Attn audiophiles

[unbibium]

On my friends list, I have at least one audiophile, several musicians, and a handful of people who can understand all kinds of sciencey things.

Would any of you agree that MP3 is ruining the sound of music, as this WSJ article makes a case for?

Comments

iPod People

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

It is certainly not "ruining" music per say so much as once again compromising audio fidelity in order to cater to the mass medium of the day.

Yes, MP3s format plus the common playback systems are significantly below what is technologically possible in audio fidelity. But a large number of people don't notice -- a fair number of people reportedly couldn't tell the diffence betwen a live band and a phonograph record behind a curtain even with technology of 100 years ago. Many of those who do notice don't care too much due to the trade off of convenience.

(Also, I think a large portion of recent generations really don't know what live music sounds like in the first place, having experienced it either not at all or only occasionally in venues where it is heard only through sub-optimal sound systems.)

Paramount Records blues series records reportedly only got okays to be issued after a test playback on a cheap windup machine with a partially blunted needle, which marketing said was typical of what the rural African-American target audience was listening to them on. Some of the Paramount engineers were reportedly frustrated that the takes they thought of better audio fidelity were often rejected due to this. (Some people think those records sound so poor because that was how primitive recording technology was at the time; one can sometimes make their jaws drop by playing them a clean copy of a contemporary Victor Orthophonic recording. In retrospect one might wish that 1920s audiophiles had at least as much interest in Blind Lemon Jefferson as in Jesse Crawford organ solos, but such is life.)

Likewise, some early rock-'n'-roll was reportedly engineered with how it would sound over to teenagers listening to it on AM radio through the speakers in their automobiles. Thus the fidelity notably below that heard on classical records from the same time.

Re: iPod People

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

I should have known.

I had a lecturer at DeVry, an old Presbyterian minister, who always confessed "there's no such thing as the good old days. They're just old."

There must have been some audio quality peaks.

Re: iPod People

[atillathehung.livejournal.com]

I know that Pink Floyd and Zeppelin put really loving care into their recordings. To my ear, you can also hear a lot of cool crap happening if you listen to Queensryche's "Operation Mindcrime" on a good pair of headphones.

I think those sorts of bands were very creative in the studio, and there are certain engineers and producers who can really take a recording up a notch, regardless of the era.

Re: iPod People

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

(Also, I think a large portion of recent generations really don't know what live music sounds like in the first place, having experienced it either not at all or only occasionally in venues where it is heard only through sub-optimal sound systems.)

Man, tell me about it. Why is it that i can only go to shows in places where the music is mixed by an idiot and played at earbleed levels from two ginormous stacks of speakers flanking the stage? Is there a worse way to do it? I can't think of one.

Re: iPod People

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

At a certain point, live rock music was starting to wear thin on me too.

For example, Hung Dynasty's playing has been steadily improving for two years, and I'd been to a few shows where their sound mixing was pretty good. But there's still a good 33% chance I'll be able to hear the guitars but not the vocals, or the rhythm guitar but not the lead guitar, etc. It's god to be harder than it looks, because I know they're paying attention.

And the last time I saw them was at Yucca Tap Room, where they followed Wensday. Wensday was mixed beautifully, and HD was not, because one of the amps had a tube that was way out of balance for that particular venue, and they forgot to bring the one that would have balanced better. Ironically, their striving to bring good equipment was their downfall, as I gather cheap transistor amps don't have that problem. The whole discussion is on my LJ somewhere.

Re: iPod People

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

Not "early" rock'n'roll, exactly, but more like mid-to-late '60s. And the guy who did that may wind up paying for his crimes.

[pootrootbeer.livejournal.com]

"Ten years ago, music was warmer; it was rich and thick, with more tones and more 'real power.' But newer records are more brittle and bright. They have what I call 'implied power.' It's all done with delays and reverbs and compression to fool your brain."

This quote could have been made in any year between 1957 and 2007. Audio engineers always seem to think the latest new idea in music reproduction is ruining fidelity -- from the 33 1/3 RPM LP to the cassette tape to the compact disc to the MP3 format.

[halfabee.livejournal.com]

There's a radio commercial which makes me laugh. It's from a local "audiophile" store which seems to suggest buying $1000 headphones to use with an iPod.

I'd also like to kill whomever thought using a DCT on audio was a good idea. (DCT has to be the messiest pseudo frequency transform as it manages to corrupt both phase and frequency.)

