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The Man Who Broke the Music Business

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Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#41

Post by drostie »

nsxwolf wrote: post #39
teh_klev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I think you're being overly charitable about how well Beats perform.

They're better than earbuds. The iPod brought forth a decade where virtually everyone's only headphone experience was earbuds.

That's probably the weakest compliment that I've heard for a set of headphones ever. I have something like 7 pairs of earbuds and I pine for the bass that I remember from my crummy Philips HS820 (foldable neckband) headphones.

For some reason the only place to get good earbuds is from someone who is selling something else: Samsung's in-ear earbuds sold with Galaxy devices and Apple's earbuds are both somewhere between OK and pretty good.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#42

Post by selimthegrim »

bluedino wrote: post #18

I remember seeing people at flea markets selling bootleg compact discs. They'd rent a booth and have boxes and boxes of them in those fluorescent colored plastic holders, the ones you could buy in 500 packs at Sam's Club or Egghead. Some of them even printed out fake covers and labels on inkjet printers, heck they would be doing it in between customers. I couldn't figure out why the cops never came and shut them down…

Nobody's told you about the shops on Devon Ave. in Chicago that only bring the originals out for display when the fuzz come around?

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#43

Post by ssharp »

adamtj wrote: post #21
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bef…

Music consumers won't catch up to the decay that mp3's cause, _by definition_. Consumers only listen to music. The most sensitive, highly trained ears listening to the absolute best equipment in a perfect environment cannot reliably tell the difference between a decent mp3 and the original CD. Anybody who tries to distinguish guesses wrong as often as they guess right. Anybody who thinks they can tell the difference…

I appreciate what you're saying, and largely agree, but I'm not sure your photography analogy holds up. Although this could just be my ignorance of photography because I'm not 100% sure what data "raw" formats hold. But from the sounds of it, that might be closer compared to a tracked out song, meaning pre-mixdown, where you're accessing individual instrument recordings.

As an aside, I know producers who have sampled from lossy formats and had those songs put on major labor records. It's not that big of an issue, though I suppose how the sample is used could make in impact on it.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#44

Post by pxlpshr »

pageld wrote: post #29
justinpaulson wrote: post #24

This reminds me of using oth.net to browse ftps for tracks in late 1990s. I used to burn custom mixes for friends in high school back then before napster exploded and everyone had a burner. On a 28.8 or even 56k connection it was an amazingly tedious process to download tracks from ftps. It is pretty insane how you can download an entire discography today in the amount of time it took to download some single tracks b…

I made some pretty good beer money running one of those FTP sites by making people download Bonzai buddy for a password. I feel a bit bad for advancing that purple ape, but at least I could increase my sysadmin skills on something that didn't matter.

+1. I was running an FTP server on one of the few multi-honed T3 connections (late 90's) in our city. OTH sent me a ton of traffic, which also included RIAA scouts. I almost lost my job after they sent a C&D to our IT department; I was ~16 years old at the time and was forgiven.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#45

Post by wishinghand »

drostie wrote: post #41
nsxwolf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're better than earbuds. The iPod brought forth a decade where virtually everyone's only headphone experience was earbuds.

That's probably the weakest compliment that I've heard for a set of headphones ever. I have something like 7 pairs of earbuds and I pine for the bass that I remember from my crummy Philips HS820 (foldable neckband) headphones. For some reason the only place to get good earbuds is from someone who is selling something else: Samsung's in-ear earbuds sold with Galaxy devices and Apple's earbuds are both somewhere betwee…

>For some reason the only place to get good earbuds is from someone who is selling something else

Or you buy quality stand-alones from Shure, Sennheiser, Beyer Dynamic, or Sony (and many more probably)? I always throw into my e-waste bin the Apple earbuds since they're both really low quality. The Shure SE215s are so much better than any bundled earbuds it's barely an opinion.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#46

Post by flyinghamster »

amyjess wrote: post #20
ssharp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm not sure if that's really a fair comparison. The difference in both video and sound quality between a VHS tap and a DVD is easily noticeable. There is also improved cost and improved convenience. Cost and convenien…

Yep. Just off the top of my head, I can think of: DVDs don't need to be rewound, discs take up less space than tapes, DVDs don't degrade with repeated viewings, you don't have to futz with tracking when watching a DVD (I totally forgot about tracking until now! Good riddance!), DVDs come with multiple audio and subtitle tracks (anime fans especially love these), DVDs can be watched on a computer without specialized e…

The trouble with audiophile gear is that it is really a scam to separate people from their money. I've found that, for me at least, the best deals for music fidelity are in studio-type equipment. A good pair of powered mid-field studio monitors and a Focusrite FireWire audio interface gets me sound that would cost $thousands if I bought audiophile-market gear.

Also, there are some interesting audio cards for the Raspberry Pi that are quite reasonable and offer great sound. I've set up an old Model B with the Wolfson card and RuneAudio, and plugged in my monitors. Outstanding sound from a box that cost less than $100.

Audio is engineering, not magic. Sure, people can spend big bucks on AudioQuest cables with Extra Bling, but I'm not one of them. I even consider Monster to be a ripoff.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#47

Post by thirdsun »

justinpaulson wrote: post #24

This reminds me of using oth.net to browse ftps for tracks in late 1990s. I used to burn custom mixes for friends in high school back then before napster exploded and everyone had a burner. On a 28.8 or even 56k connection it was an amazingly tedious process to download tracks from ftps. It is pretty insane how you can download an entire discography today in the amount of time it took to download some single tracks b…

I remember those days - I used to download mixes, albums, tracks over ISDN, which was basically an all-night affair. Getting up in the morning in anticipation of listening to a new Global Underground compilation is something that just rarely happens these days. Not having everything readily available made me appreciate the smaller, but carefully selected collection I maintained.

I still buy lots of music, since I prefer to own my collection and don't want to rely on a streaming service. However these days I find myself to be much quicker to hit the skip button and enjoying a new album is more often than not a short lived pleasure. The downside of modern conveniences I guess.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#48

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

teh_klev wrote: post #27
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bef…

>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. I think you're being overly charitable about how well Beats perform.

Not really. They're terrible headphones in the grand scheme of things - especially in terms of their price:performance - but they're a huge upgrade for most consumers.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#49

Post by JonnieCache »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #26
donohoe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being totally sincere and serious here; but could you create such a test?

I can hear the difference, I also produce music. It would be incredibly easy to produce a better test. The hard part is getting permission from copyright holders. Now - I'm sure a lot of people can't hear the difference because they don't know what to listen for. The issue isn't that the difference doesn't exist or that it's "not audible" in some objective sense. It's that they're not listening to the sound in the sa…

>Saying the difference isn't audible at all is like saying that you may as well quantise all rhythms right on the beat because most people can't tell by ear if beats are early or late.

This is a great analogy that gets to the key point: most of the things that make records sound good are 'inaudiable.' That's why making music is so hard.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#50

Post by [deleted] »

bluedino wrote: post #18

I remember seeing people at flea markets selling bootleg compact discs. They'd rent a booth and have boxes and boxes of them in those fluorescent colored plastic holders, the ones you could buy in 500 packs at Sam's Club or Egghead. Some of them even printed out fake covers and labels on inkjet printers, heck they would be doing it in between customers. I couldn't figure out why the cops never came and shut them down…

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