Phoenix Gold Phorum

This article points to the sad state that portable music has brought to those that enjoy high end stuff. Because "good enough" is basically good enough for the masses the industry is doing nothing to curb this mindset. If "good enough" was really good enough, we'd still be using cassettes. The industry should be promoting lossless portable units, but alas, the masses don't understand.

Digital music portends death of hi-fi

I would disagree with that statement....mostly. High end audio has always been a niche market. It will survive because that niche will always exist...no matter how small or large it might be. There has been a huge comeback in vinyl in the past few years, and it continues to grow. Plenty of high end companies continue to show consistent growth. And there are several companies on the forefront of the digital music age. I have been researching possibilities for using a PC as the only source in a high end 2 channel rig for my home. And surprisingly enough, there is a consensus that the delivery of digital data via PC, USB, etc... can certainly exceed the quality and fidelity of a CD transport IF IMPLEMENTED PROPERLY. Luckily there are several companies committed to this specifically.

There are a few firms that modify Squeezeboxes, SONOS products, and other similar products for high end performance. But the most impressive to me has been Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio

He has done more research and testing and R&D in the area of digital music delivery...primarily the use of a computer as a digital source. He is the king of computer audio as far as I am concerned. I am currently working on acquiring a specific DAC with the plan to send it to Steve to have it modded, and purchase his Off-Ramp I2S module. Expensive, but will allow me to use a PC and all of my ripped FLAC files as the dedicated source in my system.

The high end audio industry is alive and well. And I dont think mass market trends will ever truly have a large enough impact on it to make it disappear totally. Just my $.02

Yeah, I realize that high end stuff will always be around for the niche of people that will appreciate it. Unfortunately when it's only a niche of people buying and purchasing the price of things react to what the market is supporting. I would like quality stuff to be affordable as well. But if everyone wants iPods and MP3 players galore what happens to the price of the other stuff? It pretty much stays high.

In particular with car audio, the move by manufacturers is to support iPod and MP3 with their HUs. I haven't found one HU yet that gives an option of lossless support. So as a consumer I am forced to stay with CDs as I have yet to see a portable device with lossless support that doesn't interface via the headphone jack. Yes, the iPod supports lossless AAC but can you purchase any music in lossless AAC? The idea of "docking" an iPod in the vehicle, yeah, ok, but still not great.

It would be nice to see a HU that can accept a DVD (DVD transports have got to be cheap to implement by now, DVD drives in PCs are dirt cheap) where the user has dumped music onto it in a lossless format (don't care the format, as long as it's easy to generate and possibly purchase music in). That gives you storage and durability, if someone steals them, ehh, no biggee. Or, the possibility of a HU accepting a pluggable flash device, and also supporting lossless.

And what about 24bit audio for the car? Will it ever happen and will it be affordable? In the home arena 24bit is available but expensive and the industry doesn't have too many releases.

lopezi wrote:Yeah, I realize that high end stuff will always be around for the niche of people that will appreciate it. Unfortunately when it's only a niche of people buying and purchasing the price of things react to what the market is supporting. I would like quality stuff to be affordable as well. But if everyone wants iPods and MP3 players galore what happens to the price of the other stuff? It pretty much stays high.

Are you supposing that audiophile quality gear was at one point affordable for joe average?

High end gear comes with high end prices. I don't understand what you're trying to say besides "I want high quality stuff at low prices"... and if that's what you're saying, well duh! Everyone wants that and if it was flat out easy to do, at least some companies would likely be doing it. Who would buy a clear inferior product if the obviously better product was the same price or less?

I think we'll see lossless compression formats becoming increasingly popular as storage keep getting larger in capacity and smaller in size and network (Internet) bandwidth becomes cheaper and more available to the general public.

As soon as more people think like you ("I want lossless support!") and it becomes a viable business to include the support, you'll see it. For now, it's so niche that major HU players couldn't give a flying fuck to support it because support for it isn't going to net any noticable sales increases. But iPod support certainly does and will.

