Flawed Gadget Show test

[otolith]

I read something recently about findings that young people actually preferred the sound of electronically compressed formats - the inference was that people become accustomed to the artefacts of contemporary recording and playback technologies and come to prefer them.

[mmertens]

otolith said:

I read something recently about findings that young people actually preferred the sound of electronically compressed formats - the inference was that people become accustomed to the artefacts of contemporary recording and playback technologies and come to prefer them.

Good point - I think most "users" of MP3 aren't all that interested in audiophile levels of quality. You could also say that many vinyl-worshippers actually prefer the small imperfections of the recording technique over the numerically closer approximation of a DVD-A or SACD. The blind testing however is a favourite topic... I read a blind test ran on some very good equipment somewhere where even selfprofessed audiophiles found 256k MP3's better sounding than the original.

It has also been demonstrated that in a blind test, amplifiers above a certain price (I think it was around 500 quid), given the same speakers, same volume levels etc. are indistinguishable. Also, in blind tests people cannot distinguish connects (excluding of course the flimsiest and thinnest of electric wire). Same thing for CD players/transports. Only speakers (driven by capable amplifiers of course - not all amplifiers can stomach dips to 2 ohm of impedance or less) and of course the quality of the source material have, above a certain basic quality level of equipment, noticable effect on the more or less faithful reproduction of the source.

For me, and I like a good set as much as the next guy, audiophily is simply the reverence of technology - nowt wrong with that, you see it with cars, cameras, computers etc. In many cases it's a simple " mine is bigger than yours" argument. However, justifying this hobby with the elitarian conviction that one can really hear the difference outside the abovementioned humble constraints is what I find amusing to mildly irritating. It is in 99% of cases only the basic human desire to establish oneself as better than, or at least different from, others in some, preferably not objectively measurable, fashion.

[JustinP1]

As I mentioned in my previous post, it is an interesting phenomenon that the 'Art' or 'sound' of the music we listen to always follows the way the music is technologically distributed and reproduced, and because of that, that becomes what people are 'used to'.

For example, songs being 3-4 minutes and albums 40 minutes to an hour are all to do with the fact that when popular music evolved it was played exclusively on vinyl. Similarly bass and kick drums are almost always mixed to the centre so the record player needles didn't jump when they hit one side of a stereo record track.

Even in the professional world of recording, the most highly regarded and expensive microphones are not any that were built in the last decade, or even the last two decades, it is the ones from the 50's and 60's that had a particular 'sound'. Even through the recording stage a lot of producers and engineers will prefer to track to 24 track analogue tape due to the slightly compressed distinctive sound it has, particularly for drums - even though it will of course be converted to digital later.

A recent phenomenon is that tracks are being made progressively 'louder' and pushed more and more towards the top limit of reproduction to make them come over louder on the radio and sound 'better'. The fallback of that is that songs sound 'flat' and devoid of any real dynamics. However, this is a sound which converts surprisingly well for compressed formats like MP3.

When I converse in professional recording circles, the ethos always has been to push up the boundary in fidelity of recordings in pursuit of the ultimate sound. Many thousands are spent on gear to get the final few percent into a recording.

What is sad and interesting is that there are a lot of professionals who now feel that when 99% of the listening of their work is going to be put through a cut down or compressed format, that to push the boundary for that final few percent of greatness is a waste of time and money.

I just really do hope that storage technology moves fast enough so that the drop down to MP3 quality is a 'blip' rather than a trend.

[FlossyThePig]

otolith said:

I read something recently about findings that young people actually preferred the sound of electronically compressed formats - the inference was that people become accustomed to the artefacts of contemporary recording and playback technologies and come to prefer them.

It wasn't the link on my first post was it?

[E31Shrew]

Slightly off topic but it was the same when they did the 'blind' test on comparing plasma and LCD screens a year or so ago. Covered up the brand names and then it was supposed to give the idea that they didnt have a clue which screen was which. Similar to covering the badge on a car and having no idea! Absolute cock.....Bearing in mind a plasma has a glass overlay and most LCDs dont , it wasnt really too difficult to tell one from the other.

[jmorgan]

Is this the same gadget show that lobed a few computers off a balcony and marked down the one that did not work?

[otolith]

FlossyThePig said:

otolith said:

I read something recently about findings that young people actually preferred the sound of electronically compressed formats - the inference was that people become accustomed to the artefacts of contemporary recording and playback technologies and come to prefer them.

It wasn't the link on my first post was it?

No, probably something from the Times or New Scientist RSS feeds, but it was the same story.

[thehawk]

otolith said:

I read something recently about findings that young people actually preferred the sound of electronically compressed formats - the inference was that people become accustomed to the artefacts of contemporary recording and playback technologies and come to prefer them.

Not only that but how many people these days actually sit in a quiet room and listen to the music, an album in it's entirety. The majority of people using music players these days use them in noisy situation where the sound quality isn't that important. On the Tube, background music to dinner, on a bike, in a car, at an office etc is where most people listen to most music.

[SJobson]

JustinP1 said:

SJobson said:

FlossyThePig said:

I can remember when the purpose of Hi-Fi was to try to get as close to a live performance as possible. When did that idea go out of the window?

You could try turning your system up until it distorts, getting someone to shout at you and spill beer on yourself and you will still get that feeling

I think of hi-fi as being faithful to the recording, not necessarily to the original performance. However, if a system is too revealing you end up dissatisfied with the majority of recordings so there's room for subjectivity, surely?

It is more to do with the philosophy of recording and technological constraints.

The original reason for recording was to capture a live performance.

However, with the advent of multi-track tape machines, recording became an art unto itself, and microphone placement changed from aiming to recreate a 'front row' experience to one with a 'hi-fi' sound, and this has been the ethos ever since.

So I would say the best description of what hi-fi should aim for should be to accurately recreate the recording.

My subscription copy of Stereophile arrived the day after I posted that - and this month's 'As We See It' says pretty much the same thing I did. It'll be online within a couple of weeks at http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/

Amusing coincidence.

Edited by SJobson on Friday 20th March 10:18