# The Typical Monday Bullshit... - Site: Analog Industries - Author: Chris Randall - Date: 2010-05-10 - URL: https://analogindustries.com/2010/05/the-typical-monday-bullshit/ In no particular order: 1\. The New York Times has revealed the [blindingly obvious.](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/business/media/10audio.html?src=tptw) Their two key points: first, consumers will merrily trade quality for convenience, and second, the average listener wouldn't know good sound if it hit them in the head with an arm-length piece of two-by-four. To the first point I say "dear NYT: have you noticed all those Wal-Marts in the flyover states?" To the second, I say "fuckin' duh." 2\. Discord 3 is inching closer to completion. We've got a fully working Windows build that is lacking only the eye candy and the MIDI features. I expect we will be in full beta by the end of the week at the latest. Although, what I expect hasn't yet met what I fear, which is 64-bit Apple builds. 3\. I promise I won't mention the iPad once this week, unless something major happens. Or I gaze upon it lovingly too much, thus giving the Apple Mind Control Apparatus (AMCA) time to do its evil work. ## Comments (10) **rumpelfilter** (2010-05-10): I agree. We know all this by now. And the industry has proven over and over again (not only the music industry). What happened to music will happen to books and eventually to life and then we'll probably all die killed by the cylons. **BirdFLU** (2010-05-10): From the article: "Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford, said he had conducted an informal study among his students and found that, over the roughly seven years of the study, an increasing number of them preferred the sound of files with less data over the high-fidelity recordings." Wow. Can that really be true? Could AM radio be poised for a comeback then? **shamann** (2010-05-10): 1) Some arts editor at the NYT has a real hard-on for audiophilia, as they publish something on the evil MP3 roughly every six months or so. By my estimation, MP3s sound better than AM/FM radio and cassettes, which is how I listened to music for a major portion of my youth. Yet, the Times always frames this low fidelity thing as a recent issue in music listenership. And that, after having done extensive A/B'ing with my own material for years now, the differences between a properly encoded MP3 and non-lossy format aren't all that important under most circumstances. 2) D3 is the proverbial bomb. 3) I can't justify buying an iPad, as any need it might serve for me is already well-served, so I wish someone else might buy one for me. I doubt I could convince my boss to do so, though. Pity. **elxicano** (2010-05-10): I really doubt the article was aimed at any of us... yes, "duh," would be the appropriate response if it was, but I don't see that. Yes there are many articles about audio fidelity and mp3's and portability and, so on and so on, but information like this is still a surprising thing for a shit load of people. Really... I'm not even joking. I think it's a relevant article considering the increased availability of music in different formats, and the increase in demand for music in either Aiff or Wav or lossless formats, which is coming at a time that downloading more and faster is possible AND coming at a time that Hard Disk space is becoming so much cheaper. I personally think it's great that the NYT is pushing the audio fidelity issue so hopefully there'll be a few more converts here and there. After all, as the technology changes, there's going to be fewer reasons to listen to crappy but convenient mp3's. **chaircrusher** (2010-05-10): 1. Sorry if this has already been covered, but if I buy Discord 2 now, do I get Discord 3 as an update or an upgrade? 2. I wonder how many people could reliably pick out the difference between 320K MP3s and 24bit/44.1khz uncompressed audio in a double blind test. This lossy vs lossless argument becomes even more absurd in the context of dance music, where people claim Vinyl>CD>MP3 when played on a club system. I submit that blaring music at 130dB even on the best PA obscures more detail than it reveals. 3. iPad schmiPad. **Chris Randall** (2010-05-10): Regarding 1: you get Discord 3 as an update when you pay the $10 just like everyone else. ;-) Discord 3 is a paid upgrade, not a free update. The general price is going up to $59, and all owners of previous Discord licenses pony up $10 for the difference. -CR **Jaysen** (2010-05-10): There's a youtube video up with the upcoming akai music app on an iPad- which aside from most demos- is actually a good one. This alone would be a reason i would purchase an iPad. **Jinsai** (2010-05-10): Kids prefer the artifacts of MP3s for the same reason the graybeards prefer the artifacts of vinyl sounds. When you grow up listening to music with that coloration, stuff that has that coloration "sounds like music" more than stuff that doesn't have it. I'll take MP3 over cassette any day. At this point, device storage is large enough that people can choose to rip to WAV if they want and still carry a ton of content. Internet services offer sub-WAV quality because a) the labels won't let us offer full-def and b) the users don't want to wait forever for stuff to download and c) users want to fit more on their portable devices. Eventually (5 more years?) we'll all have the opportunity to download/listen to the 24-bit/88.4 masters (or whatever bit/sample rate is considered "pro") directly. **bleepbloop** (2010-05-10): monorail! **Michael Moncur** (2010-05-10): I think sound quality has gone up, relatively, since I was a kid. I started with scratchy LPs* and hissy cassettes and staticy FM radio. A 128K MP3 beats all of those to me, although I prefer to use higher bitrates. Heck, the Youtube app on my iPhone has better quality than most of those. Sure, there were a few years when well-mastered CDs sounded better, but I still had cassettes and FM in my car where I did most of my listening. * Vinyl snobs: Yeah, LPs could sound way better than FM or cassettes. But when you're a teenager in 1985 with a $50 record player, they sound like crap.