6000's on my computer...

    http://www.bostonacoustics.com/home/dt6000.html

    I'm also using the Gateway 36" monitor and have a 22GIG hard drive. My computer is my entertainment system. It has an ATI all in wonder pro card so I can watch TV with it and an FM tuner built in -- of course I can watch DVD's on it as well. I have more than 100 CD's and they are quickly becoming MP3's. It also runs Linux. What more could I ask for?
    -----------
    Resume [iren.net]
  • I don't understand the complaints about sound quality. Is there really much difference between 128 and 160kbps? Who cares?

    I've ripped many MP3s myself as low as 48kbps, and, yes, one can tell the difference between it and the orignial, but only if they are played back to back. 48 is more than listenable. I can hear every nuance of the music, and there is no added noise or anything else that detracts from my enjoyment. Isn't a tape as good as a CD?

    Maybe it's just me, but I want to HEAR the music.

    With MP3s encoded at 48, I can download more free music faster.

  • Oooohhh the poor guy who doesn't have a wall full of CD's, but instead could afford an 18Gb portable SCSI drive (not to mention his potencial backups in CD's, or tapes, or other drives) and who can carry his pitifully small collection to work (hey, can't he be a DJ carrying a selection of songs ripped from the pub's CDs, instead of changing a CD for every song? What the heck, even to his office!) or maybe he'd rather carry a wall of CDs all the way through his 'round US car trip.

    Come on, that is pure FUD... just look at it.. it even can fit into a tamplate.

    He starts by stating he doesn't like them, then immediatly says that they have CD quality (when it's in fact near CD Q.), and then he throws up a bunch of reasons not to like MP3 who seem to lie solely on the human desire to cause envy on others by showing how phisically huge his collection is.

    Another example of FUD is when he states that a lightning strike on your house could damage the 18Gb drive. PHU-LEASE! If a lightening stroke on my house (suppose I don't have an antenna to protect me) I would be worried about having it burnt from attic to cellar, carrying me with it into hell and oblivion.

    Get real...
  • I understand where he's coming from, but I don't see how he can deem it to be important that music have a physical basis or be "limited edition". Part of the wonder of MP3s is that the problems that come with the need for physical storage of music are no longer issues. This may make it, in some odd way, less "special", but we shouldn't forget that this is ultimately about _music_. I don't care what I listen to my favorite songs on, so long as it comes through loud and clear. I find the liberation of music from matter to be a positive thing. Before the advent of recording media, music was about performers and an audience. Then Edison and his cylinder appeared, and music suddenly became property. Why must music have a physical basis? It's only sound, after all.
  • I can't say I agree with much of what he says. His point about the ease with which an MP3 collection can be destroyed assumes that you're treating MP3s as you do physical items like CDs - when in fact you could/should be paying for the *right* to listen to the music, rather than the file itself.

    "With MP3s, rarity does not compute." Sure you can have limited edition MP3s - in fact, by lowering the cost of getting music out there you can have a lot more, in the form of live sessions, less "saleable" recordings etc.

    As for blurring the lines between art, music, and data... is music heard on the radio intrinsically different, or lacking in "artistic" value because of the transport mechanism used to get it to you?

    "People will forget how to make music the old fashioned way." Oh *please*. There's no reason why MP3 should change the way music is made - it's a distribution network.
  • I really enjoyed reading his article, and I agree with most of what he had to say. I do have one problem with the following paragraph:

    MP3s also blur the lines between music, information and data. I don't have any problem thinking of music as data, but it takes a lot of the art out of the concept.

    The fact that mp3 is a binary data does not mean that it is not an art.
    When I program I don't feel that I do ordinary work like a salesman or a bank teller. I feel that I create new things, and this is some sore of art.

    Moreover, there are some sorts of music that cannot live without mp3 (like Techno -- since it is computer generated music mp3 is the format most of the creators use, and then if they are successful they might distribute also on CDs) are those not considered art?

    Is creating binary images with The Gimp of Photoshop not considered art?

    That fact that binary data files are easily reproducible does not necessarily mean that the content is not considered art.


    Liran.

  • I am not a fan of MP3s as a way of replacing
    CDs, but I think that the focus of this article
    on how wonderful it is to be able to stare at
    your CD collection is a bit silly.

    The reasons I still like CDs over MP3s are
    simple. First, I like to listen to music without
    having to sit at my computer. Second, I usually
    listen to entire albums rather than just songs,
    so I don't need or want to deal with playlists.
    Third, and most important of all, my stereo is
    a better sound system than my computer.

    Obviously as more MP3 playing devices come
    on the market (and the price starts to come
    down) and as better sounding MP3-like standards
    come into existence my opinion on the matter
    will likely change, but given the way things
    currently stand I'd never even consider switching
    over to MP3s as my primary music format.

    Having said that, I do love them as a way of
    supplementing CDs and as a really great way for
    artists who aren't on major labels to get their
    music heard. Frankly the fact that the author
    sort of seemed to sneer at independent artists
    by referring to them with terms like "bush
    league" would have left me disliking the article
    no matter what else he had to say. The fact that
    the "bush league" artists stand to gain so much
    from MP3s are the reason I cheer every time the
    RIAA fails to restrict the format, even though I
    personally don't have a hard drive full of them.



  • Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:

    Ahh, but you see Mike, the DVD collection would only signify music. In Saussurean terms, the sign is missing, at least until either (a) Roland Barthes learns to watch when he cross the street, or (b) a DVD driver becomes a reality for Linux.

    -----------------------------
    Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
  • I didn't understand that the acceptance of the MP3 format would end the distribution of other formats. I thought that MP3's were better suited for some situations, and CD's for others. I didn't know I wasn't allowed to have both. I suppose that having a hard disk full of MP3's and a few racks of CD's is a disaster waiting to happen.

  • The Joy of Collecting MP3: A Rebuttal (Score:4)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Sunday June 20, 1999 @07:24AM (#1842182)
    I'll accept the author's argument if one's goal in collecting is to have a large mass of "original stuff" to brag about to fellow collectors. If one's goal in music collecting is simply to have a large collection of "stuff to listen to", however, I believe MP3 to be the superior option.

    Caveat: My comments only apply to those whose musical tastes are relatively MP3-encoding-friendly, and for those who don't consider themselves audiophiles; that is, those for whom 128k is adequate for their needs, and to whom 160k is indistinguisable from the original. I believe my comments would also extend to most MP3-"unfriendly" music with a sufficiently high bit rate - try VBR, 160, or higher, until your ears don't notice.

