Mp3 Killed The Audiophile

Everyone uses the term—and hardly anyone knows what it is, what it means—and how it has affected the way we listen to music/audio.

The term is “mp3”—given that name on this date in 1995—just 15 years ago.

Formally known as “MPEG-1Audio Layer 3”, the technology was an efficient way to compress digital audio.

Why compress? Well, taking up A LOT less computer real estate means inventions like iPods can store thousands of songs in a device the size of a deck of cards—or smaller.

Normally a single second of a song is roughly 176,000 bytes of data, meaning that a three minute song is approximately 32 million bytes (MB). In the mid 90’s, it was not unusual for a computer to have a hard drive capacity of only 500 MB, meaning it would be impossible to store even one ALBUM on a computer! Add in the standard 56K dial-up modem—and now we’re talking about literally ALL DAY to transfer that album over the internet.

So how does it all happen?

Audio engineers realized that the limitations of human hearing and our PERCEPTION of audio was such that up to 90 PERCENT of the audio in a standard CD could actually be REMOVED without the average listener hearing/perceiving the difference.

Of course, true audiophiles CAN tell the difference—and even casual listeners will say that analog “vinyl” records are “warmer” or “richer”. The compression algorithm is really a very sophisticated “connect– the-dots”, where entire chunks of music are removed—hoping you won’t notice.

The upside is that we can cram a ton of tunes on our little devices. The downside is that we are raising a generation of kids who have little use for audio quality. They (and we now) are listening to compressed files with large amounts of “data” (music) missing—and hearing it all on little earplugs we bought at CVS for a buck.

Remember the 70’s, when stereo systems were huge—speakers took up much of the living room and the components of the system were large—and heavy?

I miss that.

A short video here— a quick look at LOUDNESS—and how music compression IN THE RECORDING STUDIO—even before mp3 compression is applied—has affected the SOUND of what we commonly hear:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

Our kids simply don’t care about the pristine quality of audio that was a never-ending quest when we were the same age. Maybe that’s good—if only because they’re not spending all their dough on stereo equipment.

But, when a musician’s craft is compromised for the sake of portability and convenience, there is a loss there as well.

One that may be irretrievable.

If you’d like my blog in your box, just let me know: tim.moore@citcomm.com