+1 to what AT said.  My entire life I have been hearing "the sky is falling" when it comes to music.  It's grumpy, crotchety old man talk.  I remember having low quality transistor radios and even crappy boomboxes that were loud but awful sounding.  It never stopped me from wanting better.  My son just bought his first pair of real headphones and I guarantee that they are much better than anything I could afford when I was his age.  Yes, he listens to low quality mp3s on his phone just like most of the world these days because it is far more practical and convenient to do so.  It's no different in principal to choosing to eat ONLY food prepared entirely by scratch from only fresh, organic ingredients or eating prepped food.  Most would agree that scratch is better yet our society's leaning towards prepackaged food (How many of you eat only freshly baked bread?), but it does not stop us from recognizing the difference and appreciating it.
 
By the posts here, you would swear it was standard for every home to have a pair of 50k Infinity reference speakers in every home .  What I recall being in the average home was the bog behemoth system with the rack changer in the 70's and cheap integrated component systems in the 80's with the occasional mid-level component system .  With the exception of audiophiles, people who upgrade often got loud ported speakers that provided boomy distorted bass.  I think in my entire 20's I came across maybe three systems in the home of an average joe that came anywhere close to reproducing something even close to what the master recording likely sounded like. 

Isn't  the Loudness control/button for the decreased highs and lows that come with lower volume? I usually like things fairly flat. If anything I may put the bass +2, mid 0, and treble +1 and keep the Loudness off. I used to pump the highs more.

Beats by Dr Dre serve a particular market and are neither as good as they claim or as bad as their detractors claim.  Although they don't sound like Bose, the marketing principle and end result is not all that different; take any sound  turn it into a particular sound popular with target audience.  Neither has any business being used for recording but serve end users well.  IMHO the philosophy and target audience for "Beats" is not much different than the target audience that Cerwin-Vega speakers targeted in the late 80's and early 90's.  I highly suspect that criticism lobbed at Beats would not ring nearly as loudly if not for the association with rap.  If the exact headphones were put out with a different name, they would simply be seen as just another set of headphones,  above the quality of SKull Candy but not audiophile quality.  Yes, they are overpriced for what they are, but so are most things attached to a celebrity name.

I see that a lot of people are feeling annoyed that their mix winds up getting played on ear buds and I am paused to wonder if perhaps the way forward is to mix different versions for different devices?
 
For example: one mix for stereos and a different mix for ear buds, etc.
 
Then the consumer simply downloads the appropriate version for their device from the web-store. I'm imagining that the ear bud version would be pretty slap dash but surely there is a way to optimize fizzle?

As it's my own?... Not even slightly... I take it you've been discussing exactly this?... Well I'll just slink back off into my dark corner...

Royal, yours or not what you posted seemed strange because the thread had sort of come to a conclusion. Your post appears to disregard that. 
 
Your solution would have various mixes out and about for ever. Don't believe that people will follow your instructions and play the right mix on the right gear. 

Well, when you're listening to crappy music, who really cares if it sounds like crap? 

This thread sounds like a lot of old farts sitting around the campfire jousting about the old days, it's the earbud generation vs. the dolby generation . . .
. . . wait a minute. . . . let me grab a beer from the cooler and pull up a lawn chair . . .
 
These recent threads find me fighting the urge to go out and buy some cheap earbuds, because I have some amazing Sennheiser headphones that sound great !
 
I was so glad to see the cassette tape era die a slow death, where your mixes sounded different on every stereo it was played on, so much so that if MP3's and earbuds
are here for a while, that may be alright. I'm sure the next round of audio playback technology will fix all this. I'm actually more worried about the current state of songwriting in the industry, than the media it's played back through. Oh well, just makes me appreciate classical music, and live show music all the more.
 
There's also this thing I'm hearing on the radio lately, squashed and compressed, dynamically void, sounds good in the car in traffic, but play it 10 minutes on my living room hi-fi system, and I just want find a quiet corner and pluck my acoustic guitar.
 
Anyways, some great comments here, I've had a lot of laughs on this thread, thanks guys and gals for cheering up my Friday night.
Think I'll head over to the songs forum for a bit . . .

Am I an old fart?... 'twould appear that 32 is the new 79?... Back to ear buds bashing, perhaps inventing an arc system for ear buds could solve this distress? It could measure how fat people's ears are, the amount of wax and the approximate brain mass of the subject in relation to their total head mass and determine optimum slap back cancellation?...

