Original Image by Photogestion
I recently had the chance to talk with Jonathan Berger, who is a composer and a music professor at Stanford University.
For a period of years, Professor Berger played music in various audio formats for his incoming students. To his surprise, he found that for some specific types of rock music, students preferred the sound of mp3s over ‘better’, less compressed, audio formats.
In this full interview, we talk about his thinking on why this is happening, how this might be affecting the way pop music is produced, and whether the expectations we bring to the music we hear influences the way we hear it, whether it’s ‘better’ quality or not.
A shorter version of the interview will air on Episode 71 of Spark. You can hear the full, uncut interview below, or
download the MP3.
Play audio:
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I was curious why he stopped the experiment. While there are various ways to read through the lines, I'm curious to hear directly.
Beyond what he told me in the interview, I'm not sure, Russell.
Nora,
I am wondering if you have a reference for this research? I looked on his website but there are so many articles. Any idea what journal this research might have been published in?
Hi Sam,
I'll email him and see if I can find out. I'm not sure his research has been published. It may just have been his own research as he looked into designing a compression technology, but I'll post something if I find out. Thanks for your interest.