Mar 10, 2010
Whatever happened to the audiophile?
UPDATE: 8 SEP 2011 – The Register follows up on the loudness wars – “It is a standard sound engineer complaint, as well as of serious listeners. And, those that have simply listened and (easily) heard the difference. It was propelled by increased CD listening in cars (to further standout over more background noise). Louder and faster records on radio and jukeboxes are earlier variants. Louder ads on radio and TV is another.”
This video, which I think I saw at the time I wrote my original article highlights the difference between the sound engineering of today and yesteryear:
Back in the 1970s my parents had friends who had stacks of hi-fi separates with gold contact wiring and speaker stands on metal spikes. They were only playing Perry Como on vinyl, but that was their idea of fun, so good luck to them. When the CD emerged on to the market with its claims of superior quality and scratch resistance, the hi-fi enthusiasts split into two camps: those who clung to their “warmer” but crackly analogue vinyl and their hissy tapes and those who went digital and got optical wires to hook up their shiny new CD player to those spiky speakers.
Manufacturers propagated the upward spiral for both camps marketing ever more elaborate systems and even selling green pens to colour the edge of a CD to prevent laser leakage. Personally, I grew up with a “stereogram” and a personal radio-cassette and was quite happy with it, whiling away countless hours listening to prog rock, Jean Michel Jarre, Talking Heads, and the occasional Perry Como album.
But, was it all for nothing? Within another generation the notion of digital audio had been compressed using the audio equivalent of the lossy image format jpeg and music fans were listening on pocket devices or watching Youtube clips with embedded music on poor-quality computer speakers and really not caring either way, whether the sound was great or not.
Jerald Hughes of University of Texas Pan American in Edinburg writing in the International Journal Services and Standards has a nice table showing the technical specification of the human ear and comparing it to the various analogue formats:
| Audio system | Frequency range/Hz | Decibel range/dB |
| Human ear | 20-22,000 | 110+ |
| Vinyl LP | 30-15,000 | 50-60 |
| 8-track tape | 45-8000 | 45 |
| Cassette tape | 50-12,000 | 45-50 |
| Chrome cassette | 50-16,000 | 60 |
| Reel to reel | 30-20,000+ | 66+ |
So, the only system that ever came close to the full range of human hearing was reel-to-reel and I don’t recall seeing many of those around even among the most extravagant separates hi-fi aficionados of my parents’ acquaintance.
So, how does the CD fit into this picture?
| Audio system | Frequency range/Hz | Decibel range/dB |
| Human ear | 20-22,000 | 110+ |
| Compact disc | 20-22,000 | 90+ |
| DVD audio | 10-95,000 | 144 |
Not bad? It really was a golden era, then, apart from that lack of “warmth” and “colour” that the analogue stalwarts claimed. And, with DVD audio quality (and SACD, superaudio CD) far outstripping even CD. These latter formats are well-known to devoted adherents of jazz and classical where dynamic range and complex frequency content tends to be more common than in rock and pop, although there are serious mastering problems with many modern recordings in all genres.
Today, there are almost as many audio “formats” as there are audio files. One can choose a download or rip at almost any rate, a lossy or lossless compression algorithm, and countless other options and codecs to playback a music file on myriad devices. But, consumers in general, have gravitated towards a quality that is much lower than the human ear is capable of discerning and much lower than top-end equipment is capable of reproducing. It’s as if the hi-fi nuts never existed…
Perhaps that’s the point though, my generation was perfectly content to listen to vinyl albums duplicated on cassette tapes (remember: home taping is skill in music killing music, it never did) and today, the kids are quite happy to listen to downloaded 128kbps mp3 files through the cheap earbuds that come with portable music players.
Human senses and sensibilities have limits. It’s not that the human ear cannot receive the finest of musical details, it most certainly can, it’s just that most people perceive satisfaction in listening to a good-quality mp3 and are not worried about the top notes or the quiet moments that might be lost in the compression process that squeezes their collection of thousands of songs on to a sliver of silicon embedded in a case no bigger than a thumbnail.
