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Does Going Digital Mean Missing Music?
arlanTLDR writes "The Seattle PI is running a story about how the MP3 format is the sign of a musical apocalypse. Apparently, many top music producers are 'howling' over the fact that files in a compressed format contain 'less than 10 percent of the original music on the CDs.' Is this just sensationalist FUD, or is there something to the assertion that listening to an MP3 is like hearing music 'through a screen door?'" The article mentions that the iPod and its cheap earbuds bear some of the responsibility for rendering this degradation in sound quality less objectionable.
I remember AM tube radios.
Now quit complaining and get off my lawn.
You will be surprised at just how much of that 90% of sounds produced our ear cannot understand.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Clearly, all that hard work to polish the recorded sound isn't really very important to people.
Doesn't bode well for the planned obsolescence system and it's efforts to shift us to new hi-def hardware.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
10% of Britney Spears or the Aguilera Monster is fine with me, although 5% would be better.
Seriously... 6% of any given Britney Spears song is still sufficient to cause internal hemorrhaging. The other 94%, if added back, would just be salt on the wound.
load "$",8,1
Saying that MP3s sport less than 10% of the music of a CD is just plain stupid. Perhaps 10% of the data, but frankly that would only be a low bit rates. That is a little like saying that radio is destroying music because it is not CD-quality. Everybody has a different tolerance. For me 128 just won't do it but up that to 256 and I can't tell the difference. These people are just dinosaurs afraid of the future. I'd take a high bit rate 6-channel AAC file over a CD any day of the week,
It's just whining. There have been numerous double-blind ABX tests, many done by the folks over at Hydrogenaudio.org, comparing MP3 files to AIFFs, and with the right codec and right bitrates (depending on the type of source material), it's possible to get an MP3 that only the most refined ears can discriminate from the original. [1]
a ssical/mp3test.html. While well-trained ears could discriminate between 128kbit MP3s and PCM, they could not reliably tell the difference between 256kbit and PCM, on average. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Of course, it's quite possible to make an MP3 that sounds like a tin-can telephone with one end held underwater, and I'd argue that many of the consumer-ripped files floating around the P2P networks fall into this category, but these files only exist *because* there aren't legitimate, professionally-made, DRM-free MP3s. (And because some people like getting stuff for free and don't much care about the quality when they do. But I do think there is a market for and profit in digitally-delivered music, for the people who can do it right.)
As more music begins to be distributed as MP3s, sound engineers will doubtless (if they have not already) begin studying the codecs and encoding procedures in order to wring the most quality out of a particular bit rate. Many amateurs and enthusiasts have already done this, and there is a sizable body of work devoted to the topic -- including the LAME encoder itself.
Also, looking towards the future, while CDs have pegged the standard for digital music as 2 channel, 44.1kHz, 16-bit PCM, there is no reason why an appropriately-crafted MP3 file cannot *exceed* it in terms of quality. The Apple iPod already supports (slightly) higher sample rates, I believe, and if consumers desire it [2], there's no reason why modern digital formats cannot encapsulate very high-definition audio.
The only people who I hear whining about MP3 are those with either an ulterior motive and a desire to try and keep the industry from moving away from a distribution model that revolves around physical objects, or those who just don't understand the technology. (There are a very small core of audiophiles and techies who seem to dislike MP3 because they prefer some other format, usually either for ethical/political reasons or technical ones, and there certainly is an argument in favor of using lossless formats in lieu of MP3 for distribution, but overall MP3 strikes a good balance between quality and portability. [3])
[1] One 'competition' that pitted serious self-described audiophiles against modern codecs is described in detail here: http://www.geocities.com/altbinariessoundsmusiccl
[2] Which is a big 'if.' The buying public, to date, has shown little interest in high-definition audio as such. The only exception to this is multichannel audio, but that only in movie soundtracks for surround sound.
[3] This does raise the question, though, of why the legitimate music-download sites don't take a cue from the late, great, AllOfMp3.com and just allow the *customers* to choose their format of choice for their downloads. There's really no particular excuse not to at least offer a few different quality/size options, particularly for popular music that is going to be enjoyed in a variety of settings (automobiles, portables, home stereos -- each lends itself to a slightly different EQ and compression).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If music is only stored as an MP3 than yes we will be loosing some of the music. Flac would fix that. Now to the question, are MP3s and cheap earbuds ruining music? I would say the lost of dynamic range in modern CDs, the nightmare that is Clearchannel, and the general decline in the quality of music are much greater threats. Let's not forget the draconian tactics of the music industry also seem to come into play. It has gotten to the point that I hate the record companies and just don't want to pay their prices.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Bad mixing. I can't find the link right now, but many people have complained about how CDs are being produced by mixing things loud and the sound getting clipped. Add to that most consumer CD players completely process the CD signal to hell and gone then they play it through cheap-ass head phones so seriously, the consumer has already lost a lot of quality. Most listeners won't notice the difference because of their playback set-up.
