Where my Au20 gold discs at, fuggah?!

I've come to the conclusion (it was not hard to come to) that I am an audiophile.

Quoth wikipedia: "An audiophile, from Latin audire "to hear" and Greek philos 'loving,' can be generally defined as a person dedicated to achieving high fidelity in the recording and playback of music."

To be clear (for clarity is prized), I have a greater appreciation for music that sounds as close to the original source material as possible.

Human ears are a highly sensitive stereo system.

Quoth some random university's website:"A reasonably standard definition of audible sound is that it is a pressure wave with frequency between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz and with an intensity above the standard threshold of hearing."

I'm not sure whether that refers to the perceived loudness, or the actual frequency at which the waves wobble (the difference being that higher frequency wobbling means a more "treble" oriented sound, while a lower frequency wobbling means a more "bass" oriented sound... Pretty much anyone who listens to music with more than a passing interest knows this stuff).

The important thing to take from what I'm saying is that an audio recording which has higher or lower frequencies cut out or misrepresented, will sound less like it did when it was actually being played by instruments. This kind of thing can be detected because anything that would normally fall within a certain range of frequencies, normally detectable to the human ear which is heard in a recording with misrepresented frequencies is going to sound thinner, tinnier, muffled, or muddy (these are words that smart people actually use to describe sound).

Now, an audiophile, being concerned with hi-fi recordings is going to want to hear a recording that can represent the entire range of frequencies that were originally being produced by say, a four piece band. This doesn't sound like it should be that hard. If you're like me, you listen to CDs and mp3s all the time thinking "this is pretty darn great." If you're also like me, though, you can certainly tell when someone's sent you a shitty-quality mp3, with a subpar bitrate (128 is considered normal... but is it?), and a lower frequency than your device or file was meant to be heard at.

Here's the problem: CDs as we know them are not normally capable of representing the full range of frequencies, and a vile thing known as "compression" has caused many a recording's range of frequencies to be "compressed" by shaving off the higher and lower frequencies (which admittedly, does not usually result in unsatisfactory listening) with two purposes: to fit audio onto a CD, and to decrease dynamic range to avoid clipping.

Why compress?

Quoth wikipedia (again): "The trade-off of slightly reduced audio quality is clearly outweighed for most practical audio applications where users cannot perceive any difference and space requirements are substantially reduced. For example, on one CD, one can fit an hour of high fidelity music, less than 2 hours of music compressed losslessly, or 7 hours of music compressed in MP3 format."

For the sake of useful redundancy: The standard CD can hold only 800MB (at best). This means that in some cases, a lossless recording of an album won't fit. This doesn't apply to the usual pop-album, which contains between thirty and fifty minutes of material (a rip-off considering the potential 80 minutes of writeable surface). Other albums, though, that take full advantage of the CD space, require compression*. However, the result is something unnatural. The result does not actually sound the way the recording sounded before it was recorded.

Over the years, mastering engineers and producers have figured out how to use compression to reasonable effect without causing noticeable losses to quality, through the use of computer algorithms which encode a lossless recording (typically a .wav format) into a coded lossy format like mp3, or even a lower quality wav.

Now, there's a whole other kind of compression which causes even more trouble. I mentioned that compression is used to modify the frequencies of a sound. Frequently, in remasters of releases that were originally vynil releases, loudness is an issue. We have grown accustomed to a certain level of loudness, which is much louder than what was common during the age of vynil. The process of digitally compressing say, a drum track allows for the drums to seem louder, without having an amplitude that would cause clipping. Clipping is what happens when audio becomes so loud as to be distorted. Compression avoids clipping, but at the cost of dynamic range - which means that the difference in volume between the sounds in a recording is smaller. The result of using too much compression for this purpose is that the brain has more trouble distinguishing between sounds, and some frequencies end up being lost in the mix - so you don't hear everything that was recorded.

So, for audiophiles (who tend not to enjoy pop albums anyway), we encounter problems when we listen to modern CDs that have compression (and for some, all CDs), and when we listen to CDs that were mastered before engineers had quite figured out how to do it best.

The solution? vynil.

The gramaphone or phonograph record is the solution. Somehow, through the miracle of analogue recordingsound wave is etched into the vynil disc. We see this in the form of the groove, which we put the needle into. If we could zoom in super-close, we'd see a wiggly sound wave (they look like this!). The groove, though tiny, can represent the full dynamic range of frequencies in the actual sound to the recording. So, why don't we always listen to vynil? After all, the capacity of vynil is actually limited to the amount of space on the disc. The spiral can only go around so many times before you run out of room. How much room does a record have? About 45 minutes in total. How many minutes is the average pop-album? About 45 minutes. the quality of the original recording is maintained. Here's how: when records are pressed, the actual

Well, vynil is fragile. It can warp, deteriorate and scratch. Worst of all, if anything manages to make the tiniest dent in the groove, then the sound wave at that point is permanently affected by whatever has happened to it. A piece of dust can get in the groove, and you get a pop or a click. Any thing that the needle of your record touches will be picked up by the amplifier. Any abnormal bend in the sound wave is going to be heard, and there's nothing you can do to fix it. Not to mention the fact that flipping the damn thing over is a bit of a chore...

