old_school_2'

That was a very interesting post. To that end I, thought you might be interested in a short paper on this issue that I delivered at CES to a joint meeting of the CEA Audio board and the Grammy awards Technical commitee. I delivered the paper in the role of my "day job" at Atlantic Technology:



A Major Issue Facing the Recording Industry in 2012 and Beyond
© 2012 Peter Tribeman, Atlantic Technology. All rights reserved.


Throughout the history of the modern music recording industry, one theme has been consistent: Each succeeding recorded medium has delivered markedly superior sound quality compared to the one it replaced. As the 78 was replaced by the LP and the LP was replaced by the CD, each time there was a significant improvement in the frequency range, signal-to-noise ratio, distortion, and dynamic range of the new medium.

There have certainly been “side media” along the way, like 8-tracks and cassettes, which may not have advanced the state-of-the-art from a sound standpoint. But the main recorded medium in widest use at any given time has always featured a major sound quality improvement among its central virtues.

Sadly, today, this has come to an end for the first time since recorded popular music has been a major social/economic factor in society.

Today’s downloaded, disjointed “songs” (virtually no one listens to entire albums any more and longer-length classical works are pretty much ignored) place a far higher premium on user convenience and accessibility than on ultimate sound quality.

A further indication that sound quality is nowhere near the top of consumers’ priority lists is evidenced in the practice of downloading at lower sample bit rates in order to maximize the available memory space on their chosen playback device. Today’s recording industry is demonstrably uninterested in offering widely-available commercial recordings that can legitimately claim “lifelike, accurate” sound as an attribute.

One of the biggest impediments to offering recordings with a wide frequency range and a wide dynamic range is the very real limitation of the environment and conditions under which much of today’s music is played back.

The dynamic range in today’s recordings has been compressed into near non-existence, for purposes of seeming “louder” when played back on TV and radio: As observed on http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RecordOfLoudnessWar :

“The absolute peak of loudness started slowly creeping up in 1995, when Vlado Meller mastered Oasis' (What's the Story) Morning Glory? to -8 dB RMS. Since then the tendency has been to make records louder, while Meller has gone on to ruin more albums like Californication. The resulting loudness war is due to a variety of factors, such as commercial concerns, stupid executives, following the leader or listeners / musicians who are unaware of this phenomenon, can't tell the difference and don't care, or actually LIKE how it sounds.

Most of today’s music is experienced under what would be considered “portable,” “mobile,” or “background” situations. The days of sitting down in front of one’s “stereo system” on a Saturday afternoon and listening intently for hours in a quiet living room to the latest “audiophile” recordings is long past. Decades passed.

These days, people listen to their iPods while on the treadmill at the gym or walking from their office to lunch around the corner, or when driving their car. Home listening consists mostly of docking one’s musical storage/playback device in a low-fi plastic “docking station” with 3-inch speakers, simply to fill the background with indiscernible sound while cleaning the kitchen after dinner.

All of these common listening scenarios have high noise floors, which mask frequency extremes and render wide dynamic range recordings unlistenable by virtue of the high inherent noise floor swamping the low-level passages of the program material.

The impatient, inattentive, convenience-oriented nature of today’s music consumer, coupled with the typical noisy environment in which music is “consumed” leads to wide frequency range/wide dynamic range recordings being not only unappreciated, but in fact, outright unusable for the average listener.
There is a segment of the music-listening market to whom recording quality still matters. And many people would opt for better sound once they experienced it if it were readily available.

Should the recording industry ignore this segment altogether? Is there a way to encompass both the quality-conscious and casual music listener?

Fortunately, the solution is easily implemented and technologically feasible. My suggestion is that recordings/downloads be populated with two different versions:

1. A “popular” version with the normal compressed dynamic range suitable for use in cars, gyms, and other noisy environments, and

2. A second, selectable “audiophile” track with uncompressed wide dynamic range, lower distortion and no “brick wall” clipping.

This will satisfy both market segments and broadens the music’s appeal well past its current consuming audience.