Of course, some people are now going for the "super bitrate" MP3s ripped directly from CDs, but they are the rare ones.
Also, if the mass market really wanted higher audio quality, don't you think any of the CD successors would have taken off already?
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Whilst it's true that lossy compressed audio can't sound exactly the same as the original, it's worth bearing in mind that people will listen to their portable mp3 player in places where the background noise is sufficient to drown out any imperfections the compression creates.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
because cd's are always perfect: http://georgegraham.com/compress.html
This is propoganda planted by the RIAA. The last gasp.
While the 90% figure may be overblowing things a bit, there is a noticeable loss of sound fidelity when converting to a compressed format. In fact, it's actually quite impressive that the loss is not even more noticeable than it is, and that is a testament to the brilliance of the original MP3 algorithms, which have been tweaked and honed to make the quality even better.
The fact remains, however, that most listeners, in most situations, don't care. For one thing, popular music has, since the 50s, been designed for listening to on cheap equipment. The dynamic range is enormously compressed, the sounds are often fuzzy to begin with, the voices are straight front and center. This can explain the dwindling popularity of classical and jazz, and the rise of the louder, simpler, more beat-oriented music like rock, rap, or pop. Note that I'm not saying the music is of lower quality, but that it can be reproduced "faithfully enough" on lower quality equipment.
I don't have any statistics, but I would bet that most music listening happens while the listener is doing something else: driving, working out, coding python scripts, etc. In those circumstances, an average listener is not going to notice a little swishiness in the cymbals, or lack of crispness on the trumpet's timbre.
Those who care (like me) will shell out the extra bucks for higher fidelity. Those who don't care, which are in the majority, will use whatever technology is most convenient.
My guitar chord generator.
No worries! If you want high quality stuff, like sound board recordings of live shows of decent artists that aren't controlled by the RIAA, it's out there in SHN/FLAC (lossless codecs). It's just not what most of the consumer market wants for a variety of reasons including size constraints, the fact that the music has little depth as it is, and it takes too long to download.
It was only in the last couple of years that I started to notice the difference in quality between different bitrates of MP3's. Then CD's started to sound bad. I swear my girlfriend's cheap turntable sounds better than my audiophile CD player.
Is the concern overblown? Maybe not with 128kbps mp3s (as opposed to say 256kbs ABR kind).
However, these same producers compress the living bejeezus out of their music during the production, killing all the dynamics. So frankly, the effect of a lower-bitrate mp3 isn't quite the castration of full-on sonic fidelity that's portrayed in the TFA.
10% of original music is an overblown claim, because the music is not just filtered down, but is also compressed. In truth, the article should be comparing against equivalent lossless audio compression formats, which yield about 60-70% of the original size (so does that mean that a FLAC file contains 60-70% of the original music? No!)
The bit about the compressed music affecting the perception in a different manner is an interesting one, but I really struggle to see how the difference can come through the average consumer equipment. It just doesn't. For example, things such as SACDs or high-quality vinyl records allow the recording to retain a lot of the "air," ambience of the room, which gives a perception of larger-than-life sound, makes it sound more full, gives it an impression of better dimensionality, really puts you there. But shit, you can only hear that on high-end equipment with the entire signal chain made out of quality components, and you sure as hell won't hear the difference on a consumer system.
Most people also do not listen to the music in an environment that allows for such an engaging listening experience.
I too am sad to see the consumers ignore higher-quality audio (as I want that higher quality for myself, being an audio geek of sorts), but I completely understand where they are coming from.
This reminds me of the fuss that currently exists over HD-TV. People gasp at the quality of the picture, but don't notice the lack-of-quality of the content. It's the same with music - people focus too much on the equipment, and ignore the music.
I've got a beautiful violin recording from the 20s or 30s. It's very low-fi, scratchy as hell, but the playing is magnificent. Ask any jazz fan whether they'd prefer to listen to a well-used John Coltrane LP, or Kenny G in 192 kHz / 24-bit, DVD-A.
People, listen to the music -- not the equipment! Otherwise you're a hifi-collector, not a music fan.
Sucks that we can't all be rich record execs who can afford the multi-thousand dollar equipment needed to get that other 90% of the music that we are *missing*. Most people are held back by their stereo set-up and not their 256 AAC files.
Animoog.org
If you want to experience all that there is in music, you have to be in a very special listening environment. Among other things, there has to be just about zero ambient noise. As noise increases, you have to resort to compression or you will lose sounds that are weaker than the noise.
It is said that Phil Spector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Spector, one of the most successful music producers of all time, made a point of listening to his music on a crummy car radio. That was where most teens listened to music and that was where it had to sound good. The same logic applies to MP3 players. Most people spend much more time listening to their MP3 players than they do listening in the quiet of their living rooms. Music that sounds good on an MP3 player will get listened to. Concert quality music that sounds bad on an MP3 player might get listened to once before it gathers dust forever more.