You don't need to be 79 to sound like a crotchety old geezer. :) Cheap headphones are nothing new.  Nostalgia tends to wear rose colored glasses. I'm quite sure the combination of Beats by DR Dre , an mp3 and earbuds sound no worse than  my old Sony Walkman with those foam covered headphones.    The Sony Walkman was such a hit because it was a major jump for portable music.  Affordable options for music on the go prior to that consisted of cheap transistor radios.  In fact, I can't think of an error where portable music was anywhere even close to audiophile quality without spending an arm and a leg and being impractical.  I had a few friends who would spend several hundred on high end headphones for their discman, but most realized walking around with bulky, expensive headphones that could easily be damaged or lost was silly.  This thread makes it sound like the average consumer strapped reference monitors to their ears and toted around a cart with a high end audio system powered by a generator, playing 3/4" tape machines.  I seriously don't recall there ever being a widespread portable headphone that was significantly better than earbuds.  I'm hoping one day there will be, but like WDI, I think of portable music the same way as anything else portable; a step down but worth it for the convenience of being able to tote thousands of songs.

{oldFartsDisgustedWithThePresentYutes}
Hey you kids, get off my lawn.
{/oldFartsDisgustedWithThePresentYutes}
 

I get that portable music is convenient. But as a musician who'd like to turn a better dollar and maybe garner higher numbers at shows? My only problem with the devices that hold thousands of songs, is that it's breeding listeners who have no idea who some of the artists are that they're listening to in the first place. There was once a time where people knew specifically who the artist, the album title and they could even tell you what track number the song was on the CD without looking. (I realise that this isn't effecting the really big names but the mid echelon and small timers appear to be getting the raw end, something chronic.)
 
It's ridiculous, the amount of times in recent years I've had friends tell me about this awesome song that I just have to hear! Only to spend the next 15 minutes, flicking tracks, trying to find it because they don't even know the name of the artist or song. (But they've supposedly listened to it "heaps.")
 
It's a bit off topic but coupling this with the whole free ripping debate, the excuse I hear people who download for free, say all the time is, "If I really like the songs? I'll buy the album!"
 
Well that's a great sentiment, except that most of my friends who do this haven't parted with money for a song, let alone an album, for the last 6 years or more. How could they, when they don't even know the name of the artist to begin with? What are they going to do? Go into a CD store and play every album in the store until they hear that song, that they only know by the way it sounds? Of course, obviously they're always far too busy to take note of what it is, when they're playing it and liking it?
 
And sure they love it now but it doesn't seem to take long to get buried by the new 1000 songs (over exaggeration?) they download over the next 12 months and be replaced by yet another song that you just have to hear if only they could find it? Cue the: "Oh I know who it is, I just can't think of the name at the moment? I think I saved the song as a favourite? Give me a couple of minutes to find it? I'm not sure if it's? Oh I think it's after this one? No? Oh I was sure it was in this bunch of tracks somewhere? I'll know it once it plays! When I'm jogging, it comes on when I've reached the park bridge, so that takes me about 25 minutes to reach it, so? Ummm? You know what, just take a seat and I'll find it, you're going to love it though..."
 
For the love of crap! I've been at festivals with these people who whilst walking between stages, hear a song being played and all of a sudden exclaim that they really love that band but had no idea what their name was and didn't know that they were playing at the festival. Which would be cool if they then locked down who the band was and maybe (wishful thinking) bought an album from them and perhaps (god forbid) some merch? Fast forward to a week later and they can't recall the name of that band again, but swear they were awesome and supposedly love them.
 
Perhaps in the same way that it's impractical for everyone to have amazing speaker setups, is it also in this day and age, now impractical for listeners to dedicate themselves to who the bands are and what they are about?...

WDI

RickJP909

robert_e_boneNow THAT is funny - and sad. Bob Bone 

What's even funnier and sad Bob is the fact that the ear buds have now been replaced by expensive Beats Dr Dre Solo's!!!  So we have people downloading poor-quality MP3s from iTunes (being the biggest retailer) and on to their iPhones or iPods (poor quality playback device, but yet people will happily pay premium for them) and then played back in Beats Solo HDs (premium price for these too)! Q: So where's the logic of shoving HQ-Audio converted to compressed low quality audio and shoved through high quality expensive headphones?

