Dithering: Jonny Greenwood in The New Yorker (Sep. 2009)

The New Yorker: What are your feelings about the various audio formats?
Jonny Greenwood: Sonic quality is important. I’d feel frustrated if we couldn’t release CDs as a band, but then, it only costs us a slight shaving of sound quality to get to the convenience of the MP3. It’s like putting up with tape hiss on a cassette. I was happy using cassettes when I was fifteen, but I’m sure they were sneered at in their day by audiophiles. If I’m on a train, with headphones, MP3s are great. At home, I prefer CD or vinyl, partly because they sound a little better in a quiet room and partly because they’re finite in length and separate things, unlike the endless days and days of music stored on my laptop.
TNY: Do you record any differently now, knowing that the end result will likely be an MP3?
JG: No, but it was interesting how some tracks fared the conversion to MP3 better than others. It was never bad.
TNY: What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of the MP3 age?
JG: The downside is that people are encouraged to own far more music than they can ever give their full attention to. People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis’ record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row—there’s just too much to get through. You’re thinking, “I’ve got ‘Sketches of Spain and ‘Bitches Brew’—let’s zip through those while I’m finishing that e-mail.” That abundance can push any music into background music, furniture music.