The main topic I would strongly counter is the statement “But at a certain point [in lossy encoding], you no longer perceive anything missing”. That is true for me with my current system and 99.9x% of the population, but on a high end system it is easy for me to correctly distinguish between a high bit-rate MP3 source and a lossless source.
Let’s rotate the charts, by way of comparison. I can even write the headline:
Greg May 10 2010
One should not conflate the alike staggering but neutral advances in technology and ignorance.
Not like video. 320×240, really? Over-compressed video encoding and 15 fps? Stations that shriek themselves “HD” but museum noise artifacts do to over-compression – to say nothing of the less-popular, standard-definition stations squeezed into your cable signal to allow you to have 2000 stations? It’s as if people aren’t videophiles any more. It looks horrible.”
i blame the CD and it’s limitations of 44.1.
Raymond Roman May 10 2010
Microwave Prince: You are committing the sin of mythologizing whether you muse that previous generations were so quite, very aware approximately HOW things sounded, rather than WHAT they were hearing to. High piety has *always* been a phenomenon reserved for the few, and not something that has ever saw trough the all social fabric. I know, I grew up with a very devoted hi-fi father, and I can insure you that his interests were no shared with the common public – not even 25 years antecedent.
Music Lover May 10 2010
The only point I’d like to make is that you used to be able to go to an appliance store and get a pretty good Stereo for a weeks’ wages (1975). Now you can’t buy a good stereo unless you go to a boutique audio store and pay 2 months’ worth of wages
“Sounds good” versus “sounds well”… no. Good is an adjective describing the subject (that which is sounding), not an adverb modifying “sounds.” It’s the same as saying something “looks good” or “feels good.” Fixed the typo, though, with which I “looked pretty stupid.”
JackFromOhio May 10 2010
Really?
Movies are, by ecology, an artform whose goal is total uninterrupted immersion, so it makes sense that televisions and home video have evolved in the instruction of ever more fidelity– bigger screens, surround sound, and recently 3D on Blu Ray Disc. Those are all things that enhance the goal of total immersion.
fudduf May 10 2010
With the rise of digital music, fans listen to less albums straight through. Instead, they move from one artist’s song to another’s. Pop artists and their labels, meanwhile, tremble at the prospect of having their song seem quieter than the previous song on a fan’s playlist.
This is what is hurting and devaluing music — it simply can’t be enjoyed by the extensive majority of consumers.
Another point I want to add is hifi does not equal hifi.
That doesn’t make you ‘right’ either.
Midrange “coloration” – winner: it depends on the quality of the headphones vs. speakers
Beyond the myth of falling fidelity Peter you just educate the ny times journalist a lesson in journalism we can replace audio myth with many other myth and it’s the same results alas…
I wish this is in your intentions. If not, or if you feel “misedited”, just drop me a line.
As for ‘loudness wars’…. mastering for radio has always been a dare. Whatever dynamic range you leave in will be squashed by their limiters anyway..
On my own Denon hifi system with specially designed speakers, i can hear the difference between mp3 and real audio very well, also the difference between the George Martin and the latest Beatles boxsets. (Thank you guys) On the really high-end audiosystem of a friend of mine (read a years wages) it is very clear you should not use mp3…
(Afterwards can’t listen to my own set for a few days for that matter-sound to bad all of a sudden )
Okay, I’m tricking a *little* bit. The theoretical limit of DVD audio as encoded on video is 24-bit / 96 kHz. Yes, AC3 is a lossy format, but it’s a pretty effective one, and that means the claim isn’t that far-fetched. Of course, in practice, DVDs often make sacrifices in order to cram more content on a disk, so this would have been more fair to say about the Blu-Ray than the DVD.
1. Audio and visual technology have advanced in lockstep, whether or not consumers have always bought the gear.
2. MP3/AAC files can sound just fine, so it’s not fair to leave audio grumbles at their doorstep; what we need is better testing under optimal circumstances, not just how these formats fail.
3. The transistor radio, not the iPod, was the great backwards step in mobility; it shows just how important being mobile and cheap and for how long, years before digital.
4. The real culprits in the loudness wars is media coalition and top-of-the-charts senselessness, not mastering engineers or iPods.
5. Listener are the variable, not tech.
6. Human perception is always the first place to consider – even with pros.
“Also, the quote that people used to sit and listen to music brings up a relatively new phenomenon. I think dance to music is more orthodox. Moving to music seems pretty natural.”
Lower bitrates like 96Kbps is where newer formats (Vorbis, AAC, WMA) tell themselves from ye olde MP3.
[...] # The Myth of Falling Fidelity, and Audio History Unburdened by Fact [...]
Steven Sullivan May 10 2010
c. todd [phylum_sinter] May 10 2010
I indeed agree! Thank you very much for demonstrating in precise words the falacies of some cheap journalism!
If the audio compression is successful, that means a generation of fans hasn’t traded fidelity at all, if the previous popular format was the audio CD. The “if it’s successful” part is important, but it isn’t as simplistic as this (and most other stories) would have you believe.
‘Just because you cant tell a difference doesnt mean there isnt one’
File this under: Can’t we all just get forward?
Interesting post.
Photo (CC-BY) Tasitch / Steve Drolet.
Myth #4: Music is getting squashed by loudness wars – blame the iPod
Odds are, at a perceptual level, the average person on the street has ears every bit as good as yours, with or without exercising. But they haven’t given those ears a decent chance to hear different stuff.
It is not unlikely that we’ve been affected by bad compression techniques, and have developed an unconscious liking for it. Furthermore, atleast I think it’s pretty boring to listen to any-boring-digital-format-MP3-CD-blabla, but listening to a Laserdisc, Minidisc or 12″ is pretty exciting stuff! Of course then, it sounds *better* …
The issue as I see it isn’t that people don’t know better. It’s that they *think* they don’t know better, or think they don’t deserve better. Maybe we’re part of the problem.
The last decade has brought an burst in dazzling technological advances — including enhancements in surround sound, high definition television and 3-D — that have transformed the fan’s experience. There are promotions in the quality of media everywhere — except in music.
But anyway, great post. Again, totally appreciating all you do here.
As somebody who masters audio for a alive I can attest to the sad shoulder shrugness every time I have to reduce audio from full res even to 16/44.1k, let alone anything of lower “standard”.
as you eluded to peter, there are far too many variables and rarely are apples compared to apples.
Hortron May 10 2010
If you want a historical variable in that time span (and the more recent decade), look to the consolidation of broadcasting companies and radio markets.
re: Myth #1: Audio advancement hasn’t kept pace with video advancement. …
John May 10 2010
I’ve always loved listening to transistor radios. They have gotten better. But that’s the point: they’ve gotten better, not worse. And an iPod can ordinarily beat one of these devices when it comes to sound quality.
So while the conclusion may be right, the premises are wrong.
jmob May 10 2010
Name
My take on the loudness wars is that overcompressed CDs are intended to surmount high levels of background noise seasoned either outside and wearing earbuds or while driving. Ideally CDs would be mastered with high dynamic range with the listener able to apply as much or little compression as desired. Suggested compression and eq settings could perhaps be comprised in the file metadata if a standard for doing so could be agreed.
Have you read Aden Evens ‘Sound Ideas’? A real interesting read by a very intelligent guy, but with an anti-digital vibe running through it that really rubs me up the wrong way… I’d be interested to see your response to it…
It could be that we’ve just worked through a colossal in-home HDTV growth squirt and people are sitting behind and catching stock at how much better their TVs look. When did this occur for audio? I’m not sure – either former in the 60s or 70s, or I think subtly in the medial to late 90s when the quality of commodity speakers was heaved quite a morsel.
No, it’s the the crappy ipod *headphones* (earbuds) combined with extreme dynamic range limiting
Renzu May 10 2010
There’s an unstated elitism in most of these discussions. I think it’s worth a separate post, so I’ll come back to this video and the ideas in it, but one key detection is that even golden-eared pros can have their perceptions fooled by comb filtering in a room or even the placebo effect:
Now, of course, no one will ever write that article again. Right?
Excellent article. Allthough I will beg to diverge on one front. Movie theatre sound quality. I am going to start taking ear plugs to movies in the hereafter. You want to talk loudness war? Movie theatres are the WMD of that argument. Sometimes it sounds like they just put the ultra maximiser on 11. And those high frequencies! I mean Jesus, I have almost called OSHA a few times.
Quick: what’s small and portable but sacrifices audio fidelity for over-compressed music with no frequency or dynamic range? It’s portable, it’s pocketable, it was a wildly-successful creation that changed how a generation wasted electronics and music alike, and it has terrible earbuds.
dont really care about fidelity though, im hungered for good ideas, not production
Rich Costey May 10 2010
agree stongly with leaving old recordings unsullied and not ‘remastered’
And that´s the problem with all the people saying old hifi is better
than modern hifi. In some way they are right, because modern hifi is much more
prestine and revealing (also see: digital cold music) how bad recorded
and mastered the original recording was.
Feral Hotdog May 10 2010
Earbuds do suck tho! I wanted to agree with everything you posted (and mostly do except some bits about the ‘Loudness war’) but the image of the Earbuds kept popping into my head. ARGH. Neverending perdition. F Earbuds! And yes, those #$100, Sony, AT or Sennhesier ones still suck! Why can’t someone contrive something equally as portable but not has awful for your health or quality. Demon spawn!
Our “Generation” is in a great time to listen to music; we can decide how we consume it, in everyway. There’s a healty DEMOCRATIZATION of Music.
Kids today, with their YouTube and their over-compressed, handheld shot video. Why, I remember in the old days. I used to shoot in gorgeous film on my Bolex and edit by hand on a Steenbeck.
Still, there are some ghosts in the mp3 machine. There’s a big thread over at MOTU-MAC about why some mp3′s made from hello rez files emulating a rigid rhythm, when then imported into another project, appear to lose rhythm (these would typically be longer things, getting into the 7+ min range). Lotsa theories there. But it doesn’t change the fact that it DOES exist, and what is that doing to the overall sound of the fashionable file?
