A recent New York Times article argued that sound quality hasn't benefited from the same kinds of technological progress that video has. (Think of flat panel TVs, High Definition, and 3D movies; then try to imagine what a living room stereo with fancy new technology would look like.) But then the website Create Digital Music published a rebuttal, reminding us of High Definition Compact Disc, DVD-Audio, and various cinema-grade surround formats. They tore apart pretty much every point in the Times article, and their criticisms are mostly right. Unfortunately they were a little too busy attacking the lazy Big Media journalist and polishing their righteous indignation to identify and address the reason the Times wrote the article in the first place: people have stopped buying stereos.
It used to be common to have two large speakers in a big room for listening to music. Today I can only think of one person outside my family who has anything that qualifies, and he uses it mainly for videogames. I won't exclude him because of that; what I'm talking about here is listening carefully to music on a system chosen to reveal audio detail, and he does that sometimes. I'll bet even audiophiles do most of their listening passively, while multitasking. The thing is, over the last 30 years, most of the rest of us went from occasionally listening carefully to never doing it. So we no longer devote the space in our living rooms to it.
Why are Blu-Ray players selling so much better than, say, SACD players? Something has changed in our patterns of consumption. On the surface, video content is more immersive than audio-only content, simply because it engages an additional sense. I've always thought that actively listening to music was a more contemplative pastime than watching television or movies, simply because there is less in the media to distract me from my thoughts. It's been said that America needs to work on its mindfulness, so perhaps the trend towards more immersive media is part of that.
The argument that sound hasn't fallen off in quality because there are high definition media available is somewhat disingenuous. The problem isn't low res media, it's poor content production values. Recordings aren't being created with high fidelity, so it doesn't matter how well they're stored and played back. GIGO, and they're producing garbage to record.
ReplyDeleteI just got back from a monthly audiophile meeting where 30 of us listened to a $150K 2-channel system. The best sounding music source in the system was an analog reel-to-reel tape deck upgraded with tube electronics and playing carefully mastered all-analog material. The digital sources and vinyl also sounded outstanding. The limiting factor in the quality of recorded music is not the storage medium, it's the will of content producers to take the care to record, mix and master in a way that preserves natural sound on the recording. It's much easier to compress, tweak, equalize, auto-tune and cheat your way to an OK sounding product than to bother to make the best playback experience possible. I suspect that this is due to the buying public just not valuing better fidelity. Good enough is good enough so why should the record companies spend resources preserving detail that won't be heard through iPod earbuds over the roar of the bus?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I would or wouldn't argue that sound hasn't fallen off in quality because there are high definition media available. Well, I wouldn't try to argue causation. I'm not sure what kind of an argument you'd make about an actual decrease of sound quality. Are we talking about best-case scenarios? Your audiophile meeting showcased them, so I don't think we're hurting there. Are we talking about worst-case scenarios? 30 years ago we had cassette Walkman and there was plenty of cheaply produced pop music. Are we talking about some kind of "average" scenario? That's a lot harder to define. That's what I was trying to get at with my anecdotal observation that my friends don't own stereos, or don't use them to listen to music alone. You're right that people don't care; there's no value added in having a really well engineered recording.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why the music industry hasn't pursued something like a 5.1 format for car stereos. Cars these days are shipping with at least 4-6 reasonably high quality speakers.
Well, you're right that 2-channel audio in a room is no longer the dominant mode for music consumption. This change started with the Walkman and similar personal stereos, accelerated with portable CD players, high quality car audio and really hit its stride with portable digital players and computer-based music storage. The home stereo dominated when music was bound to physical media like records. It's certainly still possible to find high quality recordings to enjoy on a conventional 2-channel system but more and more popular music is optimized (or degraded) for the characteristics of the primary means of storage and consumption. I'm an audiophile but I have no problem with consumers dictating what quality level they want in their product.
ReplyDeleteThe NYT may be imagining some golden age of Hi Fi where quality was the main goal, but pre recorded cassettes outsold records for years before CD came along. The market has always been driven by consumers' wants and convenience seems to be more important than fidelity.
Regarding multichannel audio, it's been available through home theater systems in specially mastered music recordings for some time, but just hasn't taken off. I've heard a few of these and they range from gimmicky to merely OK. The more complex mix just doesn't seem to add much to the realism of the experience.
I don't think there is an average scenario any more. It was a lot easier in the '70s to generalize about audio systems when they ranged from a department store all-in-one record player to an expensive audio shop installation. But when you add an iPhone, a multimedia computer, a home theater system and an MP3 player into the mix, any definition of the group becomes too broad to have meaning.
ReplyDeleteA change in attentive listening is a trickier question to answer. Do people pay less attention to music than they used to? Perhaps, but maybe because it's now convenient to have music in contexts where it was impossible before. maybe the same amount of attentive listening goes on but it's been joined by hours more of background sound on headphones, on the computer and in the office. if so, then there is a change or there isn't, depending on how you define music listening.
I think you've hit it: 30 years ago, music reproduction was format limited. You could listen to the radio, but if you wanted to choose your music, you had only two options. LPs sounded good but could only be played in your living room. Cassette tapes sounded less good and only added car and walkman and boombox to your options.
ReplyDeleteNow that you can fit days' worth of music on a flash chip the size of your pinky fingernail, listening has moved into contexts that discourage you from listening actively.
Yup. There's been a huge shift in how people listen to music and I haven't seen it discussed at all. take FM radio. Local stations used to be independent, profitable, powerful, distinctive and able to move consumer tastes all on their own. Now many are no more than local labels on national centrally programmed chains like Clear Channel. Cable brought MTV and MTV started moving consumer tastes more than radio. What will do that in the future? Music video has dropped off in influence and I don't see anything coming up to take its place. Easy, fast, cheap downloads allow people to pick and choose easier than ever, possibly making music choice more democratic than before.
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