Kevin Nolan wrote: there was a constant drive through the 20th century to move audio technology as far forward as was possible at any given juncture
Hardly! Yes, on the professional end of things tape recorders, lathes and transcription turntables and arms gradually improved as technology and manufacturing techniques evolved from the 40s through to the 1980s. But at HUGE expense, and there was nowhere to go after that. The technology was exhausted. A decent mastering or broadcast tape machine cost £15k or more in the 1980s. A decent transcription record player would be close to £10k. The music industry couldn't afford that kind of expense any more, and home consumers never could.
And while this drive to high-quality audio was inching forward, the bulk of the consumer industry was producing nasty 'Fidelity' record players and cassette walkmans -- low quality formats and equipment which was affordable and acceptable to the typical consumer who weren't (and aren't) interested in quality, just convenience and cost.
...it's as if, with the likes of mp3, that a whole bunch or other criteria are holding true, widespread innovation back,yet we have barely scratched the surface on all fronts.
MP3 isn't holding innovation back. It was innovative in it's own right, and designed to meet the needs of the consumer market. Meanwhile high-end innovation continues as it always has: slowly.
I have to ask the question as to why a mini moog is regarded as a pinnacle, and why today we are not coming up with new synthsizers that are a true hallmark of out time.
It is a 'pinnacle' to some because it presented a very practical AND AFFORDABLE arrangement of simple subtractive synthesis technology combined with very musical playability. But it didn't represent the state of the art, and plenty of other sophisticated technologies have come along since then. How about wavetable synthesis, FM synthesis, phase distortion synthesis, physical modelling synthesis, subharmonic synthesis, granular synthesis... and so on.
There are too many exciting developments that will happen in, say, 200 years from now and I want to push, hard, towards them.
Okay... make sure you let us know what you find when you get there...
Again, as just one example, imagine music colleges able to replay recordings of orchestras with such fidelity that the student could, as just one arbitrary example, change where in the orchestra they are sitting while listening back.
That is more or less possible now with wavefield synthesis, but not very practical at the moment, but this is just one example of the ongoing audio innovation and R&D that you think doesn't exist.
Suppose your learning clarinet. Imagine being able to sit in a virtual recorded environment in the 1st clarinet seat and hear the orchestral work from that position?
Or you could just learn to play by joining an orchestra and sitting next to someone more experienced and accomplished!
Or imagine being able to record a gig from your smart phone and go home and hear it exactly as you heard it live with your family and friends.
Yes... I think the laws of physics are going to get in the way a bit there.
so where's the push towards them?
In universities and corporation R&D departments all around the world.
I think the audio world is as boring as it's ever been
Boring? I find it as exciting now as I did when I was a kid of 7 playing with a Grundig tape recorder. Every day I learn something new. Every year some astonishing new technology or technique is discovered and I gete to play with it. Wake up and smell the coffee!
Where's that sort of innovation today.
High-quality digital recording? The DAW? Modelled audio processing plugins? Convolution? Spectral editing? All those clever synthesis technologies I listed above? And countless more things -- all in the last decade or so... with more coming along every year or two.
MP3 - sloppy, lazy, dark-age mentality to audio in my opinion. It's a 'theft' of possibilities from our youth and our future.
MP3 is ageing a bit now, but it is still astonishingly clever and sophisticated technology which is still perfectly capable of delivering stunning good audio at remarkably small file sizes -- which is what it was designed to do. It's anything but sloppy and lazy -- although the people who use it without thinking, and at inappropriately low bit-rates, might be.
MP3 lies at the heart of the audio on the internet revolution, and of miniature portable audio on iPods and mobile phones, radically improving both perceived quality and practical convenience compared to the cassette walkman which it rendered completely obsolete.
It was THE enabling technology of the turn of the century and bears direct comparison on the innovation scale with the original Shellac 78rpm record 150 years ago.
H
) - by listening to the recording, you would absolutely not be even close to following the same conversation, for all the reasons Hugh explained.
There were only 2 points I was trying to make there, and I forgot to write either of them down... Try again:
