Every time I see a story about audiophiles today it makes me mad and depressed, because I like popular music. And I like to expand my collection with good new music.
But that pursuit is dead now for anyone who loves music or high-quality sound, because the record labels have utterly destroyed all new music with dynamic compression since the late '90s. Even worse, they've busily ruined their back catalogs with "remastering."
Now we have a generation of people who have never heard how good music can and should sound. The "loudness war" is so monumentally stupid that it must stand as one of the greatest crimes against art of all time. It's so insidious that even some of the musicians complaining about sound quality now have failed to recognize that the real problem is NOT data compression or sampling rate.
Apple and Spotify, as gatekeepers to hugely popular music services, are the only sort of entity that has any hope of "fixing" this problem by setting dynamic-range requirements, the way Netflix sets technical requirements. But while dynamic-range measurements (specifically LUFS) have gained adoption, Apple has instead brought us the degrading gimmick of Atmos.
But that pursuit is dead now for anyone who loves music or high-quality sound, because the record labels have utterly destroyed all new music with dynamic compression since the late '90s. Even worse, they've busily ruined their back catalogs with "remastering."
Now we have a generation of people who have never heard how good music can and should sound. The "loudness war" is so monumentally stupid that it must stand as one of the greatest crimes against art of all time. It's so insidious that even some of the musicians complaining about sound quality now have failed to recognize that the real problem is NOT data compression or sampling rate.
Apple and Spotify, as gatekeepers to hugely popular music services, are the only sort of entity that has any hope of "fixing" this problem by setting dynamic-range requirements, the way Netflix sets technical requirements. But while dynamic-range measurements (specifically LUFS) have gained adoption, Apple has instead brought us the degrading gimmick of Atmos.
It's really depressing for music lovers.