There are an elite group of people out there that are called "audiophiles." These people (myself included) have an obsession with getting the highest fidelity sound they can for a particular audio track. We are willing to pay more for a track just to get a better sample of it at the highest bit rate possible.
It turns out, almost no one else is...
What has amazed me about the digital music phenomenon is the lack of interest in high fidelity music. People will almost accept anything even when (even for untrained ears), the music is blatantly poor quality and many of the sounds and instruments are hard to make out.
Pop music (which by definition is the most popular) lends itself very well to low quality audio because of its close range of sound on the spectrum. Its rare that a good Jazz or Classical music track (which has a much wider dynamic range) can hold up at a low quality level.
It really comes down to a matter of music tastes. Where's my proof that people don't care about quality? Ever heard of a disaster called "Super Audio CD" (SACD)? This format has been around for years but never really took off. It is much better than a CD. It can store 8GB of audio instead of the CD's 740 MB. It can play in regular CD players as well as custom players. It extends the frequency from 22kHz up to almost 100kHz (Humans can't even hear sounds in that higher range).
Are people re-buying their old tracks for the increased quality? Are we hearing a massive outcry from consumers about Apple's pitiful 128 bit rate?
People just don't care about high quality audio. They would rather have the convenience of the smaller tracks for their iPod on the go. These days, it seems like music listening is more about amassing tracks than actually listening to them. Its definitely a quantity over quality game.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
People don't care about sound quality
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2 comments:
With the standard iPod headphones music isn't going to sound good anyway so why spend more $ for high quality audio.
The only time I care about quality is with classical music. I think the dynamics of the music require a higher quality track.
People are accepting lower quality standards for pretty much everything these days. PC hardware is one example. When I got into computers 18 years ago, you could throw your computer down the stairs, bring it upstairs, reseat a few plugs, and it would work. For the next decade! And also hardware defects were virtually unheard of. Now it just seems the norm. I think people don't have the critical thinking skills to make proper judgments or base their quality standards off cold, hard, obdurate, and objective facts. It's frustrating to have standards in a society that doesn't care about them.
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