The future…what is the landscape in 10 years?

[Plcamp]

We all (happily) live in an age of fabulous sound quality at affordable cost…vastly (measurably) improved over that available in the HiFi explosion era starting in the 1970’s.

What’s going to be different ten or more years from now? What will enable it?

I have ideas, but don’t want to bias the conversation. That said, it seems to me the limitation today on cost performance ratio is speaker design, and the integration of amp and dsp technology within it.

Where do you see the biggest changes coming from?

 

[Soundproof]

Typically, tech tends to drizzle down the budget brackets, the current audio state being a bit different as it is driven by high quality at low cost.

Presume room correction will be increasingly expected for more budget friendly (to them) gear from the big con/prosumer brands. Believe the big brands will be forced to pay attention to "the ASR" approach and the likes of Arendal and Ascilabs for speakers.

...but the area where there is still a lot to be desired is on the source side of things. Both in terms of software, hardware and connectivity. PEQ will be standard and the signal chain quality standards like now, but USB A/B will be gone and eArc common.

Somehow believe if someone or I put together a well measured system with eArc/usb C dac, Purifi/Topping amps and Ascilab speakers, it will be just as good in 10 years. But the software for libraries will change quite a bit, the streaming services will be different, and the software for sound control will be different.

That's one reason for me at least, not to go for all in one streamers and so. They will be the first to become obsolete, easier and cheaper to keep everything but the streamer/source if units are separate.

 

[Plcamp]

but USB A/B will be gone and eArc common

Yes I think that, and more generally the integration as AV and not audio only will happen, because transparent audio will be ubiquitous … including through your tv.

I am thinking source and control logic will center on a tv device, and speakers could integrate with DAC, dsp, crossover and amps. Can’t see why that isn’t inevitable.

 

[xanalog]

I have ideas, but don’t want to bias the conversation...

Me too!

 

[kemmler3D]

My predictions for 10 years:

• Speakers with really excellent directivity ala Ascilab will become common and dominate at all price tiers, since modeling of waveguides and cabinets will get much easier via AI and AI-coded tools. However, just because of manufacturing concerns, in the lowest price tiers you will still get a flat baffle by default, and optionally 3D print the faceplate yourself.
  
  
• Diract ART-like technology will become cheaper and more common, and we'll see a handful of speaker systems where it's built in. However, it still won't be cheap to use, as you need multiple low-frequency sources for it to work, and low frequency sources will still be big, heavy, and therefore expensive to make and ship.
  
  
• Personalized headphone EQ based on in-ear measurements will start to be somewhat mainstream. You will be able to buy at least one or two pairs of $500+ wireless headphones that come with a little mic and take the measurements and correct the response automatically. My guess is either Sennheiser or Sony gets there with a kit first.
  
  
• Standard room EQ is fully mainstream and few relevant digital products (speakers, DACs, AVRs) ship without it.
  
  
• Soundbars and portable speakers continue to leverage DSP to punch above their weight. Integrated room correction (and fancy spatialization based on the ART-like room modeling) in these products means "real" hi-fi still doesn't have a huge resurgence.
  
  
• Advances in head tracking via cameras on common devices like laptops, phones, AR glasses, etc. - along with in-ear measurements becoming more common - lead to an explosion of high quality virtual spatial audio. Multichannel recordings are more popular than ever, even as real multichannel speaker setups become an ever-narrower market for rich folks. On the other side, headphone fans with head tracking setups openly question whether there's any point in having speakers anymore, and declare them a dead-end technology.
  
  
• WiiM turns evil after being bought by private equity or an IPO and starts charging a subscription fee for basic features of the app.
  
  
• CDs outpace Vinyl as the nostalgia format of choice.

 

[Soundproof]

Yes I think that, and more generally the integration as AV and not audio only will happen, because transparent audio will be ubiquitous … including through your tv.

I am thinking source and control logic will center on a tv device, and speakers could integrate with DAC, dsp, crossover and amps. Can’t see why that isn’t inevitable.

Essentially, linear tv is gone, pure only by sat.

I'm with you on controls accessible via TV, that's rational indeed. But there are significant issues as long as Samsung, LG and Google owns the market.

 

[Soundproof]

My predictions for 10 years:

• Diract ART-like technology will become cheaper and more common, and we'll see a handful of speaker systems where it's built in. However, it still won't be cheap to use, as you need multiple low-frequency sources for it to work, and low frequency sources will still be big, heavy, and therefore expensive to make and ship.

Level may vary, but I would argue it is already here at an early stage. Am considering this for my under development setup, less than 270 euros

ARC Studio

ARC Studio. Advanced Room Correction System.

www.ikmultimedia.com

My predictions for 10 years:

• WiiM turns evil after being bought by private equity or an IPO and starts charging a subscription fee for basic features of the app.

Will turn evil? Have a close look at their cookie/collecting/sharing policies. I did, and dropped it.

 

[Plcamp]

WiiM turns evil after being bought by private equity or an IPO and starts charging a subscription fee for basic features of the app.

A prophesy!

 

[Plcamp]

I expect you could add Minidsp capability within a tv (at volume) for about $10 additional parts cost (if the tv doesn’t already have the capability).

Why would any intermediary device in between tv and speaker be needed?