    The author writes that "there's something about looking at a big mass of music". I get the same feeling when I look at a hard drive full of MP3s - it's just as big a "mass" of music, just in a different form.

    Ane yes, you can have the same feeling of "hunting down" MP3s as with other media. I find it odd that the author writes that one can build up a huge library "with a T1 and a healthy dose of spare time" (emphasis added), and then goes on to say in the next paragraph says that only collection of physical media offers the feeling of reward that comes with finding a long-sought item. If the "item" is the experience of being able to listen to the song at any time you like, it's not just a matter of downloading it. Someone else has to have it, rip it, encode it, and post it to USENET or an FTP/WWW site. If an FTP/WWW site, you've gotta find it, and then you've gotta get through to it to make the download. If USENET, you've gotta be reading the appropriate group at the right time, all the pieces have to propagate from the poster's server to yours, or you've gotta hope/pray/beg for a repost. In either case, music that's "rare" on physical media can often be every bi n MP3.

    The author's snort of derision ("Oh, how impressive") at the notion of an 18G hard drive of MP3s strikes me as bizarre. I think what we have here is a culture clash. I'm a geek. I think small is cool, and the thought of having 18G of MP3-based music in the palm of one's hands as immensely attractive. Does the author snort just as derisively at a CD of music when the bulkier 78RPM vinyl format could have been used? (A hint - we call them "albums" because a collection of songs from a single artist in the days of "78s" was a hefty book of discs. Each "track" was roughly the mass of a 12" vinyl recording. I snort in derision at the notion of a CD as a tangible item :-)

    How many of us have looked at our hard drives and remembered when floppies were king, pondering the question "how many rooms full of floppies are on that drive?", and marvelling at the answer? I think of it the same way - how many shelves of CDs can I fit in the palm of my hand?

    As for permanence, I think the /. crowd needs little reminding that backing up an 18G hard drive (or transferring it to some other storage media when "hard drive" technology is replaced by something else) is far simpler than backing up a wall full of vinyl or CD. A safety deposit box in a bank costs as little as $20/year. A spare 18G hard drive, a little over $250 and falling. If you've got 18G of data, a monthly trip to the bank for offsite backup is the least of your worries.

    Lastly, getting back to the notion of collecting as a hobby that requires effort - how long does it take to download 18G of data? And given the impermanence of FTP/web sites and USENET binary postings, how long would it take one to replace every track on those 18G worth of MP3s? About as long as it took to find the MP3s in the first place, assuming a random probability of any specific MP3 showing up in any given place. I dunno about you, but at the rate I've been accumulating MP3s, our author's hypothetical 18G collection would represent several years of work.

    To recap - yes, if you're interested in "original" material and the ability to say that you have one of the 500 pressings of Foo's limited edition single, maybe an MP3 collection isn't for you. But if it's the music, not the packaging, that you collect, collecting MP3s can be a hobby that's every bit as rewarding as collecting physical media.

  • He said "I've written software to allow me to convert my CD collection into MP3 format" before that comment, so I assume that means that he's got 64 albums he owns on his computer at work. I personally have 30 or so here and it's nice to be able to put a playlist on and not have to hear the same song twice all day or switch CD's. In fact I don't hear the same song more than twice all week usually. Compared with the hassle of switching CD's a dozen times a day or listening to the same old crap over and over on the radio mp3's are nice. They're not perfect, but when I'm working it's little more than some nice background noise. (and I am definitely confident that my boss would never read slashdot :-) )
  • What good is 20 kHz you can't hear going to do?

    Quite a lot, actually.

    Music (and musical instruments) are not undifferentiated collections of mere frequency.

    The frequencies we don't hear have a profound effect on the frequencies we do hear. A clarinet playing C#5 and a bassoon playing C#5 sound different, even though they are playing the same note.

    A lot of the dynamics of the character of an instrument are expressed in the additional frequencies that are imposed on the base frequency by the physical nature of that instrument, and some of these additional frequencies are themselves beyond the range of human hearing.

    Granted that some of these artifacts are digitized as part of the original sample, all you have to do to hear the difference is to record an audio input at an 11kHz sample rate vs 22 or 44 kHz. The difference in sound quality between the three is obvious.

    Past a certain point, the limitations on the playback equipment will swamp out digitizing differences, but the sound then is limited only by the playback equipment, not by the frequency limitations AND the playback equipment.



  • I guess if you are more interested in looking at and thinking about your music collection rather than actually LISTENING to it CD's win out. Myself I'd rather que up a playlist and do something constructive with my time, besides splitting fingernails trying to open jewel boxes.

  • He did get lost in his feelings (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    All I want out of MP3 is to record my tapes and LPs onto my hard drive, squunch them into MP3 format, and burn them onto a CD, 100 at a time, so that I can play them in my car. Anybody with a How-To?

    The sound quality of MP3 is only fair, just like that of CDs and tapes, so who cares about physical media anyway? Only LPs have the proper dynamic range and low and high end response for demanding music (opera, Judy Garland). Yes, I know about those clicks and pops.

    Foreign Aid: The system by which poor people in rich countries give their money to rich people in poor countries.

  • Posted by Australian Convict Scum:

    The guy who posted the original "essay" was right. .MP3 is fantastic (and should be encouraged) for those rarities, bootlegs, demos, b-sides etc. I was once (partially) involved in the "Lost Wisdom" project (formerly www.lostwisdom.net, alas, no longer), which warehoused all the rare death/black/heavy metal material we could muster. Even albums which have long been out of print.

    No copyrights were being infringed, bands were getting that rare material circulated for free (they wouldn't make money from that material anyway, unless it was re-released, in which case, it wouldn't be considered "rare" anyway.) and it circumvented nasty bootleggers who would charge us$30.00 for something we were offering for free.

    ...and don't get me started on how cool .mp3 is for promotion of unsigned/demo bands.

  • I don't have any problem thinking of music as data, but it takes a lot of the art out of the concept. I think there's a fundamental difference between a creative work, be it a song or a drawing or a story, and an Excel spreadsheet.

    Seems to me like this is what's happened as vinyl has disappeared and cd's became dominant - digital format, no?
    Still, I kind of admire his love of stacks of records - I love it when I go to someone's house and they have shelves of vinyl and are actually listening to it. Record collections take up _space_ and become a part of your surrounding. But for someone who spends lots of time on the computer, that partition of mp3's can have the same meaning.
    As to who's collection would survive a lightning strike, 2 things: a) tape backups , b) melting wax.
  • Try not to be too harsh. Years back I bought a Lear Siegler ADM3A dumb terminal (the predecessor of the iMac) at a surplus store, to use as the terminal on my Altos CP/M box (it had no keyboard or screen, just a RS-232 console port.) I discovered it was permanently modified to be all-caps-only. I disassembled it to find a wire had been soldered over the caps-lock keyswitch, making it permanently upper-case.

