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Radiohead: hear before you buy
There's a lot of coverage about XFM's plans to play the Radiohead album in full from mid-day tomorrow, but they're actually being scooped by the NME which is going to publish an audio-dribble of the whole thing from 10 am tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile, as Simon points out in the comments down there, there's a squall blowing around the Radiohead downloads, with complaints that 160 kbps bitrates aren't exactly the highest of hi-fi rates. Although, to be honest, we're mentally filing this alongside those people who complain about the sound quality on DAB, as a problem which exists solely in the ears of people who actually spend more time perfecting the diamond of sound in between their speakers rather than browsing in record shops.
6 comments:
I disagree with your fllipant comment regarding the sound quality. At that level of kbs the sound is worse than an average quality MP3, which is 192 kbs.
192 is pretty crap for an MP3 anyway, 320 kbs is nearer to CD quality.
People who browse in record shops aren't somehow immune to - or superior of - wanting a basic decent quality of sound reproduction.
Even traders on P2P systems tend to avoid anything between 192kbs, and the majority of them are by no means audiophiles - they simply know it's going to sound crap at that lower level.
Really? Perhaps it's just that I grew up with fading in and out AM radio singles, and being so broke I was buying the most expensive tapes I could, which were usually the cheapest I could find, but I've never really understaood this "perfect sound quality" fetish.
128 seems to be fine for everyday use.
Sorry Simon, I think your ears may need testing. I agree with the poster above. I'm not a perfect sound fetishist (used to be just as happy with an album on cassette as anything else) but MP3s below 192kbps DO have some unpleasant sonic characteristics, particularly on high frequency things like hi-hats, that make them hard work to listen to.
And if I'd offered up £15 or something for the download, I'd feel cheated.
Seems to me that you could always fork out the £40 for the Discbox (which I did anyway) or buy the CD version of the album next year if you're really that bothered about the sound quality. Would be interesting to find out how many of the people complaining about the bit-rate paid nothing for the download in the first place...
Duckie, you're probably right about my ears - too many gigs, too often down the front, too many radios turned up too loud.
And feeling cheated? Well, perhaps - although that old saying about buying a pig in a poke comes to mind...
bearing in mind that you didn't have to pay for the download in advance, what does it matter. it's still better than the average itunes download. it sounds perfectly acceptable.
it's short-sighted to focus on this, and not the joy of turning up in work this morning to find a new radiohead album in your emails! last album i spent about a month scouring usenet to find a pre-release copy.. how much better is this?
one interesting thing is the poor quality of all the reviews written today - that's the benefit of us getting it at the same time as the critics.
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