Hey, Whatever Happened to "High Resolution" Audio?

[MikeRivers]

 

for me personally i started listening to cds again with my kids a couple of years ago again while i was listening just to the computer for over 10 years. i now have a nice mid size hifi sound system in my living room and i make selecting and listening to music an experience for me and my kids. standing in front of the shelf, thinking what we can hear next, selecting something we haven't heard for a long time, having a small debate with the kids what they want to hear, putting the cd in the player, taking care for the one just removed putting it in the right case at the right place in the shelf again aso...

 

This is as it should be. It changes "listening to music" from something mindless to something worth doing.

 

altough i have unlimited data traffic and high bandwidth, mobile and at home, i do not like streaming service, cause the selection process is all done by software, you get suggestions by your habits and it seems to me you always listen to the same stuff over and over, instead of finding a gem you haven't heard in a long time, or something completely new surprising.

 

My on-line music listening is nearly entirely to community or college radio stations with live DJs who produce shows of music that I enjoy. It's rare that I can listen for two hours and enjoy every song I hear, but none of it is the repetitive top-40 stuff that's so uninteresting as music that it needs something special to make it interesting. Maybe that's high resolution so you can hear the pick noise or count the number of hairs on the brushes, or hear the edits on the old Beatles records. Then you have something to talk about with your on-line music buddies.

 

 

 

[nat whilk II]

So does streaming, in the long view, encourage eclectic and exploratory listening, or hinder it?

 

My guess is that it pushes both ways. Those who care less and just let themselves be spoonfed get herded down an ever-narrowing path of commercial sameness.

 

Those who care more and are thrilled by the sheer amount of music that is available, who have musical curiosity and would rather add to their musical experiences than just repeat them - they get to wander into a landscape of listening that expands with every new step. Not every step is into a new bed of flowers, 'tho, I'll tell you.

 

I don't mind curation from time to time - in fact I'd welcome it from someone who knows more than I do and has the knack for setting the musical table invitingly.

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

[blue2blue]

[...]

 

 

My on-line music listening is nearly entirely to community or college radio stations with live DJs who produce shows of music that I enjoy. It's rare that I can listen for two hours and enjoy every song I hear, but none of it is the repetitive top-40 stuff that's so uninteresting as music that it needs something special to make it interesting. Maybe that's high resolution so you can hear the pick noise or count the number of hairs on the brushes, or hear the edits on the old Beatles records. Then you have something to talk about with your on-line music buddies.

 

 

 

As I think Mike knows, I'm a fan of WAMU's Bluegrass Country stream, although I'm not sure where the actual DJ's are.

 

[MikeRivers]

 

As I think Mike knows, I'm a fan of WAMU's Bluegrass Country stream, although I'm not sure where the actual DJ's are.

 

WAMU studios are in Washington DC, and Bluegrass Country uses the same studio complex. A good many of the DJs are local and do their programs live from the studio - Gary Henderson, Lee Michael Dempsy, Rosemarie Nielson, Ramona Martinez, Jay Bruder, and Fred Carter are nearly always live. Dick Spottswood uploads his show from Florida, Mike Kier is in Australia, I think.

 

They keep everything, live or dead, on their server so they have a stash of pre-recorded shows to use for the repeats that fill up some of the program hours, and as emergency backup if someone who would be on-air live can't get in at the last minute. And obviously the editied compilations like Editor's Picks are pulled together from stuff they find on disk.

 

They're too cheap to pay the license fees to make show archives available for streaming except for Dick Spottswood's show, since so much of the material that he plays has long expired copyrights.

[blue2blue]

Interesting details on the station! So their bluegrass arm is essentially online only, with the 'main,' broadcast station being all public affairs programming?

 

I love the down home feel of the Bluegrass Country feed. Pretty close to the only DJs I have much use for.

