The Death of High Fidelity in the Age of mp3s

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Rolling Stone article, followed by some good quotes by people in the business on the "compressed aesthetic" and "robot's choice".


http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...fidelity/print

[tippy]

oh cool, Steve. Thanks. (Smoke on the water, bro.)

[Gentle Giant]

Not only has technology changed the way (i.e., the format) in which I access and listen to music, life has changed the way I experience music. When I was a teenager and single guy in my 20s, I sought out moments of solitude in which I could sit in perfect stereo and just focus all my energies on a piece of music. I'd read along with the lyrics or check out the liners, or just close my eyes and let the music wash over me.

But with kids and work and constantly being on the go, music is never, and I mean never, a primary activity for me anymore. It's always something competing with 3 or 4 other things. For that reason, convenience has become more important to me than fidelity, which may be the only thing I share with the current generation that only listens to what they can download.

[Gary Sisco]

I have less time, too, but when I do have the time, I want as high a fi as I can afford. The digital player's fine for work or the car, or background for casual reading, even a beer session on the stereo. But when I sit down to listen to music for real, I listen to the hard formats.

I do get the time once Bronwyn and the animals are all tucked in, enough to listen to at least one record, for real, sometimes more.

There's been a long trend toward convenience and away from hifi, though, going back to the commercial cassette, which was the first major move toward convenience. The first generation plus of CDs had the physical potential for hifi, though the potential wasn't used and still isn't for many recordings. Many CDs lack dynamic range, for instance. They're either way too quiet or way too loud all the time, and so often have a dynamic range that's virtually nonexistent. People who care about the sound quality, at decent labels, pretty much ruling out the corporate, have of course way improved the sound of CDs through the years, but they're outnumbered.

And I still listen to rekkids, talking vinyl platters, and I still prefer them when I do.

In the end it seems a lot more people opt for convenience but there's also, frankly, a lot of people who don't seem to have ears to distinguish. Otherwise, they could never have gotten away with that "best possible sound" shit they came out with when they began pushing CDs.

[Jon Abbey]

yeah, I linked to this last week on that downloading impact thread on Organissimo (that was linked to here in a Speakeasy thread in turn). I actually bought one hiphop CD that sounded better as a MP3 than it did in "full fidelity", kind of funny if it didn't cost me $15.

[groover]

I knew there was some reason why I couldn't hack the Arctic Monkeys, besides their playing and songwriting. The waveforms make it clear. I sometimes boost the volume on my own digital recordings, but never to the point where you lose the contour of the waveforms.

[Gary Sisco]

Turning up the volume is one of the oldest stereo sales gimmicks. The volume fools people's ears in that environment. At home, at normal volumes, the truth is revealed.

[Rob C]

Originally Posted by groover

I knew there was some reason why I couldn't hack the Arctic Monkeys, besides their playing and songwriting. The waveforms make it clear. I sometimes boost the volume on my own digital recordings, but never to the point where you lose the contour of the waveforms.

I dunno--I saw them live and they didn't do much for me then, either!

[John L]

But not all digital-music files are created equal. Levitin says that most people find MP3s ripped at a rate above 224 kbps virtually indistinguishable from CDs. (iTunes sells music as either 128 or 256 kbps AAC files — AAC is slightly superior to MP3 at an equivalent bit rate. Amazon sells MP3s at 256 kbps.) Still, "it's like going to the Louvre and instead of the Mona Lisa there's a 10-megapixel image of it," he says. "I always want to listen to music the way the artists wanted me to hear it. I wouldn't look at a Kandinsky painting with sunglasses on."

Um...hello. Unless you are listening to live music, then you are only listening to an image of it. Duh!

It seems to me that PCs will soon be able to handle WAVE files like they do now MP3s, and this whole debate will be put to rest.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Originally Posted by John L

It seems to me that PCs will soon be able to handle WAVE files like they do now MP3s, and this whole debate will be put to rest.

Not if the waves sound like shit to begin with! The problem with fidelity today starts with the released format, in today's world that's CD, where the "modern" mastering technique is to crank up the level and compress the hell out of it. Ripping this stuff to an mp3 only makes sound worse. But truth be told, it was bad to start with.

I used to consider new reissues of stuff I already had to gain a sonic upgrade. I stopped that about 5 years ago. I think the first ones that "hit me" were the Hendrix estate's remasters of "Are You Experienced" and "Electric Ladyland". I couldn't understand why I got sick of listening to them after about 10 minutes. Then I did a little research and found out how compressed they were.

Kevin

[John L]

Originally Posted by Kevin Bresnahan

Not if the waves sound like shit to begin with! The problem with fidelity today starts with the released format, in today's world that's CD, where the "modern" mastering technique is to crank up the level and compress the hell out of it. Ripping this stuff to an mp3 only makes sound worse. But truth be told, it was bad to start with.