A: There isn't any logic behind it, it's just about pure image - they look good and trendy!

I bet I could play you the song of your choice downloaded from iTunes on your pick of apple device on your pick of stereo system and you would have a difficult time in a blind AB test with a CD as long as the volumes were equal.

I still buy records and record to tape. But I definitely see a place for MP3 players and MP3s.

Tapes hiss and always needed adjustment in the player to avoid lossing high end. I always turned Dolby off as I would rather hear the hiss than have all the high end cut out. Plus tapes got eaten and degraded. Copies lost noticeable sound quality.

Records pop and crackle, warp and in general need a lot of care.

An MP3 player hooked to a car radio properly sounds much better than the FM radio.

The earphones that come with MP3 players are the same quality if not better than came with Walkmans.

I recently pulled out my CD Walkman to listen to a CD and couldn't figure out how I listened to it ever as it sounded far worse than my iPod and iPhone.

Oh did I mention being able to carry your entire music library in the palm of your hand. Or previewing and buying new music without ever having to go to the store.

Etc....

To me the worst thing about MP3s is short attention span. I find myself jumping around a lot more picking songs rather then just listening all the way through.

Good for Dre Beats. Not really my style though. I got the Bose.

Hi WDI.
 
My friends think I'm a "pedant" when it comes to music as that's been tried already by them & I'm afraid I picked out the CD from an MP3!  Well, to be fair it was a 128kbps & a 192Kbps.  It was easy for me as those two lacked a bit of high-end which I was able to perceive & the mids sounded harsher to me however I admit that I don't believe I can tell between a 256Kbps, 320Kbps & CD but I may try as an experiment!
 
I'd also like to say that I'm guilty of using MP3s as I not only use them in my car but I also use my iPhone as an iPod now & I'd agree that with a decent pair of headphones, they sound Hi-Fi to me!  For the record, I never liked the headphones that came with Walkmans anyway!
 
I think it's fair to say that modern technology has advanced enough to get high fidelity from many compact devices now.  I was just highlighting the use of highly compressed MP3s such as 128Kbps which was the standard of iTunes for a long time.  Even though I believe they now use 192Kbps, it's still borderline for me & on a portable device or in the car I think it's fine but I can tell you that on high-end speakers such as my full range floor-standing Kef's with decent kit attached, I can hear the difference which is why on that system I only play CDs or if there's no alternative, 320Kbps MP3s.
 
Regardless of whether you can hear the difference or not the fact is that MP3s alter the dynamics of uncompressed audio and in some recordings, it sticks out to me as I don't like the end result.
 
I agree that any medium that sells music has got to be good for the industry but the original creator of that diagram I linked in this thread just points out the irony in the general listening public.
 
I therefore think it's fair to say that the general public don't really care much for Hi-Fi music, as long as it's good enough & accepting highly compressed audio isn't the only thing which has been accepted either as its been well documented that we've had a loudness war for years even with many releases having so much compression applied, that the dynamics have been lost & some clipping which will have introduced distortion into the recordings, being bought by the masses which means they either accepted those recordings as good enough or are clearly tone deaf as I can think of many recordings which sounded awful to my ears & so I avoided listening or buying them as I didn't personally consider them acceptable.

i also find it hilarious that people act is if people in the past were somehow more discriminating. people who care that much about the quality of their sound (always has been the vast minority) have always gone the extra mile.  I rip my cds to 320 as i am sure some of you do.  i voulteer for a blind organization and sound means a lot more to them.  They tend to look for higher quality sounds.  The average joe, hower, takes it in any format tha twill fit on his mp3 player/phone/ipad the same way listeners took whatever they could fit on 8-track, cassette, etc

RickJP909

WDI

RickJP909

robert_e_boneNow THAT is funny - and sad. Bob Bone 

What's even funnier and sad Bob is the fact that the ear buds have now been replaced by expensive Beats Dr Dre Solo's!!!  So we have people downloading poor-quality MP3s from iTunes (being the biggest retailer) and on to their iPhones or iPods (poor quality playback device, but yet people will happily pay premium for them) and then played back in Beats Solo HDs (premium price for these too)! Q: So where's the logic of shoving HQ-Audio converted to compressed low quality audio and shoved through high quality expensive headphones?