    Maybe this fellow can't find his soldering iron.
  • Ok, I can understand that people would want some visual art with their music, but visual art could be distributed with MP3s too. Maybe some artists could even sell advertising by embeding HTML and related files in MP3 headers if the players would show the stuff. Regardless, a phyisical media is not the answer because it constrains the lissener too much. Why should I be forced to lissen to music in the order someone else prescribes or even in the random order prescribed by a large CD changer. Hell, I think playlists are even too constraining. I have writen a simple perl-GTK front end to mpg123 which uses a simple AI and attempts to learn the users moods (check it out here [gtf.org]). It also allows you to cancel songs before you hear them which keeps the user from waisting lots of time lissening to the beginnings of songs they dont want to hear (unlike more random play options). Note: since the palyer is in perl it is easy to modify the AI with your own rules that consider things like artist or song name similarity. The point is that we to have the needed flexibility in players we need the player front end to be implemented in software and to be easy to modify. I never lissen to CDs not because they waist too much time.. my player is writen specifically to save me time.. that is the beauty of software. Jeff
  • Collectors have always been interested in the ephemera of their subject; a stamp collector, for instance, is often much more interested in a stamp if it has a unique history (saved from the Titanic or something). Even with ordinary CDs, it is possible (and fairly easy) to make an exact duplicate, byte for byte, of the original. What he as a collector thus is interested in is the package; the original artwork on the CD, the booklet that accompanies the CD, and most of all, that it is an 'official' CD. A perfect CD copy would not interest him, for the same reason mp3 doesn't.

    Thing is, he would probably change his mind if record companies would start putting out 'official' CD collections of mp3 songs just as they are doing now, complete with covers, 'limited edition' nonsense (that made some sense with vinyl, but not with CDs) and so on. The difference between mp3 and the CD format is only one of data structure, after all.

  • You've just taken the wind out of the sails of everyone proposing that just because music can be digitally encoded, it is therefore "information," and should be free.

    I don't see your point.
    The fact that music can be digitally encoded does not mean that it is information. On the other hand, a lot of the OpenSource products you use may be considered art and those are free too.

    It might be the time that music artist, like computer professionals, started giving something back to the community. Music can be either information, art or both, but that does not mean that we have to pay a lot for it!

    Liran.
  • I've got a friend who might agree with this guy... he collects vinyl and dats and whatever else he can get his hands on... matter of fact, he has my record player. :) But he also uses mp3's, I assume because they're convient for him. But it proves you can have it both ways, imho.

  • "Fondling and Fetish Potential" (Score:3)

    by nigiri ( 22248 ) on Sunday June 20, 1999 @03:52AM (#1842198) Journal
    Frank Zappa used to say that "fondling and fetish potential" were an important part of the experience of owning an album.
  • "Traditional Music Storage" would be ink on paper. If it's good ink, on high rag content paper, or parchment, it can and does last a long time. It also appreciates significantly in value, as any owner of a Bach manuscript knows.
  • I understand where the writer is coming from in many ways. However, there are A LOT of times that I would gladly have bought a single vs. the entire album. Most artists have one or two tracks that I am actually interested in - with some notable exceptions. Still, after you get the CD you have this large piece of plastic and aluminum media with a jewel case and a 4-6 page insert. If you are lucky to find an artist that has disdain for jewel cases thats a rarity. I like the comment about this technology being for the "bushes". I also know that markets haven't emerged just yet for when media is transferred to a new supreme format. I mean how much cool collectible visual information can you put on the cover to a MiniDisc? How about if music starts being sent out on smart media cards? Maybe that is the time when large throw away lcd panels that are the size of a poster come into vogue. You put in the media and it will tell your poster what to show off. Just a thought. I also don't think that MP3 will be the end all be all of formats *cough 8 tracks* but it will last through the time of cheap disk space and plentiful bandwidth for some. Basically, it is rare to find what you want when you want unless you have a small out of the way record store (why do they still can them this when they rarely have records i.e. wax?). Sometimes you can get lucky and they have the promo stuff with the song you actually care about. Most often though there are the music walmarts and the mega mega music wholesale places inside malls. At least with new technology you get some input into the purchasing. So, the writer has some points but those points don't apply to the way I think about music distribution. Record companies might set up those central servers but that isn't happening right now but MP3's for those of us here in the "bushes" are happening right now. When I can dial in the local college radio station and hear an entire nights show composed of mp3's of artists I would never have heard of in a mega mall record store I think this MP3 phenom is doing just fine without critical acclaim. :)

    "You cannot uncook Mushoo pork once is has been cooked" -- wiseman
  • First Edition collectors buy a reading copy and a collector's copy.

  • KILLRAVEN ROTE: > Here it seems that we disagree on the meaning of listen. NO RAVEN UBUT DAVEO THINKS WE DON"T. MAYBE YOU LIKE LIKSTENING TO SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH DIFFERENT FORMATS BUT WE BOTH NO WHAT LISTENING MEANS. >No matter how you argue, you will never get away from the fact that MP3's are of lousy quality. They have little dynamic range and lack true stereo. Their only feature is they are convenient if you have a computer handy and sound quality is irrelevant. THAT'S A GOOD POINT, HOWEVER DAVEO USUALY DOOESN'T NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE THAT MUCH. DAVEO THINKS THAT THE TRADEOFF BETWEEN HAVING BAD QUALITY AND GETTING FREE LARGE AMOUNT OF CONVENIENT MUSIC IS WELL WORHT THE PRICE
  • Factory Records (the sadly defunct home of such luminaries as New Order and Joy Division), made some interesting comments on
    Digital Audio Tape that relect my thinking on MP3's.

    They stated that ignoring DAT as a format, which many record companies wanted to do, was a daft idea. Mainstream record
    companies were worried about promoting the format, as they saw the proliferation of DAT recorders as a threat to CD's. Fears of a
    piracy boom, as people made CD quality copies on DAT, lead to a dubious copy protection system being used on many DAT
    machines.

    Ultimately DAT was only ever really used as a cheap mastering format, and never made it into the home.

    However Factory Records attitude towards DAT as a commercial format is instructive. They argued that when most people bought
    records, tapes, etc. they were buying an 'artifact' not just the music contained on the storage media. To counter the desire to pirate
    the original media Factory declared their intent to package their products to enhance the status of the artifact. They had been doing
    this anyway, with packaging like the Blue Monday record sleeve - a die cut imitation of a floppy disk.

