http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4052123.stm

When did you last read anything about an MP3 music player that mentioned the
quality of the sound it reproduces?
You'll find size, storage capacity, the type of music files played, even the
pastel colour it's available in mentioned in advertisements and reviews, but
chances are that sound quality won't get a look in.

Which is odd, considering that not so long ago wow and flutter, rumble,
tracking error, signal-to-noise ratio and other arcane measures of sound
reproduction quality used to be vital statistics for hi-fi buffs in their
quest for the perfect sound system. No spec sheet was complete without them.

People spent vast amounts of money on hi-fi equipment, which invariably
meant there was less to spend on records and cassettes. Their attitude was
what was the point in buying music if you didn't have anything decent to
play it on?

But when it comes to buying MP3 music players today, the quality of sound
reproduction has become a bit of a red herring. Something fundamental has
changed.

'Forget clarity'

Whereas in the past salesmen demonstrating a new hi-fi system might have
said "Just listen to the clarity of the violins", today they're more likely
to say "Look at the size of the hard disk on that one."

What's going on? Don't people care about sound quality any more? The answer
is that quantity turns out to be more important than quality.

Music lovers today have the opportunity to amass huge MP3 music hoards the
size of which would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.

It's easy to copy CDs, download music files from the Internet, or even clone
a friend's entire music collections by attaching a portable hard drive to
their computer.

It's quite possible to bag a collection of hundreds of albums in less than
an hour, (much of it probably copied illegally) whereas five years most
people couldn't hope to assemble such a collection in a lifetime.

What we are seeing is that quality isn't always top of the list any
more

Clare Newsome
What Hi-Fi? editor
The reason it's so easy to copy, download and store all this music is that
compression techniques like MP3 can make digital music files very small -
without this compression a collection would rapidly become unmanageably
large.

Compression usually involves a loss in sound quality, but the popularity of
MP3 music players shows that most people simply don't care any more. What
music lovers want today more than anything else is music - and lots of it.

The manufacturers of digital music players - Apple, Creative, iRiver and
others - have been quick to grasp this. The main difference between a cheap
and an expensive MP3 player is simply the amount of storage space it has.

It's not just sound quality that's lost its importance - the same applies to
videos too. DVDs offer great quality picture reproduction, but many of the
latest generation of DVD players can also play DivX files.

DivX is a video equivalent of MP3 compression, and the picture quality of
films encoded using DivX is lower than DVD quality.

The end?

The great irony for the entertainment electronics industry is that now that
very high quality sound and video reproduction is possible and quite
affordable thanks to CDs and DVDs, many consumers no longer see quality as a
very high priority.

They are happy to "downgrade" to MP3 and DivX quality to accommodate the
deluge of digital content that is getting increasingly easy to accumulate.

So is this the end for the hi-fi equipment buff?

Clare Newsome, editor of What Hi-Fi? magazine, says: "A lot of the tweaky
geeky stuff is gone, and what we are seeing is that quality isn't always top
of the list any more," she says.

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel for the hard-core sound
quality freak. Vinyl and valves are very slowly beginning to make a
comeback, as a small but increasing number of music enthusiasts rediscover
the joys and sound reproduction of old fashioned analogue record players.

Could it be possible that talk of the demise of venerable hi-fi buff terms
like wow and flutter, rumble, tracking error and signal-to-noise ratio may
yet prove premature...?


Dave

www.davewhitter.myby.co.uk

Music is Art - Audio is Engineering
Steam is Fun

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:39:05 GMT, "Dave xxxx"
wrote:

Clare Newsome, editor of What Hi-Fi? magazine, says: "A lot of the tweaky
geeky stuff is gone, and what we are seeing is that quality isn't always top
of the list any more," she says.

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel for the hard-core sound
quality freak. Vinyl and valves are very slowly beginning to make a
comeback, as a small but increasing number of music enthusiasts rediscover
the joys and sound reproduction of old fashioned analogue record players.

No, they're providing lots of entertaining magazine coverage, but the
market penetration of valves is negligible. All this talk of a
'comeback' reminds one of George Foreman............

