Sandwiches

REPLY: COPYRIGHT
http://www.terracedaily.ca/show1955a13s/COPYRIGHT_AND_CENSORSHIP

Computers and iPods and the like are without a doubt the most convenient way to access your music library.

And isn't that the name of the game? Delivery: instant gratification. And is this not the era of ubiquitous entertainment? Yes, it is. So much so, that people spend lots of money to get away from the perpetual assault of aural candy floss and obnoxious ranting that define the boundaries of current pop music.

Ocean kayaking, mountain climbing, horseback riding; surround yourself with silence. The sound of wind, the beating of your own heart, utter silence. That's expensive peace. So leave your MP3 player behind.

What we're concerned with is longevity. Those people who were once foolish enough to live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse have already achieved their goal. It's time to put that old self-deception to rest.

It's common knowledge that repeated exposure to high volume music will ruin your hearing. With that in mind, it's frightening to see the popularity of MP3 players used continually - joggers, students, bus riders... but what bugs me is how this phenomenon isolates us from each other. Is there something wrong with sharing a physical space? We can't stand the sound of each other? Well, I do sympathize with those who have grown intolerant of the muzak that they pump through the speakers in the stores. Hoo-ee! What a load.

What is actually happening is people are completely wrapped up in building a style to their personal inner-space. The simple act of consumption - consumerism, whether purchased or pirated - provides self-satisfaction. Without it, the modern consumer is empty.

OK, now to brass tacks. This _is_ about the music industry. The big companies have suffered a setback, likely due to their own mistakes in implementing Digital Right Management. So they backtrack and begin to use the de facto standard compression technology that actually makes it convenient to download music in a timely fashion. That's MP3, aka MPEG Audio, Layer 3, and it is a very flexible technology.

Benefit: portability. Costs: not just money. The biggest cost, and the one that will last the longest, is the damage to the music itself. MP3 is a "lossy" technology; when compressing the size of a recorded file, you naturally lose detail. Same thing happens with JPEG pictures, another technology developed to take advantage of limited internet bandwidth and disk storage.

But wait a minute! Isn't this a bit retro? Where have the greatest strides been of late? In these very technologies - neither bandwidth nor storage is dear at this time.

So when we are weighing file size vs quality, what are our options? LEt me walk you through the iTunes "Ripping" options. Ripping refers to copying a music file from a CD onto a hard drive. On the CD, the file can be very large - say 60 MB for a 3-minute song. Typically you will end up with a 3 MB MP3 file. How did it get there?

Answer: in iTunes, use Preferences: Advanced: Importing: Import Using: MP3 Encoder. There are 3 basic settings to choose from: Good (128) High (160) and Best (192 kbps). There is also a "Custom" setting where you can adjust the file to anywhere between 16 and 320 kbps. At the lowest setting, the resulting file would be very compact, suitable for sending a friend an e-mail with a poor-quality song attached. The question is, at what point do you actually notice the difference between the bit rates?

And some very good research has been done on this. You could try it yourself, by going to http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/11/few_listeners_can_distinguish.php To summarize, the low-quality (64 kpbs) MP3 was consistently rated by lsiteners as inferior to both the Average (128) and Best (256 kpbs) recordings. Almost all respondents could not tell the difference between the Average and Best recordings.

So, what bit rate has the industry chosen to sell its MP3s at? Why, only the Best! And only a few people would be able to tell the difference between theseversions and the ones you might be able to find on a download site. And could anyone tell the difference between the 256 kbps MP3 and the CD you could buy of it, *at the same price*? Not likely.

So everybody's happy. Your iPod will only hold half as many songs - maybe only a week's worth, instead of two. You might have to delete some of them some day, heaven forbid! Of course, if you were buying all those tunes online (or CDs in a store), you would be broke long before you could fill up that 80Gb drive.

The industry will certainly be happy if it succeeds ub convincing you to spend loads of time downloading songs from their store.

So there's two things that are in short supply: money and time. How can you balance them with bandwidth and filesize?

I guess you could unplug for awhile.