Interesting NY Times Article

[The Computer Audiophile]

In Mobile Age, Sound Quality Steps Back

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/business/media/10audio.html?th&emc=th

 

[ghook2020]

An interesting quote...

 

"Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford, said he had conducted an informal study among his students and found that, over the roughly seven years of the study, an increasing number of them preferred the sound of files with less data over the high-fidelity recordings."

 

Innocent victims of the "loudness war"?

 

I wonder if dynamic range compression was explained to these students, would their preference change?

 

Or is it that music has always meant something different to young people? When I was a kid, I got my rock-n-roll fix from an AM-only transistor radio, and could care less about my Dad's stereo system. Maybe not so different from today's iPod generation.

 

Perhaps high fidelity is simply an acquired taste that (more often than not) comes with greater maturity and perspective?

 

Hook

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Hook - I think you are on the right track. Plus, if people have never heard anything better on a real audio system there is no way they can select it as sounding better.

 

[wgscott]

When I was a kid I remember going through a stage (I am embarrassed now to admit this) where we would record something with Dolby (first-generation) noise reduction from an LP onto a cassette tape and then play it back without turning on the noise filter. The way it accentuated the vocals seemed worth all the extra hiss. Maybe it is something like that, where the digital compression makes it harsher and somehow more authentic. It is what sounds normal now, I guess, if you go around with iPod ear-buds jammed in your ears all day, or maybe it is the nascent cellphone-induced brain tumors.