Interesting Article in NYT About Sound Quality

[Dave James]

This is a pretty interesting article. Be sure to open the embedded links. They are worth a look. Also, read the comments. Several fairly knowledgeable people weigh in on the issue of sound quality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/business/media/10audio.html?src=me&ref=homepage

Edited May 12, 2010 by Dave James

[skeith]

thanks Dave, that was interesting.

[jeffcrom]

thanks Dave, that was interesting.

And depressing.

[BeBop]

Unfortunately, I can't get to the link, but I did read this in the actual newspaper on Monday. As I recall, there wasn't ANY mention of the LP...even with quotes from vinyl maniac Michael Fremer.

[jeffcrom]

Unfortunately, I can't get to the link, but I did read this in the actual newspaper on Monday. As I recall, there wasn't ANY mention of the LP...even with quotes from vinyl maniac Michael Fremer.

One mention, almost in passing: "To many expert ears, compressed music files produce a crackly, tinnier and thinner sound than music on CDs and certainly on vinyl."

[Guest Bill Barton]

"But Michael Fremer, a professed audiophile who runs musicangle.com, which reviews albums, said that today, 'a stereo has become an object of scorn.'"

Sigh...

[BeBop]

One mention, almost in passing: "To many expert ears, compressed music files produce a crackly, tinnier and thinner sound than music on CDs and certainly on vinyl."

Ah! Read right over it. Thanks. Thought I was going crazy.

[RDK]

Unfortunately, I can't get to the link, but I did read this in the actual newspaper on Monday. As I recall, there wasn't ANY mention of the LP...even with quotes from vinyl maniac Michael Fremer.

One mention, almost in passing: "To many expert ears, compressed music files produce a crackly, tinnier and thinner sound than music on CDs and certainly on vinyl."

This is true to some degree, yes, but it seems most "experts," when they make this claim, listen to 128 kbps files using old codecs that did sound bad... but have been greatly improved over the years. I now have a hard time distinguishing even 192 kpbs files, though I usually rip at even higher quality just to be safe. There's no doubt that listening to CDs and LPs on a good home stereo system is better than mp3 files on an iPod or boombox, but mp3 files per se don't need to sound bad. I'm more concerned and find more fault in maximized/overly compressed mastering these days - now that crushes all life out of the music imo.

[porcy62]

Unfortunately, I can't get to the link, but I did read this in the actual newspaper on Monday. As I recall, there wasn't ANY mention of the LP...even with quotes from vinyl maniac Michael Fremer.

One mention, almost in passing: "To many expert ears, compressed music files produce a crackly, tinnier and thinner sound than music on CDs and certainly on vinyl."

This is true to some degree, yes, but it seems most "experts," when they make this claim, listen to 128 kbps files using old codecs that did sound bad... but have been greatly improved over the years. I now have a hard time distinguishing even 192 kpbs files, though I usually rip at even higher quality just to be safe. There's no doubt that listening to CDs and LPs on a good home stereo system is better than mp3 files on an iPod or boombox, but mp3 files per se don't need to sound bad. I'm more concerned and find more fault in maximized/overly compressed mastering these days - now that crushes all life out of the music imo.

Agree, though the fact that today most of the people don't listen to music 'per se', but as a background, (or as 'soundtrack' if one wish to be more gentle and poetic) strengthen the 'compression's' route. The very same compression applied in broadcasting movies over here, where the steps on the falled leaves and the byrd's singing have the very same db level then 'Saving Private Ryan's opening sequence.

[Hardbopjazz]

When you think about this for a moment, consumers want Blue Ray, high def TVs, but are willing to settle on low quality audio. I just am amazed.

[Christiern]

When you think about this for a moment, consumers want Blue Ray, high def TVs, but are willing to settle on low quality audio. I just am amazed.

That is nothing new. For years, we heard people walk around with boom boxes spewing out the most horrendous reproduction of sound. The fact that the box carriers seemed to enjoy this has always puzzled me, but I guess that was as much about attracting attention (a la loud-speaking cellphone dummies) as anything.

If you are listening to music on a subway via ear buds, you cannot expect matching the sound of good speakers hooked up to good equipment in the right room.

