Digital Drive

RE: Xiph Foundation Leader Calls High-Res Audio a Waste of Bandwidth

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Fascinating, to see that acolytes of "perfect sound forever" still remain with us.

First, the author's stated premise of the article is specious. is there really concern over the bandwidth consumed by high-res audio. The physical carrier, the optical disc, has the same size for DVD audio, and Blu-Ray, as it does for CD. Increased data storage density has seen to that. Even hard drive capacity is dirt cheap these days, so the storage cost for a music file server is not a driving concern either. There, done with that, as the article's author would say.

Second, I note that the author wisely focuses on playback, not recording. Do we really want to settle for what seem believe to be essentially an just-good-enough attitude to capture musical performances by treasured artists? Some of whom may never record a particular work again. Doesn't it seem prudent to record and archive with the best technology available at the time?

Third, as far as technical arguments over what constitutes sonically perfect playback, I'll take the research and analysis of Bob Stuart over rather poorly researched conclusion of the author. Stuart concludes that linear PCM channel of 20-bits dynamic range and 60ksps rate are required to deliver audibly perfect digital sound. http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF

Lastly, the author's tone strikes me as inappropriately smug. A tone too prevalent among both subjectivists and objectivists alike. We, unfortunately, encounter such smugly closed minded people all the time in audio.
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Ken Newton


Edits: 03/12/12   03/12/12

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