Comment of the Moment: "Horse Back" and Audio Quality

The Comment of the Moment is concerning "Horse Back" and Audio Quality from the Steve Jobs and Neil Young thread by Kimball:

Now, on the subject of Horse Back Neil, wow, that is an assault of rich guitar tone. I can tell that even through the lossy compression of the video on Neil's website. Its going to be great to hear the record(s) when they come out.

Remember that little note on Neil's own news page on his website, that 2012 is going to be the year that the record companies bring high quality or high resolution audio to the masses. Seems like that was there back in August or so, and now Neil's speaking about the subject in public. I can't wait to see what the format is, and what it will require for equipment.

While I've been watching these videos of Neil speaking about digital sound quality, I've noted his lack of mention of the previously available forays into high rez that have been available in SACD and DVD-Audio (he even re-released several of his albums on DVD audio). He also has been spanking the 128 kbps MP3. He does not mention the availability of equipment that plays CD quality flac files, like the Cowon J3. I know he's got his sights on players that will support 24/192 files. I would love that support too. But perhaps he'll get more critical public mass momentum if he gets people to understand flac equipment that at least does CD quality, which is a great deal better than 128 MP3s.

(AIFF and WAV are lossless formats that maintain full CD quality, but are also uncompressed meaning they take up maximum space. FLAC is the same in that it is lossless, but it takes up less disk space. The same quality, but compressed. That is the difference between lossy and lossless compression. Its the compression that relates to how much space the material takes up. The lossy vs lossless relates to whether there is a loss of information. Think of a .ZIP file of a document. It takes up less space, but you can still expand it to get back to the original. That's lossless compression. Imagine if you wrote your life story and then saved it with LOSSY compression to be able to save it to fit on your thumb drive. You might lose every other letter or maybe you'd lose years of passages. With lossy compression the information is gone and it doesn't come back when you read out the material. Think of it in terms of your autobiography and you're approaching how Neil and other artists feel about their personal musical compositions going through the lossy shredder.)

Thanks Kimball! Great comment.

More on audio quality, Steve Jobs and Neil Young.

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Steve Jobs and Neil Young: Comment of the Moment

Neil Young & Steve Jobs

Quite a bit of discussion regarding the news that "Steve Jobs Preferred Vinyl" Says Neil Young.

The widely picked up quote was preceded earlier by Neil Young's announcement that he supported the Occupy Audio movement due to his "anger over today's sound quality".

Which brings us to the Comment of the Moment:

This story grabbed my interest, because I know of Young's long term dedication to sound quality. And also just because it was an interesting idea that these two could be discussing a major move forward.

But realistically, I wonder how far he could ever have got with Jobs (or could get now, with just Apple). I suspect Jobs and Young would have struggled to find common ground. Jobs may have liked vinyl, but he liked Apple a whole lot more.

True, the iPod itself is quite an innovative product, but from the very beginning, it was about quantity over quality, "1000 songs in your pocket" and all that crap.

And mainly what it is is a shamefully locked piece of equipment, a vehicle for Apple's proprietary obsessions.

Consider.

We've had "hi-def" digital sound for at least 15 years now, even DVD Video has 24-bit sound written into its standard (Google the Bob Stuart interview in Stereophile). Yep, you can run off a lovely hi-def audio disc on a cheap DVD-V blank.

We've had hi-def digital disc formats that didn't too well commercially - DVD-Audio and SACD, and now we have hi-def audio on Bluray. And we have what may be the true home of hi-def, computers. And where has Apple really been in all this? Nowhere. Jobs and Apple have been completely silent on the subject, and where their equipment can even handle this stuff, they're usually very late to the game.

Instead, they've had a separate but extraordinarily lucrative existence where they developed the iPod and iTunes, got people buying a song at a time for a dollar a time, and did nothing to disabuse people of the idea that MP3 was all they needed.

If Jobs knows vinyl sounds great on his billionaire-class turntable, why didn't he do more to promote higher quality digital audio for the plebs? He's had ten years with the iPod, more than enough time considering that during the same period, audiophiles have adopted high quality computer audio in a very big way.

