For those interested in the sound quality of their music, on Sunday The New York Times published an article about the topic. According to them (and many others), iPods and "compressed computer files" are destroying the quality of music. These paragraphs quickly highlight on of the main points of the article:
In one way, the music business has been the victim of its own technological success: the ease of loading songs onto a computer or an iPod has meant that a generation of fans has happily traded fidelity for portability and convenience. This is the obstacle the industry faces in any effort to create higher-quality — and more expensive — ways of listening.
I’m not going to get into the rest here since the Times does such a great job of discussing the issue, but I will say that I had never given much thought to this until I purchased a copy of Ooh La by The Kooks a few years ago. Shortly after buying the track, I had the opportunity to hear a CD version and I was stunned (and saddened) by how crappy my downloaded version sounded. I then went out and bought the CD just so I could get the improved sound quality. I know that all sounds like a complete waste of money (though I was able to resell the CD and get most of my money back), but at the time the improved quality of sound was really worth the trouble.
It’s simply a fact that most people enjoy the convenience of a quick download, and at times these same people might be willing to sacrifice sound quality for convenience. It’s also worth noting that many people are completely unaware that they are losing quality. If I had not heard the improved version of Ooh La, I would have just assumed that my version was sufficient, and frankly, I completely enjoyed the old version until I knew better. As they say, ignorance is bliss. Just so you can get an idea of what I experienced, here are my two versions of Ooh La:
Ooh La (poor quality) –
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Ooh La (improved quality) –
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To contact the author of this post e-mail: anise@offtheradio.com
