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Topic: NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent (Read 3996 times) previous topic - next topic
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NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Q&A in the NY Times yesterday with Dr. Daniel Levitin, neuroscientist/author of This Is Your Brain On Music, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the iPod.


Quote
Is iPod sound quality better or worse than a basic home stereo system?

Worse. The MP3 standard ruined high fidelity. It’s possible to upload CD-quality onto the iPod. But most people opt for the default, lousy quality of MP3 and M4A compression. An entire generation has grown up never knowing high fidelity, never hearing what the artists heard in the studio when they were recording. This is a real shame.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/opinion/...itin&st=cse

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #1
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An entire generation has grown up never knowing high fidelity, never hearing what the artists heard in the studio when they were recording. This is a real shame.
  Ha!  I'd say there's an entire generation that only knows high fidelity!

I grew-up with scratchy records and hissy cassettes & 8-tracks.

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #2
That would be true, and great, if it weren’t for the sad fact of the loudness war and its friends. At least in terms of the mainstream, many recordings have been mastered so badly as to cancel much of the benefit/potential of CDDA (unless we’re counting the fact that this medium enables the possibility of the signal being violated even further!)

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #3
But if you listen such CD on some expensive 5000+ $ CD player, 15000+ amp and 20000+ speakers, you know what high fidelity is.
Clearly, nonsense.
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NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #4
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Adolescents routinely listen to their iPods at levels exceeding 95 to 100 decibels. That’s about the same loudness you’d hear standing near the tarmac as a 747 takes off.


What I find interesting is exactly how comparable such sources of sound really are.

The climax of a typical post-rock song played at 95 dB through Hi-fi headphones doesn't feel as abrasive as the same music played live on stage, which in turn isn't nearly as annoying as a 747's engines or a washing machine in its centrifuge phase, so a statement such as that loud music has "the same loudness" as a jet engine should probably be take with a grain of salt.

My personal intuition tells me that the rock concert is the most damaging of the three, but exactly how trustworthy is that intuition?


Quote
The tried-and-true way is to think of another song and hope that pushes out the first one. Here: think of “It’s a Small World After All.”


Oh that loathsome scallywag!

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #5
I have a feeling the concert could only be worse due to the duration.

Does anyone have actual SPL data from a 747 taking off within 50 feet or however close "standing near the tarmac" is?

I have a feeling that it is far greater than 100dB or 110dB; most likely past the threshold of pain which I seriously doubt is the level of routine adolescent iPod usage.

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #6
I have a feeling the concert could only be worse due to the duration.
Does anyone have actual SPL data from a 747 taking off within 50 feet or however close "standing near the tarmac" is?
I have a feeling that it is far greater than 100dB or 110dB; most likely past the threshold of pain which I seriously doubt is the level of routine adolescent usage.


This is the closest that I could find to a "reliable" source. http://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/trai...in/dblevels.htm

Jet take-off (at 25 meters)    - 150
Aircraft carrier deck - 140    
Military jet aircraft take-off from aircraft carrier with afterburner at 50 ft (130 dB) - 130    
Turbo-fan aircraft at takeoff power at 200 ft - 118 dB
Jet take-off (at 305 meters) - 106 dB
Jet flyover at 1000 feet - 103 dB
Boeing 737 or DC-9 aircraft at one nautical mile (6080 ft) before landing - 97 dB

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #7
IOW, the quote about the 747 clearly came right out the writer's ass; just as I expected.

Thank you for the research.

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #8
Can't be a CD @hlloyge.  Anything less than SACD with a direct transfer from the vinyl is an atrocity.

Also, you need audio-grade power and signal cables.  Can't recreate the experience with your generic Romex, no sir.

@greynol: The 747 comment made me do a double take as well.  Glad I wasn't the only one.

My mother lent me the book referenced in the article to read one time, I didn't particularly enjoy the guy's writing style.  I can't recall much else of the book at present.
FLAC -2 w/ lossyWAV 1.3.0i -q X -i

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #9
Dr. Daniel Levitin, neuroscientist/author of This Is Your Brain On Music

Anyone read this book? I've heard about it and I remember having an interest in it.

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #10
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But when it doesn’t work it’s disorienting, pulling us out of the hypnotic reverie that good music programming induces.


That guy must be smoking some heavy shit when listening.

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #11
I'm not a random-listener and I completely agree with that disorienting/reverie part, but it's personal preference, not scientific fact.

I fear for the contents of his book.

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #12
Quote
Is iPod sound quality better or worse than a basic home stereo system?

Worse. The MP3 standard ruined high fidelity. It’s possible to upload CD-quality onto the iPod.


Bearing in mind that a "basic home stereo" is a far cry from reproducing CD-quality.  You typically lose the top octave and the bottom 2 octaves altogether just due to speaker limitations.  Depends on what you mean by "basic" I guess.

On whole album vs single downloads, I thought a large part of Itune's success is because so many albums have just 1 or 2 good songs with the rest being random crap to fill out the time.  I don't know that it's MOST albums.

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #13
Quote
Worse. The MP3 standard ruined high fidelity. It’s possible to upload CD-quality onto the iPod. But most people opt for the default, lousy quality of MP3 and M4A compression.

With today's quality of codecs and choices of bitrates in lossy encodings on the market, MP3 and AAC are certainly not the dominating parts in the low fidelity chain. Bad mastering is far more apparent and has a much bigger impact, as well as poor equipment. The assertion of mainstream media that MP3 is the cause of low fidelity in music today is aggravating. The rise of MP3 just coincided with the rise of atrocious mastering techniques which are commonplace today.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

 

NYT—neuroscientist says lossy has ruined high fidelity+artistic intent

Reply #14
On whole album vs single downloads, I thought a large part of Itune's success is because so many albums have just 1 or 2 good songs with the rest being random crap to fill out the time.
That or people just have short attention-spans and cannot handle the thought of having to spend time getting into songs that they have not already been bombarded with by the television. I can imagine that many of the artists who are popular nowadays see a great career strategy in just making one or two novelty songs and then packing the rest of the album (if they even make one) out with filler to keep up appearances. The two ideas in these two sentences may work together, I suspect! There is a recent discussion along these lines: Albums with only 2 or 3 good tracks