Keats' Handwriting May 10 2010
“If the audio compression is successfully, that means a generation of fans hasn’t traded fidelity at all, if the previous fashionable format was the audio CD.”
You probably meant “successfully” to be “successful”
“The only point I’d like to make is that you used to be competent to go to an device store and get a pretty good Stereo for a weeks’ wages (1975). Now you can’t buy a good stereo unless you go to a boutique audio cache and pay 2 months’ worth of wages.”
On the contrary, I believe the opposite to be true. Adjusting for inflation and all that jazz–it can’t be the case that in 1975 a pretty good stereo was $600, whereas today you need to pay $2,400 for a similar stereo!
Ok, so another digi-phobic audiophile rant. But both of you touch on the importance of civilization rather than tech. Like ShowcaseJase above, this makes me think about this article:
CPRoth
And yes, I agree, as for the generational gap … I’d just like to know when the golden age was. I think, as the article points out, it is probably safe to say people aren’t spending as much on home stereo equipment as they once did, and I don’t mistrust that listening usages have shifted. But that still discounts shoddy listening equipment 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago, it says nothing about installed base (if in fact album sales and equipment sales peaked in the 90s and people still own that stuff), nothing about economy trends (in this country, there’s a growing gap between wealthy and poor), and a far cry from enough about what actual listening habits – not just purchasing habits – may be. These are all interesting questions, too.
It’s not that some MP3s don’t sound terrible, or that music is occasionally mastered poorly or overly compressed. It’s not that the standard earbuds on the iPod aren’t awful, or the blown-out speakers in someone’s motorcar aren’t poor – they are.
It’s a subject for another post, but I’m tired of the “loudness war” being applied to “music.” What music? What genre? Recorded by whom? When? I’ve heard exquisitely-engineered music from the past few years. I’ve heard brickwall-limited pop songs that … well, would have sounded like crap even without being poorly mastered. I’ve also heard music that used over-compression for intentional distortion in some genres (like Dub) long before anyone began worrying about loudness wars. (I’m also unconvinced by the listening habits described here. We know how many singles versus albums are bought, but not how people listen to their existing music collections,
Sennheiser Worldwide Private Audio Headphones Accessories, so I’m doubtful.)
I think the MP3 “standard”is already 256-320k. (AAC is 192, but it’s a more efficient format.)
This is an economic issue, which has unfortunately convert a fidelity issue. I no longer have the option of buying a CD, because all the CD stores have gone out of business. I don’t blame iTunes, here. It’s the record labels. They’ve lost the DRM war, but seem to be preventing lossless out of jealousy. The battle’s over, guys. Those who want to embezzle, will steal. People like me are willing to pay for high fidelity content, and you (labels) are cutting off your proboscises to malignity your faces.
Um…what did you THINK was gonna happen to the music?
NXK May 10 2010
Absence of excess reflected sound and room resonance problems – winner:ipod (or any headphone based system) IMHO this is actually a very big deal
Photo (CC) NomadicLass / Malinda.
Myth #1: Audio advancement hasn’t kept pace with video advancement.
Hellgi May 10 2010
Agargara May 10 2010
Rambodeish May 10 2010
@JackFromOhio
Fascinating, thanks very much – really enjoyed this
Comparing to a transistor radio is silly.
You might be interested in this
re: “how the artist intended it to be heard”
Not many comments about the “whole album” facet, but here goes. I listen to whole albums only in the case of albums that are compelling. Artists seem content to stick one or two songs on an album of noise and whine that none wants the whole album. I didn’t hesitate to elect up and listen to 3 albums of “Joe’s Garage” because the ALBUM was compelling. And I am perfectly elated with the single of “Lady in Black” because the recess of the album just didn’t coerce me to listen, let solo buy it.
Lots of good points here, folks; thanks!
As for the quality of video:
In Mobile Age, Sound Quality Steps Back [The New York Times]
Today we live in a world of untold audio richness, spoilt for choice. But what to do with all these riches? For whom to do it? And why? These are the questions the audio artist should be asking.
This site runs WordPress 3.1.2 and something that rhymes with 'muddy dress'. Use open source it's good for you.
I think this article is a good dissection of the NYTimes piece, which, in my opinion, really missed the point:
fantastically detailed post Peter – thanks for this… many ideas to muse over.
aaron May 10 2010
mediawest May 10 2010
This is the prosumer market, not the consumer market, but it carries over. Most people can’t hear the difference between a CD and something of higher fidelity. But almost everyone can tell the difference between DV and HD video. So video made a ‘progression’ while audio ‘stayed still’.
Thank you for prose this. I saw that idiotic article this morning and was going to jot a hateful comment, but I thought better of wasting my breakfast time on a flame. I’m pleased you had the vigor to tear down every single point the article made.
Having been a lucky receiver of the final days of the Record Business (RIP) in the 90s, I kinda have a bit of a skewed perspective on this. But in the big argument, no, the iPod is NOT to blame for xyz. That’s kinda like a sinking battleship blaming water for giving the torpedo that sunk it a platform.
this is a good taking down of the NYT article but again, kirn seems hellbent on defending digital EVERYTHING at all costs. i would much care for read an article from someone who doesn’t have quite so clear-cut of an agenda. but it’s his blog, so what do i really expect right? i get that…btw, costley is right about the “loudness wars” and mastering and it brings up an interesting point to me that kirn seems to bypass and that is just because you CAN do something with technology, SHOULD you do that? the “loudness wars” is a PERFECT example of that…
and don’t get me started on ‘djs’ who use mp3s when they play out (off topic I know)
Steven Sullivan May 10 2010
How many non-tech “consumers” are even conscious that their iPod aids full res wav or aif files – at no accessory price? But who’s telling them?
As professionals (and the talents who create the music) we’ve never needed to aim for a lowest common denominator.
Nonsense. You can get an objectively *stellar* stereo (vanishingly samll distortion, dynamic range and frequency response beyond person limits) for a weeks’ wages or less. Not addition loudspeakers, of course, which even in ‘high end’ systems are the most grossly inaccurate parts of a stereo system.
The Myth of Falling Fidelity, and Audio History Unburdened by Fact, Novation Nocturn Keyboard + Automap standard Review, Color a Sound, The Most Warped Drummer Contest, Youtube MIDI interface, free plastic decanter specimens May 10 2010
But yes, I don’t see why quality can’t improve. I think on streams, it has.
First, this idea itself is internally incongruous, at least in part. People’s home theater setups are full of music, from the soundtracks to games to movies to video of live concerts. In fact, the quality of audio in audiovisual contexts – including music – has improved alongside the video. Consider:
@Renzu: in most listening tests, doesn’t AAC execute at the same quality as MP3 with half the bitrate? So this means a 96 kbps AAC is perceptually transparent? I remember hearing 128 kbps AAC was supposed to be the limit.
i think the reason that many people don’t is just the type of person you are and what is agreeable to you.
Nice reading, the comments too!
[...] The Myth of Falling Fidelity, and Audio History Unburdened by Fact (createdigitalmusic.com) [...]
Jim Aikin May 10 2010
A quick anecdote: About 30 years ago, when David Burge (not to be perplexed with David L. Burge) was writing the Contemporary Piano column for Keyboard, he and his wife were visiting Northern California, and finished up at my apartment after supper. What struck me at the time was that when I put on an LP (hey, remember LPs?), they both sat noiselessly and LISTENED to it, all the way through the side. It was just a different response to recorded music than I or any of my musician friends had, then or since. David taught in a extremely regarded East Coast conservatory, and I believe his wife did too. Does that tell you something about listening habits?
One thing I agree on – an 256 mp3 is a helluva lot better than a cassette or a VHS tape. So the average consumer has a whole lot better portable fidelity than we did with Walkman.
One thing to put into the equation is the recording technique and how the compression (analogue-type or algorithms) will affect the perception.
I work with stereo mostly, in the 2-mic sense of the word. Compressions, either analogue or algorithmic/lossy have a great influence on the depth perception. The two treatments are very different and what they influence is technically different too. Lossy compression may not change the audible sound, but it can affect the more shrewd factors that are involved in stereophonic perception.
Analogue compression disrupts the balance between the different frequencies and breaks the depth of the sound as well.
This is less true for multitrack recorded music with close micing, mixing and postprocessing.
Not all types of music, sounds and recording techniques give the same impression through these processes.
Schnafte May 10 2010
I’ve been comparing 320 and flac, and 320 is just not ample. Listen and you will notice its not as full, the sub bass is lacking. Lets listen to a recording the way it was meant to be heard.
The iPod is not the cause of the loudness war, which expedited in the 1990s. But when your music player is portable, you often want the music to mask the sounds around you. If a great part of the market is listening in cars or noisy cafes, added compression may be profitable. However, the players are perfectly capable of doing their own compression; there’s no need to main to the lowest common denominator and squash the music for everyone.
Peter Kirn May 10 2010
But that’s not really the argument here. The issue is what’s to blame. In fact, I believe historically the author again has it entirely wrong. The technology that began to change how music was mastered, that began to cause people to move from one track to another, isn’t the iPod. It’s the radio. And if anything caused the homogenization of music at the top of the diagrams, it wasn’t the introduction of digital singles. In fact, the iPod has technology designed to level out volume levels automatically on a playlist. The trend attributed to the loudness wars scaled in the 1990s, as sales of CDs and CD singles – not downloads – were on the rise.
In an apocryphal fable, in 1966, the Beatles’ (EMI) mastering engineers were non-plussed at the loudness of Motown mastering. It took Paul McCartney’s goading to get them to push things at the 45-RPM mastering stage, with the result that the single “Day Tripper” was considerably louder (the bass, in particular) than previous Beatles recordings, and thus doubtless, comparative to Motown’s.
I gotta get a copy of the Parlophone “Day Tripper” 45 to hear for myself!
