Cell phone sound quality was bad enough, but now we accept further degradation introduced by bluetooth headsets.
CD-quality sound is being replaced by further downsampled downloadable digital music.
Now you can buy TV shows and movies online that are lower quality than the ones you can see for free on an actual TV.
Text messaging is introducing new lexicon that eschews punctuation and sentence structure for simply getting the point across.
YouTube brings pixelated motion to the masses.
Judging by quality, these products are getting better by “getting worse.” Convenience trumping quality is nothing new, but its pace seems accelerated these days.
Which companies do you see bucking this trend? Who is competing by delivering higher quality goods and services? Who is saying convenience is important, but it’s not the most important thing? What opportunities are out there for companies looking to differentiate through quality? Who is excelling by raising the bar on both convenience and quality?
ML
on 05 Feb 07I was just reading about the Rockport Technologies System III Sirius turntable...cost: $73,750.
mattL
on 05 Feb 07to be fair, “real tv” isn’t exactly free. How much are you paying for cable / satellite / tivo?
brad
on 05 Feb 07Back in the old analog phone days, AT&T did very well for themselves in this regard by offering the best-quality voice connections, especially for overseas calls. I used to try other providers but always went back to AT&T because the sound and connection quality for overseas calls (of which I made many every day) was so much better than anyone else. Even today I have a cellphone and I have Skype, but when I’m talking to clients I usually use my landline because the sound quality is better. Clients often complain that they can’t hear me clearly when I call them with Skype.
Keith
on 05 Feb 07The PixelCorp is delivering online short-form video content in full 1080p resolution for the TWiT MacBreak series.
Chris Busse
on 05 Feb 07Verizon FiOS is competing by selling a higher quality product at a lower price than their competitor.
30Mbps up, 5Mbps down Internet, lots of HD channels on the TV service, less expensive than Comcast Cable.
Installation technicians are extremely knowledgable and go the extra mile during installation. After years of abuse from the cable company, they are a refresing change.
Chris
on 05 Feb 07There’s so much to consume now that quality doesn’t matter. You only need as much as you need to get the gist of the content, then it’s off to consume something else.
Successful environments tend to minimize energy consumption; the lossy compression that is prevalent on the internet today is a perfect example of that. I personally believe that we’re better off for it, and probably wouldn’t use any services that provide lossless music or video. Life is too short to spend it waiting for downloads.
Dave Jeffery
on 05 Feb 07Bluetooth headsets – It is extremely difficult to notice any difference in sound quality by using a bluetooth headset (in my experience). The quality of cell phone calls is so low in the first place that the additional degradation is moot.
Downsampled Digital Music – To a certain extent my point above applies, A substantial amount of people can’t notice the difference between a CD and say an MP3 at 192kbps. I will say that it is likely we will see improvements in this area over the next few years, perhaps more records released in 5.1 surround sound?
Downloadable TV Shows – Selling TV shows online is in it’s infancy. I could say that the difference is negligible again but in fact it’s not. Give the medium time to develop and we may well see downloaded TV shows in HD. People don’t like waiting too long for things, very few people have the bandwidth capacity to download HD content at real time.
Text Messaging – On this, we agree. I’m hoping that the advent of devices like the iPhone (with it’s QWERTY keyboard), will help to bring grammer and punctuation back to text messaging.
I guess my point, particularly with the first two is that sacrifices in quality may not even be noticable to many people. Therefore, is it even a sacrifice in quality?
beto
on 05 Feb 07If you think the Rockport Sirius turntable is an embarrassment of riches, you haven’t heard about the Continuum Caliburn on a similar league – at $100K and counting.
As an audiophile hobbyist, I tend to cringe when I see people touting low-res downloads as the “next big thing”, while throwing much of what makes music actually palatable through the window. Then again, few people actually get to LISTEN to music these days – most use it as mere background noise while working or driving. I tend to do that too, but when I finally get a chance to really listen to music and do nothing else (not even watch TV), I want to do it in the best way possible. Hopefully low-res MP3s will give way to lossless downloads over time and the world may be a little better place by then.
clifyt
on 05 Feb 07In both of these, I really don’t see how its convenience over quality? Are you trying to speak on the phone or do you need it to sound like someone is lording over you screaming atcha?