    If the music industry sees the MP3 format as a threat to sales, then they shouldn't try to end it's existence, but encompass it within
    their marketing. Working with equipment manufacturers they could produce alternative distribution formats, that enhance the choice of
    waht the consumers buy. No more buying a CD album just for two great tracks and ten filler ones - the buyer could mix and match
    tracks from artists on the label, and pay for some form of digital media ...

    An idea anyway.

    Chris Wareham

  • Oh yeah? I don't know a gentle way to break this to you, but...

    Standard DVD is copy-protected too. It seems to be doing ok. Granted, it's copy-protected will become irrelevant the moment that someone figures out the scramble algorithm and posts a decoder to comp.sources...

  • The idea behind an MP3 is that the human brain is too feeble/slow to hear all of the music. An MP3 takes a good 80-90% of the sound that is present in the actual recording and throws it away. The human brain doesn't notice though because we can only concentrate on so much of the music at once.

    A lot of the research that went into the compression involved in MP3s was basically seeing how much could be taken away before you started to notice. The MP3 encoder then samples the "important" part of the song at a variable rate.

    For instance, a high quality mp3 (not the ones you listen to when you're listening to samples on artist webpages or online CD stores) takes more samples of the important part of the music. The crappy quality ones take fewer samples.

    Listen to an MP3 with lots of cymbal crashes on some really good speakers. Not on computer really good speakers, something like studio monitors... you'll be able to tell right away that something is very wrong with the cymbals. Then everything starts to sound really flat, and pretty soon it starts to drive you crazy, and you have to go find the CD that you copied it from and listen to it, just to make sure that you're not going completely out of your mind.

    VFQ and AAC (AAC is the Sony MiniDisc format, VFQ is something that Yamaha dreamed up) both try to fix some of the problems with MP3s. AAC sounds the best to me, but some people swear by VQF. I suppose MP4s or whatever the hell they'll be called will fix some problems too.

    I'm also sure that at some point people are just going to accept that the music doesn't sound as good as it could, and that, for convenience's sake, we can all just live with it. Our stereos will be connected to the cable in our house, and we'll be able to download the song that's been stuck in our head for $.99... By then I hope to have destroyed my hearing enough not to care, but there will always be a gnawing feeling in the back of my mind that I'm missing something.

  • okay Daveo, I'm sure you are all "kewl" and stuff now.

    But the third-person references and all-caps style is very childish.

    Sadly, I agree (sort of) with what you said, but cant really support you because I refuse to fully read any of your messages.

    please. i feel sorry if you go through your life refering to yourself in the third person as you yell at everyone around you.

    - Glothar : a (semi) normal person.
  • > You've got 64 albums online at your place of
    > employment? Don't you worry about getting fired
    > for trafficing in illegal stuff using company
    > resources?

    No I don't. I have MP3 versions of 64 albums that I *own* on CD. This is a right I have as a music consumer (although the RIAA would *love* to take it away from me if they could).

    --
  • >(b) a DVD driver becomes a reality for Linux.

    I'm not 100% sure, but as I understood it you can use DVDRoms as filesystems under Linux now -- it's just the special video storage modes we don't have drivers for.

    Of course, there is still the issue that DVD burners are quite expensive still (although I expect they will go down in price). I just need access to one for a day or so to burn my music collection to a disc, though...

    --

  • By then I hope to have destroyed my hearing enough not to care, but there will always be a gnawing feeling in the back of my mind that I'm missing something.

    I know it happens all the time, but why would anyone want to knowingly destroy their hearing?
  • Mp3's don't dent my CD purchases at all.

    Quite the opposite, in fact...

    I've found (illegal copies of) mp3's of bands that I would normally have never heard of. And after listening to the album a couple of times sitting behind the computer, I bought it on cd.

    So mp3's have in fact increased my cd purchases.

    Mp3's are great to sample the music, especially if your taste in music is something non-popular, which means you can never find it in cd stores.

    I have to admit there's a bit of a grey area with albums that I keep around on mp3 to listen to once in a while but that I don't buy on cd because I don't consider them 'worthy enough' or because I want to spend my cash on better cd's. But still, mp3's have increased my cd purchases.

  • If he don't want mp3's that's fine with me. Just leaves more for the rest of us!

    ... hey wait a second!

    PS: Why does he believe that *any* tax break is undeserved?
  • CD changes are mechanical. They're slow, and have many moving parts that can go wrong. You don't have this problem when playing MP3's, generally.

    I've _never_ had a problem with my CD changer. What's more, if you don't play back to back CD's on the same changer, you won't notice a break between CD's while the changers switch discs. Yes, it's quite easy to queue up enough music to last a week, and easy to play random tracks when I'm in the mood.

    Also, there's this very obvious, yet apparently new concept of RUNNING A CABLE TO YOUR REAL STEREO SO YOU CAN LISTEN TO YOUR MP3'S AT HIGH QUALITY! Why is this so incredibly difficult? I feel sorry for anyone who DOES put up with crappy computer speakers! Just run a cable! $6, Radio Shack. (Or more if you're one of those monster cable freaks)

    I have this setup, sometimes it's very nice for playing games in surround sound. However, the signal quality from the combination MP3 encoding + sound card on my computer is absolute shit compared to the crystal clear signal from my CD players piped through my very nice digital mixer, then amp, ... There's no comparison!!!
  • He sounds like those phonies who stack their bookshelves just to
    have a library they'll never even start reading. If art is what he cares
    about, then form factor is irrelevant.
    He brings up an interesting point though: digital property has no
    collection value, due to ease of reproduction. Does anyone know of
    a way to make digital property collectible?
  • It's the same thing with hardcover book fans. I buy hardcover books only when I want the book *now* and don't want to wait for the paperback edition -- it's the *words* that I want, not the physical medium. But some people seem to get enjoyment out of the pure ownership of a hardcover book. And then there's the first-edition collectors who never even *read* the books...

  • As far as traditional storage, there's analog audio tape, and this has to be handled with great care in order to maintain its quality. Variations in humidity and temperature, as well as accidental exposure to magnetic fields, etc. can have a significant impact on the quality of a tape.

    Vinyl has its drawbacks as well - each play introduces wear and tear on the record surface, and over time, diminishes the quality of the recording. The maintenance is higher, and warpage, if severe enough, will destroy its usefulness completely.

    I think the CD is the clear winner, at least for now.
  • > Everything in my 8gb collection is listened to

    Mine is the same way. I've got it set up so that I can tell it to play up-beat blues tunes, or slow soul songs. My most common thing to do is just to have it play random songs or random albums, though.

