Apple has killed music, says boffin

Yes, this must be true, because vinyl is well known for its incredible dynamic range and ludicrous frequency response, or the excessively perfect surface contact the needle exhibits!

Portable music players, lossy codecs, headphones, all of these can be made to allow music to sound excellent if one cares about it. Furthermore, some music simply doesn't sound good in certain equipment (like the pseudo-stereo Beatles music on headphones).

What good equipment and practices cannot do is fix fundamentally flawed music, and their listener's tastes. Music today is compressed for radio play, and that reduced fidelity even before the lossy codecs struggle to represent it in the low-bitrate files people use to cram as many tracks of their crappy music into their music player.

In the end it doesn't matter though. If you consider that many of these lurchy "iPod generation" kids like the stool produced by groups such as Coldplay and U2, and the fact that most will be virtually deaf by age 30 anyway, quality equipment for them is like pearls before swine.

They didn't and nowhere in the article says such thing, WagonWheels. It talks about Le Pomme making mp3's crappy sound popular to teenagers, which is sad but true.

How about no? I was listening to MP3s since 1996, when I was 11. So Apple has nothing to do with this. On the other hand, I challenge you to tell apart a song played from a CD to a 320 kbps MP3.

He's right in that Apple distributes relatively low quality, low bitrate music and provides really lousy earbuds with their ubiquitous ipods. That said, all of my ripped music is at higher bitrates and now Apple is offering better files (at a premium) and you can buy better headsets. Just because it's played on your ipod doesn't mean it's crap, but that's what most people get from it.

Digital music like digital (LCD) displays is not superior quality to its predecessor. Digital media are of inferior quality, for now, but easier to manage and also shiney and new.

And cassettes were the epitome of audio quality...

Recordings have always been flawed and will always be flawed. Unfortunately few of us can hire our favorite bands to play live in our homes, so we have to settle for the flawed-recording-format-du-jour.

Well looks like you suffer from the very syndrome that the article mentions, you got so used to MP3 that now you have very low standards. If you can't tell apart music playing from a CD and MP3 in the first second, then you really don't know what sound quality means. You should also know that there's little quality difference between 128 and 320Kbps, so don't waste your player's memory. The flaw is in the compression algorithm that discards elements of the music that most people wouldn't miss, like you.

All current and past recording media and formats are defective. MP3, because it is a compressing codec, deliberately throws away audio content. Vinyl and wax before it, were unable to accurately reproduce high frequency and/or high level recordings as the mechanical nature of the playback head had inertia. CDs came close, but at 44.1ksps, higher frequencies were recreated as square waves, hardly hi-fidelity. Plus the finite number of levels detracted from the accuracy.

An oversampling digital format would do the trick, but the storage requirements would be excessive, plus the discrete number of levels would continue as an issue.

But even more a drawback is the way the original recordings are made. Even attempts to simulate the natural binaural nature of the human head have been flawed. Multimiking only makes the matter worse. And due to audible cross-recording even on binaural attempts collapses the natural 3-D environment into an out-of-phase catastrophy.

Bob Carver came the closest to accurate reproduction with his Sonic Holography(c) breakthroughs. I still have a Carver C-4000 preamp (and an M-2 amp, a miracle small box that pumps out 201 watts per channel into 8 ohms), and for realism and accuracy, nothing beats it when feeding it with a CD.

Kids (and most adults) nowadays have no idea what they are missing. But then given the quality of the performers, perhaps it's just as well.

My favorite piece of music in this present digital age is The Beatles Love album, on DVD 5.1 surround. Played back on a proper surround system is just freakin' awesome! I could listen to it every day.
(53 yr.old with lots of vinyl and the equipt. to play it on. And yes, I still prefer vinyl to everything digital that I own, with the exception of this one album.)

"Kids of today have no concept of hi-fi " - where do "audiophiles" get off telling everybody what great music sounds like? Most vinyl hi fis sound nothing like the original recordings anyway. How can you compare one from t'other and say these kids are wrong because they'd rather not listen to your overpriced vinyl hi fi?! Give me a pair of monitor speakers anyday.

I'm a DJ and doing a music technology degree and i gotta say this article is correct. I am a lucky owner of a pair of Shure SE530 earphones and the difference between 320Kbs and 192Kbs(Cd Quality) is MASSIVE! But still not anywhere near as close as vinyl. Shame its going be scrapped cause its alot more fuller sound. Wav files are always going be your best digital sounding files because they are lossless, i.e, Nothing is taken away, MP3 is generally 100hz to 15,000Hz which the human hearing can hear 20-20,000Hz, which means your missing a whole lot of the high and low frequencies. And the fact that it highly compressed!

Ipod's sound aweful too. Good job apples marketing is the best in the world for selling over priced pieces of crap!

The same people who swear by vinyl also swear by distortion-inducing vacuum tubes and don't appear to understand Nyquist sampling. Thus the "golden ears" doesn't have science on their side. I'll keep ripping my CD's into high-quality MP3's, then delivering those via digital optical into my receiver. As for my ipod, well, you can't run carrying a turntable so that's a pretty stupid comparison.

