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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: The Audio of 21 century: still not there.
Post Subject: The Audio of 21 century: still not there.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 12/29/2019
It is the end of the year and while people think about
summation of the year’s events, I would like to elevate myself to a higher altitude
trying to observe the most significant things in audio with wider lenses. I am 52 and I begin to play with “improvement”
of audio since I was 10. There were some moments of my life when I was involved
more or less with audio but I always has some strange interest in the subject. In
1992 I moved to US and since the mid of 90s I was more or less actively observed
and was involved into western audio word. If to look back and to observed all
events that took place over the last 30 years and try to dissect what was important
then. with some sadness, I need to note that there was nothing truly important happened
in audio.
Moving from analog to digital, then back to analog and back
to hi-res streaming was irrelevant. Moving from dull speakers and powerful electronics,
to horns and SED, then to DSET and multi-channel time aligned horns was irrelevant.
Buying audio devises or making my own was also irrelevant. Do not get me wrong,
there was great difference between performance of audio during all these periods
and I do not mean to devaluate the worth of all my moves and the impact of took
on my life and music I was listening. However, my moves were in a way a
reflection of universal audio progress and from the prospective of audio as an epistemological
entity I do not think the answers I founded were discovered in the realms of
audio. Of course, as a listener I tremendously evolved, which is the only
proper way to evaluate quality of audio, but how
to differentiate the changes in me that were inspired by audio from the changes
that were inspired by exposé to other
people, literature, life experience and other forms of art?
This all might a subject of other discussion and I would
like to proceed to the main topic of this thread: does new century has any new form of audio
that different or better than what we had before. My answer is No. There is
nothing conceptually different or fundamentally more advanced that we have
today. We are having live streaming today and if it done at very high sampling
rate and deep resolution then it is still the very same paradigm: a musical event coded as a sonic snapshot
shared with listeners. I think here is where we hit the main delinquency of today’s
audio: audio is all about sound but it should be about human experiences. If to
accept this premises then it is hard not to observe that audio did not offer anything
new lately despite of the all appeared irrelevant advancements.
So, the current mechanism of delivering musical sensations
is in my view is faulty. I do not think
that musical sensations should be derived by sound only. It should not be also
any multi-media actions, like movie for instance. It should be rather a new
form of media where consumers would subscribe some kind broadcast channel where
sensations would be delivered in raw, none-converted to language, sound or
image format. I do not see any development in this direct in contemporary audio
and without it, any pure old-fashion audio auctions, in my view is just like gilding
the lilies trying to prevent the swamp drying…Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site