Don’t let a hipster’s anachronistic philosophy fool you – when critically listening to music, technology is your friend. In this brief tutorial, I’m going to give you some hints on what tools you will need to become a music snob virtuoso and how to use them.

The main goal: avoid loss.

From the moment a sound wave leaves the mouth, guitar amp, or drum kit of an artist, loss of the sound wave is occurring. Every technological component between the performer and your ears – microphones, sound cables, mixing consoles, digital signal processors, digital multitrack recorders, master tapes, CD’s, MP3′s, your iPod and your headphones – can only transfer and reproduce sound with a finite accuracy, and stacked on top one of another, loss of audio signal integrity does occur.

The mission of every recording studio and mastering house is to minimize these losses – to bring the artists’ vision to your ears with the utmost integrity. Producers spend inordinate amounts of money and time obtaining the highest quality reproductions of their artists; consider it a favor to you.

But, once those tracks are on their final medium – MP3′s, iTune’s AAC (.MP4), CD’s – you are on your own.

So lets talk about the ideal scenario. You want the sound that the mastering engineer hears in his headphones to match the sound in yours. Here are some things that can get in your way and how to get around them.

Music Storage

CD’s are considered lossless. This isn’t completely true, and an audio engineer will spend hours talking his head off about how anything not 192khz/24-bit is inferior, but they are being audio snobs. Your job is to be a music snob – there is a difference. For all intents and purposes, consider the CD the golden standard of distributed music. It’s as good as you are going to find unless you are ballsy enough to break in to a mastering house and steal your artists’ demos.

If you are going to listen through a CD player, provided that you have quality equipment discussed below, you are hearing what you are supposed to, and there isn’t much you can (or should want to) do.

However, the digital world is a whole different ball game. The average CD requires between 700-800MB of digital storage at full capacity, way too big to fit your entire pretentious discography on your computer or your portable audio player. So compression is key, but the secret is in the compression algorithm. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of experimental compression algorithms but the major file formats you are going to encounter are MP3, MP4 (AAC) and maybe some exotic lossless file types like Apple Lossless.

Bit rate matters – there is an inverse relationship between sound quality and bit rate. Here are 3 clips of the same sound byte at different bit rates.

32 kpbs (File size: 64.0k), 128kbps (File size: 252k), and 256 kbps (File size: 504k)

Let It Be (32k)

Let It Be (128k)

Let It Be (256k)

Now here is the great debate. It’s obvious that the 128 is way better than the 32, right? (If you don’t agree, go do something else with your time). But, is the 256 really worth twice the file size in the 128? There is no correct answer. At some point (and it’s different for everyone), there is a point where file size becomes the constraining factor over audio quality. If you only own 20 albums and a huge iPod, screw it, go with lossless WAV and reap every last byte out of your music, but for those of us with thousands of songs, the answer isn’t as simple.

Mystery Tricycle’s recommendation: At least use 160kpbs for MP3′s, and MP4 AAC is an even better algorithm. (MP4 is iTunes’ native, so if you are an Apple user, you don’t need to think too much). I prefer 256kpbs or above, but then again, we can’t all be as awesome as I am.

Music Player

On your iPod, we advise that you only play with your Equalizer if you are going to do it responsibly. If you are in the mood for some thumping bass, are you sure you aren’t looking for some more… simplistic music? Try to find an EQ and volume setting that fits the artists’ intent, not your booty’s.

Most of us at Mystery Tricycle use our iPods as a secondary player to our computers, but even on a computer, there are some limiting factors. Specifically, a computer sound card has to have a decent digital-audio converter module. Most computer listeners are using their motherboard’s built-in sound card and are thus using a lackluster approach. Most of us can’t afford a high-end digital audio card, but if you can, you are better off for it.

What does it get you? A better signal-to-noise ratio (less buzz, better dynamics), reduced gain limitations on the hardware (lots of distortion can happen before the signal ever gets to your headphones), and quality line-amplification circuit, which leads us to the meat – headphones.

Headphones

Get the best headphones you can afford. If you have money to spend, this is where you gain the most value.

For my critical listening, I use the Audio-Technica ATH-M50 Studio Monitor Headphones. They’ve come down in price a lot, and if you don’t feel like researching the best pair for your budget, spend the $120 and pick them up. If you are up for a little research, you are bound to find the best headphones for your own personal set of ears at Headroom.

Earbuds suck. There is a reason they are “free” with every iPod. They do not create any isolation between your audio world and the everyone elses’, but more importantly, they have low-quality, low-power-handling drivers (typically a piddly 1 driver per ear) and simply are not ideal for listening.

Those of you that praise the convenience and style of those little squirrel testes can find solace in In Ear Monitors (IEM). They are suspiciously small, but pack as many as 6 drivers per ear inside a little package (of course, not without spending a fortune). The IEM’s that I use (on my minisule blogging budget) are the Klipsch IMAGE S4 In-Ear Enhanced Bass Noise-Isolating Headphones. For only $80 bucks, they pump crystal-clear sound at all line levels, and have a pretty full sound, but look around for what fits you best.

But its not that easy, my pretentious friends. You may also want to consider a headphone amplifier if you are particularly snobby.

Headphone amplifiers are audio amplifiers specifically engineered to drive dynamic headphones. Everything you plug your headphones in to already has an amplifier (your PC, your iPod, your mom), but an external amplifier allows for higher volumes and greater clarity. Many headphone amplifiers can power between 10 mW and 2 W depending on the specific headphone you are driving. They can be battery powered but aren’t necessarily ideal for walking down the sidewalk, but home listeners will benefit by teaming kick-ass headphones with a good amplifier.

Do your homework.

At the end of the day, your goal as a pretentious listener is to hear everything the studio intended you to hear. Your responsibility is to eliminate the weakest links in your chain. If you are using crappy files, crappy headphones, or a crappy integrated amplifier, steps can be taken to improve your audio indulgence. Best of luck in your endeavors at being a true audiophile (music snob).