The advent of the digital age and the fragmentation of society by capitalism: Digitized Music is More Than a Metaphor
Traditional Analog Vehicles for Music Playback are Usually a Better Aural Representation of the Creators’ Efforts
See: “Analog vs. Digital Audio Explained”
https://www.first.edu/blog/analog-vs-digital-audio-explained/
“Digitization” as a rule, is a representational reconfiguration of sound into resampled and re-ordered data bits, and the lower that data and sampling rate is, the more raw information of the original act has been discarded. It is similar to how the presentation of a series still frames via low-frame rate film and video is an “illusion of motion.”
The concept of “digital masking” with respect to hearing, including limitations of the range of human hearing abilities does not deny the reality of “lossy” re-representation of analog music production in the digital audio era, it is its theoretical foundation. What was touted as “democratization” by some from the advent of the music file sharing era, for all of its benefits in terms of convenience and increased exposure and access to musics and its recording, can also be viewed as a technical assault on the actual experience of shared music as human social interaction.
The digital “stair-stepping” of digital audio represents varying degrees of a frequency and vibration discarding process, providing a less accurate “outline” of a sound experience. This can be mitigated by increasing the sampling rates and bit depth. E.g. low-resolution mp3’s such as what allowed for the advent of Napster file-sharing at the beginning of this century were driven by the deletion of large amounts of music, so that in the end, what was delivered to the listener was barely a shadow of the original experience initiated and engaged in by the musicians, especially relative to the production of music via acoustic instrumentation. E.g. with low-resolution mp3 files, one is not allowed to actually “hear” an upright bassists’ bass and one only hears a fragment of the sound coming from brass instruments or a drummer’s cymbals. To elaborate, in many cases, the listener is no longer given the overtones and dynamics of a bassists’ bass notes, but these notes are now represented as muffled “thumps” within the truncated frequency palette delivered via the degraded audio format (and most likely cheap analog playback medium). Low and high frequencies, including those audible to the human ear and brain, are discarded for the sake of smaller file size and “delivery convenience.”
The end result is that the original music is severely compromised and the a significant breadth of emotional content from the musician is discarded, and no longer available to the listener.
A popular misconception is that “Compact Disc audio is good” but it is really the case only with respect to the relatively poorer quality of most mp3 audio that is common to various digital audio delivery platforms such as Apple iTunes, Spotify, etc. CD audio is 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, and it is true that this is a “better” relative to the worst mp3 audio files that are commonly shared via the internet, but the above statements still apply. Some tout CD audio as being “uncompressed,” but this is misleading as it can be understood to dismiss the “lossy nature” of the digital reconfiguration of the original music. 16-bit, 44.1 kHz is still “lossy.”
I can personally testify to the physiological pitfalls of low-resolution audio in the post-production phase. When the first Alesis ADAT technology appeared, it was part of a new boom in home studio audio recording….once again, an example of the new technology having a “democratizing” effect on the music “industry.” However, the quality of the audio was severely lacking relative to traditional analogue magnetic tape recording method, due to lossy analog to digital conversion as mentioned above. The first ADAT machines deployed 16-bit, 48 kHZ digital audio conversion chains.
What I can attest to is how “sore” my ears would feel after hours of mixdown work, listening to the sound coming off of the ADAT formatted SVHS tapes. Imagine an orchestra of washboard players using large forks and metal spatulas to play them, versus the sound of a kitten’s purr heard by placing your ear on the kitten’s belly. The ear fatigue of the experience, which was far greater and more noticeable than anything I had experienced sitting in long sessions of a 2-inch magnetic tape recording mixdown was palpable. My eardrums literally felt sore.
My premise here is that low-resolution digital music denies the listener an experience that would approximate direct interaction with the original “intent” of the musicians’ performance. The social component, which includes the collective confirmation and validation of emotional premise and statement is further negated by current modes of experiencing the degraded sound as individuals, hearing the “lossy” representation of the original performance on cheap earbuds in isolation from on another.
The advent and trajectory of “digital audio” over the past decades can be correlated with the further “fragmentation” of society. Essential elements of social interaction represented by lossy digital audio representation of musical performance have been deemed permanently acceptable as today’s “norm.”
It is interesting to note that the while the world of digital video has moved to significantly higher planes of “quality” with soundtracks supplemental to say, 4K video production/distribution like the Dolby Atmos format, the larger infrastructure for high-quality digital audio playback and consumer consumption is severely inadequate, which is a modern tragedy, IMO.
Fortunately, the situation has been mitigated by the improvement of analog to digital and digital to analog conversion technology. Also the maturation and promotion of various superior digital audio formats allowing for uncompressed high resolution audio is a good thing (e.g., FLAC, AAC, WAV, ALAC). Many musicians and recording engineers, while embracing digital technology, now insist on recording performances at much higher data rates, etc. Options for high-resolution audio. playback exist, they just aren’t part of the “mainstream culture.” https://www.whathifi.com/us/advice/high-resolution-audio-everything-you-need-to-know
And, while the machinery of capitalist commodification of art continues, not all hope is lost. Vinyl sales are increasing and the hunger for live performance, AKA “the desire to immerse oneself in the social experience of music,” has most likely been driven upward by the pandemic. Musical expression of revolutionary human impulses is irrepressible and such activity will surely continue.
Don’t throw away your turntable: https://www.axios.com/vinyl-sales-growth-music-industry-5b54cf4f-d46f-4e5a-9f9a-6bef05a2935d.html
Looking for solutions and options:
Convert vinyl LP’s into high-resolution audio files: ps://www.whathifi.com/sony/ps-hx500/review
Everything you need to know about high-resolution audio: https://www.whathifi.com/advice/high-resolution-audio-everything-you-need-to-know
Best portable music players: https://www.whathifi.com/best-buys/portable/best-portable-music-players
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