Neil Young Pushes Pono, Says Piracy Is the New Radio 361
Hugh Pickens writes "Kia Makarechi reports that Neil Young isn't particularly concerned with the effects of piracy on artists but is more concerned that the files that are being shared are of such low quality. 'It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio,' says Young. 'I look at the radio as gone. Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around. That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it.' Young is primarily concerned about whether the MP3 files we're all listening to actually are pretty poor from an audio-quality standpoint. Young's main concern is that your average MP3 file only contains about five percent of the audio from an original recording and is pushing a new format called Pono that would be 'high-resolution' digital tracks of the same quality as that produced during the studio recording. Young wants to see better music recording and high resolution recording, but we're not anywhere near that and hopes that 'some rich guy' will solve the problem of creating and distributing '100 percent' of the sound in music. 'Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music, his legacy was tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl.'"
Hundered posts about blind tests (Score:4, Interesting)
Sound Quality (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dirty Hippie (Score:5, Interesting)
(notsureifserious)
if serious, though, 24/96 really is a step up from regular redbook (16/44.1) audio. and redbook is about 2 steps up from mp3 when br=192k (approx).
at 256 and 320 encoding, mp3 starts to sound reasonable on high res audio gear (such as what a mastering studio would have access to).
the main issue, really, is how well the source was done. if the source was not done well, 16/44 is fine enough or even overkill. but for carefully done productions, 24/96 *is* really sweet. at home, using a clean path system and decent headphones, 24/96 is worth it. on sprks, it gets harder to tell; but people with good hearing can tell. its not BS.
Re:Sound Quality (Score:4, Interesting)
And they most certainly don't have an entire barn [morebarn.org] as one speaker, with a house as the other.
Re:FLAC (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, I love all the crazy technology, because I never get tired of watching the audiophiles lie to themselves about this or that.