There’s hardly a month that goes by without a attempt at improving the way that music sounds. The problem is, nearly all these brilliant moves come from artists and producers. Do consumers really take fidelity into consideration when making the few music-purchasing decisions?
Some of you might be old enough to remember people complaining about how the music just didn’t sound right on any format but vinyl (including a creepy character accused of rape on a episode of 90210), and of course, there are those who complain about any file format that isn’t completely lossless. Also, there’s John Mellencamp.
Last year, Amazon and iTunes made concessions to upgrade the quality of their download tracks.
Some artists want the bar raised even higher. Metallica announced last week that its upcoming untitled album, in addition to being released on CD, will be available as a higher-quality digital download ($12) and on audiophile vinyl in a limited-edition $125 boxed set. It’s due this fall….
John Mellencamp’s upcoming Life, Death, Love and Freedom CD, due July 15, will come with, at no extra charge, a high-definition DVD stereo version that will play in most DVD players. Producer T Bone Burnett and his engineering team developed the DVD music technology because they grew exasperated about the state of digital music. Listening to the high-res disc, “I could hear the music the way it was intended to be heard,” Mellencamp said in a statement.
Neil Young recently announced that the first volume of his long-awaited archives project would arrive this fall on 10 Blu-ray Discs. The rocker, who has long decried the sound of CD and digital recording as brittle, says, “Previous technology required unacceptable quality compromises.” In addition to HD video, Blu-ray Disc players support the playback of high-resolution music beyond a CD’s dynamic range.
I’m sorry, but it’s clear that the majority of consumers couldn’t care less about the specifics of how their music sounds. The first thing they are concerned about is price (”128kbps MP3 files? A bit of a downer, but it’s their entire discography in one torrent!”). Someone willing to question the intentions of, let’s say, Metallica might believe that selling albums in increasingly expensive formats is more of a revenue-based move than an artistic one. I’m sure the new Mudcrutch album rings true and beautiful on audiophile vinyl, but it feels better for the bottom line when you pay $30 for it instead of $10. Even if the higher-quality option is at no additional cost, as in the case of the Mellencamp disc, any format that requires people to listen somewhere besides their car or a MP3 player of some sort is going to be immediately marginalized.
But, hey, maybe the reason I want to purchase fewer discs this year isn’t that the albums themselves are bad, they’re just pressed that way.
Musicians push for better sound online and on disc [USA Today]
I don’t have the setup for it anyway, but I don’t understand the 5.1 mix.
People don’t care because they have been conditioned not to care…mp3’s sound bad because there is fatigue that occurs when you listen to them…CD’s are better, but when everything has no dynamics and is LOUD ALL THE TIME LIKE THESE CAPITALS IN THIS SENTENCE…well then…it’s just annoying to listen to music…
So..where does that leave us? With CD’s nobody wants to buy and a relationship with music that has none of the mystique of the past…
Now vinyl…well..that does have sound benefits…but only if you do it right…so the optimum situation should be analog…not digital to analog…but if that is the artist’s only option well then…it means that the LOUD games that go on when mastering a CD can’t be done on an LP due to pure physics…I guarantee you that the new Portishead LP for eg (the British 33 1/3 RPM version) TROUNCES the CD…Shits on it from a great hight…Same goes for “In Rainbows” as well (the normal single LP version will do for that!!)
I care…but that is because I love music! And here’s a little tip…the older versions of your favorite CD’s usually sound better than the new remasters…because they are actually more faithful to the master than the jacked up versions currently posing as improvements…
Yes you might have to turn it up a bit louder…but then you will notice that loud is loud and quieter is quiet within the space of the same LP…it will sound better and you won’t run screaming from it after 40 minutes…(or 2 in some cases…)
Music needs to be brought back to the beautiful level it once occupied…when you got home from a shitty day and threw on a record to take you someplace…not the concept that it is the wallpaper that you throw on in travel so that you don’t have to hear the humanity in the street as you walk…
Funny that…I always get more song ideas that way…by letting the street and the subway and the inane conversations wash over me…
Then I’ll put on a record!
couldn’t you argue that the majority of consumers have never cared how it sounds. athough it is interestingly random that televisions have never looked better, and america is actually being forced to keep up (even though i read yesterday that plasma screens use 4x the energy of conventional tvs. woops!) and shell out more money for those crisp images, but any old music file will do.
YES!
i care.
Oh lord…
Despite the fact that blind tests are done time and time again showing even self professed audiophiles can’t tell the difference between a high-ish VBR mp3 and lossless, there’s going to be people saying it matters. Same for tests showing people (again, including audiophiles) can’t tell the difference between whatever “hi-def” audio and standard redbook CD.
The reality? I think you’re right. People just don’t care. Not because they have been brainwashed into complacency(as some would have you believe) but because the average consumer can’t hear a difference, so why should they pay for one?
Personally, I’d like to see Apple get with it and up the bit rate as it’s pretty easy to hear artifacts at 128 without trying. But the iTunes Plus stuff I’ve got sounds pretty good, even through my high end Shure E500 earbuds, which tend to reveal flaws pretty accurately.
Metallica, Mellencamp and Neil Young, three names I wouldn’t exactly think of if I was testing audio gear anyway.
Since most people are going to be listening to these things in the worst environments anyway — seriously, you should not EVER pay $5 for headphones… you might as well pump the music through sardine tins — I think these arguments ring hollow. That, plus the fact that most people over 18 have already blown out all of the nuance in their hearing…
Still, as someone who has obsessively tried to balance sound quality with file size in order to fit the most songs on a portable device, I can definitely say that there is a point that is “too low,” and that it generally corresponds with 128 CBR.
“it’s clear that the majority of consumers couldn’t care less about the specifics of how their music sounds”
It’s also clear that the majority of consumers like Nickleback. That doesn’t make them good.
