The Distortion of Sound

What an excellent little film! Thanks for the link. Everyone should watch this...

Boy - excuse the rant here, but... That had to be produced by
the same people that do the Bose commercials. A lot of vague
promises about how the next thing they're going to sell you is
going to make you happy. The problem is not compression. It's
the fact that the young people cannot sit down like human
beings and listen to a record or a hi-rez file or anything
else. They have no attention span. Like they would ever sit
for 22 minutes and listen to that bullshit film. They have
too much to do, like tweeting that they're going to the
supermarket or whatever.

It wasn't always like that. In the day, every young guy
wanted a good hifi and you and your friends would go into the
room and just listen. Nothing else. That's all gone now,
except for us weirdos and half of us don't even listen to
music. We listen to cables and stillpoints and whatever other
crap we cherish.

IMO - If they want to sell something, sell the idea that it's
cool and satisfying and gratifying to own a good hifi and sit
down and listen. As long as music is only something to blast
in your ears while you're in the subway or cleaning the
toilet, it doesn't matter what the hell you're listening to.

Despite the foregoing, I'm really not a cynic. I truly
believe that people would appreciate sitting down and
listening to their favorite music in high-rez (CD or better)
on a really good system. It's getting them to do it that's
the trick. And I'm all out of tricks.

Well stated Chayro. I have nothing to add.

Ditto.

When young, I needn't any tricks or prodding to compel me to listen. Once heard better, there was no going back. Just another way of getting better sound without breaking the bank was the trick which I still employ today.

As much as I love my grandnephews, I couldn't get them to sit long enough to listen, yet alone appreciate, better sound. I'd get those funny looks that strike at the heart of what I love and I couldn't bear it. :-)

We live in different times and the herd is going in a different direction. Or are they lemmings?

All the best,
Nonoise

So whats your point chayro? Are you saying kids today listen to music but don't hear the equipment? I know a lot of kids whom you cannot pry the ear buds away from their skulls. In fact a lot of kids I see are so entranced with their music they often times do not even aknowledge the world around them. They are not sitting up all night posting in forumsbasking opinions on cables and DACs and debating silly audiophile dogma. The way I see it we have a lot to learn from them both the other way around. Just my two cents and I'm sure I'll catch hell for this.

Sorry for the misspellings I typed that on my phone

@Chrshanl37 - my point is: Harman is marketing a new
"thing" to kids called hi-rez music and telling them
that compression is bad. I happen to agree, but you'll notice
if you watch the entire 22-minute film, which I'm sure you
did, that the people listening to music are actually listening
to it. They are sitting down and listening to it. The kids
will never do that, and my point is that it doesn't matter
what resolution file you have loaded into your iphone when
music is just the din you have going on in your ears while
you're preoccupied with broadcasting every aspect of your life
on a 24/7 basis. Excuse me, I'm going to drink some OJ, then
I'm going to slice some ham, then I'm going to bring my car in
for a service. Boy, traffic is terrible, there's a guy in the
next car that looks like a fish! hahahaha lol. Stay tuned -
Cuz I'll tell you about the coffee I had when I got to the
dealer.

The demonstrations at 12:00 are examples of dynamic range compression, not bit compression...all done by the same artists and recording engineers complaining on the video.

Those pictures are worth thousands of words.

All the best,
Nonoise

Yes, the demonstrations were highly deceptive, trying to show that bit compression resulted in a ridiculously distorted sound resembling severe amplifier clipping.