With music, do you want to listen to MUSIC or audio? If you are listening to audio, you want the best quality…if you are listening to music, its the content, the message that is most important. If you have enough quality to hear this, you’ve gotten everything the musician wanted you to do so (and I say this having recorded on 192khz 32bit multitrack recorders engineered by the best in the game, only to see the musicians compress it down so that they can throw it on their iPod and play it in their car…)
Sure, we want it all…I know a lot of people still screaming about the album art on CDs vs. LPs. I find that argument more relevant than compression vs. lossless.
Benjy
on 05 Feb 07I think these acceptances of quality over quality are simply a temporary trade-off as we addopt new technologies. as bandwidth, storage, etc. gets cheaper and better we will no longer have to chose between quality and convenience.
It’s kind of like cars… I’m sure 100 years ago that horses were more reliable, better suited to different road conditions, faster, etc. But pretty quickly, cars proved superior in every way.
Eric Wagoner
on 05 Feb 07Hopefully I can point out my own project, which has been very successful at raising the bar on both convenience and quality for buying food. And, I just happened to do it using Ruby on Rails.
I’ve built an on-line farmers’ market system that simply and elegantly connects customers with local growers. We’ve been using the system for the last five years (previously using php), and what started as a little market is now the largest in the region. Two weeks ago I publicly opened the Rails site, moved our market over, and have been helping other markets elsewhere in the country who have been eager to replicate our success.
You can find my market at athens.locallygrown.net and the full system at www.locallygrown.net.
So far, we’ve shown that if you make locally grown food as convenient to order as it is to get books from Amazon, people will do it. And it’s far, far better than the stuff at the supermarket.
beto
on 05 Feb 07clifyt: You are right with regards to the definition of “music” as opposed to mere “audio”. You can be moved and enthused by music coming out of a clock alarm radio. What I was mainly referring to was when, if you’re a dedicated listener, want to get to the pure essence of the sound and want to embody lifelike realism as much as possible – for instance, when you want drums and cymbals to sound, well, like drums and cymbals, not like plastic pans and air brakes.
Then again, lots of people seem happy listening to plastic pans and air brakes and barely a complaint goes by. Different strokes for different folks, we could say.
Ryan
on 05 Feb 07You could say that instead of getting better by getting worse, these products are getting better by getting simpler. Digitally compressed music is simpler than audio on CDs: the compression algorithm has stripped away data that isn’t needed by most people for most uses, creating a smaller file that can more easily be used in many ways on myriad devices. Digital video downloads are simpler than over-the-air broadcasts: they’re more portable, they use widely-supported video formats, and they still get the necessary information (plot, characters, etc.) across.
And isn’t simplicity, eliminating “features” (or data, or restrictions) that most people don’t need or even want, a noble design goal?
Paul Robinson
on 05 Feb 07TV has never been free. The cost is loaded into the price you pay for everything in a supermarket that was advertised on television – for soap powder, around 1/3rd of the cost was in providing you with “free” television.
Back to the point though, I think some brands show convenience as a quality in itself. Simplicity, getting out of the way, that’s how they show their mark. All of us here are aware of which brands they are, but if you’re struggling: Apple, 37signals, utility companies, etc.
Those bucking the trend and saying to hell with the convenience appear to include the growing band of anti-Gillete shaving supply companies (I want a ‘proper’ razor), car manufacturers who don’t want to move their plants East (Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, Ferrari), and of course the rise in organic agriculture that provides tastier food of a more diverse range of species, but you need to work out how to cook it yourself from scratch.
BSN
on 05 Feb 07On expensive turntables: the Transrotor Artus weighs in at 118,000 Euros ($ 150,000)
J Lane
on 05 Feb 07I think some of your examples aren’t completely fair Jason. Digital audio/video are just working within constraints of the medium. Broadband is becoming more widespread, but I’d still hate to have to download a 300 MB 3 minute song or a 17 GB HD movie.
