Hi-Res audio, The Boulder CD player Review, January
JIMV -- Mon, 12/21/2009 - 21:54
First, this post has nothing to do with the CD player in question, or its ridiculous price...
No, this is about the 'Hi-Res' music discussed. I was an early adopter of the SACD format. As soon as it was possible to buy a player under $1000 I bought one. Then I bought some music.....
While the 'music' sounded good, perhaps better than anything my CD player could play through my modest system, the available music on SACD, how do I put this delicately, SUCKED! It was as though some wine and quiche weenie fresh from Public Television, had decided the plebians who are music lovers needed to broaden their horizons so SACD versions of obscure music played by 2nd or third rate orchestra's were in order. Instead of Beethoven's 9th we got Iskabibble's 2nd flute and kazoo concierta with Serbian vocals as done by the Askosh all girl band in the local Moose Hall....
The same thing is happening again in Hi-Res, but with a more teaky setup and a host of formats. The reviewer listed many source files...of the lot the only one I was even familiar with was the Goldberg Variations.
Why in God's name do folk insist on pushing the quality envelope with music no one has heard of by orchestra's that rival a high school marching band in performance.
Why no Philadelphia Orchestra Beethoven's 5th, no remastered Sinatra, or Ella Fitzgerald? Where is the very best of today's performers, the Kralls, Buble's, Willie Nelson, or Nora Jone's?
Why the unknown and crap?
Why is Hi-Res yet another excercise in 'Baffle them with BS' instead of 'Dazzle them with Brilliance'?
Would it not make sense to remaster or record anew something that is already popular. Everything a well known composer wrote is not the subject of greatness. Some things have survived the centuries and other works deserve the obscurity they are in.
Geeze!
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The HR-x discs are all Keith Johnsons favorites. So thats that. Not too many people are capable or are interested in making them because most people don't buy this stuff anyways. Majority of the population will not shell out $50 a pop on these discs when they have i-tunes and ultra cheap downloads and not much interest in sound quality. If you can rope in a large crowd to buy into this stuff or other high end stuff, then yea you will see Norah Jones and others in no time on Hi-Rez...... otherwise not much can be done.....I don't think complaining will help..... you should hear how frustrated the SACD and HDCD crowd was and how excited they are that now its dead. After spending thousands of dollars by these folks on SACD and HDCD disks the death of the format is the final punch for a k.o. "IF" Hi-Rez formats survivie and catch up as a format, even then I suspect it will be years untill you start seeing the stuff that you want. Thats the nature of this game.
And computer based music, serious music, will b e a niche for tweakers...
Exactly......and one great example of the question you raise is Blue Ray Disks vs. Audio CD's. People by enlarge LOVE large cutting edge HDTV's and Videos.... when DVD's came out it caugt on like a fire......and now same with Blue Ray.....just amazing! on the other hand audio always goes in the other direction sadly. and its hard for them to keep up at a fraction of the success in quality and technology.... What a Shame.....but as they say "what ever sells". Its so much easier and much much cheaper to have cutting edge video equipment vs. audio equipment..... and I don't see that changing any time soon.