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 | | | | May31Written by:ProRec Editorial Staff
Monday, May 31, 1999 6:00 PM  Welcome back to the ProRec Roundtable, the quarterly convention of the ProRec Collective Consciousness. This summer, we have Joel Braverman, Lionel Dumond, Pete Leoni, Bob Lichty, Ted Perlman, Rip Rowan, and Garry Simmons. OK, guys, gloves off. Here comes the topic:
Currently the consumer audio market is being pulled from two directions. The pro audio manufacturers have released Digital Versatile Disc - DVD - capable of better-than-CD-quality 24 bits @ 96 KHz sampling rate. On the other hand, the Internet has given us the less-than-CD-quality MP3 compressed audio format.Over the last year we have seen an explosion in demand for MP3s - on some search engines, the term "MP3" is the single most searched-for term on the Internet - ahead of such perennial favorites as "booty" and "monica". At the same time we have read countless articles from the audio pros who tell us that MP3s sound unlistenably bad.
What do the consumers know that the pros don't?RR: Easy. Consumers know what they like. Pros don't have a clue.
Most people do not sit down in a reflection-treated room on the center line between a $3500 pair of B&O speakers powered by Krell power amps and audition music with their eyes closed. Really, they don't, no matter what the folks at Elitist Audio Monthly tell us. Real people just throw in Creedence while they vacuum the living room, or Rachmaninoff while they share a romantic dinner for two, or Seal on the drive to work, or Lenny Kravitz while they're passing a joint around the room. For most people, music is not an end in and of itself. For most people, the difference in audio quality between MP3, CD, and DVD is irrelevant.
PL: Sad, but true. You are absolutely right. Look how long the cassette format has hung around. MP3, at it's highest bit rate sounds preferable to cassettes. The average consumer is going to drive this issue, whether it is a good idea sonically or not. My guess is we are stuck with some kind of compressed audio format for mass distribution.
BL: There's another issue here as well, Pete, and that is COST. I mean, the fact that I can go out on the web and find a boat-load of tunes for next to nothing and burn them onto my CD-R attached to my computer and then have "my favorite tunes" playing all the time pretty much counter-acts the "quality" issue to a lot of consumers. What do these people listen to anyway, the RADIO? Please, audio quality screaming off of "KISS FM" is really pretty piss-poor if truth be told. The other thing is equipment. Many of the consumers that fit the demographic of people who regularly buy music own PCs.
Is this a long-term (5+ years) or short-term (<5 years) phenomenon?BL: Oh, it's long term, and I think the industry was thinking short term when all this started. Remember DCCs? Right now, not everyone has a computer or internet access, but those stats are growing by the minute. The more people realize what is available, the more they will access it.
JB: No shit. Rampant exchange of bootleg MP3 files on the internet dramatically exceeds anything reported in the media. The fact is that consumers have decided that this format works for them.
TP: MP3 may be popular now, but I don't think it will be around much longer. I think Microsoft's product will end up the winner in the marketplace, considering the support they will receive from major record companies who feel they were mightily ripped off by MP3 sites. I don't think those guys take too kindly to getting beat up.
RR: Yeah. And what will happen when lots of people have high-bandwidth connections to the Internet and more advanced storage media? Why download an MP3 when an uncompressed 16/44.1 recording is just as easy to download?
LD: Definitely, downloading music off the Internet is a phenomenon that is here to stay, and in the future it will only get bigger. The main question right now, is whether the record companies and the codec-builders will be able to develop a secure format that will catch on. There are literally dozens of new security-enabled data compression formats competing right now to be the future successor to MP3, but at this point they offer little added benefit to the consumer to make up for the fact that MP3 - and uncomressed WAV files - are already established, relatively uncomplicated, and non-secure.
Does MP3 meet your needs as a musician and / or listener?LD: As a distribution medium, MP3 is doing for songwriters and musicians what HTML did for prose writers -- it's a means of getting content out to the world via the Internet in a way that doesn't involve the acquiescence or participation of publishers or labals or other middlemen, which is a great thing. The other side of that coin, however, is that the format isn't capable of delivering the fidelity that the producer intended, which as an artist and as a listener is somewhat frustrating.
BL: Certainly as a musician, singer and songwriter MP3 is great. It gives me access to a whole group of people that I wouldn't have been able to get to through gigs or other normal routes. However, as a musician who is also a studio guy, I loathe the sound quality of MP3s, and it always my hope that people will download one or two tunes, hear that they are pretty good songs, then order the CD.
RR: Gee, Bob, who'da thought that I'd disagree with you on this?
