Seriously, Who Cares About Fidelity Anymore?

Dan Gibson | June 3, 2008 3:00 am
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There’s hardly a month that goes by without a attempt at improving the way that music sounds. The problem is, nearly all these brilliant moves come from artists and producers. Do consumers really take fidelity into consideration when making the few music-purchasing decisions?

Some of you might be old enough to remember people complaining about how the music just didn’t sound right on any format but vinyl (including a creepy character accused of rape on a episode of 90210), and of course, there are those who complain about any file format that isn’t completely lossless. Also, there’s John Mellencamp.

Last year, Amazon and iTunes made concessions to upgrade the quality of their download tracks.

Some artists want the bar raised even higher. Metallica announced last week that its upcoming untitled album, in addition to being released on CD, will be available as a higher-quality digital download ($12) and on audiophile vinyl in a limited-edition $125 boxed set. It’s due this fall….

John Mellencamp’s upcoming Life, Death, Love and Freedom CD, due July 15, will come with, at no extra charge, a high-definition DVD stereo version that will play in most DVD players. Producer T Bone Burnett and his engineering team developed the DVD music technology because they grew exasperated about the state of digital music. Listening to the high-res disc, “I could hear the music the way it was intended to be heard,” Mellencamp said in a statement.

Neil Young recently announced that the first volume of his long-awaited archives project would arrive this fall on 10 Blu-ray Discs. The rocker, who has long decried the sound of CD and digital recording as brittle, says, “Previous technology required unacceptable quality compromises.” In addition to HD video, Blu-ray Disc players support the playback of high-resolution music beyond a CD’s dynamic range.

I’m sorry, but it’s clear that the majority of consumers couldn’t care less about the specifics of how their music sounds. The first thing they are concerned about is price (“128kbps MP3 files? A bit of a downer, but it’s their entire discography in one torrent!”). Someone willing to question the intentions of, let’s say, Metallica might believe that selling albums in increasingly expensive formats is more of a revenue-based move than an artistic one. I’m sure the new Mudcrutch album rings true and beautiful on audiophile vinyl, but it feels better for the bottom line when you pay $30 for it instead of $10. Even if the higher-quality option is at no additional cost, as in the case of the Mellencamp disc, any format that requires people to listen somewhere besides their car or a MP3 player of some sort is going to be immediately marginalized.

But, hey, maybe the reason I want to purchase fewer discs this year isn’t that the albums themselves are bad, they’re just pressed that way.

Musicians push for better sound online and on disc [USA Today]