TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Music Discussion
-- Young people prefer the sound of MP3s to WAVs
Pages (2): [1] 2 »

Young people prefer the sound of MP3s to WAVs

According to an informal study being done by a Stanford professor over the past six years, many incoming college students now prefer the sound of MP3s, with the "sizzle" caused by the distortion and artifacts of compression, to the undistorted sound of full WAV files. This preference has become increasingly common as MP3s rather than CDs become the dominant medium for listening:

quote:

Are iPods changing our perception of music? Are the sounds of MP3s the music we like to hear most? Jonathan Berger, professor of music at Stanford, was on a panel with me at a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Mountain View, CA on Saturday. Berger's presentation had a slide titled: "Live, Memorex or MP3." He mentioned that Thomas Edison promoted his phonograph by demonstrating that a person could not tell whether behind a curtain was an opera singer or one of Edison's cylinders playing a recording of the singer. More recently, the famous Memorex ad challenged us to determine whether it was a live performance of Ella Fitzgerald or a recorded one. Berger then said that he tests his incoming students each year in a similar way. He has them listen to a variety of recordings which use different formats from MP3 to ones of much higher quality. He described the results with some disappointment and frustration, as a music lover might, that each year the preference for music in MP3 format rises. In other words, students prefer the quality of that kind of sound over the sound of music of much higher quality. He said that they seemed to prefer "sizzle sounds" that MP3s bring to music. It is a sound they are familiar with. I remember wondering what audiophiles were up to, buying extremely expensive home audio systems to play old vinyl records. They put turntables in sand-filled enclosures with elaborate cabling schemes. I wondered what they heard in that music that I didn't. Someone explained to me that audiophiles liked the sound artifacts of vinyl records -- the crackles of that format. It was familiar and comfortable to them, and maybe those affects became a fetish. Is it now becoming the same with iPod lovers?

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/th...d-of-music.html

quote:

iPods and Young People Have Utterly Destroyed Music You know how most people are perfectly happy with Apple standard-issue earbuds, white plastic molded around a crappy audio experience? A Stanford professor's informal annual study shows that youngins like the "sizzle sounds" of MP3s. Each year, Stanford Professor of Music Jonathan Berger does an informal test of his students by playing a bunch of different music in a bunch of different formats. Over email, here's how he told me performs the informal study: Students were asked to judge the quality of a variety of compression methods randomly mixed with uncompressed 44.1 KHz audio. The music examples included both orchestral, jazz and rock music. When I first did this I was expecting to hear preferences for uncompressed audio and expecting to see MP3 (at 128, 160 and 192 bit rates) well below other methods (including a proprietary wavelet-based approach and AAC). To my surprise, in the rock examples the MP3 at 128 was preferred. I repeated the experiment over 6 years and found the preference for MP3 - particularly in music with high energy (cymbal crashes, brass hits, etc) rising over time. In other words, younger people haven't just grown more tolerant of thin, soulless MP3 renditions of their favorite music, they actually like them. Shitty MP3s, even. O'Relly Radar quotes Professor Berger as saying that it's the "sizzle sounds" that people are loving because it's what they're comfortable with. So, yes Virginia, iPods really have killed music. People aren't just ignorant of high quality audio, they actually hate it. Gee, thanks for contributing to the downfall of civilization, Apple. Music is dead, everyone, carry on.

http://gizmodo.com/5166649/stanford...ve-ruined-music

I found it pretty interesting that people would actually prefer the sound of a format that's universally considered "lower quality" in a technical sense. But the perception of "quality" on the individual psychological level is subjective, so it appears that people can even come to like a technically "worse" format and consider it "higher quality" if it's what they're used to hearing.

Just because bands can't be bothered using effects machines.

Cretins with iPods who listen to low-bitrate MP3s give the format a bad name.

Still, vinyl kicks the living shit out of both, quality wise!

quote:

Originally posted by AirPole Still, vinyl kicks the living shit out of both, quality wise!

No, it just colours the sound.

Very interesting, but not really surprising. Part of the problem is probably that most people just don't know how good quality sounds like. Well, or may be iPod quality is just the transportation of the "ghetto blaster" quality to your headphones.

I recently made a selftest. I recorded my newest set from vinyl in Audacity uncompressed 32Bit 48kHz and then exported it to wav 16Bit 48kHz, MP3 -V0 48kHz and MP3 192kbit/s CBR 44kHz/48KHz. I was really surprised how awesome the wav file and how shitty the 192 kbps file sounded! I actually didn't even want to publish it in -V0, because it sounded worse... The difference between 44 and 48kHz was also obvious.

quote:

Originally posted by DJSoulstone The difference between 44 and 48kHz was also obvious.

Right.

Great, another deadmau5 thread

I've heard some 128kbps MP3's with better encoding than some of their 320kbps counterparts. Especially when it comes to older music.

Most young people dont care about bitrates because they dont like the music that much. They use shitty-ass q-tip headphones.

Peer pressure makes people want to stick with crappy headphones, the Ipod headphones, so in that case you will not be able to tell a difference (or enjoy, for that matter) between 128kbps and 320kbps.