That said, I think we need a bit of an example to show how vynil is/can be superior. In the early days of the CD, audio compression was a new and complicated thing. For one thing, computers were ASS. We're talking early/mid 80s, here. Tech-savvy artists were trying to convert their standard vynil releases to the new and exciting CD medium, which was smaller, didn't scratch as easily (no clicks or pops!) and you didn't even have to flip it over.

One such artist was Frank Zappa. Zappa fans (who are almost exclusively audiophiles for some reason), know that there were several albums that ended up getting mixed very badly for the CD reissue of their vynil favourites. Specifically, Shiek Yerbouti, Tinseltown Rebellion, and You Are What You Is. The masters for these albums were revisited and compressed for the CD releases. The result was horrible. The worst offender was You Are What You Is, which had so many problems that a guitar solo ended up being cut out, there were random volume spikes, and other issues that could cause average listeners headaches.

Later on, the album was re-remastered using the original master tapes, and everything was fine again... but in the end, the real audiophiles all went back and searched out the vinyl.

Unfortunately, audiophiles (and shitty DJs and hipsters) seem to be the only people keeping the vynil industry alive. Very few artists release their albums on vynil these days (more on this later). What alternative is there to vynil for those of us who don't want to send our valuable energy off into the entropic void by flipping the record over?

Solution: Lossless audio codecs.

Like I said before, there are lossless digital formats, like PCM (.wav). For computer users, if they have the capabilities, it is possible to rip lossless recordings from CDs (if those CDs are lossless themselves, otherwise, you're just encoding a lossy file without any further loss). Furthermore, if you don't mind having cables all over your floor, you can run a vynil turntable through your line-in (basically an all-purpose input) port in the back of your soundcard. Using audio programs, you can record the entire album in a lossless format.

But, what do we do about compressed CDs when vynil isn't available? Well, there's a bit of a movement going on that could be of some help.

With the dawn of the digital release, music artists are able to distribute the high-quality media files directly to you. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has partially pioneered this method of album release, letting his listeners download 320kbps mp3s (that's better than CDs), FLAC (almost lossless, but not quite), and wav (all lossless).

Not to mention the fact that SACDs, DVD-A, and Blu Rays have the kind of space you'd need to not only present the highest quality stereo version (which is the normal way to hear things with your ears), but also in surround sound! Yes, surround sound! the ridiculously unnecessary audio experience that lets you hear the music from anywhere between 3 and in some cases 10 (but usually 5.1) different locations. If you've got it set up right, it's supposed to sound like you're there with the band. I'm a fan of surround, but the lengths to which I will go to hear the band as if I was there are limited.

Anyway, with the increasing capacity of portable music devices, and the fact that you CAN burn lossless audio to CDs, even if the commercial CD release wasn't released in a lossless format, it seems that there will be (and are) audiophiles wandering around listening to hi-fi recordings on mp3 players.

However, in my view, vynil will always be the best choice.

*this is worded a bit incorrectly. It's not the case that 80 minutes of music is available to be written, but based on standard wav encoding and filesizes, 80 minutes is the standard for a lossless PCM format.

No Label, No Problem

This is old news, but here it is for posterity. 

Originally published in MacMedia Magazine

No doubt many of you have heard about Radiohead releasing their new album In Rainbows online as a digital mp3 download for whatever price you thought it was worth. To many this seemed to be a marvellous step forward in combating both tyrannical labels and music piracy – simultaneously catering to the age of digital music distribution. Of course, little did anybody know that the band had secretly planned to release the album later through a major label on CD (presumably for the usual high price determined by that label). What appeared to be an honest ‘eff you’ to the system, turned out to be a marketing ploy, and perhaps even a case of cheating fans out their money (some poor people paid hundreds of dollars as a sign of support).

Then, Trent Reznor (you know, that NIN guy) and up-and-coming spoken word/hip-hop artist Saul Williams did the real deal. They released their (amazing) collaborative album for free with higher quality than Radiohead’s downloads, no strings attached, and giving the option to pay 5 dollars in support of the artists. I think there are two main reasons why artists have turned to self-distribution in a digital format.

The first reason is probably somewhere near you right now: your mp3player or iPod (I’ll just call them all iPods from here on, for convenience’s sake). It is clear to me that we have reached a stage at which it is impossible to live without digital music. Since Napster, we’ve been using our computers as jukeboxes, and with Apple’s help, we can carry those jukeboxes around. However, a large problem was created by these technologies: piracy. Sure, we had the mix-tape problem in the 80s, but once it came to CDs and the Internet, the sheer scale of the problem made the blank-tape tax seem like a drop in the bucket. Now that the damage is nigh irreversible, it’s only logical that the fumbling record labels would join us after failing to beat us.

