Quadraphonic Quandary

I find it interesting that, while we demand that almost every form of audio/visual media improves in technological quality as time passes, most of the population seems more than happy to sacrifice quality for convenience when it comes to music. We have these ridiculous home theater systems, and overpay for Blu-Ray versions of movies (while the DVDs often still have far more special features) just so our movies can look and sound that much better. Of course, video games continue to demand equal attention in the technology department. Even televison, a medium that long relied on wire coat hangers jutting out in all directions just so the picture wouldn’t be fuzzy is so advanced that Jay Leno has been in High Definition for longer than the average person was able to afford to watch it that way. It’s just too bad HD doesn’t make you funny. But I digress…    

So why, then, do we continue to happily settle for the compressed, subpar quality of MP3s and the various other forms of digital music? While plenty of people claim they don’t hear a difference, it’s an indisputable fact that MP3s don’t sound as good as CDs when you get right down to it. (I found this article detailing the sound qualities of the different forms of digital music to be very informative if you are interested.) Granted, there are many different types of digital music these days, some sounding nearly as good as a CD, but with what most people listen to that isn’t the case. Of course, hardcore audiophiles will chime in that CDs don’t sound as good as vinyl albums. I’ll admit that I can’t speak on that particular point with a significant amount of experience. However, there is a radio station here in Chicago, The Drive (97.1FM), that has a feature called “Album Sides Thursday”, where they play the entire side of an actual vinyl record album. And even through my car’s default factory sound system, I swear I do hear a difference. It just sounds, I don’t know…richer or fuller, maybe.

So if albums sound better than CDs and CDs are (mostly) superior than the music the average person downloads off of the internet, then those people are currently listening to music in a format that is inferior to what was the standard thirty years ago! Compare that to how television looked in the 70’s to now or how Atari 2600 games look next to PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 and you’ll see just how silly it really is. I know a guy who recently switched cable TV providers based entirely on the fact that one had more HD channels than the other. This same guy also overpaid for the 20gb PlayStaion 3 model just so he could have Blu-Ray that much sooner. Music? Eh, iTunes through crappy earbuds is fine for him.

Probably the most key aspect of this that I haven’t addressed is convenience. Is it easier to just point and click and have your desired song playing within seconds rather than rifling through cumbersome jewel cases, taking the disc out, putting it in your stereo, and so on? Well, yes. Is it more convenient to have 10,000 songs on a music player the size of a credit card rather than a bulky Discman and a big book full of CDs? Of course. At the same time, though, the conveniences of other forms of media have grown along with the increase in quality, not instead of. It’s much easier to find what you want to watch on TV with on-screen menu guides, and easier to record shows with DVRs. It’s a cinch to pop in a game disc and start playing right away without having to blow on it or spend 10 minutes making sure it’s sitting just so inside the system before it’ll play properly. And DVDs and Blu-Ray’s are far easier to navigate than the archaic fast-forwarding and rewinding of video casettes. But as I said, with all these ways that things were made easier, they were also made “better”, and we wouldn’t have accepted anything less.

Look, I’m not so high and mighty that I’m above this whole digital music thing, nor do I think I’m too good to ever put convenience over quality. When I put a movie on my iPod, which I do frequently, I’m sacrificing quality for the ability to watch that movie on the go. When I buy the PSP version of a console game, another thing I’ve done several times, I’m making a conscience choice to have the inferior version in order to be able to play it anywhere. Even as I write this, the soundtrack to my blogging is brought to me via the iTunes player on my PC. I suppose the difference is that what’s on my iTunes came off of my actual CDs. I’m not saying that as a commentary on the buying of physical CDs versus downloading albums, although I have enough opinions on that to fill its own rant. The point is, when I’m doing housework or just want to relax and listen to my new or favorite album in its entirety, I put on the CD. Maybe it doesn’t sound that much better, especially through my rather unremarkable 7-year-old stereo. Maybe I just misunderstood what it was that is truly bothering me about this whole thing.

I discovered just in the process of writing this is that what is really getting to me more than anything is that people just don’t seem to really appreciate music as a whole, at least not like they used to. People just don’t seem to really love music. We microwave popcorn, order a pizza, and invite friends over to watch a movie. We go to midnight launches and call in sick the day a new video game comes out. We go to “viewing parties” at bars or peoples’ houses every week to watch a TV show, and discuss it for the entire week afterward. But when it comes to music, we download it off the internet (many of us by stealing it in some fashion), dump it onto our PCs and our portable music players, and it literally just gets lost in the shuffle. And if we do make a point to put something particular on, it’s not for the specific purpose of enjoying said band or singer or album or song. it’s usually just pouring out of our tinny computer speakers as background noise to something else, something more “important”. Like, say, shopping for a 50″ LCD television and a state-of-the-art home theater system to make sure Jay Leno looks and sounds amazing.