But unlike people who choose to make themselves outliers, audiophiles shouldn't be so readily discounted. They are just people who were born with 20/10 hearing instead of 20/20 hearing. People seem to dismiss or poke fun them as if it were a matter of their being pretentious. To those, I can only suggest imagining what the constant sensory input overload experienced by autistics feels like -- both emotionally and discomfort-wise. The imperfections average people barely hear (or register only subconsciously) stand out to us vividly and actually become sources of stress when regularly subjected to them.
Low bitrate streamers can literally pain us, and often our only choice is often to simply turn them off. And I guarantee were it possible for me to wave magic wands at their ears and make them capable of hearing what audiophiles do, at the level audiophiles do, they would go instantly red-faced, and very humbly and apologetically dial up all their streaming and broadcasting bitrates, stop clipping all their masterings, etc. The thing is, none of us would be angry at them for having been unable to hear what we were hearing all along. But it really begins to grate and degrade the quality of our lives when there are so many people in decision-making roles who can't hear what we're hearing, who won't even consider the possibility they're doing that to others, and who will make no concessions on their behalves. For the video- and audiophiles of this world, it's very much like living in a wheelchair in the age before the Americans with Disabilities Act. "Enjoy the stairs, freak!" I really wish this could change. At least in the old days, incompetence (things like clipping) often generated sounds that people could acoustically interpret as warmth, color, and character if they weren't outright extreme. But no amount of codec noise, digital clipping, overdone Voltair-style watermarking, etc., has any "silver linings" like those to hide behind to help make the medicine go down.
Perhaps in spirit, but not ultimately because of that last part. I have made a habit throughout my life of contacting streamers, big and small, with gentle taps on the shoulder and encouragements concerning mistakes they were making, and things they could improve. I've gotten into technical and philosophical e-mail debates over streaming bitrates with everyone from Scott Mason (RIP) to the people behind obscure and eclectic streams (note the 320 kbit/s stream now on KEGR.org's front page?). I contact anyone I see streaming in very low bitrate MP3 to champion AAC to them (or at least HE-AAC), offering elaborate background information with links on how old and established AAC itself has already become so they're assured switching won't cost them listeners. I point out codecs accidentally set to mono, and mono program streamers (e.g. old time radio folks) accidentally using stereo, needlessly increasing their audible artifacting levels due to bits being wasted coding tape head phase skews, etc. In the end, 75% of the people I make contact with don't make any changes. But the 25% who do feel like pure victories. Which makes it all worthwhile. My favorite "get" is still KROQ HD2. I grew up on that music in addition to oldies, and yet KROQ was streaming it at just 64 kbit/s ... a nightmare for my ears, given the value of the content to me individually. The e-mails I wound up exchanging with Scott and their PD were friendly in both directions, but seemed to reach a general impasse in the end, much like, and for the same reasons as, audiophile talking points aren't very well-received here.
However, to my delight, about a month later, their bitrate mysteriously jumped out of nowhere to 128 kbit/s and the improvement was immediately noticeable. I was ecstatic, and you can still hear it that way at http://stream.abacast.net/direct/audacy-kroqhd2aac-imc to this day.I think that if we all made gentle and persistent efforts to communicate and reason with the decision-makers out there about quality issues, the victories we scored, however few and far between, would collectively contribute to putting a sequence of events into motion that would lead to a broad victory later down the line. Allowing the mediocrity of the masses' standards and tastes to suck away our morale so we become paralyzed, passive sufferers of their own retinas' and auditory sensory receptors' limitations does us no justice, and actually leads to the creation of a world where future up-and-coming audiophiles and even musicians may never chance to encounter the finer things that would've induced and inspired them into seeking careers as technological and artistic excellence-makers for the next generation. Who, after all, would ever be induced to become a great chef if we collectively let all good food vanish from civilization through getting lost in the feelings of futility created by staring at Cheetos' sales figures?
The corollary is: imagine that same content being 1:1 available on a second platform with minimum 256 kbit/s Opus encoding. All the audiophiles would switch, instantly. That would get noticed by the techie and power user demographic, which would soon follow. Then the masses would suddenly perceive that elements of "the technological in crowd" were switching, and the great sucking, siphoning sound of Sirius going bankrupt would commence.
Ordinary people put up with inferior things because they either don't notice the difference, or simply prioritize other passions in their life. But they sure follow leaders. Those of us with "the ears to hear" and strong passions for quality can create movements if we push hard enough.
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