Kids increasingly prefer MP3 to superior formats
Dougherty likens kids who prefer MP3s to those who prefer vinyl to CD, saying that it might not be so much about quality as familiarity.
O’Reilly blogger Dale Dougherty recently attended the Information Technology and the Public Good event at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, where one of the speakers was Stanford University’s professor of music, Jonathan Berger.
According to Dougherty, Berger described a test he performs each year with his new students. In the test, the students have to listen to a variety of recordings that span several compression formats from MP3 upwards, and then state which one they preferred.
According to Berger, the preference for MP3 files rises every year, explaining that the next generation prefers the “sizzle sounds” of MP3s because they’re familiar with them. Dougherty likens this to the preference for vinyl records among some people who grew up with the archaic discs, saying that it’s not necessarily down to a perception of higher quality as much as the fact that they’re used to that particular sound.
Audiophiles like the “sound artifacts of vinyl records – the crackles of that format,” says Dougherty, adding that it’s “familiar and comfortable to them, and maybe those affects became a fetish. Is it now becoming the same with iPod lovers?”
Are you a pure vinyl lover or are you happy enough with an MP3 jukebox? What’s your music compression format of choice? Share your audio preferences in the forums.
Via Engadget
Previous Article
63 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyI would quite happily use more FLAC if iTunes/iPod could play it out of the box and there was somewhere to buy albums in that format.
This does bring up some interesting ideas. While most of my childhood music and video enjoyment was spent with cassette tapes, VHS and to a lesser extent vinyl, I much prefer the sound or picture quality of CD's and DVD's as that's what most of my now favourite music and video were purchased on once I was old enough to start buying things for my self. Looking to the future, it seems that only picture quality is being catered for with Blu-Ray etc. New high def music formats like DVD-A and SACD have been largely ignored by the public. I think the reason for this is that CD's are good enough for most people. That doesn't bother me so much but it does bother me that music quality is now swiftly moving backwards. I now seriously worry that in a few years no new music will be available in high quality uncompressed formats. On the bright side, things like this seem to work in cycles and in the same way that valves have experienced a renaissance in recent years, I can only hope that some time in the near future the same will happen with uncompressed high quality recordings.
Have they ever used something else?
Effects :)
And it's 'good enough'
I have my CDs and I have my rips. Do I ever listen to the CDs to get better quality? Nope.
It's funny, I was selling hi-fis when the first compressed music hardware came mainstream (minidisc + ATRAC) and there was all this talk about how inferior it was when really you couldn't tell. And it's MP3s that became mainstream and the quality can be terrible.
It's got so bad then sometimes you can hear bad MP3 rips when listening to FM radio, tracks recorded at what must be 64kbps
And I still rip to MP3, 256 variable is good enough for me.
Kids prefer mp3s for the same reason they prefer iPods, they're popular and that's all they really know of. And to be honest, with the shitty speakers and headphones most people have (myself included), it's incredibly difficult to tell the difference between formats unless you have a really good ear.
Plus isn't vinyl actually supposed to be superior to CDs (when they're nice and fresh that is).
For the record i'm no audiophile and only have fairly cheap hifi but ever with that there is a noticeable difference between mp3 and CD though some of my mp3 are quite old and sound really bad.
Yep, that's his word, not ours!
*waits for crazy dom*
i for one, like CDs, and FLAC.
this way if mp3 ever DOES get obsolete, i can just bulk convert the FLAC files, without having to go through the epic effort of re-ripping my CDs.
Size, sound quality, production. They're all pretty bad compared to other standards today. I'll occasionally get an offer to provide sound for raves. Stupid DJ's bring in vinyls. Yuck.
You should check out ALAC (Apple's version of FLAC). It's nearly identical in quality, but it's supported on Apple hardware.
If FLAC saw more widespread use and ran out of the box with everything, then I can see it also becoming much more popular.
I also went to the trouble of recording all my vinyl and creating a lossless archive on my media PC, which is hooked up to the stereo and is great for convenience and random play, but I still play the original records if I want to play an album. I've also created a 256Kb/sec archive of all of my records and CDs that I use for my MP3 player and my PC upstairs - they don't sound bad, and you can't tell the difference when you're on the train anyway. Basically, I have a mix of everything for different situations.
