Hi Steve:
THANKS for posting this link. I totally agree with Bob Ludwig that listener fatigue from this
toothpasted garbage is a factor in declining music sales. This "make it louder" is a plague. You'd
think that the higher-ups at the record companies would realize by now that their tin-eared
underlings who lean on mastering engineers are WRONG and this stuff sounds TERRIBLE both in earbuds
and especially over highly-process FM radio (see Bob Orban's white paper on why toothpaste-mastered
material then processed by an Orban unit results in unlistenable garbage).
The discussion of MP3 lossy encoding is interesting, too. The U-MN guy is just wrong about lossy
being "indistinguishable," even at bitrates like 320kbps. I would submit that ANYONE with good
hearing and decent playback equipment will be able to reliably tell the difference between un-lossy
source and MP3 lossy encoding.
All in all, these technologies (digital toothpasting and a profusion of lossy formats) have been a
plague on recorded music. Fidelity does matter with almost all forms of music. It's an insult to the
artists to consume their work in a junk format when a full-fidelity format is readily available.
Of course many other factors have led to the implosion of the music business, but I strongly believe
that the degradation of typical fidelity available to the consumer has helped the process along.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Ramm" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010 12:37 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] The Loudness Wars - NPR story
> Thought others would enjoy hearing/reading.
>
> _http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122114058&sc=nl&cc=mn-
> 20100102_
> (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122114058&sc=nl&cc=mn-20100102)
>
> Steve Ramm
>
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