Awareness of Sound Quality: A Look at How We Listen

I never really considered myself an audio snob in the past. Until recently, I listened primarily to rock music, a genre that, although often rich in texture, is not hurt a great deal by a small loss in sound quality. I would happily don five-dollar headphones or transmit my music over the relentless static of a mostly-unused radio frequency... sometimes I felt like the raw sound actually contributed to the power of the music. Not so with classical.

As we delve into the Renaissance period, it is going to become more and more important to listen with a good sound system. The more vocal texture a composer adds to his pieces, the more we lose when we settle for low sound quality. Last night, I found myself overwhelmed by the power of a cyclic mass by Petrus de Domarto and it occurred to me that I had heard the mass before and experienced nowhere near the same level of bliss. I eventually realized that the previous time I had been listening through my iPod, while last night I had been listening through iTunes on my laptop. Needless to say, in the future legs of my journey I'll be avoiding the use of portable audio whenever possible.

Traditionally, sound quality has depended on the speakers/headphones and the player, but in the digital age the encoding of the audio file is also important. If you want to listen to classical music, particularly of the choral variety, I recommend listening through a pair of noise-canceling headphones and a relatively powerful source (like a computer or stereo system). In general, you'll also get better sound quality from a CD than a sound file with "lossy" encoding (this includes anything from iTunes), but I haven't found this to be essential. Of course, there are plenty of more expensive options for those who are even pickier than I am -- see the link below if this is you.

If you're stuck with cheapy equipment and portable audio, don't fret, there is still plenty to discover in early music. The important thing is just to be aware of the difference sound quality can make and to bear it in mind when you choose how you listen.

Related Links: Portable Audio for Snobs