The Magazine’s Year in Ideas issue of 12/13/09 contained an item by Robert Mackey with that headline. Here is the last paragraph:
“In February, a music professor at Stanford, Jonathan Berger, revealed that he has found evidence that younger listeners have come to prefer lo-fi versions of rock songs to hi-fi ones. For six years, Berger played different versions of the same rock songs to his students and asked them to say which ones they liked best. Each year, more students said that they liked what they heard from MP3s better than what came from CDs. To a new generation of iPod listeners, rock music is supposed to sound lo-fi. Good enough is now better than great.”
As someone who remembers when a good stereo system was often the first major purchase of someone entering the World of Work, I can’t help but feel pity for those who cleave to the “good enough” theory. And as someone who now listens to much of his music via a web stream, I understand the attraction of convenience when balanced against ultimate quality. But when given the choice between lo-fi and hi-fi, all else being equal I’ll still choose hi-fi. And I guess that just proves, yet again, that I’m old.