Is the Sound Quality of CDs and MP3s Hindering Sales?

[doug osborne]

They're doing that - sort of. My Scion xB has a button that kicks in frequency dependent compression over a loudness curve, ... At least they give you the option of turning it off....

 

 

This is precisely where this type of compression should be. On a switch. On all consumer equipment, with mixes mastered to be faithful to the mix, and the mixes not over-compressed or limited (moving targets, artistic decisions, relative...). Modern DSP might not screw it up any more than the deliberate processes that mastering engineers are sometimes paid to do.

[Dean Roddey]

This speaks to my point. At the advent of downloadable music, the powers that be in the music industry regarded it as a threat instead of an opportunity. They were so happy selling re-issue CDs of back catalog they did nothing with new music or marketing. If they had responded to the opportunity, they could have created an environment where everyone understood that intellectual property has a cost, regardless of the delivery medium.

 

 

How many times are you going to make this clearly incorrect argument? It would have made zero difference, as proven by the fact that the theft isn't stopping now that legitimate sources are available. And as proven by the fact that this was already going on before the internet even became a commercial delivery possibility. As soon as people could connect copyrighted material was being uploaded, for the same reasons as now, because they can get away with it easily. In the BBS days of modems pictures were the only thing that were practical so that's what was being uploaded back then.

 

So you are argument just doesn't hold any water, and it's completely bogus anyway since they aren't obligated, and no one is, to have their stuff stolen if they take some time to address a new business model.

[Billster]

Have you ever seen an honor system farmstand? People understand that the farmer can't offer the fresh stuff at a good price if he also has to pay someone to stand there all day for only a few random customers. So they take honor in the spirit of the thing and drop the money in the box when they grab a bag of apples. It's a culture of understanding.

 

I understand where art comes from, what it costs to create, and why it's fair to pay for the good stuff. If the RIAA put an effort into that kind of cultural understanding that came even close to the effort they put into squeezing every last penny from the Byzantine contractual arrangements, they could have avoided some of the problem of people who think art is supposed to be free for the taking.

 

Is it any wonder that artists like Prince, Radiohead, and others have determined that they no longer need the so-called major labels piling on overhead and skimming every possible dollar?

 

:deadhorse: :deadhorse:

[John Sayers]

Is it any wonder that artists like Prince, Radiohead, and others have determined that they no longer need the so-called major labels piling on overhead and skimming every possible dollar?

 

 

that's because record companies have already made them Brand Names.

 

Everytime I go to a local market someone is selling hand made soap - they probably sell enough to cover the cost and make a small profit. To get their soap on the supermarket shelves, where the real money is would require huge promotion of their product. That's what big soap companies have done and it's what big record companies do to people like Prince and Radiohead.

[Dean Roddey]

I understand where art comes from, what it costs to create, and why it's fair to pay for the good stuff. If the RIAA put an effort into that kind of cultural understanding that came even close to the effort they put into squeezing every last penny from the Byzantine contractual arrangements, they could have avoided some of the problem of people who think art is supposed to be free for the taking.

 

 

Again, I think you are just not connecting with the real world here. What exactly could they have done to achieve this? It's easy to say they should do something, but there's no way that this would work. I assume you saw the reaction to the anti-theft commercials that are on a lot of DVDs now, right? Just another excuse to bash the content makers was all it basically was, and I saw various people using this as another rationalization to steal from them (they are spending all this money treating me like a crook, and that's why CDs and DVDs are so expensive, so I just download what i want.)

 

You aren't going to guilt these people into doing the right thing. They have plenty of rationalizations ready to go any time they need to avoid feeling any guilt about it.

[alphajerk]

The effect is not subjective as there've been a crapload of studies dating back many years about it..

 

 

i would wonder the bias on such studies to begin with. i have a VERY hard time even thinking that hypercompression is the reason for poor sales. {censored}ty music would be a stronger arguement.

 

like i said, i have no ear fatigue from listening to hyper compressed music, and i like it on a lot of things. it doesnt give me a headache or make me want to turn it off after 15 minutes... if its good music. {censored}ty music makes me want to turn it off.

 

 

as for everyone wanting to do something, i dont think thats a business decision but rather an influence decision... i think they call them fads. the industry goes through them all the time and usually time-marks all eras, and none are immune to it.

[Lee Flier]

Well aj, it's no secret that people hear differently and process what they hear differently. All of the studies that have been done acknowledge that. There are individuals who don't experience the effects that they track in the studies, and I don't think the studies were biased (if you do read them, they do outline their methodology so you can see exactly what they did).

 

However, if a large percentage of people react negatively to X type of sound, and you're trying to sell records to as many people as possible, then it behooves as an engineer you not to hurt anybody's ears if you can avoid it. That's why these studies are done in the first place. So while I totally believe you that hypercompression doesn't affect you specifically, there are a lot of people whom it does affect. I know that I'm one of them - even if I like the music, I can't keep listening to it for very long if it's squashed to death.