 

(I still have a soft spot for Helen Borgers at KKJZ [jazz, out of my adopted hometown of Long Beach, even], although I don't listen to the station much anymore after some programming reorientations. [They have the most abysmal blues show host ever. He seems to often forget that blues started out as black music. Maybe because he was a rock jock in the 70s and 80s. Whatever, it's an embarrassment, particularly after having several blues musician DJs who really knew their stuff.])

[Ernest Buckley]

First of all, the general public can't hear the difference. I have recorded with 24 bit and I can hear the difference ,at home, but when I'm driving in my Corvette down the highway, with my motor humming, listening to my mp3s , it doesn't make a difference anymore. For me and many others, it is what you hear while you are driving that counts, and then, MORE COMPRESSION is better. I very seldom just LISTEN to music. Most of my exposure to new music, and just music, is youtube videos, THE VOICE , etc.

 

The second thing is who is willing to PAY for this? New players, higher bandwidth, and overall higher cost to the consumers is probably what is driving them away.

 

That's just my 2 cents.

 

Dan

 

You hit the nail on the head.

[MikeRivers]

Interesting details on the station! So their bluegrass arm is essentially online only' date=' with the 'main,' broadcast station being all public affairs programming?[/quote']

 

It's a long and painful (for long-time listeners) story. WAMU-FM used to be quite strong in bluegrass programming. From morning to mid-day they ran NPR and local news and information programming, then there was drive-time bluegrass from 3 to 6 PM, when the evening news programs started again. Weekend air time was about 50% bluegrass, old time country, and folk music. That didn't pay the bills, but they stuck with it, starting the Bluegrasscountry.org web site and stream anyway, and started moving some of the shows off terrestrial FM and on to the Internet. It was 24-hour streaming of bluegrass and related music but there were lots of repeated shows. Initially, there was a paid smart phone app for listening, but they pretty quickly opened it up to users with real computers.

 

When digital broadcast came along, they jumped on that bandwagon and moved nearly all the bluegrass programming to one of their three digital channels, and ran that simultaneously on bluegrasscountry.org (BGC for short). They did pick up a few DJs after that move, but a couple died, some retitred, some got ditched, and only a couple got replaced. That's where it stands now, but an insider friend tells me that they're darn near broke. The other two digital channels were a duplicate of the analog FM program which was largely NPR shows and a little local production. I think the third digital channel was straight off BBC. They did pick up thre low power FM licenses along the way and have been feeding them the BGC programming, so they have some regular FM coverage. It's nice that they figured out that not everyone listens on a computer or smart phone all the time. My car radio is tuned to the

 

A new station manager was hired a couple of years back to attempt to get them back into the black, but mostly what he did was drop a couple of the paid music DJs and some of the more expensive NPR programming, dropped some of the experienced local programmers and announcers, and now there are several novices on the air. And they do fundraising three times a year now. Like everything else in music, there isn't a decent

 

I love the down home feel of the Bluegrass Country feed. Pretty close to the only DJs I have much use for.

 

I listen to a couple of programs on KBCS - Walking The Floor with Iian Hughes on Sunday morning (6-9 AM your time), and Music of Africa on Thursday night. Also, Shake The Shack (rocabilly) on KEXP Friday nights. And almost any time nothing else in particular is on, I can always hook up to WWOZ and not be offended by what I hear. A couple of other shows on BGC that I listen to regularly are Dick Spottswood, Jay Bruder, and Ramona Martinez (though she talks too much). I like a lot of what Gary Henderson plays, but he plays way too much gospel for my taste - the last 15 minutes of every hour on his weekday show and his Stained Glass Bluegrass, 3 hours on Sunday morning, a show that's been on WAMU for a long, long time, that Gary took over when they lost the original host.

 

(I still have a soft spot for Helen Borgers at KKJZ [jazz, out of my adopted hometown of Long Beach, even], although I don't listen to the station much anymore after some programming reorientations. [They have the most abysmal blues show host ever

 

When I get a rental car in the LA area, before I leave the lot, I set the radio presets for KKJZ, KCRW, and whatever the classical station there is. This is something that's getting to be more and more complicated. I don't care much for The Wagman either, but at least he plays something classic every show and plays unsigned bands, some pretty good, some not so.

