The Sound and the Fury
Posted on | April 26, 2008 |
I sat down for coffee with an aspiring engineer the other week. He was interested in getting some advice on how to break into the local music scene as an engineer. While I’m not sure I was able to give him any relevant advice — “networking is the key” was the best I could do — we got talking on an interesting side topic: what direction is audio going in?
This is sort of a Pandora’s box and, really, impossible to predict. But one thing I see (that I don’t see as a revelation) is that audio is being pulled in two separate directions: How low can it go before it falls apart, and what is the upper limit?
The low-end is being driven, ironically, by the music industry. MP3s and other compressed formats are based on convenience, not sound quality. And as most people listen to music in loud and noisy environments, the quality really doesn’t matter that much. It is, in essence, the audio cassette of the day. The lowest common denominator.
The high-end is being driven by the home theatre market: something people are becoming more and more interested in as the price of movie tickets goes up. SACD, DVD-A and Blu-Ray all offer exceptional HD quality, and a home theatre system (something pro-sumer yet affordable like a Bose system) offers the benefit of a nice surround-sound home theatre setup that doubles as a nice multi-channel or stereo listening system (or, vice-versa).
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From Ohm to Om reflects the opinions of mastering engineer Paul Abbott, owner of San Diego's ZenMastering.
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