Even if the demand for quality remains slack (as it is currently) the standards will hopefully continue to rise as bandwidth and processing power continues ever upward. Almost by default, things should get better
Almost despite the consuming audience.
I saw some news about the new "super high fidelity" digital audio player that Neil Young is involved in. It seems he's taken over the company? I can't help wondering who the product is actually for? I guess they are hoping for the "lossless" crowd to come on board. But as it stands APPLE is embracing "lossless" codecs and 24 bit files with "iTunes Plus" so trying to launch an entirely new platform just seems like spitting in the wind. But hey, it takes all kinds
I love N Young as a musician but he and his company pono are talking bull. There's been lossless codecs like FLAC available for years for personal players, long before he got involved. Unlike pono you can get flac files from a lot of different online retailers. If you want an mp3 type player that is near cd quality than use flac or one of the other open lossless codec that don't force you to a single source.
Here's a quote from Young in The Guardian:
"Go back to your digital masters and see what they sounded like compared to what was released. Now, if you want to, they can all be released in their original glory," he said. "You can talk to your producer or record company and learn how to make that available to your listeners on Pono... Record companies, this is an opportunity to rescue the art of recorded sound..."
What a load of bull. The redbok PMCD is not different to the commercial CD that is released. Besides in domestic situtions a CD is more than sufficient to capture the audio quality of a 'digital master', if there is an audio issue it's not the CD format that is at issue but the quality of the domestic replay ystem. If you want an mp3 type device then use one that has FLAC and you will have CD quality near enough so as not to be noticeable on domestic headphones and particularly on earbuds. The issue is with how well the music is recorded, mixed and mastered and not the delivery format.
As for Apple and MFiT - mp3s should be transcoded from the 24 but anyway so there is no advantage/difference there. What Apple want with MFiT is to be sent the orginal 24 bit wav for them to transcode to ALAC rather than to be sent the 16 bit PMCD. Apple want to move to ALAC rather than the lossy AAC format. It's worth stating that AAC is better than many mp3 transcodes anyway.
I believe that Apple has something in the region of 98% of all digital AAC/ALAC music sales for iplayers because the platform is pretty much/supposedly locked to itunes. What pono want is to do the same and lock lossless codec sales to it's own platform. It's about market share and getting rid of the competition by locking them out with a technological barrier.