Comment by userbinator
6 years ago
I can’t say the same about other tech, but audio just doesn’t age at the same speed.
People's ears have not changed, and the ability to reproduce sound has been nearly perfected. If you're not too picky/audiophillic, like most people, the requirements are even lower.
Literally the only "improvements" that are ever going to happen to audio in your lifetime will be a) internetifying it and b) adding more restrictions to how you use it.
We've hit peak audio (best reproduction, no restrictions on usage) and it's only downhill from here.
I look forward to my 2025 speakers that only work for an hour a day unless I pay for extra time credits.
"Do you wish to play a) music b) music and local radio c) music, local radio and podcasts [BEST VALUE]?"
We had indeed excellent analog audio for many decades. But there are still very exciting things happening which are improving the audio quality a lot - expecially in the middle and lower range of the spectrum. There are great pure analog setups, but they require a lot of very expensive and bulky technology, none the least, large speakers and a carefully set up room with good accustics.
Modern digital technology makes this so much easier and more. There are excellent digital power amps, where you have power amplification on one chip integrated with the DAC. Just looking at some of the features of a simple Homepod, there are exciting technologies involved, which could improve also higher end audio. First is driving the bass speaker in a feedback loop. In classical audio technology, you would have a power signal and have to rely on the speaker to transfer this into motion with as little as possible of distortion. Which required the speaker to behave like a perfect spring for different frequencies. So this is a very difficult task, making the speaker expensive and often imperfect. Homepods drive their bass speakers in a feedback loop, the desired position of the membrane is calculated and an electric circuit drives it into that position. It does no longer depend on the mechanical properties of the membrane, also allowing for much higher motion range than in a classical speaker. Also, the active monitoring of the room acoustics with several directional microphones is an improvement vs. classical set up amplifiers, even if they had a microphone input for set up.
So I don't see us hitting peak audio at all yet, that makes for exciting times for music lovers.
I don't disagree that there are exciting things coming to consumer audio, but we have had excellent digital audio for decades in audiophile systems. My speakers are twenty years old and they each have a DSP, two DACs and three amplifiers. I paid $900 for a pair and they are the best speakers I've ever heard.
In terms of storing/transmitting/digitizing, yes.
Distortion levels from speakers are still far from negligible-- by negligible I mean so low as to be extremely likely to be inaudible.
High power amplifiers are just now reaching a point where there are efficient amplifiers with negligible distortion; though they've been pretty good for a fairly long time.
There is a lot that can be done in terms of immersive spatial audio, unfortunately the trouble and cost of installing an array of speakers ... limits deployment. :)
There is also a lot that can be done to use DSP to ameliorate poor room acoustics, this stuff exists, but it isn't super widely deployed.
> peak audio
Nah, there are plenty of other things, like positional audio. I remember (through a pleasant haze of nostalgia) my old A3D-based sound card in the 90s as being even better than modern EAX stuff.
Potential improvement in that area can be both through simply adding speakers, and through tuning per-speaker output to forge better audio-cues. (To wit, Head Related Transfer Functions applied to headphones, possibly even with custom parameters for different peoples' heads.)
Monster Sound A300 and 3dfx Voodoo 3000 FTW! That was peak hardware for my teens!
What about things like Dolby atmos that use 3D noise wave cancellation/amplification technology to effectively do to surround sound what 3D glasses did for the TV
> do to surround sound what 3D glasses did for the TV reply
So, nothing, at the end of the day?
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doesn't do a thing for music.
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The improvements are all in headphones. Wireless and noise canceling are legitimate needs and they are getting better.
People's taste has changed though. Your speakers from the 80's generally can't be driven as loud with current music, as modern music tends to be a lot more bass heavy (obviously a lot more pronounced with techno and other electronic music, but also with pop music).
The response curve from speakers has also reflected that, a lot of them are bass boosted in the amplifier or are designed with a bass boost in them.
I have some fairly nice speakers from the 70's (a couple of different sets, one homebuilt), and Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane sound a lot better from them than Katy Perry or Tiesto.