MP3 Players: An Audio Nightmare

Written by tinfoil on Monday, 04 December 2006 08:10

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article about the perceived lack of quality coming out of compressed music files. The article states:

"For the past 100 years or so ... every new format that came along was an improvement over the previous one," from 78s to vinyl to tape and high-grade cassettes, he says.
After CDs arrived and files became digitally encoded, he explains, there was a push to make files small and still "fairly listenable." The technology used to create MP3s - "lossy" compression - strips away what might be viewed as "unnecessary audio information," he says - information that can, in fact, contribute to richness.

I've got more to say after the jump.

I'll give them a point. MP3s are certainly a step backwards in terms of sound quality over uncompressed CD audio, and so many people encode them poorly. Whenever I rip, I set it at 256bit straight out, none of that variable bitrate crap that can really destroy quieter passages in the program. That being said, I am hard-pressed to tell the difference between a CD and a quality MP3. My speaks & 'phones may not be top of the line, but Dynaudio don't make crap speaks and my Koss Porta Pros are good phones. It's also very true that I suffer some hearing loss, so I'm probably not the best judge.

Complaining about the sound quality coming out of an MP3 player with the stock earplugs is pointless. Stating that the poor quality sound coming out of the devices is the fault of the format is missing the point. The stock phones that come with any portable device generally suck, and the lofty iPod isn't immune either.

Another small point I would like to make:

For his own use, Mr. Goddard, like Willens, favors WAV, a "lossless" compression format that renders sound accurately but has some drawbacks - notably the tremendous amount of storage space it requires: some 50 to 60 megabytes per song, versus about two for an MP3.

WAV is not a compression format. It's raw audio. FLAC is the only lossless compression format listed in the article. And if this fellow is compressing a 50-60MB WAV down to a 2MB MP3, no wonder it sounds like shite, it's probably sitting at 128bit.

I'm not advocating for MP3 to become the dominant format, but let's not forget that most people listening to music are listening to it on sub $500 bookshelf stereos with over-EQ'd speaks and quasi-subs that do more harm to the musical qualities of the program than any music format ever has. Or those horrid little Bose clockradios. Ugh.

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