Digital music is rubbish - Bob Dylan • The Register

Digital music is rubbish - Bob Dylan

And don't policemen look young these days?

By Andrew Orlowski • Get more from this author

Posted in Entertainment, 23rd August 2006 12:05 GMT

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You can't blame people for illegally downloading music for free, because that's about all it's worth, according to Bob Dylan, in an interview with Rolling Stone this month.

Dylan also had a blast at modern recording processes for robbing music of its soul.

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he reckons. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like...static."

Dylan complained that songs sounded 10 times better in the studio than the final result. And he might have a point.

While today's algorithms are constantly being improved, we're told, they have to replace what's already been taken out by a reductive process of encoding and compression. The result? A net loss.

Digital "remastering" has also been the excuse for some heinous butchery recently. Universal's Motown CD reissues compress the sound so tightly it sounds like a hiss. You can't sing along to that.

Send us your worst examples of digital "enhancements" to the usual address. ®

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