MP3 Music Quality Suffers. And Your Point Is?

Filed in archive Business , Commentary , Society & Public Policy on August 29, 2007

In Producers howl over sound cut out by MP3 compression, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes about anguished record producers. MP3 files lose 90% of data stores in the Recording studio.

The mass consumer world has always been different from the high fidelity one. The digital world is no different. The comments from producers like Phil Ramone sound like the same proclamations from doomsayers 30 years ago who complained that vinyl albums are low fidelity compared to tape or 20 years ago when CDs were attacked.

The call that MP3s have brought down the record industry or civilization as we know it are just silly. Clearly people consider the format good enough. No one is forcing consumers to download or rip them. Indeed I predict the sound quality will go up in the future. As technology continues its exponential increase in storage capacity, transfer bandwidth, and improved digital formats, higher quality music will naturally be recorded and propagated.