News Kids increasingly prefer MP3 to superior formats

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/03/09/kids-increasingly-prefer-mp3s/1

Stanford's professor of music reveals that tests with his new students show an increased preference for MP3 files over higher quality formats.

 

I must fall into a fairly unique part of the audio lover then - as lossless and as pure as is practically possible, whatever the medium.

 

I rip my CDs to mp3 @ 320 kbps, I can't tell the difference between that and the CD itself - then again im pretty much always doing something whilst listening to music, just the music = sleep for me

 

I like many put up with mp3 for its convenience but i shudder to think of people who prefer it... Would have Mister_Tad turning in his grave (were he dead)

 

Lossy MP3 is only popular because net connections are slow, portable media players have limited storage capacity and MP3 is the best supported file format.

I would quite happily use more FLAC if iTunes/iPod could play it out of the box and there was somewhere to buy albums in that format.

 

One of the many reasons children should be seen and not heard.
This does bring up some interesting ideas. While most of my childhood music and video enjoyment was spent with cassette tapes, VHS and to a lesser extent vinyl, I much prefer the sound or picture quality of CD's and DVD's as that's what most of my now favourite music and video were purchased on once I was old enough to start buying things for my self. Looking to the future, it seems that only picture quality is being catered for with Blu-Ray etc. New high def music formats like DVD-A and SACD have been largely ignored by the public. I think the reason for this is that CD's are good enough for most people. That doesn't bother me so much but it does bother me that music quality is now swiftly moving backwards. I now seriously worry that in a few years no new music will be available in high quality uncompressed formats. On the bright side, things like this seem to work in cycles and in the same way that valves have experienced a renaissance in recent years, I can only hope that some time in the near future the same will happen with uncompressed high quality recordings.

 

?

Have they ever used something else?

 

I use FLAC for everything nowadays, MP3's are fine for headphones but if you have a decent stereo at home I think its worth the extra space to rip CD's as a lossless format.

 

Effects

 

I play mp3's through my car speakers and the quality is fine with me. why would I switch to something else if there just isn't a need? I'm even still using my old old old soundblaster audigy.

 

320Kbps MP3 is fine for 99% of times I've ever listened to music, and it's universal compatability and total transparency trump any tiny increase in sound quality in my opinion. I'm no audiophile, but neither are 99% of people. And as such, realistically, good quality MP3 will no doubt be the preference of 99% of people eventually.

 

I can hear the difference and I still rip to MP3, it's easier and will 'always' be compatible.

And it's 'good enough'

I have my CDs and I have my rips. Do I ever listen to the CDs to get better quality? Nope.

It's funny, I was selling hi-fis when the first compressed music hardware came mainstream (minidisc + ATRAC) and there was all this talk about how inferior it was when really you couldn't tell. And it's MP3s that became mainstream and the quality can be terrible.

It's got so bad then sometimes you can hear bad MP3 rips when listening to FM radio, tracks recorded at what must be 64kbps

And I still rip to MP3, 256 variable is good enough for me.

 

I think he missed the nail and hit his thumb with this one.

Kids prefer mp3s for the same reason they prefer iPods, they're popular and that's all they really know of. And to be honest, with the shitty speakers and headphones most people have (myself included), it's incredibly difficult to tell the difference between formats unless you have a really good ear.

Plus isn't vinyl actually supposed to be superior to CDs (when they're nice and fresh that is).

 

I find vinyl has a much richer sound but i'm not so sure on "superiour" suppose its the same with cd's versus hq mp3.

For the record i'm no audiophile and only have fairly cheap hifi but ever with that there is a noticeable difference between mp3 and CD though some of my mp3 are quite old and sound really bad.

 

Yep, that's his word, not ours!

 

uh oh. did someone just suggest that vinyl is inferior to CD?
*waits for crazy dom*
i for one, like CDs, and FLAC.

do what i do and rip simultaneously to FLAC and MP3. dbpoweramp allows for simultaneous file format ripping - it's just a case of setting it up and after that it's no different to a normal rip process. this lets me use FLAC for my squeezebox network and mp3 for my portable players and car. best of both worlds. space overheads aren't much more than having a FLAC collection, and space is ubdercheap for music nowadays, so why not?

this way if mp3 ever DOES get obsolete, i can just bulk convert the FLAC files, without having to go through the epic effort of re-ripping my CDs.

 

I personally hate vinyl. It's a horrible medium.

Size, sound quality, production. They're all pretty bad compared to other standards today. I'll occasionally get an offer to provide sound for raves. Stupid DJ's bring in vinyls. Yuck.

 

You should check out ALAC (Apple's version of FLAC). It's nearly identical in quality, but it's supported on Apple hardware.

 

I only ever use MP3, and as mentioned, the main reason is ease. They take up less space, are compatible with everything under the sun, and the sound quality, though not amazing, is far from bad.

If FLAC saw more widespread use and ran out of the box with everything, then I can see it also becoming much more popular.

 

I'll give my two cents here - most of my music is on vinyl, not because I think it sounds better, but because I prefer the sound. I actually find the crackles and pops annoying, but the sound of my records through my Cambridge Audio 640P pre-amp just sounds so gorgeously full and rich, plus you get nice big sleeves and cover art with vinyl, and you can guarantee that it will never have any DRM.

I also went to the trouble of recording all my vinyl and creating a lossless archive on my media PC, which is hooked up to the stereo and is great for convenience and random play, but I still play the original records if I want to play an album. I've also created a 256Kb/sec archive of all of my records and CDs that I use for my MP3 player and my PC upstairs - they don't sound bad, and you can't tell the difference when you're on the train anyway. Basically, I have a mix of everything for different situations.