There was me thinking that apple didnt like mp3 & set their own audio codec ACC as default... they only worked with mp3 because it was too popular to ignore...

PS I dont encode lower that 256kbps :)

SHIT music has killed music ... Nuff said!

The mastering is what is really wrong with todays music. Yes MP3's are lossy (I try to avoid them) but clipping, emphazing, gating, loudness etc. are ruining dynamic range for everyone, which is a far worse problem.

A lot of artists and producers need to get it in their heads that having "the loudest input" is a bad idea.

Drums often lose their hitting impact, treble suffers from low quality encoding.

I personally use .wav files wherever I can on my computer but this is irrelevant if the mastering is bad to begin with. I have no problem reaching for the volume dial if I have to for a quieter, fuller recording.

A new file format that is actually popular is needed featuring programmable gain control that could even be tied to devices. All original files would have the full range of the original recording.

DVD's for the most part are made this way, if you have a noisy environment and need to compress the dynamic range those options are in the PLAYER not the material.

Some good reading for the uninformed: http://www.turnmeup.org/
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

It's not always easy for me to distinguish good quality MP3s from the original CDs doing A-B comparisons, but anything less than 320kbps MP3s cause me fatigue and headache after 30 minutes or so. I convert my CDs to flac for convenience sake.

There is very little music created these days that is any good, IMO - most of the stuff I listen to is from at least 20 years ago.

If your ripping CD's to MP3 @ anything higher than 192Kbs, it's pointless!!! CD's are only 192Kbs, You cant magically turn 192KBS to 320KBS without the original sound source or a copy of it. Your just wasting HDD/ipod or whatever space!

As someone said with mastering, It's an art form and this day and age there is a lot of people who just don't know/can't do it! Yes, everyone's 'preference' is different but there's definitely margins which should be stayed in. Then again, who can be bothered to master any of the mainstream diarrhea that's out there.

Underground forever baby :)

Sure, I rip at 192 vbr. Given that the best available format for 99.9% of the music out there is CD, you're welcome to enjoy the infinitesimal quality improvement available on the other 0.1%.

As to your vinyl, if you are an adult capable of distinguishing sounds above 20kHz (below the Nyquist rate for CD), then I suggest you submit yourself as the subject for a scientific journal article. No, scratches don't count as a feature.

One thing I will agree you with on is that it all depends on the quality of the master. I don't buy claims that you can hear an improvement over the same high-quality source material on CD.

Regrettably, this unscientific garbage appears to be essential to support the high-end audio business, what with their "directional" audio cables and other nonsense. And who am I to stand in the way of people enjoying these irrational purchases?

"CD's are only 192Kbs" - wrong !

2-channel signed 16-bit PCM sampled at 44,100 Hz

2 channels x 44,100 samples per second per channel × 16 bits per sample = 1,411,200 bit/s = 1,411.2 kbit/s.

Why are people even bothering to use the mp3 format with a higher bit rate when there are lossless formats out there. Go have a look at FLAC and stop throwing your music away.

I'm glad that the article and some posters here are telling people they are being sold short when it comes to music quality delivered over the internet.

The problem is that you get worse quality audio right from the start. So you listen to is on a cheep MP3 player and then you buy better equipment and the MP3 still sound the same, possibly worse because the better equipment highlights the imperfections more.

Products that offer things like bass boost or any kind of modifications to the original sound are do so by adding range that didn’t exist in the original recording. Sure, it may sound “better” but, by it’s very nature, it’s filling in gaps that should not be there in the first place.

Would you be happy with your boss phoning you on your mobile/cell and giving you very explicate instructions when you can only hear every third word and your phone tries to make up the words you could not hear? No, you want to hear every word your boss said. What’s the problem with wanting that from music? After all, you paid for it; you should want to listen to it in the best quality your equipment can produce.

But, the audio equipment industry also has a portion of the blame, pick up any magazine about audio equipment and you see reviews of mega expensive equipment.
Audio is very much about diminishing returns on investment and what you want and what you listen to. If you listen to James Galway then your requirements are going to be different to a drum and bass fan.

But, with an aging Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card and ancient Altec Lansing speakers, I can tell the difference between a CD and a MP3 recorded at maximum quality.

I think that lossy digital downloads are bad for music because the lower expectations of listeners allow recording studios to release worse quality music. Everyone loses out when that happens. And you can’t go back and polish a turd!

Well, "Baka_toroi", I could EASILY tell the difference from cd to 320kbps recording. However, you cant use your junior high styled ipod speakers for that.

Try using a cerwin vega set of speakers and throwing either in. the difference is nothing short of massive.

It's funny reading all the mp3 FUD, mp3 can achieve transparency to CD. ABX if you don't believe me. Newer codecs like AAC can achieve transparency at a lower bitrate than mp3, though only marginally.

Lossless formats like flac are great for flexibility, i.e being able to convert to any format, though bring little to the table in regards to fidelity over lossy.

