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Neil Young speaks out against excessive compression
- Thread starter chuck3
- Start date
I would add to that that the irony of getting the most possible definition out of a recording of Old Black through that Deluxe with a dynamic range of about .5 db and sounding like an airplane exploding is not lost on me.
+1 on the "cranky old man" comment. Neil, please come save us from degraded music...please. What a load...mp3 is only 5% of the data but that doesn't mean that it's 5% of the quality. The best part is how he speaks for what Steve Jobs would have done if he'd lived long enough. Jobs would likely have done what made his company the most money...and that doesn't currently involve transferring wav files that download overnight. What a crock...
bongomania
Commercial User
Yeah he's saying he needs "some rich guy" or Steve Jobs to invent a digital format that retains more data, but that will take longer to download???????????
FLAC, WAV, AIFF, how many other examples already exist, and have existed for years?
I respect ol' Neil for many, many things, but this is not one of his finer moments. This, and his claim that he has already designed and built a car that runs on water instead of gas...
FLAC, WAV, AIFF, how many other examples already exist, and have existed for years?
I respect ol' Neil for many, many things, but this is not one of his finer moments. This, and his claim that he has already designed and built a car that runs on water instead of gas...
Dude- on a lot of recordings the difference really is night and day. A 256k AAC file is fine on my computer, but anything less than Redbook CD on my main system is all but unlistenable.
Then, going from 16bit/44.1 to 24bit/96k is amazing. You're right that it depends on the source material, but in most cases, the difference can be pretty clear.
Neil has been at the forefront advocating for higher quality music, along with Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree and Peter Gabriel.
Golden Ears really don't exist anyway. Hearing the difference between interconnects and all sorts of snake-oil stuff IS laughable. But the difference between compressed music and higher bitrate stuff is identifiable- mostly in the extremes of the frequencies.
Yup +1.
Even though it's only a handful of people on here, it's kind of surprising to me that on Talkbass, where the specifics of often inaudible frequencies put out by bass amps are endlessly argued, that Young is being knocked for wanting better sound quality more readily available.
Neil Young has been singing this song for 25 years now... he does come off as a "techno-grouch".
meh...
-points for me ... analogue audio does not automatically mean LP records. LP are sonically inferior to many tape based analogue formats.
- digital audio does not automatically mean CD at 16bits/44.1kHz. Specs could be higher, could be lower. Thinking about airplane terms of "flight envelope", the "sonic envelope of a CD is quite better than that of an LP.
- Tech people and audiophiles were going through these motions in the 1990's..."what will replace the 16/44.1 CD to deliver better sound for the people? SACD was tried, DVD-audio (24/96) was tried. In the end the masses of people spoke... Take 16/44.1 CD, through away 90% of the digital data and let me download it to my computer, for free off of Naptser. (Later replaced with AAC and legal purchases from the iTunes music store) Not enough people cared about the sound quality enough...
Sad, but true..
meh...
-points for me ... analogue audio does not automatically mean LP records. LP are sonically inferior to many tape based analogue formats.
- digital audio does not automatically mean CD at 16bits/44.1kHz. Specs could be higher, could be lower. Thinking about airplane terms of "flight envelope", the "sonic envelope of a CD is quite better than that of an LP.
- Tech people and audiophiles were going through these motions in the 1990's..."what will replace the 16/44.1 CD to deliver better sound for the people? SACD was tried, DVD-audio (24/96) was tried. In the end the masses of people spoke... Take 16/44.1 CD, through away 90% of the digital data and let me download it to my computer, for free off of Naptser. (Later replaced with AAC and legal purchases from the iTunes music store) Not enough people cared about the sound quality enough...
Sad, but true..
there is a nugget of truth in there, mp3s do squash stuff heavily to the extent that I can hear it.
perhaps someone who knows can help me, but is there another popularly used format that takes up similar memory space, but offers higher quality?
perhaps someone who knows can help me, but is there another popularly used format that takes up similar memory space, but offers higher quality?
scottfeldstein
Roots and fifths and a little extra.
Perhaps you're right. Maybe I really am missing something in all this. But I'll tell you what. Let's do the following thought experiment.