Instead, the iPod is more about what you _can't_ do. No SPDIF or other way to get the digital signal out to a DAC. If you want to do that, you have to buy a Wadia box (licensed by Apple) for $300. And that's not the external DAC, it's just a digital middleman. Unlike an external DAC, which can be an extremely versatile audio device that deals with multiple sources, it presumably has no function other than getting digital off an iPod and passing it along. You can't plug it into anything else or do anything else with it. For $300! It's basically a license in box form.

http://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/1008wad/index.html

Now it would be perfectly possible for Apple to just build digital-out capability into its iPods - in the same way a $30 PC soundcard can do it, a DAT player can do it, a CD player can do it (I do all three right now). Instead, the iPod is permanently prevented from reaching its full hifi potential - as a digital transport - unless you take Apple's approved, Apple-takes-a-cut-of-the-money route. Isn't it interesting how the iPod, in 2012, can't do things that a CD player or a DAT could easily handle in 1990?

Compare that to how you freely move music files around on a computer, swap between computers, send out to a DAC, basically do whatever the hell you want with them, and you see that the iPod is classic crippleware.

Now how many of us really believe that the Jobs-Young summit would have produced results that weren't weighted in Steve's favour? I've got the greatest respect for Neil Young and what he's achieved for audio over the years - he's a frigging _hero for the way he's pushed this issue - but I'm convinced Jobs would have obstructed or circumvented him one way or another.

So what have we got?

Neil Young: brought out the Archives - his BABY - on Bluray.

Steve Jobs: Blu-ray? What's that?

http://gigaom.com/apple/tasting-the-forbidden-fruit-blu-ray-on-the-mac/

And there you have the difference between the two in a nutshell.

A lot to consider in this comment.

So we'll just say that we're always searchin' for quality -- rather than quantity. But -- generally -- we can't always get what we want, but we're happy we get what we need. :)

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"Steve Jobs Preferred Vinyl" Says Neil Young

Peter Kafka, Walt Mossberg and Neil Young
AllThingsD Conference, Laguna Niguel, California, Jan. 31, 2012
Photos by Asa Mathat

Neil Young’s never ending quest for better sound continued today at the AllThingsD Conference in Laguna Niguel, California.

Last week, Neil Young declared support for Occupy Audio due to his anger about today's sound quality" and provided further elaboration at the AllThingsD Conference.

In an interview, Young said:

“Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you’ve got to believe that if he’d lived long enough, he would have done what I’m trying to do.”

From Neil Young on Music Quality, Record Labels and Steve Jobs - Dive Into Media - AllThingsD by John Paczkowski:

“My goal is to try and rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years,” Young said. “We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s degrading our music, not improving it.”

“It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art,” Young said. “The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.”

Also a topic of conversation during today’s interview: The recording industry, and whether the record label has outlived its usefulness. Young contended it hasn’t.

“What I like about record companies is that they present and nurture artists,” he said. “That doesn’t exist on iTunes, it doesn’t exist on Amazon. That’s what a record company does, and that’s why I like my record company. People look at record companies like they’re obsolete, but there’s a lot of soul in there — a lot of people who care about music, and that’s very important.”

Then why is it the case that some artists complain so much about the economics of the industry?

Said Young, “Those artists should go by themselves. They have a choice of what they can do. Artists who want to go it alone should just do that.”

Finally, Young discussed piracy, which he doesn’t view as the threat that some other musicians do.

"I look at [the] internet as the new radio," he explained. "Radio [is] gone. Piracy is the new radio; it's how music gets around."

From Business & Technology | Neil Young: Steve Jobs listened to vinyl | Seattle Times Newspaper By RYAN NAKASHIMA:

Young told the "D: Dive Into Media" conference Tuesday that he spoke with Jobs about creating a format that has 20 times the fidelity of files in the most current digital formats, including MP3.

Such a format, he said, would contain 100 percent of the data of music as it is created in a studio, as opposed to 5 percent in compressed formats including Apple's AAC. Each song would be huge, and a new storage and playback device might only hold 30 albums. Each song would take about 30 minutes to download, which is fine if you leave your device on overnight, he said.

"Sleep well. Wake up in the morning. Play some real music and listen to the joy of 100 percent of the sound of music," he said.

Although Young didn't have a practical plan for developing such a format - saying it's for "rich people" to decide - he said Jobs was on board with the idea before he died from cancer at age 56 in October.

"I talked to Steve about it. We were working on it," Young said. "You've got to believe if he lived long enough he would eventually try to do what I'm trying to do."

Young's opinion of Jobs was confirmed by interviewer Walt Mossberg, a journalist with News Corp.'s All Things D website, which has hosted Jobs at its conferences before.

Mossberg said Jobs in the past expressed surprise that "people traded quality, to the extent they had, for convenience or price."

UPDATE:



Also, see Neil Young Supports Occupy Audio.

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