“In the iPod age, music sound quality has been dumbed down to ‘Fisher-Price toy’ levels, rock star and tech enthusiast Neil Young said Wednesday at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech Conference,” Michal Lev-Ram reports for Fortune.
“‘Apple has taken a detour down the convenience highway,’ Young told the Brainstorm audience after taking the stage for an interview with Time Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey. ‘Quality has taken a complete backseat – if it even gets in the car at all,'” Lev-Ram reports.
“Young spent most of his time on stage lamenting what he feels is an increasing focus on convenience versus quality in today’s iTunes/iPod-dominated music industry. And he wasn’t afraid to criticize companies – Apple in particular – that he feels have brought down audio standards,” Lev-Ram reports.
Lev-Ram reports, “Young complained that music has become ‘like wallpaper’ – more Muzak than music. ‘We have beautiful computers now but high-resolution music is one of the missing elements,’ he said.”
Full article here.
Of course, Young’s right. He’s just blaming the wrong party. Apple sells music via their iTunes Store at the best quality levels the music cartels will allow. If you want to criticize, then criticize those responsible for the problem, please. Leave Apple out of it. (We suppose you could stretch far beyond the bounds of reason and attempt to blame Apple for not including $500 audiophile-quality headphones with every iPod, but let’s stay realistic).
Apple iPods are perfectly capable of playing pristine high-fidelity sound with frequency responses of 20Hz to 20,000Hz. Apple’s iTunes can import using the extremely high-quality Apple Lossless Encoder. In fact, Apple even offered encoding in MP3 format at bit rates up to 320 kbps at no extra cost long before most other applications. Of course, you’ll sacrifice hard drive space for sound quality.
Bottom line: The music cartels are to blame for not allowing real high-resolution music to be sold online, which is Young’s real criticism, we believe. Apple, Apple iPod, and Apple’s iTunes software are not to blame. You can easily get very high-quality music into and out of an Apple iPod using Apple’s iTunes software.
And, Neil, while you’re obviously talented and we love a lot of your music, you’re not effing Mozart. Hate to break it to you, but for most of your stuff, even 128 kbps MP3 would suffice.
Rock star? Yeah, and Ballmer is thin.
Neil is cool, just a bit outta touch.
“…if it even gets in the car at all.” Anyone putting loads of money into a car stereo is nuts to begin with. Too much noise from tires, wind, engine, transmission and so forth. MP3 or AAC is more than adequate for a car.
Anyone remember why Crosby, Stills and Nash canned his no-talent ass? Wasn’t it something like when they sobered up they realized that he sucks?
-jcr
Oh, and let’s not forget the only noteworthy mention of Niel Young ever made in a rock and roll song:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=65293&id=65321&s=143441
Apple fans don’t need him around, anyhow.
-jcr
I think the drugs Neil is / has taken is affecting his brain. As people get older their hearing sensitivity decreases substantially. He wants headlines where he can get them because he wants to rebel.
Shows you the class guys like Mozart and Beethoven have.
Not once have they been interviewed whining about an Apple product that brought their music to new generations of music lovers!
An aging rock star, overpaid, out of touch with normal reality because of the huge cash he keeps getting for playing the same songs over and over.
I liked his music 30 years ago, but what is irritating is that he is still getting paid for it.
Ask a working person, a music fan, if the quality is good enough.
The answer, Mr. $50,000 stereo in your frickin mansion, is YES.
Blaming Apple, who are NOT at fault, shows how remote these super-rich types become.
Hey Neil, any chance of some cash? My frickin mortgage payment is due.
Sorry, Wandering, but I can’t agree in the slightest. Neil Young is an arrogant, effete snob of a man whose voice and talent left him LONG ago. John C. Randolph (above) is absolutely correct: If CS&N;couldn’t put up with his destructive behavior and lack of work ethic, why should we? Truth is, Young is a has-been trying to return to the glory days when anyone gave a crap about what he said or did. Retire, Neil. You can use the rest!
This is true for all Internet digital music format. Not just iTunes.
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‘Fisher-Price toy’ quality levels he said… ah ah ah very funny.
I saw Mozart last week.
Man, he was looking rough. He was totally Brahms and Liszt.
I saw Mozart last week.
Man, he was looking rough. He was totally Brahms and Liszt.
technically he is right.
sound quality sucks.
my brother has an awesome tube stereo. the sound is amazing.
but then again, I can’t afford that type of quality even if I wanted it.
Neil was one of the last holdovers to keep using analog recording equipment, and methinks his real beef is the whole digital format thingee itself. That said, the mp3 format is fairly atrocious, and should be critiqued on audiophile grounds. But MDN’s take is correct- it ain’t Apple’s fault. In fact, Apple insists upon AAC, which does at least try to be fairly accurate. What people don’t know about bitrate and all the rest is daunting, and Neil is a good front man for the fight, but, yeah, he’s picking the wrong opponent in Apple, and confusing the issue more than confronting it.
