MP3s Are Destroying Music

Sigh. It was bound to happen, I suppose...

A professor out at Stanford University named Johnathan Berger has been conducting an informal study every year for the past 6 years. The subject of this study? Students. The purpose of the study? To find out what quality of music they prefered. In a letter to Gizmodo, Professor Berger described the experiment:

Students were asked to judge the quality of a variety of compression methods randomly mixed with uncompressed 44.1 KHz audio. The music examples included both orchestral, jazz and rock music. When I first did this I was expecting to hear preferences for uncompressed audio and expecting to see MP3 (at 128, 160 and 192 bit rates) well below other methods (including a proprietary wavelet-based approach and AAC). To my surprise, in the rock examples the MP3 at 128 was preferred. I repeated the experiment over 6 years and found the preference for MP3 - particularly in music with high energy (cymbal crashes, brass hits, etc) rising over time.

Yep. You read right. Kids these days actually prefer the sounds of overcompressed mp3s to uncompressed CD-like audio. I mean, I'm all for compression... It certainly has its uses, a lot of which are good. But actually preferring the sizzle and crackle of digital overcompression to clear, uncompressed audio?? Ugh...

One thing's for sure... My kids are being raised FROM BIRTH (or beforehand, possibly) on uncompressed music. Hm... I better keep these old CDs around...

-e