People w/o ears (fidelity related)
spelunk
3,400 Posts
I've been having an ongoing struggle with a guy I do a radio show with over sound quality and mp3s, trying to get him to listen to the difference in fidelity between CDs, mp3s, and vinyl. When we were first starting to pull together the show I implored him to try to find all the stuff that he has as mp3 files at least on CD at the station's library, if not on vinyl. He's very typical of the current college generation, as he rarely buys music and relys almost solely on mp3 files.Thing is, the guy can't tell the difference in sound quality between an mp3 and a CD to save his life, even when I A/B the same track on some good studio monitors. This really tripped me out, because I had always assumed that everyone could tell the difference, it's just that most people don't really care. It really got me thinking though about how many people out there are really even concious of those issues, and even notice when a track is poorly recorded/mixed/encoded.Personally, I know that I notice the smallest details in mixes and sound, and am picky to the point where I won't play some great songs if they're poorly recorded. I won't play an mp3 over the radio unless it's something impossible to find otherwise (now a lot of radio promotion is done via mp3 downloads, which is some total bullshit. Bandwidth is so damn cheap these days, send me the effing wav file or a CD you cheap bastards.)I guess my question is - with a lot of the everyday people you encounter, do a lot of them not notice differences like this? I mean we're not all cut out to be recording engineers or mix records but are most people that oblivious? I don't know, a lot of shit these days has got me questioning whether I hear music differently from most people...
Comments
Yeah, I know this all too well and it makes me ashamed of my generation, but even by this logic I'd figure that once someone heard the real thing (i.e. a record) they'd at least notice, even if they didn't care. I mean if people truly can't tell the difference it says something more universal about some human beings being more/less adept listeners, right? I mean people bought cassettes and didn't care about fidelity either, you know?
The general public ever really gave a fuck though. Its not like Direct to Disk was a phenomenon or some shit. At this point I would rather here a dope mp3 than some medicority through a ssl with 1940's pre amps.
I feel really sorry for you.
I mean, if this is a radio show (assuming it to be college/public-community/internet or some combination thereof), the sound quality for most people is going to be so negligible anyway. I mean, 3/4s of the audience is going to be listening through shitty computer speakers or the kind of bookshelf unit junk they peddle nowadays anyway. I guess if you are recording it for posterity/promotion tool, the issue becomes magnified, but you are probably still waging a losing battle when it comes to this guy. I developed my ears later in life(after abusing them on countless rock stages) and even though I enjoy audiophile equipment and speakers and talk of 'imaging' and 'warm sound', I am not sure I could pass a blindfold test the way friends of mine like Fatback could. It has to be pretty obvious, and I grew up on vinyl.
Playing mp3s on the radio is pretty weak, though.
I think you've got it the wrong way around. Most people who get music sent to them prefer not to have their inboxes cluttered with big ass audio files. almost all radio DJs or club DJs I know prefer a CD or a Yousendit with a high quality mp3. Yes bandwidth is cheap but I'm not about to aggravate someone by emailing a WAV file which might be 100 MB or more in size.
Why do you think so many DJs spin MP3s encoded at 320k? Can you really tell the difference between a CD and a hi res mp3 when you compare on the same monitors?
true
only 5-10% of the population can hear it
True. It's not like FM is the perfect medium for preserving sound quality.
by the time it hits you
well, yeah. i said the only way the mp3 would be noticeable over a radio signal would be if it were encoded at less than 128, and still, it might not be noticeable on radio.
192 and up is basically CD quality. the only way you can tell the difference would be on a pair of accurate reference monitors.
Which is why its important to feed it a high quality signal to begin with. Signal chain issues get exponentially bad when there's more than one problem; compressing a file twice sounds like trash.
nteresting responses. Deej - Yes, I can absolutley tell the difference between a 320k mp3 and an uncompressed file, and it surprises me when people can't. I guess I shouldn't be quite so surprised though.
I hear people say all the time "I can't tell the difference any way". When I ask if they have ever listened A/B they say "no".
I am old enough to remember people saying they couldn't tell the difference between hi-fi and mono, mono and stereo, stereo and quad, analog and digital and now mp3s.