Hi
dave ahl May 10 2010
The only point I’d like to make is that you used to be able to go to an appliance store and get a pretty good Stereo for a weeks’ wages (1975). Now you can’t buy a good stereo unless you go to a boutique audio store and pay 2 months’ worth of wages.
And yes, I love having a juke box with 500gig of audio files, but that’s just a PC.
That was fun to read, thanks a lot! I edited it down a little and reblogged it at
“Do you still sit down and listen to an album, end to end? If not, why not?” Very seldom. I’m usually doing something else while “listening.”
“…they know how to shape music for the worst-case scenario listening environment…”
Diegotz May 10 2010
And also digital recording began to migrate from ‘sounding aceptable’
to ‘sound great’ no ealier than about 2003. Once for the technology
to mature and then for most mixing technician and engineers to lear how
to use it and see the difference to parallel mixing.
Newspaper journalists continue to treat MP3s as though it’s still 1999. In 1999, it wasn’t unusual for people to illegally download music from services like Napster that were encoded at bitrates that were too low, and that actually included encoding errors, which will cause auditory distortion and pops. That’s not true of a track downloaded from Amazon or iTunes today. These issues are significant.
nick May 10 2010
And you know who they are replaced by (and I’m SO not kidding here)? They get the ACCOUNTANTS that found out who the biggest money losers on the roster were last year, got them dropped, and now THEY are awarded with ‘creative’ posts, like A&R.
i don’t agree with most of your other myths either, but i’m more concerned that using false information to support your dialectic is going to scatter disinformation to other people who may determine otherwise.
-Ryan
Yes ultimately choice is a great thing, but currently the choices are still a little limited and subject to ill-informed people ripping good music at bad bitrates.
Greg May 10 2010
Bravo. Well said, Peter.
Want to bitch about something? Sirius radio is so compressed it sounds like ass.
Renzu May 10 2010
Also, the quote that people used to sit and listen to music brings up a relatively new phenomenon. I think dancing to music is more traditional. Moving to music seems pretty natural.
Create Digital Motion » Recalling the Glories of LaserDisc, in 1984 Devo Promo, and the Power of the Past May 10 2010
I totally disagree with the premise that audio quality for the client is good enough – tho not for the reasons in the NYTimes article – the take-out is correct. But the AAC doesn’t sound anything like the 96/24 original. and nor does the CD, and the CD is harder to obtain than ever before, so yeah, the best audio quality is still out of reach because of lowest-common denominator needs like download expedience and portability. Pray for 96/24 HD downloads – I saw Gorillaz at Coachella and I know what their live synths sound like via a great digital Midas embark and L Acoustics playback at lofty volume 96/24 and the ITunes download is sallow by comparison.
But I’d also question the concept that every listening experience has to be a high-fidelity one. Some of my fondest listening memories have been on poor car stereos with highway noise or, heck, even the windows open, or on a mono radio with a plastic housing I inherited from my parents. (and actually, some of those radios sound pretty good – another case of engineers overcoming poor academic specs)
It’s the fowl in the eggs problem of who is to blame: consumers for wanted ease of use and portability over quality or the manufacturers for providing devices that favor ease of use and portability over quality? In the end, most people get what they want … crap.
No article on the evils of digital music would be complete without reference to the Loudness Wars:
I hope kids a few generation from now can just get a laser beamed into their eyes and experience more than most live shows can give you now, both audibly and visually.
Every “Myth” stated here is still a fact. The article did not disprove anything, only saying “Lord of the rings sounds good”. MP3 and AAC still sound worse than CD, a 28 year old format now.
My immense meat is that iTunes has killed off the CD, as a side effect, and the massive consolidation of power means that iTunes is my ONLY realistic source for legitimate, paid up music. Because iTunes doesn’t do lossless, I am effectively shut out of buying high fidelity music. My choices are drying up. Good thing I picked up the Depeche Mode SACDs when I can still get a player.
@c. todd: yeah, but these were the same youths who in another old production dubs of dubs of dubs of tapes (or playing them until the metalline wrapping came off), and taping pennies to the ammunition of their phonographs to reserve dirty albums on cheap turntables from skipping. It seems like the CD was the anomaly, if anything, as with it was in its bargains surge.
Sadly, though, we can’t. I don’t know about you, but my access to high quality music (by that I mean uncompressed CDs) is severely restricted compared to what it was a few years ago.
When is the last time you saw a decent CD section in a Borders or Best Buy? iTunes doesn’t sell lossless format music, and the classic websites that do have pretty dispersed offerings.
Broader frequency and dynamic ranges, lot of encoding options (from lossless FLAC to lossy MP3), absent from arsenal space required than before.
When I began making records we knew that a cloud of our listeners would enjoy our work on vinyl played through some sort of reasonable quality system. A minority would buy the cassette version only and a larger percentage would buy both. But MOST would get to hear our art the way we intended.
Best
Low Frequency response – for amount, winner:hifi. for quality, winner:ipod (see next)
At the same time, I haven’t seen anyone argue against the notion that media consolidation might be the culprit, even though radical consolidation took place over the same era that the “loudness wars” were supposedly raging. I salute other theories here. But even if you don’t agree with me, I don’t think you can take it as a given that the iPod is specifically to blame – and I’d think you’d want some evidence, regardless.
Let’s face it: A&R people don’t care what a track sounds like at a time it’s found its way to your iPod playlist. You’ve already bought it. Job over. What they care about is how “loud” that track sounds when you haven’t bought it. And that means impressing the people who run the radio stations.
goto80 May 10 2010
The nonpartisan Future of Music Coalition (FMC) found that in 2005, half of listeners tuned to stations owned by only four companies, and the top ten firms had almost two-thirds of listeners. At the same time, radio listenership has declined 22 percentage since its peak in 1989 in the top 155 markets.
I REALLY LOLed at this. Just Great!
You do need enough file for the compression technique to work its sorcery, which is why the shift from lower bitrates in MP3/AAC to higher bitrates on leading digital music stores is so major. But at a decisive point, you not longer perceive everything missing, and as Duke Ellington would say, “if it sounds good, it is good.”
Good points.
Great post! Thanks.
c. todd [phylum_sinter] May 10 2010
jamieh May 10 2010
Original VHS format: Poor frequency feedback (100 Hz – 10 kHz), mono, alternatively stereo with frightful dynamic response. In fact, this isn’t even worth measuring – it was dreadful. Couple that with poor analog reception or low-quality analog cable markers, and it method the 1980s, pinnacle of the melody video, sounded favor crap.
Anyway, I read the remarks at the Lifehacker post referencing the NYT article and was revolted by the conflated issues, half-truths and general perplexity.
Tweet editorial, iPod, media, opinion, perception, rants, recording, trends, 108 108 Responses robin May 10 2010
Rebecca May 10 2010
Steven Sullivan May 10 2010
iPod DAC/opamps have never been terrible, just average, i can even drive HD650s with a sansa mow at gentle volume without any significant issues
But yes, I suppose it can be said that at an indeterminate time, using an indeterminate playback format (MP3 or AAC or … something) with an undetermined bitrate (possibly 128k, maybe 256k), listening through a range of variables that have gone undefined (headphones? background noise? are you using your blender when cooking in the pantry?), an indeterminate group of people listening broadly to things that might be called “music” (whether that’s the Brandenberg Concerto or Frank Zappa) from some indeterminate epoch, itself recording originally through some nameless means at some undefined time, has audio quality that is not as good as some other music music listened to by someone else … sometime. Or something.
Ernie Jackson May 10 2010
As usual, the lay journalist skirmishes with the notion of data compression, saying that the process is “eliminating some of the sounds and range contained on a CD.”
I was recently attempting to master a CD with appropriate dynamic range..I had several fruitless google sessions trawling through ‘loudness wars’ articles online, not discovery any actual practical guidance as to what RMS min and max, and what Peak levels would be ‘appropriate’ for this type of procedure material (meditation)
I can’t really argue with that, can I?
I’m very dissatisfied in the lack of decent inexpensive widely available stereo and home theater systems. For example, in best buy everything is marketed towards base. Clarity, and high frequency are more difficult to find. I’ve got some old alesis m1 mk2 monitors that blow away a crowd of ipod dock stereos, and they are around the same price? Also, its agreeable less essential to use lossy codecs. Boomkat and Bleep are two online music retailers that offer FLAC and WAV as download options for instance. I think the poorly encoded stuff is more an issue for people who can’t or don’t pay for their music.
Last point – dynamic range in mastering is on the rebound – wait for the new LCD Soundsystem – TONS of real dynamic range.
There’s often a difference between theory and practice. But to suggest that the aim, the goal of MP3 or AAC is to eliminate auditory, detectable sounds in order to boost portability is simply inaccurate. Perceptual compression charted so that, along to the appropriately-named Karlheinz Brandenburg, compression pioneer of the Fraunhofer Institute, “the basic mission … is to compress the digital audio data to some extent that … the rebuilt (deciphered) audio sounds exactly (or as close as possible) to the original audio before compression.”
Via Twitter and Facebook this morning, while I was blowing off steam about this article, a couple of people referred to how artists “intend” their music be heard. I’ve got bad news for you: your listeners don’t care about your directions. Part of the genius of people who are great mix engineers or great mastering engineers is that they know how to shape music for the worst-case scenario listening environment, not just the best.
Your blog has a new subscriber.
Especially if you think about the availability of large quality sound in comparison to the few elite folk who could supply such badass analog systems say in the 1970-80′s. Sure they had good quality matter but you had to pay a cost for that and most people simply did not.
First off, kudos for including the word Steenbeck.
@Peter: Reminds me of an interview with Madlib, saying he mixes on iPod earbuds.
To have a technically-robust discussion, though, we’d actually define what we’re talking about
: comparing, say, the quality of a direct-to-digital audio CD with a wide dynamic and frequency spectrum as played on a standard audio CD and a 320-kpbs MP3. That could be an interesting discussion, and you might even choose the audio CD over the MP3 in certain cases. But it probably wouldn’t reach any sweeping conclusions like generations of listeners turning their backs on quality in the name of cheap thrills.
