TechForensics's Journal: Have mp3s ruined our appreciation of music?

I always wondered why I never enjoyed listening to my favorite music played from an mp3 file on my computer. I guess I was just thinking that as I got older, my youthful passions were fading.

Long ago, I had decided that at least I ought to preserve my LP collection (about 400 records, mostly classical). Then last week, I finally got around to installing the FLAC codec on my machines and the project began. Listening to the music as it was encoded (live from my turntable) was an entrancing, emotional experience as I remembered. What's more, so was listening to the music played back from a FLAC-encoded digital file.

So I did an A/B comparison of the same music from mp3 and from FLAC. I could distinctly hear the comparative dullness and lack of airiness in the mp3s. Then I started berating myself. How could I have been so blind (or maybe deaf is the better word) for so long? How could I not have noticed the difference? Probably I put it down to listening on small computer speakers rather than my expensive stereo.

But I was wrong. Mp3 has been important and useful, and music on computers and music-to-go could not so easily exist without it, but for me-- it stole away my enjoyment of music for over ten years.

I'm not bitter, however. Now I get to hear it "fresh"-- all over again. If you have been subsisting on mp3s, maybe it would mean something to you to try conversion of your CDs and LPs to files encoded with a lossless codec.

is is MP3 -- or

[Grampaw Willie]

is the difference in MP3 or in the type of material that is common today?

mp3 is fine if ya just wanna make noise but then so is a chain saw