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In a long inteview, Neil Young mentions the effects the technological race to the bottom is having on music and our ability to appreciate it. From ear buds to compounded lossy compression algorithms, most people have lost access to anything resembling the traditional dynamic range and chromatic range that music requires. What to call the sounds that are left? Neil goes into a lot of detail on the problems and some of the, so far unsuccessful, steps he has taken to try to fix the problem.
Neil Young is crankier than a hermit being stung by bees. He hates Spotify. He hates Facebook. He hates Apple. He hates Steve Jobs. He hates what digital technology is doing to music. "I'm only one person standing there going, 'Hey, this is [expletive] up!' " he shouted, ranting away on the porch of his longtime manager Elliot Roberts's house overlooking Malibu Canyon in the sunblasted desert north of Los Angeles.
[...] Producers and engineers often responded to the smaller size and lower quality of these packages by using cheap engineering tricks, like making the softest parts of the song as loud as the loudest parts. This flattened out the sound of recordings and fooled listeners' brains into ignoring the stuff that wasn't there anymore, i.e., the resonant combinations of specific human beings producing different notes and sounds in specific spaces at sometimes ultraweird angles that the era of magnetic tape and vinyl had so successfully captured.
It's a long read, but quite interesting and he has thought about both the problem and solutions. More importantly he has been working to solve the problem, even if it may be an uphill fight.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by qzm on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:20PM (2 children)
Could we please change the title to 'Neil Young, promoting his commercial product, the PONO music player, said....'
And yet what he says still makes little sense. There is nothing inate in in these technologies that FORCES producers to shorten and over-compress their music.
It is simply the choice the commercial producers and promoters are making.
He should be saying 'modern music production is crap' - because buying his overprices and technically of minor advantage music planer/service isnt going to make the production of music any better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by qzm on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:34PM
Just to point out, yes I know PONO is dead, but Neil is well known for beating the dead horse ;)
His website for 'high quality streaming' is still going, which apparently cost him over a million dollars (really? you need to find some better techies Neil).
I suspect he has been suckered by someone, and they are milking him for money in the name of 'helping him save good music' - poor guy.
But really, this stuff is just rubbish - there are plenty of ways to get good music - the problem is little modern music is being produced with much quality.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Sunday August 25 2019, @12:11AM
Modded you insightful on both, but as TFA (along with everything else I've ever read about the guy) the problem is that he's a true believer. He did PONO not only to make money - although he doesn't perform for free, either... - but also because he does really believe in the passion of preserving quality sound. And, point, as you stated he crashed and burned with PONO yet he still advocates for the cause.
"In the clearing stands a Boxer and a fighter by his trade. And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him 'till he cried out in his anger and his rage, 'I am leaving, I am leaving,' but the fighter still remains."
This sig for rent.