I REMEMBER THE DAY STEVE JOBS announced the very first iPod. I was really excited. One thousand songs in my pocket?! Are you kidding? How could I be anything but impressed? I bought my first iPod the day it came out. But … something was missing.
Turns out everything was missing. There was literally nothing there, other than a bunch of 1s and 0s flittering about trying to sound like music. It was convenient, sure. But that convenience seems to have come with a cost attached because the sound wasn't entirely present. At best, it was an approximation.
A couple of decades on it's now millions of songs in my pocket and all I have to do is to pay 15 bucks a month to access them. I don't even need an iPod anymore. But there's still literally nothing there (other than those 1s and 0s, which are invisible).
But streaming audio, while it can mimic music, can't sound musical. It's mathematically impossible. It's a digital signal that is much more compressed than CD, which was already pushing things.
I have a friend who swears his Google Play subscription is the greatest thing since the invention of the gramophone. "It sounds awesome," he says. "And all I have to do is say, 'Hey Google. Play some music.'"
I can't tell my turntable to do anything. But all I have to do is pull a record off the shelf, slide it out of the cover, then slide it out of the inner sleeve (and maybe clean it if necessary) and then carefully plop it onto the turntable and swing the tonearm out over the record. A quick flick of my wrist drops the cueing mechanism, and the needle hits the vinyl and the room fills with glorious analogue sound.
Streaming music does have its place, though. It's called the background. It's cleaning music, or cooking or walking the dog music. It's the noise you fill emptiness with, like a TV droning on in an empty room. It's car music. It's not something you actually listen to. I subscribe to Apple Music, which is always playing in the background somewhere. But I don't really listen to it. It's comfort food. Processed cheese and pre-cooked bacon bits. I don't hear the nuances or the spaciousness I hear when I play an analogue record. People who have never experienced a really good analog record played back on a decent system often roll their eyes when I talk about spaciousness and nuance. "What does spaciousness sound like?" they ask me. "It's just space."
No. It's not. It's the separation of the instruments and voices, the placement of musicians in the room, the breathy sound of a bow drawing across the stings, the swish of a brush on the skin of a snare so real you want to reach out and touch the drum rim. These things are not part of the streaming music experience because - as previously stated - it is impossible.
The math doesn't lie. All sounds - digital or analogue - are nothing more than vibrations in the air. Those vibrations causes the eardrum to bounce back and forth according to the pattern of the disturbances they create in the air. This pattern is sent to the brain to be interpreted. The brain makes decisions relating to volume and pitch, depending on the size of the peaks and valleys of a sound wave (amplitude) and by how many peaks pass by your ear over the course of a a period of time (frequency). The larger the amplitude, the louder the noise.
There are all kinds of variables, though. If a piano and a violin play the same high C note at the exact same volume there is still some quality that feels different between the two notes because the different instruments (their materials, etc) have their own influences on the sound wave. But the different amplitudes and frequencies have nice relationships with one another, which is why you hear a specific note rather than a mess of clashing noises.
So how do you tell, say, The Beatles from Frank Zappa? The simple answer is that the squiggle carved into the groove of a record can be written as a combination of pure tones and there is only one combination that will produce any particular squiggle. What makes this possible is called the Fourier Transform.
When it comes to storing sound as a digital file, the limited capacity of our computers poses a problem. Storage is possible, thanks to the work of mathematicians in the 1930s that produced the sampling theorem that states it is possible to completely rebuild a sound wave using a finite number of points as long as they are close enough together. But there's a catch. The theorem requires that when the Fourier Transform breaks down the curve into a combination of pure tones, all the frequencies fall between some maximum and minimum. How close together the points on a curve need to be in order to rebuild it depends on the distance between this maximum and minimum.
Because the mathematics of sound describes an idealized version of reality, the reconstruction of a digital sound wave may not perfectly match the vibrations of the actual sound. An analog recording, on the other hand, is purely physical. Does this mean analog is more accurate? Or is it just different? Sound quality depends on a lot of factors, and it is impossible to definitively state once and for all that either analog or digital is fundamentally better. But the math seems to be on the side of the vinyl lovers.
Turns out everything was missing. There was literally nothing there, other than a bunch of 1s and 0s flittering about trying to sound like music. It was convenient, sure. But that convenience seems to have come with a cost attached because the sound wasn't entirely present. At best, it was an approximation.
A couple of decades on it's now millions of songs in my pocket and all I have to do is to pay 15 bucks a month to access them. I don't even need an iPod anymore. But there's still literally nothing there (other than those 1s and 0s, which are invisible).
But streaming audio, while it can mimic music, can't sound musical. It's mathematically impossible. It's a digital signal that is much more compressed than CD, which was already pushing things.
I have a friend who swears his Google Play subscription is the greatest thing since the invention of the gramophone. "It sounds awesome," he says. "And all I have to do is say, 'Hey Google. Play some music.'"