 

[WRGKMC]

What I find is higher bit sampling produce better results when using plugins mixing and mastering.

 

I've done many experiments using plugins with the same presets on different sample rate files. In general, mastering a 16/44.1 file with a normal mastering chain using EQ, Multiband and limiter produces more artifacts and less air/presence then a 24 bit file.

 

The bit depth seems to play a bigger role in frequency response and dynamics then the sample rate. From my experience there is much less difference heard mastering a 44.1, 48 or 88.2 file. I've tried it many times and given how much space it takes up, the benefits are small.

 

What I do hear is slightly better three dimensionality. Instruments in the rear of the mix aren't as washed out and retain clarity. If music was a photo there's little difference with the instrument up front, but those small details in back can be seen more easily.

 

If I have a mix that's going to need heavy mastering done I'm more likely to up sample it before I master it because I've heard the results side by side and know I can get better results. I often compare them using several versions mastered at two different sample rates just to see.

 

Its real deceiving however. The ears acclimate so quickly to whatever you have playing at the moment. If there was a big frequency shift it would stand out in an A/B comparison easily, but its not that kind of an improvement. Its more of a clarity improvement. Even that is just a generalization. I can use the same process on two different pieces of music and hear a difference with a higher sample rate on one song and not on another. I've kind of written it off to how my particular comps respond to music dynamics, tempo etc.

 

Unfortunately you cant always predict if a higher rate will be better or a wasted effort. You can only try it and find out. Like most I conserve drive space by only up sampling on high quality performances worthy of that extra drive space.

 

In any case, whatever you have recorded will survive all the number crunching better theoretically if you apply those processes at higher sample rates. You just may not hear that difference in the end. If you have great tracks that don't need allot of processing then there's little benefit of wasting your time or hard drive space.

 

[Folder]

I remember being very excited about the format wars gearing up in the late ninteties between DVD-Audio and SACD. I heard a demo of the very first Sony SACD player when they first came out and they cost $5000. I remember seeing racks of DVD-Audios and reading about artists remastering their albums for hi-rez audio.

 

If you had said back then that people would still be buying CDS in 2016 I would'nt have believed you. It was a forgone conclusion that CD technology was hopelessly outdated and in a short matter of time CDs would be replaced by either DVD-Audio or SACD.

 

But the war was over almost before it even got started. And there was no winner.

 

So what happened?

 

I think part of the problem was that things were just too complicated.

 

The DVD audios had eight different formats with 6 different sampling rates. Some discs had video content. Others didn't. Some had surround sound. Some were stereo. Some were 96khz some 192khz.

 

With SACD they had the single layered SACDs and then the dual layered ones and then came the ones that had the PCM layer on them. Then the double rate SACDs.

 

At one point I thought the SACD with the PCM CD layer was going to be the clear winner because they were backward compatible with CD players.

 

I assumed that one day the players would become cheap enough for everybody to afford one. I think the last SACD player I ever saw was still about $1000.

 

A couple of years ago I got a cheap DVD player. One day I noticed that it says it plays SACDs.

 

So 17 years after being mightly impressed with that SACD demo I finally have an SACD player.

 

Unfortunately they don't make SACDs anymore.

[philboking]

While we're on this topic, has anyone ever heard what the digitalFM broadcasts sound like? We have a local jazz/blues station that uses it, but I've never heard it over-the-air (though it can be streamed ona PC).

 

Come to think of it, I've never even seen a radio or receiver that can pick up these broadcasts. Do they exist? Have any of you ever heard one?

[John_steel]

 

http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/...899499-/page18

[MikeRivers]

While we're on this topic, has anyone ever heard what the digitalFM broadcasts sound like? We have a local jazz/blues station that uses it, but I've never heard it over-the-air (though it can be streamed ona PC).

