High-resolution audio will never become a mainstream phenomenon. It just won’t. And it’s not because David Pogue, Seth Stevenson, and Brent Butterworth have written uninformed articles claiming that high-res recordings don’t matter or that listeners failed to hear a difference between the output of their iPhone and a new Pono player. The primary reason that high-resolution audio recordings and in fact, the whole high-resolution initiative is bound to fail on mainstreet is because there is no compelling difference between standard and high-resolution audio recordings. We…the advocates for high-resolution audio and the audiophiles that are with us…are kidding ourselves if we think that our non-audiophile friends are going to spend more money on high-resolution versions of the records we love. Even if you agree with me and other believers that there is merit to the whole high-resolution thing, the fact remains that it’s “subtle to hear” any improvement or change by moving from 44.1 kHz\/16-bits to 96 kHz\/24-bits.<\/p>\n
Helen M. Jackson, Michael D. Capp, and J. Robert Stuart investigated whether subjects could tell the different between high-resolution sample rates and down converted versions of the same tracks and Robert presented a paper at last October’s AES Convention on their results. I attended the session. It was given the “best paper of the show” by the society. The title, “The audibility of typical digital audio Filters in a high-fidelity playback system” says it…and their conclusion was “there exist audible signals that cannot be encoded transparently by a standard CD; and secondly, an audio chain used for such experiments must be capable of high-fidelity reproduction.” There is little doubt that under the right circumstances that there are differences…but not enough to warrant the kind of wholesale marketing push that is being attempted. <\/p>\n
The organizations, companies, artists, websites, reviewers, and labels that are promoting high-resolution audio don’t have a clue how misguided their efforts are. They believe the road to high-resolution audio success will happen by adopting a common logo (although the current high-resolution has multiple definitions), taking a well-equipped motor home to malls, audio trade shows, and universities to play CDs and then high-resolution downloads, and setting up events with artists like Neil Young to act as cheerleader-in-chief for high-resolution audio. The average consumer…and it turns out the tech press as well…don’t believe there’s any difference. And the country agrees.<\/p>\n
Instead of concentrating on selling older recordings remastered to 192 kHz\/24-bits, we should be pressuring the labels and artists to make better recordings. It is possible to do better but the industry just isn’t interested in higher fidelity recordings. <\/p>\n
I have a Grammy-winning audio engineer friend that raves about the sound quality of my tracks. He’s just recently been hired to produce and engineer a new project for a legacy band that had some hits 15-20 years ago. In spite of his enthusiasm for high-resolution and surround music mixes, he’s located a studio in east LA that has an old Neve console, lots of classic analog processors, spring reverbs, and vintage microphones where he wants to work. Here’s a guy that has the opportunity to make something really special in high-resolution and he retreats to the comfort and familiarity of old gear. Pretty disheartening.<\/p>\n
We need to reel in our expectations…and so far we haven’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
High-resolution audio will never become a mainstream phenomenon. It just won’t. And it’s not because David Pogue, Seth Stevenson, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[657,50,40,172,57,242,905,85,87,17,1032,911,70,640,26,639,651,42,298,251,645,638,637,227,643,451,906,74,169,276,903,912,150,166,910,649,347,27,659,658,660,661,279],"class_list":["post-4206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dr_aixs_posts","tag-advanced-resolution","tag-aix-records","tag-analog-vs-digital","tag-audio-resolution","tag-audio-specifications","tag-audiophile-mastering","tag-audioquest","tag-cd","tag-compact-discs","tag-dsd","tag-dvd_audio","tag-fred-kaplan","tag-hd-downloads","tag-hd-music","tag-hd-audio","tag-hi-res-audio","tag-hi-res-audio-logo","tag-high-resolution-audio","tag-high-res-music","tag-high-resolution","tag-high-resolution-audio-experience","tag-hires-audio","tag-hires-music","tag-hra","tag-hra-listening-experience","tag-john-gorka","tag-john-mceuen","tag-laurence-juber","tag-mark-waldrep","tag-mastering","tag-onkyomusic","tag-out-of-the-blue-and-into-the-wack","tag-pcm","tag-ps-audio","tag-slate-com","tag-sony-hi-res-logo","tag-spectragram","tag-spectragraphs","tag-uhd-audio","tag-ultra-hd-audio","tag-ultra-high-definition-audio","tag-ultra-high-resolution-audio","tag-vinyl-lps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4208,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions\/4208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}