Re:The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse
by ynniv on Monday January 04, 2010 @11:37AM
(#1030570)
While they explained audio compression well enough, they really botched the explanation of uncompressed PCM and MP3, and failed to mention 24-bit/192khz at all. The result is that one means of information compression used in MP3 (masking) is posited as an improvement over uncompressed PCM. Here's a quick summary of why your music sounds like crap tho:
Every single arrow is a loss of quality. The studio makes sure that everything from reality to mixing uses the best equipment. Then they purposely butcher the quality to make it "pop". Next is where you muck it up based on the format you buy. MP3 has terrible detail reproduction (most obvious in cymbals), CD is okay and by far the most common, and DVD-audio is best but rare (vinyl is the most rare, and comparison with digital audio is complicated). Then, shoddy MP3 decompression aside, most consumers elect to reproduce their music using underpowered amplifiers and cheap headphones or cheaper speakers.
So, half of it is the studio's fault, and half is yours. I bet most people don't even notice that an iPod has better analog sound reproduction than any computer. But the studio's errors are more damaging, because there is nothing we can do about them. No matter how much you learn to love your music, or how much equipment you buy, you can never undo the one step in which they destroy the quality of the product.
reality -> microphone -> pre-amp -> digital conversion -> mixing -> mastering -> compression -- MP3 -- decompression -> analog conversion -> EQ and/or "enhancement" -> amp -> headphones -> ear
Every single arrow is a loss of quality. The studio makes sure that everything from reality to mixing uses the best equipment. Then they purposely butcher the quality to make it "pop". Next is where you muck it up based on the format you buy. MP3 has terrible detail reproduction (most obvious in cymbals), CD is okay and by far the most common, and DVD-audio is best but rare (vinyl is the most rare, and comparison with digital audio is complicated). Then, shoddy MP3 decompression aside, most consumers elect to reproduce their music using underpowered amplifiers and cheap headphones or cheaper speakers.
So, half of it is the studio's fault, and half is yours. I bet most people don't even notice that an iPod has better analog sound reproduction than any computer. But the studio's errors are more damaging, because there is nothing we can do about them. No matter how much you learn to love your music, or how much equipment you buy, you can never undo the one step in which they destroy the quality of the product.