Compression: The bane of modern music

I stumbled across a fantastic article in Rolling Stone about the trend of increasing compression in CD masters. It explains the problem in laymans terms, and if you're not worked up about the problem already (I have been for years, but nobody listens to me) you probably will be when you're done reading.

What bothers me the most is the idea that portable music players require a highly compressed waveform to eke the best fidelity out of a compressed format. That may be the case if you're buying crap quality tracks from Steve Jobs. Those of us who do our own compression are using variable bit rates of 192k average, or more. With a quality set of headphones, you should be able to achieve highly dynamic sound in almost any environment.

This is, as with so many other problems, simply a failure of education.

I also take some umbrage at the blanket statement that 'nobody buys high-fidelity stereo equipment any more'. Yes, this is generally the case, but I'm of the CD generation, and I own a system that by any objective standard can be considered hi-fi. These days it's more affordable than ever to buy a great stereo system. Stereos just aren't cool. IPods are.

I guess I'm just not cool.