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

Is DCT something that MP3, AAC and OGG all use? Or just one of the three?

[halfabee.livejournal.com]

MP3, AAC and Vorbis all use types of DCT.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

Is DCT something specific, or does it stand for Digital Compression Technology and refer to any means of turning many bits into less bits?

Or, rather, are there lossy compression schemes that don't have the drawbacks you mentioned?

[halfabee.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_cosine_transform

[jecook]

Another thing that the article mentions is that the tracks are being released at the top of the the level ceiling, which washes out a good chunk of the nuances and subtle tones.

If I want music to be loud, I'll turn my amp up, dammit.

I am in total agreement: the MP3 format is not that great of a format. I'll take Vorbis over mp3 any day, and the next player I buy will be capable of playing it out of the box, or via a firmware replacement such as rockbox. (and in fact, I'm eying one right now, I'm just waiting for the $150 to become availible before I jump on it.)

[davetheinverted]

Having ripped our entire CD collection to ogg (and also to FLAC, but that's gonna be more for home use), I'm definitely interested in players that can handle it. Which one are you looking at? And tell me more of this firmware replacement....

Dav2.718

[kirkjerk.livejournal.com]

I was once-upon a time a musician, but am nearly the opposite of an audiophile. As long as the fidelity isn't distractingly bad, like external speakers trying to run off of headphone power, I'm generally content, and more interested in the core ideas of the music.

[surferelf.livejournal.com]

Me too. I'm a former musician that doesn't even own a decent set of speakers. Unless the sound is so bad that it gets in the way of enjoying the song, I don't notice it. I listened to the clips in the sidebar, and couldn't honestly say that I would be able to tell them apart in a blind test.

People don't fall in love with music because of the quality of the recordings. The music I loved was on old, scratched LPs played on a shabby stereo that my Dad got from a frat house. Later, there were the 3rd or 4th generation dubbed cassettes of coolness I couldn't hear on the radio, and probably couldn't buy in a record store even if I had any money. Those got played in a walkman or crappy plastic boom boxes with 3" or 4" cones.

The guys interviewed for the article are highly trained ears. They make their living off of them, so I don't doubt that what they're saying is true. However, I think it is safe to say that the reason why people aren't enjoying listening to pop music has almost nothing to do with the way they mix the music, and has more to do with the fact that what they're mixing are crappy songs.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

It's possible that you're right, though Leo Laporte mentioned a study about how the brain handles compressed or low-fidelity music, which concluded that it has to work harder to fill in the blanks, and that has certain effects. I'll have to look it up.

[atillathehung.livejournal.com]

No, I wouldn't agree. Really, I think most recordings are ruined before we rip them and turn them into MP3s. They're just mastered too loud.

Even if the mastering were spot-on, I'd still say MP3s aren't ruining anything. It's all in how you use them. When I'm running, I listen to my MP3 player. When I'm at home really listening to music, I'll listen to CDs or LPs. Nothin's ruined.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

The "mastered too loud" argument seems to have been around longer than compressed music has been for sale.

I remember being discouraged from buying Rush's latest album in 2001 for that exact reason.

[atillathehung.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's true.

I think a few people here have (rightly) said that someone is always crabbing that it doesn't sound like the "good ol' days."

You know what really ruins the sound quality of music these days? Bands like the White Stripes. I don't have anything against their music so much (hey, at least it's two real people playing real instruments). It's that it sounds like it was recording in a Dumpster in a hailstorm with a microcassette recorder.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I actually read that this morning in the print version of the WSJ. It is all kinds of stupid.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

Well, except for this one guy, who was ignored:

Larry Klein, noted for his work with Joni Mitchell, said, "If something sounds really good on an average pair of speakers, it will sound great on earbuds. I can't imagine mixing a record so that it sounds better on earbuds."

The problem I've found listening to music on any set of head phones is: it cuts outside sounds and lets you hear how bad something really is. Like, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sound pretty good over ordinary speakers, but when I first heard them through my Walkman, I was painfully aware that three of those guys were harmonizing and one wasn't.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

Once I brought my guitar to my grandparents' house to play it for my uncle, who had an acoustic guitar. He said he could hear mistakes better through the headphones, when really my guitar just wasn't well-tuned.

CSN&Y, to me, sounds like they're optimized for large outdoor concerts.