 

Also, I specifically said I don't think hypercompression is "the" reason for loss of sales - there are a whole host of contributing factors and I agree with you that crappy music is a big one. But I do think hypercompression contributes, along with a lot of other factors.

[alphajerk]

so you are saying its subjective now....

[amplayer]

i would wonder the bias on such studies to begin with. i have a VERY hard time even thinking that hypercompression is the reason for poor sales. {censored}ty music would be a stronger arguement. like i said, i have no ear fatigue from listening to hyper compressed music, and i like it on a lot of things. it doesnt give me a headache or make me want to turn it off after 15 minutes... if its good music. {censored}ty music makes me want to turn it off. as for everyone wanting to do something, i dont think thats a business decision but rather an influence decision... i think they call them fads. the industry goes through them all the time and usually time-marks all eras, and none are immune to it.

 

 

I think you put that very well. I agree.

I do think that overcompression is a factor in the diminished sales though, but I think it is a very small factor because most people aren't offended by it.

[MrKnobs]

I think this thread is very silly.

 

I can't count the number of times I've given someone a CD that wasn't mastered or comp/limited, and when they put it in their car stereo they always say, "Why's this so QUIET compared to the radio and my other CDs?"

 

NOT ONCE has someone said, "Why's this CD so SQUASHED compared to my other CDs?"

 

LOUD just sounds better. People will pick loud over soft & dynamic, all else being equal. And yes, it IS asking too much of them to just crank up the volume knob.

 

MP3 sales are proof that sound quality, beyond a point, just doesn't matter to the consumer. MP3s can sound very good (especially as you start cranking up the bit rate and therefore making them much bigger) but they aren't .WAV files - IF the .WAV files sound really good.

 

But I *think* that most people listen to 128mbps MP3s, or 256mbps, on their portable MP3 players. That ain't CD quality, and nobody really cares.

 

In general, I think sound quality on a recording is down the list of priorities for the average listener. Of course it can't be so bad sounding it's obnoxious and painful to listen to, but always the priorities go (1) how good is the song, (2) how well was it sung, (3) how's the groove. Might move #3 up to #1 for dance music.

 

Terry D.

[Lee Flier]

 

so you are saying its subjective now....

 

 

No ... if a study showed that a particular food ingredient made most people sick but some were immune to whatever it was that made them sick, would you say that was subjective? And if you were a food manufacturer would you think it was going to help your sales to include this ingredient in your products?

[Lee Flier]

I can't count the number of times I've given someone a CD that wasn't mastered or comp/limited, and when they put it in their car stereo they always say, "Why's this so QUIET compared to the radio and my other CDs?"

 

Well of course. Do you think anybody is advocating NO limiting? I'm certainly not.

 

NOT ONCE has someone said, "Why's this CD so SQUASHED compared to my other CDs?"

 

Of course not - talk about silly. Most people don't know that records are "squashed" so they're not going to say that.

 

LOUD just sounds better. People will pick loud over soft & dynamic, all else being equal.

 

Of course they will. As I've already said, people's initial attraction is to louder sound and of course that's the whole reason the hypercompression trend started in the first place.

 

I like compression. Sometimes I even like a lot of it. But I have a hard time believing that you're OK with waveforms that look like Hershey bars, or where a good percentage of the peaks have been clipped. That's what's being discussed here, and that would describe a huge percentage of records that are released nowadays.

 

 

MP3 sales are proof that sound quality, beyond a point, just doesn't matter to the consumer. MP3s can sound very good (especially as you start cranking up the bit rate and therefore making them much bigger) but they aren't .WAV files - IF the .WAV files sound really good. But I *think* that most people listen to 128mbps MP3s, or 256mbps, on their portable MP3 players. That ain't CD quality, and nobody really cares.

 

No, but as you say (and as I said very early in this thread), MP3's don't really sound all that bad, if they were encoded with a decent codec and at a decent bitrate. I'm not the least bit offended by an MP3 unless it was badly made, and I don't think the end distribution medium is really what affects people's perception of "sound quality" except in extreme cases. The real stuff that affects sound quality happens further up the chain.

[MrKnobs]

Well of course. Do you think anybody is advocating NO limiting? I'm certainly not.

 

Then it's just a matter of degree. I've been burned so many times by bands wanting a "work mix" of the day's effort and not wanting to wait for me to "master" it, then bitching when they get it in the car because it's not as loud as their commercial CDs.

 

Now I just don't ask, and with a dBx Quantum in my rack I can mix a "mastered" (read: multiband comp'd) version as quickly as I can mix the unmastered one, so I just give them that.