So, for all you musical purists out there, suck it up dudes. Fighting against the MP3 format (and the players) is like King Canute trying to push back the tide.
I own plenty of 24/192 albums that are as good as it will ever get- digital is not the problem at all, the problem is everything around it. #0- Nobody under 50 has heard music sound good, and those over it don't care anymore (so nobody has any idea what they are missing) #1- Sh!tty speakers #2- Sh!tty speakers #3- Sh!tty speakers #4- Horrible mastering that absolutely ruins music (eg: loudness war) #5- Horrible mastering that absolutely ruins music (eg: loudness war) #6- compressing to MP3 when disk space is free, there is 0 need for using an mp3 #7- EAX, Dolby prologic, all of that crap upmixing for surround It all boils down to young people having absolutely no experience with quality when it comes to music or playback equipment, the industry pushing for cheaper when infact it is clear that the cheapening of music in all instances is destroying the industry, and they don't want to do a thing about it. I bet that 95% of college students are listening to music on either ipod earbuds, or logitech/creative computer speakers. They are all HORRIBLE. And about those double blind tests- well no wonder its hard to tell, the music is maximized or compressed to static already, the listening equipment is awful, so ya no wonder.
There's probably a sweet spot somewhere between MP3 and CD where you would not notice the difference.
Clearly MP3 is good enough for most people. To use the car analogy: sure, a Rolls Royce might be technically better than a Toyota, but where is Rolls Royce now? Does Rolls Royce actually deliver a vehicle that is useful to anybody?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Ten percent of five minutes is thirty seconds, and most full songs are shorter than five minutes. I call fair use on that!
If either the quality of the source or the quality of the output medium is bad, the other end can't compensate whatsoever. (put garbage in, get garbage out).
This thus means that if the output medium is not very good, the source only needs to be equally good. Improving the quality of the source won't give any substantial benefit in the output. Certainly not when the "speakers" are $0,50 headphones. This is why the sound of MP3's is "acceptable". (add some reverb effect and other DSP's and the sound, to many, quickly sounds "better", when it just has more effect.)
If you play an mp3 on B&W speakers with similar quality amp (say Musical Fidelity or Rotel), I can't imagine no one wouldn't be able to hear the difference. It probably also depends how much you've trained yourself to listen to detail in music.
When people mention "losless quality", but the amount of information is reduced by 90%, there are definitely areas in the sound where this loss is more significant than in others. Someone mentioned hi-hats and guitar solos. I suppose that higher harmonics are probably suffering a lot from the mp3 reduction, which usually don't come out very well in cheaper systems, but still add to the sound overall.
True, decently encoded mp3s are barely distinguishable from their CD counterparts to the vast majority of listeners.
Also true, even poorly encoded mp3s are capable of sounding vastly superior to the collection of cassettes and 4-tracks, which formed previous generations of portable music. Still, the record companies charged more for those formats than vinyl and the music producers didn't complain about their paychecks back then.
The real difference that is affecting the livelihood of music professionals these days has less to do with the quality of the format than the quality of music produced these days. That and the end of the music industry's archaic and monopolistic distribution model.
Couldn't the RIAA have found a better spokeperson for their argument than Phil Spector?
Phil Spector, as a producer, is best known for the Wall of Sound--creating an effect by cramming as many instruments into the studio and on the master tape as possible. I suppose his music would be an edge case in data removal--if you could actually hear every detail in his recordings, then the Wall of Sound would really be overwhelming.
But the Wall of Sound works best in mono; it doesn't fully work in stereo. Hearing more detail makes it less effective, and that kind of music tends to get called "overproduced" regardless of merit.
Spector is also responsible for producing the original Let It Be. Spector laid an orchestra on "Long and Winding Road" that, in remastered Redbook CD detail, drowns out every other non-vocal instrument on the track and nearly swamps Paul's vocals.
In short, the man often puts more detail in his tracks than the average ear can hear, on purpose.
There is also the problem that Spector is on trial for murder right now. This makes no difference to the validity of his theories, but it would have been nice if the RIAA had tapped a famous producer who was not at risk of going to San Quentin.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
shhh! Not so loud! if you wake them they'll make all the non-drm tracks flac and start charging $10 a song!
Get a web developer
OK folks, let's get real... I'm both an Apple fanatic and an audiophile, and I can tell you, if you want audiophile-quality playback and without 'missing' anything in the music assuming you've purchased the CD, then you need to be listening to that music on a stereo system of no less than $10,000 (U.S.) purchased from a professional sound shop. Forget that $1000 Sony, Pioneer, Fisher, Bose integrated amplifier with 5-speaker surround sound. It ain't gonna matter. When you start looking at the individual components and their specs, and how they integrate together, in addition to considering Transparent Cable interconnects and speaker cables (they have band-pass filters located at the terminals), then you have the beginnings of a decent system, not even a good one. In fact, if you can afford American-made stereo components, then you can walk about with a BIG STICK! Some of the best-sounding audio equipment in the world is designed and 'Made In America' if you can afford it - and I cannot! - 'nuff said...
