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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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In Reply to: Agreed posted by castironandtubes on November 28, 2008 at 01:16:12:
"I wonder why you say these give a false impression of digital's capabilities, it seems to me that it gives every indication of the capabilities but history exposes that it was all about the convenience and not sound quality."The reason is that at the time I experienced the Telarc Soundstream LPs, I thought this product was introducing a new era of recording. And the sonic superiority would bring high fidelity playback to the masses, as opposed to just audiophiles.
But in retrospect, it was too good to be true- What was expected (the "Soundstream sound") turned out to be a one-time occurrence. When digitized recording became commonplace (and the Soundstream system abandoned due to incompatibility with the established Red Book standard), the reality of poor listenability in recordings across the board quenched those expectations. Not to mention the great Soundstream sound becoming a distant memory.
But the real problem has been the deficiencies of digital audio playback never being addressed over time. Instead, the "advancements" were convoluting and compounding the problem (from jitter reclockers to asynchronous conversion). To the point where people in large numbers have been going back to analog.
I personally blame the technical types who discounted the complaints about the new technology. I think this disagreement seeded the so-called "subjectivist-objectivist" feud. (Which I think didn't exist to any significant degree prior to the digital audio era.) A growing bitterness from audiophiles thinking audio playback has taken a step backwards clashing with a growing bitterness from the audio design community thinking the negative reaction toward the new technology was psychological/delusional, rather than toward actual deficiencies in the technology.
Digital audio has ended up being the technological "New Coke", which initially had great fanfare, and some great initial impressions (mainly due to Soundstream), but over the years, it has ultimately become less preferred to what had been around before- vinyl. The audiophile complaints spread to the mainstream, and the designers IMO lost out on an opportunity to build upon on what I thought was a very promising technology.
I'd say the best thing that could happen to digital audio is to go back to the Soundstream technology, and start over again from that point. But it won't happen.
Edits: 11/28/08
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Follow Ups
- RE: Agreed - Todd Krieger 19:00:03 11/28/08 (2)
- Todd excellent post and it sums up pretty much most that happened afterwards. - Teresa 19:39:38 11/28/08 (1)
- "Soundstream's 100kHz Audiophile Card" - Todd Krieger 20:21:56 11/28/08 (0)
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