The notion that an MP3, wma, or any other form of compressed digital audio is as good as a CD is beyond ludicrous. Anybody with any listening experience can tell the difference on even a decent system. Conversely the quality of high bit-rate digital audio (24/96 or higher) is swiftly apparent on even the poorest of systems. Of course if your recording exhibits only 6dB of dynamic range this is a moot point…
What really annihilated music is, it got smaller, and continues to get smaller. And not just in a tactile way (from album cover to gem case to streams of zeros and ones). The business consolidated, just like everything else. When that happens the ONE thing you know is going to come of it is that the people who originated that ‘industry’ (ie: the ones that gave a shit) ambition be looooong gone.
Don’t fret, i can also really enjoy a 1911 recording of Beethoven, or anything what is musically good but not hifi…
In fact, by design, lossy compression does nothing of the sort. The ideal back MP3 compression is to eliminate tones which are themselves inaudible, masked in the normal perception of music. That means that, encoded correctly and with enough data, an MP3 should theoretically sound identical to a PCM-encoded CD.
and dont get me started on how bad ear buds are….
Yes high bitrate AAC can sound ok (relative to the lesser options) yet, since when have fans of the visual arts been fine with visiting ################## to view framed low res jpgs with no option for anything better?
Peter you are right about the relationship between record label and radio. Don’t get me started.
Ryan May 10 2010
nick May 10 2010
[...] on one of my favorite blogs, Createdigitalmusic.com, Peter Kirn takes on a New York Times article featuring the common complaints about digital music, [...]
While i do agree with you on most points, i deviate a little on the perceived lowering of standards with the advent of the mp3. When i see tween and teenage cousins and their mp3 actors, i always take a look to see what format they’re using and what quality they gravitate towards. None of them have had a single 320kbps mp3, no FLACs, and very few 192kbps files — which is the point i really start to notification things being altered. I’ve queried them why they don’t go for the better versions, and they have no idea of the variants and effects of the different kbps.
Why no advert of the advent of Hi-Fi audio track in the section about VHS?
iPods may not be “to blame” but iTunes *is* to blame — selling that 128Kbps garbage. How can you not see that?
Jeffrey Wagy May 10 2010
That is the sad, unavoidable, undisputable reality for our industry. We, the artists, have completely lost control of how our art is presented and that, to me, is the real center of the problem. All the science in the world will not convince me or many, many other Producers, Mix engineers, Recording engineers, Mastering engineers and, most importantly, many, many musicians that the present plethora of new formatts available are in any way receivable alternatives to where we have come from.
Instead, music is often carried from place to place, played in the background while the consumer does something else — exercising, commuting or cooking dinner.
The fact is, the average listener can absolutely, positively tell the difference between the white earbuds of crap and something that’s actually decent. But they’re often overwhelmed by choice, and they haven’t given their own ears the become for a difference. So instead, compensating for the poor frequency response of the headphones, their tendency is turn up the headphones and break their audition. Bad.
The obvious conclusion would be that the DACs of the Amiga are better.
But the CORRECT conclusion is that the DACs of the AMIGA sound better
for they were bad. Masking mistakes and frequency breaches and inflating on the
actual harmonic content.
Same is with analogue gear with a much wider
tolerance for errors than digital system, where
1 wrong bit can kill the entire track.
Photo (CC-BY) alexkerhead.
Myth #3: The iPod is the faultless emblem of a generation that doesn’t care about music
The bit rate for a standard AC3 compressed multichannel DVD (5.1) is 448 kbit/s
The bit rate for uncompressed stereo audio CD is 1411.2 kbit/s
Very much enjoyed reading this. Thanks!
first, fine article Peter,
second I agree with hi.
Here is a youtube video probably recorded from a mono black and white video signal in the 60s of an hero of mine playing a traditional Irish song on the uilleann pipes. 250,000 views with not one mention of sound quality, only awe of the music. Kind of cuts through the argument abit.
The Myth of Falling Fidelity debunked - MUSIC IS NOT GIGABYTES. May 10 2010
Thanks to oivindi (see also SoundCloud) for the tip.
Adam Dempsey May 10 2010
iPod earbuds suck, but not much more than the cheap portable headphones people have been using since there were cheap portable headphones. Cheap canalphones (or IEMs or whatever you want to call them) are a new phenomenon I think. I remember when you only had a few names like Etymotic making those (starting at $100). I heard a friend’s Creative mark canalphones and they actually sounded alright next to my $150 Etymotic ER-4p, which originally sold for $300 before the flood of new players into the market.
morning gold May 10 2010
You got choices. It’s simple to change fancy, and every possibility is cheaper than ever. It’s just a better world!
Has anyone seen stats on those details? (I assume they’re out there elsewhere.)
quantize May 10 2010
What about MP3? As CPRoth says, there are emphatic questions on fidelity and how it’s perceived. I think to answer that question, we have to respond some bigger questions about perception and sound. At what MP3 or AAC bitrate is a file causativeable substitute for lossless formats? And what’s the benefit of going beyond 44.1/16-bit (At least 44.1 isn’t entirely arbitrary; dynamics are a relatively open question.)
Photo (>CC-BY) iamaruntimeerror.
Myth #2: MP3s reduce audio fidelity in the name of mobility
If the consensus is that it’s ok to have 160kbps mp3′s as the standard out there, then yes… we’ve gone backwards. I would like to see all online distributors move towards 320kbps mp3′s or better, and i think they will eventually. Even moreso, i would like to see lossless audio compression become standardized on every portable player, so nobody has to compromise.
Audio quality today is fantastic. 10.1 surround is the norm, as is better-quality mixing. Just listen to The Lord of the Rings recording. It’s spectacular. It’s a whole orchestra and everything. You can go watch the movie in a THX-certified theater, and listen to nearly three full hours of music. In fact, at all times you’ve watched the trilogy, you will have sit and listened to a longer piece of music than a Wagner opera – and you won’t have gotten out of your chair (minus that fast bathroom destroy).
Well done. Great talking points for a nectar with other audio friends!
MrLemonhog May 10 2010
“DVD: Typically AC-3 or DTS digital audio, better-than-CD audio quality”
Mike May 10 2010
Great post, Peter. I don’t think it’ll be enough to quiet the quasi-journalism you’ve attempted to squash.
CPRoth May 10 2010
Myth #6: The Internet is responsible for a growing number spelling and syntax errors.
No, it’s the the crappy ipod *headphones* (earbuds) combined with extreme dynamic range limiting.
Hoo chap, I’m first? Well, giving it a shot.
Peter Kirn May 10 2010
Biggest myth of all: Perception and reality are one and the same
Total Harmonic Distortion – probable winner:ipod – tracking errors on phono cartridges would often cause significant distortion, amid many other sources like overdriving speakers
Couple things –
The D/A in a current Apple product ( Iphone 3GS or Ipod Touch) is a very good sounding part – the compression (dynamic or lossy) is the limiting element. MacBooks sound great.
William Norman May 10 2010
[...] side, audiophiles have lamented the slow forward (or arguably backward) progress of sound. In a rant in May, I played devil’s support, to say that some of the certify they cited was shaky, and, [...]
Look at it this way, and you begin to wonder if the real problem isn’t the unwashed masses, but us so-called experts when we privilege our experience above the people for whom we’re supposed to be making the music. If we think they’ll be happier with better headphones, or anything else, we’re probably right – we do have real expertise. So we should reach out to them.
Oh, and everyone isn’t listening to music on the iPod. Not at all. A lot of people are using Squeezeboxes and other digital devices of pretty high quality, while *also* listening to music on the iPod or whatever.
Matthew Davidson May 10 2010
Finally! Great article!
[Mix engineer] Anyone who records and mixes professionally has done this at fewest once in their career—you tweak a snare or vocal track to perfection only to discover afterward that the EQ was bypassed the entire time. Or you were tweaking a assorted track. And if you’ve been mingling and playing around with … whether you’re a professional or just a hobbyist, if you’ve been doing this for a few years and you haven’t done that,
beats from dre Asym Headphones, then you’re lying. Yet you were certain you heard a change! Human auditory memory and perception are exceedingly brittle, and expectation bias and placebo achieve are many stronger than people care to confess.
The punctation and spelling in this message bas heen frought to u by the letters, B, E and R
@Kyle McDonald: I was speaking from memories, since it’s been a long time since I’ve actually retarded. Seems like codecs have perfected a lot since the early/mid 2000s:
Lots of these ‘loudness wars’ articles seem to be written by ‘industry experts’, too few written by mastering engineers compliant to share the technical detail of what might be an proper dynamic range.
Here’s how it works: After your label has had its run and starts to lose money, you sell out to a conglomerate. The conglomerate says “Aw heck, we’re just money guys. You all are the inspired types, so just get busy with what you’re doing…erm, except we had a big loss in the last 2 dwelling, so half your A&R staff has to go”.
Orubasarot May 10 2010
“I think it’d be hard to overstate just how sub-optimal real-world listening by real-world consumers can get.”
@Rambodeish – Occasionally I’m noticing certain labels (or artists that release on Bandcamp – which offers alot of format options for DLs) will release MORE via a digital format than you could get otherwise, which was the point i was trying to get at but never made it to in my last comment haha:
I love discussions of “fidelity”, as it’s often a slender mask for “subjective quality”. I’m glad to see some historical examples being wrangled in to the discussion, if not numbers and listening tests.
Consumer sound systems are, by and large, terrible! The systems are either underpowered + expensive iPod docks, crappy computer speakers, bulky or old-fashioned systems, or mobile phones (horror!).
Thanks Pete!
DVD: Typically AC-3 or DTS digital audio, with better-than-CD audio quality (in terms of theoretical specifications), and digital surround capability. [Clarification: technically, it's the theoretical 24-bit, 96kHz encoding rate that would make audio on DVDs "better" than CDs. Commenters are correct, though, that the lossy audio format, combined with real-world concessions to space, could degrade real-world audio quality - though you also get more channels, which is a good thing. For a better advance from the CD, see the Blu-Ray disc. Ed.] So, the NetFlix age is better off than the Blockbuster age.
