how does it feel, awww how does it feeelll?
really good article imo; and an important one (& also an 'interactive' article as it provides 'discussion' area)...mostly about how the music is delivered in these days of lo=fi digital and hyper compressed mastering (and RE-mastering) etc...many charts and links and great interview snippets with producers and the top mastering people in the history of the business....as well as being really well written.
[www.rollingstone.com]

The first thing that I noticed was the ad right next the article for a Rhapsody MP3 player. the ad says:
"Introducing the first MP3 player to help you discover more of the music you love"

Funny isn't it?? Here you have an article villifying the MP3 and right along side it is ad selling it.

Some notable passages from the Rolling Stone article:

But even most CD listeners have lost interest in high-end stereos as surround-sound home theater systems have become more popular, and superior-quality disc formats like DVD-Audio and SACD flopped. Bendeth and other producers worry that young listeners have grown so used to dynamically compressed music and the thin sound of MP3s that the battle has already been lost. "CDs sound better, but no one's buying them," he says. "The age of the audiophile is over."

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.)

"I think there's been a huge shift in how people listen to music. They used to get as good a stereo as they could. Now they want an iPod. And the audiophiles have moved on to multimedia. But to get the content to people, you have to play by their rules."
— Matt Serletic, Matchbox Twenty and Collective Soul producer and former chief executive, Virgin Records

"With the Beatles or Rolling Stones, they'd be a little sharp or flat, but no one would care — that was rock. Now if someone's out of tune or out of time, they treat it as a mistake and correct it."
— Ted Jensen, mastering engineer

Yea it's a shame, music is being degraded all over the world - just for the convenience of having small computer files, small equipment, small costs....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-01-07 20:32 by Erik_Snow.

Yes a good article, indeed.
I was discussing that article with our sound engineer the other day.
he talked about how there was a higher rate of brain activity while listening to mp3, compared to the same piece of music in uncompressed format.
most likely the senses are searching for clues of 3d environment which can't be found in mp3's due to reduction of information.

I remember also reading that article - but where to find it when you need it...

Not me...I dont even own an Ipod, or other similar device. I cant even listen to music on a computer...yech....Gotta be vinyl on the Klipsch for me.

JR

I also listen to vinyl for these days, but some material can only be found on CD.
There's so many official CDs I have, especially from the last 10 years, that sounds awful - soundwise....even New York Dolls last CD is spoiled by a massive wall of sound.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-01-07 20:28 by Erik_Snow.

Erik_Snow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I also listen to vinyl for these days, but some
> material can only be found on CD.
> There's so many official CDs I have, especially
> from the last 10 years, that sounds awful -
> soundwise....even New York Dolls last CD is
> spoiled by a massive wall of sound.

Erik,

How is that search for the Holy Grail going? We all know that you are a lifetime member of the Priory of Vinyl. Protectors of the bloodline!!

The Sicilian Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How is that search for the Holy Grail going?

Thanks for asking, Sicilian, I still haven't found The Sardine Quintet LP

if i remember correctly simular things were said about cassettes at one time. and the recording industry improved the quality of tapes. hopefully they'll do the same with compressed formats

ghostryder13 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> if i remember correctly simular things were said
> about cassettes at one time. and the recording
> industry improved the quality of tapes. hopefully
> they'll do the same with compressed formats

Good analogy. Storage capacity is expanding so much that in a few years there won't be a need for compressed formats, anyway. You'll be able to fit thousands of songs on a portable player in an uncompressed format like flac the same way you can now fit thousands of compressed MP3s onto a portable player. It was a big deal to me a few years ago that MP3s were two or three times smaller than flacs because storage was so expensive. Now that you can buy a 500 GB external hard drive for $150 I don't really care about saving space anymore - there's plenty of space to go around.

ohnonotyouagain Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Good analogy. Storage capacity is expanding so
> much that in a few years there won't be a need for
> compressed formats, anyway. You'll be able to fit
> thousands of songs on a portable player in an
> uncompressed format like flac the same way you can
> now fit thousands of compressed MP3s onto a
> portable player. It was a big deal to me a few
> years ago that MP3s were two or three times
> smaller than flacs because storage was so
> expensive. Now that you can buy a 500 GB external
> hard drive for $150 I don't really care about
> saving space anymore - there's plenty of space to
> go around.