To make the best sounding MP3s, download iTunesLame and start making the best-sounding 320 kb/sec MP3 that the algorhythm can make. If that isn't good enough for you, you can always copy the original AIFF file off of the CD and drag it into iTunes, or use Apple's Lossless format to have the same quality at 1/2 the disk space.
My point is, make the best possible sounding MP3 file you can, because eventually, you will upgrade you MP3 player to something better and you will find that upgrading the quality of your MP3 library is a very arduous task and a waste of time. Hard drive space is cheap, and getting cheaper. Just make the best sounding MP3 you can make, and be happy with it. Actually, most people are not missing all that much from the MP3 format. Even I, an audiophile, don't analyze every nuance of a music I listen to in MP3 format - I just ENJOY IT, hell, Journey, REO Speedwagon, and Van Halen aren't going to sound any better on my iPod as opposed to the radio in a 1976 AMC Gremlin or 1981 Chevy Chevette.
MP3 format was designed for maximum music quality with music loss and compression - keep that in mind... You want to hear the 'real thing' without loss? Then go to the recording studio or the concert with no hearing loss.
Christina Aguilera is a really talented singer and performer. Over-produced sometimes, but she's good. Just because someone is popular doesn't mean that they suck. It is just a highly likely coincidence. Flame away. :D
Lossy compression sounds bad on classical music, period, and the same tends to be true for similar sources like solo acoustic guitar, piano, etc. Lossy compression assumes that most of the data is unimportant, which in a dense mix tends to be true due to masking. In a thin mix, though, that assumption falls apart, and so does lossy compression. Of course, that's not the only pathological case where lossy compression sounds bad; it's just the most common case.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Actually, double-blind tests have a long and varied history in the wine industry.
... whether that's due entirely to tester bias, or also to poor QC on the part of the winery, is an open question.)
Many people credit a certain 1976 blind test of wines for launching the California wine industry, and proving that Americans could make "serious" wine as well as (in fact, better than) the French. There was a repeat in 1986 and 2006, with similar results.
And a few years ago, Trader Joe's "Two Buck Chuck" won a 'double-gold' medal at a California wine fair during a double-blind test. (In other tests, it was usually last
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Can I choose the source audio? If so, then I choose white noise. If not, then of course you'll pick a source that is almost indistinguishable even at 128 kbps and assure your victory, proving nothing.
:-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
... and shouldn't any copyright violations be for a lot less, since only 10% was copied? Better yet... Doesn't 10% fall into fair use?There is the implicit assumption that before MP3s, people were listening to music in less 'destructive' devices. The assumption is that people were listening to music without losing as much as the 90% of detail/data that the iPod experience gives.
The reality is that most people previously listened to music through devices which had the same, if not worse drawbacks:
- car radios - where the background adds so much noise
- radio - where the degradation in quality again adds a bunch of noise
- audio cassette - where repeated listning degrades performance
- vinyl - you are trying to tell me that scratches were part of the 'original' sound
Perhaps the industry experts are comparing the experience of listening to beautiful monitor speakers to an iPod. My god! There is a difference
>> hell i have friends who like the over compression of FM radio.
you need to get some new friends
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
I freely admit that ClearChannel and the four-company record label oligopoly have both been bad things for the music industry. But isn't the RIAA proof enough that the music industry isn't something that any of us should mourn? If ClearChannel is helping to kill it -- if ClearChannel is standing right in front of us, plunging a butcher knife into the music industry over and over -- then I say all we need to do is point and laugh.
The death of the music industry doesn't seem to be doing anything to slow musicians down. Not the real ones, anyway. Maybe I just live on the fringes, but more and more I'm hearing about how the major labels are struggling, cursing, and biting their nails, while at the same time independent labels are experiencing a boom time. It's certainly been true of punk and metal for a long time that the really important new artists are all going to be on indies. Some of the best rock bands of recent years -- bands that 20 years ago might have been deemed "radio rock" -- have emerged from the indie scene. And lately, more and more hip-hop artists have been releasing so-called mix tapes (many of which violate copyrights, bringing hip-hop proudly back to its roots) and putting out records through independent labels (and I don't mean "bespoke 'independent' subsidiary of Interscope created as a vanity imprint for a particular artist," I mean real indie labels).
Meanwhile, other people sign to major labels and what do they get? In effect, they get to go into debt via a whopping big bank loan that someone else gets to spend to record, release, and market an album and a tour package. And then every penny of that loan has to be paid back by the artist before the artist sees a dime. Why do these musicians put up with it? Because they are not really musicians ... they are wage earners who made up their minds to go and work in the music industry. They don't see anything wrong with being the equivalent of a character from Office Space, working 9 to 5 in an industry than churns out factory-manufactured pap like Velvet Revolver, Audioslave, 50 Cent, Limp Bizkit, Avril Lavigne ... made-to-order music cobbled together in a studio by cynical marketers who don't differentiate music from any other disposable consumer good. The so-call artists don't care because they get to buy pretty clothes and date pretty girls, and that's it. So who needs 'em? If that's the music industry we're talking about, let's let it die.