This is one space I think everyone can have a valid point since it depends on whether you’re talking about possibilities vs actuality. I’m disposed to agree that audio hasn’t really “advanced” as fast as video from the standpoint of adoption, i.e. how most people are actually listening to music. Who here listens to surround sound mixes of music albums? Who here creates & distributes circle sound mixes of their own music? It’s not that the skill and distribution formats don’t exist, but I think a 2-channel 44khz 16-bit recording is the end-all-be-all as far as most listeners are concerned, so there hasn’t been a great need for circle sound or other innovations like that. Multi-driver, “surround sound” headphones are foolish in practice, and many people often don’t listen to music by sitting in front of a couch and staring at the space between their two main loudspeakers unless they’re watching a movie. For a lot of the ways I’ve seen people listen to music, it may as well be mono (and 8-bit and 32KHz). I knew SACD and DVD-A were going to flop as “successors” to CD the moment I first heard of them, because they have nothing to do with how most people view music– not as a medium of absolute immersion, but as a accessory to their life– something to play in the background as they’re otherwise traveling, working or whatever.
[...] 10:33, Posted in Junk through noise, Musiikin analysointi, Comments (0) The myth of falling fidelity, and audio history unburdened by fact.AKPC_IDS += "1669,"; This portal was posted 0 minutes ago [...]
let’s face it ipods were intended to be a part of the background meantime multi-tasking. generally, spirited listening is done on a more advanced system with speakers.
regend May 10 2010
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@Jonah There was a time when people played music with each other at home too … The ease and prevalence of recording has turned us into consumers, not participators. Hell, in general, people don’t even know how to dance with each other.
A couple of years ago I made some French speaking, young, art students listen to a Glenn Gould documentary (The Idea of North) it had been ages they hadn’t stopped doing something while listening. It could have even been a new experience fall butme. Quite a few felt bored and unable to concentrate on listening.
Nice piece. I agree with your point about loudness re. radio. I cannot believe how awful music sounds on advertisement radio: compressed at every stage of the digital audio chain from when it is ripped to their servers to when it goes through processing at the local station. The frequency range is a hair’s width and today’s FM sounds about like AM in the 70s. On the station I listen to most often in my car, the mids are shoved out of all rational range and there are almost no audible highs except for vocals. I know it’s not my equipment because CD and even MP3 audio playback does not have those issues. Apparently being able to hear distortion is no longer a qualification for announce engineering at the citizen or local level.
When CD’s arrived those percentages shifted in assistance of the new formatt but as music makers we still knew that the MAJORITY of our listeners would continue to enjoy our work through a signal route of reasonable quality and thus all those hours of sweating over the details of the production would actually be heard and STILL make a difference.
Like music gear, I also feel that stereos have been ramping up in cost-effectiveness over the years. I’ve heard a lot of low/midrange systems from the early and mid 90s(like NHTs that retailed for over a grand back in their day), and they don’t hold a candle to what you can get for a grand from a modern speaker enterprise like Paradigm or PSB or whatever. That’s without adapting for inflation, or without considering new resources like Craigslist where you can get loads of audio gear cheap.
With the regularity of clockwork, stories about how digital audio consumption is degrading the quality of music are published and then re-published. Nearly a decade behind the introduction of Apple’s iPod, this still evidently qualifies as news. The content of the articles is so alike, you could deem the bylines are a ruse, a nom-de-plume for the same author re-publishing the same story.
Great article!
“The iPod is demolishing music” discussion may get tired hasty, but we’re never going to run out of things to study about perception and listening.
so far my 2cents
will anyone discussion the CD sounding better than the same work on vinyl?
yes, when i have the time, i definitely love to get lost in one album. this makes me miss physical product even extra as i like to see at album art during.
Anyone looked through the theory used by those tests? Care to comment?
This article was nothing more than a group hug for MP3 users. The article disproved nought. MP3s do not match CD quality, duration, end of story.
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as an engineer and musician for 40 years, i do think that while previous ways to hear music, [ie vinyl, cassettes, 8tracks! am radio and more] most of the time what we heard was lo fi. the riaa bend is not understood, as how records were played back to lest surface noise.
I now have a great reading assignment fknow next to nothing ofund design tomorrow.
Awesome post. A lot of solid points here. I don’t have much to add to this because so much was covered but it was definitely worth the read!
Hey Peter.
What generation? (I’ve seen everyone from age 8 to 80 with an iPod.)
Compared to what? (MP3 to audio CDs? AAC to 8-tracks? What?)
Who’s judging the quality, and how? What’s quality?
When? Who? Where? … What?
Great article Peter. This hooks it
An Active Listener May 10 2010
Create Digital Music » Your Hearing, According to MP3: Sounds for Humans, Played for 10^450 Years May 10 2010
You get the point. Nothing above is incorrect; it’s just a matter of perspective, and whether you join the best practices of one medium to the worst practices of another.
That said, loudspeaker technology and materials have advanced far enough that the performance of ‘mass market’ gear can far outstrip its equivalent from several decades ago.
There’s a lot more to this panel. It winds up being a lot more interesting than the debates over MP3s and digital downloads, and get to the heart of how we hear. I’ll try to pull it separately and talk to people with more expertise than my own about is soon, but in the meantime, there are copious notes and audio downloads to go along with the video:
A bit wordy, Peter, but dead right.
Renzu May 10 2010
aaron May 10 2010
If you want to improve “fidelity,” even for your own listening, you can’t ignore the listener. You can’t ignore perception. And you certainly can’t ignore history. But pay attention to these things, and who knows what’s possible?
The general absence of support for 24b is also a travesty. WMA is the only reliable format for this. FLAC and QT theoretically do 24b but it is inconsistently implemented and last I checked Apple removed 24b encoding from iTunes (thanks stevechokesondick!).
High Frequency response – winner:ipod
Why perturb with this whole rant? I’m hopeful that, if we look beyond the simplistic explanations to the actual science, history, and magic by which we all hear music, we’ll ascertain out a lot more about what music means. The story above came from the business segment, but the industry isn’t a good place to look for answers. The failure of a format like SACD shows a real failure of understanding about how people listen, how they perceive quality, and even basics of how formats and compatibility would pray. Nor has the recording manufacture always given you a better product for more money: they were just as happy to sell you excerpts of music at ridiculously expanded prices at lower fidelity for mobile formats in the form of ringtones.
Greenladies» Blog Archive » The Myth of Digital Degredation May 10 2010
Jeremy May 10 2010
RRSounds May 10 2010
It’s a topic for another article, but I just can’t find a logical explanation for why the iPod would make less dynamic range make sense. Personal listening means the ability to set your own volume level, and data compression and poor-quality headphones mean that over-compressed music sounds worse, not better. The charges levied against the iPod might just as easily be directed at the Cassette Walkman of the 80s, on which people routinely listened to mix tapes of their own creation.
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“…music blaring out of a cellphone…”
(There are some MP3 encoders that respond to this by granting you to calibrate against your own listening ability, using that as the perceptual model for measuring psychoacoustic entropy during the encoding process.)
Create some music music Create some motion motion Create some noise noise Home News Artists Features Reviews Archives Contact Search May 10 2010 The Myth of Falling Fidelity, and Audio History Unburdened by Fact
by Peter Kirn
Abit of perspective is also needed.
[...] Kirn at CDM wrote a fairly roomy response to an article in the New York Times regarding the role of [...]
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In the disco of plausible fallacies, articles like this one never define the terms of their basic dissertation – the “generation of listeners” trading convenience for quality:
bill May 10 2010
nice rant peter.
There’s a base line to my infinite rant. (I know, I know – get to it already.)
PJ May 10 2010
Audio quality is nice, but FFS there’s a point of diminishing returns. When I put in a CD and play it on my stereo, I’m listening to the music, not the speakers. Shut your mouth and dance! 90% of the people who think compressed audio is atrociously lesser to uncompressed couldn’t tell the difference in a double-blind test.
I don’t think consumers are necessarily to blame either — the problem is that what is being offered is truly unappealing, terrible, and over-priced.
R Pellegrini May 10 2010
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tony May 10 2010
[...] of sometimes-arbitrary, designed-by-committee industry specifications. But, in the environment of my rant about perceived myths in audio, what can we hear, [...]
And don’t even get me started on vinyl rippers…
Here’s the latest offender:
Lee Faulkner May 10 2010
The story conflates anything from comparing analog to digital to dynamic compression in mastering to data compression, so it’s hard to know where to start. But I’ll do my best to divide out the issues. (After all, you merely have to read this article, because you’ve read this story – substituting a pair of sources here, a couple of metaphors there – again for about ten years.)
Jonah May 10 2010
The ipod and other portable music players are amazing things. Formats like MP3 and AAC make music available and available in ways they never were before. Everyone agrees the earbuds are terrible (and I don’t think this is a parenthetical point to the discussion, but there I go with the parentheses). This would not be a hot-button, recurring topic, if it didn’t resonate with people though. There are folks out there convinced (whether rightly or wrongly) that they can tell the difference between lossy and lossless files and want the quality and flexibility of an open-source format even if it means the file sizes are larger and downloading is clunkier. If there is an audience, small though it may be, companies interested in serving it and increasingly cheap and easy storage space and bandwidth, I’m unclear as to why one would argue against it.
Mp3 does not deliver an equally enjoyable experience as CD or Vinyl. Bottom line. Screw the science. Until we sort the muff out, make Hi-Res audio readily available again,
beats from dre AMIEIndia.web View heading - ATH h, we are short changing ourselves and our listeners. And our listeners WILL allow us to teach them but right now we have abdicated this responsibilty to Apple Corp. Suckers!
I wish I can read an article called “Video Quality Suffers in the Age of the Internet – Unlike Audio” whenever soon!
