Keep It Simple, Smartass

Every once and a while it's a good idea to pull back and gain some context, see the forest for the trees. Most of what I've recommended with regards to keeping your audio at the highest quality possible, such as:  recording/mixing at a high sample rate & using certain re-sampling algorithms, can be disregarded without much consequence. I'm simply laying out some rules or theoretical ideals, that it would be nice to abide by. Whether or not you do is up to you. But as the old saying goes, it's a good idea to know the rules you're breaking before you break them.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that a vast majority of people listen to their audio in MP3 format. This is much lower than the CD quality standard I have been comparing even higher quality audio to. So logically it follows that even if you make a very good quality recording at CD quality, some of it's nuances will be lost when converting to ~320kbs MP3. So why bother? Because in the future, when storage space is even cheaper than it is now, and audio playback even higher quality, people will want better quality audio. Maybe not everyone, but the real music lovers will appreciate it.

With regards to MP3 listening, of course I listen to MP3's too. Having an iPod with thousands of tracks on it makes it too convenient not to. Ripping a CD to MP3 (or ideally AAC/MP4) takes minutes, so does downloading a digital copy from Bandcamp or another digital music marketplace. But mixing and mastering a track takes hours, days, weeks, months... and developing your overall musical style, chops, production techniques are all processes that take years. That all this work can all be condensed into a few minute download is incredible, and yet it makes even the most progressive music makers nervous.

Without getting into an entire other tangent on piracy, and the ethical issues that it implies, I will simply make an appeal to sound quality. MP3 is a very limited slice of the sonic spectrum, and even CD quality WAVs or FLACs aren't all there is to music. For certain styles a cassette tape would provide a more than adequate, and sometimes preferable listening experience. But the days of Walkmans and even Discmans are gone. It seems ironic that as the capacity to record music in ever higher quality becomes available to the average person, the quality of music being passed around has become lower. It is out of this paradox that my generation's taste in music is emerging from, and it is worth thinking about what a new standard for digital audio might look like.

That's all for now, keep your headphones on!