About ten years ago, probably, it would be a semi-frequent pastime of me and some of my geekier friends to get together in one another’s basements, connect our computers via a series of wires, gadgets, and switches. You see, wireless networks were not prevalent (or inexpensive) at the time, so it would take about an hour or more to get all set up. Once we finally got it altogether, we’d play a few first person shooter games, sports games, etc., drink lots of soda, and generally geek out until morning.
Some of the games were not of my most interest, however. Back at home, my parents did not have fast Internet (like that of many of my friends), so what I would spend a big portion of my time doing, is searching through my friends’ computers for MP3′s, videos, and other interesting files, copying them over to my machine if I found them particularly interesting.
My friend Drew had a large collection of MP3′s that were of interest to me: Nirvana’s entire catalog, various Incubus archives, other bands I enjoyed. So, without thinking twice, I copied everything he had that was interesting onto my own computer.
Thing is — these MP3′s of Drews are of a particularly low quality. MP3′s have a bit-rate, which essentially is a measure of how much information is contained in each second of music within the file. Naturally, the higher the bit-rate, the more information in the song, the larger the MP3 file. Keep in mind that this was circa 1999-2001, when hard disks didn’t come nearly as large as they do now, and didn’t come nearly as cheaply as they do, now, either.
CD-quality is essentially 128kbps (meaning 128 kilobits of information are contained in each second of music). Drew — who perhaps doesn’t possess “audiophile” level hearing — had made a decision to store all of his MP3s at 56kbps to save space (on his small, expensive hard drive). He saved space and the expense of reduced quality, which he couldn’t tell the difference. And to be fair, I couldn’t tell the difference too much, either.
But then speakers got better. And iPods came out. And headphones got better. And and and and… 56kbps MP3s that previously sounded adequate started to sound like absolute crap. Drums are tinny, vocals are scratchy, and the details are missing. They don’t take up much space, though.
So here it is 2010. Disk space is large and disk space is cheap. Speakers and headphones are of high quality. And I still have about 80 really, really low quality MP3s hanging around that have followed me from computer-to-computer-to-computer over the years.
These low-quality files come up occasionally when I’m on shuffle and at first I won’t notice. I’ll get into it. Then when that chorus hits and Dave Grohl’s drumming starts to sound like Doug Funnie banging on a trash can, I know.
Drew, your MP3 from ten years ago got me again!
I’ve spent the last year getting rid of all mp3s or AACs under AAC 256VBR, I’m down to the last 3,000. My iTunes library couldn’t exist when we were 16, I think its north of 110gb.