People w/o ears (fidelity related)

spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
edited May 2007 in Strut Central
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...
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  • dayday 9,611 Posts
    I hate to say this but, music is disposable and people don't care. This is an MP3 generation and that is all alot of people know.

  • spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
    I hate to say this but, music is disposable and people don't care. This is an MP3 generation and that is all alot of people know.

    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?

  • JacobWizzleJacobWizzle 1,003 Posts
    I hate to say this but, music is disposable and people don't care. This is an MP3 generation and that is all alot of people 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.

  • BsidesBsides 4,244 Posts
    Im picky to the point where I won't play some great songs if they're poorly recorded.


    I feel really sorry for you.

  • Birdman9Birdman9 5,417 Posts
    I guess it all depends on HOW bad the quality is, and how unavailable it may be through any other means. The way you are describing it sounds a bit Laurel-and-Hardy-esque, with him on one end of the spectrum and you on the other. I can see how it would be irritating to have him playing stuff that's at a low bit rate when it's readily available on a remastered CD, but if it's crazy rare and the only way anyone's gonna hear it, I think it's reasonable that you let go of a little on your end.

    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.

  • Otis_FunkmeyerOtis_Funkmeyer 1,321 Posts
    Ipods wouldn't be so popular if most people could tell the difference.
    Playing mp3s on the radio is pretty weak, though.

  • KaushikKaushik 320 Posts
    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 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.

    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...

    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?

  • kalakala 3,361 Posts


    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

  • G_BalliandoG_Balliando 3,916 Posts
    cd/vinyl/mp3 doesn't make much of a difference when your'e talking about radio. unless your mp3 is 128kbps.

  • deejdeej 5,125 Posts
    192 and up the difference is barely noticeable dude, as long as the mp3 is encoded right

  • DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
    cd/vinyl/mp3 doesn't make much of a difference when your'e talking about radio. unless your mp3 is 128kbps.

    True. It's not like FM is the perfect medium for preserving sound quality.

  • kalakala 3,361 Posts
    yeah fm is so compressed and fucked with by all kinds of digital signal processors
    by the time it hits you

  • G_BalliandoG_Balliando 3,916 Posts
    192 and up the difference is barely noticeable dude, as long as the mp3 is encoded right

    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.

  • spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
    cd/vinyl/mp3 doesn't make much of a difference when your'e talking about radio. unless your mp3 is 128kbps.

    True. It's not like FM is the perfect medium for preserving sound quality.

    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.

  • LaserWolfLaserWolf Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
    This is the first case I have ever heard of someone not being able to tell the difference between a good recording and a bad one when they are A/Bed.

    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.

  • deejdeej 5,125 Posts
    interesting 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.
    you must have some nice-ass stereo equipment.

    my audiophile friend is in europe or i'd have him respond

  • billbradleybillbradley You want BBQ sauce? Get the fuck out of my house. 2,904 Posts
    I can hear the difference in the quality but I think others are right here, most people either can't hear the difference, or just don't care. Personally, I can't stand listening to a 128khz mp3s and the only time I ever do is when it is something I just can't track down in better quality.

  • spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
    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.

    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.

  • deejdeej 5,125 Posts
    considering the negligible price of HD space these days i doubt that the poor fidelity and compression issues of mp3s will be a long-lasting problem

  • G_BalliandoG_Balliando 3,916 Posts
    some people seem to be missing the fact that he is talking about playing on the radio. there is no way you can tell the difference between an mp3 at 192 and a cd over the radio. no way. however, the difference between a cd and vinyl is vastly different than the difference between an mp3 and a cd. we're talking analog to digital as opposed to two different styles of compression in digital. I can always tell an mp3 from vinyl in my own studio on my own reference monitors, and usually even between an mp3 and a cd (or wave file), but that's because my ears are trained on my current setup. in a regular listening environment (home stereo, or any mid to high end audio equipment), the average person should be able to hear the difference between vinyl and any kind of CD or mp3 when A/Bed, but I still think a decent quality mp3 and a cd are going to be a tough call for most people.

    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.

  • G_BalliandoG_Balliando 3,916 Posts


    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.

    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.

  • LaserWolfLaserWolf Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
    What about studio recordings. Some people love Steely Dan for the care taken in the studio. By comparison I love early blues recordings from Chess or Sun studios, masterpieces in lo-fi.

    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

  • G_BalliandoG_Balliando 3,916 Posts
    i hear ya, it's totally up to preference at that point. production and mixing styles are an element of the muisic itself, so it's completely dependant upon what the artist and producer are looking to achieve. I like all different types of recording styles. I like some old jazz stuff in mono, i like the willie mitchell style, I like the 60s rock style stereo imaging (with some instruments panned hard to one side, some panned hard to the other, with vocals and bass somewhere near the middle), it just depends. I think that this is an entriely different discussion though.

    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.

  • billbradleybillbradley You want BBQ sauce? Get the fuck out of my house. 2,904 Posts
    Several times I have downloaded an mp3 for a track that I couldn't find on vinyl, then when I finally found the vinyl the tracks would sound MUCH better, having layers of audio that I never heard before.

  • spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
    What about studio recordings. Some people love Steely Dan for the care taken in the studio. By comparison I love early blues recordings from Chess or Sun studios, masterpieces in lo-fi.

    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

    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.

  • kicks79kicks79 1,337 Posts
    I do a community radio show and by the time the signal is compressed and boosted by the station you'd be hard pressed telling the difference between a 192 mp3 and a cd. I am loathe to play anything below 192 though. We used to be all about the vinyl but the equipment at the station is pretty bad that it makes harder and harder to do this.

  • People that are not normal wax diggers are clueless when it comes to understanding different frequencies with different formats of music.


    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
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  • spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
    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 is probably the most horseshit explaination of the differences in format I've ever heard.

  • BeatChemistBeatChemist 1,465 Posts


    Most records have a tucked( thick analog feel, but still clear)warmer 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 ..

  • im not sure what you didnt understand about "my take"....so Im going to let what you said slide.


    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
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