AES British Section lectures - June 2006

The Future of High Quality Audio

Tony Faulkner, Green Room Productions

The commercial viability of conventional High Street retail CD and DVD shops has been hit very hard by the internet. The first attack came from competition from internet-based mail-order companies such as Amazon, but more dramatic has been the decline of retail as a result of the broadside of the impact of downloading both legal and illegal. A classical label such as LSO Live now does comparable amounts of business in sales of iTunes electronic downloads as it does selling CDs and SACDs. In the age of iTunes, podcasts, wma's and mp3's what is the future for high quality audio? SACD and DVD-Audio have failed to capture the imagination of buyers in any big way, so if discerning music lovers and audiophiles want something better quality-wise than a 128kbps mp3 what hopes are there for them for more resolution and surround?

There will be demonstrations of various of the options and plenty of opportunity for open discussion.

Lecture recording - mp3 format (26.3 MB)

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