In this age of the mp3, we face a burgeoning frontier of music marketing. The labels want to keep you from stealing music so they can make huge bucks, and the artists want to get heard by as many people as possible without losing money. After recognizing that money could still be made on the Internet, the labels and Apple got together and formed the iTunes Store as a way of allowing the music industry (mostly the Recording Industry Association of America or RIAA) to make you pay for songs that you would otherwise have acquired illegally. Of course, this helps the labels more than it helps the artists. A much larger percentage of the money you spend with iTunes is going to the label, than to the artist (more than is usual, I’d guess, though I couldn’t say specifically how much).

The reason is this: you are not paying for the music; you are paying the label for the ability to hear the music (note that due to copy-protection, many songs are subject to harsh limitations, in terms of sharing and backups). Were you to pirate it instead, you could be sued by that label for sums well outside of your price range– regardless of whether you were someone’s dead granny, or someone’s nine-year-old grandson.

Obviously, some artists are not pleased with the way this system works. Allegedly the Zappa Family Trust had all of Frank Zappa’s material removed from the iTunes store. The action certainly follows from a quote by Frank Zappa himself: 

“The manner in which [people] ‘consume’ music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie– it’s consumed that way without any regard for how and why it was made.”

I’d venture to say that many artists feel this way. The pop-single mentality, which seems not only to be supported, but also endorsed by iTunes, is the kind of mentality that completely disregards the artistic process, and the effort that goes into making a cohesive album. So, if we are to continue living in an age of digital music distribution, and we want to support the artist, it seems that perhaps we need a better business model than what we have right now.

The second reason for self-distribution follows from that poor model. Artists would love to be heard, and by many, many people. Obviously, they can’t very well distribute their physical albums to the entire world efficiently. They must pay a label to distribute it, allowing the label to set a price (in some cases, unnecessarily high), and further delay their albums without good reason in order to somehow satisfy their label’s wishes. The Internet provides the kind of global market they want, without the money-grubbing middlemen. However, the digital age poses the problem of losing the physical aspect of the album, including the artwork, the lyrics, and obviously the disc itself. However, if the music is all that’s important, maybe people like Trent Reznor and Saul Williams can still get by. Without releasing their album through iTunes, and without going through middlemen, they have released an album with lossless quality, for as much money as an overpriced cup of coffee, or alternatively, for free! Such a low price potentially allows that the casual music pirate might actually consider paying for the album, as a sign of support for the artist. Certainly this is the best way we have to support the artist, and only the artist, in return for giving us some great music.

That said, I do have problems with the self-distributed model. For one thing, I like having the physical album. Here’s a little fact for you: the blank CD-Rs that are sold to us are missing something crucial. Whereas on commercial CDs, there is a lacquer finish over the burned music, increasing both the duration of its fidelity and its durability, blank CD-Rs do not have this lacquer finish, which significantly decreases both. This means, that if I don’t have an iPod, and I want to listen to digitally distributed album in my eight-year-old discman, then I’ll have less chance of maintaining the quality of that recording. I also like having the artwork, and the little booklet with all the lyrics in it. Sure, they can give me a .jpeg or a .pdf file with all of that stuff and more, but there’s something to be said for having an album and its artwork; appreciating it in the context it was made for.

In order to reconcile the physical album with the digital age, I propose a method that I’ve borrowed from Rob Sheridan (artwork designer for Nine Inch Nails). Basically, if we want to support the artists who aren’t ready or able to innovate to the level that Radiohead pretended, or that Saul Williams succeeded, without supporting the greediness of the RIAA, we should simply not buy CDs released by labels under the RIAA. Sure, you’ll be deprived of some good music, but maybe they’ll learn a lesson if enough people try, and maybe, just maybe, the labels and the artists can cooperate in creating a marketable system, that will benefit both the label, the artist, and most of all, the consumer of the digital age.

Addendum: For the record, I did buy the physical release of In Rainbows, and it was worth it. Saul Williams’ Niggy Tardust saw a physical release with added tracks, which made me feel somewhat betrayed, having written this big honking article about how revolutionary the method was. That said, I will buy it. The importance of the physical album is too great to hold grudges about the 5 bucks I spent. That said, I also coughed up five bucks and fourteen more bucks for both the digital and physical versions of Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts (but there were no secrets about that physical release). To some extent, my desire for the physical album far outweighs any impulse to hear the music as soon as possible, and wherever I am.

Furthermore, at the risk of revealing myself as a hypocrite, I ended up getting an iPod (and later, an iPhone!). It has many flaws (iTunes is crap software - especially on  a PC). That said, it makes for good listening when it comes to albums I’ve downloaded because they’re out of print or unavailable… or simply not bought yet. I still carry a box of CDs with me everywhere I go, for stationary listening.