Exposing media hype for what it is.

   Digital sound for the compromising conformist.

I've been reading in the news recently about MP3.  MP3 is the format that is supposed to revolutionize the music industry.  There are all these portable MP3 players out now, and MP3's are available just about everywhere on the net.

Now for the truth.  I've been around the MP3 scene since its beginning.  I've listened to hundreds of them, recorded at maximum sound quality, so I speak from experience.  Which is why I now say MP3 must die!

Here are some reasons why.

MP3 sound quality sucks.  It's not just a little bit worse than CD quality, it blows green chunks.  I can record stuff onto tape that sounds better than MP3.  I've heard from people that claim the MP3 sounds just as good as CD.  Well of
course it does to them, they're listening from some $40 sound card with $20
computer speakers.  I could play an 8-track on those speakers and you wouldn't
be able to tell the difference from CD.  If you've got a REAL system, like
we at OFTM do, you can easily tell the difference.  I'm talking hooking up your
computer with a $200 sound card attached to a $1000+ digital receiver with speakers costing over $1000 each.  If you can't tell the difference between MP3 and CD you're probably deaf.  Or maybe just some dumb monkey who's so stupid he can't tell what quality is.

MP3 is supported by people who think it's "cool."  Of course these same people
are the monkeys I just described.  There's nothing cool about MP3, it's a crap
format originally designed to transmit voice and other non-quality recordings over
the net.  Of course some guy who said wow, I can compress music with this and pirate it.  But then said person was probably on crack and didn't realize what he was recording sounded like $#!+.  At least the designers of MP3 recognized that it wasn't high quality, but that makes sense.  Anyone who can make an audio compression scheme must be smart.  MP3 isn't a "cool" format; it's the format of dorks and dweebs who sit on IRC all day trading MP3's because they have nothing better to do.  You don't want to be one of "them" do you?

MP3 is a step backwards, at 10 times the price.  The Rio sells for $200 or so and
only stores an hour of MP3's (AKA tape quality music).  I bought a piece of crap
walkman for $4 that also stores an hour of tape quality music.  Now I will say MP3 can beat my $4 walkman, but it doesn't beat a $20 walkman.  Better than that, buy a portable CD player and get real quality for only $50-60.  You won't have to deal with uploading songs to the stupid Rio, you can use your CD library on it, and it sounds way better than MP3.  This isn't a hard choice here people, I don't know why anyone would want to deal with the Rio.

Last, MP3 won't stay because there are other, better, MP3 quality sound solutions out there.  Such as Microsoft's.  Hey, they even advertise their systems as having MP3 quality, not CD quality, because they recognize there is a difference.

In summary, MP3 is for the lowest common denominator.  The people who have crappy computers, with crappy sound cards, attached to crappy speakers.  It doesn't surprise me too much that America would be one of the places that MP3 is popular in.  We've settled for mediocrity in so many other fields, why not another?  I know one day enough people will finally realize that MP3 has to go.  I hope that day is sooner rather than later.