Eddie Van Halen Quotes

I think that if people realize that with an mp3, you're only getting five percent of the sound that's there. But when you hear the entire thing... I think it would save the music business. It's such a drastic change.

No compression or as little as possible - that's how you get a good recording.

All of audio as we know it is an attempt to be more and more perfectly linear. Linearity means higher quality sound. Hypersonic sound is exactly the opposite: it's 100 percent based on non-linearity.

I've personally reached the point where the sound of MP3s are so uncompelling, because so much is lost in translation.

That's one of the problems with the Zeppelin stuff. It sounds ridiculous on MP3. You can't hear what's there properly.

CDs sound so much better than MP3s. I'm sure they'll come out with a better format someday.

I don't like the compression on compact discs. It's lacking in air, and it's lacking in majesty.

If all the elements are in place, you should get 80 percent of what a song has to offer no matter how you hear it, whether on headphones or on the radio.

Most people have no idea what something would sound like if it wasn't an MP3.

When you hear a great two-track of a performance in Carnegie Hall, let's say, it sounds like you're right there at that moment. It's true to reality. And the closer it gets, once it gets too technical, it becomes very tinny to hear notes. It doesn't sound right. It has to be natural.

Early CDs, I found, flattened out the sound - it took away all the highs.

Technically speaking, there is no music whatsoever on a CD. Lots of information, but no music.

Young people have decided they like to listen to music in a certain way, through ear buds, and that's fine with me as long as it doesn't bother them that they're not hearing 90 percent of the music that way.

You can find the greatest sound of all time, and someone's going to squash it down to a tiny little earphone anyway or play it through the computer, and that is a big thing people have to think about now.

What do I think of digital recording? Well, it's all right. But those old thorn needles, now, that was a sound.

People are making a lot of music and higher and higher quality. I can't say the same thing for how people are listening to music. People are hearing music through terrible speakers, little computer speakers, there's a lot to get back to in terms of hi-fi and people listening to better quality, technically better quality music.

When digital recording came in about '84, everything started to follow into digital. Now, you've got the best recording media in the world, but it's not very pleasing to the ear.

We're in this period where we're getting good data rates. I would say we're getting data rates that are like the data rates we got when we launched RealAudio in 1995.

I loved music, and in my ninth year at MIT, I decided to buy a hi-fi set. I figured that all I needed to do was look at the specifications. So I bought what looked like the best one, turned it on, and turned it off in five minutes, the sound was so poor.

MP3's are perfect.

Music as background to me becomes like a mosquito, an insect. In the studio we have big speakers, and to me that's the way music should be listened to. When I listen to music, I want to just listen to music.

As so much music is listened to via MP3 download, many will never experience the joy of analog playback, and for them, I feel sorry. They are missing out.

I wanted to do something as an extension of my passion for music. My aim for the STREET by 50 On-Ear Wired Headphone range is to present music as it's meant to be heard, in studio-mastered sound.

A lot of times good, pristine recordings prevent the listener from getting emotionally involved in the music.

Digital music boils down the actual musical experience.