Just like with Leica M8, it's sometimes sad to see the venerable kings of design and quality trying to keep up in the digital age. Witness the iPod rip-off from Bang and Olufsen. It looks worse than the iPod, has fewer features, and is more expensive.
I am guessing it is like I said before: in the analogue age you could make outstanding products with a very small company. With digital technology, this is just not possible.
Bert commented:
Not true. Analog design did require genuine talent in electronics, while a digital design doesn't have to be elegant to work well, but that's about where the difference ends.
What has changed are the behavior and expectations of the customers. It is becoming more and more difficult to sell a product just by slapping a fancy label (like B&O) on it. Yet the response of people to fads, like every iGizmo from Apple for example, is unbelievable. To a point that the situation is impossible to understand, so it's not surprising that many will resort to copycat strategies or other desperate measures.
TTL recently mentioned that every generation in audio technology got crappier (vinyl -> CD -> MP3). I disagree with that reasoning because, while CDs are not perfect, they can be far superior to vinyl in many, if not most respects. Fully digital recordings are far less forgiving than the old analog stuff, and thus it requires both knowledge and talent to master a great CD [blah, blah, blah...]
But the transition to MP3s was a consumer choice, and never ever was this lossy, crappy compression scheme promoted by the audio industry. Quite the contrary: it allowed companies like Apple, who know dick about audio technology, to enter the market with their toys, and that has hurt the old players in the field like nothing else. It is like, overnight, sound quality no longer meant anything and portability was the only important matter (the $ aspect did play a role too, as the average Joe is getting poorer by the minute, but that's a debate on its own).
So, in a world where nobody seems to care about sound quality, what do you expect from people who devoted their lives to high-end audio? That they suddenly become able to design battery-operated micro-miniature high-end gear? That simply cannot exist, period. What else is left for them but to try to adapt to this new world?
Btw, B&O has always have been in the business of design much more than audio. Distinctive looks are their main strength. In that respect, their iPod wannabe will probably do well with their old-time customer base who, after all, can't be satisfied with the commoner's toys. ;-P
Similarly, Leica made a name for themselves in times when it required real knowledge, craftsmanship and dedication to make perfect lenses. This is no longer the case, as high-end optics are now routinely mass-produced. What's left for Leica?
This is called evolution and, unlike in nature, evolutionary changes in technology don't always go for the better. I, for my part, hardly listen to music anymore. It all just sounds like noise mastered especially for earbuds, and I can't stand that.
Back to Eolake:
Thanks for these excellent points.
Personally, I'm getting far more enjoyment from MP3s than I ever did from vinyl or CDs. I can't hear any difference, and I can sort the music any which way, and I don't have to take care not to scratch anything. And I can find new music much easier. But that's surely a huge discussion without any final answers.
"I am guessing it is like I said before: in the analogue age you could make outstanding products with a very small company. With digital technology, this is just not possible."
ReplyDeleteNot true. Analog design did require genuine talent in electronics, while a digital design doesn't have to be elegant to work well, but that's about where the difference ends.
What has changed are the behavior and expectations of the customers. It is becoming more and more difficult to sell a product just by slapping a fancy label (like B&O) on it. Yet the response of people to fads, like every iGizmo from Apple for example, is unbelievable. To a point that the situation is impossible to understand, so it's not surprising that many will resort to copycat strategies or other desperate measures.
TTL recently mentioned that every generation in audio technology got crappier (vinyl -> CD -> MP3). I disagree with that reasoning because, while CDs are not perfect, they can be far superior to vinyl in many, if not most respects. Fully digital recordings are far less forgiving than the old analog stuff, and thus it requires both knowledge and talent to master a great CD [blah, blah, blah...]
But the transition to MP3s was a consumer choice, and never ever was this lossy, crappy compression scheme promoted by the audio industry. Quite the contrary: it allowed companies like Apple, who know dick about audio technology, to enter the market with their toys, and that has hurt the old players in the field like nothing else. It is like, overnight, sound quality no longer meant anything and portability was the only important matter (the $ aspect did play a role too, as the average Joe is getting poorer by the minute, but that's a debate on its own).
So, in a world where nobody seems to care about sound quality, what do you expect from people who devoted their lives to high-end audio? That they suddenly become able to design battery-operated micro-miniature high-end gear? That simply cannot exist, period. What else is left for them but to try to adapt to this new world?
