I'm not surprised DVD-Audio and co failed. Their quality is indistinguishable from CDs despite what audiophiles would have you believe, and by the time they came out MP3 was clearly the future.
Well I blame the system. You needed upgraded headphones or speakers. I have $2000 studio monitors when I was an audio engineer and well I can 100% tell you in a blind test I can tell the difference.
95% of the reason why is people don't care about quality audio. It's something about human brains. MP3 sound horrible compared to a FLAC and good equipment. Instead people wear Beats Bluetooth Headphones listening to streamed Audio.
I also blame myself. I use $15 in ear bluetooth ear piece (Looks like a hearing aid) Inovate G10. I listen almost exclusively to podcasts or YouTube videos. The convenience is so much more needed than sound quality. I listen to music at home (When my kids aren't around because all they do is complain). I need to get a good pair of headphones.
For at-rest listening, God made Sennheiser.
Do you have an explanation of how that is possible? On the face of it, CD seems to have more SNR and frequency response than necessary. I've got intelligent friends on both sides of the debate, but I've never heard a plausible explanation from the "I promise I can tell the difference" friends. I tend to believe Monty Montgomery (of Ogg Vorbis fame). After watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qFjdQP7Ep0 there's little obvious room for doing better than CD. The best explanation I've heard is that CD mastering is generally aimed at mainstream equipment, and therefore isn't optimal for good equipment.
Technically here is how it works. CDs are at 44.1khz sample rate and you record at 96khz back in 2000s, similar how video recordings are 8k for 4k or 1080p. Then when you exported your mix to be mastered it would get knocked down to 44.1khz not very noticeable in the least unless you listened to stuff all day everyday and had to train your ear to hear everything.
If you compare the two 96khz and 44.1khz there is a distinct difference BUT it is not something that people would care about because their equipment only gives a clarity of less than 44.1khz. My system from recording all the way to audio output and DAC were 96khz and cost my thousands and thousands of dollars.
I do believe that you can tell when you hear the two. Kind of like how FLAC and MP3 sound different on my LG V20 phone.
EDIT: upper ear response is presumably limited to ~20 kHz
I can tell the difference with my now-old ears, if it is a good recording of real-world instruments in a common space.
That is a lot of qualifiers, but on playback you can ‘feel’ that other space.
I believe that it is because of the way that the higher frequency components of the sound interact with the environment and effectively down-transpose and affect the rest of the signal before they hit the listener’s ear.
A 1000 times this.
High bit rate (FLAC/DVD-Audio/etc.) sounds way better than standard CD Audio, even on mid-range ($3k) kit. Of course you DO need to listen to proper music on it, that uses real instruments[2], instead of all that bump-n-grind poplet-R&B stuff that kids like these days[1].
Modern 'pop' music is also mastered for MP3/Streaming nowadays anyway, so high bit rates of that stuff will never sound good no matter what you play it on.
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[1] Get off my lawn.
[2] No I don't just mean Classical, but good Rock/Metal also.
Probably GoNovate, right? https://www.amazon.com/GoNovate-Bluetooth-Earpiece-Smallest-...
Also check out Crystal Method's Legion of Boom in DTS-ES.
I wish there were more releases in 5.1 or better, and specifically EDM releases.
As to your specific DVD-Audio example, I think it didn't widely catch on because most music is consumed (1) with earphones (2) in the car (3) as incidental background while multitasking. The scenario of "purposeful" music listening by sitting in the center sweet spot of a 5.1 setup is very rare.
There's also a long history of technology that's "superior" but isn't accepted by the masses. There's a "law of diminishing returns" and/or other dimensions of utility (such as convenience) have higher priority than quality. Examples:
- quadrophonic sound[1] is more immersive than 2-channel stereo but people didn't buy it
- satellite radio is higher quality sound than FM radio but Sirius XM remains a niche and won't penetrate the market like FM did. Yes, FM had higher fidelity than AM and listeners switched but the same didn't happen for satellite.
- 24bit-96kHz or 192kHz audio did not take over 16bit-44kHz (1411kbps). Instead, the opposite happened and more listeners consumed lower quality 128kbps mp3 and AAC files. Lower quality was driven by Napster + iPod + Spotify. Convenience trumped highest fidelity.
- Bluray discs : more customers pay for digital streaming (often with lower resolution than 1080p) than upgrading the old DVDs to Bluray. There was more market penetration with VHS to DVD.
- large 3D tv screens : the explosive growth is smaller screens on mobile phones playing Youtube rather than 3D content like Avatar. 3D is now seen as a gimmick fad.
History has shown that we always overestimate how technical "quality" drives consumer adoption.
I'm not an audiophile, but when I listen to SiriusXM it hear compression artifacts. I'd way rather listen to FM.
BIG Music Business sucks and the slow death to the Pop Music Industry. http://brandsplusmusic.blogspot.com/2011/02/death-of-pop-mus...
"...things are actually much better for independent musicians than in the past, just as we would expect. In fact, there's been an astounding 510% increase in independent musicians making their full time living from music in just the past decade."
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130529/15560423243/massi...