Nieuws

Neil Young is right: Those songs on your iPhone do sound like crap, and it’s time we demand better-sounding alternatives for our digital music.

Speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference Tuesday, the outspoken musician expressed his deep dissatisfaction with the MP3 format and called for an end-to-end reboot of the consumer digital audio ecosystem, from file formats to playback devices.

Young’s big beef: Digital music files download quickly, but suffer a significant loss in quality. Bitrates for most tracks on iTunes average 256kbps AAC audio encoding, which is drastically inferior to the quality of recorded source material in almost every case. By Young’s estimation, CDs offer only 15 percent of the recording information contained on the master tracks. Convert that CD-quality audio to MP3 or AAC, and you’ve lost a great deal of richness and complexity.

“My goal is to try and rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years,” Young said. “We live in the digital age, and unfortunately it’s degrading our music, not improving.”

Schokkend om te lezen:

available in our highest quality 256 kbps AAC audio encoding (twice the audio quality of protected music purchases)

De hoogste kwaliteit die Apple levert is slechts 256kbps! Dan kunnen wij ons voorstellen dat muzikanten protest aantekenen tegen de kwaliteit van downloads en helemaal als je leest dat de ‘beschermde muziekaankopen’ in de nog veel lagere kwaliteit van 128kbps geleverd worden.

Die kwaliteit is nauwelijks voldoende voor spraak, laat staan voor muziek!

Bron: Rowe Productions