The Internet could mean a bleak future for high‑fidelity music, worries reader Philip Cadman.
I was concerned at the recent announcement of the merger between EMI and Time Warner, not simply because I think big is seldom — if ever — better, but because of the possible implications for the music and recording industry. And, needless to say, for people who enjoy listening to high‑quality stereo recordings.
There is increasing discussion about distributing recorded material via the Internet. Currently, a 56k modem will just about manage poor‑quality MP3‑encoded recordings in real time, but to receive CD‑quality audio an increase in bandwidth of at least 25 times would be required and very few end‑user Internet connections are yet capable of such speeds. This is presumably one reason why the music companies now wish to make available MP3 versions of their music catalogues.
I find this very worrying: if the network infrastructure required to provide proper CD‑quality (or better) data rates is not in place in a sufficiently short period of time, the music companies may stay with MP3. In short, the music companies may decide to deal in MP3 and other data‑reduced formats (like Minidisc's ATRAC) as long as it will satisfy the majority of their customers.
An article in the March 2000 issue of Electronics World makes interesting reading: in brief, the author states that data‑reduced recordings lack the ambience and reverberation components which supply spatial information to the listener, and therefore that such techniques are unsuitable for high‑quality stereo reproduction. One point which the author makes is particularly significant, and I quote: "While lossy compression may be adequate to deliver post‑produced audio to a consumer with mediocre loudspeakers, these results underline that it has no place in a quality stereo reproduction environment."
Because the vast majority of consumers possess just such 'mediocre loudspeakers', the major recording companies may receive little complaint regarding their use of data‑reduction techniques and it may then follow that CD‑quality recordings become the exception to the rule in Internet music distribution. And as music distribution becomes increasingly tied to the Internet, might CD versions of some tracks/albums be foregone entirely in the relentless pursuit of economy?
Radio listeners are already being subjected, unknowingly, to data‑reduced recordings. Although Minidisc is currently used mainly to record jingles, interviews and other programme contributions, it can't be long before playlist items are also broadcast from Minidisc, or from similar data‑reduced recording formats.
Apologies for being cynical here, but why should anyone bother with the new generation of 24‑bit/96kHz recorders and other high‑resolution recording equipment and techniques, when most of what they record will be thrown away by data‑reduction encoding? Indeed, what of the 24‑bit/96kHz recordings that the capacity of DVD promises? Will they be declared obsolete before they are even marketed? The technology will soon be available to provide affordable, high‑ resolution sound reproduction to the discerning music lover, but unfortunately record companies might well consider production and distribution of high‑resolution recordings not to be worth the relatively small return on the investment required.
But that is not the only danger of Internet music distribution: assuming legitimate music distribution over the Internet becomes widespread, how will listeners be charged for material they download? It is relatively easy for a download from an official MP3 site to be charged to, for example, a credit or debit card. But what is there to stop someone then making the material available on an unofficial site or on Usenet — which is exactly what is happening at the moment — or even passing it around by email?
To prevent — or rather track — wholesale distribution of pirated material, the MP3 file could have a digital signature added to identify the original purchaser. However, stealing a credit card and setting up an account on one of the free Internet service providers would make the risk of detection insignificant. In fact, while on the subject of digital signatures, could such a signature be embedded throughout the audio data without being audible? Could it be made detectable even after a decode to audio followed by re‑encoding? I fear any purely software‑based method of preventing piracy will be circumvented, with 'cracked' versions of both the playback software and the material itself inevitably becoming available over the Internet. In my experience, the only truly successful piracy prevention techniques involve a hardware 'key' (often referred to as a 'dongle') of some kind. The question is where to put the lock?
The Internet is the future, we are told — it will change forever how we shop and how we do business. That's probably true, but I just hope that it doesn't also precipitate a decline in the audio quality of recorded music.
If you'd like to air your views in this column, please send your ideas to: Sounding Off, Sound On Sound, Media House, Trafalgar Way, Bar Hill, Cambs CB3 8SQ. Any comments on the contents of previous columns are also welcome, and should be sent to the Editor at the same address.
Email: soundingoff@soundonsound.com