All recording equipment produces less than accurate reproduction - Live with it.

If you want to hear good music simply go to a live concert with a good band or orchestrator.

You can't beat uncompressed music in the ambience of a real building played by real people.

I seriously doubt that an iPod has worse quality than the average walkman/personal stereo sold in the High Street twenty years ago, most of which didn't even have Dolby NR.

Also, the article confuses data compression with the mastering compression responsible for the loudness wars mentioned by trab. I'd argue that the latter affects the sound more, both on CD and MP3. That's what's making modern pop music sound so bad: that and the rubbish bands.

The story is true - sound quality is going down hill - but that is what technology does. It takes the essential of what the user wants and gives it to them cheaply.

An LP running through a 8 ohm speaker was always going to sounds better than any format of digital recording where the concept of sampling is at fault.

The problem is - modern kids don't know what good sound sounds like - it isn't a technical specification - its a feeling - and that isn't measurable!

"Joint stereo coding takes advantage of the fact that both channels of a stereo channel pair contain far the same information. These stereophonic irrelevancies and redundancies are exploited to reduce the total bitrate. Joint stereo is used in cases where only low bitrates are available but stereo signals are desired."

192kb is typically 96kb per channel dual stereo, or 192kb joint.

320k would be 160k per channel (dual stereo).

In any case, like another posted said, s#it music killed music, not MP3 compression.

Listening live is best, A TOP OF THE LINE RECORD PLAYER is the next best (one that costs more than most home sound systems combined, or a small car) is better than a CD player for dynamic range and sound quality (proved scientificly by Electonics Australia over 20 yrs ago and by other audiophiles), a CD player is next followed by Most MP3/4/5 players. Its not just about the sample rates and codecs, but the output ie. what are your listening to the music through? Cheap headphones/speakers equals cheap sound, better quality equals better sound. You need to look at the sum of all the parts. And Yes, today's listener is under-educated in what constitutes good quality sound.

...if this is a cross section of the music buying/playing audience then the lack of knowledge/ignorance of modern analogue/digital sound technology is quite scary.

Its no wonder 'The Man' can get away with just reducing the quality all round.

The world just keeps on getting dumber.

Today's kids are fat and nourished by fast food. Thus, it would be silly to expect their their senses to be highly developed and sophisticated enough to discern the difference in the quality of anything. They want instant gratification as opposed to being bathed in the intricacies of subtle nuances. In all fairness though, I would prefer to listen to a low quality version of a song that I like rather than a studio quality version of one that I don't; so it's not my primary concern either. On the other hand, I can certainly appreciate the "richness of sound" from a good HQ rip paired with great speakers as well as the other finer things in life that I can afford to imbibe in from time to time.

I challenge anyone making rediculous claims like this to do a double blind test comparing 24-bit 96kHz audio to an mp3 encoded at 320kbps. I've done it personally with some very high end equipment and I was 50/50. I could sometimes tell the difference between lossless and 192kbps, but only in REALLY complicated passages. And the person who commented on square waves obviously doesn't understand what a DAC does or they wouldn't be making that comment. Again set up a double blind test (if you can even hear 20kHz with any significant volume).

Like someone else said, it's all in the mastering. A crappy recording at 32-bit 192kHz will sound like crap compared to a well mastered recording encoded at 192kbps.

Audio quality is better now than it has ever been, the old school tube/vinyl crowd just likes the distortion of their old equipment. Solid state produces a much more accurate sound (both in terms of waveform magnitude AND phase). Anyone who tells you different doesn't know a thing about electronics or amplifiers (except that they paid way too much for their equipment). Where are tubes still used? Guitar amps. And why? Because they sound cool when they are driven into distortion, not because tubes "give a warmer sound". The warm sound is coloration of the original signal which is also called DISTORTION.

In the end it's all personal opinion, I like the setup I use, and you like yours. Compress the music if you like, or use a lossless audio codec. Use a tube based amplifier if you prefer the sound over solid state. Use your internal sound card, or get an external DAC. Hell buy $4000 interconnects and speaker cables if it makes you feel better about yourself.

I must here claim against the vinyl technology: Young 20th century fellows think what they hear is right just because they just heard to it. But in fact if you can hire a full orchestra and carry it with you while you travel, they could be able to hear to better quality music, provided the orchestra guys are in the correct mood, there is no external sound, whatsoever.

Digital music exist for a reason: to fuck music. Nah really? Not really. Most music we hear today is heard because of mp3. What you prefer, low quality music or no music? Dumb.

So kids are listening are used to MP3 and don't know how good an original CD sounds. But then people who listens to CD don't know how an original mastertape sounds. And original mastertape still doesn't sound as good as live listening.
The same for cone speakers (most common form of speakers), good electrostatic speakers and real sound.
And the same for digital mastering, analog mixing and the band playing together live.
Live is always better in terms of hi-fi. It is the ultimate reference.
But let's face it: most music genres sound good because of heavy producing, like rock for example. So we'll never have a live band playing as polished as a fully produced record.
How nice is hi-fi then?
So there you have it.