What next for audio?

RobHolt

RobHolt

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What do you see as the next real change we'll see over the coming decade?

Can amplifiers, dacs and phono stages etc really get any better?
Will it be loudspeaker developments and if so what?
Or will it be confined to the way we store and access music?

I go with the last point and think that the cloud solution as exemplified by Spotify will be the big change. I think we are looking to the end of the decade though - I'm not convinced the solutions currently available are quite good enough.
 
Computing will all go cloud based: "The network is the computer."

That means Spotify type services will rule.

Stereo and AV kit will merge.

Speakers should become active with their own streaming receiver and DAC, so they just sit on the home network.
 
It would be revolutionary if recording studios aimed to capture the dynamic range of the performance, but the reality is that you often have much more dynamic range captured on a 1959 RCA Living Stereo LP than on a modern CD.

Joe
 
The market will continue to diverge between absolute quality and absolute convenience.
 
To a degree that happens naturally. As technology matures, there is less need to measure it. It just works well enough so long as you follow the rules.

What i'd like to see are more active speaker systems, amplifiers with real digital inputs (ie built-in dacs) becoming the norm and perhaps even built in wireless capability.
Daft we have to have so many boxes that actually don't improve sonics in themselves. None of that is particularly revolutionary though and its the big stuff that matters here.
 
Joe Petrik said:
It would be revolutionary if recording studios aimed to capture the dynamic range of the performance, but the reality is that you often have much more dynamic range captured on a 1959 RCA Living Stereo LP than on a modern CD.

Joe
Click to expand...

Nonsense, I've been slowly replacing my classical Lp's with their CD counter parts over the last few years and I've yet to find one where the LP has greater dynamic range.

This http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schubert-Sy...ef=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1295203247&sr=1-2-spell
21CKY5633NL__SL500_AA300_.jpg

Blows it's LP verson out of the water.

YNMOAN said:
The market will continue to diverge between absolute quality and absolute convenience.
Click to expand...

That reasoning makes no sense, what does ease of use have to do with sound quality?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I feel that the rate of improvement in home sound reproduction has diminished in recent years - eg the "best" of 2010 wasn't superior to the best of 2000 to the same degree as, say, 1980's benchmark was over 1970's.

The hardware manufacturers have realised that they've squeezed as much as they can out of performance so their future is in new formats - storage and access as the original question put it. Mobile technology will continue to be invested in, maybe your mobile phone as a high quality portal for streaming wirelessly via your amplifier to multiple rooms sort of thing.

"Better" reproduction ? - nope.

Pete
 
sq225917 said:
think about it....

hairshirt audio minimalism vs ipods.
Click to expand...

I knew someone would say this and I also knew it would probably be you!

Plug the ipod head phones into your 'hairshirt audio minimalist' hi fi and it will sound just like an ipod!
 
Basil said:
Nonsense, I've been slowly replacing my classical Lp's with their CD counter parts over the last few years and I've yet to find one where the LP has greater dynamic range.

This http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schubert-Sy...ef=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1295203247&sr=1-2-spell
21CKY5633NL__SL500_AA300_.jpg

Blows it's LP verson out of the water.



That reasoning makes no sense, what does ease of use have to do with sound quality?
Click to expand...

I think this goes back to the idea that good performance is proportional to the simplicity of the system. Quite wrong as a rule IMO.
Some Audiophiles like to suffer for the cause it seems.
 
I think the main reason that many older recordings sound so good, is studio time was far cheaper back than, there weren't the commercial pressures there are now.

But overall, I'd say when it comes to classical music and solo piano in particular; we've never had it so good.

For an example, try this CD.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chopin-26-P...=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1295209999&sr=1-1

I'll up load some samples when I get a minute, the Australian open starts tonight so I'll be glued to the TV for the next two weeks!

Go Rafa!
 
I think what YNWAn was implying was that there would be an increasing gulf between the hi-end and the mass market.
 
Basil said:
Nonsense, I've been slowly replacing my classical Lp's with their CD counter parts over the last few years and I've yet to find one where the LP has greater dynamic range.

This http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schubert-Sy...ef=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1295203247&sr=1-2-spell
21CKY5633NL__SL500_AA300_.jpg

Blows it's LP verson out of the water.



That reasoning makes no sense, what does ease of use have to do with sound quality?
Click to expand...
Now I don't have this particular LP and CD but I definitively can say that most of my CDs don't appear to have more dynamic than the equivalent LP.

I would neither say that today's recordings have less dynamics than the older ones.

A part that there aren't many people who can hear classical music at the sound levels like in row 10-15 of the concert halls. Actually most people don't even have any clue about how loud a music piece is in concert halls. There are some which hear normal level compositions far too loud, other don't hear Mahler with peaks up to 105 db(A). My opinion is that if people don't / can't listen to the music at the level in concert halls they shouldn't complain about dynamics which are not at concert hall level. ;)
 
RobHolt said:
What do you see as the next real change we'll see over the coming decade?

Can amplifiers, dacs and phono stages etc really get any better?
Will it be loudspeaker developments and if so what?
Or will it be confined to the way we store and access music?

I go with the last point and think that the cloud solution as exemplified by Spotify will be the big change. I think we are looking to the end of the decade though - I'm not convinced the solutions currently available are quite good enough.
Click to expand...

The biggest change is going to be the impending total collapse of the music business. That and the steep decline in audio separates market, as yet another generation of music lovers consider hi-fi to be incompatible with their lifestyles.

Ten years from now, good audio will be at best a pair of B&W MM1 speakers or a soundbar on a television set.
 
Fnuckle said:
The biggest change is going to be the impending total collapse of the music business. That and the steep decline in audio separates market, as yet another generation of music lovers consider hi-fi to be incompatible with their lifestyles.

Ten years from now, good audio will be at best a pair of B&W MM1 speakers or a soundbar on a television set.
Click to expand...

When i think back to my childhood, most people played music on a portable radio, mono TV set speaker, low quality 'music centre' or a simple record player. Only a very few had anything better and the gap in quality was pretty huge.

I would argue that today the quality of the mass market end has got better in many ways, while improvements at the high end have been far harder to define. In the case of loudspeakers I think the specialist market has actually got worse over the years, despite some clear improvements in technology.

I was reading an article the other day on vintage audio and noticed that the very cheapest bargain basement products contained single ended amplifiers , while push-pull was reserved for the expensive models. Of course today, SE is to many the thing to have. I mention that for no other reason than to demonstrate how attitudes change.
 
RobHolt said:
When i think back to my childhood, most people played music on a portable radio, mono TV set speaker, low quality 'music centre' or a simple record player. Only a very few had anything better and the gap in quality was pretty huge.

I would argue that today the quality of the mass market end has got better in many ways, while improvements at the high end have been far harder to define. In the case of loudspeakers I think the specialist market has actually got worse over the years, despite some clear improvements in technology.

I was reading an article the other day on vintage audio and noticed that the very cheapest bargain basement products contained single ended amplifiers , while push-pull was reserved for the expensive models. Of course today, SE is to many the thing to have. I mention that for no other reason than to demonstrate how attitudes change.
Click to expand...

Difference is, when you were a child, when people reached the age when they would get married and settle down, they'd buy hi-fi. Even when that became buying micro systems, they still bought them.

That has all stopped. There is no mass-market anymore. Even the budget micro hi-fi systems sold in Currys don't sell these days. If they are a glorified iPod dock, perhaps. But otherwise, the numbers are tiny.

Improvements to the high-end, discussions about vintage audio or single-ended amplifiers... you might as well be discussing gas lighting to most people under 40.

This hobby doesn't just die with us. It dies before us. Before the end of the decade.
 

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