As a listener I have no qualms with a well-encoded MP3 file. For rock / pop recordings the difference between MP3 and CD is slight. You certainly won't hear the difference on a cheap playback system. But as a musician, MP3 doesn't really help me. I do not find CDs prohibitive to manufacture - I can print 1000 CDs for under $2000, and if I can sell 500 of them for only $4 then I make my money back. Maybe even a little profit. Alternatively I can make a little money on MP3.COM selling CDs. The point is, either way, I have to sell the music. It's still my responsibility to market my music - to get it in front of listeners. And for that, my friends, radio is still king. Sure, I can get exposure if I chart on MP3.COM - but the same problem still exists - how do I generate enough demand to get on the charts? In the end, record labels, with their marketing power, will continue to be the only way that I, as an artist, can reach my audience.
Does MP3 pose a real threat to the record labels?JB: Probably not, in the short term anyway. If and when mp3 playback becomes a standard component in the home, then the record companies will be in more trouble. People have been dubbing tapes off albums for years, but the ability for hundreds or thousands of people to download an mp3 pirate copy of a cd is more drastic. MP3 and other compression technology will eventually result in companies like MP3.com becoming the corporate conglomerates of the next century.
PL: Record companies create "heroes" and images and then sell records to people who identify with the image they have created.
RR: Right. A format doesn't create heroes, marketing dollars create heroes. MP3 is just a format, and at least for now, MP3.COM - the largest for-profit MP3 site in the world, doesn't make anywhere near the profits of a Sony. A world full of free music is just a world in which you can't find anything good to listen to. Kind of like cable TV. You have to be able to sell an image.
PL: Right. The vast majority of the record buying public buy "people" not music. If that wasn't true, jazz would be more popular. In jazz you mainly have music speaking for itself without political and sexual posturing. Until the web becomes more of a "TV" or even "radio" experience the labels have little to worry about. But when it does.. All bets are off!!!! I would think that after that there will be a lot of small labels about and maybe a little diversified non-homogenized music will emerge. Now that would great!
BL: I agree with Joel. Unless the labels find ways to set up secure sites, they are going to take a hit. And the pirating will be intense once the sound quality improves. The labels have to be careful not to come across as dicks in all this too. Remember when Harry Fox came in and shut down OLGA due to copyright? What a way to make enemies!
JB: There is no way to prevent present and future bootlegging of music - if you can buy it, you can play it, and if you can play it, you can intercept the stream of data from the cd/dvd/whatever/ with custom hardware or software, even if it was originally encrypted. Imagine a world where everything was free... If the internet is any indication, we may be ultimately on the road to a civilization in which everything is free!
RR: "We are the world!" (swaying hands over head) I think you've been inhaling a little too much Happy Gas, Joel.
GS: Me too. It always comes down to money, Joel. The industry wants to sell hardware and back catalog. Consumers don't want to spend money. They want convenience and choice.
RR: Aye, there's the rub. So the challenge is to figure out how to offer convenience and choice, and still make a buck.
GS: Once people figure out how to control MP3 distribution, someone will figure out a way to make a buck off of it. I could see the record industry of the future selling people MP3s and letting the end user burn their own CDs (or burn them for the consumer, for a price). I think that MP3s will offer a lot of bands a way to get worldwide distribution that a conventional record company would never be able to provide. Bands can produce CDs really cheap these days, but it's distribution and advertising that make the difference.
While MP3 has been exploding onto the scene, we have also seen the disorienting release of DVD and the heated debate amongst the audiophiles about what the new audiophile standard should be: 20 bits? 24 bits? 32 bits? 88.2 KHz sampling rate? 96 KHz? 192 KHz? 5.1 surround-encoded audio discs or stereo?
What's driving this shift?LD: For one thing, I think "consumer demand" can be ruled out as a driving force right off the bat. I certainly don't hear the average music buyer screaming that CDs don't sound good to them. A lot of the impetus for the new consumer standard is much the same as for a lot of cutting edge technology -- sort of a "build-it-and-they-will-come" mentality. It's "let's agree on something and get the kinks worked out first, and worry about building consumer demand later." That's not necessarily folly; sometimes, it works. People don't know what they want until the marketers tell them, and if it's sufficiently cool, consumers will discover that they just have to have it.
The record companies aren't stupid -- they realize that consumers are, for the most part, very satisfied with CD, which also makes me assume that much of this is really being driven by RIAA interests. It is true that the big record labels have vaults full of masters they can mine. Hey, if they can make you go out and buy the White Album again, that's almost pure gravy for them, isn't it?
RR: Yeah, and don't forget that most of the big record companies are now huge conglomerates. A company like Sony can lose a little money on the front end by practically giving you the player, then make a fortune on the back end by selling you DVDs at a healthy markup. Most buyers won't think twice about getting a DVD player really cheap, hey, if it's only $99 why not? Then when it comes time to buy the music, why buy that CD when for a dollar more you can get the DVD? Most people won't even need to be able to hear a difference to choose DVD. Just tell them it's better, and they'll buy the DVD version.