The real damage done by the recording industry cartel, unfortunately, has been to the independent retailer. Very few mom n' pop record stores can survive selling CDs that Best Buy and Wal*Mart are going to discount 30 percent. MP3s are also doing damage to indie retailers' sales, for sure ... but MP3s are surely only another nail in the coffin. The damage has been done by the industry itself, which is more reason to say "good riddance."
MP3 (or pick your format) as a channel for legitimate music distribution is still only in its infancy. Who among you is going to tell me that digital downloads aren't going to continue to play a bigger and bigger part in music distribution of all types, though? It's a shame that this might effectively pull the rug out of the customer-friendly, independent retailer scene before it really puts the screws on ClearChannel et al, but nobody is better positioned to take advantage of the changes than the people who aren't paying off their student loans on their MBAs by getting piggy-back rides from other people's music.
Breakfast served all day!
Just to be technically correct...Ogg is a container format not a codec. Ogg is most often associated with the Vorbis lossy codec, but FLAC was originally written as the Ogg lossless format, hence why the reference FLAC encoder has an option to save as "Ogg FLAC". Vorbis or Ogg Vorbis is the more correct usage for clarity.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
People used to find all-mechancal gramophones perfectly acceptable, and for a long time music was heard - and greatly enjoyed - when belted out by rank amateurs that couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
As opposed to now, where music is heard, and greatly loathed, when belted out by rank professionals that can't carry a tune in a bucket.
I am officially gone from
from the Music industry's point of view. You will buy the MP3. Then buy the high quality Vorbis or whatever. Then buy the 44khz stereo lossless. Then by the 98khz five channel lossless. There you go, four times the sales!
And take may word for it, except for the jump 44khz to 98khz you can hear the difference (once you get to know the music). Children, who's hearing can go up to 30khz or higher, can hear the jump from 44khz to 98khz too, and some very young adults may still be able to hear a difference. But not for too long!
You know just enough about this topic to be dangerous, but not enough to be right. I don't of any serious, informed audio professionals who would even bother to mention DSD in this context - its not discredited, just forgotten. Your comments on double blind testing is the usual apologist side-tracking that the "audiophile" community offers in response to such tests demonstrating no discernible differences. I was suprised that you missed out the part about how "golden ears" still count even if 99% of the rest of the population don't fit such a profile. Your comments on 192/24 completely ignore two very salient facts: (a) the improvement comes mostly from using 24 bit samples instead of 16 bits (b) almost all of the tiny benefit of a 192kHz sample rate comes from the brickwall filter design that is enabled by this higher rate BUT almost all of that benefit exists at 96kHz and there are still no double blind tests that show people able to differentiate 96/24 from 48/24.
psycho-acoustic compression of audio was really devised as a band-aid for low bandwidth connectivity. its a tragedy that in 10 years time, when storage costs (disk + memory) and bandwidth have changed so dramatically as to render such compression as archaic, we will still have a couple of generations thinking that its the de facto standard for storing music on digital media. sigh. double sigh. triple sigh.
To my middle-aged ears, 192K BPS MP3 sounds fine. It doesn't have the phase-shifter effect found on 128K bps MP3s.
If you are younger in your teens or twenties, use 320K bps to get all the high frequencies that may be present in CD recordings. High frequency hearing diminishes with age.
CDs are heavily filtered above 16KHz-18KHz to avoid digital aliasing and this affects the sound. It's why musicians say that vinyl sounds better. Plus musicians get full audio range very loudly and clearly from their stage amps. Johnny Winter says that CDs sound like shit. He has been standing 10 feet away from an amp playing the sounds that come from his guitar for 40 years. Compared to that, well yes, everything else pales in comparison. You probably won't hear any difference.
What the top-flight music producers are really saying is "look, we get $50,000 - $100,000 plus percentage from every no-talent fuck band that walks in our studio off the top. Whether they sell ten or ten million albums, we still get ours. And this MP3 shit is causing people to not buy albums like they used to because instead of five friends buying the same 100 albums, now five friends buy one album each and make near-perfect copies for each other. So the record companies aren't signing as many no-talent one-hit wonder bands than they did ten years ago and this is beginning to affect our bottom-line as producers. And, as producers our greatest concern is to bring great music to the album-record-CD buying public, and we have to issue a statement saying that MP3 sucks. So there it is."
The real question here is why do the record companies demand that the bands that they sign use a top-flight $100,000 (plus percentage of sales) producer? Because it's the only way that they can be assured that they will get the same crisp homogenized Clear-Channel sound that will most-likely get profitable record sales from each of the no-experience bands that they have signed.
Of course the band pays the $100,000 to the producer up front out of their advance and they have no choice over who the producer is or what he (always a he) does to their sound.
