Tuesday, February 07, 2006

At any rate, it's a bit of a rip-off

At any rate, it's a bit of a rip-off

My brother the audio professional has been making this case since the glory days of original Napster:

Can you discern the difference between songs encoded at 128, 192 or even 320kbps and the original sound recording?

Audiowise, we are only now reaching the point of what we already knew. While the entertainment industry has spent two decades reselling us higher fidelity versions of our music and movie collections, this is one evolution where, for the time being at least, less is definitely perceived to be more.


The iPod era has moved music from speakers to small, bad headphones, and audio fidelity is taking a backwards step. Barry Gordy used to mix the Motown classics through a car radio speaker, because he knew the kids were listening on tinny transistor radios. So in this era, the audiophile's quality will be dumbed down to the earbud level.

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