Tags: audio

I’d feel frus­trated if we couldn’t release CDs as a band, but then, it only costs us a slight shav­ing of sound qual­ity to get to the con­ve­nience of the MP3. It’s like putting up with tape hiss on a cas­sette. I was happy using cas­settes when I was fif­teen, but I’m sure they were sneered at in their day by audio­philes. If I’m on a train, with head­phones, MP3s are great. At home, I pre­fer CD or vinyl, partly because they sound a lit­tle bet­ter in a quiet room and partly because they’re finite in length and sep­a­rate things, unlike the end­less days and days of music stored on my laptop.

I find this sound qual­ity stuff both fas­ci­nat­ing and ridicu­lous. It’s like the pixel res­o­lu­tion of dig­i­tal cam­eras: higher num­bers are bet­ter, but that dis­cus­sion always pushes the actual pho­tog­ra­phy to one side, somehow.

Radiohead’s Jonny Green­wwod, quoted on an inter­view by Sasha Frere-​​Jones on New York Times (via sub​trac​tion​.com.)