Neil Young says the tech industry doesn't care as much about music quality as it should.
Perhaps that's because the average iPod-toting iTunes customer doesn't give a second thought to whether the digital file of the latest single they just bought is uncompressed or lossless.
Young told a bunch of tech luminaries gathered for an industry conference as much on Wednesday: "People's understanding has been skewed by MP3s and convenience. It's important to get music out there...but not at the expense of quality."
He's not the only one who feels that way. Grammy-award-winning producer T-Bone Burnett (who says audio nowadays is so degraded it's akin to viewing "a Xerox of a Polaroid of a photograph of a painting") is spearheading CODE, a new high-definition audio format distributed on a DVD.
CODE gives the music consumer options, by including many different formats, including 24-bit/96-kHz WAV files, uncompressed 16-bit/44.1kHz files, AAC, and MP3 on a single disc. What Burnett has done is show consumers that there are options, more than perhaps they are aware.
Young and Burnett are certainly vocal, but aren't the only people dissatisfied with the listening experience offered by today's cheap, one-off music downloads. So we checked in with our own resident audiophile, Steve Guttenberg, who writes at CNET Blog Network's Audiophiliac. Here are his suggestions for hearing music the way it's meant to be heard.
*Listen. Well, sure, that's the point right? But Guttenberg means really listen, as in, don't have it playing in the background while you're filling in spreadsheets at work, or scrubbing your shower. Once you do, you'll actually notice how much is missing from a compressed MP3 file.
"People who actually put on music and listen--whatever form it's in--they hear more because they're giving it their undivided attention," he said. "Once people really listen, they care about (sound quality) more. Whether you're listening to an iPod or $20,000 turntable, it doesn't really matter. But that's sort of the beginning of everything."
(Credit:
CNET)
*Download quality file formats. Now that you can get music players with 160GB of storage, file size isn't really a huge issue anymore. MP3 files are generally regarded as the lowest-quality music file since the audio uses a lossy compression process to make the files smaller, meaning some of the data is left out, like higher frequencies.
Luckily there are alternatives: Apple lossless for iPods compresses the files, but losslessly (which means it sounds exactly like uncompressed, but is actually compressed, Guttenberg says); AAC, which is a lossy compression encoding process, but is generally accepted as better than MP3; or OGG (no, no relation to me), which is another lossy compressed file format, but is open source and is known for its higher fidelity. And then there are WAV files, which are completely uncompressed and sound exactly how they're "supposed to," according to Guttenberg.
*Buy used CDs. Though CDs probably aren't Neil Young-approved, it's a vastly better quality experience than MP3s. Plus, it's kind of a deal, Guttenberg says. "It's cheaper than buying iTunes (songs) and certainly sounds a million times better."
*Think outside the iPod. Though there's nothing wrong with Apple's portable music player, it's not the only device out there. Besides other brands of players, you could get super pro and go with a set of turntables. And you don't have to spend a ton. There are USB-equipped turntables that go for around $100--cheaper than most iPods.
*Listen to it live. If the other options still aren't getting it done, you can always go see your favorite act in person. But Rule No. 1 still applies: Actually listen. A lot of people "talk because they're used to music being in the background, they don't just shut up and listen to it."
I had a problem. Years ago, I bought Microsoft's now-discontinued Digital Media Plus Pack for converting my LP records into digital files. Because it's a Microsoft product from back in the day when Microsoft was gung-ho about Windows Media, it only rips to Windows Media Audio. And of course, it's Windows only. (Other than that, it's a great tool--very easy to use, never messes up line leveling, and has a good algorithm for removing pops and scratches.)
Back when I used iTunes and my iPod exclusively, I'd simply rip the album into WMA, then import the folder from MyMusic into iTunes. It would ask me if I wanted to convert to AAC (the default--it can also convert to MP3), I'd accept, then delete the WMAs so as not to clutter my hard drive with duplicates.
dBpoweramp lets you convert just about any audio file format to any other.
(Credit: Screenshot)But since 2006, I've been using a Zune (review unit) as my primary music player. Zune plays both AAC and WMA files, and it automatically reads your iTunes library. I got lazy and stopped converting my vinyl from WMA to AAC.
Now I've got a Shuffle. And a library full of WMA files that it can't play. Of course, I could do what I used to do--import the folders from My Music into iTunes, convert to AAC, then delete the originals. But what if I want to convert those WMAs into MP3s to make sure they can play on any device with any software app? OK, I guess I could change the default on iTunes. But what happens when you add a bunch of downloaded FLAC files into the mix? Or Ogg files? What about converting AAC back to WMA--I can't see any reason why I'd want to do that today, but who knows where Microsoft and Apple are heading with their file format support?
I needed to future-proof my music collection, while still maintaining the best quality-to-size ratio possible. (MP3 is one of the lossiest formats.)
dBpoweramp Music Converter is the solution. $18 for the regular edition. (The $28 reference edition has features for professionals and more serious amateurs.) You can download just about any imaginable codec from the associated Web site. By default it performs file conversion within the same folder as the original files, so you can easily keep track of what's where. (Not like iTunes, which moves every converted file into the iTunes library by default.) Or, if you want to export directly to an iTunes folder, it can do that. It even adds a feature to the Windows Explorer so when you hover over a file, it'll display full ID3 tag information for that file--useful for changing mysterious file names to match song titles.
Highly recommended.
dBpoweramp shows ID3 tags within Windows Explorer. So you can find out the real title of that Track 4.WMA file you've been carrying around..
(Credit: Screenshot)
The Cowon iAudio 7--same great looks as the iAudio 6, now with Flash memory and an incredibly long battery life.
(Credit: Cowon America, Inc.)One of our favorite MP3 players is getting an upgrade. Cowon announced the iAudio 7 today in Korea, updating their micro-drive iAudio 6 player to a lighter, leaner flash-based player. The update includes a significant jump in battery life, from 20 hours to a remarkable 60 hours. The iAudio 6 supports standard audio formats such as MP3, AAC, WMA, ASF, WAV, and even beloved (yet rarely supported) formats such as OGG and FLAC. It looks as though many of the great features of its predecessor have been maintained, including line-in recording, voice recording, video playback, BBE sound enhancer, and its unique touch-scroll interface.
Korea will see the player mid-July, unveiled in 4GB and 8GB capacities, and priced at $182 and $246, respectively. No word on whether this will ever reach the U.S., however.
(via AkihabaraNews)
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