I agree with your concluding paragraph wholeheartedly. I also agree that the sound engineers at any point were trying to provide the best sound reproduction with available technology. The advent of high fidelity was a big deal in our house, at least for my older sister, who brought same into the house because she had begun teaching and could afford a hi-fi record player. Mother, of course, wondered about my sister spending the money.

And hearing a true note hit with authority does make the hair stand up (I’m thinking in particular of Nessum Dorma and some of the notes Kiri hits, along with the power of Hendrix’s definitive Star Spangled Banner). I was just glad that Adam paid respect to the whole broad range of love of music at any and all levels of fidelity.

The way the four remaining major labels are attempting to get around the expiry of sound recording copyrights is by re-establishing copyright every time they issue a remastered version of a CD. That is to say that if an album originally issued in the 60s received a 24-bit spit and polish last year, it would actually be copyrighted as 2005, thus establishing a fresh 50 year term. The down side of this - and the reason why it has no legal basis at present - is that acts who sample another piece of music could claim that by mechanically creating the sample they are creating a new piece of work - even before they incorporate it into their composition. Not that it would change the current legal position on sampling - it would merely make suing someone for not obtaining the necessary permission virtually impossible. Or at least that’s what industry lawyers are saying.

Interestingly enough, the expiry of the early Elvis recordings proved to be a cash cow for RCA, who reissued 18 records in various formats on a weekly basis, which all charted and shifted a not inconsiderable amount of back catalogue.

Adam - With regard to the 128kbps AAC thing, there is a noticeable difference between downloading something at that bit rate straight from iTunes or any other online site and downloading something as a variable bit rate file or a wav and converting it back to a 128kbps AAC. It’s not perfect, but it’s a better compromise between available file space and file quality. I actually agree with you that 192kbps is the best starting point, but when you’ve a collection that’s big enough to fill four iPods and whittling the best stuff down to 55GB is difficult enough as it is, that compromise has to be made. Then again, if anyone had told me ten years ago I’d be able to carry as much as 30% of my record collection around with me in my inside jacket pocket, I would have had them sectioned. That’s the problem - give me a machine that’s everything I ever wanted from a music player and I’m still not happy.

I’m also no stranger to low-fi, as you well know - my forthcoming CD was recorded on a cassette Portastudio! Personally, I get as excited listening to a 1906 version of Maple Leaf Rag cut straight to disc as I do hearing the latest album by Donald Fagen. However, the people who engineered both those recordings will have attempted to preserve the sound as closely as they could at the time, given the recording equipment that was available to them. As listeners and consumers, we make allowances for recordings made with what is now considered to be inferior equipment - although, in many cases, 128-track digital recording and 5.1 surround has actually made the sound quality of the average 21st Century pop song a lot worse than these “inferior” recordings. Perhaps we’re heading back to mono, which will please Phil Spector no end - although he’s got more important things on his mind at the moment.

In the case of older recordings, engineers do their best to clean up the deficiencies of rapidly oxidizing master tapes and make a definitive digital master that will hopefully remind people of the first time they played their vinyl albums - some are more successful than others: The Byrds remasters are loved by many, yet the current batch of Hendrix remasters have been widely criticized by fans.

Individuals will go by what their own ears tell them, of course - but that doesn’t make it OK for iTunes to sell what I consider to be substandard quality downloads. Apple is a big company and it can do better in that respect. All it has to do is offer people a choice of bit rates for the same purchase price and I for one will be very happy indeed.

Thanks for adding that to the conversation, Adam. I go all the way back to before hi-fi even existed, and the low fidelity music that filled our home meant as much to me as the higher fidelity I now enjoy. For fidelity, we found some way to take in some live perfomances when that was possible. You are absolutely right about what we did - we filled in the fidelity in our imaginations as the music did whatever in hell it so wonderfully does regardless of the fidelity. Case in point: Enrico Caruso on an old Wind-It-Up to which an old Italian my dad knew would treat us all. I’m sure mostly it was the fascination with the odd-looking Victrola for an 8-year-old, but it also helped set in motion a lifelong love for one more of the incredibly rich and diverse forms of music in any and all levels of fidelity.

What this means is that a ton of early rock and roll is already out of copyright, and the first recordings by ELVIS have left the building (of copyright restrictions). As time goes on, more and more popular (read: profitable) recordings are going to enter the public domain in Europe.

As I said, right now, the governments in the EU seem to be digging in their heels on this point, and have no inclination to change the law. This is still in the background, but expect a ton more publicity in about six years, when THE BEATLES start going public domain. That’s right. You heard me.

Interestingly, the song publishing remains under copyright while the master recordings will go PD. So while in 2012 anyone will be able to release a Beatles CD, they will have to pay Michael Jackson a royalty for the right to do so legally. Oh joy.

Of course, once anyone can copy the music legally, nobody will able to sell it and make money since the market will be flooded with cheap legal copies. It all works out in the end, I guess.

Recordings are sold with their own player! What a winner! Each album is sealed within an indestructible mechanism that can only be used to play that recording. That’s as close to orgasmic as the record companies need!

Also, since it’s a given (after all, the recording industry grew on the back of distributing media that wore out the more you played it), the sealed recordings only play for as long as the batteries last. And they’re proprietary, sealed, unrechargable batteries. And they self-destruct when they go flat.

I thought about DNA-encoding, but that’s too expensive.

Adam, unfortunately, you’re right (shuffles one foot in a circle, hands behind my back). The reason I got into this business is because I love music - all music - and I know we (that’s all of us) have an intimate connection with music at many levels. Hedera was right on the money - it’s a personal response to perceived themes, colours, shifts of emotion, drifts of thought and even fantasy. That’s the best reason to listen. There are obviously others.

