December 08, 2003
Audio Trade-Off: Quality vs. Portability
A colleague at work and I often have a discussion where we come to radically different perspectives on enjoying music. He's an audiophile and I'm a...well...I guess you could call it a portaphile.
To him, being the audiophile that he is, the quality of the sound is what matters most. His highly sensitive ears can detect even slight degrees of compression in digital sources and he can easily tell the difference between mid-level and premium speakers.
For him, nearly any type of audio compression scheme is unacceptable, since it results in the loss of sonic detail and clarity. Moreover, easily toting his music along with him is almost impossible, since even the best small headphones don't have the sound reproduction capacity he demands.
To me, I desire portability over every other aspect. I'm not unhappy with FM-quality sound if I can listen to it where I want, when I want, and how I want to. I just can't hear the difference between, say, two MP3 files encoded at 128 kbps and 192 kbps. But then, I don't often listen under optimal conditions -- while working (over computer speakers), while mowing the grass, while driving, etc. Listening to music is rarely something I do as my sole activity (and I bet that's pretty much like most folks).
The good news is that there are a lot of lossless digital audio formats out there to choose from, including Monkey's Audio, the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), WavPack, and Lossless Predictive Audio Coder (LPAC). Supposedly, a lossless version of Windows Media Audio (WMA) is also on its way (oh, goody). A good overview of these formats can be found a modatic.net.
However, that still doesn't help with the headphone problem -- Mr. Audiophile still has a hard time easily toting around an enormous over-the-ear headset. Another technology, known as bone conduction, may help here. Bone conduction basically sends sound waves directly through the skull instead of transmitting them through the air to the eardrum. While most small earphones have little problem with high-frequency sounds and the upper end of the audible spectrum, bass is almost always pretty bad. That's where bone conduction comes in -- solid bone carries low frequency (bass) sounds better than air, so sound reproduction could benefit significantly.
So, while there's a distinct trade-off of sound quality versus portability today, that may not be the case for much longer. Better software and better hardware, and innovations in both, might permit Mr. Audiophile to take his high-quality experience with him and might let me, the "portphile," begin to appreciate better quality sound without losing the portability I crave.
Posted by Craig | PermalinkAlthough I can't say never, but it's not possible to duplicate a high-end system in any portable device right now. The headphone system is only one part of the sound processing chain, and there are other areas such as amplification stage, digital processing stage, interconnect stage that any portable devices would be hard to match at this point in time. The way I deal with it is I don't have the same set of expectation, and I simply enjoy portable music for what it is.
Posted by Ken at December 8, 2003 12:14 PMBTW, Apple's iPod can play uncompressed AIFF files (equivalent to Windows .WAV). Doesn't solve the headphone problem, unless your friend wears some honkin' studio phones while walking around. ;-)
Posted by Mike Rohde at December 8, 2003 12:29 PMI don't know about you, but "bone conduction" sounds a little creepy to me. My brain is rattled enough as it is.
Posted by bob at December 8, 2003 01:27 PMHave Mr. A try out a pair of Etymotic Research ER-4 in-ear headphones. If that won't do the trick, he is doomed to sitting at home between the Sennheisers.
Posted by Mitch at December 8, 2003 02:28 PMAny serious audiophile knows that there is no headphone that can duplicate the experience of the high-end speakers. You just can't duplicate the soundstage and lower-octave sound. Also most headphones don't have great dynamic range anyway. I used to own an expensive electrostatic headphone (Stax, I believe) a long time ago, but ended up selling it because it didn't even come close to my reference speakers I had at the time.
Posted by Ken at December 8, 2003 03:42 PMAssuming no headphone would ever work and even bone conduction technology, portable music would never be up to audiophile spec anyway, since there will always be some level of incidental noise.
With an audiophile "room" I imagine one could eliminate alot of incidental noise (at great cost too, probably) which just isn't feasible in a constantly changing environment.
But then in some ways I kind prefer some ambient noise when I listen to music -- I think it's kind of cool to walk around with music in my ears and still hearing my environment because it feels more like my own personal movie soundtrack, :-)
Posted by Mike Rohde at December 8, 2003 05:16 PMWhen engineers perfect direct stimulation of the portion of the brain that produces auditory sensation...that should answer any questions of perfect rendering for audiophiles!
Posted by Sam at December 9, 2003 12:25 AMOf course cans can never fully replicate the soundstage of a first class setup in a prepared room, but a pair of Etymotic er-4's or Shure E5c's driven by a headphone amp will, I suspect, give sound that he'd be willing to live with. These "canalphones" have great sonic isolation and Headroom amps have a circuit built in (which can be shut off) to slighly crossmix the left and right signals, in order to improve soundstaging--tho' of course it's still not perfect.
Posted by Mathew at December 9, 2003 12:52 PMHi, can anyone tell me or direct me to a comparison between the etymotic ER-4s/p and shure E3/c? Thank you.
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