Letters to the Editor
blunderdog
Published Letters: 310 Editor's Choice: 9
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More Chiming In...
[Read the article: The death of hi-fi?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]MP3 sound quality is poor. The higher the bit-rate, the less poor it may be, but it's still poor. Listen to a sustained note in MP3 format. It sounds pretty good at the beginning, but the longer the note plays, the worse it gets, until it feels like someone is scratching your eardrum with a cricket's leg.
AAC is slightly less poor than MP3. The sustained-note symptom is less distressing, but a strange wah/flange sound often shows up when the music being played starts rubbing up against the compression artifact. (Thanks to the poster who mentioned space-monkeys. Great term that I'm glad I just learned.)
Ogg-vorbis is as good as you can expect from a highly-compressed digital format, but your iPod won't play it. Nor will most portable players. It's indistinguishable from CD quality. The files are 3 to 4 times bigger than 128K MP3s.
Whether LPs or CDs are better or worse is a matter of personal preference coupled with the nature of the music being reproduced. Music created using digital synthesis (pop records, lots of rock these days, techno/electonica) tends to sound great on CDs. (These categories tend to compress better too, but MP3s and AACs still don't sound so great.) Audio which came from musical instruments which actually moved air before they were recorded doesn't translate to CD quite as well as the electronic stuff.
"DVD" audio can refer to different things. The sound used in standard DVD movies is compressed using MP3 format, but it is very carefully mastered using a variable bit-rate to prevent the horrible artifact in sustained tones, and usually recorded in 5.1 channels. Audio DVDs sound amazing, as do SACDs and...drat, I forgot the name of the other "hi-def" CD format, but I'd bet it's mentioned in this thread somewhere.
My experience is that I can and do tolerate the poor quality of MP3s for the convenience of a player which is the size of a Bic lighter that runs for 12 hrs on a single AAA battery and offers me almost instant access to hundreds of songs. I never listen to them when a real stereo is available.
On the recording side of things, I believe I hear a difference between actually recorded "live analog" instruments vs. their samples, regardless of the bit-rate or format. This may be a variation of placebo effect. I have no idea if I could see such a difference on an oscilloscope or wave-table plot, but the concept makes sense to me. I'm doubtful that "even temperament-tuned" string and wind instruments can be properly simulated with digital imitations. (If you hear the difference between even-temperament tuning and "nature's" tuning of a vibrating string/reed, it seems to me that _something_ has been given up for the benefit of being able to change keys without going horribly out of tune. Listen to baroque music played using medieval tuning vs. even temperament tuning to hear what I'm talking about.)
I also believe that the 20Hz to 20KHz "assumption" about the capability of human perception is an oversimplification. In terms of actual frequency response of the human inner ear, it may be a safe bet, but I see no reason to presume that the inner ear is the only part of the human body that is "involved" in perceiving the quality of sound.
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I Support Alec Wholeheartedly
[Read the article: This little piggy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Heard the message. I know nothing about the details of any of the parties, issues, facts, or possible consequences.
I support Alec wholeheartedly because I like his face.
(Don't judge me too harshly, it ain't like I vote based on these standards.)