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In Defense of AudiophilesThe iPod hasn't made great sound obsolete.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2007, at 11:48 AM ET

(Continued from page 1)

These are all good points, but none of them makes the case against audiophiles. Let's examine them one by one.

First, one boast of high-end audio gear is that it does tend to reproduce high frequencies with pristine purity. If you can't hear high frequencies anymore, you can't hear that advantage. But there's more to music—and more to hi-fi—than extreme treble. Compared with good CDs and LPs played on good hi-fi gear, MP3s also flatten dynamic range (the difference between the loudest and softest sounds), obliterate dynamic contrasts (the slight variations between loud and soft), smother low frequencies (the bass), and smear transients (the front edge of, say, a drum smack or a string pluck). These shortcomings wreak havoc with drama and rhythm—the life and essence of much music.

As for his budget, well, such is life. Teachout is known for his impressive collection of limited-edition art prints, which have cost him a fair chunk of change. He might as well have said that a dollar spent on art was a dollar he could no longer spend on speakers. And that's fine. We all make choices. But one person's priorities aren't immutable principles. Teachout has adjusted to life without high-end gear, but that doesn't make audiophilia a crock.

He's also right that recorded music is not the same as live music, that it's unavoidably "an experience once removed." But there are degrees of removal. There are really good stereos, so-so stereos, iPods, cassette tapes, boom boxes … where do you draw the line? He writes that "Stravinsky is still Stravinsky," no matter what the medium. But is he? A crummy pair of ear buds doesn't let you hear everything in Stravinsky's scores—all of the notes that made Stravinsky a genius and his music enduring and stirring. Given that recordings are approximations, the question remains: How proximate do you want to get? Recordings may be "once removed," but they're also endlessly repeated. You can relive moments that, in a jazz club or concert hall, are fleeting. And in the reliving, is it a "snare" to want the sound to be as close to the concert hall as technology and one's budget can manage?

The Times' Tomassini sums up the argument—that MP3s and cheap earphones are "good enough." But here's the question: Good enough for what?

If you want the mere gist of music; if you like music wafting in the background; if you want to carry around 1,000 songs in your pocket; if you want to hear a beat and a melody while you jog or ride on the subway—and that's often what any of us want (even me)—then MP3s are plenty good enough. Convenience doesn't merely trump quality; it is quality.

But there are some things that only a really good home stereo, playing well-recorded CDs or vinyl LPs, can give you: the texture of an instrument (the woodiness of a bass, the golden brass of a trumpet, the fleshy skin of a bongo); the bouquet of harmonics that waft from an orchestra (the mingling overtones, the echoes off the concert hall's walls); the breath behind a voice; the warm percussiveness of a Steinway grand; the silky sheen of massed violins; the steely whoosh of brushes on a snare; the undistorted clarity of everything sung, blown, strummed, bowed, plucked, and smacked, all at once—in short, the sense that real musicians are playing real instruments in a real space right before you.

Such wonder machines, most of which by the way are made in America, cost money—though many very fine models don't cost so much. (Useful reviews can be found in Stereophile and the Absolute Sound, though I should note, in full disclosure, that I write for the former and used to write for the latter.)

It's worth noting that digital audio files will get better, just as compact discs did. (In their first decade, CDs and CD players sounded dreadful, worse than MP3s—and much worse than some other, less-compressed, downloadable formats—sound now. Click here for a note on these other formats.) When this future comes, we will all rejoice. In the meantime, to deny or dismiss the sonic differences not only deprecates the depths and delicacies that make music so alluring. It also tells the engineers and manufacturers that they don't need to improve their products, that bad sound is good enough.

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Fred Kaplan, Slate's "War Stories" columnist, reviews music and audio gear for Stereophile magazine. His jazz blog can be read here. He can be reached at .
Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer.
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Notes from the Fray Editor

"If listening to a stereo has never given you goosebumps, you don't understand." This comment by Psychedelicious is probably the motto for this Fray. Many posts received checkmarks, but that was rather unfair: most of them were interesting and knowledgeable--maybe they all should have checks. Or, put another way, this particular Fray Editor didn't feel qualified to judge all the technical posts--but feels qualified to say that this was a good-tempered (mostly), highly opinionated and informative board. If you're interested in the subject, allow plenty of time to follow the posts: advice, arguments, one poster's dramatic change of mind, and Nexofa's charming history of a hi-fi purchase, including some advice on how to listen (spit out the gum, close your eyes).

There's a good discussion of the difference between live and hi-fi music—and in the first post, below, a strange echo, we thought, of last week's Fray on Led Zeppelin—see the Fray notes below this article.

Comments from the Fray

The first major purchase I made after college (in '79) was a stereo, and it took months to select the right components. In those days I had plenty of time to listen to my vinyl collection for hours at a time, with the best setup I could afford. Years later, I'm over 50, my hearing isn't what it used to be, time is a precious commodity, and I haven't listened to a recording without multitasking in years. The last stereo I bought had to meet the following specs : less than 13" high. When I do listen, it's on a bus, train, or walking down the street. Sadly, I don't need high fidelity. But I wish I could go back to the days when its importance was paramount.

--thebigpalooka

(To reply, click here)

There is an elephant in the living room on the subject of hi-fi that no one ever talks about: In general, people like highly compressed music! This is the main reason most people, including audiophiles, prefer vinyl to digital. The limited dynamic range of analog is a positive; people describe the music as thicker, more intense. I remember my disappointment the first time I ever heard a CD back in the early eighties; it sounded washed-out and flat. It took me years to figure out that the impressive sounding spec of 90 decibel dynamic range was to blame. I see this as a prime example of the law of unintended consequences.

--case42tlc

(To reply, click here)

Yeah. I had a similar epiphany back in the dawn of the CD age, listening on the car radio to some random song, and the DJ came on to exult about how that was off a CD and wasn't it wonderful with that great CD clarity etc. and I thought: even assuming the input to the CD recording process was perfect, it was played back at the radio station, I know they usually have all kinds of limiters and Aphex 'aural exciters' etc., then through the transmitter which is probably designed for a lot of things before fidelity, then through a car stereo no less and listened to, in the interior of a car..... the fact that it's still recognizable as a CD under those conditions can't be because of the fidelity of the CD, it's got to be because the CD puts its signature on the sound so indelibly nothing can remove it.

--gzuckier

(To reply, click here)

(12/11)

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