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July 22, 2004

Making Music Less Enjoyable to Listen To

Via metafilter, we find complaints about the dynamic range of modern compact disc recordings. As time has gone on, the "louder is better" aesthetic has dominated, compressing the range of frequencies being recorded onto a CD into a more and more narrow range.

Interestingly, my post yesterday covered a story about the genesis of the iPod in which Steve Jobs frequently demanded that the volume of the iPod be turned up. When combined with the loss-of-quality inherent to mp3 compression and low-quality headphones (which I have since replaced), it's no wonder that I simply don't enjoy listening to classical music on my iPod, despite my extensive collection of classical music at home.

Classical music has a lot of subtle, quiet passages that are hard to enjoy (or even hear) when dynamic range is sacrificed like like this. Turning up the volume to hear during those quiet moments can then cause the passages to be distorted. It's a loss all around.

Philip Greenspun, a fellow MIT alumnus, has written some related musings on music reproduction, particularly the shortcomings of CDs when it comes to classical music and argues for a preference for LPs. Use of LPs avoids many of the dyanamic-range problems that one confronts with CDs, and shopping for LPs can save money over CDs, since there is such a large surplus of cheap LPs to be found at garage sales, thrift stores, and used record stores. This is particularly true when it comes to "audiophile" CD recordings of classical music, whose good quality is mitigated by the high prices one must pay. On the other hand, good deals on decent-quality classical music CDs can be found from the Naxos music label.

Posted by Dean at July 22, 2004 10:08 AM

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