What are the causes of "The Dumbing Down of Audio"?

[highfihoney]

People's lifestyles just aren't oriented around sitting at home anymore. There are too many other things pulling at our attention to just stop. Maybe that's a bad thing?

It is a bad thing & one im glad i finally became aware i was doing,people are too busy paying for their pile of throw away toys to even enjoy them,too busy to listen to an opera but enough time to invest countless hours on a video game,too busy to admire a peice of music by a master while going bananas over the next new movie to come out with the greatest bass track & fake graphics.

To me it has alot to do with attention span,when real composed music has been relegated to back ground noise & guitar hero has taken its place with the youth as a top form of entertainment is it any wonder that music only systems are becomming useless.

 

[gliz]

If we want people to enjoy our hobby condescending attitudes will not help. I have been chided for suggesting cretin products. I own a Onkyo 605 and I was told in one post "when you get a real avr let me know..." that is the kind of stuff I am talking about. They did have a bad production run on the first series of them but they did get them corrected. EVERY manufacture makes a few duds. it is that type of attitude (IMHO) that makes us look like techno-bigots. When my 6 year old son has a friend over and they are watching Transformers, and my HSU VTF2 mk 3 starts asking the room and there is nothing but an ear to ear grin on his face (and my wife is concerned about cracking the dry-wall) that is it for me, I LOVE that! When my friends come over and watch moves, after the move they usually ask me questions about my set up, I try to educate them and I can see "the bug" take hold. you do not have to spend goofy amounts of money to get really good sound about 1500 to 2 grand you can put a slammin system together (audio only).One more thing just so that folks know a little about me. My vision in my right eye is 20/400 and the vision in my right eye is 20/1000 so sound quality is very important to me. I have been legally blind since birth and my ears are a big part of my life, For me, good sound is a must have

 

[Midcow2]

Just like the F** war in movies ...

I would add the loudness war in todays CD recordings which is so unfortunate.

Also a very sad trend when a movie is judged by the number of gunshots and the number of time F** is spoken.

 

[Seth=L]

Also a very sad trend when a movie is judged by the number of gunshots and the number of time F** is spoken.

Not to mention how many times Halle Berry's breasts are exposed.

Halle was paid $500,000 on top of what she received for "acting" for doing that little show on "Swordfish". Things like that just kill me.

 

[Matt34]

Not to mention how many times Halle Berry's breasts are exposed.

Halle was paid $500,000 on top of what she received for "acting" for doing that little show on "Swordfish". Things like that just kill me.

They didn't hurt me any, in fact I demand an encore.

 

[Seth=L]

They didn't hurt me any, in fact I demand an encore.

Not sayin I am upset about seeing it, just that it's dissapointing they use nudity to sell movies. The "unrated" marketing campaign seems to have paid itself off as well.

 

[bandphan]

For me the audio bug started with going to "live shows" bluegrass festevials, symphonies, jazz clubs, ect.. Then when we began to record the shows to capture the feel and moment, and have a copy of that great feeling we could always re-live. The need reproduce, as well as record, that sound was my driving factor to have good gear. As many have stated the quality of engineering has tappered off steadily over the years, and with fm radio forcing music down the throats of younger generations, i dont think these generations have much of a clue of what they are hearing, but more of what they are seeing. Growing up in new orleans muisc was apart of everything, instilled in us at an early age and all around us. With more and more electronic music being the mainstream, i dont think the youth of today have opportunity to hear good music and only want to hear bass notes .These youth will be the ones working in our electronic stores, passing on mis-information, not educated in what they are doing and as this continues happen i see our community dwindling slowly. sorry for being long winded

 

[zony]

An average listener with ear for quality

I think the problem is that people don't listen to music anymore. Most people are quite happy with some top 40 crap that they play really loud in their cars or on their ipods.
I consider myself an average user but I do like music and I do like to hear my music SOUND good. There is quite a lot of budget music systems out there - for example I have a budget system of a sony 2 channel amp, 2 15 old Sony speakers given to me (they are almost identical to the excellent budget bookshelf SONY B3000) . The sound is actually quite good (certainly better than any boombox) and certainly as good as more expensive equipment I have heard.

