Quality of recorded music lower than 25 years ago

When the CD standard was developed in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the recording quality was fixed at a sampling rate of 44.1khz at 16 bit resolution. This was a compromise set due to the limitations of computer chips at the time. Recording studios would record music at 48khz at 24 bit or higher, this would be ‘dithered’ down to the cd standard when mastering the cd for production. 

25 years later with the rise of MP3, typical music has been ‘bit crushed’ by up to a factor of 10 times so that it will play on MP3 players such as the ipod. This dramatic reduction in the quality of recorded music for the consumer, which may be just passable for quick shot pop music listening, leaves nearly 90% of the music content out. And this from a standard which was a compromise 25 years ago. The material is artificially replaced by algorithms such as used by The Frauenhofer institute. It really is time that Apple, Microsoft and others revisited these standards to bring back full quality music in the 21st century.

This article published by www.conspiracyreview.com ©2008.