Tom Watson links to a fascinating article on Rolling Stone magazine’s website about the deleterious effects MP3s are having on the quality of music, both in terms of fidelity and whether it’s worth listening to at all. The article, which is worth reading in full1, essentially says that people want to make music with more loudness2 so that more people will listen to it (or rather, notice it) and, because of the technical restrictions on MP3s, this can only be done at the expense of sound quality. It is an interesting thesis, but it doesn’t quite give the full picture.
The problem started with MTV. Video may not have killed the radio star, but there’s pretty good evidence for GBH3. The first problem is the ‘tele‘ part of Music Television. Quite apart from television being a chimera of a Greek and a Latin word (and so no good could ever come of it), it is designed for speech, not music. This affects how the signal is modulated, transmitted, received, decoded and – most importantly – reproduced. The speakers on televisions are, as a rule, not of particularly high quality. They are more than adequate for speech programming, but they’re not going to faithfully reproduce every nuance of music; they’re not designed for it. As MTV grew, the ‘vision’ became the problem. A record label only has so much to spend and so an increasing amount is spent on the video; after all, that’s what the kids want, as they’re watching MTV. This means less spent on the recording and mastering. The easy (read: cheap) workaround to making your song good is to make it noticeable by increasing the amount of loudness.
There is another problem; music is played in pubs. I don’t object per se to music being played in pubs, but I object very strongly to music being played so loudly that I can’t have a conversation with the person opposite me without raising my voice or the choice of music being discordant with the surroundings. I have been in otherwise lovely, Victorian pubs with happy hardcore playing over the speakers. Whether or not you like DJ Sharkey, he doesn’t go well with a pint of stout. The result, though, is an increased demand for (and, through royalties, reward for) music that, in essence, sounds alright over okay-ish speakers in a loud room.
All this means that people come to expect a certain quality of music and are quite surprised by how rich music can actually sound. There is no desire to look for better quality because there is no awareness of its existence, and, where there is, no means to access it.
This process continued with the advent of the MP3 format, but it did not start the trend; indeed, one of the songs used to initially assess the quality of sound recorded as MP3 was Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega. Whether you agree with me in liking Suzanne Vega is irrelevant; Tom’s Diner is a detailed song. MP3 became popular because of limited storage space and download times; the sacrifice of quality for small size seemed attractive. This isn’t as much of an issue now – iPods and the like store huge amounts of information in a small box and a terabyte (a thousand gigabytes) drive is available for £150 – and so MP3s encoded at higher rates are more realistic. Sufficiently realistic, in fact, that Deutsche Grammophon are now offering MP3 downloads of their entire back catalogue. Given that DG place a high value on the quality of their sound recordings, I think it suggests that MP3 does offer viable, good sound quality.
However, people don’t have the means, as I mentioned, to access that quality. A good example of this is the habit some people have of playing music on their mobile phones on the bus. The speakers are rubbish and any sound that comes out (quite apart from the lyrical delights of Soulja Boy’s wonderful hit, Crank Dat (Soulja Boy), which exhorts us to watch him do before cranking it ourselves, possibly without the necessary safety equipment) will be offensive to the ears. It appears to be an increasing norm or in-group signifier amongst some subgroups to engage in this behavior. I’m sorry if I sound sanctimonious, but it is inconsiderate and ill-mannered behavior. If you’re playing your music on your phone, there’s no way for you to appreciate decent quality music. Equally, a lot of music seems to be written so as to go directly to the lucrative ringtone market; quality is not important but catchiness – loudness – is.
This process has been going on since before 1994. I hope that the advent of digital broadcasting, faster internet and larger, cheaper storage means that more people will become aware of how good sound can sound. A better solution than MP3 is FLAC, which aside from being open source (with all the benefits for free software, in both senses of the word) is lossless; it’s been taken on by EBU (the people behind Eurovision) for their radio broadcasts. I’d venture that DG isn’t offering FLAC because people aren’t familiar with it (yet) as MP3 stole a march.
xD.
1 – if for no other reason than that, on page four, it has scientific proof (illustrated with pictures) that the Arctic Monkeys are rubbish and that U2 have become rubbish.
2 – which is not the same as loud music; have a look at the Wikipedia entry on loudness.
3 – I know of at least one barrister who reads this blog, so I’d appreciate it if m’learned friend could correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I believe, although there was no intent, that as there was foresight and recklessness and the harm occasioned is particularly grievous, a charge of GBH is more appropriate than ABH.
Indeed so! Before I took to the bi-cycle in an effort to improve my cardiovascular health, my forays on public transport – already hampered by the death of the Routemaster – was made all the more unpleasant by the hobbledehoys playing their obnoxious pap for all to hear.
The question is, though, what one should do about them. I find that asking them in a polite but firm tone to desist from polluting our space is a surprisingly effective way of getting them to stop; however, it can make one feel somewhat stuffy and priggish. Any advice on the matter?
Mike,
I wouldn’t worry about feeling stuffy and priggish. I forget its name, but there has been a study that shows that in most cases people want to act, but won’t make the first move. A hobbledehoy (note to self: make more use of the word ‘hobbledehoy) started playing something on their mobile on the top of a bus at six o’clock in the evening on the Strand. A bus full of pointed stares rapidly put them off the idea.
Generally, they will stop playing their infernal music if asked nicely; rudeness doesn’t work. Unfortunately, some people try rudeness straight off the bat, and this makes the problem worse by reinforcing the in-group.
If this fails, I fear you must resort to the nuclear option. You must acquire a mobile phone capable of playing music on its speaker, and then load it with some choice pieces of music. I would recommend Schoenberg’s String Quartet Number Four or Grieg’s Piano Sonata in E minor. Ask them if you mind if you play your music, and then, as Soulja Boy would say, ‘Crank Dat’.
That’s a fascinating take and not in the least sanctimonious. Surely the fidelity question will be solved before long. What’s it take to shove decent preamplifier and amplifier in a set? FM has been coming through the air for eons and it’s pretty good quality? I can’t see that it’s an insurmountable technical problem and not even for a lot of money.
I agree with you. Have you seen that classical music is proving very popular at tube stations?
WW – Indeed; it’s played at Hammersmith station, to where I travel for work, with the intention of keeping the, ahem, chavs at bay.
James – absolutely. It’s not an insurmountable technical problem. It’s not even a technical problem anymore. It is, though, a cultural problem; people aren’t aware of the difference between hifi and lofi music (or sound reproduction in general).
FM is pretty decent quality and is more than adequate for most purposes. However, it is increasingly possible to go for better qualities at low cost.
Slightly off topic, but I hope not too far, is this article which urges us to spend $20,000 on a record player.
Would that I could.