A new survey of online music aficianados

July 21, 2000 12:46 PM

A new survey of online music aficianados supports claims that the Napster crowd has been making for months: MP3-swappers are more likely to purchase music after listening to it for free.
posted by harmful (3 comments total)

Its true. Mp3 audio, despite so many false claims, is NOT nearly as good quality as CD audio. Really not even that close. There's also a sense of a journey when you first buy an album. You spend the first listen thru, looking at the inner booklet, reading the lyrics, the thank yous, browsing their homepage etc. I have 3+ GB of mp3s. However, I still buy a CD a week, on average.
posted by Satapher at 1:11 PM on July 21, 2000

Hmmm...

I've spent considerable time working with both 44K uncompressed audio ripped from CD's, and the MP3 compression of same, 44K, 128-160KBs.

I've been a sound guy of one sort or another for at least 15 years.

I'd say you won't hear the difference unless you have about a $400 sound card, and 2 grand or more worth of amp and speakers to back it up. And I say this having evaluated everything from solo piano and acoustic guitar -- good for spotting one category of artifacts -- to "Don't Pay the Ferryman", half a dozen big band tracks, and Chicago -- all of which would be prone to tickle the *other* reportedly observable category of artifacts.

I just don't hear it. And I'm *incredibly* picky.
posted by baylink at 9:08 PM on July 21, 2000

Sure if you're going to play a CD on the computer vs. an mp3 it will be very hard to tell the difference, especially since components such as the CD drive are not optimized for audio. And it is still easy to spot the mp3 when playing orchestral recordings.

What about the difference between vinyl and mp3? I'm still not satisfied with the sound quality of CD's and am still looking forward to a higher quality format such as DVD-audio or SACD.
posted by gyc at 11:48 PM on July 21, 2000