There is an interesting post over at Tim Anderson’s blog all about the lack of a market for high quality audio. As I hope you all know, the MP3 format results in quite a bit of loss of quality because of the compression. Listening to an MP3 over earbud headphones causes even more loss of quality. But does anyone care? Apparently not. Or at least not enough for there to be a sizeable market for better quality audio.
Two things occur to me. The first is that this sound very like the sort of complaining we see about people liking rubbish books rather than well-written ones (and yes, I’m sure I have been guilty of both of those things myself). Secondly, I know that my ears are not good enough to tell the difference between an MP3 and better quality audio, and I’m wondering if there might be parallel issues with reading.
Books, as a storage and transmission medium for words, are generally more reliable than any storage or transmission medium for audio. Almost any storage or transmission medium for words, digital or analog, is going to be better. Most rubbish books are rubbish because of their content, not their packaging.
The odd thing is audiophiles are yearning for an ideal as if it had existed in the past, but it never did. Vinyl and analog tape are, by definition, very fussy media with very fussy reading equipment that damages the recording during playback. There’s a gradual degradation in the equipment and media over time. Digital media are inherently more consistent, exactly identical time after time until the degradation hits the point of failure.
I will accept the alleged lower storage and transmission quality (which, even with good ears, I can’t really identify) for the consistency in quality over the years.
You are taking things a little too literally, Andy. Of course book quality isn’t degraded by the packaging. But what if there are people who are no more capable of distinguishing between good and bad writing than I am capable of distinguishing between good and bad audio? What sense would be working badly in that case?
I tend to agree with you about digital media.