But dude, audio and video have progressed at different rates. We’ve topped out a 24bit/196khz in prosumer audio, and yet, even professional video has a hard time keeping up with 4
4 video.
Lee
Signal to Noise and Dynamic Range – winner:ipod
This is all anecdotal to the extreme, but I just don’t buy it when people argue that hi-fi is becoming _more_ expensive and less accessible. A dwindle in cost-effectiveness is the inverse of what technology does in any area. Computer-aided design & simulation has probably performed miracles in loudspeaker R&D. Dynamic loudspeakers are perplexing animals (cabinets/resonance issues, multiple drivers, phase issues, crossovers, bass reflex, horns & waveguides) and many articles discussing home hi-fi in the old days will reference electrostatic loudspeakers (i.e. speakers without cupboards & crossovers) as the state of the art back then.
When the first CD’s were being tested, i didn’t like it. You could hear all the needless background noises like traffic outside the studio (classical music), noisy amplifiers (the rest) etc.
Then they came in ultimate production, and i got a Chuck Berry recording.
50′s recordings, prehistoric.
They were always cheap ultra low quality vinylalbums, and now there was this cheap CD.
It sounded better as my own studio albums released on LP, let alone on cassette. Shocking. Dynamics, placing of the musicians, different amplifiers….
No need to say all of my (amateur) musician-friends bought those expensive but amazing machines among a few months. (musicians and
money:-)
Earl Vickers May 10 2010
Of way, your listening habits are also in your control. There’s nothing stopping any of us from sitting and really listening to a whole album. I’ve never been so concerned about what The American People are doing so much as, you know, myself, individually. Do you still sit down and listen to an album, end to end? If not, why not?
as for mp3s – hard drive space is getting clay cheap now. there is no real reason why all of our music collections are not made of flac/wav files. god disallow you need to actually choose to leave some of your collection at family when you leave the house. my ipod is only 8gb and still fits a very decent amount of wav albums on it. I remember it wasn’t long ago that I was fortunate if I got to prefer from 4 or 5 tapes that I brought with me in a backpack when I left the house. It seems gluttonous to me to need more.
AudioNowcast May 11, 2010 episode 84 AudioNowcast May 10 2010
Maarten Aerts May 10 2010
Kyle McDonald May 10 2010
i can relate it to watching movies. i am constantly annoying friends because many people i know want to talk or interchange glimpses or whatever during the course of a film. i like to sit and watch uninterrupted til the end. (i even watch credits if it was good). most people are so diverted or used to sensory bombardment to concentrate on one thing.
In video arrest, the difference is more pronounced. Modern digital cameras now shoot in increasingly high-quality audio, which formerly was often more ziped than the video. My new Olympus E-PL1 actually shoots uncompressed PCM audio alongside its film JPEG video.
your claim of DVD having “better-than-CD audio quality” is simply erroneous.
I would submit that even the best high-end hifi of today, installed in an uncooperative room can sound less jolly to some listeners than the ipod. More so than in approximately whichever other conversation, “your mileage may vary”.
Just Noise May 10 2010
As far as loudness wars go. Kids kids kids, I can tell you of a time way back when a Jukebox was something the size of a refrigerator (not a Preference on a piece of software) and ‘played’ medium pressed into 7″ discs of petrol. And all the guys mastering those 7″ discs (especially the ones marketed towards ‘the kids’) were told to make THEIR 7″ record louder than the others in that jukebox. That they can do it in another way thru digital code is really nothing new, ‘cept it does sound really really bad.
One question regarding listening habits is why people need to listen to music constantly, most of the time just to cover silence or any background noise.
[...] started to think that things were a little slow lately until Peter dropped his manifesto “The Myth of Falling Fidelity, and Audio History Unburdened by Fact” followed by the postscipt “Your Hearing, According to MP3: Sounds for Humans, Played [...]
and lastly, i think it’s scary how little emphasis is placed on a treated room and properly placed “quality” gear with a specific listening rank. most “audiophiles” i have worked with (yawn) seldom take this into account.
Today we, as producers of music, can no longer have any such truce of idea that the listener’s experience of our work is going to, in any way, resemble what we intended.
On the subject of surround sound, it’s really only necessary to mention the great missed opportunity of Ambisonics. If only…
[...] this must read article about The Myth of Falling Fidelity, and Audio History Unburdened by Fact. If you are interested in music you might be interested in this article on the progressive discussion [...]
But that’s not the argument here. Apparently, the lowest-quality audio distribution format can be compared to the highest-quality video format. That just doesn’t make sense.
Sorry, Peter, but you miss the point. It’s not about formats, it’s how listening habits have changed over time. New generation doesn’t know how a good recording should sound. Everyone is listening music with crappy sounding ipods.
Actually, if you can’t narrate the feud, your point doesn’t material either.
just b May 10 2010
agree with most of Peter’s points
Enough with the audiophile jihad snobbery..people make great records with ‘inferior’ equipment all the time. Where does that leave all that BS?
And who says these digital compression artifacts are even to be avoided? We’ve come to adopt and adjust a great many coloration that is imposed by studio and mastering engineers and listening gear. We listen on our “warm” tube amplifiers, on the speakers with our favorite tone, or the headphones that give a little more oomph — what the artist did before the song was compressed to 192 kbit/s was already long lost in a range of obstacles.
adam parkinson May 10 2010
Hmm May 10 2010
A discussion of how compressed audio compares to an audio CD actually isn’t an easy discussion. Even simple metrics like frequency range or signal-to-noise percentage aren’t directly applicable to audio that uses perceptual encoding techniques, because by definition, they use variable encoding rates to change from border to frame. The quality of the encoder and its settings make a big difference. Suffice to say, it’s possible to create an MP3 or AAC file that isn’t as satisfying as an audio CD, or to create one that – even for many trained ears – is satisfying. I won’t even try to discussion the merits here, because to get the answer technically correct, we’d must do more work.
[...] with the Bangals, voyaging in the summer and what accurate is Abby Dearest, we also talk about this article on 1 of our favorite blogs Create Digital Music at Peter Kirn, has technology assisted or ache [...]
Anonymous May 10 2010
god forbid you need to actually choose to leave some of your collection at home when you leave the house
Thanks for great piece, Peter. I agree that the pedal to convenience does not necessarily hint a drive to cheap fidelity. We can have both, immediately.
Kevin Connor May 10 2010
The iPod? No, I’m talking about the Japanese transistor radio. By contrast, it makes the iPod looks beautiful unbelievable. The transistor radio had:
People who like the highest quality are always going to argue for it by saying “good enough” is just not good enough for them. I’m not justifying the vitriol of any audiophile, and I do not believe compression is the “death of music,” but I am safeguarding the right of a company to offer something to serve that crowd and, ultimately, the music itself.
what is especially upsetting in the loudness combat, although, is the tendency to remaster classical recordings with the same types of mastering techniques as present-day popup creations. of course the recent Beatles remasters are an manifest example, but also the Big Star box set and several of the recent R.E.M reissues all profoundly different the material with over-compression. I think it’s a tremendous act of bad belief to rerelease this music in any other format other than one that ventures to preserve as accurately as possible the original dynamic range and volume of the master recordings.
Whatever the reason for their supposed newsworthiness, the problem with these stories isn’t their demands about the variable quality of music listening. I think it’d be hard to overstate just how sub-optimal real-world listening by real-world consumers can get. The problem is that these journalists, inexperienced in the substantial history of the technology they’re covering, falsely nail a scientific trend.
booml May 10 2010
there do exists standards for causative. when consumer electronics companies differ for a particular product that doesn’t make neither the consumer or the company a culprit. the standards exist as a reference but it’s not a statute that is levied on people. professionals in several industry decide what’s best for their R&D for their product. although the music industry may seem to be taking a step backwards. engineering and mastering are actually pushing fidelity forward. in time, consumer electronics may grab up to high fidelity but remember, high fidelity exists at several levels and audiophiles have always been a niche market. i used to get AES.org and SMPTE.org newsletters. i should keep subscribing to them to reside updated on audio engineering breakthroughs.
Good points, Peter
Very well written article and I agree with it completely. I used to be an “audiophile” refusing to listen to lossy encoded music, but I got much more pragmatic about it. Still, what I do not appreciate about the new generation is kids listening to music on their mobile phone speakers which sounds bad and annoying.
johncalderon.com» Blog Archive » Read Music Notes Easily – For Adults. May 10 2010
@Dan: Hi I’ve heard this too, and it amazes me. We should collaborate on an album specifically targeted at blaring cell phones. You know, “Music for Cell Phones”.
re: Myth #2: MP3s reduce audio fidelity in the appoint of mobility
Microwave Prince May 10 2010
But the chief thesis of the entire article – one we’ve seen before – is this:
Speaking of which… studio monitors have fallen in price quickly. We’re all versed with that phenomenon.
@Peter: it would be great if everyone heard things the same way, but the specifics of MP3 and AAC style perceptual compression are constrained by a great many non-universal ideologies — Brandenburg, Fraunhofer, decades of psychoacoustics researchers, etc. Check out section 5.7.1 of the article you linked to: he says there are “some hints” that we can perceive complex sounds above 16 kHz, but that the “full scientific proof has not been given”. Then: “it is a good encoding tactics to limit the frequency response of an MP3 or AAC encoder to 16 kHz (or under if only).”
Bill Z May 10 2010
I really think that portable consumer devices for playing music (right from the car stereos and walkmans) are criminal of the “loudness war.” It’s definitely nothing new, but the iPod naturally is part of it. The should have had compressors built into these things from the opening.
Good rant!
Couple of points:
If you actually make music it has gotten much cheaper to make high fidelity music that fills mp3 players.
Peter Kirn May 10 2010
Source: Peter DiCola, False Premises, False Promises, Future of Music Coalition (2006)
Wow… AC-3 is a compressed and lossy format, definitely not as good (both on paper and to the ear) than an audio CD!