Rather than try to spend too much money on audio components or go for gimmicks i try to buy stuff that sounds good for not too much money.
For portable music I was listening to a cassette walkman for quite a while because it sounded quite good. ANd when I tried out a Ipod it just didnt have enough bass - thankfully I found a cool Iriver flash player that sounds a lot better.

Most people however buy Ipods because they think its fashionable and that click wheel is really "cool" and "easy".
As for Bose - I know someone who was raving about how great their Bose sounded so I gave it a good listen and though it wasn't too bad - it just had a little bit more midrange than my system but not very good bass. Not too bad, but certainly not worth too much money.

People just dont like music anymore its more about "whats in".

 

[Pyrrho]

From the title of this thread, I thought it would be about something slightly different. Frankly, pretty much everything has been dumbed down, but efforts have been made to hide it. For example, SAT test scores since 1995 have been "recentered" to elevate them such that the average score is about what it used to be:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Name_changes_and_recentered_scores

In other words, SAT scores were going down, evidently because students knew less, but instead of teaching the students more, they simply changed the scoring, so now the students can have scores seemingly comparable with their parents.

No doubt there are many factors involved, but I will mention only one. Given the fact that many teachers are now kept or dismissed based upon student evaluations of their performance, this kind of thing should be no surprise at all. After all, what do you think students will say of a teacher who requires rigor and learning, and how will that compare with what students will say of a teacher who hands out easy A's? What will a student say about a teacher, when the teacher is seen as ruining the student's GPA (instead of the student seeing it as a failure to study enough)? How much difference will there be on things irrelevant to teaching, such as a teacher who tells better jokes during class? It is no wonder that our educational system is in the toilet.

So, the dumbing down of audio is a result of the fact that most people don't know much and are unable to reason well, because they have never learned much and have never learned how to reason well. This is why there is so much nonsense in audio, and why marketing is so very effective in selling junk.

 

[aberkowitz]

I think the problem is that people don't listen to music anymore. Most people are quite happy with some top 40 crap that they play really loud in their cars or on their ipods.
I consider myself an average user but I do like music and I do like to hear my music SOUND good. There is quite a lot of budget music systems out there - for example I have a budget system of a sony 2 channel amp, 2 15 old Sony speakers given to me (they are almost identical to the excellent budget bookshelf SONY B3000) . The sound is actually quite good (certainly better than any boombox) and certainly as good as more expensive equipment I have heard.

Rather than try to spend too much money on audio components or go for gimmicks i try to buy stuff that sounds good for not too much money.
For portable music I was listening to a cassette walkman for quite a while because it sounded quite good. ANd when I tried out a Ipod it just didnt have enough bass - thankfully I found a cool Iriver flash player that sounds a lot better.

Most people however buy Ipods because they think its fashionable and that click wheel is really "cool" and "easy".
As for Bose - I know someone who was raving about how great their Bose sounded so I gave it a good listen and though it wasn't too bad - it just had a little bit more midrange than my system but not very good bass. Not too bad, but certainly not worth too much money.

People just dont like music anymore its more about "whats in".

Please tell me when these good old days existed in which everybody cared about music and there was no such thing as a "Top 40". Tell me stories of times when music "wasn't in" and we all sat around discussing philosophy while smoking pipes and listening to Bach Concertos and Mozart Operas.

What is wrong with listening to and enjoying "Top 40" music. I personally don't enjoy much of it, but there must be a whole lot of people out there who do b/c it's played on many radio stations. Why does somebody have to be labeled as "not liking music" because of the music they like??? How does that even make sense?

The concept of Top 40 on the radio has been around for over 50 years now, and the Billboard Hot 100 chart (the basis for most top 40 stations) celebrates it's 50th birthday this year. It's not like this is a new phenomenon in the past 10 or 20 years. If anything, there's even more consumer choice today when it comes to radio music than ever before. For most of the 20th century listening to music on the radio consisted of a limited number of AM channels who pretty much played all the same stuff. Today we have AM, FM, High Def radio (which I still don't totally understand), and 2 versions of Satellite radio.

