Quoting the NY Times article:
"In fact, among younger listeners, the
lower-quality sound might actually be preferred.
Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at
Stanford, said he had conducted an informal study
among his students and found that, over the
roughly seven years of the study, an increasing
number of them preferred the sound of files with
less data over the high-fidelity recordings. "

I read about Mr. Bergers' study. As I remember,
the study was a quiz given to students entering
his class for the first time. When the students
were queried about their preference for the
compressed versions, the typical response was:
"that was what they were used to hearing".

In the early 80's, as the audio CD was gaining
popularity, Rupert Neve was quoted as saying that
he feared an entire generation of people would
grow up not knowing what an acoustic instrument actually sounded like.

Cheers!

Corey
Corey Bailey Audio Engineering

At 06:44 AM 5/10/2010, you wrote:
>I received this note about NYT article on
>listening. Maybe some of you have seen it.
>-Randal Baier
>
>
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/business/media/10audio.html?hp
>
>"I think our human ears are fickle. What’s
>considered good or bad sound changes over
>time,” Mr. Berger said. “Abnormality can become a feature.”
>
>If you need a password, go to bugmenot.com