The last decade has brought an explosion in dazzling technological advances - except in music. In many ways, the quality of what people hear has taken a step back. To many expert ears, compressed music files produce a crackly, tinnier and thinner sound than music on CDs and certainly on vinyl. And to compete with other songs, tracks are engineered to be much louder as well. 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.
For decades, starting around the 1950s, high-end stereos were a status symbol. But from 2000 to 2009, Americans reduced their overall spending on home stereo components by more than a third, to roughly $960 million, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, a trade group. Spending on portable digital devices during that same period increased more than fiftyfold, to $5.4 billion.
People used to sit and listen to music but the increased portability has altered the way people experience recorded music. It is no longer consumed as an event that you pay attention to. Instead, music is often carried from place to place, played in the background while the consumer does something else — exercising, commuting or cooking dinner.
The songs themselves are usually saved on the digital devices in a compressed format, eliminating some of the sounds and range contained on a CD while allowing more songs to be saved on the device and reducing download times. Last year, the iTunes Store upgraded the standard quality for a song to 256 kilobits per second from 128 kilobits per second, preserving more details and eliminating the worst crackles.
Audio engineers are often enlisted to increase the overall volume of a recording. To achieve an overall louder sound, engineers raise the softer volumes toward peak levels. On a quality stereo system, Mr. Merrill said, the reduced volume range can leave a track sounding distorted. Modern recording has gone overboard on the volume.
Read more at the New York Times.