The iTunes Store, for instance, would be making a lot less money if they were selling fully lossless files. Why? Because bandwidth costs money. Lossless almost always means bigger files than lossy formats. Also because fewer home users would have the patience to download as much music as they do now if the files were substantially larger. Not everyone has broadband.

More and more people will get broadband and larger hard drives and larger iPods and such and at that point, lossless becomes a viable business model. Right now, with the current technology and consumer resources, it's not.

Edit: Apparently there already are a few HUs that support lossless formats like FLAC.

fuzzysnuggleduck wrote: Are you supposing that audiophile quality gear was at one point affordable for joe average?

High end gear comes with high end prices. I don't understand what you're trying to say besides "I want high quality stuff at low prices"... and if that's what you're saying, well duh! Everyone wants that and if it was flat out easy to do, at least some companies would likely be doing it. Who would buy a clear inferior product if the obviously better product was the same price or less?

There is higher end stuff that can be had but you do not have to pay the insane purist audiophile prices either. Am I going to pay $2K for a speaker (not set, just speaker), no way, but I'm also not looking for KLH by a pair for $150 either. I'm looking for a happy meduim.

When CD first came out, the players were high priced, but within five years the prices came down. Same thing with HDTV, prices were high at the onset, but now the market has a slew to choose from at different price points.

But look at something like SACD(besides the whole format war issue, and people downloading), we're past the five year mark with it but it really hasn't made a dent at all and the price isn't as insane, but it also hasn't come down to the point where people don't mind going and picking a unit up either. So will the manufacturers continue to create better quality media and formats? Not really if everyone is ok with lesser grade stuff. We'll probably stagnate for awhile until sometime when a company breaks through to cause a shift in thinking.

fuzzysnuggleduck wrote: As soon as more people think like you ("I want lossless support!") and it becomes a viable business to include the support, you'll see it. For now, it's so niche that major HU players couldn't give a flying fuck to support it because support for it isn't going to net any noticable sales increases. But iPod support certainly does and will.

Which is my point, as long as the masses don't care, no one is going to roll it out. Why shake the steady revenue stream? If all the music providers keep claiming "CD quality" for their downloads, no one will blink an eye.

There is no need for any of the manufacturers to "ignore" lossless either, another option, another selling point.

Who is rolling out FLAC with their HU?

I heard that some Pioneer HU had FLAC in some model but then I also heard they aren't making it anymore.

As for HUs that you can get today, new, that support FLAC, it's most computer/PC based 2 DIN units as far as I know. Carputers in a nice DIN compatible package, basically.

lopezi wrote:

fuzzysnuggleduck wrote:Which is my point, as long as the masses don't care, no one is going to roll it out. Why shake the steady revenue stream? If all the music providers keep claiming "CD quality" for their downloads, no one will blink an eye.

There is no need for any of the manufacturers to "ignore" lossless either, another option, another selling point.

My point was that so few people care about it because it hasn't been that viable of a method in which to distrubute music in the past and even still. Now that fully lossless music libraries are becoming more viable (in terms of storage space, bandwidth, freely available software encoders/decoders) distributors are going to start noticing and will eventually push it out as which point device and hardware manufacturers are going to follow suite. Or at least, that's my analysis (and hope).

My opinion is that lossless is only niche because of technical issues, not because people don't care enough. People are starting to care a lot more and I think that will eventually push the market.

PCs and free software make things like lossless encoding a personal viability waaaaaaaay before it becomes a business model viability.

Riddle me this batman...

If people don't care about lossless, why are HDTV's so popular now? Higher definition is better, everyone will agree on that. I am sure marketing teams will be turning it into a selling point as soon as it becomes commercially viable. Just you wait... they'll give it a catchy name too, like HD-MP3...

stipud wrote:If people don't care about lossless, why are HDTV's so popular now? Higher definition is better, everyone will agree on that. I am sure marketing teams will be turning it into a selling point as soon as it becomes commercially viable.

