There are two kinds of audio compression, and they’re not the same. But people get them confused all the time, and it’s driving me nuts.
Today, it was Bob Stanley from St Etienne, being interviewed on Radio 4′s PM programme. The discussion was prompted by Neil Young‘s recent claims that the sound of music today makes him angry. You can hear PM’s discussion of this issue here, about 41 minutes in.
During this discussion though, they managed to completely mangle the distinctions between the two kinds of compression, and the whole ‘analogue versus digital’ debate, too.
They’re not alone though, it happens all the time.
So in an attempt to clear the water, I’m going to explain the difference, using sponges.
I don’t go out and see live shows nearly as often as I should, in fact. [Note to self !]
And I really love hearing acoustic music live. I love enjoy loud, distorted guitars as much as the next man, but there’s something magical about hearing music in it’s simplest, most honest form.
The superb video above captures that, beautifully – and also explains in only a few minutes how the internet opens up a whole new world of possibilities for independent musicians to tour, build their audience and see the world, if they have the desire, determination and drive.
It was a response to a study by Professor John Berger of Stanford University which he claimed showed that young people today actually prefer the sound of mp3 to CD audio.
Now, you probably already know what I think of mp3:
- so it probably won’t come as a surprise that I disagreed quite strongly with Prof. Berger ! You can read my full response on that link, but the reason for this post is to present some new evidence that I was right.
Just yesterday, Dr Sean Olive posted a comment on my old site with a link to research he has done on the same subject, which
(a) is fully documented (unlike Professer Berger’s work) and
The message of this post is simple, short and sincere. In fact, it could almost be an open letter:
Dear Peter Jackson,
PLEASE ask your audio engineers to stop auto-tuning the dwarves.
Please.
Yours sincerely,
Ian Shepherd
PS. Please…
What the hell am I talking about ? Well, check out the first official trailer for the new film of the “The Hobbit”, above.
It’s a great trailer. As a massive fan of both the books and the films of “Lord Of The Rings”, I’m very excited. But after seeing this trailer, I’m also now very nervous.
I’m signed up to the Facebook group “End the Loudness War“. Last week Harman Aaron Loučka posted a heads-up that an example of the vinyl release of the new Red Hot Chile Peppers album, “I’m With You”, had been posted on YouTube.
I headed over to check it out, since vinyl releases often show as having better dynamics (“crest factor”, to be strictly correct) than their CD equivalents in the Dynamic Range Database. I don’t have a record deck though, so hadn’t had a chance to check it out, until now.
The results were pretty clear, and I’ve made my own short YouTube clip to demonstrate the difference. Take a listen, and see if you can hear a difference, and which one you prefer.
This is not a vinyl versus CD thing
Whatever you decide, it’s important to know – what you’re hearing is NOT some inherent limitation of the quality of the CD format.
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