In my real life, I have to look at a piece of music both subjectively and objectively. Objectively, because I need to be able to identify and remove entropy’s fingerprints (scratches, pops, clicks, jumps, stutters, warping, cracks, etc, etc) from a recording without getting into the details. Subjectively, because no matter how “efficient” I am at taking away the bad, if the result isn’t true to the original recording, all I’m doing is being a subcontractor of Mr. Entropy (hate him, he’s a bastard boss, he never, ever sleeps).

Low bitrate or not, lossy recordings to me are truly anathema. Unfortunately, it’s more of a professional horror of lossy formats wrapped up as a personal dislike of popularisers and apologists for the prevalence of that style of music presentation. I guess it comes down to arguing (however incoherently) against personal preference and convenience, and I’m never going to win that one, I know.

Hedera, you’re absolutely right: maybe the problem with some listeners/users if iPods is that they’re using a great little tool (I would if I could, just not in MP3 or AAC formats) as a barrier. Hey, don’t talk to me, I’ve got my white earplugs in! And yes Adam, it only takes a second or so to unplug, but that’s so reminiscent of walking in to someone’s office to tell them something important, but you have to wait for a second or two while they recognise you, stop telling their jokes to their colleagues, and turn their dazzling attention back to you. It’s annoying to feel intrusive all the time.

And, if I may make one last observation: most people I know with iPods (that’s around 30 people in my immediate circle of acquaintance) don’t put their favourite music on the device; they squeeze as much music as they can on, and that always comes at a massive price in terms of actual (not perceived) audio quality. So at least some of them are just listening to noise, not music! (There’s a whole nother argument about listening to anything rather than converse, and another one again about what “those young people these days…”, etc, but I’m not gonna do that!)

As a sufferer of severe tinnitus (courtesy of nearly 20 years of continuous opiates), you’d think I couldn’t tell the difference between a steamtrain and a viola. On a bad day, I can’t hear if the cicadas are singing in the trees around the house; so why do what I do? Probably because I love what I can hear. I guess I need to recognise that need in others. Mixing up my professional understanding with personal invective isn’t helping anyone.

- Hedera, I hear you (although only barely because I’ve got my iPod on). But I walk for at least an hour a day, wave to people, pet dogs, and say hello to my neighbors, all while using my iPod nano. If I actually speak to someone, I turn the music off, a process which takes about 1-2 seconds. So I don’t think it’s the device - it’s the people using ‘em.

- Personally, I really like the AAC format. I usually rip my music at 196 kbps, which to me sounds about as good as a 256 kbps Mp3. In other words, pretty darn good for any On The Go listening.

- Richard, I’m not quite sure why you so vehemently criticize the iTunes store’s quality and then actually recommend people use 128 kbps AACs on their iPods. That is precisely the format the music store uses. While there are definitely ways to rip to that format better than the store does, the difference is not that huge to me. To me, 128 kbps AAC files are NEVER good enough for music that I really love. And the iTunes store’s quality isn’t bad enough to interfere with my enjoyment of a pop single that I think is worth hearing once or twice. But that’s just my opinion - I don’t think people who disagree “deserve to be ripped off.”

- Forgive me, but to me that brings up an important point for ALL audiophiles to hear (with high fidelity): You might not understand what other people get out of music. It’s not that people have “bad ears” if they’re fine with poor-fidelity music. It might be that they’re listening to the content rather than the contours of the music. It may be that their auditory imagination is stronger than yours. It may be that rhythm and melody (or text) fuels their enjoyment more than balance and fidelity.

Whatever their reasons for enjoying music that audiophiles find unlistenable, it is ridiculous to put them down for it. Let me offer an analogy:

I know bibliophiles who LOATHE paperback books, who rail against small typefaces, and who think that the idea of reading a novel on an electronic device is downright offensive. They will talk to you about paper quality and thickness, about bindings, about aging and preservation.

That’s great. But I don’t share their concern. For me, as long as I can read the words, I’ll enjoy the work. I prefer a hard-bound, large-type, well-set book. But I don’t require it. Not at all.

Similarly, those thousands of people who first heard blues or jazz or classical music over a scratchy monophonic tube-based radio in the early part of the 20th century and were inspired to learn an instrument or make a pilgrimage to New York or New Orleans or Chicago or even just developed a lifelong love of music… Those people were not rubes or dopes or yokels who “deserved” the sound quality they got, nor were they “ripped off.” They were people who heard the tinny sounds and colored in the rest of the picture for themselves and were enriched by something about music that has little to do with its “fidelity.”

That’s not to put down audiophilia. I personally care deeply about how my music sounds, and making it better is a wonderful hobby. But it’s only one part of music appreciation, and by my lights it’s not even the most important.

I’m not taking you to task, Richard (or anyone). I just want to make a case for low fidelity and ask that we ratchet down the snobbery against those who don’t demand better.

Some of the best music I ever heard I heard as a kid, listening on a crappy radio that I balanced on my shopping cart as I delivered newspapers. On some days I’d hear a new song that would introduce me to sounds or feelings or compositional styles that I didn’t know existed before, and I’d just stand there in the street, enjoying it, and then stay glued to the shopping cart until the DJ came on to tell me what I’d just heard. I would happily trade both of my iPods and my entire music collection for a few more moments of that kind of clarity.

Representative Thomas Delay (R, TX)
Still Saving America, One Dog Attack @ aTime