
I’ve been watching the rise of hi-end digital audio recently, and as I put the individual pieces together over the past year or so a picture is emerging that has inspired me to claim that we are entering a new era of hi-res digital music. We are, I believe, at the edge where compressed audio (MP3s, AACs, etc) will be as outmoded as 8-track tapes and new hi-fi consumer playback systems playing uncompressed digital files will soon be the norm.  Evidence that we’re entering this era comes from a number of different sources, most of them efforts to get hi-res digital into the market.
To be clear, these players will, of course, be of varying quality, but they are all designed to outperform and/or vastly improve an iPod, laptop or phone. Better clocks, much better D-A converters, better analog stages and headphone amps, better power supplies to run it all. Better playback systems will also play back lower-res files much better, making backward-compatibility with existing digital music libraries not just possible, but better.
"The Grateful Dead studio albums were mastered from the original master tapes in Airshow Studio C, Boulder, CO. Transfers were done at 192kHz / 24 Bit from an Ampex ATR with Plangent replay electronics to a Prism ADA-8XR A/D converter into a soundBlade workstation."
Not everyone is going to care that much about the individual pieces of gear used - and Grateful Dead fans have been notoriously struck by wide-spread audiophila - but this kind of information will likely become part of the credits on hi-res digital, because people will soon want to know that they’re buying the best possible file. No one wants a DSD transfer of an MP3, and when possible a direct transfer from original masters will be the thing people want.
But why? The appeal of that direct transfer of a studio master is fascinating, when you think about it in terms of fan appeal rather than audio quality. Music fans have always wanted to be as close to the artists as possible - front row center seats, an autograph, candid interviews, etc... Fans love to be close. And with hi-res digital there is the sense that the listener is in on something intimate, something usually reserved for those lucky enough to enter the sacred sanctuary of the recording studio where the records were made. We can argue about fidelity and hi-res all we like (I’m bracing myself for the comments to follow), but - regardless of whether the digital code has any actual relationship to what happens in the studio - from a marketing perspective
Truth be told, as much as I am a big big supporter of the hi-res digital movement, I have a lot to learn about how best to deliver it in the studio. This is one of the reasons I’ve returned to archiving final mixes onto analog tapes that can be converted later. Analog seems endlessly future-proof (
).
But I’m not nearly as interested in the details of the format battle as I am in the fact that it’s happening at all. The format battle is another strong indicator that we’re entering into The Hi-Res Digital Era.
Most importantly: hi-res digital files formats are only one part of the equation. We need great playback systems, too, and, YES!, CD-quality files can sound amazing on a great player. Much of what will make the Era of Hi-Res Digital wonderful will be the availability of great playback systems
Suffice it to say, there is much to investigate going forward and I am broadly asking that people catch their breath, slow down, and begin with a humbler sense that there is still much to learn about digital audio. I also ask that more people openly question the scientific paradigms being employed to test our perception of hi-res digital audio.
“If you’re watching a movie on a phone, you’ll never in a trillion years experience the film. You’ll think you’ve experienced it, but you’ll be cheated. It’s such a sadness that you’d think you’ve seen a film on your fucking telephone. Get real!”
I believe that the same can be said of records and their soundscapes, and to the extent that the introduction of this new breed of accessible hi-res digital audio systems and newly minted hi-res audio files can bring that kind of experience to listeners, I suspect that listeners will, in turn, be far more likely to come to value recorded music as it should be. They might even consider paying for it.
- Allen Farmelo, October 2, 2013
is a producer and engineer. He also founded and directs .
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