 

Come to think of it, I've never even seen a radio or receiver that can pick up these broadcasts. Do they exist? Have any of you ever heard one?

 

You want an HD radio. The organization that pushes the format has a booth at the NAB show every year, though they're getting smaller and smaller. I really wanted to get one so I could listen to Bluegrass Country when WAMU moved that programming from the regular radio station to an HD channel, and before they got the standard FM low power transmitter up and running. I dropped a business card into the "Win an HD Radio" fishbowl at the HD Radio booth and a couple of months later, what should show up on my doorstep, but an I-Heart-Radio plastic tabletop clock-radio and, by golly, I could listen to WAMU HD-2. But I've never listened to it with anything else but its built-in speakers. And now, the volume control (digital, of course) has stopped working in the downward direction, I can turn the volume up, but I can't turn it down!

 

I thought I wanted one for my car, but they way most of them work when the signal isn't good enough for digital is that they switch back to the primary FM carrier (which, in the case of WAMU, carries a different program from what I was listening to.

 

I suppose one of these days, I could set up a listening test, running the headphone output of the HD radio to a pair of inputs on the console and the same program over the Internet to another pair of intputs and A/B them. Want to come over and participate?

 

Visit http://hdradio.com/ You'll find radios there from $50 to $5,000

 

 

[Notes_Norton]

They sold us 78s, 45s, LPs, Hi-Fi, then 8tracks, the cassettes, then CDs and now they want to sell an even better format.

 

They did the same with videos, laser disks to Video Tape to DVD to Blu-Ray

 

It's profitable to sell media again and again on different formats.

 

But I think they sold CD-Quality too hard. They told the public it was the ultimate, and when they came out with something better, untrained ears couldn't hear enough difference to invest in the next generation of machines and software. Furthermore, the majority really don't care.

[Notes_Norton]

I too listen to classical and have attended hundreds of concerts from some of the greatest symphony orchestras in the world.

 

Nothing duplicates that sound, not LPs, 1/2" tape at high speeds, CDs, SACDs, 7.1 surround, etc.

 

And it's not only dynamic response. It's the tone of the instruments (digital puts an edge on them), the sound of the concert hall, and the direction of the sounds that a couple of paper (or whatever) cones trying to duplicate the sounds of a hundred individual instruments just cannot do.

 

For listening to classical (I prefer Romantic era to Contemporary) in the car (not the best listening environment) I compress them, save to mp3, and still keep my finger on the volume rocker located on the steering wheel.

[Notes_Norton]

I still prefer the sound of a clean, unworn LP, but I buy most media on CD.

 

The LP is going to get worn, it will develop pops and clicks, needs to be flipped in the middle of a symphony, and isn't as portable.

 

When I did tests for the backing tracks that I make myself for my duo, I took musicians with trained ears (one recently tested perfect on an audiogram). Did blind A/B tests between WAV and various mp3 bit rates using the highest quality setting on CDex for each bit rate.

 

I did blind a/b tests with my high end component PA Set with their backs turned and at various volume levels from about 50dba average to 85dba average

 

192kbps was the highest bit rate where they could tell the difference between the WAV and the mp3. And the difference was slight.

[Notes_Norton]

I have two audiophile friends who care. They have a listening room, which they are constantly fiddling with to make better, McIntosh tube amps and preamps, giant tower speakers with a half dozen cones in each which they moved around the room to get the best sound and so on.

 

The wife is an amateur musician (flute), the husband is not a musician. But he has great ears.

 

They listen to mostly classical, and it sounds great in their listening room.

 

But they are the exceptions to the rule so to speak.

 

For I would guess 90% or so of the non-pro listening public, expression trumps tone by far.

 

How else would you explain Stevie Nicks, Dr John, Rod Stewart, Blossom Dearie, Bob Dylan and tons of other million sellers with what could be considered bad voices and some with bad technique too.

