Neil Young’s answer to iTunes

http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2008/06/neil-youngs-answer-to-itunes/

by nickb • 18 years ago

4 12 18 years ago

blogs.ft.com

swirlee• 18 years ago

Neil Young's answer to digital distribution is physical media? A disc you have to go the store and buy in person or have delivered by a guy in a truck? A disc, I think it's safe to assume, for which you have to jump through hoops in order to get the music onto your iPod (assuming you have a Blu-ray drive in your computer)? Neil, you truly are a visionary.

nickb2• 18 years ago

I don't buy his aversion to mp3s. Vast majority of the population can't even tell the difference between 128kbps and 192bps. I guess quality is a red herring and a way to market his new product.

bootload• 18 years ago

"... I don't buy his (Neil Young)aversion to mp3s. Vast majority of the population can't even tell the difference between 128kbps and 192bps ..."

I do.

Firstly it shows good taste. NY is a sound quality nut and I for one is grateful ~ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9937142-80.html

    "We are trying to give them quality 
     whether they want it or not. You 
     can degrade it as much as you want, 
     we just don't want our name on it."

When I listen to Old-Black http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Black with the amp cranked up loud I really want to hear the sound (distortion and all) and not the technical limitations that some company puts on it as is the case of iPods. Don't beleive me listen to Doug Kayes explanation on mp3 recordings ~ http://podcastacademy.com/shows/detail1600/

As for marketing I don't think the "rich hippy" really needs it.

bprater• 18 years ago

Yep, even the folks promoting Bluray are making the realization that most folks can't tell the difference between it and DVD.

rms4• 18 years ago

>Vast majority of the population can't even tell the difference between 128kbps and 192bps.

That is true. However, I think most people could be taught to tell the difference on proper equipment, if they were given a double blind test and they heard at the 50th percentile or better.

There is a very real difference between 128 and 192 kbps MP3s in the sound quality that you can really perceive. In 128 kbps MP3s you lose all sounds above 16khz. With 192 kbps there is enough headroom to keep most of the way to 22.1khz which is the frequency limit of CDs. On some very loud passages (like most modern music) a V0 lame MP3 would probably start rolling off the upper frequencies.

192 kbps with variable bit rate is plenty of sound quality for distribution on the internet. You just can never re-encode it so you don't own the music quite as much as if you had the original CDs.

Since I doubt Neil Young is promoting ideally encoded MP3s, you're probably right about the red herring.

Tichy• 18 years ago

If you care about audio quality, also make sure to buy the Denon AK-DL1 audio cable. Only that 499$ cable can ensure the unharmed digital transfer of your audio data.

cheponis• 18 years ago

I am rather bothered by a lot of the comments here. Have any of you actually talked with Neil about these issues? I have. He's an extremely passionate promoter of high-quality sound. I truly feel sorry for those who cannot tell the difference between 192kbps MP3s and CDs. I can always hear the difference with my headphones and eq settings. But Neil is not satisfied with CD-quality; he wants higher quality than that. At the time I chatted with him (several years ago now) he was leaning toward 24-bit 192K samples/second, as I recall. This was before Blu-Ray.

Since the original article was so vague, and we don't have a particular product to critique, can we at least give Neil the benefit of the doubt? His heart is definitely in the right place (and, in case you're wondering, he's more than just a bit of a geek - he's a first-class geek! - And not too shabby a musician, either...)

akd• 18 years ago

I think Neil Young is misguided here. He is a very successful musician and has spent his whole life in sound. Obviously he's going to have a much more finely tuned ear than the general population.

But the number of people who are like him and you is not enough to support a new format or business model. Most people can't hear any differences beyond a good bitrate MP3.

Consumers over the last 50 years have been on a relentless trend towards greater convenience and poorer quality (look at the quality of any of today's household appliances). A quality play is simply obsolete.

rms4• 18 years ago

>I truly feel sorry for those who cannot tell the difference between 192kbps MP3s and CDs.

Have you listened to a properly encoded ~200 kbps MP3? Under what circumstances can you tell the difference between a proper MP3 and a CD? Do you think you could under double blind circumstances with music you pick?

If Neil wants to launch a competitor for HDCD and DVD-audio, great, but I doubt it will be more successful than those. He didn't say what the product actually was, so hopefully he has something better up his sleeves.

Neil Young’s answer to iTunes

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