claytonsummers Loc: Orange County, CA

Many years ago (1992?) I was working for a CD manufacturer In Huntsville, AL. We had a chance to go up to Nashville and listen to some of the engineers and scientists who invented the MP3 algorithms.

They explained how they had done studies that determined how we perceive sounds and how louder sounds mask softer sounds and that they could remove the sounds we do not hear anyway to reduce the data required. They showed data including blind studies that showed the vast majority of people could not tell that "data had been removed".

This was in front of a group of music professionals in Nashville who went nuts. They were shouting at the scientists and engineers that they were changing the music and throwing away information! Some of these music industry people had had the same complaint when CDs came out that sampling music digitally threw away too much information to accurately reproduce music.

Today we just refer to this as lossy compression, but I don't think most people really know how lossy MP3 really is.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

All they have to do is listen with a good set of headphones to an MP3 version and a full spectrum version of the same music. Night and day.

Many years ago when I was in Vietnam one of the guys came back from R&R in Tokyo with a set of $150 headphones(1968-over $1100 in 2019 dollars) and a high end tape deck with a selection of music tapes. One of his tapes was Antonin Dvorak's Ninth Symphony "From The New World" aka The New World Symphony. This piece has some passages (mostly violin) so soft that if you set the volume to hear them over speakers then some of the other passages will almost blow your eardrums out. People have complained they caused pain in their ears. Well on those headphones you could set the volume so the loud passages didn't hurt yet still hear those soft soft violins perfectly clear. Lovely!

Those head phones or their descendants could really show the difference between MP3 and full spectrum.

I do use MP3 home recorded CDs mixed from my library for playing in my car - I get 20+ songs per CD and in a noisy car it doesn't matter.
Unfortunately for me I have severe tinnitus and hearing loss in the high end from my time in the army (noise and tropical fungus infections that scarred my eardrums). When I want to listen at the best I can get these days I use BOSE noise canceling head phones and the original full spectrum CDs or DVDs which I seek out online when I want to buy some music.
Between myself and oldest son we have well over 1000 CDs, most from the good old days before they started to down grade on the quality. Since I retired 12 years ago I probably haven't bought 20 new CDs. While I was teaching I often bought 5 or 6 a month or more. When my students were working I played music softly - all types of music, even some I didn't like, just to expose them to the different types. They only thing I didn't play was whatever was on the top radio play lists at the time. They listened to that themselves out of class. And it seemed that no matter what I played some of the students found something they had never hear before and liked. One gang banger started getting off on Scottish Pipes - "Hey mister, this stuff makes me want to have a fight!"

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

We listened to a lot of music too when I was in DaNang, and there was a lot of great music being made in the late 60s. I now too have extreme hearing loss in my right ear as a result of the war. I bought a set of the original Koss electrostatic headphones and the power supply, not to be confused with the cheaper ones Koss made in subsequent years. They came with a set of individual frequency response curves for each ear speaker and are the best reference phones I have ever heard (and not cheap) - I still have them, and I only listen to CDs or SACDs at home (and with vacuum tube amps). As you said, a car is so noisy that a huge DR doesn’t matter as much because it’s limited by the noise to maybe 35-40 dB max.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

I read an article about some high end noise canceling head phones with individual tone and volume for each ear plus each ear has provision for changing the white noise to cancel at least part of the tinnitus. At the time I was distracted and didn't bookmark the site or make a note of the brand. I will have to do some searching to try and find them - and hope they aren't from some "snake oil" company that produces over priced junk. My wife bought a learning system with headphones for our special needs son when he was about 10 and trying to learn the alphabet and they charged $250 for the "special customized" head phones. Later I looked them up and bought straight from the maker those head phones were $49 in the customized version and $40 in the plain version.

BlueMorel Loc: Southwest Michigan

Simple - different strokes for different folks. I like my own photos lightly processed, but some like highly enhanced photos.

