
Neil Young’s Lonely Quest to Save Music From Low Quality Streaming - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/magazine/neil-young-streaming-music.html
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whymsicalburito
I don't feel like streaming quality is the biggest issue. Spotify's highest
quality rate (for paid users) is pretty good, but the audio compression for
streaming to a bluetooth device kills the quality. I've stuck with wired
headphones because the quality is so much better than bluetooth.

~~~
phyalow
I disagree, I have switched from Spotify premium (HQ) to Tidal uncompressed
and have noticed a huge difference. I usually listen on a wired pair of
Senheisser HD-25 ii’s. Its very frustrating for me that Spotify doesn’t
support anything better than 320 MP3, it truly sounds muddy.

~~~
bobowzki
It's time for double blind testing!

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anon9001
Neil Young is an audiophile in the worst sense of the word. He's tried to make
a player and music service
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_\(digital_music_service\))
and it didn't work because there isn't demand.

If there was demand, Spotify would just add FLAC. They already added 320kbps
compressed streams, and I doubt anyone can hear the difference between that
and FLAC.

The vast majority of the audio perception people are going to pick up on
happens during production. And
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war)
is why everything sounds worse than it used to. When records were being made
for vinyl, the physical material wouldn't allow for the level of "loudness"
that removes dynamic range from the track. That changed when all music started
being produced digitally for digital distribution. Ironically, digital audio
actually has a much larger dynamic range and should be better, but because of
the way it's mastered it comes out louder but with less dynamic range.

Audio compression is the least of the problems for people interested in high
quality recordings.

~~~
theandrewbailey
I backed the Pono Kickstarter. I got a player that had some cool features, but
I ultimately stopped using it after a few months because it was slow and
battery hungry compared to my old Sansa Clip with Rockbox.

~~~
K_REY_C
Rockbox was (is?) such a great project.

~~~
jpindar
Looks like the last release was in May 2017.

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zerocrates
Normally I don't particularly mind the meandering, personal style that
typifies these magazine-type pieces but this one was fairly grating. Maybe
it's the more or less immediate elimination of any suggestion that there could
be a difference between Young's views, the author's views, and "the truth."

> At ground level, which is to say not the level where technologists live but
> the level where artists write and record songs for people who care about the
> human experience of listening to music, the internet was as if a meteor had
> wiped out the existing planet of sound.

> digital-recording technology, as opposed to low-quality streaming services,
> can be a gift to musicians, properly deployed

The article doesn't really have any interest in talking about streaming, or
quality, or music, or the various actually realistic options people currently
have... I guess that's fine. The closest this comes to having something useful
to say about its ostensible topic is a small aside about how music
_production_ has changed over the years.

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coldtea
If music needs saving from something is not streaming quality, but the
increasingly marginal and irrelevant role it has (even in teens) compared to
the cultural power it had in the 60s up to the 90s...

~~~
DannyB2
Music today is deeply meaningful, partly because of how it is produced:

Take one part modem noise, mix thoroughly with 2 parts bass and 1/2 part
melody line. Serving suggestion: crank the bitrate way up to a full 96 Kbps!

/s

Lyrics are one thing that makes some music meaningful. If there aren't any, or
if they are unintelligible, then that meaning is lost.

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biggieshellz
It's not like Neil Young can hear it anyway. Dude has had tinnitus for
decades, and there's no way he doesn't have major noise-induced hearing loss
from standing in front of those cranked Fender Deluxes for all those years.

From [https://www.audiologyonline.com/releases/by-time-we-got-
to-3...](https://www.audiologyonline.com/releases/by-time-we-got-to-3118): "It
was guitarist Neil Young who suggested Stills try a new modern-design, behind-
the-ear hearing solution called Dual."

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saidajigumi
Sigh, obligatory repost, given the topic:

 _24 /192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense_

[https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-
young.html](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html)

 _[edit, add prior discussion on HN:]_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19318898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19318898)

~~~
mhh__
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM)

Video by the same man of the same topics but with shiny lights and graphs.

~~~
acqq
And who speaks about the audio aspects, noise including, but unfortunately
produces his own video with very audible noise, which he could have filtered
even in the post-production using the open source program (1), if he used poor
microphones originally. I prefer no noise to the "fidelity" in such cases.

1)
[https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/noise_reduction.html](https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/noise_reduction.html)

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Paianni
Trouble is that most streaming services, even YouTube, aren't low quality.
Opus at about 160kb/s is more than sufficient for transparency.

~~~
guitarbill
I'm not sure if it's the source material or Youtube's compression, but music
on Youtube often sounds terrible compared to e.g. Spotify. There are obvious
artifacts and dynamic range issues.

~~~
Paianni
Music on YouTube is resampled to 48kHz for Opus. YouTube's resampler is
probably optimised for speed over precision. Resampling to 48kHz before
uploading can yield better results.

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krustyburger
It seems like the use-case for streaming music is mostly mobile and almost
always with headphones, most of which these days are ear-buds.

So it’s not surprising that most users aren’t interested in lossless or other
high-fidelity options.

Meanwhile, I assume most audiophiles with traditional hifi setups would prefer
downloads or physical media over streaming.

~~~
jiveturkey
> Meanwhile, I assume most audiophiles with traditional hifi setups would
> prefer downloads or physical media over streaming.

I find that unlikely. Sure, it's preferred but that's because of the quality.
Not because audiophiles enjoy fumbling with one disc at a time.

~~~
guggle
I do not consider myself an audiophile (too much BS in this field) but I do
buy lots of physical music releases (vinyl and cds, preferably cds). Beside
the obvious audio quality, there are other reasons to do so, all of them as a
whole making for a very different experience from streaming. Downloads don't
cut it either. Alas, physical releases are not always available and that's a
shame because there is no shortage of good new music these days. I found
myself down the rabbit hole of Bandcamp very often only to find that some
great albums don't have any physical release. That's how it is, I guess.

~~~
cardiffspaceman
I'm not an audiophile but I have a pair of speakers that is probably 70 or so
laptops of volume and something nice to hook them to. I stream lots of music
through the YouTube app in my smart TV, and last night some of that was
written by Grieg[0]. Remember this Qwest commercial [1]? Streaming music has
its pleasures and undistorted sound should be one of them.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNIon17o5kQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNIon17o5kQ)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxtxPAUcwQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxtxPAUcwQ)

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viburnum
The main problem is with how records are mastered and remastered now (the
loudness war).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war)

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mhh__
I've always thought that if you can _hear_ the difference then you aren't
listening to the music; I say that as someone who plays multiple musical
instruments and is a reasonably competent audio engineer.

(Obviously up to a point)

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bitwize
If it didn't come from a needle in a groove, straight through tube amps into
your speakers, it's low quality.

~~~
aidenn0
I cannot tell if this comment is sarcastic or not.

~~~
mhh__
Poe's law

