Does it annoy you that CD and MP3 sound quality sucks?

Post Reply New Topic

Depending on the context, I might find the out-of-tune guitar to be more exciting.

I've never had a problem with it.

My problem with the quality of recordings these days has less to do with the Analog/Digital argument, and everything to do with the fact that natural musical errors on recordings are edited out in ProTools or similar software in the production phase of a recording.

Granted, the Analog/Digital argument has relevance with older digital recordings that were tracked and mastered with RIAA standard resolution (16 bit resolution/44.1 Khz sample rate) however this has not been used in years, and the current standard resolution and sampling rate for high end digital recordings is 24 bit at between 96 Khz and 192 Khz before it gets knocked down to RIAA resolution by the mastering engineer before the CD Master is transferred to the CD production plant. Current mastering engineers also compress the dynamic range of recordings much more than they used to in order for to produce a louder sounding recording at the behest of record companies. -- This also further degrades the natural ambience of a recording.

As far as MP3's are concerned, I will listen to 128K streams, though the compression artifacts are quite obvious at this level of compression. Other than that when I rip CD's down to MP3, I always use the highest possible bitrate. I would personally like to use FLAC or other lossless formats, though these are much less portable than MP3's.

For music I use lame to encode mp3s using vbr at the highest quality setting. For speech I use lower settings, but always vbr.

I also use replaygain on all of my audio files to minimize clipping, though never on 'classical' music, as it is usually mastered at about the same volume that replaygain adjusts other recordings to.

Yes. The sound war is hideous.

I will only listen to my favourite music on adequate speakers now. As my headphones are spending ages being sent back, I used some cheap earphones. Borrowing my friend's decent pair today was incredible—the "dut, dut-dut—tisht" from "Just Like Honey" by The Jesus and Mary Chain was replaced again with the "BOOM, BOOM-BOOM—TISSH!" it originally was and should always be. So gratifying to hear again. I'm currently sat between two very decent speakers, though with a disposable income I'd be getting in my adulthood I'd like to get something top-of-the-viable-range.

The set-up MAKES the music.


Oh! and I'll leave the production and tunings to the musicians. Over-polishing is a farce, but very raw, rash production will only work with certain things. With tunings I like to give time to every audible Hertz.

I like this reasoning. Ergo, VHS > DVD?

Humans have a finite ability to discern sounds. I am highly skeptical that Vinyl is intrinsically superior to CDs in terms of accuracy.

Thanks everyone. Could the problem be that I just don't have good enough headphones? I spent like $25 on my pair (I couldn't stand the earbuds that came with my MP3 player).

I actually like music which is somewhat 'mushy' and has certain encoding artifacts. Certain songs sound better when encoded badly

i worked in a recording studio for about 3 years in the late 1980's and early 90's until i got an ear problem that damaged my hearing in the left ear. i had to resign, and when i got better after a year, i never was able to break back into that field again (one had to "know" the right people etc (i originally got the job as a "work experience" thing for school and they employed me after that)).

it is a pity that most music is mixed on nearfield monitors or even "sound cubes" these days.

in the 1970's and early 1980's, much music was mixed for audiophiles with very good sound systems. for example, fans of bands like "pink floyd" and "led zeppelin" often had expensive sound systems that they listened to their music with.

then, the focus of the music was the music itself, and many listeners used to switch the lights off and turn their excellent sound systems up and listen to every subtlety.

now, the music is more of a "mood" enhancer rather than a thing to behold in itself.
the most popular music these days is music that people can dance to with a regular beat, or music that is a statement of a style of attitude.
there is far less need to mix for audiophiles these days.

the studio i worked in, had a pair of urei 813's built into the wall in front of the MCI 500 desk. there were also yamaha's as the nearfield monitors that simulate home sound system quality, and then there was auratone sound cubes that simulated car radio quality that was what most people would listen to the song on.
the head engineers used mainly the grot boxes (the sound cubes) to mix the music on, and they also mixed a bit on the yamaha's, but they rarely used the big urei monitors.
i was annoyed but they said no one had that quality of sound in their homes or cars, so it is not necessary to use them to mix with. they were just for show by that time really.
they used them in the 70's and early 80's but when i was there, they were redundant.

so the music these days is mixed on crappy little speakers that are designed to be the average sound quality of the average equipment of the average listener.
and the average listener now does not care about much except the beat and the main lead melody.

there is a fashionable artificiality that is deliberate in mixing as well these days. eg: that ultra pure electronic sound they apply to voices etc.

at the moment i have 2 jbl 4350's as my speakers. they are very big "studio monitors" that faithfully reproduce music in a stunning way. they have phenomenal transient response and they are flat between 30 and 22,000 hz (only -3db at 24hz and - 6db at 16 hz). the square wave rise time tests are very close (the speaker almost traces a square wave when reproducing one which is extremely hard to do). the magnets on the transducers are almost as big as the speaker cones, and it is a major chore to lift one 15" speaker from the cabinet.
the voice coils are 4" and they are "edge wound" to tiny tolerances (like 1 micron).
most speakers use tubular wire to spiral around the voice coil, and that results in a small amount of actual contact area with the groove in the magnet. but if the wire is rectangular across it cross section, it makes total contact with the magnet ring groove.

