{"id":5825,"date":"2016-08-18T16:56:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T23:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/?p=5825"},"modified":"2016-08-18T16:56:10","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T23:56:10","slug":"ask-me-anything-defining-hi-res-audio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/?p=5825","title":{"rendered":"Ask Me Anything: Defining Hi-Res Audio"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve visited AVS Forum, you might have noticed a couple of upcoming events focused on “Defining Hi-Res Audio”. The folks at Sony \u2014 the Q&A session will be driven by the primary advocate for hi-res audio these days \u2014 has enlisted the help of expert Bob O’Donnell, the founder, president, and chief analyst at Technalysis Research and person whose had a long career in the technology business. Here’s the opening pitch from the AVS Forum website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“High-resolution audio (HRA) is a hot topic these days. It promises better audio quality than MP3s and even uncompressed CDs and equivalent digital files, but there’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about it within the ranks of audio consumers.<\/p>\n

To help address this problem, AVS Forum and Sony are offering AVS members an opportunity to ask an expert anything they want to know about high-res audio in a series of real-time interactive sessions. The first session will be focused on defining high-res audio \u2014 exactly what it is, how it’s created, where to get it, and what you need to fully enjoy it.”<\/em><\/p>\n

It should be interesting although I seriously doubt Bob will be able to clear up any “confusion and misunderstandings” in a way that would please the people at Sony. I read the recent blog post that Bob wrote and which was reposted at recode.com called, “Digital audio progress highlights tech\u2019s more human futur \u2014 Recording resolutions could go even higher, but for any applications involving people, there\u2019s no point”.<\/a> <\/p>\n

I would generally agree with the points that he made in the piece. He stated, “Digital audio recording technology has peaked”. His assertion is that digital audio has already eclipsed the ability of humans to perceive a difference. He’s right. However, the essential question is at what specification has “digital audio” peaked? Is it 44.1 kHz\/16-bits as many claim or do you have to move to 384 kHz\/32-bits to get there? If you’re Sony, you believe that DSD is the answer. He also talks about the return to vinyl LPs \u2014 “format and audio quality that are arguably worse than what’s possible” with modern digital equipment. Obviously Sony believes vinyl LPs are hi-res because they sell a turntable that will convert your albums into DSD files! Argh!<\/p>\n

But near the end of the article he expresses a central theme of this site, “With the right kind of digital music files, recorded, mixed and mastered in high-resolution form (unfortunately, a tiny fraction of available digital music)<\/strong>, played back on the right kind of HD Audio equipment, you can experience a level of audio fidelity, sense of space and overall musicality that makes the technology completely fade away. In a word, pure audio bliss.”<\/p>\n

I would add that you have to do more than just use higher sample rates and longer word lengths. Musicians, singers, engineers, and producers have to want to create and release albums that have high levels of fidelity. Unfortunately, that concept does not dominate the production community.<\/p>\n

If you actually calculate the number of albums that fall into this category \u2014 and which strive for ultimate fidelity \u2014 there are less than 2500 of them. Does Sony really think there’s a business in selling HRA to the masses when there are a very limited number of albums that will benefit from the increased resolution? Apparently they do.<\/p>\n

Wait a second, I get it. Sony is in the business of selling hi-res audio, which is the hardware that plays back the upconverted standard resolution audio files we download from most sites. They don’t care about hi-res music because there are big bucks in reselling hardware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve visited AVS Forum, you might have noticed a couple of upcoming events focused on “Defining Hi-Res Audio”. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5827,"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":[97,657,50,40,172,1032,70,640,1092,26,639,1043,980,1061,42,298,251,645,638,637,227,643,169,1101,1026,1027,150,1110,503,1108,347,27,116,659],"class_list":["post-5825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dr_aixs_posts","tag-5-1-surround","tag-advanced-resolution","tag-aix-records","tag-analog-vs-digital","tag-audio-resolution","tag-dvd_audio","tag-hd-downloads","tag-hd-music","tag-hd-vinyl","tag-hd-audio","tag-hi-res-audio","tag-hi-res","tag-hi-res-music","tag-hi-res-sound","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-mark-waldrep","tag-master-class","tag-music-and-audio","tag-music-and-audio-a-user-guide-to-better-sound","tag-pcm","tag-smyth-a16","tag-smyth-research","tag-sonic-blocks","tag-spectragram","tag-spectragraphs","tag-surround-music","tag-uhd-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825","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=5825"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5829,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions\/5829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}