There's a world of difference between iTunes' 112kbps and a home-ripped 192VBR or higher. For me, the biggest difference in sound is headphones v speakers, not MP3 v CD.
But it is a pain that no PMP's that i know of support it and converting is a hassle. If apple were to support it on the ipod rather then thier own fomat (again) i could see it taking of. Again, it would be more for the sake of conveniance then the quality as would you care sitting on a train?
I listen to 320kbps MP3s through my E-MU 1616m audio interface (which has pro-tools D/A converters) and Samson resolv65a studio monitors (near flat frequency response), and balanced cabling throughout. Can I hear a difference between the MP3's and CD's? Hell no, and I have pretty good ears, even if I do say so myself.
Granted, 96kbps MP3s will have some noticeable artefacts, but most of the difference is in peoples heads.
I also think it has a lot to do with the over-production of today's music, while I'm writing this I'm listening to Muse's Exo-Politics from CD (simply cause I haven't got round to ripping it yet) and I can hear the bass drum is clipping from over compression. When the original CD's have artefacts its no wonder people notice them on the MP3s.
Music that is heavily produced/layered would sound nasty at 192... but a simple Pop song would be fine.
An issue with asking people about what sounds better is also how the changes effect the particular song. When I played a song for my sister she loved the crap version on the 30 eyar old $2 headphones over the flac version on the DT-990s with an upgraded little dot micro MK1. When I pressed to find out how this could be so it was actually the fact that it did sound better on the HI-FI setup as why she did not like it. In the high end setup the trumpets were much more crisp and noticeable, my sister did not like that and preferred the low quality one where it was harder to hear the sounds she did not like.
If you asked a class every year what the best game ever made was do you think they would provide a realistic view of gaming. NO, they would all say halo and you would cry yourself to sleep that night...
I read the article and that ABX method is terribly flawed. A group hearing unfamiliar music on an unfamiliar system has no memory base line to compare good and bad. Listening is a skill learned through comparing familiar sounds stored in our memory and like athletes some are better at it than others. The same can be said for kids. MP3s flaws and lossy/heavily compressed audio in general, regardless of format, is through omission of detail. This is hard to pin down because if you havent heard the original how do you know whats missing. Vinyls biggest flaw is additive noise. Most, not all, pop music is over processed and mixed to sound best on radio and is lacking detail to begin with. I have been working with my kids on how to listen. Sounds weird but you learn to read, write, etc you must learn how to listen effectively too. I can hear the difference between cds and mp3s on modestly priced equipment because I know whats missing, I have a base line to work from. Another problem with kids is many have be using ear buds at excessive volume which has fried their ears. Unfortunately hearing loss is permanent and hearing aids are not like glasses they only amplify frequencies in which the wearer is deficient in. When the whole body is in a loud noise area for a while it fatigues quickly with or with hearing protection, headphones do their damage fairly quick and dont impact the rest of the body so dramatically. At least where I have lived neighbors tend to keep loudspeaker volumes down but wont hear overly loud headphones unless sitting next to them.
MP3 has one thing none of the other formats have. Portability. It'll play just about anywhere. PC, DVD player, all consoles, iPods, car stereos etc. Something which can't be said of FLAC, AAC, Apple lossless etc.
Cowon players support FLAC, I have a Cowon D2, really sweet little player that supports a ton of formats. I think their newer PMP O2 or something supports it too.
It's not flawed, that's the entire point of the experiment, the listeners hear the piece of music through different wires (or coat hangers) having never previously heard it and they say which they think sounded better, how is that flawed?
The point I was trying to make is ears cannot be as good as audiophiles like to think, like human ears cannot differentiate between tones that are different by less than 5 cents.
You said it yourself, you know what's missing, isn't possible you're noticing these differences simply because you expect them to be there.
I know that mathematically there is a difference between a 320kbps MP3 and CD, but that doesn't mean human ears can actually hear the difference.
Have you ever listened to music at 24bit 96khz uncompressed? Nine Inch Nails released The Slip in this format as well as the standard 16bit 44.1khz, and again, I really couldn't tell the difference between the two using all my pro studio equipment.
