The Sizzling Sound of Music
Posted by: The Matty on 11 March 2009
I came across a few articles online that you will probably not like reading. They are about how kids now actually prefer recordings as lower quality MP3's to ones of a much higher quality 
iPods and Young People Have Utterly Destroyed Music (Gizmodo.com)
The actual article:
The Sizzling Sound Of Music (O'Reilly.com)
Matty
iPods and Young People Have Utterly Destroyed Music (Gizmodo.com)
The actual article:
The Sizzling Sound Of Music (O'Reilly.com)
Matty
Posted on: 11 March 2009 by Howlinhounddog
To quote one contributor to O'Reilly.com
Yeah,that's about it in a nutshell
quote:So let's get this straight.
- Apple (and Microsoft) chose poor quality encoders with low quality defaults
- Apple sold 128Kb tracks with DRM
- Apple encouraged people to burn the tracks to CD and re-encode them to remove the DRM thus reducing quality
- The industry has effectively encouraged P2P networks where the quality or encoding is often unknown.
And now an entire generation think that this low quality encoding is how music ought to sound.
Yeah,that's about it in a nutshell
Posted on: 13 March 2009 by Jeremy Marchant
But haven't we seen this before?
Junk food, with its additives, high sugar, salt and saturated fats, is unhealthy, but superficially compelling. Nutritious food is cheap and easily available, but many people are both ignorant and infantilised and drawn to the easiest option.
The gutter press, particularly in the UK, is appalling and broadsheet titles are easily available (though God knows they are hardly paragons of excellence). Yet the gutter press easily outsells them.
And so on.
It's just that this is the first time people have had a real choice between crap recordings and better ones. Naturally, they will go for the superficially attractive.
High quality recordings and hifi will never die, the sectors will just be increasingly marginalised as society sinks into the new dark ages - a Dark Ages with Gadgets.
Junk food, with its additives, high sugar, salt and saturated fats, is unhealthy, but superficially compelling. Nutritious food is cheap and easily available, but many people are both ignorant and infantilised and drawn to the easiest option.
The gutter press, particularly in the UK, is appalling and broadsheet titles are easily available (though God knows they are hardly paragons of excellence). Yet the gutter press easily outsells them.
And so on.
It's just that this is the first time people have had a real choice between crap recordings and better ones. Naturally, they will go for the superficially attractive.
High quality recordings and hifi will never die, the sectors will just be increasingly marginalised as society sinks into the new dark ages - a Dark Ages with Gadgets.
Posted on: 13 March 2009 by u5227470736789439
I do not see this in such a pessimistic way.
Okay, it is true that a great many people don't actually listen to the music they have playing, but now as never before, music is so easily available.
I think this availability is a very good thing, as music will work its way into some who would in past times have not had contact with it.
I could not care less how it is reproduced.
The MP3 sound is quite an advance on the old AM radio that carried Radio Luxemburg or early Radio One ...
The old 45 rpm single was certainly more notable for robustness than audio quality. Even many LPs are not very fine in the Hifi sense.
No the replay of music has not got worse - it simply has not got better as fast as would be technically possible.
Unlike most people I don't have a problem enjoying the quality of CD replay, but then unlike many people here, I am under no illusion that perfection in replay is one day possible! I am not worried about musical replay beyond a certain minimum standard, and that standard seems to be met for me by the direct replay of 78 rpm discs, which I find rather entrancing ...
Certainly CD is better than 78, so I am happy with the pertaining standards of replay [and radio broadcasting] in the main, and even happier that so many people have music so easily available nowadays. If one in a hundred youngsters becomes a music enthusiast, then I am happy about it!
ATB from George
Okay, it is true that a great many people don't actually listen to the music they have playing, but now as never before, music is so easily available.
I think this availability is a very good thing, as music will work its way into some who would in past times have not had contact with it.
I could not care less how it is reproduced.
The MP3 sound is quite an advance on the old AM radio that carried Radio Luxemburg or early Radio One ...
The old 45 rpm single was certainly more notable for robustness than audio quality. Even many LPs are not very fine in the Hifi sense.
No the replay of music has not got worse - it simply has not got better as fast as would be technically possible.
Unlike most people I don't have a problem enjoying the quality of CD replay, but then unlike many people here, I am under no illusion that perfection in replay is one day possible! I am not worried about musical replay beyond a certain minimum standard, and that standard seems to be met for me by the direct replay of 78 rpm discs, which I find rather entrancing ...
Certainly CD is better than 78, so I am happy with the pertaining standards of replay [and radio broadcasting] in the main, and even happier that so many people have music so easily available nowadays. If one in a hundred youngsters becomes a music enthusiast, then I am happy about it!
ATB from George