compress this?

[acroyear]

Via a /. entry, here's an example of how compression can ruin music, using Paul McCartney's late 80s hit, "Figure of Eight".

In Wikipedia, they give Rush's Vapor Trails as an example of an insanely compressed album.  I'm inclined to agree.  One of the reasons I listen to prog rock is the dynamic range as much as the instrumental variety and melodic and harmonic approaches.  And the main reason I hate "modern" rock is that it ALL sounds flat, all at the same volume and thickness, no variety at all.  Just horrid...

from a comment:

"It's Good Enough" For the tin-eared masses. The bar of quality for audio/music/telephony has never been lower. We now accept crap MP3 audio as "acceptable", stuttering vocoders and dropped calls as "tolerable", and reduced/compressed bandwidth as "louder (hence better)". We are now getting spoon-fed the worst quality audio since wax recordings and the Western Electric "Noiseless" recording system of movies from the 30-40's. And like everything else around us that continues to suck worse and worse, we take it in stride, shrug and say "well, it sounds good enough, I guess."

Don't get me wrong - I'm not a Luddite, and I love the Digital revolution of music. I am just sickened by it's apparent side-effects, and AMAZED at the tolerance we the "consuming public" have for getting fed shit. As long as we accept this as the standard of quality we find acceptable, the various producers and manufacturers will keep feeding us more and crappier garbage.

Comments

[theshaggyfreak.livejournal.com]

I have to agree that Vapor Trails is one of the worst offenders of over compression. I'm a huge Rush fan and I can probably count on my hands how many times I've listened to the album. It's not a bad album technically but I just can't listen to it. Luckily their recent album, Snakes and Arrows, didn't get as much of the 'treatment'.

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm glad that I'm someone who doesn't notice these things too much, since I thought VT was very listenable, even if everyone thought the mix was horrible. I have heard rumors that a "fixed" mix is out there and there will be a release at some point, but considering how much problems they seemed to have with getting a "good" mix in the production diaries at the time, I wonder if there is such a thing, or if Mauser is truly a hack.

Course, saying that, I'm a guy who just can't bring myself to spend money on lossy music. To me, there is just something inherently wrong with that. Hell, my home library is all in FLAC and I just transcode for portable players.

[theshaggyfreak.livejournal.com]

I rarely if ever buy music online. I somethings test the waters of a particular album before I buy it but I tend to only get CDs. I've nearly completed the project of ripping all of my CDs to MP3, though (around 600). I don't worry about FLAC since I can always go back to the CD if I want the source.

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I've had a few reasons to go to FLAC. One, lately I've had problems with CDs going missing or getting scratched. For example, my copy of Geddy Lee's "My Favorite Headache" has some pretty bad problems.

Also, FLAC makes a pretty good base for transcoding since I'm using different compression in my car (192bps VBR) verses my 8GB portable (128bps VBR).

Not to mention, ripping discs is rather time consuming. I still don't have my whole collection ripped.

[theshaggyfreak.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those anal people concerning CDs. Mine rarely get scratched since I'm damn careful with them. I also am not one for letting people borrow CDs because there's too much of a chance that I'll never see it again.

I pretty much just my iPod for portable use and it works well enough in my truck as well.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

i haven't had a scratch problem since i decided i was never putting a store-bought cd into my car again. everything is copied into compilations or straight out.

i want an mp3-cdrom player for my car (circuit city has them at $99 with free installation) so i don't have to carry so many discs around.

[theshaggyfreak.livejournal.com]

Now that I have a nice little iPod (4GB), I'm probably going to be taking that in the truck more. It saves me from the huge amount of choices I have when it comes to CDs. :) I still need to sell my old mp3 player.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, the mp3-cdrom player i'm looking at is a sony which means its completely compatible, cdrom-wise, with the walkman cd player i have - one set of cdroms goes everywhere for me. in addition, it has a front 1/8 phono jack so i can direct input cyd's ipod or my XM set without having to try the fm broadcaster through this noisy (yet full of nothing to listen to) radio market. 5 bucks at radshack for the cable and i'm good to go.

just gotta get around to it...

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I still get mysterious scratch problems, even tho I never use a slot-loaded player. For example, I have no idea what is going on with my Geddy Lee CD. I rarely listen to it, yet it has problems.