Whoo! I'll be on the hunt for one of them then. Thanks!
a 500GB drive costs the same as a couple of CDs, if your collection gets too big just buy another hard drive. it's worth it to have proper backups of something that comes in a format as easily destroyable as a CD.
i rip (and download) in flac wherever possible, but that is more about having a lossless copy than it is about sound quality. i can't hear a difference between ogg Q8 or mp3 V0 or flac, but i can hear the pain in lossy->lossy transcodes. if i have a flac copy, i can transcode to whatever format i need it to be in without screwing up the sound.
also, i like that flac is an open format. i don't like to keep data in closed formats.
I think It's Absurd that people even accept anything below 192, I mean I like having a lot of music but if there's a huge compromise in quality forget it.
That is what is wrong with the method, the human brain...
MP3 is compatible with my toaster, can be found anywhere, have a moderate file size (I prefer high quality MP3 when I can find them), easily recognized and transferred from anything to anything and works on my Zune.
FLAC or other lossless formats are obviously superior in terms of quality but they won't work on my Zune and my shitty car speakers won't do them justice anyway.
This is like comparing a Ferrari to a Honda.
192 bit rate should be good for any one but expert audio setup (not an music buff or have many songs my self)
25% of people think that the gov has its own money.... so yes in reality it is pretty easy to say that most will never know or care what is going onto there ears.
my flac files play on ubuntu, my mp3s do not (until i download the ugly codecs).
I use the WMA Pro codec, and transcoding from CD I use 44.1 KHz, 24-bit (A little pointless from a 16-bit source I know, but there isn't a 16-bit option with the pro codec), at a bit rate of 440kbs. Using the pro codec I can also use a 2 pass encode.
At these settings I can't hear a difference between the transcode and the original source, where with certain pieces of music (not all, and usually classical is the most noticeable here) I can at 320kbs in MP3.
I like the idea of FLAC, but the file size is just a little to much for my tastes, so by encoding using WMA Pro I get a good balance of both sound quality and file size.
The down side of this for many people is the fact that WMA Pro is relatively unsupported outside of the PC world, but as I only listen to music on the PC (Using an Audigy2 ZS and a set of Sennheiser HD 515 headphones plugged straight in the back) this isn't a problem for me personally.
ie. If I buy a track online, I want to be able to play it on ALL the PC's in my house AND my MP3 player AND in my car!
I've always used CDEX to rip CDs, which uses the LAME encoder. Set correctly it's absolutely fine.
Set as below, I can't tell the difference in blind tests.... however, the file size it produces is quite large... but who cares about that? It's still smaller than most lossless formats.
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b26/pookeyhead/cdexsettings.jpg
The point I was trying to make is ears cannot be as good as audiophiles like to think, like human ears cannot differentiate between tones that are different by less than 5 cents.
You said it yourself, you know what's missing, isn't possible you're noticing these differences simply because you expect them to be there.
I know that mathematically there is a difference between a 320kbps MP3 and CD, but that doesn't mean human ears can actually hear the difference.
Have you ever listened to music at 24bit 96khz uncompressed? Nine Inch Nails released The Slip in this format as well as the standard 16bit 44.1khz, and again, I really couldn't tell the difference between the two using all my pro studio equipment.[/QUOTE]
You missed my point the ears are just like the eyes, they are transducers it's the brain that sees and listens so it can be trained. MP3s are a practical compression tool but when you start cutting out bits you remove detail. If you know what instruments are in a song on a cd and it's not there on your MP3. I expect them to be there because I know they are there on the original recording.
I have listened to 24/96 and I was blown away. I thought I had a string quartet playing in front of me and I could tell where each instrument was placed. What happens when you compress the music you remove data to shrink it. You also remove the spatial cues which the brain uses to compare with what and where it knows to be there. Try using a well recorded acoustic piece and listen to it for a week and then compress it. You should notice the difference. If you use your computer to listen, typically not the best source for careful listening, turn the digital volume all the way up since most crudely truncate the data stream to lower volume.
What you listen for on compressed music is what is missing, not what is there. Usually the music goes flat and lifeless. My kid noticed it when playing a zune and the original cd on the stereo. It matters to me but...
In the end what is important is that you are ejoying the music be it a silly money system or a boom box. What makes you happy...
