Audiophiles of the Y Generation...

You know how most people are perfectly happy with Apple standard-issue earbuds, white plastic molded around a crappy audio experience? A Stanford professor's informal annual study shows that younguns also, for some reason, actually like the "sizzle sounds" of MP3s.

Each year, Stanford Professor of Music Jonathan Berger does an informal test of his students by playing a bunch of different music in a bunch of different formats. Here's how he performs the informal study:

Students were asked to judge the quality of a variety of compression methods randomly mixed with uncompressed 44.1 KHz audio. The music examples included both orchestral, jazz and rock music. When I first did this I was expecting to hear preferences for uncompressed audio and expecting to see MP3 (at 128, 160 and 192 bit rates) well below other methods (including a proprietary wavelet-based approach and AAC). To my surprise, in the rock examples the MP3 at 128 was preferred. I repeated the experiment over 6 years and found the preference for MP3 - particularly in music with high energy (cymbal crashes, brass hits, etc) rising over time.

In other words, younger people haven't just grown more tolerant of thin, soulless MP3 renditions of their favorite music, they actually like them. Professor Berger has been quoted as saying that it's the "sizzle sounds" that people are loving because it's what they're comfortable with. People aren't just ignorant of high quality audio, they actually hate it. Gee, thanks for contributing to the downfall of civilization, mp3 players. What's interesting about this I think, is what it says about the ears of my generation. Hmm.

Personally, I don't really have too big of a problem with mp3s or mp3 players for that matter. I own an iPod. I love having an organised iTunes library and whilst I still relish in my CD and vinyl collection, I probably listen to my mp3s most of the time (always at 320kbs though, oh yes). What annoys me, are those pseudo audiophiles who spend £100+ on RCA to phono cables to 'enjoy' their mp3 player through their hi-fi separates. Why you would try and improve the sound of a medium which has already compressed and thus lost the quality of the original recording is beyond me.

So, the answer? mp3s are small and fun but if you're all about quality, stick with Cd's I say.

Jonty x