The big issue here is the centralization of musical recording distributorship. This is a 20th century phenomenon. The best musicians and bands sign to one of a half dozen or so companies. The company then records the band, makes the recording sound good, embeds the recording into the medium (vinyl, tape, or CD disk) and distributes it around the world. This worked for 100 years. But it's failing now due to both technological change (home recording studios and MP3 distribution) and overwhelming levels of greed and corruption on the part of the record companies. All well documented on Slashdot over the years.
Yeah, no kidding. So much "science" in the parent's post, yet there is a total rejection of the scientific method!
I go to live music all the time, play a lot of music myself, and typically only listen to mp3s and cds of bands I go to see live.
You know what? It all sounds the same to me.
The audiophile crowd just amazes me. Have they never played a musical instrument? Been to a live concert? Been to a church?
It's a unique phenomenon of self delusion I just find quite fascinating. Such people derive such a sense of POWER being one of the few to understand the "real" music. It's the mindset of a religious cult.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
With a good enough algorithm most people, including those with well-trained ears, will not be able to consciously distinguish the two sounds. But that does not mean that these people don't subconsciously react differently to them. One way to measure that might be to measure brain activity in various regions of the brain, which is exactly what this article mentions. The problem is that that type of test is always going to show a different reaction which is something the makers and users of audio codecs often don't want to hear.
The major problem here is what does the brain activity data mean? Even if you can see a difference in brain activity for a 16 bit/44 kHz PCM file verses a 128 kbit/sec VBR AAC file how do you determine if one format is preferred over the other?
You end up still falling back on subjective measures, it's much simpler to have a large number of participants and then ask them questions like, "Which recording did you prefer?" The data from a properly run survey is much more likely to yield meaningful conclusions than scans of brain activity. We are, after all, dealing with music - a highly subjective art form.
One notable feature of DSD is that dynamic compression occurs at higher frequencies yet the frequencies are able to be reproduced accurately. Contrast this with PCM where the dynamic range is fixed (i.e. 16-bit, 20-bit, 24-bit) but at higher frequencies the tonality is not as pure because it's impossible to represent anything other than a square wave at the nyquist frequency which is exactly 1/2 the sampling rate. Of course, a filter is applied to make that into a more pleasant sine wave. Now consider a frequency that is not exactly 22.05 kHz but perhaps a little shy of that. It's almost impossible to represent this accurately with PCM. The result is that you actually get a slightly oscillating frequency somewhere around the original frequency.
What you are describing is a phenomenon known as aliasing.
I'm not sure you completely understand how the Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem works. It boils down to the fact that as long as you sample at a rate greater than double the maximum frequency you want to capture, you will get no aliasing. This means that if you sample at 44.1 kHz then all frequencies below 22.05 kHz will be represented accurately. If you sample a frequency just shy of 22.05 kHz you will NOT "get a slightly oscillating frequency somewhere around the original frequency".
It is true that DSD has a variable dynamic response that depends on frequency but that works both for and against DSD since higher frequencies tend to less accurately represented than lower frequencies. In fact there is a lot of discussions (PDF file, see page 8, section 3[c]) that conclude that the current implementations of DSD produce worse quality per bit than an equivalent bit-rate PCM sampling. There are solutions to these problems but they are very complex and involve a mix of DSD and PCM sampling methods, so much so that the line between DSD and PCM blurs considerably.
This has a serious effect on how an album is mastered. When the target format is CD the producer can cause the CD player to output extremely loud high frequency sounds though not particularly accurate frequencies. This is reflected in the current crop of music which is often extremely loud and to many ears just sounds like a bunch of noise. Metallica's self-titled black album was one of the first to use severe dynamic compression to make the album sound super loud. Comparing it with modern CDs we can see that that album was relatively tame.
Again you are mixing up sound levels with frequencies. Severe dynamic compression basically limits the number of sound levels which are utilized,
Sapere aude!
Sorry, but I disagree completely.
A couple of years ago I went out and spent about £600 (= $1200) on a CD player, amplifier and speakers, I spent a lot of time listening to different set ups in that price range and not only was there a definite difference between the systems I listened to, but there was a much greater degree of clarity than on any cheaper system I'd previously owned.
My experience is that once you go beyond this amount of money, the improvements in audio quality lessen the more money you spend. Sure, there may be a lot of merit to spending to $10,000 for a hi-fi but then it's totally pointless unless you put it in an acoustically perfect room.
As for American hifi, go back some 20 years and some of the best priced hifi around was American-made Marantz stuff - I've not kept up with hifi too much in recent years so I don't know how they fare these days.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
There's no point comparing MP3s to CDs without stating the bitrate. We all know low-bitrate MP3s sound like crap, but I've done my own tests on 320kbit/s MP3s (with some fairly expensive stereo equipment), and even switching between them and the original source, I couldn't pick it.
