The NYT has an astonishingly misinformed story on Ipods and audio quality today, a matching bookend with Lee Gomes’ in the WSJ from a few weeks ago.

[O]ver the last decade the ranks of true audiophiles have been thinning, in large part because of the growing popularity of MP3 players and iPods. These nifty devices enable you to store thousands of hours of your favorite music and take it with you as you bop through your day. You can listen while shopping, while jogging or even, depending on your job, while at work. No one, not even devoted users of MP3s or iPods, claims that the sound reproduction on these technological marvels is equal to that of the best home CD systems. After all, they work by eliminating some of the digitized sound bits to open up storage space for multiple compressed files of music, rendering the sound a little thinner. Still, for consumers, easy access has trumped high fidelity.

The writer, classical music critic Anthony Tommasini, meanders on and on pondering the end of high fidelity. Like Gomes’ story, the point is true, as far as it goes. Mp3s do have inferior sound quality, in a relative sense; they are compressed sound files that make sonic compromises. But as the cost of computer storage continues to go down, the situation will slowly begin to right itself as more and more fans begin to listen to uncompressed files on their ever-bigger Ipods. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has scooped up a discounted half-terabyte drive and is busy digitizing CDs in the Apple lossless format.

(Another issue the audio bemoaners overlook is that, like most other electronic gear, the quality of even low-end audio equipment, particularly speakers, is much higher than all but the best stuff from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.)

As I’ve written before, the change will give the record companies one last resale opportunity, as they mount a campaign to inform iPod owners that the audio quality of their songs is inferior, and to give them the chance to rebuy their music, one last joyous time, in a lossless format.