4 ms·

I'm firmly in the camp that mourns the victims of the loudness war, but it's important to keep in mind that "quality" is not something that can objectively meas

I'm firmly in the camp that mourns the victims of the loudness war, but it's important to keep in mind that "quality" is not something that can objectively measured, and every generation has its own perception of it. In MP3: The Meaning of a Format by Jonathan Sterne, he cites research done on "The MP3 generation" -- people who came of age when Napster was on the rise -- that found those listeners preferred the sound of 128kbps MP3 over any other format or bit rate. The technology of encoding created an aesthetic. And then of course you have Brian Eno: "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Eno was dead wrong about that. Outside of a marginal Kickstarter project - probably for a Japanese fanbase - I don't think anyone is going to pay money for a high-jitter 12-bit resolution retro CD player. Comparing that to the stylised imperfections of a human performer is unconvincing. I do think there's an interesting effect where as soon as a first-to-market technology becomes good enough to avoid being hopelessly terrible, its characteristic flaws set standard expectations for a medium. Hence retro anything - guitars, synthesizers, cars, recording equipment, tapes, vinyl, paperback books, computers... How likely is it that the early designers were so awesome they hit a technological bullseye with these things - apparently almost every single time anyone developed a new technology? I can't quite believe that's how it works. Personally I have no love at all for the sound of vinyl, even on stratospherically expensive hardware.
- JonnieCache 11y ago
  I've paid money for software which emulates a 12 bit ADAC, with a knob to adjust the jitter etc. I have several such items in fact: https://www.plogue.com/products/chipcrusher https://www.plogue.com/products/chipcrusher https://tal-software.com/products/tal-sampler https://tal-software.com/products/tal-sampler That chipcrusher thing in particular does some crazy stuff.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    Are they on the high or low end for pricing of plugins? I can imagine a full setup (excluding hardware) gets very, very expensive.
- lucideer 11y ago
  I think you're confusing hitting an objective "technological bullseye" with creating something that a specific niche audience will someday see aesthetic value in; the former of course doesn't happen with every new technology, but the latter most certainly does (albeit with different size niches for different tech: guitar distortion and 8-bit music are a lot more popular than 12-bit CD players) Eno is spot on in this quote
- anexprogrammer 11y ago
  But there are chip tune bands who emulate 8 bit. That people pay money to see. So I can well imagine a niche for emulating flawed CDs.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    At the end of BT's Somnambulist there's cut up samples that sound exactly what you'd get with a skipping Discman. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to listen to something like that but I'm sure there's someone experimenting with those sounds.
- tomc1985 11y ago
  I love how people naively pass judgement on an aesthetic, as if everyone's tastes were like theirs. Besides, it doesn't matter if it sounds human or not, that's not the point. Old hardware introduces a lot of weird harmonics that often affect future stages in the signal chain in a big way. Predictably enough that one can make art with it -- and it's hard to emulate that in software.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

Eno was dead wrong about that. Outside of a marginal Kickstarter project - probably for a Japanese fanbase - I don't think anyone is going to pay money for a high-jitter 12-bit resolution retro CD player. Comparing that to the stylised imperfections of a human performer is unconvincing. I do think there's an interesting effect where as soon as a first-to-market technology becomes good enough to avoid being hopelessly terrible, its characteristic flaws set standard expectations for a medium. Hence retro anything - guitars, synthesizers, cars, recording equipment, tapes, vinyl, paperback books, computers... How likely is it that the early designers were so awesome they hit a technological bullseye with these things - apparently almost every single time anyone developed a new technology? I can't quite believe that's how it works. Personally I have no love at all for the sound of vinyl, even on stratospherically expensive hardware.

JonnieCache 11y ago
I've paid money for software which emulates a 12 bit ADAC, with a knob to adjust the jitter etc. I have several such items in fact: https://www.plogue.com/products/chipcrusher https://www.plogue.com/products/chipcrusher https://tal-software.com/products/tal-sampler https://tal-software.com/products/tal-sampler That chipcrusher thing in particular does some crazy stuff.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Are they on the high or low end for pricing of plugins? I can imagine a full setup (excluding hardware) gets very, very expensive.
lucideer 11y ago
I think you're confusing hitting an objective "technological bullseye" with creating something that a specific niche audience will someday see aesthetic value in; the former of course doesn't happen with every new technology, but the latter most certainly does (albeit with different size niches for different tech: guitar distortion and 8-bit music are a lot more popular than 12-bit CD players) Eno is spot on in this quote
anexprogrammer 11y ago
But there are chip tune bands who emulate 8 bit. That people pay money to see. So I can well imagine a niche for emulating flawed CDs.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  At the end of BT's Somnambulist there's cut up samples that sound exactly what you'd get with a skipping Discman. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to listen to something like that but I'm sure there's someone experimenting with those sounds.
tomc1985 11y ago
I love how people naively pass judgement on an aesthetic, as if everyone's tastes were like theirs. Besides, it doesn't matter if it sounds human or not, that's not the point. Old hardware introduces a lot of weird harmonics that often affect future stages in the signal chain in a big way. Predictably enough that one can make art with it -- and it's hard to emulate that in software.