The Sound of Music

When was the last time you listened to a song and had a problem with the sound quality?

According to audiophiles, it should happen every time you fire up your trusty mp3 player.  Your favorite songs have been compressed to fit on little mobile storage devices, so some sounds have been flattened or robbed of their nuance.  Others have been deemed expendable by the technical algorithms, and lost altogether.

Only nobody notices or, if they do, they don't care.

It's no surprise.  Apart from a brief renaissance of audio quality and playback technology during the latter part of the 20th Century, human beings have spent their lives listening to crappy sounding music. 

Usually, it meant hearing somebody nearby sing or play an instrument, and often times do so poorly.  The most common musical experiences were in-home, often impromptu, and rarely, if ever, produced by professionals.  Melodies were passed down when sung from parent to child. 

Music experience was live...not just in relation to recorded versions, which would have been unknown to most souls who've walked the earth, but as in living.  A part of their lives.  Something that pretty much anyone could make and, in doing so, enjoy. 

Teaching kids to play a musical instrument is a throwback to a time when people were expected to make music for themselves.  No longer do we send off our tots to learn how to jar fruit, make butter, or sew their own clothes, but music is still considered, perhaps unconsciously by many of us, something people do, not simply consume.

So it's kind of funny that we've branded the problems facing the music industry in terms of controlling distribution. 

Looking at things that way, it's a losing proposition, whether you try to do it with sheet music, player-piano rolls, wax cylinders, vinyl records, magnetic tape, compact discs, or computer files.  Music ends up everywhere, regardless of where it originates. 

That's why iPod and .mp3 players in general are so popular.  It's not because they sound particularly good, but rather that it's good they bring sound practically anywhere. 

And it turns out that they do sound pretty good after all. 

A song recorded at a rate of at least 128 kbps, and heard via reasonably good speakers or earbuds, sounds all but indistinguishable from the original studio recordings.  Combine that with the fact that listeners are usually doing something else while they're listening -- maybe mowing the lawn, chatting online, or singing along -- and it's not that people don't appreciate quality music.  The quality is just fine.

So let's do some math: music has been ubiquitous, live, and very personal for, say, 11,950 years of human history, and controlled, recorded, and impersonal for about 50, give or take.

I say the music industry as packaged-goods distributor is the exception -- irrespective of listening media -- not the rule.  And people are edging back to behaving the way they've always behaved.  Music is on its way to being everywhere again, along with all of its commensurate imperfections and uniqueness. 

iPods are just a stop along the way.

This has some interesting potential implications for sound quality vis a vis artists and music distributors:

• Is the era of recording artists going to be replaced by performance artists?  Madonna's recent deal with LiveNation suggests that the real draw for her consumers -- "draw" defined as the activity for which they'll pay the most -- are her live performances.  This shift, if adopted across the industry, could change how performances are delivered (more of them, in more diverse settings, etc.) and how music is recorded (who cares about making a single song perfect, when the idea is to keep a stream of music shooting out to entice would-be concert-goers?)
• Is being an artist really a job for a select few, or is creating art a job for everyone?  Along with breakthroughs in distribution technology have come innovations in how music can be created and recorded.  I personally possess more recording capabilities on my computer than the Beatles had at their disposal at Abbey Road (unfortunately, I don't possess one billionth of their talent).  When everyone can make music and record it, the requirements of those recordings shift perhaps...from quality and presumed perfection, to honesty, uniqueness, or other qualities
• Could there be ways to make the experience of music more living, like music labels distributing semi-finished or mixable songs?  Imagine if the next Radiohead album wasn't just provided online for free, but marketed with adjustable instrumental tracks, or a series of vocal tracks that could be consumer-selected?  I know the result might give you or me a headache, but there's something here in the concept of active listening or user-completed content

Ultimately, I just think the experience of music has little to do with quality, and much more with the enjoyment of sound.

Comments

[Eros]

I agree with the author. I am a big music fan and constantly around college students that possess all the ipods and truely live the music in our century... it is almost unanimous that mp3 quality is just as accepted as wav files now. quality is indistinguishable and compression benefits are large. The music still sounds great.

[Jonathan]

Er, not really. For one, you misquote me rather liberally. I stated that 'at least 128 kbps' coupled with reasonably good listening tools (i.e. not el cheapo buds), will sound 'all but indistinguishable' from the studio recording. I stand by that statement, which becomes especially and perhaps consistently true when you get to the bitrate and compression/sweetening that iTunes uses.

As for 'expanding the circle of people I know before commenting authoritatively,' I appreciate the advice but I've actually worked with sound engineers, musicians, and folks at the labels who work directly with .mp3 conversion (for iTunes, among other services). I've also worked with some of the leading sound reproduction/consumer electronics manufacturers, some of which also produce studio equipment as well.

So I sort of know what I'm talking about.

But your insistence that I must be ignorant and just wrong is indicative of the bias that people have toward music 'quality,' even if they themselves don't quite know what they're talking about. The punchline of my post is that quality -- even if it were achieveable -- isn't necessarily relevant to how people enjoy music, so maybe audiophiles are barking up the wrong tree when they try to make the case that .mp3-ification of music is a bad thing. I think maybe not.

Anyway, thanks for your comment, even if it was a bit contentious.

[B Clark]

128 bps? Most people I know can't stand 128bps rips. Granted this is probably a miniroty of all mp3 listeners, but you need to expand the circle of people you know before you comment authoritatively on this topic.

Your statement that it is indistinguishable from an original recording (assuming you mean completely uncompressed with full dynamic range) is laughably wrong.

[Branding Blog]

Honestly I can't get over that photo. Great pic.