I used to consider new reissues of stuff I already had to gain a sonic upgrade. I stopped that about 5 years ago. I think the first ones that "hit me" were the Hendrix estate's remasters of "Are You Experienced" and "Electric Ladyland". I couldn't understand why I got sick of listening to them after about 10 minutes. Then I did a little research and found out how compressed they were.

Kevin

OK, the issue of compression is something else.

It is sort of ironic that the digital format is to blame for this (if indeed it is?). When digital music first hit the market, the expansion of dynamic range was one of its main selling points. In fact, the problem with a lot of early CDs, particularly classical CDs, is that they weren't compressed enough (IMO). Either the soft parts were inaudible or the loud parts shook the walls. They went overboard in showing off dynamic range in the same manner that a lot of early stereo records had too much separation of channels. I actually bought a CD player with the capability of compressing the music for that reason.

Or am I confusing "small dynamic range" with "compression?"

[Gary Sisco]

Might be true of classical CDs; I wasn't buying any. Try listening to a first-generation CD of Coltrane's Impulse records, as an example of what I was getting at above.

The CD has the technical potential for hifi. It's not often used, however. Most are better than they used to be, doubtless, but some are still way better than normal. It depends on who's using the format and whether they use its potential. Most don't.

That was the case also with vinyl, too. All lp's were not created equal. Especially in the latter 70s a lot of records got released on shitty vinyl. That's one the reasons CDs were as easy to impose on retailers as they were. A lot of records were released that were too thin or made with recycled vinyl or both. They didn't sound good, and they often developed skips right away.

I'm satisfied with mp3 for portable uses. It's great for portable uses, where convenience trumps hi fi, doubtless. It's definitely compromised sound, but then so is FM radio.

There used to be the same arguments between the cassette fans and reel-to-reel fans when cassettes were a coming thing. Reel-to-reel, again if used to its potential, was hands down the best fidelity, but cassettes were more convenient to use, so hi fi became the lesser issue.

[Dan G]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

That was the case also with vinyl, too. All lp's were not created equal. Especially in the latter 70s a lot of records got released on shitty vinyl.

Especially RCA's Dynaflex records. Fucking crappy thin vinyl that sounded like shit.

[Gary Sisco]

It was widespread, the shitty, thin vinyl, and became moreso the later into the 70s you went. That's when I got into the habit of recording records on the their first play.

It was one of the primary reasons people were swayed by the initial CD propaganda. That and the fact that many music people had less than fine turntables and cartridges, etc.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

There's an excellent video on youtube.com that gives examples of what's been happening to CDs. The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ. I think it does an excellent job of showing how screwed up today's CDs are.

[Chris D]

This is a big reason I've been buying mostly LPs, and mostly used ones, for the last couple of years. With the Tascam recorder, I can make better CDs than most anyone is issuing.

[Morthrablethrockmorten]

So what if Hi Fi is dead?

If you're old enough to remember music in the 50s and 60s, before the advent of "high end" or even above average audio, you know that the world listened to and enjoyed Lo Fi for years. And now it's back.

I'm grateful to have a choice and I choose Hi Fi (for a while in my life my audio cost more than my car-and now both are obsolete) but if music is now a consumer good to a greater extent than it has been, then it's no surprise that it's as characterless as Velveeta cheeze. That's all a lot of people ask for from the things that nourish them and there is plenty to go 'round.

If you want more or better, it's not hard to find.

[groover]

Actually its not the volume boosting that's really the problem being described, but normalizing the volume level. Only speech recordings benefit from normalization. Otherwise, volume can safely be boosted as long as none of the original frequencies are being clipped.

[Gary Sisco]

There will always be hi-fi people, doubtless. But they've always been a minority in the larger scheme of things. Pre-stereo there were hifi mono rigs. I was one of the reel-to-reel holdouts, and used one until '84 when I had to replace a capstan but couldn't find one, and then left the country. Later on I gave the machine to a friend who liked to tinker with sound things.

There will always be hard formats and people who want high fidelity listening and there will also always be people who want to go the convenience way.

There was all the talk about the death of vinyl, how "they" weren't going to make turntables or even styluses anymore and so on and so forth. It was all bullshit, obviously, as all of that is still around, people are still making and buying vinyl, people still use tape, etc.

Hell, I have a friend who's an eight-track freak because he thinks they're funny. He's not alone. There are places that still today sell parts to fix one if you want to. He had a Coltrane eight track going last time I saw his set up. There used to be newsletter for eight-track fans. I imagine now they have websites and bbs's, like every other interest.

I have another friend who has a jukebox at his house and his hobby/collecting project is to stock the jukebox with all of the singles that were in the favorite bar of his youth's jukebox.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

I squash everything going into my dance laptop into mono mp3s. Square dances are always in mono -- the clarity of the the calls arriving at the dancers' ears trumps all other considerations.

[walto]