I think MP3 is good enough, compressed video isn’t that bad either. Youtube is okay because the message is still getting across. I’m not sure I’d want to see some of the stuff on Youtube in higher resolution :-)
clifyt
on 05 Feb 07Beto:
Unless you are actually there during the recording, you are NEVER going to hear ANYTHING that sounds similar to the music at hand. Its not even close. I’ve never heard a recording of a Hammond throwing its sound into a leslie and even for a moment believing that it might sound like a plastic representation of the real thing.
At the same time, give me the worst mono recording of a guy wailing on that instrument in concert and I’ll be in love with the results.
Drums are even worst…I don’t care if an MP3 turns the high hats on a live kit into something that an 808 sound realistic. You aren’t going to come anywhere near the real dynamic range if you put it on a recording.
Thats what gets me about audiophiles. For the most part, they are rarely musicians nor know how the stuff should sound like. I get the same reaction with the few musicians that are…the last guitarist I worked with me kept telling me that the minute 64bit mixes are a standard, he might consider getting rid of his SSL and going ‘in the box’...yet, when I crunched his recordings through iTunes and then back (the solo recordings back into the full mix), he thought it was the most incredible sound…I didn’t have the heart to tell him how I did it.
And all in all, I think you are right—different strokes…I have a feeling I’m listening to something entirely different than audiophiles and always have. I can fill in the blanks and say This Is What It Could Be, where as the audiophile says This Is As Near Exact As It Was. Not sure which is better…
flowb33
on 05 Feb 07I’d say Sony is attempting to compete on the basis of quality with the PS3. It boasts 1080p resolution and Blu-Ray disc playing at a time when very few games or movies have raised the bar to that spec. This is also the reason they’re getting their lunch handed to them by Nintendo. Convenience, fun and abundance of content will trump eye-candy for most people.
Stacy
on 05 Feb 07It’s true – convenience, simplicity, quickness, all trump quality when getting customers to use your service. Back in the 80’s, I opened athe first retail location in Los Angeles to sell desktop publishing output. I positioned it as good enough typesetting and rapidly killed off the phototypesetting marketplace in my area. That same kind of phenom happens all the time. From a business point of view, convenience over quality is a great bet!
matt
on 05 Feb 07I don’t think it’s necessarily quality as much as it is satisfying the pareto principle. If lossy recordings still satisfy the majority of the music market, then why not? Similarly to basecamp…you guys don’t auto gen gantt charts…which is desired by the similar-to-audiophiles in the crowd; however, base camp is fine for most people.
Brian Sexton
on 05 Feb 07iTunes Store video quality is actually decent now, but it is certainly true that even that is less than the quality of a DVD and without all the extras. Even so, there is something compelling about being able to watch television programs whenever you like without commercial interruptions and without having to wait for the DVD or HD DVD or Blu-ray release. I still do not buy any television programs or movies from the iTunes Store, though, because of the less-than-standard-definition pictures and the lack of the extras I enjoy when watching things on DVD.
Microsoft seems to be doing a better job of this with its recent addition of high-definition television content through Xbox Live, but there are still several things working against Microsoft’s efforts to earn my money here, including: the lack of 1080p content (720p was sufficient in 2005, perhaps, but not in 2006 and beyond); the lack of extras that will almost certainly be included with most DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray releases; the lack of appropriately large storage media for Xbox 360 systems (the approximately 14MB of free space on an Xbox 360 hard drive is absolutely tiny in light of the storage needs of high-definition content); the lack of any means to back up purchases; and the lack of any means to transfer purchases to other devices, such as a computer (Windows or otherwise) or a shiny new Xbox 3.
I think we are just in a transitional phase, though. The quality may just need to catch up to the distribution systems, much as 3D rendering had to do when game companies started making most of their games with 3D engines (early 3D engines traded detail for depth). This seems natural since these things have been developed separately. I think we will be seeing more high-quality content in the very near future.
carlivar
on 05 Feb 07It is ironic that you can get better quality movies and TV shows on pirate bittorrent sites than via paid downloads (in most cases).
