THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON COMPRESSED MUSIC

[wgscott]

Compression and dynamic range limitation on analogue media is "musical."

 

Compression and dynamic range limitation, even to a much lesser extent, on digital media is a crime against civilization.

 

One thing Neil Young is very good at is summoning up some righteous anger.

[wgscott]

14 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

Not always. NY is just like everyone else, he puts his pants on one leg at a time. Yo know the old saying about opinions......

 

Listen to some old Julie London LP's and tell me if you think analog range limitation and compression is good. On a decent system, it sounds like ass.

 

Sarcasm isn't your thing this morning?

[wgscott]

46 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

Is it morning? I have been at work too long this morning.......

 

Sounds like Steve Jobs compressed your whole day.

[wgscott]

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

 

Just crummy management.......

 

Just management.

 

(See, I compressed it without loss of any information.)

[wgscott]

For many years, I listened to that 1977 Grateful Dead Cornell Barton Hall concert on a bootleg cassette tape, which was probably the copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy (all analogue), and the distortion and tape speed variance etc was laughably bad.  Then the high res (24/192) version of the original recording was officially released, and I got to hear it how it is "supposed to" sound.  The official high-res recording is of course vastly better than the bootleg, but it isn't at all clear I got any more real enjoyment out of it.  The quality of the bootleg tape was so bad that I am sure it was far worse than the crappiest mp3, but somehow, contrary to these kinds of claims, it did not destroy the music.  (It did, however, destroy the cassette tape player in my Toyota Emasculator minivan, RIP.)

 

I've also bought Neil Young high-res music that turned out to be crappy up-sampled redbook recordings, and everyone raved about how much better they sounded.  

 

Expectation bias is far more powerful in terms of its ability to distort than is musical compression.

[wgscott]

10 hours ago, Rexp said:

Strange that someone as concerned with SQ as Neil Young couldn't get his CD's to sound acceptable?

 

At least he did the highly principled thing, and didn't sell any.

[wgscott]

10 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

Mine too - why I posted the link

 

I just had to. @wgscott might want to buy some. Good for scaring cats.....

 

 

I am a huge Neil Young fan.  I just don't buy his arguments about audio quality.  But I did buy some of his high-res that turned out to be up-sampled redbook.

[wgscott]

4 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

why?

 

Saves on green ink.

[wgscott]

Nothing gets by you guys.

[wgscott]

9 hours ago, Rexp said:

Can you recommend a Coltrane CD? Thanks! 

 

Lush Life.