Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn't the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."
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While we're at it, here is the magazine's picks for top music videos of 2007. Didn't know bands still made videos? Neither did I! We can go watch all of them for the first time in 2008.
I like Mute Math's video for Typical. It takes us back to the days of quirky and cheap videos like MTV fed us in the 80s. What the above article didn't talk about is fidelity loss on YouTube. You think mp3's are bad... CONTACT: Leave me a Houston or Texas media news tip | COMMENT: Click to leave your thoughts on this post here