True, iPod sound is inferior to that which can be achieved with more elaborate equipment, but it is relatively inexpensive, delightfully mobile, and far more palatable than, say, the sound of street construction or the rumble of a worn, outdated subway train.

Mozart's Requiem Mass always sounds bad to me on iPods, and not too good on CDs, but Bozie Sturdivant, Gieseking, Billie, Louis, the Joplins, et al come through very well for me. It is amazing how well an iPod can do with the right earphones—I hate the buds, so do my ears (they reject them).

[Brad]

I'm not sure Hardbopjazz's comment is that surprising. Watching a television is what you experience with the eyes and ears and the images and sound fill up your brain (not sure I'm making sense) whereas listening to music is auditory only and requires the mind to focus on what the artists are doing and, for lack of a better term, use their brain! It's harder work and in today's society people take the path of least resistance.

[Hardbopjazz]

My point is this, at one point there existed this micro TVs that you could carry around and small TV sets that were portable and moved from one room to another, which today cease to exist. True the new format in TV broadcasting played a large part in this, but few consumers were sitting in parks with battery operated TVs. The visual experience juxtaposed with the listening aspect was and still is more important to consumers then just audio alone. Go to Best Buy today and all stereo equipment is all for one's computer. You have to and, as the article in the Times mentions, find these declining audio equipment stores. Just where I live in NY, there existed up to 5 years ago two Harvey Electronics; now both are gone. What's left and slowly phasing away, is the audio section at 6th Ave electronics. For the large part consumers are not intelligent enough to understand or care about the loss of sound with MP3 players.

Edited May 13, 2010 by Hardbopjazz

[.:.impossible]

People prefer distortion.

[jostber]

Some more views here:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/interview_with_neil_young.php

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/327319_mp3sound13.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-9964576-47.html

[paul secor]

I think that music is important to a much smaller percentage of the population today than in the past. And if one doesn't care about music, sound quality becomes irrelevant.

[porcy62]

I think that music is important to a much smaller percentage of the population today than in the past. And if one doesn't care about music, sound quality becomes irrelevant.

Exactly! And some 'dance/techno/whatever' music needs just the highest level of compression in order to be 'appreciated'.

Edited May 13, 2010 by porcy62

[Teasing the Korean]

On the bright side, maybe we'll all be able to get higher-end audio equipment for much cheaper now, if no one is buying it. I have found nice pieces being sold at yard salesby kids who had no idea of the value.

[A Lark Ascending]

I'd like to see the evidence that people care less about music than they once did.

I suspect when it comes to recorded music there are so many alternatives for leisure that maybe less young people become music geeks in the way we did. But live music seems to be flourishing - I was reading the recent Froots (the main UK folk/world magazine) and they are convinced there that the festival scene has never been stronger (and the magazine is run by a musician who knew the heyday of the 60s at first hand) and that CDs sell by the bucketloads there. The young adults I work with in their 20s and 30s are forever going out to gigs and festivals.

There's no way to prove any of this but I'd suggest people are just as interested in music as they've always been. But they are not necessarily interested in our music.

Having never had a high end audio and had several experiences of upgrading equipment over the decades only to be unsure if I can hear any difference, I'm not a good judge of sound quality. I download virtually everything nowadays, burn to disc, play it through my main system. I cannot tell the difference between mp3 and CD (or vinyl, apart from the missing rice krispie noises). When I first toyed with mp3 about 3 years ago I hit a few poor transfers that made me cautious. But as others suggest above, the technology seems to have caught up. The only grief they cause me is if they are carelessly transfered without checking and mechanical errors get left in (drop-outs, strange electronic interference etc) and problems sometimes with continuous pieces divided into tracks where even 'gapless' burning leaves gaps. Again, time will sort that out.

Mozart's Requiem Mass always sounds bad to me on iPods, and not too good on CDs

Don't know about Mozart, but the iPod has reawakened my love of classical music in recent years. Nothing quite like a walk in the country with a substantial piece of music in your ears...I've found it has refreshed my hearing of all manner of music.

[Daniel A]

People seem to want to bring the music with them at all times, which if anything may indicate that music is an even more important part of everyday life than before. The downside is the way music has to be mastered to be listenable through headphones on the subway - with a lot of compression. Those few who still listen to music in their living rooms are aware of the side effects.