ShowcaseJase May 10 2010
This topic has been discussed to necrosis. At the risk of giving away the ending, low-bitrate MP3s don’t sound very good. Higher-bitrate MP3s do sound pretty good. (The same is true of Apple’s AAC-encoded audio, which incidentally, shares the audio codec being used on those DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and consumer digital video recorders.) In fact, bizarrely, the New York Times article doesn’t compare any hard mathematics on perception of high-bitrate MP3s and AACs to CDs. It just takes it as a given that they aren’t as good, without any actual research.
mp3 and aac are removing great amounts of bits to accomplish file size. i still would love to hear the beatles remasters on a blu ray 24/96k playback, 16bit cds have issues too.
Thankfully, in my case the white iPod buds decided their own fate, by not fitting in my ear.
Polite May 10 2010
A disgustful tuner. In order to retention space, cost, and power consumption, the tuner in early radios – the “transistor” in transistor radio – was often sub-par. Say what you will about MP3s or online streams; at least you don’t must tune them out of the air. Weak signal? Weak music.
A crappy speaker in a crappy housing. Want an insider tip for how to make a bad speaker sound even aggravate? Here’s a hint: put it inside a rattling plastic housing.
AM radio for music delivery. The sarcasm of talking about MP3 as a step backward is nothing when compared to AM radio, which supported mono output and bandwidth of only 10 kHz. Analog mono FM radio sounds better, let alone a current average digital file. Only later did transistor radios add FM radio support, and it was some time before stations embraced the format.
Terrible, mono earbuds. The iPod’s weakest link is the lousy earbuds Apple ships with the device, but early transistor radios were even aggravate. Aside from holding one up to you ear, you could plug in an earbud – yes, one earbud, in one ear. The earbud was terrible, and mono. The signal was terrible, and mono. And you had one in only one ear.
Your Ears Can Deceive You May 10 2010
I’d probably agree with 85-90% of this article. I’ve read a crowd of articles addressing the loudness wars, but don’t remember more than couple placing the blame on iPods. It is a important issue in my paperback and I place all blame with artists. They usually aren’t audiophiles and many undergo from tinnitus. When comparing a dynamic mastering to a limited brickwalled version, the latter is almost always chosen as sounding “hotter”.
A great article exposing both poor journalism and poor research, and about as amusing to read was the dispute afterwards where several great points were joined by the pro’s.
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CFlick May 10 2010
And of course, an ipod, walkman, minidisc, were intended to use while you were doing something else.
So audio engineers, acting as foot soldiers in a so-called volume war, are often enlisted to increase the overall volume of a recording.
because numerous listeners who care apt listen something as near apt the native unlocked version as feasible, digital files of high-quality vinyl rips and out-of-print audiophile reissues like the MFSL are the merely alternative.
The variable in all of this that’s more important than the technology is the listener. Listeners are fickle and unpredictable. They don’t always condense on music. They don’t always care about fidelity. “They” don’t always agree – which is why some people don’t replace those default earbuds, while others blow thousands of dollars on listening equipment.
@Microwave Prince Yup, it’s about choice and the kiddies are used to mp3′s while I grew up with CDs and records. Maybe many just don’t understand the differences and the importance of a good audio install? It’s hard to explain to some people that “computer speakers” generally don’t sound good. I can’t state the number of times I’ve seen kiddies hiking and listening to music blaring out of a cellphone. Jesus, it sounds terrible! The compression is killing that puny mono speaker … don’t you even realize??
AC-3 and DTS both appliance lossy compression. AC-3 of special note does not sound very good at all, and certainly not CD-quality. There’s DVDA which is another story, but since you reference Netflix and VHS, i suppose you are speaking about audio which accompanies consumer video. Blu-Ray eliminated this issue entirely.
Interestingly enough my dad has come to the conclusion that he was way too interested in sound per se, so much so that came in the way of the actual music itself. This is, I think, a pretty common ailment in the world of hi-fi.
Actually, I think there’s an answer to the White Earbud problem: help those you love. Give the award of headphones.
Audio Myths Workshop « Raymond Roman's Visual Blog May 10 2010
I love iTunes, and I have zero problem with downloading my music. I’m not hung up on physicality. I am hung up on access to uncompressed (data) music.
nezoomie May 10 2010
The mart has driven the quality of music to where it is today. The masses have forever treated their purchases as disposable except in the late 80s when the choice to buy a CD carried a surcharge.
As for the other points, I think digital audio fidelity went past numberwang at 44100 Hz/16 bit/Stereo. As much as my compartment phone will generate high resolution pictures with the fidelity of a polaroid, my 192 000 Hz 24 bit sound card wont make a difference if someone is listening on their $100 stereo. No matter how many channels you throw in, I’ve had the best sense of spatial depth in recorded audio listening through a couple of stereo headphones.
e.g.: In the old Amiga day I was listening to a lot of MODs. Later I transported these
to modern MOD player on newer Computers with better DACs. I was totally flattened because on the new higher end system the MODs sounded terrible.
I have to say this why not advance to making music instead the typical stereo but more like Surround manner, but then again not a lot of people have surround system to laud a song made in surround sound that would be the next step to innovating evolving music. I heard some artist has started this mission, but of coarse where are you going to play this sort of music live when it would be impossible to appreciated the spatial perception that you are falling into deep rich sound effects of a guy playing the trumpet and its going around the entire 7.1 system or better yet moving around in circles giving you like shit that trumpet sound is going around the entire circle.
dyscode May 10 2010
Again, the Industry part of the Music Industry must be accented, as one lad was saying they have bookkeepers replacing A&R men now… So you can bet your granny that they’ll be coiling out the least they can get away with, to cut distribution costs etc., etc.
Dan Wilcox May 10 2010
lastly, i am tired of people harping on the crappy white headphones that come with ipods; apple assumes you are going to upgrade these “freebies”. it’s relevant to the product yet keeps their margins high. if you think they suck then get a better pair, if you don’t you’re one of those people i see in exhibits that spend all of 2.5 seconds looking at the paintings.
Cheers from Argentina!
Peter Kirn May 10 2010
People mention that fewer money is creature cost on audio gear, but…
I have a slightly different take. IMHO, the iPod (with decent in-ear or headphone) system outperforms the phonograph-based hi-fi systems of old in quite a few ways, and would therefore be “higher fidelity”.
Mal May 10 2010
Great stuff, though I would point out that a film being in 16:9 aspect ratio doesn’t make it ‘high definition’, it’s more the size of the negate that is important. All other things being equal, a 70mm negative is going to be much more HD than a 35mm one. Also, a bigger screen does not mean ‘higher definition’ it just means a bigger picture. As you increase screen real estate for a given size of negative, the more the film grain becomes visible. A Super 8 print isn’t going to magically become more frail when shown on an IMAX screen.
The iPod is not to reprehend — portable music experiences are very private and clearly a tradeoff to promote portability. MP3 fidelity is nice — anything at 192 kpbs encoding or better is practically the same as 44.1 / 16 bit .AIFF / .WAV .
Nice article, I agree with your points. A couple spelling/grammar checks:
Digital technology is the magical box that allows us to produce, to share and to listen to 8-bit overcrushed retro tune or perfectly mixed jazz conferences ( without lowpass filtering and unavoidable saturation due to most of the-best-in-the-market analog equipment ). We are free to listen to the same tune on our iPod or to our Hi-Fi speakers in a treated room.
The ‘great unwashed’ as you put it would mostly become instantly embarrassed if you tried to lecture them about the quality of digital audio, and so it’s easy to see why companies who stream and dispense music take advantage of this multitude by rolling out their standard file at lower quality; even if a minor ratio did notice the quality degradation, the majority wouldn’t be able to explain what they were missing. And the suspicion would be raised with friends, who would almost certainly say they heard nothing wrong.
[...] is a great article over at create digital music, entitled The Myth of Falling Fidelity, and Audio History Unburdened by Fact by Peter Kirn. If you got a little more time on your hands, read the original, which provides lots [...]
fantastic article! I’ll take the fidelity of a 320k MP3 over a 45rpm any day!!!
Gavin@FAW May 10 2010
conversely, anyone that says DTS-MA doesn’t sound incredible is unconcerned. or maybe the real culprit is the recent tendancy to record/mix/master completely inside the box and the ebb of the method of more musical 2″tape? that’s where i’d start.
As someone who recorded on and listened to cassette tapes for years, I say thank you MP3.
I can put hours of hiss-free, (LP) crackle free music on a tiny little box with no rewinding or FForward. And my MP3 player never eats my music and spits out tape. You kids don’t know how good you have it. Great article.
@Jens (et al): I’m officially cutting myself off from the topic.
(@Peter) Bandwidth is ample and the internet is quite learned; if anything an internet distribution prototype that really takes vantage of the medium will be raising the standards for which you can experience any variety of music. I believe the format of the long-play will continue to contort, wonderfully as artists that already make the majority of their material on calculators to start establishing whole releases. The mp3 standard, though wonderful in its right, is a stepping stone to where the musical medium is heading.
I’m a bit disturbed. If a listener’s taste in music is subjective, isn’t it also possible that there is some class of oversight in testing audio fidelity by testing one genre opposition different? To me it seems that different genres reveal different results. For example, if the intent of a particular Classical recording is to re-create a live representation, I would think there would be a very different approach to its mixing/mastering than to that of a club layer destined House track or a Sgt. Pepper’s. If the playback of various recordings from different genres are likened to every other on the same middle, isn’t there also the likelihood that the listener could be letting their melodious biases mediate with their judgement?
the mp3 discussion will very soon be obsolete.
drive space is no longer an issue and more online labels
selling uncompressed/lossless audio.
I have my entire lossless music colletion on harddrive
and fill my 8gb iPod in 20 seconds on the go.
certainly, subjective to perception and quality of gear and listening context yet impossible to argue for CD.
“Higher-bitrate MP3s sound do pretty good”
Did you mean “Higher bitrate MP3s do sound pretty good” or “Higher bitrate MP3s’ sound do pretty well”?
