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Mastering Engineer Explains Types of Compression, Effects On Today's Music
Stowie101 writes "Today is Dynamic Range Day, which is an event to educate the public about the 'Loudness Wars' that are compressing and harming the quality of today's music. Ian Shepherd, a mastering engineer and founder of Dynamic Range Day, explains why music lovers should avoid MP3 files. 'The one that springs to mind is to avoid MP3, especially if it's 128 kbps. Apple uses a more advanced technology called AAC, but if someone can get lossless files like FLAC that's a better place to start.' Shepherd says it's actually harder to make a good 'lossy' encode of something that has been heavily musically compressed. Very heavy dynamic compression and limiting makes MP3s sound worse, so the loudness wars indirectly make MP3s sound worse."
and can probably prove it with an Etch-A-Sketch and 5 minutes of my time, but I can't take any of this stuff seriously. I listen to MP3s and they sound great to me. I listen to them on the bus, on the train, on my bike, in the city, all on standard earbuds, and it all sounds like it's supposed to.
It's just that after reading the absolute pure f**king snake-oil that some of the component manufacturers put out about their products in a vain attempt to justify charging ten grand for a pair of *wires*, as soon as anyone starts getting needlessly technical about audio, it all sounds like yet more snake-oil.
And so I end up grouping terms like lossless and FLAC and AAC with counter-spiral geometry, which is apparently why Audioquest can charge a thousand dollars a foot for a f**king power cable.