Musicians agree with INQ about crap audio compression

I'm not one of you. I'm a just heavy-user of the subscription-only site into the Fairfax County Clerk's Office land records. The site is called CPAN. Since the Microsoft security update a couple of days ago - I've been nearly dead in the ethers. Those sons-a-bitches have nearly put me out of business. And none of the fancy symptoms in the literature come even close to describing my (and many others who use the CPAN system) problem. It's a real crappo situation here.

Name, email supplied

Wall Street is not Monte Carlo!

However, having said that: Fortunes are still made and lost on the Amerian Stock exchange.

Cher Price, aka money pit pimp; you were just asking for this...:)... Guys and Gals; put your nickels on what others toys and necessities will be.

Monte Carlo roulet; red and black is all you get along with the famous 0 bankrupt fee for handling the fun and pain.

At least the Inquirer has a dash of White to enlighten your thinking.

rtg

[What can this chap mean? Ed.]

Everywhere Girl Idiocy

I asked you a few weeks ago to stop wasting my time with the idiocy that is this "Everywhere girl" crap, but you appear to have ignored me. Proof positive that brain power in the media is unusually limited.

If only I could bill you for the life energy I expend every time the words “everywhere girl” appear in one of your headlines.

Brandon Johnson

[We asked Brandon if he wasn't being a tad mean. Ed. He replied:]

Yes actually. I am indeed being a bit mean. I also realize it's absurd to expect any company to change just to suit one individual.

Do you remember the "badger badger badger badger Snake" animation that was floating around the internet for months on end? When I first saw it, it was quite entertaining. After several months of seeing it pop up everywhere it not only started to get "old", but down right annoying. Every time I saw the thing I felt like rendering the offending individual unconscious. . . This "Everywhere Girl" thing reached that point almost a year ago.

PS: A few more months of reading the word "Macinteltosh" and I may just lose my mind. It's not nearly as annoying as the "everywhere girl" but it certainly deserves to go the way "Mobe" went.

Brandon Johnson

Sentiment in the Stock Markets

"That must be why Transmeta (tick: TMTA) rose 10 cents on NASDAQ today, in anticipation of future gains. AMD shares were up 80 cents and we're sure the cher price is up for sentimental reasons."

I actually laughed out loud when I read that little pun.

Usually I email you guys to remind you of the many spelling errors in your articles but this one was actually good!

Purple Polar Bear

Nick Farrell gets fired again

Hello Nick,

It seems that you and some other get fired by "[Ed.]" on a somewhat regular basis. You and others manage to stay on the job anyway. Do you willfully ignore Ed whatever-last-name-he-has, or has he no powers over you and others?

Fired
here
here
here
here
here

I'd like to hear your secrets how to fool Ed.

Greetings Bertho

MP3: Farrell is right, shocka!

Hi Nick,

Just read your article regarding MP3s & CDs and thought i'd pitch in my 2 cents (If this were print media you'd never hear from anyone except the die-hard nutters right??!)

I'm a sound engineer by a small degree (as in you wont find my name on any big productions.. yet!) and its quite shocking to see how few people actually listen critically to their music, aside from those in the music or post business.

I've long been an MP3 user, mostly for my commute to work (cycling) or piping it around my home, and i've learnt to live with 192kb as my preferred minimum. Alot of the new albums i have are uncompressed, since HDDs are quite cheap these days, however the point of this rant isnt the quality factor.

The RIAA and the rest of the music industy have to realise something. Millions of sales at half the current price, are better than close to a million at the full price. I've been boycotting CD & DVD sales for over 5 years now. Doesnt stop me listening to good music, but it has stopped me finding new artists that they love to punt.

In the end, both the industry and I end up losing out, since they lose my business, and i sit with the same old tunes again and again. Unfortunately, until they develop better artist management, and an ability to handle their cash better, they wont be seeing any of my money. I doubt they'd ever launch a subscription service to their catalogs, let alone implement more ethical music contracts for musicians. Hell, if you own their soul now, why settle for less just to improve public perception.

The classic case is Michael Jackson & Sony. Sure, he got the biggest recording contract in history (Close to a billion dollars), but the fine print is that it was actually a loan based on future earnings. Since his career has basically tanked, Sony are checking every pocket and asset he has in the hopes they can recoup some of the loss. Infact, his biggest asset is still the Beatles archive, which Sony is steadily gaining more and more control over.

Until the industry actually comes clean about its bad business practices and starts making changes, they wont see a dime from me.

Thanks for the good writing, and I hope this wasnt too long winded!

Regards
Mike

Surely you've been beseiged by such comments already, but just in case.

