Will there ever be the audio equivalent of HD picture?
Discussion
Working at home and just watching Robin hood in the background, (as one does).
Much like audio, picture quality seemingly went through a golden age of striving for the best picture, all the old series and films recorded on well film. Later stuff on video is too poor for HD, in fact many old series the video is so downgraded there nothing to be done. So much like audio it looks like picture quality peaked back in the 70s and declined there after.
Audio recordings from the 60 - early 80's sound fantastic yet all modern stuff is horrendous quality and only suitable for portable audio, (yeh i know there are a few exceptional producers but not many).
So will we ever get a second golden age where the producers strive to make sound quality important again?
Storage is peanuts these days and the average standard of audio kit hugely higher than when it was at it's peak so surely even more could enjoy some new music rather than having to stick in timewarp back catalogue where sound was king?
Much like audio, picture quality seemingly went through a golden age of striving for the best picture, all the old series and films recorded on well film. Later stuff on video is too poor for HD, in fact many old series the video is so downgraded there nothing to be done. So much like audio it looks like picture quality peaked back in the 70s and declined there after.
Audio recordings from the 60 - early 80's sound fantastic yet all modern stuff is horrendous quality and only suitable for portable audio, (yeh i know there are a few exceptional producers but not many).
So will we ever get a second golden age where the producers strive to make sound quality important again?
Storage is peanuts these days and the average standard of audio kit hugely higher than when it was at it's peak so surely even more could enjoy some new music rather than having to stick in timewarp back catalogue where sound was king?
There IS the audio equivalent of HD picture... There are already plenty of 'high-def audio' formats (most haven't taken off commercially for the reasons I'll whinge about in a minute, but Blu Ray itself, for example, caters for several HD audio formats, with far more detail captured in terms of sample rate AND bit-depth than CD can manage).
As for the quality of production/ mastering... I actually don't agree that all 60-70s music is well produced, but I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of 'popular' music is considered to have a shorter shelf life these days - there's far more other entertainment around to distract folk, and for plenty of reasons (global marketing campaigns, instant downloads, more competition etc.) mastering tends to be focused around making it sound loud on the radio or on portable players and probably isn't seen as being that important in terms of ultimate quality for the average artist as back in the days when folk would be rushing down to a record store to buy, say, that latest Floyd LP....
Yes, the average equipment is much better, but whereas it used to be sold to a fairly large but still quite focused/ enthusiast market, the average modern consumers all want to have the latest equipment and seem less interested in what it can do and more interested in what it says it can do (see the unnecessary huge and noisey pixel counts on digital cameras, the number of people who watch the 'HD' telly and box that they're so proud of through a SCART lead, the lack of mid-range Hi-Fi seperates around etc. etc..) Hmppph!
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As for the quality of production/ mastering... I actually don't agree that all 60-70s music is well produced, but I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of 'popular' music is considered to have a shorter shelf life these days - there's far more other entertainment around to distract folk, and for plenty of reasons (global marketing campaigns, instant downloads, more competition etc.) mastering tends to be focused around making it sound loud on the radio or on portable players and probably isn't seen as being that important in terms of ultimate quality for the average artist as back in the days when folk would be rushing down to a record store to buy, say, that latest Floyd LP....
Yes, the average equipment is much better, but whereas it used to be sold to a fairly large but still quite focused/ enthusiast market, the average modern consumers all want to have the latest equipment and seem less interested in what it can do and more interested in what it says it can do (see the unnecessary huge and noisey pixel counts on digital cameras, the number of people who watch the 'HD' telly and box that they're so proud of through a SCART lead, the lack of mid-range Hi-Fi seperates around etc. etc..) Hmppph!
[/rant]
Not all early recordings were fantastically produced, but generally the essence of the music was there.
Modern recordings are ultra compressed and horrendously limited. Modern kit even the 'Tesco value' microsystem is light years ahead of what the average person would have had way back then. Even really cheap crap has CD, which infinitely better than a cheap turntable, (not going to do the high end vinyl debate), an amp capable of chucking at least 20 real watts with comparibly minute amounts of distortion. Now the storage space is available to record at higher bit rates and the tech is dirt cheap we have nothing to take advantage.
The reason this first entered my head was the low average sound level of HD,(was going to start a thread on why freeview HD is so much quieter than SD and my annoyance of grabbing for the remote when changingn channels), left presumably to have some headroom, much like DVD and Blu Ray are considerably lower average than CD.
There is surely a market for people with ears, with the average quality of playback devices now it would be even more noticeable surely?
Modern recordings are ultra compressed and horrendously limited. Modern kit even the 'Tesco value' microsystem is light years ahead of what the average person would have had way back then. Even really cheap crap has CD, which infinitely better than a cheap turntable, (not going to do the high end vinyl debate), an amp capable of chucking at least 20 real watts with comparibly minute amounts of distortion. Now the storage space is available to record at higher bit rates and the tech is dirt cheap we have nothing to take advantage.