 

If the performance 'speaks' to them, they will listen to a 128kbps mp3 on lo-fi earbuds and love it.

 

Yes, the recording industry is in trouble, and are grasping at ways to recover. So are accountants (Turbo-tax), live musicians (DJs and open-mic nights), local music stores (GC and the Internet), and tons of other businesses. In 2005 we took a gig on a cruise ship that went to Bermuda and back. A department store that had been there since the mid 1800s was having a going out of business sale - we watched the stock deplete week after week. I couldn't compete with the Internet.

 

The only thing constant is change. The dinosaurs are gone, and it looks like the Polar Bears may be next. Survival goes to those that can adapt to the changes. And changes will come.

 

Notes

[blue2blue]

 

It's a long and painful (for long-time listeners) story. WAMU-FM used to be quite strong [...]

Sobering history at WAMU. =(

 

I keep forgetting there's digital radio in the US. It seems to have had little impact. But reading the Wikipedia article on digital radio in the US, it's not hard to see why, going with a thoroughly lame proprietary format ("HD" radio which, the owners now say definitely does not stand for 'High Definition' -- with a main signal b/w of 128 kbps and sidebands at an ear-grinding 64 kbps, that must be painfully obvious).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digita...#United_States

 

 

I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but one of my favorite new discoveries on the music-discovery front is the 'online radio' station

 

www.radiooooo.com [five o's]

 

-- whose ultra-simplified UI is a global map with decade selections from 1900 forward. Pick a country. Pick a decade... (And they don't just lump all of Africa together, either! )

[nat whilk II]

The general public - the issue is not whether they care or not about high fidelity. The issue is whether they buy or not (high fidelity.)

 

The general public will buy what they feel like they have to buy. Whether it's good or gooder or bad or badder in some sort of objective sense...that's secondary. Products in their specifics are like fashions - they come and go. What never goes is the desire, the deep need, to be fashionable.

 

People, in droves, are buying $400- $1,000 coffee machines that just use those coffee packs - my $39 Aeropress can make infinitely better coffee than any of those expensive jobbers, if you know how to actually make a decent cup of coffee.

 

So if you, good member of the general public, feel like you have to have many Apple products in order to feel not-lame in your peer context, then you will buy them. If you feel like you can get some social swag from Beats headphones, you will buy them. If everyone else listens to music in a certain way, then you will listen to music in that certain way. When the "audiophile" comes around telling you that your crappy-fidelity playback system reveals that you have no true appreciation of music, you, understandably, think evil of that person.

 

But you know, you don't have to be the stereotypical audiophile to care about high fidelity. You just have to want to be able to hear all the damn instruments, for starters. Musicians in that sense almost always care about fidelity high enough to hear what's actually going on. So musicians, and there are so very many of us, will keep this issue alive for the foreseeable. The point ought-ought-ought 1% that comprise the true uppercrust of audiophiles - with their $5,000 Shunyata power conditioners and $9,000 Alexia turntables...they won't go away, either (although their spending oscillates to the economic boom/bust curve.)

 

What's needed is to make decent (not ultra-high) fidelity cool and popular and socially necessary.

 

Sorry Neil Young, love ya man, but we need a younger face to lead that initiative.

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

 

[Folder]

The general public - the issue is not whether they care or not about high fidelity. The issue is whether they buy or not (high fidelity.)

 

The general public will buy what they feel like they have to buy. Whether it's good or gooder or bad or badder in some sort of objective sense...that's secondary. Products in their specifics are like fashions - they come and go. What never goes is the desire, the deep need, to be fashionable.

 

 

 

The only people who buy hi-rez audio to be "fashionable" are the people who have more money than they know what to do with.

 

When CDs came out people bought them because the music industry decided that CDs were going to be the new music format. It took a while but within ten years or so they were dominant.

 

Nothing like that has happened with hi-rez audio because the industry has never gotten behind a new medium like they did with CDs. For me it's amazing that they are still the main music format.

