I don't know about vodka, but I can tell you with certainty that some $30 bourbon is far better than any $10 bourbon.
Oh, with certainty. But bourbon is vastly different than vodka. The whole point of vodka is to distill it so that it's essentially tasteless, and very smooth. Many cheap vodkas are terrible, but many are quadruple-distilled and very smooth, and cost a fraction of so-called "premium" vodkas; they score nearly the same or sometimes better in blind tests.
Bourbon, like all whiskeys, changes in flavor so much while it is aging in a barrel, and the point of the spirit is flavor. That said, it's a misnomer to conclude that an expensive bourbon is better than a "cheap" bourbon. It's usually because of age, but age doesn't necessarily make things better; it just changes the taste (often sweeter, as the liquor absorbes the sugar in the wood). Personally, I prefer higher-proof 10 year bourbons, as opposed to lower-proof 18 year batches.
My original point was that humans are prone to a self-fulfilling prophecy of *thinking* something is better because it is supposedly "better". Blind test often show reality.
Um, we don't need to evaluate Young's music or his engineering acumen on this. I'm not understanding the attacks on his person and music. He's simply pointing out that the present standard in digital music is a drop in quality, which is 100% accurate. If you read about the history of MP3 you will see that preservation of the original fidelity of the music was not a goal. Compression and portability were.
With decent equipment many, many people can tell a difference. I would enjoy more opportunities to download FLAC-level quality music from major vendors like iTunes and eMusic. Even support for FLAC in iTunes would be nice. No, this is not the same major market as cheaper, more lossy compressed music files, but I like that Steve Jobs was hearing from an advocate on higher-quality digital music.
And goodness, would it be a *bad* thing if such a thing were to pass? Hardly.
I agree. But audiophiles will always think that can hear something that the human ear cannot detect; well at least the difference between one recording and the next.
It's the same people who think super expensive vodka is better than a $10 bottle.
+1
Psychology plays a huge part. That's why drug trials use double-blind tests and include a placebo.
In the 1980, the Canadian stereo magazine, Audio Scene, did double-blind listening tests that compared several power amplifiers. Once all the equipment was properly grounded, the golden-ears audiophiles could not tell the difference. I happened to talk to one of the participants a few weeks later. He still thought that there are significant differences between the sounds of the amplifiers, but he could not hear the difference because Audio Scene must have rigged the experiment. It reminds me of a funny article in Mad Magazine: "Believe it or not, John Shmeddly read so much about the bad effects of smoking that he quit reading."
A few issues later, Audio Scene magazine reported on their double-blind test comparing top-of-the-line phono cartridges. Initially, the audiophiles could tell the difference. Then the experimenter equalized all the phono cartridges so that they all had a flat frequency response. This time, the audiophiles could not detect the differences. If I recall correctly, most people preferred the sound before the frequency response was flattened out (i.e., when the sound was less accurate). So, the moral of that story was, "Buy any high-quality phone cartridge and use an equalizer to tailor the sound to what you like best."
So, I, too, would be interested in any double-blind listening tests that compare different digital formats. It's important that the tests be double-blind (i.e., not even the experimenter who is turning the knobs and pressing the buttons knows which audio format he is listening to).
The extra sad thing about the passing of Jobs is also the passing of Apple's pioneering of anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton
I'm worried Apple's leadership team will think that staying the course instead of trying to invent the next big thing will keep Apple afloat. It will in the short term, but if Apple is not actively trying to disrupt the future, someone else, perhaps people like Neil Young who were inspired by Steve Jobs, will. And that, in 20 years, may turn out to be Steve's real legacy.
Mind if I group you two together?
"Sad" and "worried." Where does this seemingly automatic hand-wringing come from?
There is an alternate assumption available to you, backed up by Tim Cook's statements about amazing products in the pipeline. Jobs and Ive and who knows how many others at Apple invented a factory for invention itself. Or a think tank for invention, if you prefer that wording.
Maybe all the focus on Steve Jobs and his "disruptive" style has obscured the fact that the Jobs vision is acquirable, transferable and widely shared to begin with. It isn't disruption that Apple does, except as collateral damage, perhaps. What they do is creation, based on what would be great, or insanely great.
This has been an endemic feature of Silicon Valley, at least the countercultural subset that Apple and the Macintosh comes from. It's the Right Path that the invention of digital technology affords, and it's what is now institutionalized at Apple. It was a discovery that grew out the alternate realities explorered in the sixties, and it won't, or can't, be undiscovered.
