Letters to the Editor
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Bulk and Edges
I haven't seen anyone mention this line of observation yet.
I hear musical sound as "bulk" (or lack of bulk, which includes air and space), and "edges," the textural quality at the very perimeter of an expanding note or sound.
The simplest example is a piano note that rings out, but of course the more common example comes from an electric guitar. In either case, there is the bulk of the sound that takes up space, but also the edge of the sound that cleaves through space. That edge has textural characteristics relatively independent of the "bulk." (Think back to the piano note.)
In MP3 compression, I hear those edges get tattered all to hell, very audibly, even on cheap headphones (let alone my fine-but-affordable KEF speakers that reproduce edges so well).
This is especially complicated for me, because all my favorite artists (like Adrian Belew, anything produced by Brian Eno, Radiohead since OK Computer, etc.) put a lot of care into their edges, and it's exactly the quality of their music that fascinates me so dearly. The texture of their sound.
So I'm not buying anything less than CD quality for the foreseeable future - it would be money down a hole - and any trend that threatens the availability of CD quality worries me.