Welcome back to the Sound Synthesis Architect!
I was recently reading an article, Going Deeper: 25 Hz Is the New 50 Hz, posted by Doug Fowler, a moderator of the ProSoundWeb LAB forums and professional audio engineer of 30+ years. In this article he talks about taking single-ended measurements of various forms of electronic dance music at Ultra Festival a couple years back.
In looking at his results something was clear; a lot of producers mixed with their sub-bass predominantly in the 50 – 60 Hz range for trance and techno music and in the 40 Hz range for drum & bass and dubstep. There are very few sound systems that are available that can adequately reproduce frequencies below 40 Hz. It is possible to get down into the 30 Hz range now but this is still very rare. There were three audio systems that he was impressed with on this excursion that you can read more about in his article, here.
Doug later makes an aside to DJs (I’m assuming that he meant to say producers) asking them to work more on their productions and that on large systems it is apparent when they are playing an mp3 versus a wav file.
I agree with Doug that you can tell the difference from mp3 to wav, especially when listening on a large P.A. system. However, it’s not merely attributed to a compressed file format versus a non-compressed file format. It can also be attributed to the fact that most home systems and even studio monitors can’t accurately represent how these extremely large festival sound systems are going to sound, particularly in the sub-bass range. The variations in sound systems can make it extremely difficult to mix music so that it sounds just as good across so many different systems.
I also want to bring attention to the fact that the common listener probably couldn’t tell, or care about, the difference from a 320-bit mp3 versus a wav file. I can see why this would drive Doug crazy because I’m sure that it would bother me too. I think that the real question here is when are all of these common listeners going to appreciate the quality of the music that they are consuming instead being worried about how many songs they can fit on their mobile media player?
What are your thoughts?
Jared,
ReplyDeleteWonderful article. I think that we can break people up into three distinct audio format groups: Those that don't care about the format, only the size. Those that think they care and tell people how they only listen to high quality audio, but they can't tell the difference. Finally, those that can tell the difference and do care. Sadly, I think the last group is the smallest, and therefor we are overrun with low quality audio. Don't give up though, keep up the good fight!
Kyle Schroeder
Tubes and Transistors
Thanks, Kyle! I completely agree with your audio group breakdown. I only hope that we can inform these people so that they can appreciate audio the way that we do.
DeleteJared, interesting post and article. I can't believe someone that calls themselves a professional producer, or DJ, uses mp3's for anything. It's turrible
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, Kevin, the crowd deserves nothing but the best. The only problem that I have run into is the availability of songs in wav. And when I can find the songs in wav it's kind of discouraging that the wav costs nearly twice as much.
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