It might be suppressed for corporate profitability reasons I suppose, but it seems a logical target.

 

[Timcognito]

Many TVs will be 150" and 1/2'' off the wall, have dsp, 9 channel wifi on board and basically be an AVP for active speakers

 

[coonmanx]

In the future there will be no need for musicians because AI will just create it. And there will be no need for you either because a robot will take your place in the listening spot.

Wall-E...

 

[coonmanx]

Actually we should probably just get rid of speakers altogether and plant electrodes in the brain. Will cost less and bring the music directly to you, bypassing the need for an expensive system.

 

[Power Pop 23]

I wonder how dominant the smartphone will be for consuming content in 2036.

 

[Timcognito]

AI will be regular tech just like computers, cellphones, internet and social media are now and everyone will be remembering the AI bust of the late 2020s. Everything that can be electrified and/or powered by batteries will be.

 

[Soandso]

Cochlear implanted audio sockets for connecting your choice of miniaturized audio source(s).

 

[Timcognito]

New cars will no loner have steering wheels if want to actively drive it you will put on a special set glasses.

 

[Chris A]

Recently, I caught a video by chance on YT, the subject of which was (of all things) the uses of hydrogen peroxide for clearing drains and removing bathtub mineral deposit stains. The cost: less than $2.50 (USD) per 32 oz bottle. No retailer or plumber wants the public to know this.

I think some of that is the same for home hi-fi audio. Most enterprises are not interested in making things less expensive--in fact they try to drive the price up. We see this with boutique audio companies charging many multiples of their cost (including labor) to their customers. They want to make a living off of it (and not work too hard along the way)--not so much drive the prices down to 20%-40% over their costs in order to increase volume sales.

It's the consumers themselves that will have to take the lead on driving prices down and avoiding the boutique business models. I expect this trend to continue into the future. Nonprofit enterprises like Consumers Union (Consumer Reports) have traditionally screwed up their end of the deal--especially with loudspeakers. It took a visit from JBL/Harman (Sean Olive, et al.) to convince them that their loudspeaker ratings systems were in fact "completely upside down". After that, CU decided to get out of the home hi-fi ratings business.

So who do we have nowadays that can fill in? Well, the couple of guys that own Klippel NFS systems will help, as well as the testing gear for electronics (like the guy that owns this site). So what's the problem here? Sometimes these guys think they have all the answers--when they don't. Expertise is something that comes from working for a competent engineering company for many years on those products of interest. Even then, there are "quality escapes" I've found--those guys that think they learned all there is to know--but in fact don't.

So what's going to happen? I think that the word will eventually get out that the electronics (except for DSP transfer function correction) constitute maybe 5-10% of the fidelity puzzle. The rest of that 90-95% being a) room acoustics, b) loudspeakers, and c) recordings. Even poorly performing electronics identified by the talking heads typically sound "not to bad" for the majority of consumers. It's the room acoustics and loudspeakers (and recordings) that really determine what you hear.

But in the future, it will probably be the AIs that inform the consumers. They have a long way to go, unfortunately. The last time I did some test queries of Google, the results were an arithmetic mean of the audiophile community opinions. I think that Floyd Toole's book is the only thing that seems to be counterbalancing that sort of advice currently.

Chris

 

[kemmler3D]

We see this with boutique audio companies charging many multiples of their cost (including labor) to their customers. They want to make a living off of it (and not work too hard along the way)--not so much drive the prices down to 20%-40% over their costs in order to increase volume sales.

Well, if you sit down and do the unit economics for a speaker and include all of their costs (not just materials and labor) you realize the margins on audio gear are not always very good even if the retail price is 5-7x the cost. I think the floor on prices of speakers is mostly set by physical size and weight.

That raises an interesting thought, though.

What if ART-like active cancellation tech gets much better, somehow? Perhaps we can achieve cheaper and better speakers by switching to OB or even DML panel-style speakers, and correcting all the deficiencies in-room via DSP. So basically I'm proposing maybe we can go beyond the box-and-cone paradigm via even more extensive DSP.

If we are able to get DML speakers that perform okay, and beat them into shape with DSP, maybe we can start to think about good speakers becoming much cheaper than they are today. A thin, light panel can ship more cheaply than a big, heavy wooden box.

As long as the box-and-cone design is necessary, good sound can only get so cheap.

I don't think that's a 10-year-horizon thing but it's interesting to ponder.

 

[Cote Dazur]

10 years, in this times of stagnation and even moving backwards, is a very short time. 2036, for audio, will be just what it is today, which is how it was in 2016.
The golden age that started in the 70’s and kept getting better until the end of the century just gave way to other type of entertainment, centric to screens and computers.
The days of spending evenings listening to music with friends in our dedicated room, which was driving the industry, are behind us and will never be back.
So more Bluetooth speakers, IEM and mini monitor on a desk with a woofer under the desk in a bedroom but no future for elaborate floor standing dedicated treated room that brought the magic we all felt in love with and created the hobby.
Just tell your grandchildren that you spend time every day in a room just listening to music, they will look at you funny and ask what else you are doing, just sitting there listening to music is not a thing.
For them music come from headphone you wear going somewhere or doing something.

 

[xanalog]

Government (FCC) auctions off all OTA TV frequencies; then, FCC --itself-- gets duly dissolved.