Post by ralphpnj...
1) In the broader non-audiophile audio community almost NO ONE cares
about sound quality, as in whatever iTunes sells is good enough and
everything iTunes sells is worthless from an audio perspective.
2) The audiophile community gets their marching orders from the various
high end audio publications, whether in print or online, and the various
high end audio publications get their marching orders from their
advertisers and their advertisers are in business to sell things. Right
now the manufacturers of DACs want people to buy new DACs and so the
need for DSD capable DACs is being drummed into audiophile's gullible
little brains.
...
Gee Ralph, why don't you tell us how you really feel? ;)
While I agree that the masses interested in pop/rock probably do not
care (much) about the sound quality, I do hold hope that in time this
will change. I agree with one of the comments on my blog post that the
proliferation of better headphones could make inroads into this. I was
talking to a rap artist today (of all people!) who was well aware of
dynamic range compression and thinking about how it affects his music!
Of course, for his kind of music/genre (think angry Eminem), some
compression is needed otherwise it'd sound inappropriately "pleasant"
:mad:.
Although topics like the Loudness Wars may not have made it into the
lingo of the masses yet, it's certainly common knowledge among many
audiophiles / web sites and music lover forums like the Steve Hoffman
forum. Heck, even Neil Young's comments could help make a dent though I
believe ultimately he is misguided and this will be made plain for all
to see if Pono comes out with no evidence of better mastering.
In the long term, I feel the market will figure this out. The "second
coming" of DSD will fail and "High-Resolution Audio" will not go
anywhere either. For all the marketing expense and BS, the "high-end"
will continue to falter in sales because innovation is essentially dead
and quality has maxed out while providing no real value. In the process
the general public just -might- end up "getting it".
Realize that this could be really good for us audiophiles. Hopefully
you'll run into more "lucky flukes" as the drive for high-resolution
provides more tools and investment dollars for the
artists/producers/engineers who care about sound quality. This is how I
feel about multichannel. The home theater push in the early 2000's gave
rise to some good multichannel album remastering in DVD-A and SACD
formats. Good luck ever seeing a popular album like -Random Access
Memories- get officially remixed into multichannel these days (I think
it could sound amazing)! Even though the masses used their crappy
satellite speakers and could never fully experience it, I am happily
sitting around in 2014 enjoying the fruits of the "multichannel push"
with (almost) full-range 5.1 channels.
All IMHO of course.
Keep the faith, friend.
Archimago's Musings: (archimago.blogspot.com) A 'more objective'
audiophile blog.
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