Donuts
on 05 Feb 07I think you can make the argument that comic books are taking the stance of quality over convenience. American comics are published monthly on average. Japanes manga are much lower quality (cheaper paper, no color, etc.) but come out weekly and tell more story. However, the in demand artists and writers of American comics such as DC and especially Marvel can take months to deliver the next issue. Very inconvenient. Comparing a comic today from one even 15 years ago displays an incredible leap forward in writing and especially art. Well maybe not writing.
heri
on 05 Feb 07the answer is easy. take a look at toyota, which is going to overtake GM in sales, have the highest quality standards in the industry, with “convenient” packages.
If this doesn’t convince you, take a look at the new Camry. They are always raising the bar!
Dave Dash
on 05 Feb 07I think clifty and Benjy are right, it’s not so much the medium as the message. They are both important (in my opinion), but I really don’t care so much if I see Desperate Housewives in HDTV or if I see something more entertaining on YouTube. The content matters.
I also am in the camp of I don’t notice at all the differences in fidelity between an MP3 or a cd or a record – and many are just like that. Video on the otherhand… I expect that it will only get better. Video capturing devices are getting better and better on cameras, and I suspect they’ll continue to get better. So you get your choice… do you want visual and audio fidelity or do you want quality and original content? Both is often hard to come by, and usually it all comes at a price.
Jeff
on 05 Feb 07The industry that will buck the quality trend is going to be the porn industry, of course. Everyone always giggles and thinks it’s funny to hear that, but you know it’s true. They’ve pushed the technology acceptance faster at every step. The day after the video iPod was announced, Suicide Girls (which I only loosely consider “porn”) started offering video downloads for it.
Darrel
on 05 Feb 07“Who is competing by delivering higher quality goods and services?”
The examples you provide aren’t quite an example of that, though. You’re referring to FIDELITY…not necessarily ‘quality’.
The QUALITY of content will likely always trump the FIDELITY of the content in terms of success. People will watch a good TV show regardless of the quality of the actual signal/recording more often than they’d watch a crappy show even if it’s broadcast in full HDTV on a 70” TV.
So, the fidelity of an MP3 might be less than that of the source CD, but the quality of the product (the song itself, the ease of obtaining it, the price) is likely seen as being higher for a lot of folks.
Sean
on 05 Feb 07A lot of these services are established products being delivered by way of a new technology.
Improvement is an incremental process. Instead of perfecting the delivery right out of the gate, companies are getting something out there. When adoption increases, user patterns are established, and delivery technology improves, then the quality of service will get better.
fedbeggar
on 05 Feb 07Its seems to me that those producing/creating are more into quality…while those consuming are more into effect/experience (which would include convenience).
Which begs an initial question, ‘Do we create value by meeting a need,’ or ‘Do we create what we value?’
Good companies find a similar answer with both questions…
David
on 05 Feb 07With regards to text messaging, people use text-speak in order to fit their message into one text. There’s a limited number of characters available, so they trim as much as possible off. It’s not so much convenient as it is enforced by the medium. It also makes it convenient for the recipient – it’s easier to open one text that read one, close, open another etc.
And who says you can’t have convenience and quality? I think Macs are an example of both in one package (whether talking software or hardware).
David
on 05 Feb 07With regards to text messaging, people use text-speak in order to fit their message into one text. There’s a limited number of characters available, so they trim as much as possible off. It’s not so much convenient as it is enforced by the medium. It also makes it convenient for the recipient – it’s easier to open one text that read one, close, open another etc.
And who says you can’t have convenience and quality? I think Macs are an example of both in one package (whether talking software or hardware).
Chrisooya
on 05 Feb 07Like Ryan, I think you can classify high video resolution or high sound quality as a feature. It is a feature that people are willing to give up in the interest of immediate satisfaction. If we agree on this, then you could easily change the title of this post to “Convenience over features.”
...Which is very nearly 37signals modus operandi. And like you do when you look at the music or video industries, I wonder if in software design it is really the best path.
Minimizing features in order to simplify is not necessarily a bad thing, and it certainly capitalizes on consumers’ desire for immediate gratification. But at the same time, by flattening the learning curve, you are necessarily limiting the potential of the product.