You pick a piece of music from its master source. Whatever you want. We'll prepare it two ways. First way: whatever way you want, as long as it ends up digital and can play on an iPod. Second way: we'll take the master and squeeze it into 256k AAC using whatever method is commonly used to prepare files for sale on Apple's store.
You pick the speakers/amps/headphones, etc. Whatever you want. Sky's the limit. It comes out of the iPod though. Whatever you choose, we'll use it for all tests.
Get a random sample of 100 music listeners. Tell them you'll pay them $50 if they can identify the higher quality audio. Give each of them the files to listen to, one after the other, in random order.
My hypothesis is that the number of people who can pick correctly is going to prove statistically no better than chance. They'll be guessing.
You pick a piece of music from its master source. Whatever you want. We'll prepare it two ways. First way: whatever way you want, as long as it ends up digital and can play on an iPod. Second way: we'll take the master and squeeze it into 256k AAC using whatever method is commonly used to prepare files for sale on Apple's store.
You pick the speakers/amps/headphones, etc. Whatever you want. Sky's the limit. It comes out of the iPod though. Whatever you choose, we'll use it for all tests.
Get a random sample of 100 music listeners. Tell them you'll pay them $50 if they can identify the higher quality audio. Give each of them the files to listen to, one after the other, in random order.
My hypothesis is that the number of people who can pick correctly is going to prove statistically no better than chance. They'll be guessing.
For me, mp3s are absolutely fine. I've been playing and recording music for 25+ years, and almost everything I listen to is in mp3 format. Can I tell the difference between mp3 and some higher fidelity format like wav? Sure. Do I care? 99% of the time, nope.
I joked about putting stuff out on 2" tape, but if I could have everything I wanted to listen to in that format it would be awesome to listen to ... but totally impractical. I like the ease of access and portability that I get from mp3s. I digitized everything I owned into mp3 back in 2000, and haven't looked back.
Works for me, YMMV.
I joked about putting stuff out on 2" tape, but if I could have everything I wanted to listen to in that format it would be awesome to listen to ... but totally impractical. I like the ease of access and portability that I get from mp3s. I digitized everything I owned into mp3 back in 2000, and haven't looked back.
Works for me, YMMV.
I think a lot of that really depends on what you're listening to the music through. Unless you have a very hi-fidelity system (which most people don't) I doubt you'd be able to hear the difference. I'd bet if the listening were done through high end monitors there would be an audible difference, but in practical terms I doubt the average user would ever have the equipment necessary to discern the difference.... so it's kind of moot.
scottfeldstein
Roots and fifths and a little extra.
I won't even get into the alarming trend for musicians who use a million dollars worth of studio equipment just so they can sound as if they went back in time to 1971 and recorded their album in a garage. Seriously. Has no one else noticed this? I guess they think it's retro or ironic or lulzy or whatever kids say these days.
Get off my lawn!
Where was I?
Get off my lawn!
Where was I?
I would love to be able to get a very high quality download. I listen to mp3s and the like when I am driving or washing the dishes. But I am scared of the day when all you can get is some low resolution file when CD's bite the dust. When I am really listening to music I want to be able to enjoy it to its fullest.
mp3's are like taking a great work of art and putting it on a postcard. I like postcards but I also want to check out the real thing sometimes.
mp3's are like taking a great work of art and putting it on a postcard. I like postcards but I also want to check out the real thing sometimes.
LOL! I heard Alan Parsons talking about this kind of thing recently. It seems that the digital side of things was too clean, even though the dynamic range was much better, which is why some engineers prefer mastering the digital recordings through an analog console and then transferring them back to digital format.
So you are proposing that the standard be 'good enough for people who don't really care, listening on an iPod.'
scottfeldstein
Roots and fifths and a little extra.
A little can be legit. Excellent case in point: The warm tones and vinyl crackle of onoson's soundcloud sig. That's legit. The group I'm in right now lays down some gritty, lo-fi beats on occasion, too.
What gets on my nerves sometimes is stuff like Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People.
/rant
What gets on my nerves sometimes is stuff like Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People.
/rant