Audio cassettes were popular because they were convenient – mix tapes, copying albumbs, recording off the radio all infinitely simpler with cassettes than with a reel-to-reel machine. In the post-digital era of music on chips rather than disks consumers are trading-off audio quality for convenience just the same as they ever did. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
Jerald Hughes (2009). Emergent quality standards for digital entertainment experience goods: the case of consumer audio Int. J. Services and Standards, 5 (4), 333-353
I spoke to Hughes who confessed that he too is a prog-rock fan, and admitted that the first album he ever bought with his own money was the YesSongs triple live album. He also told me he is still listening to his Technics direct-drive turntable with hyperelliptical stylus through Bose 501 speakers and said, “it really IS ‘warmer’…”
"Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right Is Wrong" from David Bradley. Available now on 
@Durf Good point on the headphones issue…I wonder whether death metal and Britney fans benefit from $500 Shures…
My parents (and many of their friends) had reel-to-reel decks at home, but in their case it was less because of the sound quality and more because those were a great way to get six hours of unbroken music to play at a party.
Another interesting follow-up post might look at the surging popularity of high-end headphones (canalphones, whatever). Do people who drop $500 on a pair of Shures use them to listen to higher-quality source material on higher-priced equipment?
Dude, The Audiophool is alive and well.
There is no limit to the insanity of some members of the audiophile community on the internet.
Willing to part with enormous piles of cash in exchange for dubious, pseudo-scientific audio products, these guys are the ‘true-believers’ of the audio world. (Note the use of ‘true-believers’ as a pejorative).
But the Audiophile of today is a new breed – quite different, I suspect, to the type of Audiophile you are talking about – who simply cared about getting a good sound.
A website I really like is http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/ as they are a skeptical audio community and promote a scientific-based approach and don’t tolerate the woo.
:)
Thanks David,
The audiophiles are still around, but drowned out in a sea of “mediocrity” which, as you point out, has always been with us it seems – I remember how poor tapes were, but convenience won out for most people!
Something you don’t mention however is distortion, in all its guises – this adds a distinct signature to music, and differs from format to format (and from kit to kit). Ironically, it’s probably distortion that gives some of those old formats their warmth, as well as some of the older technologies for playing them back. I used to have a tube (sorry, valve) amp, and loved the sound with a passion – it was warm, expansive, seductive… But compared to a top-notch solid state amp, you could hear the distortion that led to a very distinct audio signature.
That was fine by me – treating the format and the equipment to play it back through as instruments in their own right removes a lot of angst about technical performance. What does worry me though is a tendency to sacrifice a deep appreciation of music and its reproduction for simple convenience. But I guess that’s a factor of human nature rather than technology – and that’s something that has remained pretty constant against the shifting recording formats.
Sadly, mediocrity will always win out :-)
I too enjoyed the article. I never went through the vinyl age in the 1960s for some reason, probably financial, but at age 13 my parents bought me a Fidelity Argyle reel to reel tape recorder which I used to tape music off a plastic Perdio Picadilly radio and also my friend’s vinyls, particularly the (original) Seekers who I still love particularly Judith Durham, a fantastic voice. I used to love having to thread the tapes onto the spools. A bit of name dropping there!
When ‘musi-cassettes’ came out in the 1970s, I bought an ITT KB radio cassette (mono then) which was great particularly for recording the top 40 on a Sunday from the FM radio. Then in 1976 I progressed up to an Hitach stereo radio cassette (one deck) with Vu meters and later upgraded this by connecting it to a Sony twin cassette deck with Dolby B and LEDs. I felt quite professional at the time using the Vu and LEDs and bought the high quality Chrome cassette.
As you say, we are now into the digital and post digital age and somehow I missed out on the CD age instead still relying on the cassettes which I still like despite odd times when they got jammed and required a pencil to reengage the wheel. I have recently relented on CDs and now do enjoy DVDs and hopefully will get into iPods or cheaper equivalents before getting back to vinyl reborn, this time for me my first. A bit like life really, roundabouts and swings.