Sell the sizzle, not the steak. That’s what they say, apparently. “They” being people who are good at selling stuff to other people who can’t always see the steak through the smoky sizzle. There’s apparently another type of sizzle that kids these days can’t get enough of; the sizzle-like sound of noise artifacts in lower-quality MP3 files.
According to a Stanford music professor, each school year more and more incoming students prefer the sound of MP3 music files when played against the same versions on CDs. Some speculate that this is because younger generations have grown comfortable with the MP3 sizzle, just as certain generations find comfort in the pops and crackles of vinyl records.
I’d offer that it might be because MP3 files sound “normal” to kids, while CDs sound “different” (even though the audio quality is arguably much higher). So kids might just identify with a version of a song that sounds like the rest of the songs on their iPod sound.
I myself have been listening primarily to MP3s for about ten years now, although I grew up on CDs. I found an old Metallica CD a few months ago and listened to it with noise-canceling headphones on and I remember thinking, “Holy crap, I forgot how good CDs sound.” Then I promptly returned to my collection of MP3s. The CD sounded great, but I’m not going to start toting a Discman around or only download lossless audio files from now on.
And I’m guessing that for generations who have never used CDs in the first place, the 128- to 256-kbit/s files they’ve been downloading from everywhere sound most natural to them.
[via CDFreaks]
I have about 300 audio tapes.Most were recorded on Expensive home equipement on high quality tapes.30% were recorded from SKY TV before digital and most sound as good as a cd.In fact the metal tapes could be recorded at a higher level than you might imagine without losing quality so with an equalizer in -line you could really push both ends.The result is better. Brain numbing .I dont understand why anyone would want to spend this amount of research money to downgrade the sound quality.The only problem with tapes was finding the track and eventual wear on the cassette,CD are fine but still have motors.MP3 are the answer but we must put the music into then at quality# or its reakky not worth the bother
cheers TOM(straydog9)
Arrgh! As a professional audio mastering engineer, you don’t know how much this kills me! All the day long I’m trying to find clean ways of creating loud and exciting tracks with the most transparent sound stage possible– and then you kids add distortion because you think that’s the way its supposed to sound! At least try something new: Try dropping the level of your file by a dB before you rip it. Alternately see what a real mastering engineer can do for you by encoding hi-rez audio into your tiny little data pipe.
This is an excellent read:
Is Studio Recording Killing Music?
http://80.85.89.84/lab/?p=132
It’s not about MP3/CD quality. That researcher misses two key facts. Students listen to MP3s via portable players and headphones for true stereo effect. CDs are played on tabletop boxes which have little speaker seperation and as such minimal stereo effect. The second reason is capacity. Those MP3 players have hundreds or even thousands of songs on them. A single CD bores most quickly with it’s 10 to 20 songs.