I can't tell my turntable to do anything. But all I have to do is pull a record off the shelf, slide it out of the cover, then slide it out of the inner sleeve (and maybe clean it if necessary) and then carefully plop it onto the turntable and swing the tonearm out over the record. A quick flick of my wrist drops the cueing mechanism, and the needle hits the vinyl and the room fills with glorious analogue sound.
Streaming music does have its place, though. It's called the background. It's cleaning music, or cooking or walking the dog music. It's the noise you fill emptiness with, like a TV droning on in an empty room. It's car music. It's not something you actually listen to. I subscribe to Apple Music, which is always playing in the background somewhere. But I don't really listen to it. It's comfort food. Processed cheese and pre-cooked bacon bits. I don't hear the nuances or the spaciousness I hear when I play an analogue record. People who have never experienced a really good analog record played back on a decent system often roll their eyes when I talk about spaciousness and nuance. "What does spaciousness sound like?" they ask me. "It's just space."
No. It's not. It's the separation of the instruments and voices, the placement of musicians in the room, the breathy sound of a bow drawing across the stings, the swish of a brush on the skin of a snare so real you want to reach out and touch the drum rim. These things are not part of the streaming music experience because - as previously stated - it is impossible.
The math doesn't lie. All sounds - digital or analogue - are nothing more than vibrations in the air. Those vibrations causes the eardrum to bounce back and forth according to the pattern of the disturbances they create in the air. This pattern is sent to the brain to be interpreted. The brain makes decisions relating to volume and pitch, depending on the size of the peaks and valleys of a sound wave (amplitude) and by how many peaks pass by your ear over the course of a a period of time (frequency). The larger the amplitude, the louder the noise.
There are all kinds of variables, though. If a piano and a violin play the same high C note at the exact same volume there is still some quality that feels different between the two notes because the different instruments (their materials, etc) have their own influences on the sound wave. But the different amplitudes and frequencies have nice relationships with one another, which is why you hear a specific note rather than a mess of clashing noises.
So how do you tell, say, The Beatles from Frank Zappa? The simple answer is that the squiggle carved into the groove of a record can be written as a combination of pure tones and there is only one combination that will produce any particular squiggle. What makes this possible is called the Fourier Transform.
When it comes to storing sound as a digital file, the limited capacity of our computers poses a problem. Storage is possible, thanks to the work of mathematicians in the 1930s that produced the sampling theorem that states it is possible to completely rebuild a sound wave using a finite number of points as long as they are close enough together. But there's a catch. The theorem requires that when the Fourier Transform breaks down the curve into a combination of pure tones, all the frequencies fall between some maximum and minimum. How close together the points on a curve need to be in order to rebuild it depends on the distance between this maximum and minimum.
Because the mathematics of sound describes an idealized version of reality, the reconstruction of a digital sound wave may not perfectly match the vibrations of the actual sound. An analog recording, on the other hand, is purely physical. Does this mean analog is more accurate? Or is it just different? Sound quality depends on a lot of factors, and it is impossible to definitively state once and for all that either analog or digital is fundamentally better. But the math seems to be on the side of the vinyl lovers.
I REMEMBER THE DAY STEVE JOBS announced the very first iPod. I was really excited. One thousand songs in my pocket?! Are you kidding? How could I be anything but impressed? I bought my first iPod the day it came out. But … something was missing.
Turns out everything was missing. There was literally nothing there, other than a bunch of 1s and 0s flittering about trying to sound like music. It was convenient, sure. But that convenience seems to have come with a cost attached because the sound wasn't entirely present. At best, it was an approximation.
A couple of decades on it's now millions of songs in my pocket and all I have to do is to pay 15 bucks a month to access them. I don't even need an iPod anymore. But there's still literally nothing there (other than those 1s and 0s, which are invisible).
But streaming audio, while it can mimic music, can't sound musical. It's mathematically impossible. It's a digital signal that is much more compressed than CD, which was already pushing things.
I have a friend who swears his Google Play subscription is the greatest thing since the invention of the gramophone. "It sounds awesome," he says. "And all I have to do is say, 'Hey Google. Play some music.'"
I can't tell my turntable to do anything. But all I have to do is pull a record off the shelf, slide it out of the cover, then slide it out of the inner sleeve (and maybe clean it if necessary) and then carefully plop it onto the turntable and swing the tonearm out over the record. A quick flick of my wrist drops the cueing mechanism, and the needle hits the vinyl and the room fills with glorious analogue sound.
Streaming music does have its place, though. It's called the background. It's cleaning music, or cooking or walking the dog music. It's the noise you fill emptiness with, like a TV droning on in an empty room. It's car music. It's not something you actually listen to. I subscribe to Apple Music, which is always playing in the background somewhere. But I don't really listen to it. It's comfort food. Processed cheese and pre-cooked bacon bits. I don't hear the nuances or the spaciousness I hear when I play an analogue record. People who have never experienced a really good analog record played back on a decent system often roll their eyes when I talk about spaciousness and nuance. "What does spaciousness sound like?" they ask me. "It's just space."
