The Rise of High Definition Audio – Save The Audio!
Finally, I’m not alone on the internet! Someone agrees it’s time to retire the MP3 and bring on high def digital audio.
We keep upping the resolution of our digital lives but seem to have neglected sound for 30+ years now.
Sound is more fundamental to our mental and emotional state than a flickering image. Eyes close, turn away, and can lose focus after a few feet. Created images bring no physical vibrations to our body, and we do not create images for our guttural, natural communication.
There’s a layer of abstraction when creating images as opposed to creating sound. You just did it now (made sound) and you can’t stop doing it. Neither can our machines or mother nature. Don’t forget sound in the pursuit of vision.
Don’t forget quality, even when compromising for convenience.
Here we are into our 3rd or 4th generation of digital television, our 10th generation of digital stills, and maybe our 4th or 5th iteration of digital audio. But only in the audio realm does each new standard give us less quality (less data) than what it’s replacing.
Hopefully this will end soon. #SaveTheAudio !! Megapixels, 1080p, 4K, what about bitrate and frequency response?
Maybe they need a fancy marketing name to capture our attention. I suggest Megatones. Whatever you play your music files on is 1 megatone. I want 2, 4, 8, 12 megatones!
Why don’t we have this yet? Plain old capitalism from what I can tell, taking advantage of customer ignorance.
Don’t let them divide and conquer for profit.
I see tech companies putting audio consumers into three buckets: the audiophile, the musician, and everyone else:
The Audiophile is a rare consumer who loves the highest quality everything and will spend more on a stereo system than their car. They are quite odd and they retire as an Audiophile if their income falls to earth.
The Musician knows and appreciates the high quality audio (live instruments) and the highest recorded quality (the studio control room) but is usually poor and simple enough to want digital convenience. They are often stuck in the middle of this argument, and no one listens to them anyway. Stupid hippies.
Everyone else, according to these companies, couldn’t hear the difference between an MP3 from their iPhone and Sir Paul Fucking McCartney in the flesh playing Hey Jude in their bedroom.
These are false groupings designed more for maximum profitability than for delivering quality audio.
We can all hear a difference. In particular you will FEEL a difference after you move away from lossy audio files and phone playback, even if you don’t think you hear it.
Hearing is ultimately the feeling of vibrations. It just is, but we seem to forget that. If you restrict those vibrations for convenience you hear less.
Because less is being sent to you.
