January 9, 2008

  • HiFi

    In the rush to digital music formats such as mp3 and wma that utilize compression technology, one thing that is being lost is the high fidelity offered by CDs. Unlike video, where the quality continues to increase, audio has seen the reverse. My guess is that a lot of folks don't even realize this. There was a brief time when SACD and DVD-A were seen as the next step in audio quality, but the mp3 craze has limited that market to a narrow hi-fi niche.

    I'm not too worried about this in the long term, though, because as storage capacity increases, and compression technologies improve (or are unnecessary), we will be able to store high fidelity recordings in pure digital format. The concern in the short term is that the proliferation of mp3s is changing how people record music. (More on that in the link to a Rolling Stone article, below.)

    Another perhaps greater concern is the loudness war that has seen the dynamic range of audio limited in both new recordings and remasters of original recordings. (BTW dynamic range compression is different from audio compression. The former refers to limiting the range of volume for different components of audio; the latter refers to using less memory to store data.)

    Here's an article from EE Times that includes a video demonstrating the effects of attempts to increase mere loudness at the expense of dynamic range. That article references a more in-depth piece in Rolling Stone (single page or multiple page view).