anyway, no music is mixed for my speakers these days it seems. l hear songs on my car radio that i really like, and i download them in emule or limewire when i get home. i choose either 320kbps or 256kbps examples from the search results.

i am always dissappointed that it sounds quite empty on the big speakers. in the car, i do not expect excellent sound quality, so i imagine all these wonderful little instruments and piano tracks in the backing music. i think to myself "i can not wait to hear that on my jbl's".

when i do, there is no backing musical subtleties. there are no insane little 23rd track instrumentals buried in the background.
it is stark and harsh sounding.
the voices sound shrill and artificial.

i know that TV technology is far superior to TV's of the 70's, and cars are also far advanced, and most technologies are far advanced from the 1970's, but the sound quality of the most advanced systems has not improved, but it has deteriorated.

i think that the best sounding songs that gives my speakers a work out are songs like earth wind and fire's "boogie wonderland" for example that was recorded in 197x. there is so many carefully crafted tracks in that song (that are mixed on large monitors) that are stunning in their isolated detail among the loudness and business of the general song.

songs were once sound paintings which needed fidelity to reproduce.

now they are mood enhancers that are only needed to be audible in a standard way over the sounds of partying people.

i always use *.wav formats for recording my music i compose.
it results in a large file sizes, but i do not care as i have 4 tb of storage.

there is no way to restore a generationally degraded recording.
it is like taking a photo copy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy....etc. eventually you wind up with a grainy mess of a representation of the original, and there is no reversing the process from that particular print as a starting point.

i am so sorry i took so long to say so little.

Last edited by b9 on 23 Jan 2009, 7:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes.

Even if it's not the problem, perhaps different headphones is a solution. I do think some people are more senstive to variations in sound quality than others. I'm fine with cheap headphones, but I do notice headphones (and earbuds) sound better than lowend computer speakers (in built or the cheap ones that come with it).

mp3 files are a huge compromise. That's why I think it's ridiculous to pay for them. The only digital format I'll pay for is a CD, but that's when no better format is easily available. Unfortunately, some CDs are crap, and might as well be mp3 files. As someone else pointed out, a big problem is that they try to master them way too loud.

Personally, my favorite format I've heard so far is the 12-inch single (not to be confused with the 12" LP). Because of the wide groove spacing, they can be mastered VERY loud and not lose any detail. The dynamic range on them is outstanding. This format was primarily intended for discotheques/clubs in the '70s and '80s, where the sound needed to be loud and full, but quality still mattered.

I have 12-inch singles cut at both 33 and 45 rpm, and I haven't decided which sounds better. The 33 singles excel in bass quality, and they sound so amazingly clean. The 45s really shine when it comes to percussion and intricate synthesized sounds. I guess one could make the analogy that a 45 plays at a higher bit rate (even though there are no bits to speak of). However you say it, you pick up more sound data per second with a 45. I love my records.

For those curious, I play my records on a Technics SL-1200MK2 run into a restored and improved Dynaco PAS-3 preamp and a heavily modified circa-1959 Magnavox power amp. The speakers are original Polk Audio Monitor 10s. I think one of them has developed an intermittent issue in the crossover though. I need to track down a cap checker.

Okay. I think I found out what it is that bothers me. It's a phenomenon called "clipping" that I always notice. The loudest parts of the song get fuzzy because they're overshooting the maximum decibel level. I prefer the loud parts of a song not be fuzzy/clicky unless it's intended to be that way. I notice on CD’s artists produce themselves this doesn’t happen. It’s the major record companies that decide to reduce the quality and hope people don’t notice.

I have to participate in this subject. I love music, and all the datails of it and how it makes me feel.
Anyway, I think that there are more than just one problem today. Try getting your hold on an old amplifier (Analog of course), then get a High-Quality soundcard (With good op-amps, since it tends to fail here. But yet more importantly make sure it has a good DAC.), Lastly get some good speakers (I don't know many good speakers now-a-days so I use some old B&O).

Now play a CD there is from before(!) year 1995, and the sound quality will be amazing.
I'm talking effects you would never be able to have in an LP.
Not saying that LPs are bad, cause they are not!

So there are quite alot of things, that tends to create bad sound... :/

Yes, but, here in the west at least (don't know about the Asian markets), they've gone the way of the laserdisc in that they're (relatively) expensive specialist formats which I'm sure will die out when something better comes along (like when DVD replaced laserdisc).

No, I don't believe it is. There was never any doubt that DVD was supiror to VHS. Even at it's very best (eg the Fox's UK edition of "Moulin Rouge") regarding picture resolution VHS could never make full use of even a standard 4:3 TV's capabilities.



Well, me too. But for sound quality give me a nice 1971 RCA Dynagroove pressing of David Bowie's "Hunky Dury" over any CD edition any day. That said, the 1998 CD of his "Young Americans" album sounds much better than it's vinyl equivelant, so swings and roundabouts etc...