The other path, the Left Path, is the one that Microsoft and IBM took, the one that we should have worried about more all these years. That path knows nothing about insanely great, but only rises to a certain level of competence. (But notice that MS is now trying to be great, for the first time, with their new emphasis on interface.)
What I'm saying in this ramble is that it is not legitimate to assume that the source for inspired products has dried up with Steve gone. He helped, maybe more than anyone else, to uncork a genie that can't be put back in the bottle. That genie is the networked computer for everyone, whether in portable form, or on the desk, or on your wall in the form of of a TV. And the mandate that it has to be so great that everyone wants one.
Recall the Apple University, where these discoveries are probably in the opening syllabus, and quell your doubts.
It really sounds like it is one of those fake projects that newbies get assigned to.
Apple has moved away from discs and hard drives into SSDs, which makes this sound quite strange.
Vinyl of course sounds far better than even SACD and there is no reason not to offer premium tracks in AAC at a bit rate of 1024kbps or more. That will happen but I just don't see where the work is needed.
The extra sad thing about the passing of Jobs is also the passing of Apple's pioneering of anything.
There's nothing to back up that statement. Starting with the fact that tech moves so slow that the stuff that Jobs started 2 years ago as an idea won't be seen for another 10 or so. Second, Jobs wasn't the only brain at Apple. Heck he might not have even been the biggest brain.
Um, we don't need to evaluate Young's music or his engineering acumen on this. I'm not understanding the attacks on his person and music. He's simply pointing out that the present standard in digital music is a drop in quality, which is 100% accurate. If you read about the history of MP3 you will see that preservation of the original fidelity of the music was not a goal. Compression and portability were.
With decent equipment many, many people can tell a difference. I would enjoy more opportunities to download FLAC-level quality music from major vendors like iTunes and eMusic. Even support for FLAC in iTunes would be nice. No, this is not the same major market as cheaper, more lossy compressed music files, but I like that Steve Jobs was hearing from an advocate on higher-quality digital music.
And goodness, would it be a *bad* thing if such a thing were to pass? Hardly.
You're referring to the MP3s of old. iTunes uses a much higher method of encoding, and I'd wager that the majority of people cannot tell the difference between it an lossless in normal listening environments.
I'm worried Apple's leadership team will think that staying the course instead of trying to invent the next big thing will keep Apple afloat.
Given Apple's cult of secrecy you don't know what 'the course' is to know if staying on it is a bad thing.
Quote:
It will in the short term, but if Apple is not actively trying to disrupt the future, someone else, perhaps people like Neil Young who were inspired by Steve Jobs, will. And that, in 20 years, may turn out to be Steve's real legacy.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Jobs didn't create everything himself even at Apple and so what if folks are inspired by him to try to change the world. Someone like Neil Young might have enough respect in the music world to get the labels to allow higher quality files, lower prices, etc. Just like someone like James Cameron might get his fellow directors and the studios to get the stick out of their butts about digital movies being restricted to 720p with 2.1 sound and no features released six months after the movie has been cam'd etc. And a JJ Abrams might do the same for TV.
Plus everyone is so keen to praise Tim Cook on the charity stuff, the return to education concerns, the worker abuse etc as if he came up with all of it the night after he was officially CEO (which I strongly doubt) but perhaps with the various technologies at a bit of a stand still in terms of what Apple etc have to work with maybe they will stay the course on the tech side and inside grow in other more social ways. And is a $90 Billion company giving a little out to the world and using their strength to force some very useful social change really a bad thing. Sure in some ways its a giant PR stunt but if it works even it could bring in a few sales.
While I agree there is some quality lost in most of our digital music, I find it really hard to believe we're only hearing "5%". Really? Is he just making up numbers?
I do not think that is what Neil meant. Less than 5% of all music has been made available in a hi-res format. You can buy hi-res tracks on a site called HDTracks, but there are not many other sources out there at the present time.
I feel that this might have something to do with the number of overall audio channels and the way in which the signal sent to them.
Possibly including something similar to a TOSLINK 3.5mm optical output (like many of their products) on every device, but with expanded capability to work with legitimate 7.2 channel recordings... or something of the sort. (Don't limit your mind to a TOSLINK optical cable - Apple could be bold enough to introduce their own). This way the audio would be sent digitally and also work to further industry recording standards. I would love to hear all of my songs recorded in a studio originally intended to record 7.x audio channels. This would impact the movie/game world substantially also.