I totally disagree with your point about why people buy iPods- they buy iPods because they want to listen to music when they're not in their house or in their car, and for those uses sound quality really doesn't matter all that much. I can tell you that when I'm walking down the street in NYC w/ horns blaring and people talking, I care more about being able to hear my music as opposed to whether the equalizer is set perfectly. As for the click-wheel, it is easy- and what's wrong with that?? You're acting like J6P is going to understand how to use a complex piece of equipment... there's a reason that a blinking 00:00 on a VCR became a national joke!

The great thing about the iPod is that it allows any idiot to listen to and appreciate the types of music that they like wherever and whenever they want without being subject to the whims of a radio programmer and commercials. And if that person loves top 40 music then so be it- it's still music. It may not be what you want to listen to, but they're not subjecting you to it.

 

[aberkowitz]

Growing up in new orleans muisc was apart of everything, instilled in us at an early age and all around us. With more and more electronic music being the mainstream, i dont think the youth of today have opportunity to hear good music and only want to hear bass notes .These youth will be the ones working in our electronic stores, passing on mis-information, not educated in what they are doing and as this continues happen i see our community dwindling slowly. sorry for being long winded

I would argue that young people today have more access to music at a younger age than you or I ever did. With iTunes and Amazon, kids can listen to whatever types of music they want whenever they want.

As for "the state of youth today", older generations have always knocked the listening tastes of those younger than them. Haven't you heard stories of how "rock and roll is the work of the devil", or the banning of Elvis Pressley's swiveling hips, or how the Beatles put satanic messages in their music? My parents (baby boomers) certainly got harrassed by their parents for their music tastes as children, just as they harrassed me when I was listening to a lot of Pearl Jam and Nirvana in the early 90s, just as I will harrass my children when their listening to Madonna's daughter sometime in the next decade .

I don't think it matters what type of music you listen to, as long as you're listening and appreciating music.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Essentially "dumbing down" and acessibility go hand in hand. By "dumbing down" a product you simply make it more marketable to a wider demographic. That is why bose and apple have been sucessfull.

 

[aberkowitz]

Essentially "dumbing down" and acessibility go hand in hand. By "dumbing down" a product you simply make it more marketable to a wider demographic. That is why bose and apple have been sucessfull.

But what is wrong with making music more accessable? Are audiophiles the only ones allowed to listen to music because they are the most pure??

Was it your intention to come off as an elitist snob or did I totally misread sarcasm??

 

[MinusTheBear]

But what is wrong with making music more accessable? Are audiophiles the only ones allowed to listen to music because they are the most pure??

Was it your intention to come off as an elitist snob or did I totally misread sarcasm??

There is absolutely nothing wrong in making music more accessable. I just do not like Bose and Apple.

 

[aberkowitz]

There is absolutely nothing wrong in making music more accessable. I just do not like Bose and Apple.

Or at least their marketing campaigns .

I have no problem with either of those sentiments.

 

[pzaur]

Audio hasn't been "dumbed down". It's been mutilated. Mp3s are a big reason for this. There is no more convenience between an mp3 file than a wav file. They both fit on a hard drive. What is unfortunate is that people are expecting to hear sounds that are not accurately represented from the source (file). Mp3s are smaller because information is deleted. This changes the actual sound of the file and creates holes in the sound waves at the highest peaks and lowest dips.

I wouldn't say that there is snobbery in audiophiles. There's only snobbery in personalities. Obviously, a huge flaw. People who gloat about their uber-expensive sound system aren't gloating about the system, but, instead are gloating about the fact that they have the ability to spend that amount of money. Anyone who brags about how much their system costs should be slapped with an open hand multiple times and then given a Bose system in place of their current system. It's expensive too.

-pat

 

[aberkowitz]

Audio hasn't been "dumbed down". It's been mutilated. Mp3s are a big reason for this. There is no more convenience between an mp3 file than a wav file. They both fit on a hard drive. What is unfortunate is that people are expecting to hear sounds that are not accurately represented from the source (file). Mp3s are smaller because information is deleted. This changes the actual sound of the file and creates holes in the sound waves at the highest peaks and lowest dips.

-pat

But on a portable device with less memory space it's easier to fit more mp3s, and when you consider that 98% of the listeners of music could care less about holes in the sound waves, why not give them the simplest format? That's not say there isn't a market for those of us who regard mp3s as an "inferior" sounding format (although if I'm at the gym or on the street I could really care less myself), but since we're such a niche group there will be less supply for us.