    I have a large music collection, and having it stored as MP3s gives me a greater level of access to it. Sure, the quality isn't quite as good, but that isn't always my top priority (although it sometimes is).

    BTW, if people are interested in improving the quality of MP3s, they might want to consider helping out with a freely distributable encoder that is rapidly increasing in both speed and quality.



    --
  • AND DO YOU ALSO LIKE TO BE REDUNDANT, TOO? LIKE DAVEO SAID HE WILL KNOT CRITICIZE AND MAKE FUN OF OTHER PEOPLE FOR THEIR MISTAKES IF THEY DO KNOT MAKE FUN OF HIM, HE ONLY WON'TS TO TAKE PART IN MEANINGFULL DISGUSSIONS.
  • You've just taken the wind out of the sails of everyone proposing that just because music can be digitally encoded, it is therefore "information," and should be free.
  • off topic, so feel free to moderate me down :)

    Right on about HFS. It's pratically another variety station nowadays. Some music they play I like, but it's surronded by mainstream stuff that can be found on 'dance' stations. When I discovered mp3s 2 years ago, it was a welcomed relief from the played out songs of HFS. Even the HFStival sucked this year, at a way to crowded purple stadium. Ick
  • When i produced a band back in the 80's, we did
    some vinyl and a cd. In all cases, it was the
    COVER ART that cost as much as everything else about the work put together.

    Some of my favorite artwork is from record covers.
    The importance of cover art is dimished as the
    CD shrunk it, and elimated altogether with the
    media revolution that is taking place.

  • Perhaps this is a matter of personal taste in music, but I'm the complete opposite. There are very few songs that I'd really want to listen to more than 10-15 times each. However, there are quite a few albums that have many good songs on them, and I wouldn't mind listening to the whole album 25+ times. Plus, many albums have a coherent theme or progression throughout the album that you miss by just downloading one song. For example, "The Downward Spiral" by Nine Inch Nails has some individually good songs, but you miss nearly half the purpose of the album if you just listen to a few songs individually, rather than in order as part of the downward spiral.
  • I agree with this essay pretty much. I personally download mp3s to hear new artists that I haven't heard before. If i like them, I download a few more mp3s. If i still really like the artist, I don't download any more mp3s, and buy the CD instead. I make a point of *not* downloading the mp3s, so as not to ruin the CD when I purchase it (there's much less fun in purchasing a CD that you've already heard in its entirety). However, since I can't buy every CD I like, I do download entire CDs in mp3 formats from artists who are good, but not so good that I'd want the CD.

    As for why I want the actual CD, there are several reasons. One is that portable mp3s players pretty much suck and are limited in capacity, while portable CD players work quite nicely. Another is the nifty booklet that comes with the CDs, often with artwork, lyrics, commentary/interviews, or other stuff that is interesting. Then there's the "show my friends what type of music I listen to" factor. I carry around my CDs in a portable CD carrying case (minus the jewel boxes), and that's what I show people when they ask what I listen to. I don't carry around a printout of my mp3s.

    As for why I don't download music onto CD-Rs, you don't get the booklet with the CD-Rs, and CD-Rs suck in quality compared to real CDs (especially in portable CD players - they skip a lot more).
  • Remember a format called CD+G ? Sounds just like this DVD-Audio crap. It never took off, just like I predict the DVD-audio will not take off. No one wants to watch lyrics, pictures of the artists and other extra bits while they listen to the music. Once maybe, as it still is new enough to have the "cool" factor. But truth is, music is the background to our lives. It is not the focus. I almost NEVER just sit and listen to music. I almost always have music on. I listen to music while I drive, while I read, while I compute. I go to concerts to see a show, not to listen to the music. Music is a very important part of my life, I listen to it constantly. But I do not sit and focus on the music to the exclusion of other things. I use it to set the tone of my other activities. By attempting to turn a musical collection into a multimedia mess, the powers that be are missing the point of music. CD+G failed, and I predict the same fate for DVD-Audio. Music videos on a disc will succeed in the same niche as Music Videos on VHS, but no one would buy a VHS tape filled with lyrics and artist bios displayed on the screen while the music is playing, so why would they purchase it on some other format?
  • My stereo....it goes from 5Hz to 30KHz, and...*GASP!!!* I play mp3's on it!! (OH NO! SINNER! HERETIC!!) sure, it cost $1200 and took a week's work on my car...but it's worth it...I burn mp3's to CD format, and place them in my car's head unit, and get quite a bit of nice sound out of it(enough to have people inside buildings complain...and YES, they can hear the vocals inside, not just the booming ghetto thud that a pair of well-wired 10's can produce for blocks) the 1" titanium tweets take care of all those highs, the 5's, 6's and 6x9's handle the mids just fine(oh no! had to invest in an EQ and a crossover! but it's worth it, people...it truly is). I can listen to aqua, prodigy, mystikal, busta, CPD, squarepusher, chuck berry, elvis, talk radio, cyndi lauper(okay, well, my brother actually uses my car sometimes, and I think that's what he likes), Blink 182, green day, coolio, marky mark, snoop dogg, and even books on tape(well, after making them books on CD) without even readjusting my system...the only adjustment I make is +/- the volume...

    please, please, PLEASE debate me...

    also, don't argue with me if you don't have any experience or know what you're talking about...thanks

    Dan!

    It's alright, to tell me, what you think, about me, I won't try to argue, or hold it, against you.
  • I think a lot of music-lovers would disagree with you. (Why buy a nice stereo system? You can buy a cheap tape player for $20....)

    --


  • At least mp3's don't have broken or "Cracked" jewel cases.

    As far as "CD Quality Sound" that is a crock.
    However, as I can stream mp3's, I like them quite a bit. ( gotta love that corporate connection ).


    Ken

  • I seem to have messed up the URL in the message above. For the page on the LAME encoder, go to this page [roadrunner.com].

    Before we get into legal arguments, I should mention that this encoder is distributed as a patch on the ISO encoder distribution [uni-hannover.de] and, as such, does not violate any patents. Compilation of this code in a country that allows software patents is at your own risk, however.

    --


  • Hm, not to flame this guy, he has his points but I can't stop poking holes in them. More than anything I'm a little ticked by the MP3 rarity.

    Oh - I have this ultra rare live track by artist B, and you don't. haha, poor you.

    I get pissed when people act like this. I'm a music lover, I don't care if its vinyl (though I DO prefer my 7's and 12's), CD, or MP3: music is music. I want to hear the music, I want to crank it loud. Rare tracks aren't rare anymore - so who really cares? Its not a collection game, its about getting the music you want to hear and enjoying it.