Btw, B&O has always have been in the business of design much more than audio. Distinctive looks are their main strength. In that respect, their iPod wannabe will probably do well with their old-time customer base who, after all, can't be satisfied with the commoner's toys. ;-P
Similarly, Leica made a name for themselves in times when it required real knowledge, craftsmanship and dedication to make perfect lenses. This is no longer the case, as high-end optics are now routinely mass-produced. What's left for Leica?
This is called evolution and, unlike in nature, evolutionary changes in technology don't always go for the better. I, for my part, hardly listen to music anymore. It all just sounds like noise mastered especially for earbuds, and I can't stand that.
Thanks for these excellent points.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm getting far more enjoyment from MP3s than I ever did from vinyl or CDs. I can't hear any difference, and I can sort the music any which way, and I don't have to take care not to scratch anything. And I can find new music much easier. But that's surely a huge discussion without any final answers.
I've found that if I take a CD, rip to a less than CD quality format and try to burn again I've got obvious loss.
ReplyDeleteMy car is just old (5yr) enough that MP3 was a top end option, the other car (14yrs), CD was a top end option. That in mind I make CDs for in the car, so keeping CD quality is important. Now, when I hit the open road the road noise is such that audio fidelity is a moot point. But in traffic jams, where everything and anything will get you down I want the quality.
I used to think CD was a step down from LP, but the cheap pressed and second hand vinyl on a $100 turntable (and comparable amp) soon was less than an unscratched CD on a $50 CD player. Maybe pristine vinyl on a good player and analogue amp is good with the matched speakers, but at my end of the market CD wins.
MP3 for personal portable use is good as the unit size is more in line, or smaller than a Walkman, a Discman was so cumbersome, and in the early days skipped a lot. (Heck, my phone is a convergence device and does MP3 very well, and WMA okay).
A PC full of WMA's at CD quality matches what I could afford in a CD courousel, and the player only holds 100 discs!
Convenience is definitely key when it comes to MP3s. Note that the quality can remain acceptable when the bitrate is kept high enough, but it definitely never will deserve the hi-fi label.
ReplyDeleteAnd the problem is subtle, you know. In my days, we often produced different mixes for AM radio and vinyl, in order to make the most out of media exposure. Then came along a generation of bands who aimed directly at radio. Not just crap, but bands like REM, for instance. Their sound is definitely aimed at restricted-bandwidth media like radio.
This does not mean the music can't be good, but it's definitely not a love affair with sound. A whole segment of the industry adopted this "color", as it was good for DVD soundtracks too. And since MP3s are nothing else than sound encoded for DVDs, the rest is history, as they say.
But in the end, restricting the sound dynamics to what can be decently reproduced in MP3 is like saying "from now on, painting is done strictly with watercolors". What a loss...
Since the advent of recordable CDs, I've had an itch to design a decent jukebox. I'm talking of a network device here, capable of handling data or multimedia contents, of course. Something scalable, capable of holding from 3,000 to 12,000 CDs, with multiple players/recorders in advanced configurations (library use & such). Oh, and what I have in mind would allow access to any disc within 10 seconds or so, depending on congestion of course.
ReplyDeleteIs there anyone who could be interested in such a contraption for, say, 3~5k$ (3k discs)? Just wondering...
"... while CDs are not perfect, they can be far superior to vinyl in many, if not most respects."
ReplyDeleteYes, in all respects but (1) sound quality, and (2) archivability.
CD audio most certainly was a step down in sound quality from vinyl. The reason for this is that it is very difficult to a create steep enough low-pass filter, as required by 44.1kHz D/A, without it introducing severe distortion of its own.
For this reason, in CD audio, in practice, anything above 12kHz or so is pretty badly distorted. There are some other problems with the format as well, but this is the main audible artifact that people have been listening to, and complaining as "tiring to the ears", for the past 25 years.
There is nowadays a kind of a workaround to this problem. It involves upsampling the CD output in digital domain to, say, 192 kHz. This doesn't add any new information to the signal, of course, but it makes the D/A process much easier, as a more shallow low-pass filter for antialiasing will then suffice (which won't distort the signal like a steep one does).
Such upsamplers exist nowadays as commercial products. I haven't checked, maybe there are even high-end CD players that have all this built in. Although, with the CD audio format now all but dead, it does come a little late.