 

Of course not - talk about silly. Most people don't know that records are "squashed" so they're not going to say that.

 

They don't know the word or the details, but if you overcompress something they know they don't like it. Especially if you do it with a single band limiter set on the heavy side so the bass or drums pump the entire mix.

 

Of course they will. As I've already said, people's initial attraction is to louder sound and of course that's the whole reason the hypercompression trend started in the first place.

 

True. It's the whole Fletcher Munson thing. But I wonder how much delayed reaction matters compared to initial attraction? I think the music is already sold at that point, and maybe it's not even listened to often enough for the "ear fatigue" thing to matter.

 

I like compression. Sometimes I even like a lot of it. But I have a hard time believing that you're OK with waveforms that look like Hershey bars, or where a good percentage of the peaks have been clipped. That's what's being discussed here, and that would describe a huge percentage of records that are released nowadays.

 

mmmmmmmm Hershey bars!

 

Oops, sorry.

 

Thing is, I don't think we're talking about you or me here in terms of whether sound is hurting sales. A whole lot of what poeple like is determined by what they're accustomed to, and I think the record labels have done a spectacular job of getting people to expect extremely loud CDs. Anything else sounds wrong to most folks now, I suspect.

 

Another issue is that reproducing highly dynamic material (i.e. not very compressed) requires not only a willingness to turn up the listener's volume control, but also lots of headroom on the listener's system, whether that be an iPod, a home stereo, or a car system. I don't have any hard facts at my disposal, but I think many people don't have systems of any of those three types that can produce a lot of clean headroom - I know most stock car stereos don't, and I know many cheap MP3 players don't.

 

It's a bit like playing a 15 watt tube amp cranked into overdrive and marvelling how amazingly loud 15 watts can be - until you try playing some clean, punchy, palm muted chords and run out of headroom immediately.

 

No, but as you say (and as I said very early in this thread), MP3's don't really sound all that bad, if they were encoded with a decent codec and at a decent bitrate. I'm not the least bit offended by an MP3 unless it was badly made, and I don't think the end distribution medium is really what affects people's perception of "sound quality" except in extreme cases. The real stuff that affects sound quality happens further up the chain.

 

100% agreed. They're mostly listening to the song and the singer, and the medium has to be really bad before it becomes an issue. With larger and larger flash memory on board these players (and sometimes even a hard drive), will MP3 encoding rates increase to the point that they're hardly smaller than WAV files? Will WAV files become the new encoding of choice? Or will people with 10 gig storage in their MP3 players prefer to have tens of thousands of files rather than higher quality audio? Where will the optimal bit rate end up?

 

Finally, I really have to think that despite how some of us recording people may feel about it, the major labels know exactly what they're doing when it comes to selling albums. Clearly they've determined that loud is more important than lots of dynamic range, in terms of sales.

 

Its not optimal, but the listening systems *could* be equipped very easily with an expander to restore much of the dynamic range - IF anyone wanted that.

 

 

T.

[Li10]

i think crappy music being produced by the major labels are making sales suffer.

 

 

I agree. Generic mass-produced crap!!

[nat whilk II]

It's a funny thing - when I rotate songs on a self-compiled playlist, I tend to skip a track if it comes in really soft compared to the song before and the song after.

Partially for the reason that I know if I turn up the soft tune, I'll forget to turn back down and I'll set myself up for an unpleasant jolt, followed by an EXHAUSTING effort to back the volume down again.

I know an old acoustic guitar maker who says with bittersweet humor, "Give 'em volume and they'll hear tone".

Studio types have always said that everything sounds "good" loud, so you oughta mix at low levels to avoid the illusion that a loud mix is a good mix.

Also, the sheer noise floor of modern life has to be a factor in all this - the competition for earspace is pretty intense. Particularly if you wear an iPod thingy. I can't stand to listen to classical music on the car radio because it disappears and then jumps out BOO all of a sudden over and over again. Talk shows on NPR also are frustrating when the voices dip at the end of sentences, or in the switch between persons speaking, etc. The news you can hear all of in the car - not so the interviewers and interviewees.

So there's a wall of competing noise that needs to be taken out, not just punctured here and there. Hearing it/not hearing it/hearing it/not hearing it is more frustrating and tiring than LOUDALLTHEWAYTHROUGH.

Musically, I would think that "all loud all the time" via mastering gizmos is a cheap and dirty way to accomplish this. There are other more musical ways to keep the ball rolling, the energy unabated, the intensity going, the audience engaged. But you have to totally transcend the omnipresent noise floor, and maybe you have to tease people used to hypercompression into listening just a wee bit differently.

nat whilk ii

[Hard Truth]

I rarely buy the type of music that gets played on commercial radio so I have not really experienced the harsh overcompressed sound that people complain about in my home.