    Sure I was thrilled to find a copy of DJ Cam's debut LP, or Orb's UFOrb on Vinyl, or a college only promo of Radiohead tracks, but life is more than collecting music. I love music, and I live in NC, definitely not the greatest place to live if you want to collect music. I'm still looking for this ultra rare bootleg of early Verve on Vinyl, or Ride's mega rare Kaleidoscope EP. And I don't want them because they are rare - I want them because I want to hear them and enjoy them.

    So forget being so greedy about physical music. I don't care if its vinyl, cd, mp3, or tape - music is music and I just want to enjoy it. i guess i'm not a collector, I just love listening to music.

    In the mean time, I have to move - but only 6 crates of vinyl. I'm sure I'll be at 18 some day.

  • Truth: MP3 isn't the perfect compression.

    Its compression, you do lose signal quality. But for the most part, this degradation is hardly noticable. On Jazz and Classical, yes you can hear the difference. Thus for all practical purposes - MP3 audio is CD quality. Lets not forget that MP3 IS a very old algorithm.

    False: DVD audio is a huge leap in audio quality

    This is complete rubbish. The only thing that DVD audio offers is a higher bits per sample rate. It will make a difference, but its significance will not warrant replacing current technologies. Lets say it samples at 88 kHz. Whoop dee doo, it can accurately reconstruct a signal up to 44 kHz (but a safe frequency would be 40 kHz). What good is 20 kHz you can't hear going to do?

    If you want pure signal with no distortion, buy a tube cd player - you'll hear the difference and wondered how you ever lived without it.

    s!mon
  • If I really like an artist, I'm going to buy that person's merchandise no matter whether or not I can get the same stuff for free online.
    i.e. I own the 15 anniversary edition of the Star Wars Trilogy. But I still want the original release copies of the videos. And the Special Edition. And...
    I still bought 'Sesame Street Fever' on 8-trck, though I don't have an 8-track player. It was for sentimental reasons *ahem*.
    I never buy an album because I like one song by the artist... it's a waste. Instead, I copy it off one of my not-so-restrained friends. This is where Mp3s come in handy for me; the record companies aren't getting my money anyway. I know this is small consolation for them, but what might make them feel better is that I'll buy anything REM puts out, even if it's a c.d. entirely of highway traffic noise. Because I'm a fan, and that's what I do.
  • Under very specific circumstances. My example is this:

    A new band goes to record their first record in the local "good" studio for 100 bucks an hour. Because of money and time constraints ( a third of your time, for example, should be spent just tuning and getting drums to sound good ) they record hastily and get mediocre basic tracks.

    They then attempt to "fix" during the mixdown proccess. Thats when the newbees see the signal proccessing gear. EQ, Digital Delay/Reverb etc. There is a tendancy among first timers to annoyingly over use these products leading to the "Stadium drum effect" and the "vocals from afar" i.e. buried in poorly chosen delay and reverb.

    Then, even worse, when it still sounds like shit they even add more during the mastering proccess.

    Here is the kicker:

    When you take one of these over proccessed tunes and convert it to mp3 almost all of that reverb, echo gets lost during the compression and IT CAN ACTUALLY SOUND BETTER!

    Ken
  • Definitely not on the same level as MEEPT! by any means.

    --

  • Hell, why not put audio tracks and mp3s on the same disk and sell it?

    no doubt, it's not like the record companies actually fill up the media to ~74 min. you're lucky to get an hour.
  • > I personally prefer to obtain unencoded audio on CD

    I think mp3.com have hit on a pretty ideal compromise. They sell CDs (I think they call them DAM CDs) with the original CD tracks as well as the MP3-compressed versions. This way you can put the CD in your CD-player and get the raw audio, but you can put the CD into your computer and grab the MP3s without having to rip/encode them yourself. As long as you only use 9/10 of the CD capacity (which is the case for most albums) there is room for the MP3s.

    Try convincing the RIAA that all CDs should be released this way, though...

    --
  • [[[but if lightning strikes both of our homes, which of us is more likely to lose his entire music collection?]]]

    Well, actually, you will. If lightning were to strike your house, there's a good chance it'd catch fire and you'd not have your 18 crates of low-melting-point vinyl out of there before the local fire department pulled you out kicking and screaming.

    On the other hand, my music collection fits on two DLTs, and are backed up weekly. A copy of that backup is sent offsite (to a friend's house in a different state) every two weeks. If lightning or tornado or anything else strikes, I might lose one or two albums ripped in the last week or so, but that's it.



    --
  • Neat! It's MikeO! I discovered DigitalDJ yesterday . Very nice stuff, especially since I don't know anything about SQL. Could use the ability to delete songs from the database, though :) Oh well, what do I expect from a 0.4 version piece of software.
  • EXCUSE DAVEO; YOU ARE KNOT ON THE SAME LEVEL AS PEEMT! EITTHER. DAVEO DOES NOT WAN'T TO BE LIKE ANY WON ELSE, HE HAS HIM SELF TO BEE LIKE AND DOES'NT KNEED TO BE LIKE MEEPT!! PELASE LET DAVEO GOH ON HIS MERRY WAY AND TALK WITH ALL THE NICE PEPOLP ON THIS CHAT ROOM WITHOUT DISTRUBANCES.
  • a friend of mine had his collection bite the dust due to a hd phenomenom known as bitdrift. 5 gig about. i am currently not having this problem, being the owner of a cd burner, and an old 386-33dx box that has 3 NEC 4cd-6x changers. that's hmm.. 4 cds * 650MB * 3 drives = 7800 mb of online music per shot. figure about an hour per album @ 128Kb/44KHz is 100mb, sometimes less, thats 78 albums at once. now this is a shit load chaper than one of those 200 CD changers you can buy. 128K sounds bad only when burnt to cd, probably b/c of the 128 to 160 conversion. as for playing to a large stereo, its probably your shitty ass soundcard.
  • And most of the kiddies who are posting mp3's are hot stuff listen to the Spice Girls. 'Nuff said about their taste in music.

  • Hmmm...I guess I know *how* people destroy their hearing, but I'm still not sure WHY they do it. As for me personally, I understand the allure of rock concerts, but I've chosen *not* to attend many of them for this very reason. I never saw the logic behind paying a bunch of rock bands (or ska or whatever) to damage my hearing for me.

  • Well, I do know this...you can put all the money you want into a good stereo system, but at some point, the sheer volume of the sound causes the inner ear to generate its own harmonics, thereby making it sound WORSE.

