Neil Young Says MP3 Isn't Good Enough; Neither Are CDs

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You can't edit or delete posts here anymore, not even in the forums. My previous post correctly formatted below.

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Neil Young is totally right, but the main issue is what a few people have mentioned - the loudness war. People need to spread the word on this as much as possible:

Turn Me Up! Bringing Dynamics Back To Music

Wikipedia - Loudness war

The Loudness War

Another Loudness War Example

Iron Maiden - Fighting the loudness war

Curmudgeon by Nirvana (1992 vs. 2004) - The Loudness War

CD's tagged on Amazon.com as "victim of the loudness war"
 
People don't value high quality audio because it cannot be interpreted by vision. Once people understand that sound affects the listener beyond the range of audible interpretation will they begin to value the quality of what they listen to. Sound is wave energy. There are measuring tools that measure perceived loudness (i.e. EBU), a scale other than dBfs.

Once people understand objectively (visual measurement) and spiritually (i.e. Plato's philosophy of music and the soul) will they even begin to consider high quality audio. Otherwise, they will continue to obliviously purchase audio in the "fast food" of music stores: itunes and friends.
 
Its official. Toms Hardware is now only read by 100% cunts, as im leaving. Goodbye brain dead Darwinian knightmares, may you all drown slowly in your own drool
 
Why spend the extra effort to reproduce sounds that human cannot hear? Sometimes good is good enough. It doesn't have to be excellent.

Here's a perfect example. LED light sources does not reproduce the entire electromagnetic spectrum the way sun does. It doesn't even produce most of the visible light portion of the spectrum. Yet we use them and love them. Why? They are efficient, small, light, and above all, does decent imitation of real light.

I like my incandescent light. I like the warm yellow glow it produces. It's much closer to sunlight than any other type of light source. But we now have people telling us it's "bad for the environment" and want to ban this technology.

Ironic....
 
Right now, the only internet users that won't really mind the giant music files are the ones in South Korea. More than a year ago, SK's government announced all internet users in the country would have at least 1 gigabit connections.
 
I used to listen to 8 track tapes [quad channel!} then cassetts and 331/3 albums, but I listened to too much Loud Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath [just to name a few] and don't hear so well anymore. Cd's and Mp3's sound great to me.
 
[citation][nom]stoogie[/nom]So in other words Neil Young you are an idiot. I believe in science not your words.[/citation]

Remember when Science said Pluto was a Planet. Then all of a sudden its now a "dwarf" planet. Science isn't no more perfect than anything else in the world, and to think it is... shows clear stupidity on your part.
 
Audio at even 128k can be virtually indistinguishable from CD if you do it right. The entire point of digital audio that it sounds close enough to the original for you to not be able to tell much if any difference. The technology digitally removes sounds that are above or below or too quiet at the time for you to be able to hear it. That's why they call it LOSSY because you lose info that you cant hear anyway. That makes the file size small and convenient to transport and its pretty damned close to the original to your ears.

Anyone who wants to test can either go to http://mp3ornot.com/ and test your metal. Or do what I did. Rip a cd with LAME mp3 at 320k 44khz stereo (not joint stereo) high quality (if your ripper has that option) then rip it again at 128k 44khz stereo (again not joint stereo) high quality, and see if you can see any difference.

I suspect that most of the poor quality mp3s that are listed as 128k or above are actually songs that were ripped at 64k with windows media player and then up converted to the reported bitrate. I make that supposition because when I went to my physical for the Air Force they informed me I had exceptionally good hearing... and I cant hear too much of a difference in a proper 128k mp3 and a 320k mp3 and a cd.

The entire concept that we need another, more accurate, format is pure marketing drivel for RIAA supporters to try to get people to use a format that makes file sharing 100X tougher.
 
[citation][nom]ickarumba1[/nom]We already have 320kbps MP3 and FLAC. That's good enough. I seriously doubt many people, if any, can really distinguish between the current high-end formats and this new DSD format.[/citation]

Most ppl sadly couldn't even hear the quality difference between a CD and a 128k MP3. They might be able to tell that there is a difference but certainly couldn't tell you what it was or correctly identify each version 7 times out of 10.
 
[citation][nom]Trollslayer[/nom]Whoever wrote this article should understand waht they are talking about."The format uses 1-bit sampling at 2.8224 MHz, which is 64 times higher than the 44.1 KHz used by CDs."Righhhhht... CDs use stereo 16 bit samples at 44.kHz which means 441000 x 16 x 2 which is 1.4112 MHz.Half the bistream mentioned.SA-CDs are much higher, I believe 4.2336MHz.[/citation]

You do know the difference between KHz and MHz right?

