MP3s suck

I'm not a music fanatic. I like to have some background music at various times, but that's about it: I don't have any major hardware purchases dedicated to enhacing my music-listenting pleasure, or anything like that.

And for background music, MP3 is a great format. But when you really concentrate on it. . . yuck. Seriously.

I just had a go on Pandora, another of those internet radio things. It's working quite well so far. But when it played an MP3 of Life Uncommon by Jewel. . . it was really bad. I know that song well, and this was not right. It was. . . I don't know, flat. It was almost hard to listen to it. I actually removed an MP3 of Flashdance (ripped from a CD I own, before anyone starts) from my collection because that sounded really, really bad.

I know MP3 is aimed at certain types of sound and not all songs will fit its bracket. But I'm growing steadily less impressed with MP3s. They render too many of my favourite songs hard to listen to.

Possibly my current meditation practice is another factor: It revolves around increasing my concentration skills, so I'm listening much more closely to music than a 'casual' listener. I don't know.

I just know I'm incredibly grateful for the Ogg Vorbis encoding. Never mind the fact that less hardware supports it, at least it doesn't ruin the music that I like enough to rip.