I agree. But audiophiles will always think that can hear something that the human ear cannot detect; well at least the difference between one recording and the next.
It's the same people who think super expensive vodka is better than a $10 bottle.
Some folks hear better than others. Just like some see better than others too. The problem with most people, especially under 30, have never heard properly mastered music. Most of todays recordings are poorly done. It's all in the mastering, so you do not need a $7000 sound system or $500 headphones to be able to tell the difference.
Don't be so fast to diss accomplished people for having educated themselves far beyond their original field.
Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter is the prime example of this (even though I'm not a fan of the direction his brilliance has taken him.)
You are inferring that Neil Young has indeed educated himself so that he is now a qualified electrical engineer and that I therefore should give him credit for doing so.
AFAIK, he hasn't, so I don't feel I have to give him credit for something he hasn't done.
Totally agree. It's like if people argued that 256-color or 16-bit graphics are plenty either because they have bad monitors are can't be bothered with looking at 2 pictures side by side to see the difference themselves - apparently, the fact that you can't visually see the difference in higher quality audio somehow must mean it's not there? (Though technically if you played/re-digitized it you would see a difference in the waveform...)
A well-dithered 16-bit graphic will look good too - think CD. It doesn't mean that 'true color' (24 bit) won't look better - or ever higher bit depth / higher resolution. At some point you won't be able to tell the difference - 24/192 is pretty damned good and probably going higher won't make a difference for most people's systems. Storage is cheap, bandwidth just keeps improving, so why not get a good copy of the music or at least have the option?
This isn't an argument about whether cryogenically freezing your wall outlet will give you purer sound, it's quite demonstrable.
So, I, too, would be interested in any double-blind listening tests that compare different digital formats. It's important that the tests be double-blind (i.e., not even the experimenter who is turning the knobs and pressing the buttons knows which audio format he is listening to).
+1
Anyone with a PC can conduct their very own double blind test of compressed vs uncompressed using a program called Foobar together with it's ABX module.
Comments
Go buy a nice pair of closed ear Sennheiser 380 Pro: http://www.sennheiserusa.com/dj-prof...dphones_502717
You'll notice the difference
Oh, no doubt. But will you notice the difference of the quality Young is preaching? Probably not that much.
I think actually your statement makes the point that existing quality is not the main problem, but the speakers and headphones most use to listen.
I don't know about vodka, but I can tell you with certainty that some $30 bourbon is far better than any $10 bourbon.
Oh, with certainty. But bourbon is vastly different than vodka. The whole point of vodka is to distill it so that it's essentially tasteless, and very smooth. Many cheap vodkas are terrible, but many are quadruple-distilled and very smooth, and cost a fraction of so-called "premium" vodkas; they score nearly the same or sometimes better in blind tests.
Bourbon, like all whiskeys, changes in flavor so much while it is aging in a barrel, and the point of the spirit is flavor. That said, it's a misnomer to conclude that an expensive bourbon is better than a "cheap" bourbon. It's usually because of age, but age doesn't necessarily make things better; it just changes the taste (often sweeter, as the liquor absorbes the sugar in the wood). Personally, I prefer higher-proof 10 year bourbons, as opposed to lower-proof 18 year batches.
My original point was that humans are prone to a self-fulfilling prophecy of *thinking* something is better because it is supposedly "better". Blind test often show reality.
With decent equipment many, many people can tell a difference. I would enjoy more opportunities to download FLAC-level quality music from major vendors like iTunes and eMusic. Even support for FLAC in iTunes would be nice. No, this is not the same major market as cheaper, more lossy compressed music files, but I like that Steve Jobs was hearing from an advocate on higher-quality digital music.
And goodness, would it be a *bad* thing if such a thing were to pass? Hardly.
I agree. But audiophiles will always think that can hear something that the human ear cannot detect; well at least the difference between one recording and the next.
It's the same people who think super expensive vodka is better than a $10 bottle.
+1
Psychology plays a huge part. That's why drug trials use double-blind tests and include a placebo.
In the 1980, the Canadian stereo magazine, Audio Scene, did double-blind listening tests that compared several power amplifiers. Once all the equipment was properly grounded, the golden-ears audiophiles could not tell the difference. I happened to talk to one of the participants a few weeks later. He still thought that there are significant differences between the sounds of the amplifiers, but he could not hear the difference because Audio Scene must have rigged the experiment. It reminds me of a funny article in Mad Magazine: "Believe it or not, John Shmeddly read so much about the bad effects of smoking that he quit reading."