The reason this first entered my head was the low average sound level of HD,(was going to start a thread on why freeview HD is so much quieter than SD and my annoyance of grabbing for the remote when changingn channels), left presumably to have some headroom, much like DVD and Blu Ray are considerably lower average than CD.
There is surely a market for people with ears, with the average quality of playback devices now it would be even more noticeable surely?
Not sure what you are asking for here. There are several audio formats now that knock anything from the 70s into a cocked hat. As you say, even a cheap CD player is impressive. I have some albums on CD where the sound is excellent.
From a technical point of view there is nothing wrong with Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, and I happen to like the music too. On a recommendation (from another thread here actually) I got a CD of Simon Preston playing Organ music by Bach on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Another disc full of good music, recorded in really excellent stereo, plenty of 'headroom' deep 32-foot pipes to shake the walls and enough detail to hear the workings of the machine itself when cranked up loud. All from a CD
Are you asking for popular music to be recorded in a better way, or do you want better music than pop to listen to?
From a technical point of view there is nothing wrong with Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, and I happen to like the music too. On a recommendation (from another thread here actually) I got a CD of Simon Preston playing Organ music by Bach on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Another disc full of good music, recorded in really excellent stereo, plenty of 'headroom' deep 32-foot pipes to shake the walls and enough detail to hear the workings of the machine itself when cranked up loud. All from a CD
Are you asking for popular music to be recorded in a better way, or do you want better music than pop to listen to?
Edited by Silver Smudger on Thursday 28th April 19:05
davepoth said:
HD picture has a point (decent picture on a massive screen) but once you get to decent audio quality (i.e. above decent CD quality) you are not going to get anywhere near as much of a benefit.
I have said before on here - I am much more impressed by the surround-sound on BluRay at home than just having a decent picture on a big screenSilver Smudger said:
Not sure what you are asking for here. There are several audio formats now that knock anything from the 70s into a cocked hat. As you say, even a cheap CD player is impressive. I have some albums on CD where the sound is excellent.
From a technical point of view there is nothing wrong with Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, and I happen to like the music too. On a recommendation (from another thread here actually) I got a CD of Simon Preston playing Organ music by Bach on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Another disc full of good music, recorded in really excellent stereo, plenty of 'headroom' deep 32-foot pipes to shake the walls and enough detail to hear the workings of the machine itself when cranked up loud. All from a CD
Are you asking for popular music to be recorded in a better way, or do you want better music than pop to listen to?
I'm asking that all music be recorded properly with good sound quality. The limitations of a properly recorded CD is far beyond my ears. You mention Brothers in Arms, which was one of the first mainstream released CDs and is astoundingly good. To see my point try comparing the re-mastered version, vastly inferior as are the Pink Floyd re-masters.From a technical point of view there is nothing wrong with Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, and I happen to like the music too. On a recommendation (from another thread here actually) I got a CD of Simon Preston playing Organ music by Bach on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Another disc full of good music, recorded in really excellent stereo, plenty of 'headroom' deep 32-foot pipes to shake the walls and enough detail to hear the workings of the machine itself when cranked up loud. All from a CD
Are you asking for popular music to be recorded in a better way, or do you want better music than pop to listen to?
Edited by Silver Smudger on Thursday 28th April 19:05
There is no technical reason why quality has to be so poor. I use the HD analogy as from the backward quality when things were recorded on low res video has now passed and quality is coming to the fore once more. I just hope that music can do the same. I obtained a WAV file from a friend who was recording his band. Only very minor compression to make it tolerable, the result was actually quite scary. It really was like having the band in the room. My system is nothing high end, but with good source the results are incredible.
Music Formats with "HD" quality. On Disc you have DVD-Audio capable of 24 bit 192Khz, SACD which uses a different method of encoding but is comparable to 24 bit 96Khz and BD-Audio, (Blu-Ray Discs) which again is at least 24 bit 192kHZ capable.
Their are also various File format's playable from Hard drives, USB stick etc that can handle 32 bit 768Khz signals.
The sound quality obviously is dependant on the recording and "modern" digital masters tend to be somewhere between 24/48 and 24/192. However analogue master tapes do allow very high quality recordings as per Good Film master prints producing some of the best Blu-Ray's.
It does make a difference and many now swear by these HD audio format but as usual it is person and room dependant rather like HD tv.
Their are also various File format's playable from Hard drives, USB stick etc that can handle 32 bit 768Khz signals.
The sound quality obviously is dependant on the recording and "modern" digital masters tend to be somewhere between 24/48 and 24/192. However analogue master tapes do allow very high quality recordings as per Good Film master prints producing some of the best Blu-Ray's.
It does make a difference and many now swear by these HD audio format but as usual it is person and room dependant rather like HD tv.
I too had noticed the change in fashion from (a) having all the frequencies from 25Hz-25KHz at +/-3dB, to (b) having something the size of an ant with earplugs sticking out. People don't want to say 'These cabinets reproduce 25Hz' - nobody knows what a hertz is these days. They want to say 'Look at my MP3 player, it's the size of an ant and I can get 5,000,000 hours of music into it'.
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