my audio-media dilemma

I was trying to think of the last time I actually bought a CD. Its been a while…in fact its been so long, I actually can’t remember. A year or two ago I put all of my CDs onto my laptop, converting them into MP3 format, so, as I’m quite mobile these days, I can easily and quickly access all of my music at any time. Its very handy. I’m the type of guy who likes to have little clutter around, meaning I would rather have all of my music on my computer and carry around my laptop, rather than have 350+ CDs lying around. On the other hand, I’m also the kind of guy who likes to have a hard copy of everything too. So in one sense I like to have very little lying around, and at the same I like to have copies of everything filed somewhere. This is very contradictory, I know, and that may be just something weird specific to me, but somehow I think that maybe a lot of people are like this. It’s ironic these days that things such as recording methods like microphones, digital recording technologies, and highly researched recording techniques are at an all time high. Playback methods have also been tremendously improved, such as speaker qualities, surround sound technologies, sound eliminating headphones, etc. What’s ironic however, is that what people are actually listening to, largely MP3s these days, contradicts the big bucks they are spending to hear their music. I’ve heard it argued that CDs were even a step down from records. As I’ve been told, if you have the correct setup and all the right equipment, records can have and even higher quality sound than CDs. I don’t know if I buy this (as I certainly don’t have a problem with CDs), but if you do entertain this argument, media has been the one aspect which has constantly decreased in quality. While CDs are a high quality form of media, MP3s, comparatively, are incredibly dumbed down audio files, where many frequencies have been removed to save memory…or something (even though these days memory is dirt cheap). Its kind of a shame when you think of the quality of everything else which has been so meticulously researched and improved, and then something like an MP3 throws that all away. However, it also raises the question as to whether people would even hear the difference. Most people don’t have both a CD and MP3 copy of the same music to check it out, but even if they did, could they tell the difference? Interestingly, it sometimes comes down to your playback method as to whether you would be able to tell: for example, listening on your built in speakers on your laptop as opposed to some high quality Bose speakers.

There’s something about having that hard copy though. I’m always listening to MP3s on my computer, and don’t really think about what I’ve listened to most of the time. But the other day I got a CD from my school library, listened to it, and at the end, physically removed it from my player. It sounds stupid, but there was something rewarding about having a CD in my hand with a specific set of music that I knew I have finished, completed, and listened to. Not to mention, I was more conscious of what I had just listened to. I put it back into the case, and bam, done and done. Also, when you only have an MP3, you lack the tangibles, such as the cover inserts you might get in a CD; information and details which you can only get from the insert. In fact, you can try and be savvy by looking up the CD on Amazon.com or something and get some of the information, but you’re still going to miss a lot of it. This is where I also run into a dilemma. I like to have the information…who’s playing on certain tracks, where it was recorded, when it was recorded, some background info on the group, composer info, pictures, album art, whatever. But I don’t want the clutter, and I want to be mobile. You can’t get this information from an MP3 file (sometimes you can get limited album art, and some rudimentary info, but nothing very comprehensive). Basically I think there needs to be another audio-file revolution. Something needs to be developed that can still be portable (which is important these days), can somehow be both tangible and not, can provide all of the information needed/wanted, and still not sacrifice the audio quality which is more than capable of being captured and reproduced these days. It’s kind of weird when you look at video which seems to be improving all-around: HD televisions almost everywhere these days, cable stations are beginning to broadcast in HD, the cameras which people are recording with are beginning to be in HD, and HD-DVDs and Blue-Ray discs are now becoming more prevalent. Obviously I’m content with CDs and MP3s as I enjoy the benefits of both. But when I’m listening to music on my expensive speakers, I’d like to think that the time that went into rehearsing the music, the talent that was refined to perform it, and the technology that was developed to record it, will be justified in its reproduction.