Photoshop is a good example of this paradox. Photoshop is a product that is horribly complex. If any application is guilty of feature-bloat, it is Photoshop. Yet, it is at the same time incredibly powerful for those who invest the time to master it.
In a post a couple of days ago, Matt talked about consumers’ impatience and how it can affect them negatively:
The consumer in this case would be better off if he read the manual. But since he most likely won’t, the logical step is to create software that is simple enough that the consumer can use it without a manual.
And this works to sell them a product, because-as we have established-consumers are lazy and impatient. But the lasting problem is that the consumer would still be better off had they invested in learning to use the complex product than he is having bought and used the simpler product.
It is like seeing Photoshop newbies struggling, and then selling them Windows Paint. Consumers are satisficers. They will take the Windows Paint and they will be satisfied with it because it is good enough. But they will never realize the potential they might have had they stuck with Photoshop.
Chrisooya
on 05 Feb 07Like Ryan, I think you can classify high video resolution or high sound quality as a feature. It is a feature that people are willing to give up in the interest of immediate satisfaction. If we agree on this, then you could easily change the title of this post to “Convenience over features.”
...Which is very nearly 37signals modus operandi. And like you do when you look at the music or video industries, I wonder if in software design it is really the best path.
Minimizing features in order to simplify is not necessarily a bad thing, and it certainly capitalizes on consumers’ desire for immediate gratification. But at the same time, by flattening the learning curve, you are necessarily limiting the potential of the product.
Photoshop is a good example of this paradox. Photoshop is a product that is horribly complex. If any application is guilty of feature-bloat, it is Photoshop. Yet, it is at the same time incredibly powerful for those who invest the time to master it.
In a post a couple of days ago, Matt talked about consumers’ impatience and how it can affect them negatively:
The consumer in this case would be better off if he read the manual. But since he most likely won’t, the logical step is to create software that is simple enough that the consumer can use it without a manual.
And this works to sell them a product, because-as we have established-consumers are lazy and impatient. But the lasting problem is that the consumer would still be better off had they invested in learning to use the complex product than he is having bought and used the simpler product.
It is like seeing Photoshop newbies struggling, and then selling them Windows Paint. Consumers are satisficers. They will take the Windows Paint and they will be satisfied with it because it is good enough. But they will never realize the potential they might have had they stuck with Photoshop.
FredS
on 05 Feb 07My God, I was just thinking about this phenomenon…how people will download and watch movies taped from inside a theater (telesyncs) that look and sound terrible. Most would argue that it’s because pirated movies are free. Clearly, convenience is a bigger factor. The quality is good enough…or maybe worth the price.
Kevin
on 05 Feb 07I agree with some of the posters. convenience is not driving quality down, its the technological limitations. Quality will increase as technology can handle it.
Its really just a perception. After all you take the CD and older CDs were often mixed in Analog eventhough digital technologies where there. Heck I have CDs from the early ‘90s that were AAD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_Code). So you never had true digital recordings.
Why technology was too expensive for most studios. So have patience, it’ll come.
Alex Bunardzic
on 05 Feb 07Benjy wrote:
“It’s kind of like cars… I’m sure 100 years ago that horses were more reliable, better suited to different road conditions, faster, etc. But pretty quickly, cars proved superior in every way.”
Yes, especially in the way they destroy the climate and the environment:)
icelander
on 05 Feb 07Verizon FiOS is competing by selling a higher quality product at a lower price than their competitor.
And they’re not planning on rolling it out anywhere other than wealthy suburbs. Believe me, I’ve checked. My inner city neighborhood is going to be the next-to-last place to get FiOS, after the rural areas surrounding my city. Thanks a lot Ed Rendell.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t allow Comcast technicians in my home because they don’t know what the heck they’re doing. (Search for ‘comcast’ on my blog and you’ll see why.) But if I had an option other than fast but stupid Comcast or slow but port-blocking Verizon, I’ll pick the “convenient” one that doesn’t make me jump through hoops just to unblock a few ports to access my network.
