AUDIOPHILE AUDITION focuses on recordings of interest to audiophiles and collectors, with an accent on surround sound for music, and on all hi-res disc formats. Over 100SACD, DVD Video/Audio and standard CD reviews are published during each month, and our archives go back to January 2001.
Audio News for June 9, 2009
Napster’s Impact on Music Distribution; Studio Tips on Improving Quality of Data-Reduced Audio Files; Neil Young Blu-ray Package Gets Thumbs Down; Acurus and Aragon Lines Are Back
Napster’s Impact on Music Distribution - Ten years ago Napster was first released and had sweeping effects on the entire music industry. It came at exactly the right time, when people were beginning to switch from snail-paced dialup to broadband connections, which allowed them to download music in a short period of time. Of course the program and the peer-to-peer revolution it started infringed on copyright and licensing laws - which is how it was reduced down to its present shell of itself. In a way, Napster led the way to iTunes, which is really a legal version without the peer-to-peer sharing. And iTunes has certainly made digital music downloading a success, at least in the pop music area. The whole system of how music is distributed has radically changed. Napster also made MP3 files catch on with the general public, and launched the preference for convenience (and often free or lower cost) in spite of compromised sound over standard CD quality, let alone hi-res formats. Now, however, lossless codecs such as FLAC are becoming more popular, and download sites such as HDtracks are offering hi-res downloads that surpass 44.1K CDs, though so far hi-res surround has not made much headway.
Studio Tips on Improving Quality of Data-Reduced Audio Files - Nashville studio engineers advise recording artists and producers to boost the quality of their recordings by mixing two separate masters - one for hi-res and CD and another for MP3 and other such codecs. Data compression typically throws out more than 90% of the original music information, yet has become the standard for digital music distribution. Some of the suggestions are to encode at the highest possible resolution. For example, a 320 kbps file still has over 22% of the original audio data, while the popular 128 kbps files have less than 8%. The best-sounding algorithm should be used after testing the material with different ones. It is even suggested that mono MP3 files are often a solution since they have twice as much musical data as the stereo files and therefore can sound better. The other major destroyer of pop digital music today is compression and peak-limiting of dynamic levels. it is suggested to apply the digital encoding prior to peak limiting to maximize as much of the dynamic details as possible.
Neil Young Blu-ray Package Gets Thumbs Down - Singer Neil Young is quite an audiophile and promoted his new Neil Young Archives, Vol. 1 1963-1972 Blu-ray box (SRP: $349) as the last word in remastered hi-res sonics of his old recordings. It comes with a specially-bound embossed “leather” book and 11 discs, of which only one is of previously unreleased material and only one is in surround. There is a VHS-quality film “Journey Thru the Past,” and the rest of the two-channel Blu-rays - which show visually only an LP spinning on a turntable or tape reels revolving - are 192K/24bit. Even if your components can pass that hi-res signal, they don’t sound any better than the DVDs and CDs released before, and the Blu-ray navigation is frustrating according to reviews.
Acurus and Aragon Lines Are Back - After four years of inactivity two well-regarded lines of high end audio electronics are back in the marketplace. Klipsch had owned Aragon and Acurus amps, preamps and processors since 2001 and has now sold them to two Klipsch electronics engineers, Rick Santiago and Ted Moore, since deciding to concentrate their efforts entirely on their loudspeaker lines. The new owners intend to announce a new line of products in early 2010. Their amps will feature the use of class A at lower signal levels and a gradual shift to class A-B at higher levels, with ratings between 125 watts per channel and 400wpc. Acurus will be the entry-level line and Aragon the higher-priced series. The lines were originally founded by Tony Federici and Paul Rosenberg, with Mondial as the parent company.
Copyright 2003-2009 Audiophile Audition
Reprinted By Permission
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