Rolling Stone on the Death of High Fidelity

Rolling Stone has a great article entitled The Death of High Fidelity: In the age of MP3s, sound quality is worse than ever. This topic has been written about other places, but it’s nice to see a mainstream magazine like Rolling Stone giving significant coverage to this issue. And the issue is that music is being mastered at ever increasingly levels of loudness. It’s done through dynamic range compression that limits the range between the soft sounds and the louder sounds. Basically, it’s done to get your attention, and also because many people are listening to music on digital formats. The increased loudness is seen as a way to compensate for the reducing fidelity of an MP3 rip.

To an average listener, a wide dynamic range creates a sense of spaciousness and makes it easier to pick out individual instruments — as you can hear on recent albums such as Dylan’s Modern Times and Norah Jones’ Not Too Late. “When people have the courage and the vision to do a record that way, it sets them apart,” says Joe Boyd, who produced albums by Richard Thompson and R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction. “It sounds warm, it sounds three-dimensional, it sounds different. Analog sound to me is more emotionally affecting.”

There’s is so much good music coming out right now, it’s a shame that a lot of it won’t stand the test of time because of too-loud mastering. Awareness seems to be raising about the issues though as more articles are written about it, so hopefully a change can come in the industry, and bring back the musicality of music.