Even with HDTV, not every HD broadcast is HD quality. Some of the broadcast networks have horrible codec converting them to HD. Direct Tv HD has compression losses. I am not saying it isn't better but it show be even better than what is being broadcast right now.

stipud wrote:Riddle me this batman...

If people don't care about lossless, why are HDTV's so popular now? Higher definition is better, everyone will agree on that. I am sure marketing teams will be turning it into a selling point as soon as it becomes commercially viable. Just you wait... they'll give it a catchy name too, like HD-MP3...

I've often noticed that people can "see" quality but cannot "hear" quality. I have a friend of mine's parents that were given an HDTV for Christmas the other year. They were "wow, that's a great picture", and after a few months I posed the question of them upgrading their "sound" from the basic TV speakers to a full blown surround setup. The response, "huh, what, sounds damn good the way it is". Same thing with a co-worker, bragging up and down over the HD set he bought. I asked, "what kinda sound you got going with that setup?", response, "ehh, I ain't into all that audio, mumble jumble, the set looks great and that's all that matters, it has a surrond button on the remote and we use that, makes it sound like we're in the theatre"...of course we all know the "surround" feature on an HD set is far from theatre quality.

I guess I come from a different perspective, where the sound makes the experience more "real" than the visual, I'm still on an SD set, albeit a nice Trinitron setup, although I have been seriously toying with the idea of a 1080p LCD setup.

What it all boils down to is our generations consumeristic ways. We value quantity over quality. But everyone has one particular hobby where they seek the best, and for us that happens to be audio.

I think the problem is that lower quality music is EVERYWHERE now, radio and internet, people really have nothing to compare it too, ask the average person when the last CD they bought was, most wont remember.

Its when you can compare things, such as TV picture that people can be like WOW look at the difference. Not so easy to do with music.

Capital_M wrote:I think the problem is that lower quality music is EVERYWHERE now, radio and internet, people really have nothing to compare it too, ask the average person when the last CD they bought was, most wont remember.

Its when you can compare things, such as TV picture that people can be like WOW look at the difference. Not so easy to do with music.

I agree. My favorite thing to do is dl an album in MP3, listen to it, and if I like it enough, buy it shortly after on cd for the better quality and the support of the group.

I really dislike radio and internet sound, not only do I dislike the repetitive radio top 40s, but can't understand how anyone can listen to low bitrate mp3s and not hear the difference or care, we all kno how bad those things sound sometimes if you don't get a reasonable bitrate.

I actually thought Sirius radio sounded really poor as well.

I know so many people that are ok with their crappy midbass heavy stock speakers...or their stock rear soundstage : )...and they will only talk to me about upgrading jokingly.

But talk to them about hd, they think they're the shiznit cuz they just got an hdtv with stock sound and i just dont get it... : ).

stipud wrote:Riddle me this batman...

If people don't care about lossless, why are HDTV's so popular now? Higher definition is better, everyone will agree on that. I am sure marketing teams will be turning it into a selling point as soon as it becomes commercially viable. Just you wait... they'll give it a catchy name too, like HD-MP3...

Bad comparison, HDTV is so popular because it is being marketed down every bodies throat hole. Also the fact that analog sets will be completely lost by 2010 since any and all analog broadcast will cease, this goes for radio as well.........HDTV is not a big a deal as you would suspect in fact my TV still has a better picture than most HD sets while playing back a DVD. However with the cost of parts to build a analog TV include with that the cost of broadcasting in analog it makes more sense to drive the market to a Digital based TV, firstly because HDMI makes it impossible to make a copy a copy-righted signal and that makes pirated videos less available to the common user that would otherwise use a DVR to record something, also with the world being readily connected to the internet is it makes a change to a solely IP based television easier. As you can see there are many factors involved with HDTV that is not as easily seen by the general public.


