BigChampagne's Ultimate Chart (a/o February 3rd):
1. “What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger),” Kelly Clarkson
2. “Turn Me On,” David Guetta
3. “Set Fire to the Rain,” Adele
4. “Rack City,” TYGA
5. “Good Feeling,” Flo Rida
6. “Young, Wild & Free,” Snoop Dogg & Wiz Khalifa
7. “We Found Love,” Rihanna
8. “Sexy and I Know It,” LMFAO
9. “Domino ,” Jessie J
10. “International Love ,” Pitbull
It sounds perfectly reasonable. Music fans want superior sound quality; they want crisp cymbals and rich bass instead of muffled or over-compressed files. Sounds logical, right?
According to one Stanford professor, the answer is 'not exactly'. During a recent panel in Mountain View, Stanford professor of music Jonathan Berger shared an interesting takeaway from years of ad-hoc listening surveys involving his students. In 'blind' listening tests conducted by Berger, students often express a preference for lower-quality MP3s, even against high-fidelity, superior versions of the same music.
That was relayed by Dale Dougherty, publisher of technology blog Make, and a participant in the discussion. "Students prefer the quality of that kind of sound over the sound of music of much higher quality," Dougherty relayed. "[Berger] said that they seemed to prefer 'sizzle sounds' that MP3s bring to music. It is a sound they are familiar with."
The finding raises some truly thought-provoking questions, and recasts the sound quality question. "Someone explained to me that audiophiles liked the sound artifacts of vinyl records - the crackles of that format," Dougherty said. "It was familiar and comfortable to them, and maybe those affects became a fetish. Is it now becoming the same with iPod lovers?"
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