The Death of High Fidelity

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Rolling Stone has an interesting story on how record producers alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the limitations of MP3 sound. Much of the information left out during MP3 compression is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat. Without enough low end, 'you don't get the punch anymore. It decreases the punch of the kick drum and how the speaker gets pushed when the guitarist plays a power chord.' The inner ear automatically compresses blasts of high volume to protect itself, so we associate compression with loudness. After a few minutes, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though few listeners realize this consciously, many feel an urge to skip to another song."

Comments

Loudness War

[Deewun]

I call shenanigans. Double blind testing shows no perceptible difference between a good MP3 and the source material for most listeners most of the time. The real death of hi-fi is the fault of the record companies themselves, and the Loudness War. Who cares if an MP3 encoder drops a tiny amount of imperceptible data when the CD itself has been compressed and clipped to the point that you don't want to listen to it?

Re:Loudness War

[bm_luethke]

Isn't this pretty much the point of the article? That due to customers mostly listening with bad equipment or compressed formats (mp3's) that the source has been degraded until one can not tell the difference? They are saying the same thing you are - users can't tell the difference, however their point is that the *should*. They are saying that you can not tell the effective difference because they *no longer sale the items where you can* (and they actually more blame the loudness war, of which they claim MP3's are the final end of that). Obviously under that situation one would expect to, well, not tell the difference.

Personally it wasn't until you got into equipment that was so expensive that mostly I couldn't hope to afford it that I told the difference even with recording that *were* good. I have a few pieces of equipment that are good (my headphones are) but that mostly just lets me hear all the imperfections.

Maybe once I can afford the price of my house in audio equipment I may care (and believe me, I would *love* too and am not complaining about anyone who has), but until then I don't so much. I do, however, agree with the idea that the "loudness war" (along with other problems) mostly destroyed most new music out there. Not because I can tell much difference in the quality of recordings but because the music in general is also created to take advantage of it instead of sounding good.

Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC.

[Anonymous Coward]

People who think MP3 encoded with Lame -preset standard (about 192kbps) suck and are not trolling should register at Hydrogenaudio and submit audio samples and ABX tests tests. Some Lame developers hang out there, and I'm sure they would like some help in improving their acoustic model.

The article was mostly about audio compression

[zuki]

Well, to be fair the article is specifically talking about the phenomenon known as 'finalizing', which is a way to clearly boost the
apparent levels by up to 10 dB or more during the mastering stages without any digital clipping artifacts. (a.k.a. brick-wall limiting)

There is no question that a lot of great points were raised in the article, however when it comes to MP3 (the 'other' form of compression)
as a person who has participated in recording, mixing and mastering sessions for over 30 years, and constantly listens to master recordings,
can only say that it is pathetic how bad they sound on large audio playback systems, which some of us have and listen to.
(For example pick a very large loft, or someone's home theater for 20 people, not to say anything of a proper auditorium)

You might not hear it at home, on computer speakers or certainly not your earbuds, but the bigger the stereo, the more it is obvious.
And actually what is the most disturbing is that what is very, very wrong about lossy encoding formats is that it doesn't necessarily affect so
much the frequency response, as it does the 'punch', transients and other intangibles which when played on those large-format systems become
quickly apparent. The same way a graphic designer will not try and magnify this site's jpg logo (415 x 55 pixels, I did check) to a more
adequate 16,000 x 2122 for billboard and poster printing, as there will be obvious and nasty pixelization artifacts, there are similar phenomenons
happening with audio, and they are - at best - poorly understood, and at worst dismissed as being the brainchild of crackpots with too
much time on their hands, the New-Age idealists like those who read John Diamond's "Life Energy In Music" and keep a stack of copies
of 'Absolute Sound' by the bathroom stall.

Suffice to say that the combination of both forms of compression (finalizing, plus lossy encoding) do make for a pretty formidable opponent that
already has greatly affected the public's perception of what 'sounds good' and doesn't. And it's not likely to get better.

Fear not, for those who care about listening to music in more proper manners, there are plenty of options available, from an arguably limited selection
of SACDs of some great Jazz, Classical and Pop, to fantastic vinyl playback systems, or ways to re-process those CDs that are too loud and give them
back some form of dynamic range, which will involve spending time re-mastering them with specific analog//tube//tape-machine type equipment, and is
obviously not a recommended activity for what seems to make the most of today's impatient 'click-click' listeners, the Attention-Deficit-Disorder-addled set.

As for the Hydrogen Audio bunch that keeps doing those double-blind tests and play with oscilloscope and frequency analyzers, I think they should
once try them again, but in a place that holds a couple of thousand listeners, and they may come back around to the fact that even CD-resolution
is quite atrocious to listen to, when compared to something like formats that can actually reproduce the original master recordings in a way they should,
such as DSD or 24-bit / 96 kHz encoded music. (not to say anything of a proper 1/2" open-reel master copy)

So in essence, while some of these people quoted in the article all agree that something's wrong, most of them cannot put their finger on it, as it is
something that is far more in the domain of the perceptual and psychoacoustics than an exact science.

It is mind-boggling that 25 years after the CD was introduced, most people consider progress to be size-reduction and loudness, and all attempt
at making a case for higher-fidelity have commercially failed, but again there are far larger problems looming over our heads today.

As someone who has made a living with playing recorded sounds in very large venues, I can however vouch for the fact that even if people do not exa

Re:MOD DOWN the whole story, Flamebait

[GodGell]

Let's face it, modern recordings suck and no processing will change that. That is not universally true. I find it is very much related to genre. Take Drum and Bass, for instance - in that genre, the sound engineer who determines what the final mix should sound like and deals with compression and EQing is almost always the same person (or group of people) who made the music itself, since they are all sound engineers (either professionally or as a hobby). As a result, these recordings always sound exactly like the artist(s) intended, regardless of whether it's released on vinyl (which is the most common), on CD (in which case the music is never converted to an analog format), or through the internet as mp3s. In fact, most of the mp3s I have of D'n'B music were recorded from vinyl and they all sound great.

The same is the case with newer metal releases. I found that, almost universally, albums released in the last couple of years have great quality and sound much cleaner than those released in the 90s or earlier (excepting artists like King Crimson, who probably were all sound engineers).

Re:NEWSFLASH! MP3's suck. Use a lossless CODEC.

[MrHanky]

If you're going to compare CD with mp3, compare the original wav files to the mp3 instead of comparing your mp3 player to your CD player. As it is, you have too many variables. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an audible difference between a headphone jack and a line out, simply because they have to drive very different loads.

Burn a CD.

[SanityInAnarchy]

If you really want to be 100% fair, rip the original CD to WAV (or FLAC), then reburn it. Then encode those WAVs (or FLACs) as MP3s, then decode them again, and burn that.

You can now play both on the same relatively high-end CD player. (Or you could try playing both from a laptop, if you like, but I'll bet the CD player is better.)