Could it be possible that talk of the demise of venerable hi-fi buff terms
like wow and flutter, rumble, tracking error and signal-to-noise ratio may
yet prove premature...?

There's a slight catch in your argument, in that even 128kb/sec MP3
has better sound quality than vinyl................

And what has valves to do with analogue vs digital? Sounds like more
of a retro chic thing, than anything nto do with sound quality.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:


No, they're providing lots of entertaining magazine coverage, but the
market penetration of valves is negligible. All this talk of a
'comeback' reminds one of George Foreman............

You could use a valve amp as a grilling machine.

--
Eiron.

In article , Dave xxxx
wrote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4052123.stm

When did you last read anything about an MP3 music player that mentioned
the quality of the sound it reproduces? You'll find size, storage
capacity, the type of music files played, even the pastel colour it's
available in mentioned in advertisements and reviews, but chances are
that sound quality won't get a look in.

Well, I suspect that a genuine interest in 'hi fi' and getting a really
good sound has always been a minority interest. Most people neither know
nor care much about such things so far as I can tell, and think those who
do must be a bit batty. :-)

Which is odd, considering that not so long ago wow and flutter, rumble,
tracking error, signal-to-noise ratio and other arcane measures of sound
reproduction quality used to be vital statistics for hi-fi buffs in
their quest for the perfect sound system. No spec sheet was complete
without them.

They seem to have vanished for three reasons:

1) many readers aren't interested in reading them.

2) many 'reviewers' can't be bothered to make the measurements it would
require.

3) in some cases they may not really be relevant.

[snip]

What's going on? Don't people care about sound quality any more? The
answer is that quantity turns out to be more important than quality.

I suspect that for most people the above has always been largely to case.

[snip]

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel for the hard-core sound
quality freak. Vinyl and valves are very slowly beginning to make a
comeback, as a small but increasing number of music enthusiasts
rediscover the joys and sound reproduction of old fashioned analogue
record players.

The above, of course, assumes that your second statement supports your
first statement. :-)

Could it be possible that talk of the demise of venerable hi-fi buff
terms like wow and flutter, rumble, tracking error and signal-to-noise
ratio may yet prove premature...?

Dunno. When was the last time you saw a review of a turntable or an RIAA
amp that compared the lab-measured noise, distortion, etc, levels with
those you actually get playing music LPs? :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:48:32 +0000, Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

snip

There's a slight catch in your argument, in that even 128kb/sec MP3 has
better sound quality than vinyl................

snip

There speaks an mp3 expert.... with cloth ears.... :-)

Have you actually *heard* 128kb/s mp3s? The only way that they score over
vinyl is in the lack of surface noise - and you can learn to largely
ignore that on vinyl. You can *never* really ignore the overall crap sound
quality of 128kb/s mp3s though. It just grates. I use 128kb/s mp3 on
my pocket player simply because it produces a reasonably small file size
that (sort of) works on music. Anything less than that should be relegated
to speech only.

IMHO mp3s only start to get listenable at 192kb/s. Now, if you'd care to
argue about 256kb/s mp3 versus vinyl the playing field is more level.... ;-)

--
Mick
(no M$ software on here... :-) )
Web: http://www.nascom.info
Web: http://projectedsound.tk

"Stewart Pinkerton" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:39:05 GMT, "Dave xxxx"
wrote:

Clare Newsome, editor of What Hi-Fi? magazine, says: "A lot of the tweaky
geeky stuff is gone, and what we are seeing is that quality isn't always
top
of the list any more," she says.

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel for the hard-core sound
quality freak. Vinyl and valves are very slowly beginning to make a
comeback, as a small but increasing number of music enthusiasts rediscover
the joys and sound reproduction of old fashioned analogue record players.

No, they're providing lots of entertaining magazine coverage, but the
market penetration of valves is negligible. All this talk of a
'comeback' reminds one of George Foreman............

Could it be possible that talk of the demise of venerable hi-fi buff terms
like wow and flutter, rumble, tracking error and signal-to-noise ratio may
yet prove premature...?

There's a slight catch in your argument, in that even 128kb/sec MP3
has better sound quality than vinyl................