No. It's not. It's the separation of the instruments and voices, the placement of musicians in the room, the breathy sound of a bow drawing across the stings, the swish of a brush on the skin of a snare so real you want to reach out and touch the drum rim. These things are not part of the streaming music experience because - as previously stated - it is impossible.
The math doesn't lie. All sounds - digital or analogue - are nothing more than vibrations in the air. Those vibrations causes the eardrum to bounce back and forth according to the pattern of the disturbances they create in the air. This pattern is sent to the brain to be interpreted. The brain makes decisions relating to volume and pitch, depending on the size of the peaks and valleys of a sound wave (amplitude) and by how many peaks pass by your ear over the course of a a period of time (frequency). The larger the amplitude, the louder the noise.
There are all kinds of variables, though. If a piano and a violin play the same high C note at the exact same volume there is still some quality that feels different between the two notes because the different instruments (their materials, etc) have their own influences on the sound wave. But the different amplitudes and frequencies have nice relationships with one another, which is why you hear a specific note rather than a mess of clashing noises.
So how do you tell, say, The Beatles from Frank Zappa? The simple answer is that the squiggle carved into the groove of a record can be written as a combination of pure tones and there is only one combination that will produce any particular squiggle. What makes this possible is called the Fourier Transform.
When it comes to storing sound as a digital file, the limited capacity of our computers poses a problem. Storage is possible, thanks to the work of mathematicians in the 1930s that produced the sampling theorem that states it is possible to completely rebuild a sound wave using a finite number of points as long as they are close enough together. But there's a catch. The theorem requires that when the Fourier Transform breaks down the curve into a combination of pure tones, all the frequencies fall between some maximum and minimum. How close together the points on a curve need to be in order to rebuild it depends on the distance between this maximum and minimum.
Because the mathematics of sound describes an idealized version of reality, the reconstruction of a digital sound wave may not perfectly match the vibrations of the actual sound. An analog recording, on the other hand, is purely physical. Does this mean analog is more accurate? Or is it just different? Sound quality depends on a lot of factors, and it is impossible to definitively state once and for all that either analog or digital is fundamentally better. But the math seems to be on the side of the vinyl lovers.
Turns out everything was missing. There was literally nothing there, other than a bunch of 1s and 0s flittering about trying to sound like music. It was convenient, sure. But that convenience seems to have come with a cost attached because the sound wasn't entirely present. At best, it was an approximation.
A couple of decades on it's now millions of songs in my pocket and all I have to do is to pay 15 bucks a month to access them. I don't even need an iPod anymore. But there's still literally nothing there (other than those 1s and 0s, which are invisible).
But streaming audio, while it can mimic music, can't sound musical. It's mathematically impossible. It's a digital signal that is much more compressed than CD, which was already pushing things.
I have a friend who swears his Google Play subscription is the greatest thing since the invention of the gramophone. "It sounds awesome," he says. "And all I have to do is say, 'Hey Google. Play some music.'"
I can't tell my turntable to do anything. But all I have to do is pull a record off the shelf, slide it out of the cover, then slide it out of the inner sleeve (and maybe clean it if necessary) and then carefully plop it onto the turntable and swing the tonearm out over the record. A quick flick of my wrist drops the cueing mechanism, and the needle hits the vinyl and the room fills with glorious analogue sound.
Streaming music does have its place, though. It's called the background. It's cleaning music, or cooking or walking the dog music. It's the noise you fill emptiness with, like a TV droning on in an empty room. It's car music. It's not something you actually listen to. I subscribe to Apple Music, which is always playing in the background somewhere. But I don't really listen to it. It's comfort food. Processed cheese and pre-cooked bacon bits. I don't hear the nuances or the spaciousness I hear when I play an analogue record. People who have never experienced a really good analog record played back on a decent system often roll their eyes when I talk about spaciousness and nuance. "What does spaciousness sound like?" they ask me. "It's just space."
No. It's not. It's the separation of the instruments and voices, the placement of musicians in the room, the breathy sound of a bow drawing across the stings, the swish of a brush on the skin of a snare so real you want to reach out and touch the drum rim. These things are not part of the streaming music experience because - as previously stated - it is impossible.
The math doesn't lie. All sounds - digital or analogue - are nothing more than vibrations in the air. Those vibrations causes the eardrum to bounce back and forth according to the pattern of the disturbances they create in the air. This pattern is sent to the brain to be interpreted. The brain makes decisions relating to volume and pitch, depending on the size of the peaks and valleys of a sound wave (amplitude) and by how many peaks pass by your ear over the course of a a period of time (frequency). The larger the amplitude, the louder the noise.