SACD is 1-bit at 2.8224MHz - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD#Technology
Which is the same as this 'new' standard.
 
[citation][nom]shin0bi272[/nom]Audio at even 128k can be virtually indistinguishable from CD if you do it right. The entire point of digital audio that it sounds close enough to the original for you to not be able to tell much if any difference. The technology digitally removes sounds that are above or below or too quiet at the time for you to be able to hear it. That's why they call it LOSSY because you lose info that you cant hear anyway. That makes the file size small and convenient to transport and its pretty damned close to the original to your ears. Anyone who wants to test can either go to http://mp3ornot.com/ and test your metal. Or do what I did. Rip a cd with LAME mp3 at 320k 44khz stereo (not joint stereo) high quality (if your ripper has that option) then rip it again at 128k 44khz stereo (again not joint stereo) high quality, and see if you can see any difference. I suspect that most of the poor quality mp3s that are listed as 128k or above are actually songs that were ripped at 64k with windows media player and then up converted to the reported bitrate. I make that supposition because when I went to my physical for the Air Force they informed me I had exceptionally good hearing... and I cant hear too much of a difference in a proper 128k mp3 and a 320k mp3 and a cd. The entire concept that we need another, more accurate, format is pure marketing drivel for RIAA supporters to try to get people to use a format that makes file sharing 100X tougher.[/citation]

You are so wrong with all of your RIAA conspiracy BS. Choose another file type that makes it 100x tougher. LMAO. If game developers for the PC can't stop hackers from cracking their games the day of release then what makes you think they can do any better with a song? And what's 100x infinitely easy? Still easy. Pirating music has always been super easy but I'm not saying I support it. And I can tell you, most people that take music seriously can easily distinguish 128kb/s from 320 or CD but I cannot tell much between a 320 and CD. There is a point of diminishing returns but 128kb/s MP3 is not nearly capable enough for what our ears can distinguish.
 
I think both lossless (high quality) files and MP3/AAC files should be available digitally to everyone. This would make all people satisfied.
 
you could have a music format that captured 100% of the information in a song, but if you dont have quality speakers or headphones it isnt going to make difference.
 
I listen to classical recordings from before the digital age, sometimes long before and sometimes showing it's age in other ways. One of the best ways to get more out of the recording is follow along with the score--a road map for the ear.
 
You can get good high resolution music from hdtracks. In the flac format, they are up to 24bit/196kHz which is significantly better than mp3. I can tell the difference between a 320kbps mp3 and an CD, but it depends how good your system is. There already is quite a lot of hi resolution files available in .flac format, which is drm free so I doubt another format will suceed.
 
I myself have high quality audio equip. and use nothing but lossless files (FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, etc). There is indeed a difference in quality.
 
It all boils down to that age old argument about whether or not the human ear can tell the difference between raw and compressed audio.

The reality is that the number of factors for compressed audio far outweigh those against, the lower definition of the audio being just one of them.

Studies have already been performed to determine peoples hearing perception and have concluded that for the most part people can't distinguish compressed and raw audio regardless of the playback medium's quality (record, cd, $1000 dollar speakers, $100 hifi etc).
when both.

The simple increase in data storage requirements for uncompressed audio is exponential in nature and so who want so have to download GBs of data for say, one hours worth of audio rather than the 100MB'odd they need now for a good set of MP3s.

"Sorry Neil Young but you are just wasting your time arguing with the world", I say. At least he managed to get me to think who he was\is for the first time in the last twenty years which I suppose is an achievement.
 
[citation][nom]ivaroeines[/nom]There are even some people that think that blue ray are better than VHS, that just shows how easily fooled people can be.[/citation]
So... you don't believe Bluray is better than VHS?
 
Maybe they should just start mass producing vinyl again, since everyone wants it so bad..I know if it was cheaper I would buy a turntable and a ton of it..
 
It seems he thinks that everyone can actually tell the difference between CD quality sound and this "pure" music he is talking about.
 
[citation][nom]bmerigan[/nom]So... you don't believe Bluray is better than VHS?[/citation]
The last sentence in my piece was meant as a joke, i do have a bad habit of posting jokes that can be misunderstood as serious statements.
 
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