Oh, and it'd need to be a blind comparison too. Misleading judgments due to the placebo effect are very common (see: Monster cable).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
That's just a bunch of pseudo audiophile dogma, and it's pure crap. Something along the lines of superstition.
For $100 you can get an amplifier with 0.02% THD, which is about as good as you can get, and for another $100 a pair of very good full range speakers.
You can even go cheaper... Skip the amp, and plug a $50 pair of full-sized headphones (eg. Senheiser/Aiwa) directly into the preamp/line-out of a decent quality CD player, or very good sound card (eg. $25 SB Live).
Your $10,000 option won't do any better...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I was completely with you on this one, right up until:
However, most people can tell the difference in a blind test.
That really should read:
However, most people with expensive stereos that consider themselves 'audiophiles' can tell the difference in a blind test.
People with expensive stereos that consider themselves 'audiophiles', however, do not constitute "most people". And everything I've ever seen or read doing any kind of blind test came to essentially the same conclusion: that "most people" simply cannot tell the difference. If you've seen or read otherwise, I'd love to see it myself.
Personally, I'm basically in the same boat as you. If I pay attention, I can (usually) hear distinguishing bits to where I can tell. But I noticed too that if I'm just listening to the song as the whole, rather than the individual components, I rarely ever notice a difference. And I think that is more than likely why most people never notice a difference, either.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Let us not forget that even though 'crap' applies to every generation of music, the most recent generations have been subjected to far greater mass marketing, production and exploitation. This certainly translates into the quality of the music, I'm sure.
Being a super star musical act no longer requires any sort of talent and being found can easily just be luck of the draw, more so than any other generation. This increased musical exploitation undoubtedly results in a greater percentage of... junk.
I agree with your sentiment though - Every generation thinks their music is the greatest and the one before it thinks it is garbage - whether it really is or not.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
which is about as good as you can get,
And that's just as dogmatic as the GP, just going the other way. Sound quality is a continuum: you can keep improving a sound system by throwing money at it. Diminishing returns do apply, and at the high end there's lots of bullshit to wade through. Not all components show the same amount of improvement for X amount of dollars: the quality curve flattens for CD players and amplifiers sooner than for loudspeakers.
$100 does not get you a 'very good' pair of full-range speakers. I recently tried buying a set of inexpensive speakers for use with my computer; I listened to about 15 sets in the $100-1000/pair price range. All $100 sets sounded horrible. Sound quality generally improved with price, but rather nonlinearly. Personal preference also plays an important role here.
The least expensive loudspeakers I could live with were a $200/pair set of bookshelf speakers. Full-range loudspeakers at that price offered more frequency range, but had a very uneven frequency response. Decent full-range speakers started at about $400/pair, iirc.
For $100 you can get an amplifier with 0.02% THD, which is about as good as you can get
Amplifier quality is about more than just THD. THD and noise are easy to get good specs on. Things like phase response and crossover distortion are much more difficult (=expensive) to get right.
Would your real name by any chance be Lestat?
ISO certified == THX certified
If music is compressed, limited and clipped like it is on many records today, there really isn't much argument for the need of an extra quality carrier. The quest of the artists, producers or record labels to GET THEIR MUSIC LOUDER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE, causes the dynamic range of music to be sacrificed in order to bump the sound as close as possible to the zero dB boundary. This loudness war causes severe digital clipping, and the distortion you get from it is much MUCH worse that what you get from the MP3 conversion with a decent bitrate.
Not only that, but the music loses every punch, melding all elements in one flat sound, tiring your ears. It's the same with the super audio CD. why needing a carrier with more bits and higher sample rate if you're even using what's available on a CD today?
- Loudness War
- everything louder than everything else
Really, there's no need for ultra high fidelity equipment or sound carriers if the signal is broken by design at the factory!That's not really what I'm aiming at. But I largely agree.
Chances are that your old classical music LPs have been compressed for dynamic range too. But that was simply due to the fact that an LP simply doesn't have the dynamic range required to fully record classical music. So the compression was a technical matter. Compare it to the need of tonemapping to display a perfect HDR image of a physical scene on a monitor or print.
Today however, pop music is compressed for dynamic by design, simply to make it sound louder than other songs when played at the radio or from a jukebox where the volume knob is left untouched. Compare it multiplying your image by a factor ten simply to show it "brighter" than on the monitor next it. It will "appear" brighter if you don't look too closely, but it will have lost much detail simply because it clips to your monitor brightness.
Modern pop music may not have the same dynamical range as classical music, but it still has more potential than you find on most of today's CDs:
(a) live performances _do_ have the punchy bass drums and highlighted snares lacking on the album, because the PA can deliver what's requested without clipping. Unless your band is called Cradle of Filth (they suffer the EVERYTHING LOUDER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE syndrome even on stage).
(b) pop albums of 20 years ago don't suffer this problem. They still have lots of headroom. Even trash metal records (Metallica - Kill 'Em All) behave very well with lots of dynamic range and lots of headroom. Yet, the moment they are remastered, that's totally gone. There's suddenly clipping all over the place. It's still the same music!