A few issues later, Audio Scene magazine reported on their double-blind test comparing top-of-the-line phono cartridges. Initially, the audiophiles could tell the difference. Then the experimenter equalized all the phono cartridges so that they all had a flat frequency response. This time, the audiophiles could not detect the differences. If I recall correctly, most people preferred the sound before the frequency response was flattened out (i.e., when the sound was less accurate). So, the moral of that story was, "Buy any high-quality phone cartridge and use an equalizer to tailor the sound to what you like best."
So, I, too, would be interested in any double-blind listening tests that compare different digital formats. It's important that the tests be double-blind (i.e., not even the experimenter who is turning the knobs and pressing the buttons knows which audio format he is listening to).
The extra sad thing about the passing of Jobs is also the passing of Apple's pioneering of anything.
I'm worried Apple's leadership team will think that staying the course instead of trying to invent the next big thing will keep Apple afloat. It will in the short term, but if Apple is not actively trying to disrupt the future, someone else, perhaps people like Neil Young who were inspired by Steve Jobs, will. And that, in 20 years, may turn out to be Steve's real legacy.
Mind if I group you two together?
"Sad" and "worried." Where does this seemingly automatic hand-wringing come from?
There is an alternate assumption available to you, backed up by Tim Cook's statements about amazing products in the pipeline. Jobs and Ive and who knows how many others at Apple invented a factory for invention itself. Or a think tank for invention, if you prefer that wording.
Maybe all the focus on Steve Jobs and his "disruptive" style has obscured the fact that the Jobs vision is acquirable, transferable and widely shared to begin with. It isn't disruption that Apple does, except as collateral damage, perhaps. What they do is creation, based on what would be great, or insanely great.
This has been an endemic feature of Silicon Valley, at least the countercultural subset that Apple and the Macintosh comes from. It's the Right Path that the invention of digital technology affords, and it's what is now institutionalized at Apple. It was a discovery that grew out the alternate realities explorered in the sixties, and it won't, or can't, be undiscovered.
The other path, the Left Path, is the one that Microsoft and IBM took, the one that we should have worried about more all these years. That path knows nothing about insanely great, but only rises to a certain level of competence. (But notice that MS is now trying to be great, for the first time, with their new emphasis on interface.)
What I'm saying in this ramble is that it is not legitimate to assume that the source for inspired products has dried up with Steve gone. He helped, maybe more than anyone else, to uncork a genie that can't be put back in the bottle. That genie is the networked computer for everyone, whether in portable form, or on the desk, or on your wall in the form of of a TV. And the mandate that it has to be so great that everyone wants one.
Recall the Apple University, where these discoveries are probably in the opening syllabus, and quell your doubts.
Apple has moved away from discs and hard drives into SSDs, which makes this sound quite strange.
Vinyl of course sounds far better than even SACD and there is no reason not to offer premium tracks in AAC at a bit rate of 1024kbps or more. That will happen but I just don't see where the work is needed.
If I want hi fidelity I'll listen to my SACD's.
The extra sad thing about the passing of Jobs is also the passing of Apple's pioneering of anything.
There's nothing to back up that statement. Starting with the fact that tech moves so slow that the stuff that Jobs started 2 years ago as an idea won't be seen for another 10 or so. Second, Jobs wasn't the only brain at Apple. Heck he might not have even been the biggest brain.
Um, we don't need to evaluate Young's music or his engineering acumen on this. I'm not understanding the attacks on his person and music. He's simply pointing out that the present standard in digital music is a drop in quality, which is 100% accurate. If you read about the history of MP3 you will see that preservation of the original fidelity of the music was not a goal. Compression and portability were.
With decent equipment many, many people can tell a difference. I would enjoy more opportunities to download FLAC-level quality music from major vendors like iTunes and eMusic. Even support for FLAC in iTunes would be nice. No, this is not the same major market as cheaper, more lossy compressed music files, but I like that Steve Jobs was hearing from an advocate on higher-quality digital music.
And goodness, would it be a *bad* thing if such a thing were to pass? Hardly.
You're referring to the MP3s of old. iTunes uses a much higher method of encoding, and I'd wager that the majority of people cannot tell the difference between it an lossless in normal listening environments.
I'm worried Apple's leadership team will think that staying the course instead of trying to invent the next big thing will keep Apple afloat.
