Re: [ARSCLIST] Lossy compression losing quality (was Re: [ARSCLIST] Pristine Audio and the Milllennials . . .)

[Matt Sohn <mahatma57@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> And I still wonder whether one, particularly I, can tell the difference.
>
> Howard

Hi Howard,
I have 13,000 songs on my iPod, all ripped in AAC at 128kBs. They sound just 
fine to me, and the convenience of having that vast library at my fingertips 
is worth any percieved loss in quality, as I do most of my iPod listening in 
the car.
On the other hand, when I do my archiving work, I transfer at 24/44.1, 
ultimately delivering 16bit CDRs and 24/44.1 BWF files on DVD and/or hard 
drives. The reason for this is to preserve the highest fidelity from the 
original analog source. The ultimate destination for the material may be 
CDRs or mp3s or whatever, but the idea is to have a high quality digital 
preservation master to go back to if necessary.
When I take off my preservationist hat and put on my record collector hat, I 
find my priorities change somewhat. One of my favorite things to do is to 
clean a record on my Keith Monks record cleaner, and and listen to it while 
I record it into my computer. One of my least favorite things to do is to go 
back to those records on the hard drive and edit and name all of the tracks 
on the records, top and tail them, run them through some scratch removal 
software, normalize them and convert them into mp3s (with tags), so I end up 
with lots of whole albums, as 1 big wav file, sitting on the drive that I 
can't access as quickly or easily as my CDs in iTunes.  I plan to eventually 
do these things of course, but for now, it's comforting to know I have 
copies of the records in a semi-secure location. If the drive dies, I still 
have the records, already cleaned, to go back to, and I don't have to play 
them again unless I want to.
When I started listening to recorded music, it was on a transistor AM radio, 
and then a Sony AM/FM clock-radio. My first record player was a Califone 
(the kind you used to see in the classroom, with the button you push down to 
stop the record). When I got a Sansui reciever and some Bose speakers after 
high school, I thought that was the bees knees!
That was around the time I started taking better care of my records.
In all of those scenarios, I loved the music I heard. A great song is a 
great song, whether it's on an SACD or an AM radio. Nowadays, it seems one 
can buy into this music thing at varying levels of quality. Most are 
perfectly happy with fair-to-good mp3 encoding for most scenarios, but then 
there those who percieve higher quality, and crave it.
I say if it sounds good to you, it is good. If you are transferring stuff 
for your own enjoyment, transfer it at the highest quality that makes sense 
for your scenario. If you are doing stuff that is unique, or particularly 
rare, give a thought to higher sampling rates for a preservation copy.
As you noted, the wav file for any given piece of audio is going to be about 
10 times bigger than a 128k mp3, so if you want lots of stuff in a small 
space, mp3 makes sense. When I got my first (30 gig) iPod, I filled it up 
with wav files, and had about 700 songs. Then I converted all ot the wavs to 
mp3s and got about 6000 songs. That's a lot more songs!
On my computer, I have many removable drives, and I can add more as I need 
them at relatively low cost, so I see no need to compress the audio I store 
on them. Unfortunately, hard drives are not the safest place to store data 
over time, and with ever-increasing drive size, we have the potential for 
bigger crashes. I think the average consumer doesn't worry about the 
longevity of the drive holding all those family photos, and videos of the 
wedding or whatever.
When I'm working on a project, I have multiple copies of everything saved on 
multiple removable drives, and after a while, that storage space really 
starts to add up. For my own stuff, it's worth 4-500 to be able to store a 
terrabyte of audio, but another 4-500 for a backup drive.. gives me pause. 
The main thing though is that I have all of that stuff *somewhere else* if I 
need to go back to it. I had all my records in a storage locker for 5 years, 
and couldn't play one of them if I wanted to (which was frequently, and very 
frustrating). Eventually, I will be able to carry them around with me in my 
pocket. Wow! What is more valuable to me?
I wonder about my niece and nephew (ages 7-8). With the boundless choices 
that now exist, what are they going to choose to listen to (when they are 
given a choice)? Right now they are hooked on American Idol, and love to 
listen to the performers they know from there. Their father plays the 
guitar, and they both seem to display some interest in it, so I'm giving 
them both mini stratocasters for christmas, so hopefully they can learn 
about making their own music.

Sorry to ramble so..
-Matt Sohn