MP3s Made Me Dumb

[admin]

That isn’t to say that my IQ has in any way suffered at the hands of the miracles of algorithmic digital compression, in some ways it’s even quite the contrary. The problem isn’t that my overall cognitive function has been hindered, but instead, it’s my desire to find out what the next newer/better/faster/cleaner/quieter/louder/meaner/cooler/neater audio breakthrough might be.


Discuss "MP3s Made Me Dumb" here. Read the article.

[cfrizz]

Great article!

I JUST got an mp3 player in May. I never had any intentions of getting one, but I got it used at a great price with 8gb of memory.

What turned the tide for me was thinking of my last nightmare trip down to DC to visit my brother last year and how I longed for some sort of distraction.

So when this player was posted for sale, I bought it. I loaded all the songs that are on my pc hard drive, (well over 400 songs) And went on my trip to DC on June 1st.

It saved my sanity! I had a window seat, next to me was a 6 yr old kid, & behind me in the middle seat was a baby! I pulled the earphones (I hate the ear buds) closer to my head & enjoyed my music!

Does it sound as good as my equipment at home? Not even close. But so long as I can turn it up & block out everything else that would annoy me to no end, I DON'T CARE!

Where is it now? Sitting on top of one of my speakers waiting to go with me on my next trip. That is the only reason why I got it & the only time I use it.

When I'm home, I'm listening to my system. MP3 players have thier place in my life, but only for travel. I will never be one of the endless zombies walking down the street lost in thier little world of compressed music.

[skizzerflake]

MP3 has its place but not for any concentrated listening. On the train to work, on a busy street, in a noisy office, with cheap headphones, uncompressed sound is just a waste of hard disk space. On the other hand, why would I listen to swishy, distorted mp3's at home when I have a nice system with CDs, SACDs and vinyl? It's all about convenience and blocking the din of urban living. It's also about packing lots of music on my player so I don't have to listen to the same thing over and over. Convenience in some places, quality in others.

[MDS]

skizzerflake, clueless as usual regarding MP3. If your MP3 are 'swishy' and sound horrible it's because you used a too low bitrate. That's your problem, not the fault of the format.

Vinyl sounds better than MP3? LMAO.

[skizzerflake]

skizzerflake, clueless as usual regarding MP3. If your MP3 are 'swishy' and sound horrible it's because you used a too low bitrate. That's your problem, not the fault of the format.

Vinyl sounds better than MP3? LMAO.

Bitrate is just a question of how awful. Once the swishiness goes away with a higher bitrate, the grittiness shows up. If I have a problem it is only that I want good, undistorted sound, and that never happens with mp3. Been through thousands of those things, different codecs and software and every time I hear one I get that sinking feeling...missing music...good only for the subway. It's not that I don't use them for portable media, it's just that I keep in mind that the algorithm works by removing 90% of the data and replacing it with approximations. What would you expect? Surprised that it's different? Why?

As for vinyl sounding better than MP3....my God...complete slam dunk. Not even any competition there.

[MDS]

It's not that I don't use them for portable media, it's just that I keep in mind that the algorithm works by removing 90% of the data and replacing it with approximations. What would you expect? Surprised that it's different? Why?

Like I said, you have no idea how it works but pride yourself on bashing it every chance you get.

[pereze]

Correct me if I am wrong, but lossless is pretty darn good.

The problem I have with all of these articles about dumbing down audio and such is that they always assume that anyone with an "mp3" player is using it for just that, compressed music. Yes, I would say most people are probably buying songs off one of the many stores such as iTunes and listening away, but there are a lot of people that rip there music into a lossless format and then use there storage device (mp3 player) to listen to the music.

It is my understanding the Apple's lossless format (not sure of the others) is pretty good quality. Ok, so what is pretty good, not sure but I would venture to say CD quality although i have never done a side by side comparison.

I personally don't think the iPod is the end of audio, but that seems to be the focus of many articles and discussions.

Eric

[avaserfi]

Correct me if I am wrong, but lossless is pretty darn good.

The problem I have with all of these articles about dumbing down audio and such is that they always assume that anyone with an "mp3" player is using it for just that, compressed music. Yes, I would say most people are probably buying songs off one of the many stores such as iTunes and listening away, but there are a lot of people that rip there music into a lossless format and then use there storage device (mp3 player) to listen to the music.

It is my understanding the Apple's lossless format (not sure of the others) is pretty good quality. Ok, so what is pretty good, not sure but I would venture to say CD quality although i have never done a side by side comparison.

I personally don't think the iPod is the end of audio, but that seems to be the focus of many articles and discussions.

Eric

Lossless is exactly what its name says, lossless. A true lossless format will have no differences from the original source. While there might be certain compression methods used they will still sound the same as the source which is the important part. One of the issues this article is taking is with the compression that removes or distorts music for the masses and ease of use. MP3s, the most popular downloadable format, are not lossless for the record, especially at the quality levels offered by most services (192kbs with some delving to 256kbs).

I personally keep all my music on my computer in lossless formats for ease of use but I am not loosing any quality when I do so .