Let me first preface this by saying I had a nice long blog entry written up and accidentally closed the tab in Firefox. My bad, maybe Wordpress should implement an auto-save like Gmail’s. So if this is a little short, that’s why

Listening to one of my favorite podcasts, TWIT an interesting topic came up. With the proliferation of (insert your favorite lossy codec here: MP3, AAC, Ogg, WMA, etc.) are we becoming less concerned with audio quality?

In the opinions of the TWIT’s, yes. I would agree with them. Thinking about my own habits, I realized I listen almost exclusively to music that was compressed with a lossy codec. The only instance I don’t is when I’m in my car and I pop in a CD’s I’ve bought. What I do most often is burn an MP3 data CD because my CD deck in my car supports them. It gives me more of a jukebox feel like having my entire collection at home in QCD player. It’s nice not to have to switch CD’s so often. Hopefully after the holidays, I’ll have my iPod box to connect my iPod to my car and I won’t need CD’s at all.

It’s an ironic situation because since college, I’ve been becoming more and more of an audiophile. Over the last year or so I’ve purchased premium studio headphones, 5.1 surround speakers for my computer, a good quality sound card to support the surround sound, and a CD deck for my car. I’ve got plans and wishes to buy some nicer earbuds for my iPod too.

I would say my generation is responsible for starting this trend as we were some of the early adopters of the MP3 format. Someone just a few years younger, such as my 13 year old sister would listen to this format of music exclusivly if it was available to her. Right now obviously she doesn’t have the buying power to purchase songs from the iTunes music store, but she would if she could. I remember at her age recording songs from MTV or the radio on my tape deck. I’d take that walkman with $5 headphones and bounce along to my music. I didn’t really care all that much how good it sounded and I’m sure that’s the attitude she has right now. As I got older, my tastes changed probably most due to my purchasing power.

I realized while typing this that I’m actually more lenient than I had once been when it comes to downloading music samples online. A lot of times I’ll grab some 128kbps files from MySpace or Purevolume and be OK with the quality listening to it on my computer, on my iPod, or in my car. I’m not sure why. I think it has to do with encoders getting better. It used to be MP3’s encoded at 128kbps or lower sounded terrible. They were tinny and washed out; it sounds like the cymbols are trash can lids and it was recorded underwater.

The scary thing, as Patrick Norton mentioned, is that a lot of artists record with this in mind. Instead of mixing the audio to sound best on high end equipment, they’re limiting it closer to ranges that work best with lossy audio compression. That’s just wrong. If I go buy a CD, I want the best audio I can get. I’ll compress it however I want. With better recording technology, you’d think things would move the other way towards more clarity. This whole idea is an interesting one and I’ll be curious to see where it ends up.