LD: Now, this may sound REALLY jaded... but I gotta believe one of the reasons that many big-honcho producers and engineers are telling us that 2496 is so important is that it puts some distance between them and the semi-pro and project jobbers who are nipping at their heels. They figure the little guys aren't going to be able to push 24/96 through their DAWs as easily as 16/44.1; that they won't be able to afford the new 24/96-enabled processors, or the I/O, or the 5.1-enabled monitoring and mixing systems; and that they certainly won't have the experience to run it, at least not for a while. It buys the big boys some time, and provides a little breathing space for facilities that are suitably capitalized and equipped and have staff that's suitably trained to handle all this new stuff. All of a sudden they're not so "replaceable" any more.
BL: Geez, that's about as jaded as it gets! I have a hard time believing they are "pushing this through" for strictly survivalist instincts. The truth is, 24 bit 96 KKhz does sound better, TO US! The average consumer isn't gonna give a rip. But it's up to us, the pros, to keep pushing. Remember, this is a public that was perfectly content with the cassette tape just a few years ago.
LD: What? Who do you know who was content with the sound of cassette tape? Cassette was mostly a format of convenience -- it was portable, it was fairly reliable, you could play it in a car. But the wow and flutter, the hiss, the high-end rolloff, the propensity of tapes to get munched... I remember plenty of complaints about that!
RR: I for one will NOT push for 24/96 audio. The shift to 24/96 is unimportant to the average listener. I think the entire concept is being foisted on us by an industry that's desperately trying to sell us widgets, and I'm not going to bite. 24/96 is irrelevant. Totally and utterly irrelevant. When I decide to start making audiophile CDs - you know, the ones with shitty music that's recorded with esoteric equipment - then maybe I'll change my mind. In the meantime, I'd rather focus my attention on the side of the market that is interesting to the listener.
Now, 5.1 mixing is somewhat exciting, but again, the number of systems and people who will really understand and benefit from a 5.1 music mix is pretty damned small. Most people just aren't going to sit in their comfy chairs listening to a 5.1 music mix. You need to be in a reasonably optimal listening position to get the proper 5.1 effect. With video it's different - you have a captive audience - but again, most people just don't spend their time sitting still listening to music.
Can you believe that now we're getting sold on 192 KHz sampling rate? Huh? What's that all about? Can you say, "change for change's sake?" I mean, I can kind of understand 88.2 / 96 KHz rates because they push the Nyquist frequency out there into the ultrasonics and you can use significantly more gentle filtering. But 192 KHz? Gimme a break.
Are CDs dead?BL: Certainly not now, but the DVD is the first real threat I've seen. They thought through the format enough that your CDs will play in DVD players. I think what we will see is the death of consumer, home CD Players, but not CDs themselves, after all, people will still want to listen to music. There will still be CDs in cars (no need for DVDs there, I hope!), and there will still be DiscMen, much like the only time I listen to cassettes anymore is when I'm jogging listening to my WalkMan.
RR: Yeah, the DVD players will play CDs for now. Wonder how long that will continue? I guess I'm pretty jaded too, Lionel.
As an engineer, how excited are you about DVD audio?LD: Most producers and engineers are of the philosophy that it's always best to track, mix, and master at the highest resolution available, regardless of the target medium. I happen to agree with that. That's certainly a factor in the call for higher sampling rates and longer words for consumers. I mean, if you're tracking and mixing and mastering at 24 bits, it seems almost criminal to have to cram all that pristine audio into 16 bits, doesn't it?
GS: On the other hand, a well-done discrete 5.1 mix is a thing of beauty. I spent an evening listening to 5.1 in a well-tweaked control room and it's pretty damn cool. I doubt there's a mass market for music in 5.1 (where you gonna get a 5.1 boom box), but I'd love to open a 5.1 room in the 'burg if I thought the business was there to support it.
JB: I think the biggest impact on the recording process won't be 24/96, but in dealing with 5.1. Everyone is basically starting at ground zero with surround mixing. There are no established rules yet, which is giving some creative people a great opportunity to do cool things with it. Others seem to be EXTREMELY tempted to yank the joystick and make stuff zoom around the room just because they can. It will take time for folks to develop some chops and taste with 5.1, and until then we may have to put up with some really weird shit. It will also be interesting to see how producers are going to deal with the transition, where they'll likely have to mix the same material twice, once for 5.1 and once for 2-channel stereo.
LD: There is one other important factor that cannot be discounted, and that is the same reason we built rocket ships to the moon, and split the atom, and printed the Magna Carta on the head of a pin -- very simply, because it's POSSIBLE. If we can deliver a disc that can support 24 bits, a 96kHz sampling rate, 6 tracks of surround, alternate mixes, a video, and 18 gigs of data, why not do it? That's the fire that drives pure research, the advancement of science merely for the sake of it, and there's a lot to be said for that. It's the dreamers job to tell us what can be done; it's the marketer's job to make us want it.
BL: Personally, I'm pretty geeked. Think about the depth of field possible in mixing in 5.1. And the quality just keeps getting better. The more of us who continue to creatively use new technologies, the more the consumer will catch on.
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