So it's not the music. It's the mastering.
To me there seems to be some problems with the psycho-acoustic models that are being used for mp3, because those artifacts make my ears feel itchy. To me it sounds low resolution, especially cybals and other high frequency audio. It sounds pixelated and annoying, low and midrange sounds ok, but the high end sounds so annoying and obvious that listening for problems in the low and mid-range is irrelavent.
The other thing is the capacity of flash devices keeps increasing and the fact that most car stereos have usb port I wonder if mp3 is useful any more, is there a point to having a massive music capacity, when you can have slightly less quantity and much better quality especially when the capability of technology increases. A 4Gb flash is enough for roughly 6 cd's at full resolution, or 12 at half resolution (approx fm radio) without lossy compression such as mp3.
Another thing is the psycho-acoustic model, why is the ambient components of music not important, who decided that? Those seemingly redundant components of music are very interesting components of the piece, the echo, reverberation and some harmonic components are the character of the music. With all due repect to engineers, they are not musicians or producers. Writing and producing music is not a science, it's an art. Engineers involved in the production of equipment to produce music are constantly striving to create equipment that is capable of accuratley recording the musicians and producers intentions. Sampling rates on the recording side are increasing, 96khz sampling rates at 24bit are common place for recording and many other technological advancements, but the use of the technology, placement of microphones, type of microphones is similar to the way a painter uses paintbrushes.
I would never listen to mp3's on my home hi-fi. High-fidelity music is a joy to listen to, and high resolution hi-fi sound is astounding. To draw the oposite analagy, at what point does lowering the resolution of a picture make it unviewable? It's the same with sound and that's the choice the listener has to make.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I've noticed what I believe to be an important and prevalent consequence of technological innovation: many recent technological advances entail lowering the qualitative expectations of consumers. For example, the average quality of cell phone calls is significantly lower than anything that would have been deemed acceptable by a land-line customer twenty years ago. Even using a high-end cell phone, you often have calls where there's lots of static, words get "dropped"--or maybe your whole call gets dropped because you're in a poor reception area. Airplane trips have gone from a near-luxurious experience to something like being run through sheep dip. Audio quality, as discussed in this thread, is another clear example of quality suffering at the hands of technology.
Time was when "audiophiles" spent thousands of dollars on then-exotic "hi-fi" gadgetry to achieve a sound that was a "life-like" as possible. (As I recall, some of my friends thought that listening to a recording of a steam locomotive on their hi-fis at top volume was the ultimate auditory experience. I never quite figured that one out.) The ultimate objective of those who were truly "into sound" was to extract every note from their cosseted vinyl recordings with ultimate "fidelity".
Then came the Compact Disk--a development greeted by apocalyptic horror on the part of many audiophiles. I'm aware that this topic has been discussed ad nauseam, so I'm not going to pursue at great length the question of whether CDs per se deliver sound inferior to that of vinyl. All I know is that I've listened to CD and Vinyl recordings of the same musical performances, and the vinyl sounded distinctly better. Maybe this is due to inherent technical limitations of the CD format--or perhaps the studios who produced those CDs just didn't exercise as much care in their making as they might have.
Now we have yet another quality regression: MP3. Nobody is going to tell me that a 128kbps recording of a decent piece of music sounds as good as that same piece played from either a vinyl or CD recording on high-quality equipment. I know that for a fact because I've compared 128 and 256kbps recordings on mediocre equipment (my car stereo), and I cold tell that the 256 sounded way better than the 128. I'd be lying if I said I tried comparing 256kbs against vinyl on good equipment, but I have a hunch that the vinyl would win.
Where am I going with all this? Well, probably not where you think I am. I recently MP3-ized my entire collection of Vinyl and CD recordings (at 256kbps), and the MP3 recordings are the only thing I listen to any more. Why? One word: convenience. I can carry a lot of music around with me on my little 130Mb USB disk. I can stuff many hours of music onto my MP3 player that I listen to at work. I can do the same in my car. At home, the stereo stands idle...I'm always listening to music via my computer's MP3 player while I play games (who needs to hear explosions, anyway?) or read. In other words, I'm willing to trade quality for other benefits, such as the ability to organize my entire music collection into playlists, to instantly find and play whatever song I feel like, or to be able to listen for hours and hours of music without having to get up and fiddle with finding a disk and putting it on the player.
Likewise, I've always got my trusty cell-phone clipped to my belt--it's better to have a static-riddled conversation than not be able to talk to a person at all when time is of the essence. I sure think the airlines suck, though. (Actually, that's a red herring--the quality of airline travel cannot be said to have been improved in any way by technology in the last 20 years.)
As another telling example of sacrificing quality for convenience via modern technology, consider this posting (or article or whatever the heck you call it). A few decades ago, I would have written a carefully polished essay. Now I toss off a piece of schlock while my employer thinks I'm working. Now that's progress!
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary