Hi-Fi, Goodbye

I typically upload my music at 192 kb/s in the mp3 format. The quality isn't incredible, but it's more than listenable and it doesn't eat away hard drive space. I consider myself much more than a casual listener, yet I'm willing to sacrifice some quality for a great deal of quantity. Maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's bad. But either way, we're witnessing the gradual demise of hi-fi.

Now, I wasn't around at the time, but I know that high quality sound performance hit its popularity in the '70s. Hi-Fi this and Hi-Fi that. At the time, you had nowhere to go in terms of convenient listening experiences, so they had to market quality. Vinyl's sound quality is warm and vivid, but it's cumbersome and delicate, so the market of the 70s and 80s was unconsciously dying for an improvement.

There was the fruitless introductions of 8-track and audio cassette, but what caught on was the compact disc (CD) in the 80s. The quality was crystalline, but it sacrificed the warmth and intimacy of a record, which was a physicaly representation of music. CD quality is almost saccharine and it loses the colored silence of a recording and the haunting character that could be physically developed on a record. But now, people could listen to a clear sound on the go and without worrying about quality deterioration. And now there is the MP3, which retains the the digital luster and permanence of a CD, but the sound leaves a bit to be desired and can even damage your hearing. For instance, bass response is weak, and because of it, listeners tend to increase the volume to get that kick. They often over-compensate. The high-end's volume level survives the format, so it becomes, often unnoticeably, blistering and therefore, harmful to hearing. And this occurs more commonly with those white, Apple earbuds. I'm no audiophile, but I can't stand those little guys. The quality is tinny, rusty, and has hardly any bass. But walk down a street in Manhattan and you'll see every other person wearing them. I'm willing to give up some quality in the MP3, but not quite that much. And I'm sure when they listen at home they're using a 2-piece speaker set that came with their computer. Tons of people listen to music over the MySpace stream, too. And that's why we won't see an upgrade from the digital music format in a very long time. It's not about quality. We don't need Hi-Fi. Even casual music listeners are listening to more music groups. It might be our shortening attention spans, or maybe it's our propensity to that, "I found it first" or "I know more music than you do" sentiment. For me, I listen to tons of music, mostly albums in full, but I think that I retain all of these characteristics. But it's also because I love music so much, and I finally have the means of listening to so much more--because good music doesn't have to be limited to the radio legends anymore. And in this, I sacrifice the hi-fi quality of music. If there was a popular format that had better quality and didn't take up much space on my computer, I'd love it, but I think our standards for sound have become so low that the future of hi-fi is dismal.

In all of this though, I don't feel like I'm losing much. Although I listen to vinyl, because I didn't grow up with it, I don't expect that quality of sound. I expect CD quality. There is the occassional file that is unlistenable, but for me, it's rare that I even notice this supposed poor quality. My roommate is a music technology major, and after performing a blind test on him, he was unable to tell the difference between a song encoded as an mp3 at 128 kb/s and the same song encoded as a CD wav file. Now, I'm not saying he's a true audiophile--a hi-fi fanatic--but he has to be more conditioned to notice differences in sound quality than the most of us. So do I think there will be a hi-fi revival? I doubt it. What was cool in the 70s is what is inconvenient now. And covenience, flashy devices, and earbuds that don't mess your hair is what's cool. Trends change, but sometimes trends become staples.