Does Hi-Res Audio Have a Future?

[Deleted member 48726]

I stopped caring when I did my own listening tests in the Napster era. I found that I could hear difference between 192 kbps MP3 and CD. Sometimes I could hear differences in 224 kbps and CD but never did I ever hear anything different between a 320 kbps MP3 and CD. I also recently did some tests and results were the same(ish). (I'm older, okay..)

Tests and studies show the exact same thing.


It's like insulating your house. The first 100 mm. matters a lot, the next 100 mm. not quite as much. Everything exceeding 400 mm. doesn't do anything meaningful for your economy.

 

[Palladium]

I stopped caring when I did my own listening tests in the Napster era. I found that I could hear difference between 192 kbps MP3 and CD. Sometimes I could hear differences in 224 kbps and CD but never did I ever hear anything different between a 320 kbps MP3 and CD. I also recently did some tests and results were the same(ish). (I'm older, okay..)

MP3 encoders in that era are mostly atrocious. Then LAME became so good for MP3 that they stopped doing ABX tests for >128kbps VBR because those are transparent without deliberate test tones to exploit encoding weaknesses.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

MP3 encoders in that era are mostly atrocious. Then LAME became so good for MP3 that they stopped doing ABX tests for >128kbps VBR because those are transparent without deliberate test tones to exploit encoding weaknesses.

I know. I did a lot of that stuff in that time for various reasons.

And today encoders are even better with lower bitrate and better quality compared to mp3 (OGG, AAC). It's a non-issue. Just don't choose the lower bitrates.

 

[Mnyb]

The marketing of hirez will prevail . IMO we have hirez files but rarely hirez music . So even if we could hear the small differences on regular basis it will only matter on very rare recordings that exploits this in full. Must music anyone cares for does not challenge good old CD specs anyway.

Atmos may be a bit different as it actually exploits more than two channels, and that’s really audible but despite having two 5.1 systems I’ve never upgraded to atmos , our dedicated HT room is simply to small it’s immersive enough already, and even I won’t have more than 5 speakers and a sub in the living room.

So atmos may be a niche and good for the ones that can use it .
If I use my crystal ball I predict that many remixes to the format would be rather meh and uninspired just like most of any other remasters and remix projects ever been .

 

[Waxx]

Mono is since longtime seen as not the best way to listen to music, but many kept doing it an still do, trough boomboxes, transistor radio's and now the smart speaker. And the remaining part except some what they see as freaks, listen to a classic stereo setup. Multichannel and Dolby Atmos are a very small niche of the market, and i don't think that ever will change. Most people don't care that much, as long as it sounds reasonable good and is cheap, it's good for them.

The investment and hassel to have such a multichannel speaker is just to much, even connecting a stereo setup is for many complicated. I know from first hand because i'm hired a lot for installing higher end stereo systems and tuning it right. Yesterday i did another setup like that. Just stereo active speakers, with digital source on a silent computer and dsp with dirac. But setting it up was too difficult for the owner (a classical musician) and his wife (an it manager) so they paid me to do it...

A second thing is, those systems take to much space, visually and fysically. Most don't want that in their living room and not many have a dedicated music room or home theater, even among rich people.

 

[Ra1zel]

I would so much more want a future of good recordings not useless formats. Singular greatest bottleneck in sound quality right now is the music itself.

 

[krabapple]

The marketing of hirez will prevail . IMO we have hirez files but rarely hirez music . So even if we could hear the small differences on regular basis it will only matter on very rare recordings that exploits this in full. Must music anyone cares for does not challenge good old CD specs anyway.

Atmos may be a bit different as it actually exploits more than two channels, and that’s really audible but despite having two 5.1 systems I’ve never upgraded to atmos , our dedicated HT room is simply to small it’s immersive enough already, and even I won’t have more than 5 speakers and a sub in the living room.

All a 5.1 system needs to become 'Atmos ready' is two speakers on the ceiling.

 

[Mnyb]

All a 5.1 system needs to become 'Atmos ready' is two speakers on the ceiling.

.... and the decoding, have to get a new receiver.

 

[krabapple]

Swapping out an AVR doesn't take up more room either.