UMG Watermarks Audiophile Files, Pisses Off Paying Customers

from the hisssssssssssssssss dept

Let's say, just for analogy's sake, you had a defense contractor that supplied weapons and ammunition to Earth's army. Let's say that army was going to war with the evil pod people from the planet Dah-Rull. And let's say that this defense contractor, named Universal Munitions Group, supplied the good guys with new bullet rounds that they promised would completely obliterate the Dah-Rull pod people and make everyone on Earth happy again.

Now let's say that when Earth's army confronted their enemy and fired their weapons...the bullets, instead of firing, simply blew up, taking the limbs of Earth's infantry with them. As a result, the pod people were free to take over the world. You'd be pretty pissed, wouldn't you? Unless you're a pod-person, I mean?

Yet that's about how effective Universal Music Group's latest attempt at watermarking is. You can read the fascinating exchange on the message board of Hydrogenaudio.com, but here's the skinny. A customer of Passionato, a site dedicated to bringing audiophiles high quality recordings of classical music, notices that he was getting an odd thrumming noise on his FLAC file of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony that he got from Passionato (the file was advertised as lossless), a noise that wasn't present on the file he got directly from UMG. There's some back and forth between helpful board members about some technical issues that could have been the problem, but eventually, after multiple users go and test files similarly, they arrive at the conclusion that it must be watermarking. It culminates with someone from Passionato showing up and indicating that the file received was faithfully translated from whatever UMG supplied the site, meaning that any sound artifacts would have been the result of UMG's file, not a technical issue resulting from compression or file extension switches. Basically, UMG watermarked files being distributed through their partners. Files which are being advertised as lossless recordings for audiophiles.

A couple of things were clear in that board exchange:

First, nice try, UMG, but this isn't going to accomplish what you want it to. You're talking about a dedicated group of audiophiles here. There were all manner of suggestions for nixing the watermarking, from pirating an un-watermarked file (keeping in mind that it was already purchased in what was supposed to be lossless format), to doing a cut and paste remixing of the file from a clean one to cut out the artifact. Either way, it can be done away with.

Second, these are your damned customers! Seriously, as ridiculous as my opening analogy was, this is equally stupid. Your watermarking is only pissing off paying customers. Now they have to, in addition to... you know... giving you money, go around and figure out a way to fix what you screwed up for them. And that's going to make them buy from you in the future? And that did what exactly to keep the files from being pirated elsewhere?

I can't believe I have to say this to an established company, but: UMG, customers are people, too. Stop screwing with people and sell the product as advertised, or you'll find you'll have no more customers left to piss off.

Filed Under: audio, audiophiles, customers, watermark
Companies: universal music

It's On: Journalist Takes On Audiophile Cable Million Dollar Challenge

from the details-please? dept

Last week we wrote about James Randi's challenge, offering $1 million to someone who could show that it was possible to hear the difference between $7250 speaker cables and $80 speaker cables. That set off a long discussion in our comments (and elsewhere) -- and eventually got the attention of at least one audiophile who has signed up to take the challenge. While it sounds like the details are still being worked out (in between the insults flying back and forth), assuming this actually moves forward, it should be fun to watch. In the meantime, about the only thing I'll note is that prior to this story, I don't think I ever would have considered $80 speaker cables "cheap," and yet, now I feel like my mental scale for such things has been reset. That's not necessarily a good thing.

Filed Under: audiophiles, cables, skeptics, speakers

$1 Million if You Can Prove $7250 Speaker Cables Are Any Better Than $80 Speaker Cables

from the $302-per-foot-of-cable dept

There's just something about extreme audiophiles that is either amusing or depressing, depending on your point of view. Now, as a music fan, I've got nothing against trying to make things sound better -- but there are serious diminishing marginal returns after a certain point (and, of course, there are some really fantastic musical compositions that were recorded on such crappy equipment that it's never going to matter). However, there is a group of audiophiles who really seem to stick up their nose at anyone who dares to suggest they've taken things too far. Professional skeptic James Randi apparently wants to put them in their place -- and is offering up $1 million to make his case. As pointed out by Slashdot, Randi is now offering $1 million to anyone who can prove that there's any real difference in performance between a pair of $80 Monster HDMI cables (which many will claim is already overpriced) and the astoundingly priced $7,250 12-foot "Anjou" audio cables from Pear Cable. As Randi notes, the key is in the actual performance -- not in "qualities that can only be perceived by attentive dogs or by hi-tech instrumentation."

Filed Under: audiophiles, skeptics, speaker cable

Blaming MP3s And iPods For Ruining Music

from the gotta-love-the-audiophiles dept

It seems that with every new generation of music delivery, there are going to be people who complain that the quality just isn't up to par with what came before. Remember when CDs first came out, there were quite a few upturned noses who insisted the sound quality just couldn't compete with vinyl LPs. And now that mp3s are becoming the standard, folks are complaining that the quality simply can't live up to CDs. This has certainly gone on for a while, as we've noted there are even online stores that cater to audiophiles who believe that compressed mp3s just aren't worth listening to. However, now it's going even further, as the WSJ claims that some audio engineers are saying that the popularity of mp3s and iPods is ruining music. The theory is that audio engineers are using iPods and mp3s as the lowest common denominator for recordings. Since they know that so many people are going to end up hearing the song just through the cheap white earbuds of an iPod, that they don't bother to make a high quality recording that would sound better on high end stereo equipment. Thus, the claim goes, pretty much all music is sounding somewhat crappy, and it's turning people off from the latest crop of new songs. In other words, music is less popular today, because the songs are engineered to sound like crap. This seems silly. It's certainly a different argument than the industry's typical claim that downloads are killing the music business -- but it's equally ridiculous. Sure, there may be some engineers who are doing a cruddy job in engineering the music, but as one audio engineer in the story notes, there's no reason to ever engineer a song "down" to mp3 levels. Instead, you should just engineer it to a higher level and it'll sound fine on a CD as well on an iPod. However, to put the whole thing in perspective: songs compressed to mp3 level certainly do lose some quality at the margin, but there's only a small group of audiophiles who really care or will notice on a regular basis. At the same time, compare that to how much more music is being produced today thanks to cheaper production tools and easier distribution of music through the internet, and I think you could make the case that the mp3 and the iPod has done a lot more to improve music than to hurt it.

Filed Under: audiophiles, ipods, mp3s, music, quality