I agree. In my previous job, I had a pair of headphones where I could _clearly_ hear the difference between CD and mp3. I have a pair of speakers at home where I can just about do the same.
However, in this world of iPods and music on the move and tiny headphones on crowded, noisy trains, nobody notices. And soon it’ll be too late.
It’s when the producers stop noticing/caring that it will _really_ be dead.
I can *just* tell on computer speakers, or in the car. I can’t bear MP3 on in-ear headphones (Sennheiser, but not pricey ones), and on the house stereo (budget hi-fi, but decent-ish), it’s foul. It gets better with a higher bitrate, but it’s still bad.
Some producers don’t care. A lot of rock/pop is, as one of the comments said, highly compressed in another way- the dynamic range- which makes it sound louder overall, and copes with the dreadful signal-to-noise and low power output of a crap stereo. Like you suggest, most of the consumers don’t care, and as another comment in the article says, free is better than good for many people.
So they sound different do they?
No doubt if I was of an age whereby I could still hear the full frequency range I would be able to tell.
I just thought CDs sounded crap.
One could argue that music has been dying since it went digital. Even none-compressed music is an approximation of the analogue sound that produced it.
I have to admit I use an iPod and am quite happy with the sound quality; but like the article says, you can get used to missing music. I should invest in a decent sound system at home, maybe then I can appreciate music the way it was intended to be heard.
@hoipoloi: Vinyl Junkie!
@John: Your point about digital music being an approximation is correct of course, but then again, an analogue reproduction is an approximation too: They’re just different approximations. The MP3 problem is that it’s a worse approximation- it deliberately throws away bits to make the filesize smaller, where the CDDA sampling tries to get as close as possible given technical constraints of the format. Also, MP3 is usually an approximation of an approximation, as it’s often ripped from a CD: The CD is a 44Khz sample of an analogue source, the MP3 is lossy compression of that 44khz sample.
MP3 is like cassette was in it’s day: technically inferior but more convenient than the previous format (LP vinyl), but covenient, portable, and less prone to damage. The dissapointing thing is that SA-CD and DVD-Audio have got nowhere, it seems. They should be the growing format as they give better sample rates (so a better approximation) than CD.
Here’s an interesting test. Get hold of a CD you know well, and a copy of CDex. Rip a track twice, once to MP3, once to WAV (uncompressed), and play it back and see if you can spot the difference. You could even burn the tracks back to CD as CD-Audio and try them on a decent CD player.
I agree. In my previous job, I had a pair of headphones where I could _clearly_ hear the difference between CD and mp3. I have a pair of speakers at home where I can just about do the same.
However, in this world of iPods and music on the move and tiny headphones on crowded, noisy trains, nobody notices. And soon it’ll be too late.
It’s when the producers stop noticing/caring that it will _really_ be dead.
I can *just* tell on computer speakers, or in the car. I can’t bear MP3 on in-ear headphones (Sennheiser, but not pricey ones), and on the house stereo (budget hi-fi, but decent-ish), it’s foul. It gets better with a higher bitrate, but it’s still bad.
Some producers don’t care. A lot of rock/pop is, as one of the comments said, highly compressed in another way- the dynamic range- which makes it sound louder overall, and copes with the dreadful signal-to-noise and low power output of a crap stereo. Like you suggest, most of the consumers don’t care, and as another comment in the article says, free is better than good for many people.
So they sound different do they?
No doubt if I was of an age whereby I could still hear the full frequency range I would be able to tell.
I just thought CDs sounded crap.
One could argue that music has been dying since it went digital. Even none-compressed music is an approximation of the analogue sound that produced it.
I have to admit I use an iPod and am quite happy with the sound quality; but like the article says, you can get used to missing music. I should invest in a decent sound system at home, maybe then I can appreciate music the way it was intended to be heard.
@hoipoloi: Vinyl Junkie!
@John: Your point about digital music being an approximation is correct of course, but then again, an analogue reproduction is an approximation too: They’re just different approximations. The MP3 problem is that it’s a worse approximation- it deliberately throws away bits to make the filesize smaller, where the CDDA sampling tries to get as close as possible given technical constraints of the format. Also, MP3 is usually an approximation of an approximation, as it’s often ripped from a CD: The CD is a 44Khz sample of an analogue source, the MP3 is lossy compression of that 44khz sample.
MP3 is like cassette was in it’s day: technically inferior but more convenient than the previous format (LP vinyl), but covenient, portable, and less prone to damage. The dissapointing thing is that SA-CD and DVD-Audio have got nowhere, it seems. They should be the growing format as they give better sample rates (so a better approximation) than CD.
Here’s an interesting test. Get hold of a CD you know well, and a copy of CDex. Rip a track twice, once to MP3, once to WAV (uncompressed), and play it back and see if you can spot the difference. You could even burn the tracks back to CD as CD-Audio and try them on a decent CD player.
Such are the sacrifices for “convenience”.