Only for audiophiles it makes a difference, ad for DJ's. People love their 60-inch screen TVs and massive stereo speakers, but generally they dont like massive cans on their heads - those are the headphones where you will hear the details well, and in many cases still wont be able to tell the difference between 192 and 320 kbps.

quote:

Originally posted by SMC Right.

Yeah, the difference between CD quality and higher bit rates or sample rates didn't seem to be obvious to a group of "professional recording engineers, students in a university recording program, and dedicated audiophiles" in this study:

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195

quote:

Originally posted by Magnetonium I've heard some 128kbps MP3's with better encoding than some of their 320kbps counterparts. Especially when it comes to older music. Most young people dont care about bitrates because they dont like the music that much. They use shitty-ass q-tip headphones. Peer pressure makes people want to stick with crappy headphones, the Ipod headphones, so in that case you will not be able to tell a difference (or enjoy, for that matter) between 128kbps and 320kbps. Only for audiophiles it makes a difference, ad for DJ's. People love their 60-inch screen TVs and massive stereo speakers, but generally they dont like massive cans on their heads - those are the headphones where you will hear the details well, and in many cases still wont be able to tell the difference between 192 and 320 kbps.

I have to say you're completely off base on this one lol. People don't care about quality because of peer pressure? I'd say it's much more a matter of convenience than anything else. Almost every mp3 player will come with headphones of some kind and they're certainly not going to be top of the line. If you're an everyday music listener, or a student (as in this case) you're not going to go out of your way to buy high quality $100+ headphones just so you can listen to music during breaks between class

Yes, as DJs and audiophiles we require higher quality, but the same can be said about any medium in any industry.

quote:

Originally posted by bas I'd say it's much more a matter of convenience than anything else.

It may start out that way, but saying it's a matter of "convenience" implies to me that people can actually tell the difference between high quality and low quality when they're presented with both, and that they really prefer high quality but choose low quality because it's more practical. But the study says otherwise. It suggests to me that a lot of people don't actually know what high quality sounds like anymore.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles It suggests to me that a lot of people don't actually know what high quality sounds like anymore.

I agree but again I think it goes back to convenience. If you can pay 99 cents per song online, or get in your car, head to a store, deal with parking and try to find the CD (after all the store might not even have it in stock) what would you rather do? Most people, especially now, would rather take the online option, sure it means you'll get a dip in quality (compressed mp3, m4a, whatever vs. a CD) but at least you get it NOW.

Convenience, the god of modern life.

Think I'm going to look for an old DAT recorder HSS:

4 tracks, 24 bit, 88,2 and 96 kHz, at least sounds impressive......


I always use VBR for MP3.

oh dear.



oh dear.

It's official, young people suck.

I can't wait until MP3 isn't needed anymore as WAV's are distributed just like MP3s are now.

At least then I'll have a reason to buy a valve headphone pre-amp and some seriously expensive Sennheisers (no, not HD25mk2s').

i can't stand poor sound reproduction. i refuse to deejay on substandard systems as well, all music sounds like shit when it is not reproduced well, regardless of whether i ordinarily like it or not.

Im surprised flac files have not been mentioned.

quote:

Originally posted by euphoria Im surprised flac files have not been mentioned.

I'm not, it doesn't exist for me.

lets face it.

to the majority of the people out there, music is something entirely disposable that is not even worth paying for. The preference of low bitrate mp3 is probably more because it can be grabbed faster and they can fit more on their mp3 players.

most of them do not know what sound quality is, and don't care. High fidelity is usually reserved for audiophiles.

Personally, I can't understand why anyone needs anything better than 320kbps? FLAC and Wav files are huge, and short of sitting in front of a machine, do people honestly wince when they hear 'crappy quality' 320kbps mp3s?

Headphones are also important. I bought myself a pair of $155 Sennheisers in Tokyo once, but then I lost them at the station. But I then bought the next model down, (CX55) (using them as I type, now) and I think the sound is actually slightly better on these. I'm happy listening to my Beatport tracks and CDex ripped CDs at 320kbps. Sounds incredible to me.

It was actually crazy though, that in the same store, there were in-ear headphones at eye watering prices; $400 and up... can anyone honestly tell the difference between these quality headphones?

But I agree, iPods and their bundled headphones are crap. Period.

quote:

Originally posted by notelfreak lets face it. to the majority of the people out there, music is something entirely disposable that is not even worth paying for. The preference of low bitrate mp3 is probably more because it can be grabbed faster and they can fit more on their mp3 players. most of them do not know what sound quality is, and don't care. High fidelity is usually reserved for audiophiles.

Yep.

The same applies for everything else in life. People just don't care.

i am about to put out trance and prog that i played in 04/05

hellagay!

;P

FLAC and other such lossless options for the effing win.

Oh, and www.hydrogenaudio.org - excellent digital audio discussions, plenty to learn re: double blind listening tests, psychoacoustic models and so much more.

Oh, kids are dumb.

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.