I regard to Lossless audio you would be better compared to Tape vs. CD, or 8-track vs Tape........ Each format has an upside, and when you look at MP3 or compressed audio compared to the others from a marketing standpoint I would take it hands down, and don't expect it to change for some time. First you have no storage media that you have to get to market, this means no shipping costs and no costs of media in the first place. Second you don't have to have a sales force, no reps, no commissions to pay, more money in the pocket of the execs. Lower labor cost across the board, nobody recording every CD or tape, nobody packaging each unit, no packaging, environmental friendly brownie badge. The biggest point is they have accurate tracking of exactly who is buying the media, so they know where to market the future stuff better.


Now as previously mentioned the computer revolution plays a huge part in this, not everybody owns the most state of the art computer in the world, I would guess the masses out there are hovering in the 60-80 gig HD range, so they may not want to load it up with huge audio files, also the mention of band width is crucial, as broadband is seeing the next revolution and many companies now offer 7mbs bandwidth, however most of the out of date modems and ether net ports won't accept the speed increase readily, so if you have everything else in order it all falls back on your under speed 60-80 gig HD that is running on a IDE format and bottle necks everything right back up....................

Now if you look at the way storage media prices are going it is not long before our current moving disk HD's are fully solid state chips just like our RAM, when this happens is when you will see loss-less take over since storage media will be so inexpensive you can afford to carry 100 fully uncompressed albums on your micro SD card in your phone.



It is not that it won't happen but when will it happen.

Interesting replies, good discussion. I'm always curious to see what everyone's take on things are.

VW337 wrote: Bad comparison, HDTV is so popular because it is being marketed down every bodies throat hole.

And the marketing is causing a shift, people are adopting it, although not sure the rate at which its happening. No one told the music industry to adopt lossy, they could've "forced" a shift in the industry, just the way that Apple caused a shift towards AAC, they could've shifted towards lossless just as well.

Broadband access is readily available except if you're out in the boondocks, I've had cable broadband internet since '98, and I was far from an early receiver/adopter. People adopted broadband because of the "faster" download capability. Ok, so instead of 10 lossy songs downloaded in a given timeframe you download 1 lossless file, is that really a big deal? Back in the days of dial-up people used to "wait" for those 10 lossy files, what's the rush then?

VW337 wrote: Now as previously mentioned the computer revolution plays a huge part in this, not everybody owns the most state of the art computer in the world, I would guess the masses out there are hovering in the 60-80 gig HD range, so they may not want to load it up with huge audio files, also the mention of band width is crucial, as broadband is seeing the next revolution and many companies now offer 7mbs bandwidth, however most of the out of date modems and ether net ports won't accept the speed increase readily, so if you have everything else in order it all falls back on your under speed 60-80 gig HD that is running on a IDE format and bottle necks everything right back up....................

That may be the case but you can "upgrade" to 250GB for $60, I've seen the not so savvy computer user be able to add a new hard drive, whether it's internal or an external unit.

VW337 wrote: Now if you look at the way storage media prices are going it is not long before our current moving disk HD's are fully solid state chips just like our RAM, when this happens is when you will see loss-less take over since storage media will be so inexpensive you can afford to carry 100 fully uncompressed albums on your micro SD card in your phone.

If the masses weren't told they could have ~250+ songs on a 2GB unit there wouldn't be the focus on how many songs could fit. If the same unit, initially, was marketed as being able to hold 6-7 CDs worth of music people would be ok with that because that would've been more than you could currently get on any medium, and it would've been truly CD quality.

And, why can't any of these units offer lossless as an option, even HUs, why can't none of them offer lossless, it's not going to hurt the manufacturer? The lossless decoding (pick one, doesn't matter to me) can be included on the SoC (system on chip) for no more cost than the current chips the HUs use.

I mean, I have a PN820 smartphone, it can play back WMA lossless (I have no adversion to Microsoft, regardless of what others may feel, lossless is lossless), so I don't now why HUs don't offer it.