As for music, I have an old Victrola and sometimes I get more enjoyment out of their imperfect sound quality than the best digital recordings. The imperfections add to the music.

Rathyatra Loc: Southport, United Kingdom

scubadoc Loc: Sarasota, FL

My son curates vinyl albums for a local music store and has a huge collection of vintage recordings from the 60s and 70s. He has a large fan base of millennials who would rather listen to vinyl than CD, regardless of the digital compression. They are willing to put up with the pops and crackles in order to listen to recordings with a dynamic range that most digital reproductions can only aspire to. I’m not a sound engineer, but after listening to the same music in both formats on high end earphones or studio playback systems, I can only agree that analog beats over sampled digital every time. This is similar to digital vs analog (film) image reproduction. High quality prints from an analog negative will always seem to have more depth and shading than the same print made from a digital image.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I agree with your comments about music, but listening to quiet sections of a piece in the car is virtually impossible. You need a quiet room to listen to music with quiet sections.

HDR is as much for fun as it is for photography. Although using HDR can balance light and dark areas so the picture looks good, it can also be used to "over cook" an image for effect, but that also has a certain appeal. It all depends on your objective.

GENorkus Loc: Washington Twp, Michigan

Sound and images do run similar. With music it sort of "listen to me only". With photos it sort of "look at me only'. Unfortunate for those who wish to really listen to or look at.

sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD

They sure know to crank up the volume on TV commercials

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Not at all disagreeing with your and your son’s preference for vinyl, but there is no digital compression on a CD (as there is on an MP3) and whatever you prefer on the LP, it isn’t dynamic range. The DR of a good direct pressed vinyl is in the neighborhood of 60-65 dB, limited on the low end by the surface noise of the media, and on the high end by the maximum excursion of the stylus in the grove, while 14 bit digital has a DR of 84 dB - a huge difference. In fact, vinyl was often recorded with limiting/compression on loud passages to prevent over-excursion in the groves of the pressing.

I can’t say for sure what you (and others) prefer about vinyl, but my guess is that it may be the slower response in a transient since the stylus in the cartridge has mass and cannot move instantaneously. In testing CD players square wave response (which emphasizes transients) with listening panels, it’s often been noted that many listeners prefer the players with the “worst” square wave response - ie. The “corners” of the transition are more rounded than the best players which have a sharp transition. The slower response may sound “more musical” since non electronic instruments never have perfectly sharp transitions, and their transitions often have “ringing” at the corners. It’s likely one of the contributing reasons that many listeners (including myself) prefer tube amplifiers as opposed to solid state - the damping factor is lower and the transitions are less “abrupt”.

RichardSM Loc: Back in Texas

👍

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I agree on both points. Perhaps now with 15 Stop /Zone dynamic range digital cameras (Sony aRiv, 61MP) HDR will be a forgotten method or tool. I've never gotten into HDR for my own images because I don't like the way it looks. Yes, I've tried it for classes. But since I am so used to choosing scenes that work for me I never seem to shoot anything that really needs HDR.

Compression in music, don't get me started. I am not only a fan of many types of music but collect recording from 1925 to 2019 on LP and CD. What little new worthwhile music is recorded today I still want it to sound good from a technical point. There is nothing to ruin a Metallica album faster than over compression with clipping. Hope no one ever plays with John Coltrane recordings like that.

JDG3

I guess beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder. I do like the HDR photos, but for more of an artistic reason than a view of reality. Not all photography is about "how it really looks". In fact much of the photography of today is successful because it is not reality. People enjoy what could be or they imagine could be.

I would bet a lot of people who do not like HDR professes to love black and white. What is realistic about black and white?

Humans see in many colors and hue and only full color photographs are close to reality. Black and white was done due to the limitations of technology at the time. Using black and white today is no different that expressing your art in HDR.

Larry Swearingen

My Tinnitus is so loud I think my wife can hear it too. {:>)

Larry S