The Quality of Sound:
First off, before I discuss anything else, let’s talk about bit rate and sample quality: something the majority of audiophiles like myself deeply care about. For starters, more expensive equipment does not necessarily equate to higher fidelity listening. In fact, most of the time it never does. I cannot stress this enough. This is such a common fallacy among DJs, recording artists, and audio hobbyists. This is the same psychological fallacy of “if an item is more expensive, it is obviously going to be better." No, no, no, no, this is not true at all. The majority of audio products that companies try to market are incredibly expensive compared to the quality of the sound the consumers receive from them. I remember trying headphones on at an actual studio, and I had brought my $120 headphones along with me. The sound producer told me that the headphones I was going to try were $2000, sleek, and of the highest quality. When I did try them out, I will admit that they were very very good. I also plugged in my own headphones to see whether or not I could hear a huge difference in the sound quality. I predicted that I would, simply due to the nature and quality of better and more expensive equipment. What happened surprised the hell out of me. I could not hear any distinct difference between my own headphones and ones of "the highest quality." My brain simply assumed that the "better” headphones would in fact be better because they were more expensive and unique.
Here’s the kicker people: music and equipment claiming to play frequencies and sampling rates at high fidelity, say 96kHz and 24 bit (even 32 bit on rare occasions), are going to sound almost identical to a 16-bit 44.1kHz system. The upper range of human hearing does not exceed 22kHz; in fact, most adults, simply due to prolonged sound exposure, have a range of 30+Hz to 18kHz. Because the sampling rate is always double that of the fundamental frequency, the highest sampling rate of human hearing is double that of the highest range of hearing: 44kHz. This is why many things are sampled at 44.1kHz (among other reasons like compatibility).
Stereo vs Mono:
One of the fundamental ideas behind high-fidelity listening is the idea of stereo sound as opposed to mono sound. The idea that stereo sound is necessarily better than mono sound is itself a fallacy. There are plenty of ideas where mono sound actually amplifies a musical idea more than stereo sound could. In instances where more and more instruments or voices are played, one could argue that mono sound is going to be better because stereo only augments small musical ideas in different ears, such as guitars or singing. The idea of stereo vs. mono is actually a musical idea in itself but unlike most music, the sound is determined by the taste of the listener rather than that of the musician. One of the main promotions over stereo was that it added an extreme sense of realism. The idea of “surround sound” was slowly becoming more of a reality for people, and stereo development really pushed that idea.
Stereo dramatically influenced the way a lot of the sound production of emerging rock. This idea worked so harmoniously with genres such as rock and other lightly layered pieces because it did create that sense of realism as well as the sense that you were actually in front of the band playing live.
The idea of stereo is augmented and preferred for the most part because of the way our ear hears music. One could argue that the stereo version of Hey Jude is more suited to a mono sound because the sound would not be realistic in that sense of “Hey this sounds live!” Two guitar players are not playing on one side of your ear or the other in the acoustical space.
Another example of a preferred style of music for mono sound is:
Due to the fact that this is a louder and heavier piece, mono reins supreme because the ear cannot comprehend all of this “sound.” I personally think that a mono sound would create a better musical picture in the mind of the audience. This holds true for many classical pieces, and quite honestly I am not sure I have heard a classical recording in true “stereo,” simply due to the fact that it would sound quite strange from that perspective. If we were to try and emulate an actual concert hall, a live performance to an audience member is actually going to sound very similar to a mono recording. This is simply due to the acoustical space of a concert hall. Sounds from the high strings and brass on stage right and the low strings and brass on the stage left are going to meld together before they reach the ears of the audience, regardless of the unique acoustical space the sound is housed in.
The invention and immersion of headphones also changed the way people listened to music at the time. A sense of stereo sound within such a “confined” listening area such as headphones allowed the listener to experience a more individual taste to their music without other judgmental ears listening to it. The new development also led the way to more intimate music. One of the interesting developments that people had to later grapple on to was the decision of speakers or headphones. Both had their advantages and disadvantages, and the idea of stereo really helped push headphones as an emerging and eventually a primary listening device for the majority of the population in America.
More on acoustical recording spaces and digital music to come…
Cheers,
~MJ