|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
71.225.119.213
In Reply to: Beg to differ posted by Gregg on August 1, 2006 at 10:55:55:
Bad overcompressed drivetime FM slop has driven the masses to worse ultracompressed digital dreck. But there's MORE of it. And people will always take quantity over quality. Yeah, it's "radio", just like a Big Mac is "beef". At least that's how it is here in the U.S.It's been so long now, that most folks just don't remember anymore how glorious uncompressed FM was in its heyday. Like being there live.
Going to the original poster's problem, it sounds like a codec choking on either excessive compression or error rates, or perhaps buffering issues from connection problems. Ahhhh . . . perfect digital audio.
Follow Ups:
The masses listen to either the beat of music, the words, but not the musical quality of the content. Slam dunk that with low quality transistor audio electronics in most mass marketed consumer electronics. Thus XM radio makes sense to the masses & especially so in an automobile with busy schedules, traffic jams, etc.
I disagree about not listening to the words for XM broadcasts...see my post above, the whole reason for getting it was to have music where I would WANT to hear and with some actual variety. It's not about a background beat; if that's all it was FM would be fine & it's free. Rather it's just to get to hear something new and to taste what's out there, besides the extremely limited formats with 50-song playlists that the large majority of FM stations use. Where else can you hear new bands, in quantity? If you're on a college campus it's not too difficult by word of mouth, but otherwise it's tough. FM sure doesn't have it.
Most musicians & audiophiles will value quality playback. The masses will not care much. Many simply like loud as they never heard quality, thus do not know quality sound at all or just do not care beyond loud.Our oldest daughter is prime example. Very intelligent, honor student, college grad, etc. She never had a comment on my high-end tube stereo vs say a large getto blaster or a $150 'Walmart' system with large, but junk speakers. I also have not asked her any questions about my system either.
The other three kids report a jaw dropping experience & two of those three are musicians plus they ask questions like crazy.
I believe my posts are accurate. My posts do not include everyone.
Yeah, a lot of people are obsessed with the beat, that is true. All you have to do is look at how popular rap and hip-hop are, that shows it right there.I wonder though how different this really is. (Please understand, NOT trying to pick an online fight...just wondering "out loud"). I see the clips of the Beatles performing in their early years and the crowds of girls screaming and almost passing out over songs like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", which was about at the intelligence level of a 6th grader, if that. I also saw the Dead a few times and beleive me, most of the fans were not coherent. Were those fans truly into the music, or just the drugs? If you took the drugs away, how many fans would there have been? If the Beatles had been ugly but otherwise released the same songs, how many records would they have sold? How much of it was really about the music, and how much something else?
I wonder if things have truly changed that much, or if we just had good popular music 35 years ago due to pure serendipity.
Things HAVE changed. It isn't about the intellectuality of the lyrics, or the coherency of the audience. Its about the fidelity of the medium and the variety of the programming. The modern market is so much more segmented, due to cable TV and the internet. 50 million people won't be watching Ed Sullivan anymore. The way that the industries chose to reach all those segments on such limited bandwidth is to distribute material digitally, and the crude state of digital playback over the last 20 years limted fidelity. What we fear is that now that listeners have grown accustomed to such low fidelity (mp3), will they ever value better fidelity again?
.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: