Researcher John Meyer has devised an objective index demonstrating that mp3s offer far lower fidelity than either vinyl LPs or standard CDs. And yet this eight-year study at Stanford University shows that prolonged exposure to mp3s leads young listeners to prefer the format. No wonder record producers are despairing.
posted by Paul Slade on Sep 22, 2009 - 98 comments

Regina Spektor is a Russian-born American singer-songwriter and pianist associated with the anti-folk scene centered on New York City's East Village. Incorporating "piano riffs and integrating moans, nonsense words, groans, gurglings, or warblings," Spektor has a pretty unique voice (Seattle P-I: "an instrument with the agility of an athlete and the flexibility of a yogi") and style which incorporates "beatbox-style flourishes in the middle of ballads, or the use of a drum stick to tap rhythms on the body of the piano or chair" (wiki). She's got a pretty unique voice and "Fidelity" is a very unusual and rather enjoyable music video. Someone to keep an eye on (although Mefites already had been doing so).
posted by WCityMike on Jun 9, 2007 - 68 comments

Where did dynamic range go? Compact discs seem to keep getting more and more compressed in an effort to make them seem louder. Didn't the compact disc promise greater dynamic range than vinyl? Then, some record label exec comes along and makes the recording so hot we lose the dynamic range. People have been complaining about this for some time. Papers have been written about it with proposed solutions. Where will it end?
posted by caddis on Jul 21, 2004 - 38 comments