    Other than that, help me understand why everyone within a few hundred feet should have to listen to your car stereo, anyway.
  • Actually, the audible range of hearing goes all the way down to about 20 Hz

    *Smack* I knew that... middle C lies somewhere right around 530Hz.

    Down below 20Hz it starts to become low enough to feel it, but not hear it. I believe the Army has used very low sounds as weapons before... it forces people to lose control of their bowels at a certain frequencies if I remember right. :)

  • That's why responsible people wear earplugs when going to concerts. :P

    I do, my ears still ring afterwards. Anyone who has lived in Portland Oregon and has/had been to La Luna (R.I.P.) knows how loud some of the promoters here like to turn the speakers up to.

    Concerts and clubs aren't the only place where your hearing has a good chance of getting messed up though... any loud movie in a THX theater will do (theater owners here seem to think that THX, SDDS, etc. mean 'turn up the volume'). Not to mention construction sites, drag races, monster truck rallies, noisy streets, headphones on a Walkman (try turning the sound limiter on on a modern Walkman and think about how much louder you usually listen to it...)

    My point was this:

    Our hearing gets fucked. To hear the sound difference in MP3s you have to have pretty good ears, pretty good speakers, and know what you're listening for... by the time they perfect the lossy compression, or at least improve it, the difference won't be noticable to most people.

  • That's strange, I have a few burn cd's and when I listen to them on my Discman on busses etc they rarely skip, no noticible change from the original CD's.
  • Limited edition, in this sense, means something that has a relatively small amount of copies. Say, a CD with only 100,000 copies all told. That's limited edition. Not something that is otherwise hard to get, such as a sound check or unpublished recording session. Once you transfer an audio track to MP3 and put it on the internet, there's no way it's ever going to be limited. It's easy enough to click 'file copy'.

    As for making music the 'old fashioned way', I don't think he meant the actual creation of the music itself, but the phenomenon of music getting to the audience. The act of going to a music store and buying the CD, LP , or cassette is part and parcel of the entire chain of 'making music', which all starts with a person's conceptual idea to his/her voice be heard. I can't say for sure that MP3's will destroy this ubiquitous 'making music', but there is a definite difference to buying a CD at a record store and downloading it off someone's site.
  • message. Use the word "I". It's a very important word. We're all a bunch of no good censorship haters here, and anything that looks like some sort of collectivist leanings or tendencies or behaviour scares us.

    Note: collectivist means collectivist as in group-ist or lynch mob-ist or mindless zombie-ist not cooperative.
  • oh I remember now; CDDA has no error correction but CDR does, isn't that right?
  • with all this debate on mp3 quality, maybe it's time for a poll to find out what type of speakers we are using to listen to our music. this is just a suggestion:

    most of the time i listen to music on:

    a) cheap, nasty headphones
    b) crappy computer speakers designed for gaming
    c) small portable lo-fi stereo
    d) home hi-fi
    e) expensive audiophile gear
    f) professional studio monitors
    g) drugs
  • Music, in my opinion, is ear candy. It's something that you like to listen to. This guy is talking about furniture, not music.

    I don't really care how rare the music I'm listening to is. If I like it, I'm going to listen to it. If I don't like it, I'm not going to listen to it, even if the CD is the only one that exists in the world. I'm just going to sell the CD to someone like the author of this article.

    ---
  • Music is my hobby and I take my hobbies seriously. As such, when I heard about .mp2 I was interested and when I heard about .mp3, even more so. But so far they've all failed in some way or another, no matter what bitrate you choose.

    Why mp3 is good:
    free stuff -- sometimes legally, mostly not
    convenience -- It took me about 15 minutes to track down mp3's of the Moxy Fruvous indie tape. It took me several months to find the original tape those came off of, and when I did, it was an expensive, used tape, not an unsealed nor the super-rare cd.
    space-savings -- It's true, if I put my 500 cd collection to mp3, it would fit nicely on a couple large hard drives.

    why cd is better than mp3:
    jewel boxes -- I like to see and feel the artwork, to read the original lyric sheets and actually hold the original case in my hands. Some CDs offer nothing in this manner, but some cd's have carefully chosen artwork, and even paper stock along with subtle things like unlisted alternate titles in the lyric sheets (check Smashing Pumpkins -- Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness for an easy-to-obtain album that has all of these things)
    sound quality -- Nobody will ever convince me that mp3's are cd-quality, because if I A/B them it's not just possible to tell which is CD or DAT and which is mp3, it's downright easy, it can be done within the first 5 seconds usually, and that's using computer speakers. On a professional or high-end consumer sound system the difference is immediately apparent and to anyone who has invested serious money in their equipment, it's also immediately annoying. Who wants to playback mp3s on a system that they've dropped tens of thousands or even just thousands of dollars on?
    collectibility -- the article hammered this one, but it's true. I own quite a few cd rarities, most of which I acquired before they were rare. Which is more interesting, a person's reaction when they turn to their favorite group and see all sorts of Imports, EPs, singles and concert recordings that they've never heard before, or if they do a cd /mp3/r/radiohead and ls reveals mp3s of the album. How will they know what the packaging looked like?

    Just my thoughts.
  • > I can't see ANYONE being happy with a recording
    > of Bach's Toccatta and Fugue in D minor or the
    > Beatle's Abbey Road as their reference in MP3
    > format.

    I've got my (original CD) copy of Abbey Road in MP3 format to listen to at work. It's great, and available at the touch of a key (instead of having to remember to bring the album in).

    Compressed music is not a replacement for raw audio (which isn't what you get on a recording anyway) but rather is an alternative that allows the listener to access it in different ways.

    --
  • Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:

    As I understand it hardware DVD players have imbedded macrovision copy protection. If this is the case those $19.95 copy-protection removers that people sell in popular science should be enough to circumvent it.

    LK
  • I am sure that MP3's will replace CD's just like video tape replaced the cinema.

    Ken
  • Sick! All of this free beer OS talk has spilled into free beer music talk in the form of MP3. The only redeeming quality (sic) about MP3's is that you can get them for free on the Internet.

    Hmmm.... It's a great digital music format for transmitting and backing up your collection, but a quick survery of any college dorm will quickly show you that 99% of MP3's are illegit. If you had to pay to download MP3's they wouldn't be around. You'd buy high quality CD's anyway, because MP3 quality just doesn't cut it!!!

    None of this bullshit about sampling music out there either. You have a radio, right? They play legit music all day long at no cost to you, right? Aside from that there are any number of websites that have samples of songs from any genre imaginable. It's not hard to hear the music you like. Unfortunately, it's not hard to rip off the music you like as well. A lot of good that does anyone.

