The Way it Was...
I received my latest issues of Stereophile yesterday and while reading the letters to the editor I was reminded of a debate that I have seen raging in the audiophile community. Mainly, this is the "are iPods good or bad?". I figured I would take a minute and talk about this issue. Of course the debate is not just about iPods, it is about lossy compressed music and downloaded distribution vs uncompressed music and traditional distribution. I (and others) only mention iPods because they get a lot of press.
I will start out my saying that I own an iPod and I like it. However I am very concerned about the prevalence of compressed music and lack of hard media.
There is a place for the iPod and other digital music players that play compressed music (I know, most of them can use some kind of loss-less compression, but few people take advantage of it) such as listening on the bus or when you are our on your bike. It also seems to me that this digital music revolution has re-invigorated people's love and appreciation of music. I can definitely see the benefit of having more music out there for people to listen to and enjoy, and I feel like the advent of the portable music player has enabled that. People can get music they want quickly and take it wherever they go for their enjoyment.
However, I am concerned that we are moving toward a music industry that distributes most music in 128k compressed formats. This causes me great consternation. I have done side by side comparisons of CDs and their encoded counterparts and there is no contest. Even on an inexpensive, non-audiophile system the differences are apparent.
Many of you may be thinking, "But Erik! The music that is available in the compressed format is also available at your local CD store in all its uncompressed glory!" To that I say most of it, yes, but I went to find the latest EP by one of my favorite artists Mike Doughty and to my disappointment it is ONLY available from the iTunes music store in 128k compressed audio! On this album Mike does a cover of The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. It is a great cover, and it sounds decent on my cheap headphones at work, but anything better than that it sounds thin. Something is missing and I can not get it back.
My only hope is that as your basic audio gear gets better and people listen to their CDs they start to wonder why their iPods do not sound like that, and they start to demand high quality recordings. Then we have the best of both worlds, the ability to listen to our high quality CDs at home, and then put the music on the portable music player when we are on the go, the way it was meant to be.
I will start out my saying that I own an iPod and I like it. However I am very concerned about the prevalence of compressed music and lack of hard media.
There is a place for the iPod and other digital music players that play compressed music (I know, most of them can use some kind of loss-less compression, but few people take advantage of it) such as listening on the bus or when you are our on your bike. It also seems to me that this digital music revolution has re-invigorated people's love and appreciation of music. I can definitely see the benefit of having more music out there for people to listen to and enjoy, and I feel like the advent of the portable music player has enabled that. People can get music they want quickly and take it wherever they go for their enjoyment.
However, I am concerned that we are moving toward a music industry that distributes most music in 128k compressed formats. This causes me great consternation. I have done side by side comparisons of CDs and their encoded counterparts and there is no contest. Even on an inexpensive, non-audiophile system the differences are apparent.
Many of you may be thinking, "But Erik! The music that is available in the compressed format is also available at your local CD store in all its uncompressed glory!" To that I say most of it, yes, but I went to find the latest EP by one of my favorite artists Mike Doughty and to my disappointment it is ONLY available from the iTunes music store in 128k compressed audio! On this album Mike does a cover of The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. It is a great cover, and it sounds decent on my cheap headphones at work, but anything better than that it sounds thin. Something is missing and I can not get it back.
My only hope is that as your basic audio gear gets better and people listen to their CDs they start to wonder why their iPods do not sound like that, and they start to demand high quality recordings. Then we have the best of both worlds, the ability to listen to our high quality CDs at home, and then put the music on the portable music player when we are on the go, the way it was meant to be.
posted by Erik at 8:39 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home