The MP3 or AAC file formats are not a part of the problem. People complaining that MP3:s sound "thin" have almost never bothered to do a double-blind test. I consider myself reasonably concerned with sound quality, although I don't spend a lot on stereo equipment. I've conducted a few tests with friends, who happened to be a mix of musicians, doctors, engineers etc. Above a certain bitrate (somewhere around an average of 192 kbps for variable bitrate MP3) most participants weren't able to tell the difference between CD and MP3.

The truth is that the CD format is way better than most people "need". Remember all those worn-out compact cassettes which were customary well into the late 90s? To be truthful most MP3s sound much better than that.

[Dave James]

I'd like to see the evidence that people care less about music than they once did.

I suspect when it comes to recorded music there are so many alternatives for leisure that maybe less young people become music geeks in the way we did. But live music seems to be flourishing - I was reading the recent Froots (the main UK folk/world magazine) and they are convinced there that the festival scene has never been stronger (and the magazine is run by a musician who knew the heyday of the 60s at first hand) and that CDs sell by the bucketloads there. The young adults I work with in their 20s and 30s are forever going out to gigs and festivals.

Bev,

I'm not entirely convinced that music is behind uptick in the popularity of festivals and concerts. Here in the colonies, attendance in many instances is more a question of making some kind of peceived scene or finding another place to get s**t faced. While I'm sure there are lots of people who attend these gatherings for the right reasons, there are just as many or more who do it for the wrong ones i.e. the musical equivalent of a soccer match.

[RDK]

On the bright side, maybe we'll all be able to get higher-end audio equipment for much cheaper now, if no one is buying it. I have found nice pieces being sold at yard salesby kids who had no idea of the value.

Indeed. Not that I have much use for it these days, but I recently picked up a once-$600 Nakamichi tape deck at a thrift store for just $10. Sounds wonderful.

[Hot Ptah]

I think that many people cannot hear the difference between a vinyl record or CD played on a great home stereo system and a download played on an IPod. Or if they can, they don't care.

In the early 1970s, there were many of us who had beginner stereos, which were not very expensive and not great in terms of sound quality. Then just a few in our peer group had put together the money somehow to buy a more expensive, better stereo. I remember that we would play something like Abbey Road on the better stereo and talk about how it sounded better than on our stereos. But we did not think that it really mattered all that much. Listening on the better stereo was like eating a really good steak once in a while instead of the hamburgers we all loved to eat. It was nice, a little luxury, but not essential. We did not think that we were missing out on all that much.

I think that many people feel that way today.

When we sold our house a few years ago, our real estate agent told us that we would have to rip out the high end stereo system built into the house by the original owner in 1962, because people today would not want a house with a stereo system. He told us to just rip the speakers out of the walls and dump them on the curb for the trash collector, if we wanted to ever sell the house.

[A Lark Ascending]

I'm not entirely convinced that music is behind uptick in the popularity of festivals and concerts. Here in the colonies, attendance in many instances is more a question of making some kind of perceived scene or finding another place to get s**t faced. While I'm sure there are lots of people who attend these gatherings for the right reasons, there are just as many or more who do it for the wrong ones i.e. the musical equivalent of a soccer match.

I'm sure the same was true of many who went to Woodstock...or Newport ten years earlier! Most of my friends in the 70s thought I took my musical interests way over the border of obsession. I recall them instantly re-steering the conversation if it got close to music, knowing I'd go off on one.

It's always hard to make these generational comparisons. Older generations usually assume that younger ones are more frivolous. Given how out of sympathy I am with most of the music young adults listen to I find it hard to make judgements on how genuine their enthusiasm is.

I get the impression that most the young adults I know are genuinely enthused and moved by the music they go to see or buy as recordings. Perhaps they don't approach it with the same 'gravitas' that was common 40 years ago (I doubt if many worry if it is 'art' or not). I'd say that was partly a result of the demolition job done in the late-70s where anything that dared to be more than pure pleasure or 'street' connected was laughed out of court as pretentious.

[Eric]

When we sold our house a few years ago, our real estate agent told us that we would have to rip out the high end stereo system built into the house by the original owner in 1962, because people today would not want a house with a stereo system. He told us to just rip the speakers out of the walls and dump them on the curb for the trash collector, if we wanted to ever sell the house.

Wish I'd have known so I could have driven by and snatched them