One of today's free Wall Street Journal articles is about digital music and sound quality. Lee Gomes looks at how producers, mixers and engineers approach music in the iPod era. The article's sidebar has audio clips of varying qualities so listeners can try to spot the differences. Gomes points to a possible side effect: Musicians may have less of an incentive to record the perfect take.

"All these engineers tend to be audiophiles, the sort who would fuss over a track to make it perfect. But they're beginning to wonder if they should bother. 'I care about quality, even though the kid on the street might like what he hears on MySpace, which is even worse than an MP3,' said Stuart Brawley, an L.A. engineer who has recorded Cher and Michael Jackson. 'We try to make the best quality sound we can, but we increasingly have to be realistic about how much time we can spend doing it.' Howard Benson, who has done work for Santana and Chris Daughtry, says members of a studio recording crew will sometimes complain after a session, 'I just spent all this time getting the greatest guitar and drums solo, and it ends up as an MP3.'"

This isn't a new topic -- The New York Times had a very similar article earlier this year, with audio clips as well -- but Gomes gives it a nice overview and talks to a number of recording professionals for their thoughts. Definitely worth a read.