Dennis Rogers has pointed out that Rolling Stone magazine has an article called The Death of High Fidelity, about one of the negative effects that the influence of MP3 audio has had on the audio quality of recorded music. I featured something about this last summer at this link.
Not to get too nerdy-techie, but there are two forms of compression involved here. There’s the compression of the audio signal, that makes everything have the same loudness, and there’s the digital compression that is used by MP3 and other audio formats to reduce file size. They are two very different things.
Matt Mayfield, who I’m assuming is the guitarist in the recently-disbanded band Moses Mayfield, has a video that I’ve grabbed from YouTube, with an excellent explanation of what audio compression and loudness are all about.
[flv:/Video/2008/JAN/LoudnessWar.flv 400 300]
To me, LP’s, when they’re good, are both exciting and relaxing at the same time. Listening to CD’s is still often a “nervous” experience.
When I got my fabulous Numark lp player (Doug’s excellent recommendation to my husband) for Christmas, did THIS point ever hit home. Hearing old favorites on LP for the first time in years was mind-blowing. Tom has a modest collection of the usual from his era (he just turned 57), and hearing Led Zeppelin on a tenderly preserved LP was incredible! Even WITHOUT big add-on speakers!
It’s not a good trend, I agree. Ironically, the technology exists to make recorded sound better than ever. In fact, the things pushed about CD at the outset, besides playback time, freedom from playback wear, and the elimination of pops and ticks, was the greatly expanded dynamic range compared to LP. Now lost.
Yeesh, it’s even worse than I thought! An excellent little demonstration. Is good sound a thing of the past?