A: There isn't any logic behind it, it's just about pure image - they look good and trendy!

I bet I could play you the song of your choice downloaded from iTunes on your pick of apple device on your pick of stereo system and you would have a difficult time in a blind AB test with a CD as long as the volumes were equal.

I still buy records and record to tape. But I definitely see a place for MP3 players and MP3s.

Tapes hiss and always needed adjustment in the player to avoid lossing high end. I always turned Dolby off as I would rather hear the hiss than have all the high end cut out. Plus tapes got eaten and degraded. Copies lost noticeable sound quality.

Records pop and crackle, warp and in general need a lot of care.

An MP3 player hooked to a car radio properly sounds much better than the FM radio.

The earphones that come with MP3 players are the same quality if not better than came with Walkmans.

I recently pulled out my CD Walkman to listen to a CD and couldn't figure out how I listened to it ever as it sounded far worse than my iPod and iPhone.

Oh did I mention being able to carry your entire music library in the palm of your hand. Or previewing and buying new music without ever having to go to the store.

Etc....

To me the worst thing about MP3s is short attention span. I find myself jumping around a lot more picking songs rather then just listening all the way through.

Good for Dre Beats. Not really my style though. I got the Bose.

Hi WDI. My friends think I'm a "pedant" when it comes to music as that's been tried already by them & I'm afraid I picked out the CD from an MP3!  Well, to be fair it was a 128kbps & a 192Kbps.  It was easy for me as those two lacked a bit of high-end which I was able to perceive & the mids sounded harsher to me however I admit that I don't believe I can tell between a 256Kbps, 320Kbps & CD but I may try as an experiment! I'd also like to say that I'm guilty of using MP3s as I not only use them in my car but I also use my iPhone as an iPod now & I'd agree that with a decent pair of headphones, they sound Hi-Fi to me!  For the record, I never liked the headphones that came with Walkmans anyway! I think it's fair to say that modern technology has advanced enough to get high fidelity from many compact devices now.  I was just highlighting the use of highly compressed MP3s such as 128Kbps which was the standard of iTunes for a long time.  Even though I believe they now use 192Kbps, it's still borderline for me & on a portable device or in the car I think it's fine but I can tell you that on high-end speakers such as my full range floor-standing Kef's with decent kit attached, I can hear the difference which is why on that system I only play CDs or if there's no alternative, 320Kbps MP3s. Regardless of whether you can hear the difference or not the fact is that MP3s alter the dynamics of uncompressed audio and in some recordings, it sticks out to me as I don't like the end result. I agree that any medium that sells music has got to be good for the industry but the original creator of that diagram I linked in this thread just points out the irony in the general listening public. I therefore think it's fair to say that the general public don't really care much for Hi-Fi music, as long as it's good enough & accepting highly compressed audio isn't the only thing which has been accepted either as its been well documented that we've had a loudness war for years even with many releases having so much compression applied, that the dynamics have been lost & some clipping which will have introduced distortion into the recordings, being bought by the masses which means they either accepted those recordings as good enough or are clearly tone deaf as I can think of many recordings which sounded awful to my ears & so I avoided listening or buying them as I didn't personally consider them acceptable.

I actually agree with a lot of your points. But I think someone needed to play devils advocate in this thread and I just happen to pick your post. Really didn't mean to pick on you.

I hate the over compressed mastering of many of the modern releases. I will not listen to it. There is no excuse for things being released this way. Need something louder, that's what the volume control is for. We need better amplifiers in our portable players, not overly compressed masters being released to make them sound louder.

And yes, MP3s are technically a compressed lossy format of lower quality. And that is what you get when you buy from iTunes, though I think they are 256 kbs now without DRM. It is a shame that many of the kids now will have bought an entire music library of lesser quality perhaps not even realizing that. I was totally against buying music this way. I have given in a little and have bought a number of albums from iTunes. It's always out of convenience. But at the same time I haven't been disappointed with these purchases. They sound good. But I know I could have gotten a better version for probably the same price if I had been patient and bought them on CD. Lately I've been buying records and making MP3s from them. Go figure.

I guess my point was that MP3s are not the garbage that some people like to make them out to be. And in some regards are no better or worse than some of the older formats. There's pluses and minuses.

Good thing I was replying on my iPhone. I had to look up the definition of pedant. :)