We knew audiophiles were passionate and detail-oriented. And we were not surprised that many of them weighed in double forte on our story last week on sound quality and digital formats.

The main message from nearly all of them: We’re glad someone’s paying attention.

"Nice to see the grievances of audio dorks like me getting public exposure," wrote Ethan Cheng, of Chicago.

"Thank you for the article on digital music formats," wrote Sam Grubb, of Salem, Ore. "I have resisted all the iPod type devices exactly because I have not been willing to sacrifice sound quality."

Then we got an earful on some arcane but important points. Following are excerpts from several astute e-mailers regarding, in particular, our misclassification of the WAV format – and touching on some other issues. We value the clarifications and appreciate that they took the time to write, and then helped us get in tune.

While the WAV format is lossless, it is not a compressed format. That is the key distinction between it and other lossless formats such as FLAC. Josh Burnett Natick, Mass.

I enjoyed your interesting article on music download quality. Overall it was accurate, but the sentence “The array of audio file formats includes Apple’s AAC and Dolby’s AC3, as well as WMA, OGG, FLAC, AVI, and others.” was a little wrong. AVI is a container format normally used for video – it can hold audio encoded in lots of formats (AC3, MP2, MP3, M4A, etc). Also FLAC is a lossless codec – it gives the full CD-quality audio. David Batley Exeter, Britain

A WAV pulled from a CD is not a bit-perfect copy of the master tape [as stated by one of your sources]. A master tape – the large reel of magnetic audio tape that was created in the original studio mix session and subsequently thrown in a vault – contains far more information and “richness” than the CD format can store. Even modern digital recordings, which result in digital files rather than master tapes, are almost always recorded in higher quality than what ends up on a CD. CD audio is 16-bit, 44.1KHz PCM, which is actually a big compromise in and of itself. (For comparison, the DVD-Audio format has up to 24-bit, 192KHz PCM.) The fact that the phrase “CD quality” has become synonymous with “perfect sound” is an enormous fallacy that causes people like me lots of grief. Ethan Cheng Chicago

If you’d like to advance the discussion even further, write to us at Weekend Zone.
by Clayton Collins

Lately, moviegoers have been complaining about the lack of etiquette at the cinema. As a frequent concertgoer who sees an average of 15 shows a year (last gig: Joe Satriani in New York last Thursday; next gig: Elbow this Thursday), let me be the first to spark a similar revolution among music fans.

Earlier this month, a friend and I visited New York’s Radio City Music Hall to see David Gilmour play one of his first concerts in North America since Pink Floyd’s last tour in 1994. This rare performance by the guitarist was nothing short of an Event.

Not surprisingly, the tickets to see the “guitar and voice of Pink Floyd” were more valuable than Google stock, as Gilmour was doing a small tour of North American theaters rather than the football stadiums beloved by Pink Floyd. This was a relatively stripped-down and “intimate” affair, i.e., no inflatable pigs hovering over the audience, no special-effects airplanes crashing into the stage, no Rockettes doing scissor kicks over the footlights.

Given the cost of the tickets ($65 for the cheap seats; $480 for the premier ones) and the sense of occasion, you’d have thought that the fans would have wanted to soak up every minute of the almost three-hour performance. But when Gilmour took the stage promptly at 8 o’clock (as promised on the ticket) hundreds of people were still milling around the foyer buying drinks.

The unmistakable sound of Gilmour’s Stratocaster resulted in a stream of harried concertgoers rushing down the aisles, asking seated patrons about our seat numbers, and then clambering over us. Perhaps Radio City music hall ought to enforce a strict no-admission policy for latecomers once the curtain has been raised, like Lincoln Center.

Alas, that wasn’t the end of the steady stream of human traffic. A number of patrons next to and in front of us couldn’t wait until intermission before getting a beer or two. Skipping several songs just to fetch a drink is, alas, common behavior these days and usually happens whenever a band deigns to play something from the new album that is less familiar. (If you’re going to shell out upwards of $60 on a concert, then what’s an extra $15 for a new CD on top of that? Maybe Prince was onto something when he included a “free” copy of his “Musicology” CD in the ticket price for everyone who attended his last record-setting tour.)

At several points during the concert, huge jets of dry ice transformed the stage into the steaming crater of Krakatoa, but it’s safe to say that much of the smoke was coming from the audience. One concertgoer behind us, wearing what appeared to be pajama bottoms with flying pigs on them, flauted New York City’s cigarette ban by smoking throughout the show, despite our polite requests that he stop.

Almost as annoying was the constant chatter of people behind us, which competed with the guy to our left who decided it would be a fine time to talk – sorry, yell – on a cellphone to a friend.

Rock shows are meant to be loud and loose, and I’m not advocating that they become Sunday School classes. But surely it’s time for venues to beef up the number of ushers to keep an eye on things. The nearest usher at the Gilmour show was a petite woman who looked to be no match for a boorish drunk. And wouldn’t it be great if venues would regulate the amount of alcohol sold to patrons, perhaps by issuing color-coded tokens to be redeemed at the point of sale? Sadly, there’s little financial incentive to do so.

To me, there’s no better entertainment experience than live music. But without better crowd management, not to mention better manners by concertgoers, concerts can be as unpleasant as going to the movies these days.

Hey, at least there aren't any annoying Fandango ads beforehand. Yet.

What do you think? Have you had any bad concert experiences? What solutions would you suggest? Write us at Weekend.

By Stephen Humphries