As for convenience over quality: I’ll take convenience any day. If I buy a show on iTunes, I get it on my iPod wherever I have my iPod. If I subscribe to HD content on my TV, I get it when they want it, on extremely expensive equipment, for a huge monthly fee. iTunes gives me only the shows I want (I’m not paying for the Golf channel or four ESPNs), whenever I want, wherever I want.
If it weren’t the same price to have a cable TV hookup along with my cable Internet rather than just the broadband itself, I’d drop TV altogether.
David Smit
on 05 Feb 07The guys from Skype don’t compromise on quality. Skype’s sound quality is often better than cellphones or landlines. Now they are promising us high quality TV with JOOST
Adam Lindsay
on 05 Feb 07Is it as simple as quality vs. convenience. I see it as convenience and accessibility are the driving force, but there are many constraints to deal with. Take for instance the music industry. It isn’t like CD’s just popped out from nowhere. There have been many formats of varying quality. Many can argue that LP’s sounded great, although were mono. Then we saw 8-Track and Cassette Tape. Neither that great. CD’s represent the last in a long chain of physical media, and luckily the convenience random access was met with quality. Sans the LP vs. CD quality arguement.
If we look at digital music downloads. This isn’t more of the same, this is a whole new look at distribution. It would be easy to confuse distribution with convenience, but are they the same? Apple’s iTS wouldn’t exist if it didn’t embrace the constraints it had. Lossless music still can not be cost effectively sold online. Same could be said for HD movies and tv shows. This is a limitation of the new medium and distribution. The convenience? Well that can easily be argued. Is it more convenient to have a $59 CD Player with a $20 CD, or a $500 computer, a $45/mo ISP charge and oh yea the song.
I am not saying it isn’t a great observation, but I think there is a bit more to it.
Of course so much of this comes down to “All problems solved with unlimited power and bandwidth.”
Steven
on 05 Feb 07I agree with Benjy and Sean…these temporary lapses in quality will eventually give way to a demand for better quality.
To plug the company I work for, DivX recently launched an alpha video site (www.stage6.com) where users can enjoy HD quality instead of settling for “pixelated motion”. Is it as convenient as the more mainstream alternatives? Admittedly, not yet…but there are tons of things in the pipeline to reach the holy grail – convenience without sacrificing high quality.
andrew
on 05 Feb 07It seems like a perfect validation of Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma/Solution, along with Cluetrain (and Getting Real of course) the best business books I’ve ever read.
These theoretically cruddier offerings succeed because they enable new markets or behaviours by virtue of being smaller/cheaper/more-accessible, and they’re just good enough to live with. Over time, they’ll improve. And then they’ll reach the point where they are better quality or more-featured than we really need but somehow constraining. At which time there will be opportunity for another disruptive technology to begin to eat them from the bottom up.
andrew
on 05 Feb 07See, it’s not convenience as the ability to do something that was either too expensive/hard or just not possible before. We trade quality for that new facility. Especially if the incumbent technology is actually more than we need.
andrew
on 05 Feb 07See, it’s not convenience as the ability to do something that was either too expensive/hard or just not possible before. We trade quality for that new facility. Especially if the incumbent technology is actually more than we need.
john
on 06 Feb 07Andrew’s reference to Christensen and “disruptive technology” is dead spot on. Sometimes great design is key, for example the ipod made the portable mp3 player because of “design” quality. That, however, is not how most products advance. I find ironic (like rain on my wedding day?) Jason’s example of downsampling below CD quality. Many audiophiles initially considered CD quality much worse than LP audio quality due to a number of factors (many believe it still is) and CD’s were subject to exactly the same criticism. The “quality” guys were the guys producing LP’s late into the 90’s. God rest their souls.
sodium
on 06 Feb 07The wax cylinder vs live musicians was an example of convenience over quality.
“Convenience” in this context means more than just the ability to do the same things more easily—it means the ability to do different things with the content and the potential to fundamentally alter the way that content is experienced.
Admittedly, a bluetooth headset does not represent this same degree of innovation as compared to a wired earpiece, but things like MP3 compression have undoubtedly altered the way that we experience music.