But the success of MP3, and the relative lack of interest in the SACD format, suggests that the general buying audience doesn't care about sound quality at all. Which to me is quite baffling. But it is a sign of the times. People aren't so much interested in improving the quality of their life experience (they aren't that interested in clean air, or noise free environments, either) as they are in improving its quantity, i.e. fitting more events in the days.
"Yes, in all respects but (1) sound quality, and (2) archivability."
ReplyDeleteI don't know where you get your information, but it sure is odd. As far as "archivability" goes, CDs have been demonstrated to have a life expectancy approaching (and even exceeding) 100 years... I can't even see the point in comparing this to vinyl. Oh, and please don't mention the delaminated CDs in your car stereo; it would just be fun to see how vinyl would fare outdoors... Anyway, life expectancy figures are for normal indoor environment, with no temperature/humidity extremes and no direct sunlight (UV) exposure, end of story.
Note that some playback equipment, such as CD/DVD recorders, often have too high laser power output levels, so they will effectively destroy a CD in time. But that is because those players are out of spec, not the other way around.
As far as filters go, it's been a while since I've played in that field, but we already had extremely good designs available while I was in school, in the early '80s. Duh?
Of course, for as long as critical comparisons will be done using vinyl as a reference, the debate will go on. The two media are different, no argument there. But if you insist on the analog experience, I can make you a snap-crackle-pop generator for a few buck, if you wish. ;-)
For the sake of intellectual probity, the die-hard vinyl fans should try to take some of the great digital mastering jobs and try to reproduce them on vinyl. That would be worth a laugh or two...
There's an MD of a famous British turntable manufacturer (Rega) who said that in his view the sampling rate of CD needs to be at least 10 times what it is at the moment for real audiophile sound quality to be possible. But it seems that too few people care about that for it to be commercially viable.
ReplyDeleteI think the hi fi market suffers from two different phenomena; 1 / financial, the law of diminishing returns, which meands that you have to buy ever more
expensive equipment in order to obtain the same increments of sound quality, and 2 / psychological, the law of adaptation level, which means that once you "know" a record at a certain level of detail, it ceases to have the same impact on you as it did when you first heard it.
I remember listening to David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" album (which I love) recently on a decent hi-fi system and noticing Bowie's vocal inflections in certain songs like "Hang On To Yourself" which I'd missed before on my cheap tape player.
Once I played it again after that, I already knew those inflections were there and they ceased to involve me in the same way.
Further, really good hi fi can expose the flaws and imperfections of a recording. Some of the classic '60s singles are almost painful to listen to on decent kit (the Honeycombs' "Have I The Right" comes to mind).
Thanks for reading this.
"There's an MD of a famous British turntable manufacturer (Rega) who said that in his view the sampling rate of CD needs to be at least 10 times what it is at the moment for real audiophile sound quality to be possible."
ReplyDeleteYes, there are too problems:
First the impracticality of implementing antialiasing (low-pass) filters for 44.1kHz which is too close to Nyquist. This is the concrete, practical problem with home CD players today. This is where the horrendous phase distortion we hear on CDs comes from. It can be addressed using an upsampling setup, but so far only deep pocket audiophiles have gone that far.
Second, once you solve the above, you realize that 44.1 kHz, even with a high-end setup, is not enough to get to analog quality audio. The "10 times as high" is an old ballpark figure, but in practice, in listening tests, 192kHz has been discovered to be pretty darned close to analog.
Ultimately, I believe, pro audio will settle on 384kHz, after which it will be deemed pointless to spend anymore bandwidth. The step from 192kHz to 384kHz is there more for "good measure" than perceptible improvement (but who knows maybe there are some that will be able to tell the difference). And, interestingly, this then will be close to the classic "10 times as high" claim.
So, in essence, I believe the Rega MD and others who've said this are right.
I've been a little of a high fidelity freak, both in sound and in pictures. But I'm starting to ask: is enjoying a high image quality or an excellent sound reproduction the same as enjoying pictures or music?
ReplyDeleteSure, there are *some* things you just can't do with pictures or music without a very high quality (fidelity) being involved. But the question is how high is the percentage of those.
I think the enjoyment of high quality is very real and laudable, but in the end it may be entirely divorced from enjoyment of art.