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votes
Neil Young’s lonely quest to save music: He says low-quality streaming is hurting our songs and our brains. Is he right?
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- Title
- Neil Young's Lonely Quest to Save Music
- Published
- Aug 20 2019
- Word count
- 7040 words
I'm all for improving the audio quality of streaming services, but Neil Young's particular hobby-horse (24-bit, 192khz music) is not based in scientific reality:
https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
It's a great explanation and introduction to digital audio. Check out the video, if you already haven't. Very enlightening.
Yeah. If he really wanted to make a difference he'd be fighting dynamic range compression, not trying to push sample rates so high that even your dog can't hear the high notes, and bit depths to double the range we're already not using, and which we wouldn't use even with zero DRC -- 16 bits already gets you from a whisper to full on hearing damage. You'd need more to go from a whisper to a jet engine on takeoff, but there's no reason to ever actually do that. Even if you had a sound system capable of reproducing it, you'd get to use it once before you couldn't hear it anymore.
I don't know much about sound-engineering, but is there an argument to be made that for archival storage you probably want to settle on a really high fidelity standard so that you don't keep compounding degradation from people compressing it and re-encoding it at lower and lower bitrates?
I suppose that wouldn't really apply for streaming services though. At least not for ones like Spotify where they're not really the repository for original masters. A site like the old SoundCloud, though, where more indie or amateur artists possibly could be using it to keep what would functionally count as their masters would. Maybe Youtube too.
It's a tough issue though, because the contexts under which most people are streaming music just aren't conducive to intent listening anyway. Even if you could hear the differences under good conditions, you're probably not hearing them in a car, on a bus/train, at the gym, at the office, or walking down a street. The ambient noise will drown those subtleties out. But at the same time, you do want people to be able to listen to them at high quality when they're in a position to appreciate it.
Not really. You just need to store the original in a lossless format. Digital copies are (assuming no errors) perfect reproductions, so there is no reason to go further than the range of human hearing.
Heh, I seem to remember him vowing never to go digital for not so scientific reasons either.
I love Neil. I love his passion. The muse takes him to interesting places.
At the same time, I tend to wonder about the logic behind a lot of the things that he gets really passionate about, like the absolutism of his GMO stand, the reasonability of his LincVolt project, and largely also this whole sound quality thing.
I've actually been a NeilYoungArchives.com subscriber from when it became available, and earlier had the Pono service installed (didn't buy the player though). I can't really say I notice any difference in sound quality. In fact, I have also done a couple of blind tests at home and the latest one that I did a couple of years ago suggested that I rate Spotify's sound quality as the most enjoyable -- that's higher than either CD quality or Tidal's hifi settings, or other common services and formats. This was a bit of a surprise to me. At that point, I didn't have Neil's service to compare with. Maybe it's time for another try. Although my tests, even if blind, are definitely very anecdotal, and not really scientific.
All that said, theoretically speaking, how solid really is the "but we can't hear it!" argument that is usually launched against attempts at better sound quality, as with Neil? Is music all about hearing? I really don't know, I have no background in this topic, but I've sometimes pondered about this and whether Neil may be onto something that I just don't understand. On Wikipedia, the article on infrasound lists a number of ways in which inaudible, low-frequency sounds can affect us. And as I understand it, there have also been studies that suggest that ultrasound can have physiological effects on us. I have no idea how valid these findings are, which I admittedly just pulled out of Google during my lunch break, and in any case more research seems to be needed. But if sounds outside of our hearing range really can affect us, not in terms of how music sounds but how it makes us feel, I suppose that might explain and at least to an extent validate Neil's quixotian fight to "save music".
If someone here is able to shine some light on this question, I'm all ears. Or feels, I suppose, if you shine your light ultra/infrasonically.
I feel like what we can technically hear or pick in a test is not the most useful. There are so many intangible aspects of music listening which I try to grasp at and can't even consistently experience, how am I supposed to judge how two files compare with those? I don't trust myself. A lot of life is experienced without being consciously noticed...that doesn't mean it's not impacting us, yknow?
I've been in the noncommittal "320kbps mp3 or FLAC for special things" camp for a while, since I figured I wanted the best I could find evidence actually sounds better to anyone, but now I think I want to have higher standards. Why not? I don't lose anything, get peace of mind, and maybe my music will sound better.
I'm willing to bet most of the problems that get attributed to quality (past a certain point, of course) have more to do with modern production and recording trends than anything about quality. Higher quality is either better or it's the same, and as storage gets cheaper the one compelling reason not to use the best I have access to slips away.
I don't care about the science anymore. Music is already all about how I personally feel, making concessions based on what feelings can be proven to others is just silly.
This is absolutely the problem. I have heard so many albums ruined by modern mastery. Every single one has the dynamic range blown out.