IPOD and the Audiophile

Here is an interesting article from the NY times that may be of some interest to folks here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/ar...=1&oref=slogin

I don't know...there's a lot of articles around these days about how iPods and mp3s are killing sound quality, killing high-end audio, and making audiophiles into dinosaurs.

I grew up, and fell in love with music, listening to LPs and cassette tapes (8-track was already on the wane by the time I started paying attention). Everyone knew that cassettes didn't sound nearly as good as LPs, but we still bought pre-recorded tapes, taped our friend's albums, and listened to them endlessly with no harm done. Tapes were awesome because you could never put a turntable in your car.

These days, you have way more control over the sound quality of an mp3 than we ever had with cassettes...even a 128kbps mp3 blows away the sound of any tape I made growing up (I do miss cross-fading tho. Or at least the faux-crossfades that I got really good at using just the recording level sliders on my tape deck).

All of this much-maligned convenience puts more music into the ears of more people more often. This breeds a love for music...a love of good sound quality comes years (for me, decades) later.

I too had the same experience with cassettee tapes and I sometimes play them through my main system ( and wish my car had a player!). Convenience and portability for music listening have reached levels I never dreamed of. But it occurred to me that the the increased speed with which we live our lives and all of the competing forms of entertainment may have a greater impact on changes in the audiophile world than MP3 files. It's not too often that I can sit down and really listen to an album from beginning to end with focused concentration. I often listen while doing chores and often use the shuffle function on my 5-CD player. These days, if you want to get your music, you often have to get it on the move. So much for the sweet spot!

I think downloadable lossless music will be a common option soon enough. There are already two pretty good options with itrax.com and musicgiants.com

FWIW...I use FLAC files at home, and Apple Lossless on my iPod. The only real reason I have an iPod is because of the integration with my car stereo, otherwise I would have some other portable device that supported FLAC.