In my experience CDs sound much better than most people's records did. Most people did not bother to take good care of their vinyl records so they listened to lots of hiss, crackle, pops and skips. I used to religiously clean my records and stylus properly and used a good cartridge and my albums would still get noisier after awhile. CDs were definitely a step up in overall sound quality except for the handful of fanatical audiophiles with very expensive equipment who would only listen to an album once or twice.

I don't do MP3s, but most of my friends do. They never complain about the sound quality.

I think that music only releases will never sell like they did in the 1960s and 1970s again. There were several unique factors that made that the peak period for album sales-the newness of Hifi and stereo, the demographic bump of baby boomers at the right age, the good econmomy, the drug and alternative culture, and the lack of competition from cable TV, DVDs, computers, video games etc.

[alphajerk]

No ... if a study showed that a particular food ingredient made most people sick but some were immune to whatever it was that made them sick, would you say that was subjective? And if you were a food manufacturer would you think it was going to help your sales to include this ingredient in your products?

 

 

now that is just a silly statement, and not a valid comparison. besides, i still havent seen you bring forth your so called "proof". until then, your point is simply hearsay.

[realtrance]

I think it's primarily an aesthetic problem, not a technical one, at many different levels, some of which have been touched on already:

 

1. Environmental noise pollution: I've spent 30 years of my life desperately trying to escape a world where the background noise level -- hisses, whooshes, jackhammers, jet engines -- is so high and continuous you might as well be born with a severe case of tinnitus in both ears, for starters, these days, 'cause that's what the world will feel like anyways. The only solution to this at this point is to move somewhere where people are still living in the stone age, and listen to acoustic, locally-made music that doesn't require any electricity, and where the population is extremely thin.

 

2. Dynamic range, as Billster said above -- case in point, The Rolling Stones' live album, "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out" -- the drums on that are more exciting than drums I've heard on any album in the past 40 years, I found out listening to my old LP recently. It's like having heavy cotton pulled out of your ears, kind of like an aural equivalent of being let out of solitary confinement after all that time! Wow. Most of you don't know what you're missing any more.

 

3. Oversaturation -- another case in point, listening to "Hooker," a collection of John Lee Hooker's blues, remastered and recently rereleased on CD -- I am also convinced now that the single reason the blues kicked off rock 'n roll in the USA is that it emphasized the value of simplicity, of leaving space in your music, of getting rid of notes and layers instead of adding them. Regardless of the recording, there's too much music being made now that is so heavily mixed with so many parts and so little room for quiet spaces between the notes, it's like listening to those jackhammers all the time, mentioned above. Everything the Stones and Led Zeppelin did best, was an attempt at the sparsity of the blues. Ditto the Beatles. When they got more complicated, they lost their souls, mostly.

 

4. Cultural failure -- we're so overmarketed and overhyped and overloaded with so much crap flowing in from every single direction of our lives, forcing itself into every orifice of our being, physical, mental and spiritual, full-time advertising, 24/7, that whether we're conscious of it or not, we want to go away from it all, at the same time that we're actively opening the valves and letting the crap all pour in, 'cause that's what we're conditioned to do. So we download it all but we're too weak to vomit any of it back out, so we're just left feeling psychically nauseous most of the time.

 

Pretty simple, really. Not much having to do with recording technique, or the industry and sales, except insofar as those two things are just sub-symptoms of all of the above.

[the stranger]

Draft legislation to tax broadband internet access in order to ensure a fair royalty for the creator of distributed works. Have Ascap/Bmi, etc draft the legislation to create a fair royalty distribution model...not this drug dealer/pimp thing the record companies have going. They're a dead business. Good riddance.

[the stranger]

P.S. I think cdr's killed record sales just as much as mp3's.

[alphajerk]

Draft legislation to tax broadband internet access in order to ensure a fair royalty for the creator of distributed works. Have Ascap/Bmi, etc draft the legislation to create a fair royalty distribution model...not this drug dealer/pimp thing the record companies have going. They're a dead business. Good riddance.

 

 

problem is the way they have been doing it historically has been anything but fair... from radio to restaurants to nightlcubs to any public space playing music. honestly, they have no proper way to record playlists for proper compensation.

[realtrance]

... then again there are so many wonderful things out there, like this:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgjtSOgrtE&mode=related&search=

 

The future is so happening everywhere except in the West, too bad for us.... (sigh).....

[John Sayers]

... then again there are so many wonderful things out there, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgjtSOgrtE&mode=related&search = The future is so happening everywhere except in the West, too bad for us.... (sigh).....

 

 

 

wow playboy with music.

[alphajerk]

... then again there are so many wonderful things out there, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgjtSOgrtE&mode=related&search =

 

 

wtf is that?

 

how about something like this?

 

[John Sayers]

how about something like this?