Hop Scotching Over Standard Definition
I’ve been prompted to take another look at Omnifone by several readers. They sent links to the Omnifone website in the hopes of clarifying some of the “ambiguous” claims about the 35 million high-resolution tracks that they claimed in the press announcement with Pono and Neil Young. So I followed a link to the section of their site that explains the ingestion and publishing area of their business.
They are obviously a very big player in this space…if being big is important…claiming the ability to ingest, prepare and publish of 100,000 per day. Knowing what it takes to carefully identify, produce, check and deliver a properly handled high-resolution track, I’m not terribly impressed with large numbers. This feels a little like the “millions and millions served” sign below each of the thousands of McDonald’s franchise restaurants rather than the professional mastering services offered by a very limited number of qualified engineers. Quantity isn’t the prime consideration when you’re looking for quality.
The first step of the production line is to “ingest” the source content form “thousands of sources”. All I was able to find on their site were references to “media sources” without any further detail regarding the format of the “media source”. I would prefer to read about a careful process of transferring the “best master available” (Pono’s description of their acquisition process) to a high-resolution 192 kHz/24-bit FLAC with or without human intervention. I imagine Omnifone’s process as a vast automated factory with hundreds of machines, lots of blinking lights and not a human ear or speaker in sight. Ingesting means taking a disc or other digital source and copying the digital data into the front end of a series of processors and encoders that spit out endless varieties of the same file for use across all applications.
The chart below shows some of those formats:
Figure 1 – A chart of the audio codecs, bitrates and packaging available at Omnifone.
The most interesting part of this chart is the obvious gap between 320 kbps lossy encoded music and “High Resolution”. What happened to standard resolution analog tape, compact discs or vinyl LPs? They’ve simply disappeared in the new age of “everything ever recorded is high-resolution”.
In the adjacent paragraph, the copyrighters at Omnifone state, “High resolution audio represents the musical work as originally intended by the artist in the studio.” This definition flies in the face of logic and common sense…but it means that there are already millions of “high-resolution” sources ready to back up Ponomusic or any other site powered by MusicStation. I must applaud HDtracks and the other high-resolution download sites for at least providing content that was specifically prepared for their sites. The content may be great at times or flawed at other times…but at least they’re giving you the stuff that the label’s are retransferring to 192 kHz/24-bits.
Statement like “as originally intended by the artists in the studio” mean nothing with regards to whether a track is high-resolution or not. If it did, then every track ever recorded qualifies as a high-resolution track…making the term meaningless, which it pretty much is after the announcement by the DEG, CEA, NARAS and labels.
The McDonald’s model of quantity over quality shouldn’t have a place in the distribution of music to quality conscious listeners. If the masses want fast food, then they can keep listening to HD-Radio and their ear buds. But for those of us that want the best possible music experiences, “fast music” simply won’t cut it. If I was one of Pono’s KD campaign supporters, I would start worrying.
I couldn’t agree more with you. Perhaps there is a way to make lemonade, and in this case, a value-added service that makes you some coin.
Omnifone is obviously serving up songs of unknown and likely varying quality. JRiver is providing the software to drive Pono. What if you created a paying service to curate Omnifone songs to provide music lovers with your opinion on what’s good, bad or indifferent from a quality perspective? Perhaps it could operate as a paid plugin to JRiver.
Perhaps you come up with an automated method of evaluating a song for frequency content, dynamic range and codec quality. Perhaps dumb it down to 1-5 scales in each and an overall sum, but also with a website for those who want to learn more about the scoring, and eventually more sophisticated methods of curating (but start simple). Perhaps go with a kickstarter or indiegogo project to raise funds for a programmer or two to develop an app to automate the curating process, cut a deal with Pono to have access for such curating and develop a JRiver plug-in for those who pay for the app, with funding incentives that include free subscriptions for a year, among other incentives. I think the toughest part will be getting access to the Omnifone library on reasonable terms.
In short, I think you have unique skills, commitment and integrity that make you well-positioned to do something in this space. I think the keylog is for you to make an appeal to Neil Young personally to offer an optional service to the most discerning music lovers to ID the best music, and something Young can use as a passive aggressive hammer on Omnifone to offer good music. With Neil Young’s endorsement, a fundrasing effort will probably do well.
Beyond the concept of such an effort, making it happen is all about navigating personal agendas and profit motives (which is what I do for a living as a ruthless MBA), so if you need my type on an ad-hoc basis, email me!
We’re thinking together on this. I’m working on the HRA DB site…and apps.
Ever and anon, the LARGE PRINT GIVETH, and the small print taketh away…
Thank you Mark!
Well well, it appears that Omnifone is stating the obvious position I too have staked out. If any given service can send master tape audio to my system, I cannot ask for more, and yes, anyone will hear the difference. The very tight, technically oriented definition of Hi-Res that you stick to guarantees that the last hope to re-engage the public with the value of the combo of great music/ great sound will fail, caught between squabbling about boundaries and semantics. At that point, our industry will have no one to blame but ourselves. Think Big Picture Mark; maybe someday more recordings will be made like yours, but it’s a long way from MP-3 to indisputable hi-res provenance, and we have to start somewhere. Picking on the inevitable stumbling blocks facing such as Pono; really, what true good does that do for the cause in the long run?
Omnifone and Ponomusic are selling regular gas and claiming it’s premium AND charging premium prices. Not cool. You can move the goal line and make everything high-resolution but it doesn’t change the fact that older master are bound by the technologies of the time.
Considering that neither the Pono Players or Music service are actually available yet, I think the best and fairest. M.O. is wait and see. Remember folks, Neil Young doesn’t need the money, so I doubt he would deliberately “sell out” and deliver 16.44 files as Hi-Res. As with so many things, talk is cheap, including mine, and the proof is in the Pono pudding. There’s an alliterative cliché for ya.
Actually, Neil does need the money.