The Distortion of Sound is a 2014 advertisement for Harman produced by Vice Media. The advertisement presents itself as a documentary on the decline of sound quality in music distributed with lossy compression algorithms. The ad features paid interviews with vocalists, guitarists, producers, writers, rappers, film composers, mixing engineers, mixers, music journalists, acoustic researchers, loudspeaker engineers and chief engineers—including such artists as Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Slash, Quincy Jones, Snoop Dogg and Steve Aoki.
The ad was uploaded to YouTube using YouTube's lossy audio compression. The trailer of the film was also available on YouTube. The ad, as well as a trailer, was available on the official website of the film.
The film was premiered at a paid event in Los Angeles on July 10, 2014.
Cast
The film includes the following various musical artists: Quincy Jones Slash Snoop Dogg Steve Aoki Lianne La Havas Mike Shinoda Hans Zimmer Kate Nash A. R. Rahman Dan the Automator Manny Marroquin Andrew Scheps Neil Strauss Dr. Sean Olive Greg Timbers Chris Ludwig
Clips
The original film included clips of interviews. All the clips were uploaded separately on the official YouTube channel in the given sequences.
Music
The original score for the film was composed by Lorne Balfe. Whereas the film used only three songs out of which one is the collaboration between Linkin Park and Steve Aoki, and the other two songs are performed by Lianne La Havas. Whereas the song "Holding Company (Lost in the Echo 2011 Demo)" from the LP Underground XIII extended play was briefly used in the trailer for the film.