Five Steps

Here are five steps to widening your horizons in the digital music world:

1) Convert your CDs to digital music files.

Well, sure, I'd say that. I want you to buy my service.

Here's the hook: digital music is as much a quantum leap over CDs as discs were over LPs. CDs introduced pristine clarity and random access. Digitizing adds convenience and gargantuan capacity. Holding hundreds of albums and thousands of songs in your hand affords you the chance to readily revisit forgotten favorites and to indulge any musical whim or mood anywhere, instantly.

(As an aside, some people are concerned with fidelity loss when converting to digital. If you share this concern, have a look at the sidebar to the right, which explores both sides of the story.)

2) Master your iPod and iTunes.

They work for you.

There are other players and music management programs, but you'll want these. They're the best. If you are just starting out, get a manual. A good one is 'iPod: The Forgotten Manual' by J.D. Biersdorfer and David Pogue. By understanding a few iPod basics and iTunes settings, mental light bulbs will come on. You'll see the possibilities and want to explore.

3) Subscribe to a streaming music service.

This is the best music exploration tool available.

For the price of about one CD per month, you can listen to any of millions of songs, all the way through, on demand, without limit. Many music industry seers view these services as the future. The hurdle to widespread acceptance is the debate over music ownership vs. rental. But why the debate? The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. With a service you can audition almost limitless music. If you want to own, you will have identified the good stuff before you buy; you cannot be burned by a bad gamble. Of course, at the Apple music store you can test AND own at the same time. My opinion: 99 cents per song is a roadblock to discovery.

4) Devise a game plan.

Directed searches bear fruit.

I grew up in an era when music on the radio was enough to keep you going. These days ever-more folks are relying on serendipity...an NPR broadcast, a Starbucks ear-catcher, a TV show soundtrack. All the while, overlooked music reviews and recommendations abound. Go to a news stand and grab a few music mags. Check out Amazon's Listmania. See what the All Music editors are listening to. Put together a list and seek out the titles on the streaming service to which you just subscribed.

5) Keep an open mind.

Good new music abounds. And remember: no matter the vintage, it's new if you have never heard it.

I have friends who claim that music has been going downhill since (pick a year). As a pop music lover, my own golden age would be about 1978-80. Yet I am finding more good new music now than I did then. Why? A willingness to experiment. I can slog through a couple of dozen fruitless 'needle-drops' knowing I will eventually strike gold. Read the reviews, build your lists, try stuff out. You'll surprise yourself with what you find. How could I have known that Bohren & der Club of Gore would fit right in with my love of the 'Twin Peaks' soundtracks if I hadn't searched out this knowledge? The same can happen for you, over and over.

 

 

mp3 Music - It's Better Than It Sounds

In August of 2007, Joel Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an op/ed article bemoaning the decline in music audio quality in the age of mp3 ubiquity. Here is an excerpt:

"Whether you know it or not, that compact disc you just copied to your MP3 player is only partially there.

"With the CD on its way out and computer files taking over as the primary means of hearing recorded music, the artificial audio of MP3s is quickly becoming the primary way people listen to music. Apple already has sold 100 million iPods, and more than a billion MP3 files are traded every month through the Internet.

"But the music contained in these computer files represents less than 10 percent of the original music on the CDs. In its journey from CD to MP3 player, the music has been compressed by eliminating data that computer analysis deems redundant, squeezed down until it fits through the Internet pipeline.

"When even the full files on the CDs contain less than half the information stored to studio hard drives during recording, these compressed MP3s represent a minuscule fraction of the actual recording. For purists, it's the dark ages of recorded sound.

" "You can get used to awful," says record producer Phil Ramone. "You can appreciate nothing. We've done it with fast food." "

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The article goes on. It's an interesting read. The key to Joel's opinion, though, is found in this line:

"...the music contained in these computer files represents less than 10 percent of the original music on the CDs."

This point is based on a standard of conversion compression that was much more commonplace years ago.  When hard disk storage space and internet bandwidth were more limited, kids generally compressed their music to 128kbps (a very efficient, very lossy standard). The resultant file sizes were about 10% of the original. Two important points:

1) Much more than 10% of the music survived such shrinking. What was lost was ambiance and dynamic range.

2) Nowadays there is little reason to go with such draconian compression, unless the listener is intent on cramming his or her entire collection onto a single player at any cost to sound quality.

Stories abound of blind A/B tests involving audiophiles comparing the sound quality of CDs versus that of sound files compressed to 320kbps. More often than not, they cannot tell the difference.

Oh, and those who compressed their music to 128kbps in their callow youth? As they grow older and want to hear their old favorites on better headphones or home sound systems, they will be repurchasing or re-ripping their CD collections.

You, the wily first-timer, will have no such concern.