The Man Who Broke the Music Business
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The Man Who Broke the Music Business
1–10 of 76 posts
Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business
#2...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD...
The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.
Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business
#3...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.
Actually,for 99% of folks its absolutely "good enough", as confirmed by blind listening tests.
Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business
#4...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.
Have you ABX tested 320kbps mp3 against flac? If so, what track was it, and what audio equipment? If not, the difference you heard was the placebo effect of knowing it was flac.
Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business
#5...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.
Have you gone through a blind test? Because most musicians, DJs and producers I know that tried it, either couldn't tell a difference, or told it wrong, on a big enough sample. I'm not even mentioning people who are not music industry professionals.
Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business
#6It's hard to believe one person was able to successfully leak so much material. I got into album leaks in the early-mid 2000's. Even if I would end up buying the album anyway, that first listen of the leaked album was awesome.
Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business
#7...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.
For the majority of people, mp3s seem to be "just as good" enough.
I remember some low-bitrate songs encoded with some very early encoder where you could hear a difference. Not necessarily "the" difference but "a" difference. After a couple of years the worst encoder anyone could find was better already and since 192kbps bitrates mp3s were 99.999% there.
I'm sure that a trained ear can hear differences between 256kbps vs. 320kbps in a special studio with high-end audiocards, amplifiers and speakers but 99.999% of all people don't and they don't own the equipment either.
Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business
#8...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.
Most people can't even tell the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps. Try it yourself: http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/mp3-sound-quality-test-1...
Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business
#9...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.
For the majority of people, mp3s seem to be "just as good" enough. I remember some low-bitrate songs encoded with some very early encoder where you could hear a difference. Not necessarily "the" difference but "a" difference. After a couple of years the worst encoder anyone could find was better already and since 192kbps bitrates mp3s were 99.999% there. I'm sure that a trained ear can hear differences between 256kbp…
The conventional wisdom is just that - MP3s don't sound any different than their CD counterpart, but we all know that they don't have the same degree of fidelity to the original mastered audio files. While it is true that most cannot detect the differences between MP3 (and other lossy formats) and PCM (lossless) audio, this is beginning to change as consumers become used to a higher quality of sound delivery than before. The popularity of Beats headphones, for instance, meant that hip hop producers could no longer just push the limiter until the sub bass begins to sound farty - their fans were all equipped to hear the differences now.
Vinyl playback, in the pre-CD days, had consumers interested in a whole different kind of audio fidelity. The noises in the record were largely ignored, and nobody tried to get past them. Now, all listeners notice the sound of a vinyl record immediately, and people either love it or hate it.
The point I'm making here is that audio fidelity and quality are separate topics, but while fidelity is an objective measurement of audio, quality is a subjective one, and it shifts with the culture of the day. The problem with the MP3 and other lossy audio formats is that they are taken to be the same as their lossless origins. Consumers will catch up to the decay that MP3 codecs cause and feel the same way about them that a millennial feels about VHS tapes. It may take a few years, or even decades, to arrive there, though.
Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business
#10...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.
Most people can't even tell the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps. Try it yourself: http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/mp3-sound-quality-test-1...
I could tell the difference. I produce music, and I can usually tell the difference between low and high bit-rate MP3s. Certain sounds are handled poorly at lower bit-rates: especially high-frequency sounds - you tend to hear obvious artifacting which comes across as 'mushy'.
The link above is clearly a biased example where there are barely any real high-end sounds, and therefore it would easily fool an untrained ear. I think if they had more than one example, across a range of music styles, then it would be a fairer test.