Of course hi-fidelity is niche; high-end stuff always is. It’s created for the elite few who give enough of a shit to invest their time and money in quality. Normal people aren’t expected to care. Or pay for it.
Honestly, I thought I didn’t care. I am of the iTunes generation, so convenience triumphed quality for me. However, about a year ago, i compared the sounds quality (and file size) of iTunes to 1.) eMusic’s VBR song and 2.) AmazonMP3’s LAME-encoded songs and 3.) an actual lossless CD song and I was sorta shocked at how much it made a difference.
Honestly, I didn’t do this test voluntarily, though. An audiophile friend of mine forced me too. And that’s the problem fidelity faces, most of our generation haven’t compared a 128kbps mp3 to anything else but the radio, because when we got around to consuming music, Napster was king, not LPs or CDs.
Kinda sucks :(
@elvissinatra: I understand that sort of high-end talk in high-end audio magazines, but when T-Bone Burnett’s new codec or whatever is in nearly every publication that covers music at all, it gets a little ridiculous.
@Dan Gibson: Ha. Get off the internet, dork. :)
Lou Reed cares about sound. And he’ll tell you at great, cranky length.
Meanwhile, all I know is that all my dub and reggae sounds like shit when I ripped it onto my computer.
@Dan Gibson: There’s no - in T Bone.
@okiedoke: Thanks. I now know something I care about less than audio fidelity.
Proper hyphenation techniques w/r/t famous producers.
“But, hey, maybe the reason I want to purchase fewer discs this year isn’t that the albums themselves are bad, they’re just pressed that way.”
Ding! We have a winner.
T Bone’s hyphen was last seen in 1986. Cause of death: pretension.
God, I wish I could have had “This Is Our Country” in the highest fidelity possible.
@Chris N.: I’d like to think subconsciously I was thinking of the T-Bone I used to enjoy, back when he was producing Sam Phillips and Tonio K records.
What about the fact that the first listen of a vinyl record will be the only perfect listen, and every subsequent listen will reveal pops and scratches? My dad, born in 1948, was a big audiophile in the sixties and seventies and he dreamed of the end of vinyl. The moment the cd was introduced he went out and bought a cd player. And he’s never looked back. When I ask him about sound quality of vinyl versus cd he just laughs and says “No contest, cd’s every time.” And another thing, how important is your sound system in this equation?
I also care. It’ll be a cold day in hell when I pay for an mp3 file of any bitrate.
@Dan: Perhaps Sam got the hyphen in the divorce.
I never really cared about the quality of CD growing up. It was digital, sounded better than tapes, and sounded a hell of a lot better than all the classic rock crap my parents had on vinyl just on general principle of musical quality.
Then I started buying my own vinyl - Detroit techno, Tortoise’ Millions now Living, locals, whatever . . . benchmark set. Turns out my parents just had really bad taste in music.
I didn’t really care about my mp3 bitrates in the beginning. 128k was a lot easier to get more product on the back up discs.
Then I realized I could hear a difference when it came to 192k, and that it was far and away better. Then VBR and 320k. FLAC/etc is not as portable so I stopped there.
Then I started getting into production . . . and understanding mastering and how important this was on the entire process. I have boycotted products that use marketing companies that overuse compression on their commercials to blow the sound out of your TV. It’s idiotic enough to wage a loudness war on the radio, but don’t do it on my TV.
I got a pair of lower-end studio monitors finally a couple of weeks back (KRK RP-8’s, $300/pair) and listened to some mp3s. And then some CDs. And then some mp3s. And you know what? You can hear the missing data in the mp3s. There’s a void there, and it’ll never come back.
So, now I have years’ worth of mp3s. All of a sudden, they’re for casual listening. I cherish the “lo-fi”, not-obnoxiously overcompressed cds I’ve bought from local and unknown bands now more than ever, because they’re a disappearing commodity that outshines the mp3 format quite easily.
of course, the vinyl i’ve bought in far greater quantity along the way gets more use, still sounds better, and looks a whole hell of a lot cooler . . . but that’s a given.
Different strokes for different folks. Clearly there are a lot of people paying a lot of money for some pretty lo-fi bubblegum. If you think that’s all there is to the music business, you’re just not listening.
@cassidy2099:
Well…not true…(not to discredit your dad) but with a properly aligned needle (not too much work…there are stenciled cutouts fer crumb’s sake on the internet you can cut out to align the cartridge) and with the table actual level to the ground (a little circular bubble level will help with that..available at your hardware store for a coupla bucks) and turntable, there is hardly a noticeable deterioration…
Also a good needle will suffice…my recommendation is the Shure M97xE. Should set ya back a bit over a hundred or so but it will show in how your turntable will sound…you will notice it sounds different…
and better…
CD’s aren’t bad…but LP’s are great…scratches only appear because of bad human handling…it doesn’t take much to handle an LP correctly..you do it with glasses and other fragile things everyday so there’s really not much different in the care of holding something and then putting it away at the end of listening to it…
CD’s unfortunately were not perfect sound forever..one drop on the linoleum and a gritty pebble renders the CD skipping…and therefore destroyed…it’s plastic too! And most people don’t care for their discs…so eventually all those scratches on the surfaces will render them completely unplayable…records at least don’t die unless you apply a screwdriver to them…
I have records from the 50’s that sound fantastic! I have played them a lot! There is no noticeable deterioration…as long as you know what you are doing…
It’s all there on the internet if anybody wants to find out how to do it…
There are great entry level turntables too..
The Rega Planar 1 (I have the Planar 3) is idiotproof in it’s setup and plug and play…
Really…your ears and general music loving soul will thank you!
Cheers!
i love fidelity cuz i love vinyl.