Shortly after I opened my shop the Robert Johnson box set came out. Ever single review I read went on and on about the great sound. They talked about how this was the first time you could really hear the songs. I had the 80snice price vinyl. I would A/B that thing to everyone who walked in the door. Everyone could easily hear the difference and choose vinyl.
I was surprised when I got my mp3 player at just how bad the mp3 sounded. I am recording them at a fairly high bit rate now.
On the other hand when I visit my friend who owns an audiophile store and here her talk about how this speaker sounds good for classical but not jazz and other such nonsense I rarely hear what she is talking about. I'm gald that when the green magic marker on cds (remember this?) thing was going on I never heard the difference.
If dude wants to play mp3s, you should let him. You should also let your audience know when they are hearing an mp3, cd or vinyl.
my audiophile friend is in europe or i'd have him respond
Yeah most audiophile stuff is total bs created by guys who took an electrical engineering class or two in college and spent all their excess money trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to stereo equiptment. I'm just talking about some decent studio monitors - Some JBL 4408a's run through a decent Urei amp.
I don't really trip off him playing mp3s anymore, but I'm still not going to compromise on the fidelity of what I decide to play.
and in terms of a radio signal deteriorating the quality exponentially, I can't really believe that. an mp3 at 192 is not going to sound worse than a CD or wave file over the radio. an mp3 at less than 128 is going to sound worse anyway, but i don't think it would sound worse than normal just because it's through the radio (though, an mp3 at less than 128 sounds pretty fuckin' bad no matter what). i would say the radio evens the playing field between the different compression types and musical formats more than it spreads it. but hey, i'm no scientist... just how it seems to me.
i think that's a fair conclusion. to us individually, sound quality and format matters. to the general radio listening public, it doesn't matter at all.
The sound that Willie Mitchell coaxed out of the Hi studios (with distant sounding horns and back ground vocals and a muddy mix) would not have been acceptable for Steely Dan, or producers at NY Atlantic Studio or RCA studios...
When the CDs for Motown first came out reviewers praised that now you could "hear each instrument individually". I hatted it, I figured if Smokey wanted me to hear each instrument he would have mixed it that way the first time.
Long live lo-fi! Death to MP3s. BACK TO MONO
I do agree that the mp3 changed things up a bit, but really, the digital format in general did that. Recording and mixing and production techniques aren't limited the way they were in the age of analog recording, so the entire game has changed. You don't normally hear stuff that sounds like willie mitchell or rudy van gelder anymore because everybody is working with computers and state of the art studio equipment that uses digital recording technology.
All very true, I love the gritty lo-fi sounds just as much as anyone. But even on a lo-fi recording, I want the lo-fi elements that are brought out by old mikes and tape, some harmonic distortion, analog clipping on the vocals, not some harsh digital junk. Even in the analog domain, with a lo-fi record, you don't want a bad copy, whether that's a bad pressing, a styrene copy, surface noise, etc. There's a fine line between good and bad low fidelity.
When things were all analog, it was much easier to get away with a low-fi sound, and in retrospect a lot of shortcomings are now what give recordings their unique sound. For a lot of reasons, things aren't like that in the digital world, which makes most in the box mixes sound pretty sterile.
With Motown for me listening to the remasters and the OG monos are completely different experiences, but I enjoy each.
I am not big on CDS. For me, it's Wax and mp3 files. But I know the difference.
Most records have a tucked( thick analog feel, but still clear) sound because records are pressed at a low frequency.
To me, mp3s are brassy like. They all have a high treble feel to them- that's why a lot of people dont like them, too much gain.
CDs are ultimately clear. You can hear everything. They're mastered to the point where the clarity is too perfect, not a lot of thickness to it ..
that's my take
www.myspace.com/ishnockbaptisterock
www.swanksociety.com
That is probably the most horseshit explaination of the differences in format I've ever heard.
Once again, that is my interpretation when my ears listen. That is what I hear. It may not be the same as yours, but my ears are my ears, and your ears are your ears...That is why you have djs and musicians with DIFFERENT sounds and mixes, they all hear DIFFERENTLY and explain things differently, which leads to a DIFFERENT output in sound. ....nothing horseshit about that.
but you take it lite,
peace