The Death of High Fidelity.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity

Meh, this is exactly why I don't listen to garbage music like everything you hear on the radio.

Give me a good underground never-played on radio band anyway, none of this Greenday bullshit.

I cant really find many vinyls, so i'll stick to my megadeth CD's!

This idea has been floating around for a while, and unfortunately I think it's true. The suits who crunch numbers at record companies all want their music to "pop" so it stands out when played on the radio or some other less than hi-fi source, or if they think they may frequently be played over the noise of a public setting. The burden falls back on the sound engineers to have everything in the track as loud as possible and still attempt to have balance within the elements of the song, and they usually can't do it. Instruments and recording venues start to lose their distinguishing sounds, resulting in products that are worse off for all the efforts to make them sound better.

The problem is that very few people even care about this type of thing anymore. If you talk to the average person about the sound quality of different musical sources or changes in how the music itself is produced, they'll just stare blankly at you for a couple seconds before plugging themselves back into their ipod. Vinyl will probably no longer be made soon enough because music is too easily mass-consumed in convenient digital formats, more a mere accessory to keep yourself from getting bored than an art form to be sought out for it's own sake.

As the article says, it's not just the mixing but the prevalence of lousy sounding MP3 files that are to blame.

I am disgusted at the sound quality of MP3's, so I am one of the few folks I know under 50 who has no MP3 files, no Ipod and no particular desire to get one.

People have asked me in the past why I buy and collect used CD's instead of downloading the tracks I want. I ask them if they can tell the difference between CD sound and MP3's. They know it sounds worse and don't care. Personally, if the sound is not as good as reasonably possible, why bother to listen at all?

i've never really paid attention to the quality of my music, i usually use it as background music to distract part of my brain, it helps me concentrate (I've got mild ADD, i find music helps me concentrate) and i never had anything to compare to because for the last few years i'd just rip a cd straight to my computer and listen to it from there. i just did my own test, i listened to a cd and my ripped track and the cd sounded so much more rich. i've always known about the difference between digital music and vinyl, that one's easier to spot.

my problem is that i like having music all the time and my mp3 player only holds 2Gb and it's got a maximum bitrate of 192kbps. according to that article you need to have it at a bitrate of 256 or something for it to be indestinguishable. any ideas about this?

I always rip my CDs at 256k. But i generally just listen to the CD's straight up.. i don't even own an MP3 player!

Yeah, 256 is in the same ballpark as CD quality. At that point audible losses will probably come more from the conversion process than the sample rate. Anything less sounds like crap, and I only use my mp3 player when I'm running so memory be damned.

I have no problems with MP3s. Typically, in situations when you use an MP3 player, the high quality of other formats would basically be wasted.
In your car, or walking around - outside noises essentially make the difference in quality negligible.

As for the actual mixing of the music, it's a real shame. It used to be if you wanted it loud, you turned the volume up. I have in my record collection, a neat old record that was recorded without any microphones being used.
The sound is clear and bright, and wholly undistorted. According to the sleeve, the album can be played at full volume all day with no chance of ear fatigue, because of its wholly "natural" sound. Their claim, so far as I can tell from my experiences playing the record, is completely true.
It's an older record, but the process used was refined to create the Barcus Berry pickups used by violinists etc.

audiophiles are the cigar afficianados of the smoker's world.

Labels like Peaceville and Volcano who use mastering engineers like Bob Ludwig are not afraid to shave their time and profits for a solid, impossibly intricate record. Bands who understand this are usually the more learned in musical talent.