 

If the industry had said we are moving away from 16 bit at 44.1khz and on to higher resolutions it would have eventually happened.

 

Just like CDs replaced albums and LPs replaced 78s a lot of people (including myself) assumed a new format would have emerged by now.

 

 

[philboking]

Mike - I'd stop by for a listening test if it wasn't for the commute (I'm in Iowa).

 

Seriously? 128kbps? If mp3, that wouldn't cut the mustard for me.

[nat whilk II]

 

The only people who buy hi-rez audio to be "fashionable" are the people who have more money than they know what to do with.

 

Just like CDs replaced albums and LPs replaced 78s a lot of people (including myself) assumed a new format would have emerged by now.

 

Right - the really high-end audiophiles who spend all the money are not part of the general public I was referring to.

 

But the new format is here, isn't it? Streaming. At whatever quality you will put up with.

 

The difference is that this new format has not shouldered everything else out of the way as effectively as it's done in the past.

 

It's like so many other things in this maturing digital age - instead of the old media delivery system that evolved along a line of restricted choices, now on offer is a bewildering continuum of choices. Radio, satellite, tape, vinyl, lo-fi video, CD, DVD, SACD, downloads at a variety of levels, streaming at a variety of levels - they are all here at their respective price levels, catering to their respective markets.

 

The only thing to be now is a minority. Let the public go do what the public will do.

 

nat whilk ii

[MikeRivers]

 

 

But the new format is here, isn't it? Streaming. At whatever quality you will put up with.

 

The difference is that this new format has not shouldered everything else out of the way as effectively as it's done in the past.

 

I don't think of streaming as another format, just another way of listening. It works for people who just want to hear music any time they want. It used to be that you could do that with a radio, and back when radio programming was good, people still bought records when they heard something that they heard a few times and decided was worth having a copy to play whenever they want to hear it.

 

Today, there's just so much music put out for the listening that, while some may save a digital copy of music that they stream, most dont - or effectively don't because they have so many files they don't remember what they have. And there's no need for an unsophisticated listener to hear a song again because there will always be something he hasn't heard yet coming down the pipeline.

 

There are still about as many big hits as there ever were, and there are still a small handful of songs that stay popular for many years. But all the other music is here one day and gone the next. Good thing for the consumers that it's cheap and disposable (or forgettable). But that's bad for the creators.

 

 

[Notes_Norton]

HD has just become a buzzword to sell products.

[Notes_Norton]

Pop music has always been disposable, but it seems to me that the record industry made an effort to shorten the life of the hits for faster turnover and to sell more recordings.

 

Of course it could just seem like that to me.

 

And as much as we musicians and a small percentage of the general public listen critically and intently, I don't think the rest of the public really cares.

 

And true, if promoted properly, the public will buy whatever you tell them to buy.

 

Perhaps the record industry stuck to their old models too long figuring they would work forever, and didn't adapt quickly enough to the changes.

 

Survival goes to the most adaptable.

 

I know for serious listening, I like high fidelity, but for casual listening, decent fidelity is good enough.

 

I like symphonic music best of all for serious listening (mostly from Beethoven's 3rd symphony to the present). And I also know I'd rather listen to an inspired recording from long ago that is inspired than a new one that may be technically pristine but uninspired. Of course pristine and inspired is best. And even better is inspired and live in the concert hall. Especially a European concert hall (the audiences are more polite and don't whisper, crinkle candy wrappers, read their programs, and text while the music is playing).

 

[Anderton]

And true' date=' if promoted properly, the public will buy whatever you tell them to buy.[/quote']

 

You can make a case that hi-res audio was promoted; you can also make a case it wasn't promoted properly. However, I think that even if it had been promoted more extensively and with a bigger push, people still would have rejected it. I think they just don't perceive that the difference justifies the cost.

 

Vinyl became the "trend" I think in large part because it was a backlash to the virtualization of formats - it has a real physical presence, and a social component.