There are all kinds of variables, though. If a piano and a violin play the same high C note at the exact same volume there is still some quality that feels different between the two notes because the different instruments (their materials, etc) have their own influences on the sound wave. But the different amplitudes and frequencies have nice relationships with one another, which is why you hear a specific note rather than a mess of clashing noises.
So how do you tell, say, The Beatles from Frank Zappa? The simple answer is that the squiggle carved into the groove of a record can be written as a combination of pure tones and there is only one combination that will produce any particular squiggle. What makes this possible is called the Fourier Transform.
When it comes to storing sound as a digital file, the limited capacity of our computers poses a problem. Storage is possible, thanks to the work of mathematicians in the 1930s that produced the sampling theorem that states it is possible to completely rebuild a sound wave using a finite number of points as long as they are close enough together. But there's a catch. The theorem requires that when the Fourier Transform breaks down the curve into a combination of pure tones, all the frequencies fall between some maximum and minimum. How close together the points on a curve need to be in order to rebuild it depends on the distance between this maximum and minimum.
Because the mathematics of sound describes an idealized version of reality, the reconstruction of a digital sound wave may not perfectly match the vibrations of the actual sound. An analog recording, on the other hand, is purely physical. Does this mean analog is more accurate? Or is it just different? Sound quality depends on a lot of factors, and it is impossible to definitively state once and for all that either analog or digital is fundamentally better. But the math seems to be on the side of the vinyl lovers.
BONUS TRACK
Is vinyl really better than CD? A vinyl record is an analog recording, and CDs are digital recordings. A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy (for CDs it is 16-bit, which means the value must be one of 65,536 possible values).
This means that a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps, which in itself creates problems. Some sounds that have very quick transitions, such as a drum beat or a trumpet's tone, will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate.
A CD player converts these "steps" to an analog-like signal - a straight line wave with no steps - which is fed to your system's amplifier, which raises the voltage of the signal to a level powerful enough to drive your speaker.
A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's analogue (no-step) waveform. Therefore, no information is lost and the analogue signal can be directly fed to your amplifier with no conversion. This means an analogue waveform from a vinyl recording can be much more accurate, and that accuracy can be heard in the richness of the sound.
There are downsides to records. For example, any dust or damage to the disc can be heard. During quiet spots in songs this noise may be heard over the music. Digital recordings don't degrade over time, (so it seems) and if the digital recording contains silence there will be no noise of any kind.
But … my records are quiet and clean because I take care of them. Once in a while there's a snap, crackle or pop but they are infrequent and can usually be corrected before the next playing simply by cleaning the record. If it sounds like a lot of bother but it's really not that bad. The sound is worth the effort.
And if you think a record sounds bad when it skips, try listening to what happens when a CD skips. And when that happens there's usually nothing that can be done to correct the problem.
Streaming music is just CD sound dumbed way down in order to accommodate bandwidth. There's really nothing musical about it at all.
OTHER READING
Is vinyl really better than CD? A vinyl record is an analog recording, and CDs are digital recordings. A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy (for CDs it is 16-bit, which means the value must be one of 65,536 possible values).
This means that a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps, which in itself creates problems. Some sounds that have very quick transitions, such as a drum beat or a trumpet's tone, will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate.
A CD player converts these "steps" to an analog-like signal - a straight line wave with no steps - which is fed to your system's amplifier, which raises the voltage of the signal to a level powerful enough to drive your speaker.
A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's analogue (no-step) waveform. Therefore, no information is lost and the analogue signal can be directly fed to your amplifier with no conversion. This means an analogue waveform from a vinyl recording can be much more accurate, and that accuracy can be heard in the richness of the sound.
There are downsides to records. For example, any dust or damage to the disc can be heard. During quiet spots in songs this noise may be heard over the music. Digital recordings don't degrade over time, (so it seems) and if the digital recording contains silence there will be no noise of any kind.
But … my records are quiet and clean because I take care of them. Once in a while there's a snap, crackle or pop but they are infrequent and can usually be corrected before the next playing simply by cleaning the record. If it sounds like a lot of bother but it's really not that bad. The sound is worth the effort.
And if you think a record sounds bad when it skips, try listening to what happens when a CD skips. And when that happens there's usually nothing that can be done to correct the problem.
Streaming music is just CD sound dumbed way down in order to accommodate bandwidth. There's really nothing musical about it at all.
OTHER READING
- NPR: Why vinyl sounds better. Or not.
- Vinyl better? An engineer explains
- 4 reasons why vinyl is better
- The real reason why vinyl sounds better
- Streaming music bad for the environment
- The future of music is streaming. Here's why that just sucks.
- Streaming music is ripping you off
- Has Spotify ruined music?
- Consumer Reports: best music streaming services
