Are iPods changing our perception of music?

[cheft]

Are iPods changing our perception of music?

Nice article that describes a Stanton music professor who tests his new students every year as to which format they prefer to listen to, quality wise. And the trend seems to be for noisier MP3’s.

Students were asked to judge the quality of a variety of compression methods randomly mixed with uncompressed 44.1 KHz audio. The music examples included both orchestral, jazz and rock music. When I first did this I was expecting to hear preferences for uncompressed audio and expecting to see MP3 (at 128, 160 and 192 bit rates) well below other methods (including a proprietary wavelet-based approach and AAC). To my surprise, in the rock examples the MP3 at 128 was preferred. I repeated the experiment over 6 years and found the preference for MP3 - particularly in music with high energy (cymbal crashes, brass hits, etc) rising over time.

Radar - O’Reilly

[Fatlimey]

Orchestral, Jazz and Rock.

There’s your problem right there. Old people’s music.

[Rumblejazz]

people like grimey sounds, low quality old music sounds grimey

[midian]

GRIMEY!

I like things to be grimey… tho

I still think most 128 tunes sound like getting skullfucked by an super-nes while having an aneurysm.

[Rumblejazz]

@midian

GRIMEY!

I still think most 128 tunes sound like getting skullfucked by an super-nes while having an aneurysm.

i’m a 320 snob for sho, gotta rock the akg’s with an ipod too

[DvlsAdvct]

I try not to rip anything lower than 320. Once you hit 128 I can hear a difference. The thing is, in my mind, that the quality of the headphones matter just as much as the qualitty of the track.

shitty headphones can make anything sound like shit, but $10000000 speakers will make a shitty mp3 sound like shit

[Andrew_Loay]

I’ve only recently been able to tell the difference the difference between and 128s and wave. Now it drives me crazy every time I listen to a poorly ripped mp3.

A lot of older jazz weren’t recorded in the best of places. Maybe that’s why they prefer 128s? Just a guess.

@Fatlimey

Quote:
Orchestral, Jazz and Rock.
There’s your problem right there. Old people’s music.

I must be quite old considering most of the jazz I listen to is from the 50’s and 60s

Try to listen to a song from either of those genres and focus on one aspect of the song that you like no matter how small. You may learn to love it.

[steveboyett]

I guess I’m really old, cuz most of the classical I listen to is from the 18th Century.

[Chilly]

@steveboyett

I guess I’m really old, cuz most of the classical I listen to is from the 18th Century.

+1

[Whitey]

[QUOTE][ guess I’m really old, cuz most of the classical I listen to is from the 18th Century.
/QUOTE]

Love it!! Love it!!

Comment made my day, cheers

[djpbe]

The old vinyl still is the best way to listen to music. I actually have a SACD player, but my lack of disc’s mean I never use it.