I’m a fan of Neil Young, but MDN has it partly correct. The music cartels are partially to blame. They want you to buy that high margin disc. However, the fans also want this. If you have 4 gigs on an iPod nano you’re carrying, do you want the most music you can carry or a single high def album?
I also notice that Neil isn’t releasing his stuff on SACD or DVD audio exclusively. When the walkman came out, the headphones for those things were crappy, but I guess Neil missed all of that.
Yes, the sound quality is lower with an iPod, but if all of us had the storage space and the speed of download to accommodate several gigs of space per album, we’d all be on the bandwagon. And I think the sound quality will just improve over time.
Young has a bit of a cheek really, as his music – pleasant as it may be – hardly breaks musical barriers or stretches audio equipment.
As for criticising iTunes, I’d say he’s a loser there too. Personally, I like iT for the fact that I can hear a little-known classical piece on the radio, and the odds are it’s on iTunes for me to add to my collection – without having to wait weeks for a special order to limp through a high-street dealer.
Neil no longer has any appeal. He seems mad about it. His American Idol appearance was the first this latest generation has ever seen or heard of him. Noone today knows who he is…he is dried up…get a new career.
The only people that truly care (or can distinguish) the super high-quality music are audiophiles. Your average consumer can’t recognize the difference between 128 bit and 256 bit music, so it really doesn’t make any difference to the vast majority of the population. And any true audiophile wouldn’t use digital, but good old vinyl, the truest representation of sound since it the music is actually scratched into the surface, not converted to digital and burned on to a disc.
Yes, what Apple offers is maybe a diluted product in terms of quality, but it sure is convenient. It doesn’t take up a lot of space, still has high quality in it, and as MDN said, it’s also what the labels will offer for the price Apple is willing to pay for.
I’m certain that the labels would offer higher quality bits if Apple were willing to pony up the cash to buy them, but then they’d have to pass that on to the consumers, so we’d be looking at what, 3.99/4.99 a song??? No thanks!!
I’m a fan of Neil’s, but he has misdirected the anger on this one.
Neil is a genius and the fidelity of his acoustic and live work is amazing. I think we should listen to what he has to say even though his ideas may challenge our preconceptions.
I thought Constanze was “effin’ Mozart.”
What sits at the piano and rots? Mozart decomposing.
CSN are ok CSNY rock. I stand by my previous statement.
Nobody is a bigger supporter of Apple than I am…. but you guys are wrong here…. and MDN often shows its immaturity – by closing his article and telling Young, he’s not Mozart….. take it easy, please…. you made a good point, and ruined it with a childish closing.
It is not JUST the music industry MDN… Steve has a lot to do with it….. he has shown NO concern for sound quality in any of his products ( don’t make me laugh about that Hifi box he put out a couple of years ago)
The sound quality of the iPhone is embarrassing…. yes, embarrassing…. I asked a friend to view a video on my 3G a couple of days ago…. he had to alternate between putting the phone to his head to hear it and pulling it away from his face to see the video….
Try listening to the iPhone’s speaker phone in anything less than a dead silent room…. yeah, ok
iPhone haters can laugh at that, when they put their phone’s on speaker or just use it without having to mash it into your ear to hear the other party.
The iPod’s sound quality is pretty bad… and it’s not just bits… it’s parts…. if the sound was of any concern to Steve, he would have spent even 5 more dollars (Apple’s cost) and included headphones that sound good….
For the person that says you don’t need a good stereo in your car because of noise inside the car: You need to take a ride and listen to my car’s audio system… the sound quality would shock you…. I do mean, “quality”…. if you are satisfied, fine.. but making a blanket statement that no one can hear the quality in a car is wrong.
Let’s go to the speaker on my macbook pro. The latest version is slightly better…. but anyone trying to listen to even a utube video would be put to shame by the average dell laptop for just volume.
Steve could care less about the sound quality…… don’t tell me the music industry is at fault for the iPhone’s bad audio. This is Steve’s second attempt. iPhone 1 was even worse. Maybe by version 3 or 4 he will understand that people need to hear their phone. The demonstrations at Macworld sound great amplified through a sound system.
Neil has been vocal about this topic years before mp3 became the standard; he’s been bashing CDs and their “pristine high-fidelity sound” for nearly two decades now. He doesn’t even care for the high-res discs like DVD-A, etc. His stance has been pretty consistent: at least as regards his own recordings, he knows the analog master tapes, and he knows the digital versions, and he knows they ain’t the same. Of course, he’s listening on audio systems most of us can’t even fathom. Even if he is “outta touch”, as Wandering joe suggests, at least he gives a damn.
MDN is right, though, about his misplaced ire towards Apple, though I’m not so sure Apple would offer 24-bits/96KHz audio even if the labels allowed it: the demand simply isn’t there.
I still believe vinyl is the best medium for music.
Didn’t the song “Sweet Home Alabama” say “I hope Neil Young will remember…a Southern man don’t need him around anyhow”.
That song should be the song of the day on iTunes.