On the death of quality by the sword of cheapness
I'm currently sitting in my completely pedestrian living room, (with its generic light beige carpeting and a coat of paint that in its infinite optimism has the nerve to describe itself as "Irish Coffee", when it and everyone else knows it's really just the bastard child of eggshell and off-white,) listening to a recording that's nearly as old as I am, and STUNNED by what I'm hearing. The album is Steely Dan's "Gaucho", remixed and remastered for a Super Audio Compact Disc release. I have a relatively low-end home theater setup; and by low-end, I mean it cost less than $5000 in total (that's amp, speakers, DVD/SACD/DVD-Audio player, PS2, and a hideously overpriced entertainment center to house them all in. Seriously, if you included the carpet and the paint, it'd still be less than $5k.) OK, so the album came out in 1980, and I was seven at the time, so it's not really nearly as old as I am, but hey, I'm old.
The album harks back to the days of tube amplifiers, precisely counterbalanced phonograph arms, (OMG VINYL LOL), the odd reel-to-reel tape recorder, and "Dolby" being something they put on cassette decks to cancel out tape hiss. Oh, and coke (and I ain't talkin 'bout that fizzy sugary shite). And the Golden Age of Porn (as described by Messrs. Fagen and Becker). Coincidentally, this seems to have been the last era that the American consumer actually gave a shit about the quality of the music they listened to. Let's take as an example this situation I'm in. Most people would be just as likely to think that "SACD" was something that happened to quarterbacks. That and DVD-Audio are the two high-resolution, multi-channel (exclusively) music formats available to the consumer at this time. Even in a stereo only setup (I'm listening in stereo right now, as opposed to the 5.1 surround mix) with relatively middle-of-the-road speakers, the difference between this and a regular CD is dramatic.
People are going to think that there's a huge increase in cost for this experience, but they couldn't be more wrong if they tried. Let's take as an example what I've got here. Most people wouldn't blink to hard at spending $150 on a component CD player; hell, for $200 you could get a fancy carousel one that holds 843793745 discs and does your taxes, practically. Yet, my player, which reads just about every form of media you can imagine (CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, OMGWTFBBQ) as well as just about every major format out there (DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, CD Audio, Video CD, MP3 CD), and yet it didn't cost any more than a typical CD player. So the cost associated with the improvement in quality is negligible. The media themselves don't cost any more than CDs either, typically, maybe $3 more IF that. So everything else being equal, assuming you've got a typical home theater setup, the increased cost is next to nothing. (Like everything else audiophilic, of course you can spend obscene amounts of money if you want to, but IMHO you don't have to to get a marked improvement)
Unfortunately, the American buying public has been so conditioned to want the cheapest possible product at the expense of quality, that when a product hits the market that doesn't cost any more than the current "standard" but delivers a far superior experience, they ignore it for that exact reason - someone says "sounds better" and they IMMEDIATELY assume "costs more" and it's like the product never even existed.
So what we get (those of us who give a shit), is a classic chicken-and-egg situation. With (as it stands right now) just a niche market for the high-res formats, the titles released in the format are limited. (Some new releases are now being done in the DualDisc format, DVD-Audio on one side, CD audio on the other. Yet another complication.. and in addition, the disk is physically thicker, and the mere act of playing it may void your player's warranty... don't get me started.) So with a limited library, the market is going to be... limited... Lather rinse repeat.
I'm basically just bitching here about the fact that such a great thing (high-resolution audio) is dead, it just hasn't hit the ground yet. All because (like so many things), Americans are retarded as a species.
The album harks back to the days of tube amplifiers, precisely counterbalanced phonograph arms, (OMG VINYL LOL), the odd reel-to-reel tape recorder, and "Dolby" being something they put on cassette decks to cancel out tape hiss. Oh, and coke (and I ain't talkin 'bout that fizzy sugary shite). And the Golden Age of Porn (as described by Messrs. Fagen and Becker). Coincidentally, this seems to have been the last era that the American consumer actually gave a shit about the quality of the music they listened to. Let's take as an example this situation I'm in. Most people would be just as likely to think that "SACD" was something that happened to quarterbacks. That and DVD-Audio are the two high-resolution, multi-channel (exclusively) music formats available to the consumer at this time. Even in a stereo only setup (I'm listening in stereo right now, as opposed to the 5.1 surround mix) with relatively middle-of-the-road speakers, the difference between this and a regular CD is dramatic.
People are going to think that there's a huge increase in cost for this experience, but they couldn't be more wrong if they tried. Let's take as an example what I've got here. Most people wouldn't blink to hard at spending $150 on a component CD player; hell, for $200 you could get a fancy carousel one that holds 843793745 discs and does your taxes, practically. Yet, my player, which reads just about every form of media you can imagine (CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, OMGWTFBBQ) as well as just about every major format out there (DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, CD Audio, Video CD, MP3 CD), and yet it didn't cost any more than a typical CD player. So the cost associated with the improvement in quality is negligible. The media themselves don't cost any more than CDs either, typically, maybe $3 more IF that. So everything else being equal, assuming you've got a typical home theater setup, the increased cost is next to nothing. (Like everything else audiophilic, of course you can spend obscene amounts of money if you want to, but IMHO you don't have to to get a marked improvement)
Unfortunately, the American buying public has been so conditioned to want the cheapest possible product at the expense of quality, that when a product hits the market that doesn't cost any more than the current "standard" but delivers a far superior experience, they ignore it for that exact reason - someone says "sounds better" and they IMMEDIATELY assume "costs more" and it's like the product never even existed.
So what we get (those of us who give a shit), is a classic chicken-and-egg situation. With (as it stands right now) just a niche market for the high-res formats, the titles released in the format are limited. (Some new releases are now being done in the DualDisc format, DVD-Audio on one side, CD audio on the other. Yet another complication.. and in addition, the disk is physically thicker, and the mere act of playing it may void your player's warranty... don't get me started.) So with a limited library, the market is going to be... limited... Lather rinse repeat.
I'm basically just bitching here about the fact that such a great thing (high-resolution audio) is dead, it just hasn't hit the ground yet. All because (like so many things), Americans are retarded as a species.
posted by Zach Burnham at 9:44 PM (click for permalink)
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