I’m very dissatisfied in the lack of decent cheap warmhearted available stereo and home theater systems. For example, in best buy everything is marketed towards pedestal. Clarity, and high frequency are more tough to find
Nonsense. Again, do not confuse the performance of electronic gear, which nowadays is typically eminent at hunk market levels, with the performance of electromechanical gear, i.e., loudspeakers, which has ALWAYS been the weakest link in a decent home audio chain.
Too much of the debate over listening focuses on the technology and not the listener. The listener – and perception – is everything. And that leaves us to our final myth:
Producer May 10 2010
in response to the question concerning whether or not i listen to an entire album:
“…eliminate tones which are themselves inaudible, masked in the regular perception of music…”
Likewise, MP3s low-pass percolate approximately 17KHz even by 320Kbps. That’s decidedly mid-Fi — mediocrity glorified.
ideletemyself May 10 2010
Click here to annul reply.
really, i prefer vinyl, tubes and 2″ tape(and solid engineering) but would never give up my ipod w/great ‘phones and lossless files.
The prevalence of 320Kbps CBR just plays on everyone’s ignorance and paranoia of lossy compression. I think there was even a test that resolute that extreme bitrates like 320Kbps CBR didn’t do much to quell artifacts beyond what a given algorithm is capable of at 192Kbps VBR, so all people are doing with 320Kbps CBR (and the web stores that promote it) is wasting their space, bandwidth and batt life. People should use FLAC just aboutmething if you’re going for the ultimate in sound quality.
Chris Thorpe May 10 2010
I remember PC speakers sounding like pure honk back in the mid-90s, even pricier 2.1 systems. Today’s $50 2.1 Logitechs or Creatives don’t actually sound that bad out of the box. I’m not that horrified by the reality that a heap of listeners are going to hear my music on them rather than on something like my studio monitors. Better that than what you could get for $50 back in 1994.
hello May 10 2010
best
Jens Alfke May 10 2010
el capitan May 10 2010
On the loudness wars: corporatism, whilst being a effortless target, isn’t responsible. The truth is- and this you should know- is that until the early to mid 1990′s mastering gear couldn’t be pushed to make overs as easily and quietly as it can now. I have the Weiss DS1 in my room and no matter how many ruddy lights are blaring, it still sounds great. The technology to make albums this loud just didn’t exist in the previous decades, and once producers and artists began to notice that some albums were louder than others, everyone wanted their albums to be louder. I mix and produce every single day and I can tell you that the apply for louder masters almost always comes from the artist, not the label.
Photo (CC-BY-SA) Andrew*/nez.
Myth #5: Technology is the cause and determinant
Photo (CC) Alosh Bennett.
Josh Johnson May 10 2010
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for finally putting into words and taking the time to do so, what I’ve ALWAYS been dying to screech at people when they attempt and poo poo how distant sound quality has come…
Gaming: Games increasingly use compressed but relatively high-quality audio, approaching CD quality, and in digital surround formats. With intelligent surround mixing, this also leads to better channel disjunction and spatial disconnection, and a more pristine listening experience. Not only that, but because gamers use auditory hints to help them perceive where they and enemies are in space, anecdotally many non-musician gamers I’ve talked to are particular about their sound experience.
My recent AES periodical discussed this in more elaborate. It’s not available but on the AES website, but a video based on the slide introduction is at .
kj May 10 2010
Here’s the fable, from author Joseph Plambeck:
Mail
Website
The most important factors for ‘clarity’ and ‘high frequency’ of home audio today are the recorded material itself, the horns, and the room acoustics. (Leaving aside the listeners’ own age and high frequency hearing, of course.)
“Video Quality Suffers in the Age of the Internet – Unlike Audio”
By Peter Kirn['s imitation evil imaginary sibling]
Personally I find compressed music, of either breed again, more tiring to listen to than uncompressed music. I find it harder to concentrate with compressed music than uncompressed. There’s an impression that me music is lacking some sort of air/space. I like to listen to music, but when it’s compressed I usually feel like turning it off.
That’s when we accomplished that good audio relied on the entire fetter of : musicians, soundengineers, studio-(and its equipment), than the media it was mow, taped or burned on. Radio was always really low quality anyway.
My alternative rebuttal:
Peter Kirn May 10 2010
“Sorry, Peter, but you miss the point. It’s not about formats, it’s how listening habits have changed over time. New generation doesn’t know how a good recording should sound. Everyone is listening music with crappy sounding ipods.”
The iphone earbuds: if you need better sound you have to pay more. I’v by far found cheaper earbuds that sound better.
Luckily ($$) my kids are at the age (15-20) they don’t care about soundquality, at all times it’s their own music. (And that is also the answer to why young people don’t care about mp3-128 or 350 –remember your own puberty!)
In fairness, the author here is talking about “music.” If TV in HD is now the criterion, there isn’t an equivalent shift in the common format for delivery of musical albums (see myth #2). And that’s just – mostly. But the issue is, again, comparing different delivery formats for different delivery applications for different content. Sure, the musical album hasn’t had the bound ahead that, say, television has, in the move from standard definition content to high-definition content. But by the same token, would you compare the 16:9 cinematic experience – which was already “high fidelity” and “high definition” in optical movie before the advent of these technologies – in the same way? In fact, if you did, the advances in theater audio have been greater in the theater than the advances in film presentation. While digital projection and 3D have very recently cultivated the location, urban movie cinemas getting engraved into subdivided rooms actually made a lot of movies smaller, not bigger or “higher def.”
“Sorry, Peter, but you miss the point. It’s not about formats, it’s how listening habits have changed over time. New generation doesn’t know how a good recording should sound. Everyone is listening music with crappy sounding ipods”
2010: The Year Sound Art Broke « Wow Cool May 10 2010
In the process, they miss the real story of how listeners listen.
In one way, the music business has been the martyr of its own technological success: the ease of loading songs onto a computer or an iPod has meant that a generation of fans has happily traded fidelity for portability and convenience. This is the obstacle the industry faces in any effort to create higher-quality — and more expensive — ways of listening.
If you have ever listened to audiophile grade equipement you would have one knowing of the publish. Just because you cant tell a difference doesnt mean there isnt one, it sounds just like you dont have access to proper equipment and youve never heard what recorded music CAN sound like, so you wrote one attitude piece to justify your ignorance. You are just bad.
That said, yes,
beats for dre, I agree – there are still some questions that are actually interesting:
oid May 10 2010
Here’s the thing whereas – shouldn’t we be expecting the best quality for our download or however? I mean if I’m paying out of my hard-earned money to hear a band’s matter, I ambition the best quality forgery of what they recorded not some cheap “lite” version of the masterpiece they created in the laboratory. I would favor them to give me the best that’s on offer, and if I fantasy saving some space on my iPod, I’ll convert and constrict it myself – otherwise, ought I want to immerse myself in the most original reproduction then I would have the chance to do that too. The only offering I’ve seen that’s close this is the Beatles USB Apple, entire the cardinal scrapbooks in FLAC in 44.1kHz 24bit (not the utmost obtainable but still) at £200, roughly 93p per track, which is on a par with some of iTunes’ offerings of a poorer quality.
“Being there” subjective elements – winner: hifi (IMHO headphones have an unreal in-your-head vibe)
emeidos May 10 2010
I hear a lot of otherwise good music that gives me a headache halfway into the album because of awful compression, especially on vocal tracks.
And except … anyone want to compare the AAC/MP3 /ipod player to that cassette deck I trained my listening ears on! LOL!
Bye,
Schnafte
pob May 10 2010
Steven Sullivan May 10 2010
Entries fared Comments feed
But yes, the more I read these, the more I want to know more about just what *we* can hear. Sure, it’s easy to brush off what the unwashed masses may or may not be hearing. But it’s an interesting question, whether – depending on content and encoding parameters – the pros, too, could be cheated by lossy compression in a double-blind test.
there’s one issue about the loudness wars that i’d like to point out, despite agreeing with many of your articulate responses.
Enthusiasts from communities like Hydrogen Audio used to clutch double-blind “ABX” listening tests in order to fathom the “transparecy” of audio codecs. It was generally resolved that, as you approached 192Kbps VBR in any modern, adult codec (L.A.M.E. or iTunes MP3, MP4/AAC, Ogg Vorbis, etc.), you’re reaching the point where the original is totally indistinguishable from the lossy. They used collections of very short “problem samples”, such as a characteristic Autechre snippet and a recording of castanets that had the tendency to draw out audible artifacts like pre-echo. You can basically rest positive that 99.99% of music is going to be totally indistinguishable from the original at ~192Kbps VBR lossy with a modern, mature encoder.
i don’t think there’s much to complain about vis-a-vis new music being mastered to the standards and tastes of the daytime. of course brick walled mastering, as you point out, tends to go hand-in-hand with the kinds of “drums and vocals” techniques that sound good coming out of wal-mart speakers or from the radio. and if you’re trying to make mainstream music today, chances are you want your music miscellaneous for those environments.
I can’t begin to tell you how true that statement is.
##########cellist May 10 2010
Compressed formats are great for on-the-go listening and for most it is “good enough.” So are a cloud of “good enough”‘s in the world like Chryslers, polyester fabric and point-and-shoot cameras (I’m a flare of all of them). But if there is a market that wants a Cadillac, silk canvases or a professional grade camera, why should a company be reproved for dispatching that need along with offering items across the quality spectrum.
“…192Kbps…”
John May 10 2010
In terms of the past being “Hi Fidelity” I constantly hear music from the past on DVD’s and BluRay accustomed in movies, (often during credits where it’s free of SFX and dialog) that sounds imaginary. I run and get my CD of the same tracks (original album CD’s), play then on the same system and they sound blah in comparison. Then I just want the whole album in whatever form the film track was remastered, remixed, withdrew whatever. And it’s not just a matter of loudness… the original CD’s just don’t sound as good. So in that adore I think the possibility of better fidelity is right here, right now!
beats as dre The Myth of Falling Fidelity, and Aud
What a rum
Linear Mode