Given Apple's cult of secrecy you don't know what 'the course' is to know if staying on it is a bad thing.
It will in the short term, but if Apple is not actively trying to disrupt the future, someone else, perhaps people like Neil Young who were inspired by Steve Jobs, will. And that, in 20 years, may turn out to be Steve's real legacy.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Jobs didn't create everything himself even at Apple and so what if folks are inspired by him to try to change the world. Someone like Neil Young might have enough respect in the music world to get the labels to allow higher quality files, lower prices, etc. Just like someone like James Cameron might get his fellow directors and the studios to get the stick out of their butts about digital movies being restricted to 720p with 2.1 sound and no features released six months after the movie has been cam'd etc. And a JJ Abrams might do the same for TV.
Plus everyone is so keen to praise Tim Cook on the charity stuff, the return to education concerns, the worker abuse etc as if he came up with all of it the night after he was officially CEO (which I strongly doubt) but perhaps with the various technologies at a bit of a stand still in terms of what Apple etc have to work with maybe they will stay the course on the tech side and inside grow in other more social ways. And is a $90 Billion company giving a little out to the world and using their strength to force some very useful social change really a bad thing. Sure in some ways its a giant PR stunt but if it works even it could bring in a few sales.
While I agree there is some quality lost in most of our digital music, I find it really hard to believe we're only hearing "5%". Really? Is he just making up numbers?
I do not think that is what Neil meant. Less than 5% of all music has been made available in a hi-res format. You can buy hi-res tracks on a site called HDTracks, but there are not many other sources out there at the present time.
If you have a $7,000 audio system as home, I doubt you're streaming from an iPod.
I do and I do.
The quality of iTunes Plus is just fine and dandy for most people's needs. And audiophiles already use other things than iPods.
Not this one.
Possibly including something similar to a TOSLINK 3.5mm optical output (like many of their products) on every device, but with expanded capability to work with legitimate 7.2 channel recordings... or something of the sort. (Don't limit your mind to a TOSLINK optical cable - Apple could be bold enough to introduce their own). This way the audio would be sent digitally and also work to further industry recording standards. I would love to hear all of my songs recorded in a studio originally intended to record 7.x audio channels. This would impact the movie/game world substantially also.
I agree. But audiophiles will always think that can hear something that the human ear cannot detect; well at least the difference between one recording and the next.
It's the same people who think super expensive vodka is better than a $10 bottle.
Some folks hear better than others. Just like some see better than others too. The problem with most people, especially under 30, have never heard properly mastered music. Most of todays recordings are poorly done. It's all in the mastering, so you do not need a $7000 sound system or $500 headphones to be able to tell the difference.
Don't be so fast to diss accomplished people for having educated themselves far beyond their original field.
Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter is the prime example of this (even though I'm not a fan of the direction his brilliance has taken him.)
You are inferring that Neil Young has indeed educated himself so that he is now a qualified electrical engineer and that I therefore should give him credit for doing so.
AFAIK, he hasn't, so I don't feel I have to give him credit for something he hasn't done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
Most "remasters" just punch the volume up to such an extreme that you lose any variation in the sound quality.
Go buy a nice pair of closed ear Sennheiser 380 Pro: http://www.sennheiserusa.com/dj-prof...dphones_502717
You'll notice the difference
Totally agree. It's like if people argued that 256-color or 16-bit graphics are plenty either because they have bad monitors are can't be bothered with looking at 2 pictures side by side to see the difference themselves - apparently, the fact that you can't visually see the difference in higher quality audio somehow must mean it's not there? (Though technically if you played/re-digitized it you would see a difference in the waveform...)
A well-dithered 16-bit graphic will look good too - think CD. It doesn't mean that 'true color' (24 bit) won't look better - or ever higher bit depth / higher resolution. At some point you won't be able to tell the difference - 24/192 is pretty damned good and probably going higher won't make a difference for most people's systems. Storage is cheap, bandwidth just keeps improving, so why not get a good copy of the music or at least have the option?
This isn't an argument about whether cryogenically freezing your wall outlet will give you purer sound, it's quite demonstrable.
+1
So, I, too, would be interested in any double-blind listening tests that compare different digital formats. It's important that the tests be double-blind (i.e., not even the experimenter who is turning the knobs and pressing the buttons knows which audio format he is listening to).
+1
Anyone with a PC can conduct their very own double blind test of compressed vs uncompressed using a program called Foobar together with it's ABX module.
http://www.foobar2000.org/