I would suggest moving up to at least 192kbps for MP3. Even on a relatively poor system, there is a clear improvement over 128kbps. But further than that, I would recommend ogg. At about 128kbps, the sound quality is definately richer than a 192kbps MP3. Higher data rates will get you better quality, but you really have to have the ears and the setup to appreciate it fully, and for those environments, I recommend FLAC.

Alec M

It's funny that you wrote about the audio superiority of CDs over MP3s... Funny because CDs themselves are an inferior product.

Around 10 years ago, it was common to hear people express their disdain for CDs or FM radio on the basis that LPs just "sound better". For some reason, over the last 10 years that has disappeared. I think it's because todays kids grew up with distorted music, so they don't know what the real thing sounds like (unless they go to a concert, but then the music is digitized, compressed, and piped to speakers that are a few hundred feet away - so the sound isn't great, anyway. It's just loud. The only place left that you can get "real" music is in a symphonic hall).

Now, the real kicker about digital music: It, like digital photography, will NEVER be able to match the quality of it's analog counterpart. The real advantage is that copies are guarenteed to be exact duplicates, whereas with the analogs there is some degradation every time you copy.

Now, since you can't get the same quality as the original music, can we at least improve it a bit? Let's look at specs: CDs play stereo 16bit samples at a rate of 44kHz (44.1 or something, anything after the decimal doesn't matter to me). This sounded great at the time, as it was replacing mono 8bit 22kHz files. Why doesn't the RIAA remaster all of their recordings into an 8-track (don't laugh), 32bit 96kHz audio wonder file? Or better yet, an audio file playing 128bit samples at 500kHz, with each instrument (or voice) sampled individually, and positioned by the player similar to 3d audio in games?

The audio quality would rock, and the storage requirements would be insane (compared to MP3s, at least). The result would be that the music industry would have a superior product, and make a killing selling the necessary hardware to play the stuff.

Sure, you could downsample the stuff to MP3 (or even a standard WAV), but then you'd be losing all of properties which make the original worth buying. Sure, you could use a hack to play it on your current PC / speakers, but then again you'd be losing out on the superior audio goodness. To really enjoy it, you'd need special audio hardware, and at least relatively decent speakers. Music pirates won't pay $20 for an album, so why would they pay the $hundreds to get good speakers for this stuff? OTOH, someone who pays out $2,500 or more for a "decent" speaker setup probably wouldn't mind paying a premium (let's say $30 per disc) for having the greatest sound available.

Doesn't this seem like a better deal for everyone? Yet, the music industry has been selling crappy-sounding CDs for the last 10 years as if they're the best thing since sliced bread. Go figure.

BDC

Hi there, always enjoy reading your articles. I could't help but respond to the hifi article. Several years back I bought a pair of Martin Logan electrostatic speakers, which have those fun see-through panels with a conventional driver for the low end at the bottom. This combination makes for great sound, however I found myself needing more when playing an mp3(or audio cd made from a decoded mp3) at anything below 192k. It just didn't do justice on the high-res speakers, especially compared to HDCD recordings, and vinyl off a quality needle. Over time, I have become a club DJ, and kept the morals of a hi-fi fanatic, which tends to clash sometimes. When playing cd's made from MP3's when I DJ, the online stores at music is purchased, I have been opting for the FLAC format, a wonderfull lossless compression which finally brings raw PCM sound quality to a portable format. It is a shame more players dont support it, as decoding and burning raw PCM cd's is time consuming, although it beats

KC

Ditto for the (American) sat music systems at least the one I listen to (XMRadio), who keeps adding channels to the satellite. The sat bandwidth is a finite resource, so quality of everything continues to degrade as more and more channels are loaded on the system.

For example I've noticed lately that BBC World Service (distributed on XMRadio) now has audible compression artifacts most all the time.

The size of the user population attuned to these issues not large enough to command the respect of the content providers, whose prime directive is not quality but simply maximizing profit.

Berry

I could not agree more! I write and record music so I understand what your saying!

But not all MP3 files are the devil. The ones that are compressed to 320Kps arnt a deplorable infliction on the listener. Oh the horrors of hearing a song below 160kps! Its just, so very wrong. Makes my liver quiver and my spleen shake.

I have to suspect one of the problems with downloads from major record labels is from the distributors and the contracts they have with them. I wouldn't be shocked at all to find the majority were exclusive distribution agreements. Offering any downloads could mess up that contract.

Quality should be the main focus of ALL record co's. Esp when, in two or three years the average cd/dvd wont be 44.1K/16 bit audio, but 192K/24 bit audio and beyound! It's killing us engineers and producers who record music at 192k/24 bit, to have to lower the sound quality to get songs on 44.1k/16 bit CD!

Thanks,
Seth