 

[jostenmeat]

I totally disagree with your point about why people buy iPods- they buy iPods because they want to listen to music when they're not in their house or in their car, and for those uses sound quality really doesn't matter all that much.

This is contrary to my experiences. I actually don't know anyone who uses an I-pod, and chooses WAV files otherwise for more "serious listening". Maybe you do, but none of my friends or family do. Its not just for jogging and the car. Its for everything. Its the library they bring to friends places. Its what they use for their own home entertainment.

To make things worse, the systems often used to reproduce their music is either some $20 mega-cheap dock, or even a laptops' speakers. Im not saying everybody does this (because I wouldn't know), but this happens a LOT.

I got one friend a gift. It was a greatly discounted Monitor Audio I-pod dock for $100. He thinks its AMAZING. He can't believe how "LOUD" it gets. While I am very happy my friend is happy, its not much surprise to me. Oh, he could afford better, he drives an S2000 and is a recruiter of top talent for a very big company. He's not stupid either. He was using a $20 all-in-one dock. Oh, btw, 100% of his music listening is with that I-pod.

My brother listens to 100% MP3 files from his laptop fed to the Onkyo HTIB that I gave him.

I know a CI guy who just did a really big job for a restaurant chain owner. Multi-room, you know the deal. The client uses his I-phone to listen to music in his car. He comes home, right next to the entrance, he docks his I-phone, which is also his library for home entertainment. Oh, he could definitely, definitely, afford much better quality. He doesn't care, doesn't know. It's purely about convenience. SQ? Yeah right...

As for popular music, I think MP3 works just fine. Trying to get pop music to have great AQ is like worrying about getting TV commercials to have perfect PQ. Pop music is designed like a commercial. Get your attention real fast, give you the jingle, and keep repeating that jingle over and over again. They are short for a reason too. Oh, and loud and compressed the whole time. Im talking generally. I would expect that some quality stuff slips in every once in a while to the Top 40, but I wouldn't really know.

p.s. Pat, don't slap me please! I disclosed my expenditures earleir in this thread!

 

[aberkowitz]

Josten- I agree with you, which I think comes through in many of my other comments. The vast majority of folks don't care that much about AQ, so convenience trumps all for them. To be honest, when I listen to my iPod it does for me too. I don't listen to WAV files on my iPod b/c I use it mostly in the gym or when I'm walking around outside, and since I have a Nano I want to cram as much music on there as possible.

 

[zony]

What is wrong with listening to and enjoying "Top 40" music. I personally don't enjoy much of it, but there must be a whole lot of people out there who do b/c it's played on many radio stations. Why does somebody have to be labeled as "not liking music" because of the music they like??? How does that even make sense?

The top 40 today is impossible to listen to. there is nothing musical about it - you cannot be a music lover and listen to that ...but then agreed to each his own.

I totally disagree with your point about why people buy iPods- they buy iPods because they want to listen to music when they're not in their house or in their car, and for those uses sound quality really doesn't matter all that much. I can tell you that when I'm walking down the street in NYC w/ horns blaring and people talking, I care more about being able to hear my music as opposed to whether the equalizer is set perfectly. As for the click-wheel, it is easy- and what's wrong with that?? You're acting like J6P is going to understand how to use a complex piece of equipment... there's a reason that a blinking 00:00 on a VCR became a national joke!

A lot of the ipod people are mostly snobbish morons with a lot of money -- now of course the ipods are a bit cheaper but there are even better alternatives. There is nothing complex about "another" mp3 player. I have yet to see a "complex" mp3 player.
Cassette walkmans had a bass boost button which normally gave the sound a richer and fuller. Any idiot was able to operate that . Most good mp3 players have similar functionality except Ipod which has very little bass (with or without equalizer). No need to fiddle too much with equalizer just turn up the bass.

I want to listen to music when on road too , and the ipod gives too weak a sound when I am in subway ..my little iriver is a lot better for me. Most of the poorer people in subway actually have other mp3 players. Everyone knows ipod is a status symbol. or fashion statement for idiots whichever way you look at it.

I am sure there are lots of ipod people who just didnt know better but the point is the ipod people are sheep like . Victims of predator marketing strategy.