Lossless? It’s the emotional impact that matters

It seems there was a bit of confusion on my last post regarding lossless digital formats, so here’s a clarification. Lossless is not an end to itself, nor is it an especially high standard. Lossless just means, typically, identical to the CD version. Honestly, that’s just kind of a baseline. But lossless is not synonymous with high fidelity.

There was a letter to the editor in a recent issue of Stereophile of someone who claimed that uncompressed WAV files were the way to go, Apple Lossless is a “joke,” the letter-writer claimed. Just in case you were wondering, uncompressed WAV files are crap. Well, not crap, but they’re only CD quality. That’s it and nothing more. Compressed lossless formats are mathematically identical to WAV files — it’s the same shit — so of course you’re just better off using one of the lossless codecs. You can spot a nut when he starts talking about wave files.

The important thing though is not the format of the music, but the emotional connection one feels to that music. Does listening to a certain album send shivers down your spine? That’s always an exciting feeling, and a sign, to me, of some intense emotional impact. When I watch U2 Live At Red Rocks back from ‘83 or ‘85, I get that feeling. Certain records in my collection have that kind of impact. It’s definitely not across the board.

But here’s the thing. Most CDs don’t have that kind of emotional impact. I can count on one hand the number of CDs in my collection that affect me emotionally at that primal kind of level. Something about CDs in general kind of kills that energy — it kills the air of the recording.

Vinyl on the other hand tends to keep that air — and if the emotional content of the recording is strong, it will be recorded and transmitted. So part of the love of vinyl is about the process — playing records is physically satisfying — it’s a ritual. But maybe you’ve found the other part of vinyl just as exciting — that emotional thrill that comes from a record that touches you.

So the point isn’t that lossless is some great thing: it’s just CD quality. But people have been missing the deep emotional connection to the music that comes from a more natural method of encoding. Possibly hi-res digital formats may keep that emotional air, but the cheaper and more direct route is to go vinyl. I call it emotional air, because it seems to me that vinyl recordings tend to breathe more. CDs to my ear sound concise.