    At some point people start bitching back... music's just data, what's the big deal. Oh please! Music is much more than that, and genuinely difficult (to make good music). Support your artists and buy music if you really like it, or just don't listen to it. You don't help the artists or anyone when you rip, and besides MP3 quality sucks. Do yourself a favor.
  • How true - there's some artists that I really like that I want to get the whole album from, but let's face it - there's usually only a single that you want. CDNow had the right idea - let you put all your favorite singles on a single cd and ship it - but that's inconvenient. Why is it illegal to be able to get what you want right now?

    Anyway, I think the music industry is changing - maybe more like "open source" - give away the music, and charge for the "support"- aka concerts and shows. I for one like the idea of direct capitalism - nobody controls what I buy, who I buy it from, and for how much. It's all open to the market now. The RIAA is dead. It's a market inevitability.



    --

  • I can understand the author's point to an extent. I have an old turntable (circa 1963) That I like to fix from time to time just because it's ancient and should be thrown away. The same goes for an onld reel to reel tape deck.

    The author is a collecter of vinyl and CDs. What he doesn't understand is that some people collect music itself. For them, the format is irrelevant.

    I like to ge through mp3.com an a more or less random way, and just sample things (instant play). The thrill of the hunt is in finding a few things I really like out of all of the stuff available there. When I finally do find something, I know it's something I would have never heard on the radio (if I still listened to radio), and it isn't to be found in the local Beast Buy, or even an unknown and out of the way record store. In many cases, it will never be seen in the record store or heard on the radio. It may be that I am one of the very few people who actually does like it, or it may just not be commercial enough for an industry that measures dollars first, and artistic value a distant second (if at all).

    If I like it enough, I will buy it in CD form (with pre encoded MP3 as well) and support the artist.

    It's all a matter of what you like to collect, and there's enough people to be sure that nearly anything will be collected. (For example, to me, a bottle cap is the thing you have to get past before you can drink the beer. Apparently, some people have vast collections of the things.)

  • just as a note to this posting, i agree about 80% to it. There is a big poorly drawn fuzzy line where quality and accessability are seperated. Problem is where people fall and this is why areguments between the qualities arise.

    90% of my mp3's sound poor to me because of warvling, distortion and the such. As time passes, I am buying the CD's for them. Maybe I'm one of those that fall on the border of what sounds shouldnt' be thrown out for 'acceptable' quality.
  • Umm, I think you need to read the original comment I responded to. He was talking about copy protection scheme that was licensed to a particular player... i.e. DIVX.

    DVD is copy protected in that you cannot make a digital copy of it. But you can take your original media and play it on a different player, or give it to a friend who can play it on her player, etc.

  • Though he makes some good points, I can't relate. I have a ton of CD's and I'm working on converting all of them to MP3's. I enjoy organizing my music into categories and playing music based on the category I'm interested in. I enjoy not switching CD's or only listening to part of a CD or a single song. I like the background music to my daily work and listening to 120 mp3's before switching to something else.

    I disagree with his philosophical views as well, feeling that the increase in competition will actually cause new forms of music to rise to the top. I especially like the idea that this is a world wide medium and that influences from different cultures than the US and Europe will play larger roles in what becomes popular.

    But he does have a strong point of view when you look at your collection and start to drool... and then again -- so what.
    -----------
    Resume [iren.net]
  • I can't figure out how to get it working with MySQL. I downloaded the latest version of the server and client from mqsql.com, but neither has the file libmysqlclient.so.4, which DigitalDJ says it needs. Is this file on an older version of mysql, or do I have the wrong package?

    Any help on this greatly appreciated.

  • Exactly (Score:2)

    by MikeO ( 951 )
    I used to agree with the guy who wrote the article. I didn't really see the point of MP3s. I downloaded a few songs off the net (some legit, some not) and generally ended up deleting them.

    Then I realized that on a 10 gig drive (which is pretty affordable these days) I could store over *200* albums. That blew me away! Then I realized that I could burn the whole lot onto a DVD. That *really* blew me away. Imagine taking your entire music collection over to a friends house in a single jewel case.

    Now I'm an MP3 convert. I've written software to allow me to convert my CD collection into MP3 format ( Grip [ed.ac.uk], a ripping/encoding tool and DigitalDJ [ed.ac.uk], an SQL-based playback tool). I'm in heaven! I've got 64 albums online at work so far (taking up about 3300 megs of space).

    --

  • Digital Woes (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Unlike most of the /. crowd, I guess, I for one prefer having a CD of music, or even a sheet of paper with the notes on it, than I do having an MP3. If records had better sound quality I'd be happy as a clam. What most of us forget is that all media decays, and years from now, bit rot on my harddrive will kill an MP3 collection before the plastic on the CD turns yellow and flakes off.

    There is no ideal media other than making it part of a living culture, such that it is preserved by people playing the music itself. However, as the music industry is little different from that of the book publishing industry, mechandise and not the art itself, I'd rather have a hard copy than a soft any day. I'll pay for the physical object, but the bits and bytes are 'freely' reproducible as long as one has the technology.

    That said, I think the same thing goes for books, as e-books also become an issue. I'd rather have archaic vellum & ink than a DVD filled with jpegs.
    The tangible aspect is fundamental.

    Also, as small scale reproduction of intellectual objects becomes a universal part of daily life, the sale of the physical media becomes the basis of exchange by which one supports an artist. It is not about stealing & copying, but about encouraging more art to be produced. MP3's will spread the word for lots of new bands, but unless people are willing to produce hardcopies from copying digital media, future generations will not remember the greatest works of popular culture.

    MP3s are a means of distribution of information, CD's are tokens of appreciation.
  • I dunno, MEEPT is funny sometimes.
  • From the "You're into computers, let me ask you something" file:
    "If I put an MP3 on a CD, it has CD quality, right?"
  • 1) He does not mention the importance of data formats. Think about it - every single digital media storage we know of has a far shorter life span than traditional musical storage.

    Tape, 5 1/4 floppy, 3 1/2 floppy, HD, fat32, ext2, and so on. Conversion is required every 5-10 years if your data is to survive. This is something that ambushes people after a few years when they scramble to convert. mp3 is hip today, but its successor has already been named by lucent, and it will probably last another year.

    2) Fear of new media - this article is full of it. Every time something new comes along in telecom/media, people fear it. I wouldn't call him a luddite - he uses CDs after all. I'm sure people who played LPs wrote articles like this when CDs came along.

    I think they are missing the main point - mp3 vs. CD has nothing to do with physical media - it has to do with distribution mechanisms that are shaking the industry.

    L.

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