And what has valves to do with analogue vs digital? Sounds like more
of a retro chic thing, than anything nto do with sound quality.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

What a load of garbage....If 128kb/sec MP3 sounds better than your vinyl
replay equipment then you'd better start fault finding. Reduced bit rates
are becoming the norm nowadays, just look at DAB, deaf Joe Public accept it
all without a murmer. Never mind the quality feel the width...or lack of
width in DAB's case. I wonder how much bit reduction to cram more in the
powers can get away with? I'd be happy with 256kb/s MP3 not 128kb/s Sheeez

"Dave xxxx" wrote


snip great long BBC cut & paste which said a lot and told us nothing...


Nice troll Dave!! ;-)

AFAIAC, the first thing to remember when you see anything like this is to
remember someone was paid to write it. Like ****e music, we are awash with
the musings of every Tom Dick and Harriet these days. (The proverbial
million monkeys finally got their million typewriters..... :-)

Anyway, this article tells us nothing new, it merely states the obvious,
that today's mass-market for cheap (?) recorded music is no different to
than it used to be when kids would stack 7" vinyl singles on an
autochanger - ie that speed, convenience, swapability, portablility and
affordability were more important considerations than ultimate 'high
fidelity'....???

Now, did you miss this little dooberry at the bottom of the page?

© BBC MMIV

:-)

"Stewart Pinkerton" wrote in message

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:39:05 GMT, "Dave xxxx"
wrote:

Clare Newsome, editor of What Hi-Fi? magazine, says: "A lot of the
tweaky geeky stuff is gone, and what we are seeing is that quality
isn't always top of the list any more," she says.

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel for the hard-core
sound quality freak. Vinyl and valves are very slowly beginning to
make a comeback, as a small but increasing number of music
enthusiasts rediscover the joys and sound reproduction of old
fashioned analogue record players.

No, they're providing lots of entertaining magazine coverage, but the
market penetration of valves is negligible. All this talk of a
'comeback' reminds one of George Foreman............

George Foreman did come back, as a leading spokesman for a highly-marketed
line of low-cost kitchen applicances.

;-)

Just FYI. I don't know if Foreman is marketing cheap electric grilles in the
UK or not.

"mick" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:48:32 +0000, Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

snip

There's a slight catch in your argument, in that even 128kb/sec MP3
has better sound quality than vinyl................

snip

There speaks an mp3 expert.... with cloth ears.... :-)

Have you actually *heard* 128kb/s mp3s?

That question is almost an insult. Who hasn't heard moderate-bitrate MP3s
given how endemic they are?

The only way that they score
over vinyl is in the lack of surface noise - and you can learn to
largely ignore that on vinyl.

LOL! Obviously we've got someone here whose ears are too shot to hear all
those other well-known deficiencies of vinyl. Noise is just the beginning,
not the end. Not that 128 Kb MP3s are always sonically perfect. But, there
is no mass movement to replace MP3 players with LP players, even where space
and convenience aren't an issue.


You can *never* really ignore the
overall crap sound quality of 128kb/s mp3s though.

Given how endemic moderate-bitrate MP3s are, there's no doubt that we've all
ignored them. Furthermore, its possibe to constrain music so that it doesn't
trigger many of their sonic problems, much as was done with recorded music
when vinyl was king.

It just grates.

Except when it slips by you.

I use 128kb/s mp3 on my pocket player simply because it produces a
reasonably small file size that (sort of) works on music. Anything
less than that should be relegated to speech only.

So what headphones/earphones are you using?

IMHO mp3s only start to get listenable at 192kb/s. Now, if you'd care
to argue about 256kb/s mp3 versus vinyl the playing field is more
level.... ;-)

No argument that with the right encoder, higher bitrates can help.

On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 09:47:23 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

George Foreman did come back, as a leading spokesman for a highly-marketed
line of low-cost kitchen applicances.

;-)

Just FYI. I don't know if Foreman is marketing cheap electric grilles in the
UK or not.


Of course - there was even a rumour going round that he had actually
seen one of them at some point.

d
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com