The Future of Computer Audio?

uglymusic

I've just read this article:

http://www.audiostream.com/content/future-computer-audio

and I'm trying to figure out what I agree and disagree with.

The questions were:

1. Where do you see Computer Audio in 3 years?
2. What changes would you like to see as opposed to what you expect to see?
3. Make a prediction for the far-out future of Computer Audio.

What are your thoughts?

Docfoster

A1. Not sure. I imagine there just being ever more of it, to the increasing exclusion of the old fashioned physical music (and video) carriers. I'm not sufficiently in the loop to forsee any qualitative changes.
A2. I'd like more hi-res offerings. Though I suspect they will remain a niche market, and hi-res choice will be confined to the kinds of music that sell to audiophiles. Dear god. ;-)
May be 48/24 will become the de-facto audio standard as seems to have become the case with blu-ray soundtracks.
A3. There will be no end point to it all. In 3 years time, we'll still be asking the same 3 questions.

Docfoster

...A2. Actually, I think I was being optimistic. Doesn't stereo 48/24 work out to 2304kbps...? I suspect that the standard will be more like a 10th of that, as I presume the general computer audio format will be a compressed codec of some kind.

RobHolt

I've just read this article:

http://www.audiostream.com/content/future-computer-audio

and I'm trying to figure out what I agree and disagree with.

The questions were:

1. Where do you see Computer Audio in 3 years?
2. What changes would you like to see as opposed to what you expect to see?
3. Make a prediction for the far-out future of Computer Audio.

What are your thoughts?

Taking those in order:

In three years I see cloud based solutions such as Spotify becoming far more dominant - very likely Apple and one or two other big players making this far more popular, perhaps with a revamp of the whole iTunes/Store thing.

I'd like to see higher standards wrt to download material. Not necessarily high bit or sampling rates but more downloads based on early generation files. I'm not convinced that some of what is available on Spotify is of good quality and wouldn't be surprised if we are sometimes served quite low quality, low bit rate files presented as higher quality files. I'd love to access some first and second generation master material for download.

Theoretically we can get very close to what was laid down as the studio master, and it would be nice if we could turn the theory into reality.

Far out, we'll all be able to share our libraries in the cloud, via subscription.

A sort of giant, legal, high quality, instant play version  of the original Napster.

We'll need faster and better internet services first though.

Rob

Docfoster

Rob,
Your cumuli nimbus vision seems plausible.
What's an early generation file?

RobHolt

Hi Ben,

By early generation I mean either the final master recording or perhaps one of the working copies taken at the time of the recording.

I suspect that often what we get is a file that has been copied many times over many years, perhaps from analogue to early PCM, then to DAT, then converted into different formats etc.

Docfoster

Ah, understood.
Thanks.