The one caveat to this is that it relies on you having an accurate rip of the CD in the first place. iTunes and WMP are NOT good at this - they rip very quickly, but often erroneously. To guarantee perfect rips you need to use something like Exact Audio Copy (which double reads every sector and does some clever error detection), combined with the AccurateRip plugin that creates a checksum of your ripped file and cross-checks it against the checksums created by other users ripping the same track.
Don't get me wrong, for archival or for listening in the home, storage is now so cheap that you may as well rip new CDs to FLAC or another lossless codec, but there is really no case for taking the time to re-rip old CDs that are already on your PC as high quality VBR MP3s (i.e. LAME --alt-preset standard or --v2 or higher, or OGG Vorbis -q 6 or higher, or the equivalent in another respectable codec), and even with the ever increasing storage capacity of portable media players, you're still going to be better off with a larger collection of high quality lossy music than a smaller collection of lossless, as even using high quality cans there is not a dog in hell's chance you're going to hear the difference.
IMO, most kids download music in MP3 format and don't care what they do with it afterward. They don't understand or want to understand what other formats are out there.
Now that IS flawed, the positioning in the stereo field is determined by having separate audio tracks for left and right channels, so no matter weather its a 64kbps MP3, CD or 24/96, everything is still gonna be separated in the stereo field (although the 64kbps MP3 will still sound shite)
Something no one has mentioned yet is dithering algorithms, and that does make a difference, just compare a 2 colour gif with and without dithering, you'll see how important it is, it's the reason a sound can be compressed with out a noticeable loss of quality.
Again, this isn't the point, they weren't trying to remember the exact piece of music each time, just the over all impression the music gave through the different wires. And those impressions can be remembered and compared.
As for the future - it's MP3 downloads - that's all I buy now.
Interestingly that's not all bad for audiophiles who hate MP3. If the companies want to introduce some *higher* audio format then they just need to provide a download alternative to MP3 - this is much simpler for them to do then trying to introduce a whole new CD format such as SACD. They just re-rip everything to the new format and the majority of their target audience can probably already play it (e.g. anyone using a PC, or some sort of music server will just need an update to decode the new format).
The stereo field i.e. spatial location is because the brain calculates positions through triangulation and it uses subtle details to do that. The stereo field is recreated from subtle clues reflecting off surfaces around the instruments be it a small room or large hall. Yes the brain can be fooled but not all the time. When you compress music no matter how good your algorithm YOU WILL LOSE DATA the more you compress the more you lose, i.e. spatial information since it is low in level takes the biggest hit. Algorithms, regardless of dithering, removes data then attempts to recalculate what it thinks was there when it un-compresses to regain dynamic range. Lossless systems and high bit rate compression work because they dont remove too much and the brain can be fooled a bit. Dolby and DTS have produced higher bit-rate compression systems because the lower bit-rate systems dont sound as good be it stereo, 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1 systems.
As for not trying to remember the exact piece of music just the overall impressions how can you compare the differences if youre not trying to remember all of it? That is ludicrous you must remember what you are listening to in order to compare, kind of goes with the definition of compare. Your conclusion is a faulty syllogism. The difference is in the details, music is far more complex than a 2 colour gif, similar process, not the same. Figuring out what is missing is hard to do for most people because its a learned skill and learning takes time. Yes there are audioholics who hallucinate improvements purely from hype, more money than sense. Not all improvements are hype and good sound doesnt have to be expensive, though you usually get what you pay for.
For Pop music that can work because it is so heavily processed however acoustic music suffers. A pro recording magazine, I forget the name, took original recordings heavily processed pop, lightly processed rock, acoustic jazz and small and large classical pieces. They started with a cd and used the analog out to a DAT recorder then DAT to DAT through analog connections. The more heavily processed pieces tended to sound better on the 5th generation copy and the acoustic pieces sounded worse on all copies getting progressively worse with each generation. The listeners were able to take as much time as they needed to grade each generation.
So it all depends on what you listen to.
Then again, I listen to lots of death metal. Lossy compression absolutely kills good double-bass.
In my opinion, lossy compression is perfectly suited to manufactured, shallow pop and hip hop. If you listen to anything with depth though, whether it be metal, classical, jazz, classic rock, you need lossless.