High Fidelity: Decades of Decline
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Jbl4345fan
Active Member
Back down memory lane. Anyone remember these bands- parliament zeppelin earth wind & fire lynyrd skynyrd eagles . Well all of these band members were freaking talented. They played all of there instruments and played them well. The 80s came about and change happened. Devo rap and other artists used synthesizers that imitated the sound of a particular Instrument. The sound was not the same. I went from turntable to CD DVDs now back to turntable . I am not at all knocking devo or rap music I am talking about the real sound that all instruments produced .some how I can add this into the equations of the decline of the sound of hifi
darkblue94
The Devil made me do it.
No, that would be the decline of the music itself, nothing to do with the subject at hand which is to do with the quality of the reproduction of music via electronics and loudspeakers.
I don’t get the article. To me, there is nothing scientific about a guy taking his opinions and preferences and putting it on a graph. Just because he made a plot out of it doesn’t make it science.
To say that loudspeakers, for example, peaked at any given time is always going to come down to the listener’s preference. I have some great speakers from the 60’s and some great speakers from the 80’s. I can compare their individual strengths and weaknesses, specs, ect. But my preference at any given time depends on what I’m teying to get out of my listening experience. Quantifying something like this is impossible.
To say that loudspeakers, for example, peaked at any given time is always going to come down to the listener’s preference. I have some great speakers from the 60’s and some great speakers from the 80’s. I can compare their individual strengths and weaknesses, specs, ect. But my preference at any given time depends on what I’m teying to get out of my listening experience. Quantifying something like this is impossible.
Sure it's science. It's the latest and greatest science. Called "Internet science".
It's proven so good it's really taken over. It is much faster. Often it's done by polling opinion on the web.
Wiki needs to catch up and formalize this new reality.
EV3
DaveVoorhis
Addicted Member
It is a strange and unpleasant prejudice that derides one musical instrument, or one form of musical expression, over another. It is downright musically bigoted to suggest that some forms of musical expression represent a decline in sound. There are true artists who will argue -- and demonstrate -- that a synthesiser is every bit as subtle, expressive, and capable of conveying virtuosity as a guitar or violin; and rap is every bit as valid a form of musical expression as jazz, classical or rock.
Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that people unfairly pick the worst of an unliked instrument or genre to characterise that instrument or genre, rather than fairly picking the best.
Sounds to me like more of an opinion piece more than an objective analysis on the progress of hi fi through the decades.
The writer seems to be enamored of a certain sound produced by a certain line of loudspeakers from the distant past. Many like minded individuals around which is perfectly fine. But that is only an opinion held by specific segment within greater audio community.
The writer seems to be enamored of a certain sound produced by a certain line of loudspeakers from the distant past. Many like minded individuals around which is perfectly fine. But that is only an opinion held by specific segment within greater audio community.
Jbl4345fan
Active Member
Lol to down right use the word bigot and dont kenw nothing about the person who is simply expressing himself about the sound reproduction of an Instrument vs a synthesizer. That's is simply you're opinion.
That is why I listen with my ears not my mouth
sqlsavior
Lunatic Member
Exactly.
JoeESP9
ESL's & tubes since 83
Dynamic compression (Analog) is actually quite close to what you're saying.
Digital compression is a different thing. There are two kinds. Lossy and lossless. Lossy is exemplified in MP3 files which use an algorithm to determine audible and inaudible sounds and discard all those it determines to be inaudible. This is the major reason why MP3 files are so much smaller than FLAC or WAV files. Some of the music has been discarded. The smaller the file the more that's thrown away.
FLAC and WAV files are lossless. FLAC is a compressed format while WAV is not. Their difference is that FLAC files are compressed without throwing any music away. Consequently thay are more like zipped files because nothing is discarded. They use less storage space than WAV but more than MP3's because it uses non lossy compression. Both file types (FLAC, WAV) "decode" to be bit perfect with the original.
The original files on a CD are not WAV as many think. WAV is the file type Windows uses to store uncompressed audio files. That's why if you go to File Explorer and run a directory on a CD you see a bunch of zero byte files labeled CD-A.
While your description of dynamic compression is accurate, I believe you're pin-drop analogy is not. The reason that you wouldn't hear the pin drop during the kick drum is that the volume of the pin drop is so weak as compared to the kick drum that it is essentially "lost in the noise". To use another analogy, the audio signal coming from a tape player is going to contain "hiss", but when the music is playing (relatively loud), you don't hear the hiss because it's volume is too low relative to the music.
Lossless audio file compression doesn't remove that "noise", it essentially just looks at all the data and tries to figure out how it can minimize it (by finding duplication of data) . For example, let suppose there is a long break in a song where there is no sound, i.e., many consecutive samples = "0". File compression tool would look at that long string of "0" samples (say 100,000 samples) and say, well, I don't need 100,000 samples x 24 bits = 240,000 bits to represent that data, I can just put some instructions in the compressed file to say "after this current sample, there is a string of 100,000 samples = 0". Takes much less data to do that, but that "instruction" must be interpreted eventually when the data needs to be extracted. Thus the need for standardized data compression formats. There are much more complex techniques involved in identifying redundant data and compressing it, but you get the idea.
In the case of Lossy audio file compression, there is in fact some loss of the original sample data after it is compressed, so the audio quality is affected. The typical objective here is to make the file size as small as possible while not noticeably (for most people) affecting the audio quality. It's a tradeoff.
Sorry, just felt like rambling today.
DaveVoorhis
Addicted Member
Not necessarily -- only your ears can decide. For most, 128kbps -- aka "low bitrate" -- or lower MP3s are audibly degraded compared to the original audio, but once you get to around 320kbps, many listeners can't distinguish them from lossless audio.
Try this: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
DaveVoorhis
Addicted Member
JoeESP9
ESL's & tubes since 83
I avoid MP3 files. However, IME 320kbps MP3's are sometimes very difficult to discern from uncompressed. OTOH, with storage space so cheap I can't find any compelling reason to use MP files. If your player of choice only does MP3 I recommend using 320kbps for the best audio quality.
AFAIK YouTube video's use some form of lossy compression.
FWIW: I added a 64gb micro SD card to my cell phone. My portable music player (AGPTek Rocker 2) has a 256gb card. That's enough space for 10,000+ files in FLAC format. I don't need to carry more than that around with me.
MP4
DaveVoorhis
Addicted Member
MP4 is the format of the container, not the content. When MP4 is the container, the audio content format is AAC.
It's like archiving a Word document in a ZIP file. The ZIP file is the container; the Word document (usually .DOC or .DOCX format) is the content.
You can have your cake and eat it too.
There is a difference between using a smart phone as source or as remote control. I select content from my digital library that resides on a network accessible server containing some MP3, mostly CD rips and many dozens of 24 bit high resolution files using an iPad, iPhone or even Apple Watch,
The music server drives high quality renderers and external DACs using discrete FETs - no op amps in the signal path.
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