MP3 music - it's better than it sounds

Whether you know it or not, that compact disc you just copied to your MP3 player is only partially there.

With the CD on its way out and computer files taking over as the primary means of hearing recorded music, the artificial audio of MP3s is quickly becoming the primary way people listen to music. Apple already has sold 100 million iPods, and more than a billion MP3 files are traded every month through the Internet.

[ MP3: Just because it's digital, doesn't mean it sounds good.]

But the music contained in these computer files represents less than 10 percent of the original music on the CDs. In its journey from CD to MP3 player, the music has been compressed by eliminating data that computer analysis deems redundant, squeezed down until it fits through the Internet pipeline.

When even the full files on the CDs contain less than half the information stored to studio hard drives during recording, these compressed MP3s represent a minuscule fraction of the actual recording. For purists, it's the dark ages of recorded sound.

"You can get used to awful," says record producer Phil Ramone. "You can appreciate nothing. We've done it with fast food."

Ramone, who has recorded everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Rolling Stones, was a musical prodigy who graduated from Juilliard at 16. He won the first of his nine Grammys in 1965 for the classic album "Getz/Gilberto." He is not alone in the upper ranks of his profession in decrying the state of audio, even though millions of dollars have been spent building high-tech digital recording studios.

"We're pretty happy with what we send out," says engineer Al Schmitt, winner of 15 Grammys for records by artists from Henry Mancini to Diana Krall. "What happens after that, we have no control over that anymore."

These studio professionals bring their experience and expensive, modern technology to bear on their work; they're scrupulous and fastidious. Then they hear their work played back on an iPod through a pair of plastic earbuds. Ask Ramone how it feels to hear his work on MP3s, and he doesn't mince words.

"It's painful," he says.

MP3s have won the war of the formats because of technology, not because of their audio quality. "It's like hearing through a screen door," says neuroscientist Daniel Levitin of McGill University, author of "This Is Your Brain on Music." "There are lines between me and what I want to see."

But what is the price of inferior audio quality? Can poor audio touch the heart as deeply as better sound? John Meyer, who designs and builds some of the world's best speakers at his Meyer Sound Labs in Berkeley, doesn't think so.

"It turns you into an observer," Meyer says. "It forces the brain to work harder to solve it all the time. Any compression system is based on the idea you can throw data away, and that's proved tricky because we don't know how the brain works."

It could be that MP3s actually reach the receptors in our brains in entirely different ways than analog phonograph records. The difference could be as fundamental as which brain hemisphere the music engages.

"Poorer-fidelity music stimulates the brain in different ways," says Dr. Robert Sweetow, head of UCSF audiology department. "With different neurons, perhaps lesser neurons, stimulated, there are fewer cortical neurons connected back to the limbic system, where the emotions are stored."

But Sweetow also notes that music with lyrics may act entirely differently on a cerebral level than instrumental music. "The words trigger the emotion," he says. "But those words aren't necessarily affected by fidelity."

Certainly '50s and '60s teens got the message of the old rock 'n' roll records through cheap plastic transistor radios. Levitin remembers hearing Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summertime" on just such a portable radio, an ancient ancestor of the iPod.

"It was crap, but it sounded great," he says. "All the essential stuff comes through that inch-and-a-half speaker."

Levitin also says that Enrico Caruso and Billie Holiday can probably move him more than Michael Bolton or Mariah Carey under any fidelity.

"If the power of the narrative of the movie isn't there," he says metaphorically, "there's only so far cinematography can take you."

Most of today's pop records are already compressed before they leave the studio in the first place, so the process may matter less to artists like Maroon 5 or Justin Timberlake. Other kinds of music, in which subtlety, detail and shaded tonalities are important, may suffer more harm at the hands of the algorithms.

"When you listen to a world-class symphony or a good jazz record," says Schmitt, "and you hear all the nuance in the voices, the fingers touching the string on the bass, the key striking the string on the piano, that's just a wonderful sensation."

How much the audio quality is affected by the MP3 process depends on the compression strategy, the encoder used, the playback equipment, computer speed and many other steps along the way. Experts agree, however, that the audio quality of most MP3s is somewhere around FM radio. The best digital audio, even with increased sampling rates and higher bit rates, still falls short of the natural quality of now-obsolete analog tape recording.

EMI Records announced earlier this year the introduction of higher-priced downloads at a slightly higher bit rate, although the difference will be difficult to detect. "It's probably indistinguishable to even a great set of ears," says Levitin.

How good MP3s sound obviously also depends greatly on the playback system. But most MP3s are heard through cheap computer speakers, plastic iPod docking stations or, worse yet, those audio abominations called earbuds.

The ease of distribution means that MP3s are turning up everywhere, even places where they probably shouldn't. Schmitt, who has won the award more times than anyone else, is incredulous that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences posts MP3s of nominees for the best engineering Grammy. "As if you could tell anything from that," he sneers.

For digital audio to substantially improve, several major technological hurdles will have to be cleared. The files will have to be stored at higher sampling rates and higher bit rates. Computing power will have to grow. New playback machines will have to be introduced ( Ramone thinks high-definition television is the model for something that could be "HD audio"). If the Internet is going to be the main delivery system for music in the future, as appears to be the case, Internet bandwidth will also be a factor.

"The Internet is in charge now," says Ramone, "and it has all kinds of wobbles. You have wires hanging out of windows and things like that. That's just the way things have to be because the Internet is in transition."

Meanwhile, most music listeners don't know what they're missing. They listen to MP3s on shiny chrome machines and plastic earpieces, and what they hear is what they get. But what's being lost is not replaced by the convenience.

In effect, sound reproduction is caught in a technological wrinkle that may take years to straighten out. "This is a transition phase," says McGill's Levitin. "It's having an effect on the culture, no question, but it's temporary. ... (But) it may be around for a while."

A glossary of digital audio terms

A glossary of terms that describe different types of digital audio :

MP3: What has become a generic name for compressed audio files was originally taken from a set of video and audio compression standards known as MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group). . There are many codecs, or compression programs (Apple converts CDs to an AAC file on iPods), but most reduce the file to about 6 percent of its original size.

WAV: The standard computer audio file stores data at 44,100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample (although recording studios are commonly equipped with 24-bit technology). WAV files are uncompressed and written to compact discs in Red Book audio, which adapts the file for compact disc players.

AIFF: Most professional audio is saved in these large files that use about 10 megabytes for every minute of stereo audio.

FLAC: This codec, favored by Grateful Dead tape traders, stands for Free Lossless Audio Code. It reduces storage space by 30 to 50 percent, but without compression. A full audio CD can be burned from the file, unlike from MP3s.

- Joel Selvin