When decrying the tradeoff in quality for the sake of convenience, it’s important to remember that many manifestations or measurements of “quality” are not critically important to all users.
andrew
on 06 Feb 07Christensen’s notion of disruptive technology is an amazing lens to look at the world through.
There’s a lot of other great stuff, especially in The Innovator’s Solution, about commoditisation, component-based architectures vs custom, etc.
Jack
on 06 Feb 07Outside the ludicrous luxury items posted earlier, I think it’s relatively easy to find companies that are founded on the principles of quality, but they may not always be the most successful in their field or the newest on the block.
But, I think in a lot of ways you guys and Avi over at DabbleDB are raising the quality bar on expectations for Web 2.0 in a big way.
I’d also have to say Martin Keen who founded Keen and then Miōn is changing the whole quality game in footwear, in a segment of his industry not typically known for its quality.
And, I guess, Patagonia, maybe, too. And my Timbuk2 bag is definitely well-crafted. Heck, even my IKEA isn’t your standard pressboard. Some pretty clever design there, given the materials.
The more I look around my house, the more I think at least some of my choices were not defined by the pixelization of modern products.
Nic
on 06 Feb 07Who is excelling by raising the bar on both convenience and quality?
Slim Devices’ Transporter may be a bit more expensive than an your average mp3 player, but ar about $2000 it certainly is more affordable than a turntable!
“At the heart of Transporter is a “no compromise” attitude to component selection and electronic design.”
Visor
on 06 Feb 07Yeah, basically quality is bad because people need to download quickly, and for no other forseeable reason. In 10 years time when highspeed broadband is available quality will return.
I still think quality is extremely important. I still like to buy my muic on Vinyl so that it sounds as the artist intended it. I’d personally pay more for better quality.
Youtube would be nothing but a fond memory soon after a competitor arrives with high-res videos.
Dave Davis
on 06 Feb 07As a designer and engineer in the music industry this is a topic I’ve struggled with for a decade. It’s as complex, as the long string of replies suggests! I’m going to break my reply into a few specific points.
128K MP3 and AAC is best viewed in the context of old 7” 45s, or even Edison cylinders: an early technology we value most as a model, not a definitive standard. The fact that labels are willing to play along with a Big Lie (128K MP3 = CD) speaks more to their fear and greed than reality.
Convenience DOES trump quality when all other things are equal, but MP3 thrives because the other things are far from equal (MP3 became a standard based on a single cardinal value in the Napster era: Free). It is free BECAUSE it’s small and easy to transport. Add greater convenience and a tetch better quality (iTunes Music Store), and it no longer has to be free.
An interesting thing about 128K MP3 is that there are some built in defects that virtually all hearing humans can detect in virtually any setting. The “space monkeys” or “janglies” get worse at lower bit rates, but exist at 128K – once you hear them, they’re as obvious in your car as on your ear buds. Similarly, the missing top octave contains musical information that is pleasant and useful – when you listen to CD it’s there. Stereo imaging is essential to realism, and critical to some forms of music (jazz, acoustic folk, chamber, and orchestral/classical), but the MP3 algorithm is fairly ham-fisted in it’s handling of this critical information. In short, once one learns to hear the artifacts of MP3 (and to a different extent AAC), you cannot STOP hearing them.
Of course this phenomenon doesn’t happen until one’s ripped thier entire CD collection to iTunes at 128K! Even I made this mistake, in an effort to cram more into my iPod(s). The harsh, fake sound got to me quickly as music I’d learned to love in the past grated in the present. While 320K MP3 is quite good, I compromise with 192K versions on the iPods, and lossless sources in the library. Live and learn…
d
viceroy321
on 06 Feb 07i believe J Lane is essentially right. The medium (broadband@2Mbps) doesn’t just support more. Logie Baird’s first tv screen had 30 lines!
but move to hongkong (Gigabit-Internet) or to finland next year (also 1gbps) and then visit the hottest pages for bittorrent-documentary-videos (HD since beginning 2006) and you have equal quality at superior convenience.
sharaf
on 06 Feb 07Who is competing by delivering higher quality goods and services?