That would be nice. Hopefully by then all the engineers who remember how to master properly won't be gone.

Also, that assumes that these changes are all storage- and bandwith-driven. Part of the problem is style of life--people don't often take the time to listen to music now, or they just don't have it, as music competes with other forms of "entertainment," now all located on the computer. For many young people, music is the soundtrack for their multitasking. I don't see these trends changing.

Great post/ article/ discussion! Just the info I was looking for when I posted a question about the quality of recent remasters a few weeks back!

yeh Tate; please check out this short vid, as i think it really illustrates your 'quality of recent remasters' issue...stuff u probably already know but very informative vid with musical and graphic examples...less than two minutes long.

this shows a perfect example of it

I haven't read that piece, but this is an issue that I feel strongly about.
The technology isn't the issue. We have the technology now for acceptably good digital recording and playback.
The issue is the market.
Conventional CD was and is crap. It was never truly Hi Fi but was forced on the record buying public as the wonderful new mass market medium.
Jo public then spent twenty years getting used to it and forgetting how good recorded music can and should sound.
He was then ready to accept just about any other low resolution but "nice sounding" format which the industry saw fit to deliver.
Sadly, we've arrived at a situation where there is no demand for a genuine High Fidelity music only format.
SACD and Blue Ray are an adequate technology but we've now gone the way of low resulution downloads and solid state storage.
Maybe one day the technology will allow the convenience of MP3 to be married with the highest possible quality...but the industry has to stop using the market as a playground and focus on what will represent real progress rather than on the latest gimmick and fast buck!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-01-08 15:38 by Spud.

Could someone please elaborate in a more or less clear way what the difference is between FLAC, or for example WAV? I mean, are both lossless? Both have to be created, so they are run through software I suppose... so my guess would be that it will always remain an interpretation of the holes and non-holes on a disc, or of the grooves on the vinyl original? What happens roughly in the software, when music is processed to FLAC or WAV?

Jelle

PS I usually rip everything I buy to my harddisc, WAV to play at home (is study is work), and MP3@320 to carry with me.
It's just that you can enqueue many albums on the computer so you don't have to get distracted from work each time the cd has to be changed. And I don't have to stand up for each change of volume or pause/play... the soundsystem I use is thesame for both computer and cd-player, so that's no obstruction to use WAV. Quality would be one though...

sluissie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Could someone please elaborate in a more or less
> clear way what the difference is between FLAC, or
> for example WAV? I mean, are both lossless? Both
> have to be created, so they are run through
> software I suppose... so my guess would be that it
> will always remain an interpretation of the holes
> and non-holes on a disc, or of the grooves on the
> vinyl original? What happens roughly in the
> software, when music is processed to FLAC or WAV?
>
> Jelle

The only difference between FLAC and mp3 for the user is that if you decode compressed FLAC files, you are able to obtain the original uncompressed file, while this is not possible for mp3 (so only one is "lossless" format).

C

Ah thanks Liddas... what would be the difference between FLAC and WAV? I guess FLAC is still lossless and WAV is not? But WAV files are almost as big as FLAC-files, so information-wise, the same musical quality can result from both FLAC or WAV? I guess I mean this: a FLAC contains the music in unencoded format, but is a WAV in some way encoded/altered/processed or degraded compared to the original?

sluissie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ah thanks Liddas... what would be the difference
> between FLAC and WAV?

FLAC (free lossless audio codec) is a "compressed" audio file.
Wav files are a format of digital audio.

I guess FLAC is still
> lossless and WAV is not?

WAV is, generally speaking, uncompressed. But as if wav is the best way of "digitalizing" audio, this is a completely different issue.

For the normal human being, PCM (cds audio format) and WAV are of the same quality.


But WAV files are almost
> as big as FLAC-files, so information-wise, the
> same musical quality can result from both FLAC or
> WAV? I guess I mean this: a FLAC contains the
> music in unencoded format, but is a WAV in some
> way encoded/altered/processed or degraded compared
> to the original?

It is the other way round. If you have a WAV file to start with, the FLAC compressed version will be a smaller file

C



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-01-08 11:41 by liddas.

Clear enough! Good to know that I did not have a clue ;-)

At least I conclude I'm doing okay for now with the way I listen to my albums, but I see I should sort it out a bit deeper sometime. Thanks very much for your info.

Jelle



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-01-08 11:51 by sluissie.