Here are some brands that come to mind:
Bose BMW Apple Craftsman Target Four Seasons Hotel Whole Foods Market Swiss Army
Jeff Engel
on 06 Feb 07This is has been happening since the beginning of time. Technology can help create improved user experiences, but you have to mask layers of complexity to do it. Think aobut it. It’s intended to create simple and easier lives for us, but at the loss of certain attributes that come from experience, such as detail and quality. Something robots and dynamic scripting cannot always do. Look at craftsmanship and the ornate late 1800s Victorian stylings. What were they replaced by? Simple and easy Bauhaus concepts. Look at the detail in buildings built at the turn of the century vs. buildings built today. Some of those old buildings have a tremendous amount of detail and finish that buildings today could only hope for, and in order to get snug finishes, everything has to be very simple edges and arcs. As we create these layers upon layers to mask the complexities, we lose some core competencies in this complex areas, and the result is what you see now. We now settle for pixelated and horrible resolution photos (look at photos shot with cameras from the ‘30s and ‘40s to compare). We went from large format to 35mm, to be mobile. We create sans-serif fonts to simplify rendering of serifed and blacklettered text. Result: loss of detail/quality/whatever you want to call it. However, our lives are easier. Ultimately, it means we really don’t need the “art” (craft).
Dave Davis
on 07 Feb 07I’m not sure I agree with the summary and conclusions you make, Jeff. But maybe it’s a question of definitions:
In a number of your examples “quality” might be better defined as “decorative complexity”. The finest handcrafted work pales in detail, form and function next to the cheapest microchip in the crappiest factory in China (chips are beautiful inside – works of art in their own way) Robots pretty much whipped man at manual tasks back with John Henry, and have since left us in the dust… it’s chess-playing that took them awhile to master! ;)
Architecturally, new buildings are fabricated in computers by robots, and assembled on site to specs that were unbuildable just 40 years ago. Complex forms and shapes are becoming quite common in the 21st century. The designs of Frank Gehry are literally impossible to build sans computer.
San-serif fonts are definitely a simplification, but there is absolutely NO loss in detail: old english and germanic faces were far less clear, in spite of all manner of cryptic detail. It’s tough to claim a word, sentence or paragraph in a highly-serifed face is more readable at any given resolution. Loss of UNECESSARY detail enhances legibility, and thus function. If slowing down the reader is a feature we desire (useful in longer forms like novels), modern designers use serifs functionally.
I would argue the shifts in quality you reference are more related to the “renaissance” attitude inspired by our cultural tools, computers and digital capture devices. The “amateurization” of photography, music and video lead naturally to less sophisticated, non-pro products, like the stuff on YouTube. As pattern-recognizing animals, we easily graft more familiar forms over the bad sound and images, and focus on the ideas/concept; as we moved from a passive audience to active creators, we’ve apparently gotten better at suspending disbelief – again (prior to late 20th century cinema, we were well equipped with imagination for this). It’s not that we no longer want or respect quality. Rather, it’s not necessary to get some ideas across, and we are willing to sublimate quality to ideas.
In the broadest sense this is symptomatic of a real shift, and as you say our lives are easier, but it doesn’t mean we don’t need craft. We’re simply in a phase of development, not unlike the Enlightenment in North America, where our products and tastes lag a bit behind our ideas and intentions. If we didn’t need “craft”, we’d turn off our network TV and watch YouTube and rent NetFlix and surf the web. Yet we still spend more time with PACKAGED, pretty media than rougher home brew.
It’s too early to say whether we’ll eventually get our “craft” fix from YouTube or Corporate America. CurrentTV and fan-created Super Bowl ads point to some kind of mix. But the aesthetic values we see in the examples you cite are more related to individual capability, than broad subjective tastes. In short, we’re all like proud parents, sticking our ugly out-of-the-lines coloring work on the global refrigerator and pretending it’s amazing. Like little kids, we’ll grow up, and our tastes will re-assert themselves, leading to more sophisticated, complex forms.
greg z
on 10 Feb 07Coffee chains bring drive-thru coffee shops to your community but couldn’t make a dry-cappuccino without having to read a direction booklet.
This discussion is closed.