Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
When sound engineers can't pick out high resolution audio in a blind listening test then why would anyone think a significant number of people are going to change their habits and re-buy higher resolution music? Sure you'll get some audiophiles who love spending money on placebos, but they make up such an infinitesimal portion of music consumers that they won't make even the slightest dent in the inevitable march towards streaming being the primary source of peoples' music.
The comparison to Blu-ray doesn't hold water given that there are clear and demonstrably perceptible differences between HD and SD video (as long as you're close enough to the screen); that's not true in the slightest with higher resolution audio formats. And even with that, most consumers still prefer the convenience of something like Netflix even if the product is a lower bitrate and lesser quality than Blu-ray.
Now take that same kind of thinking and apply it to a medium where there's no discernible difference in lossless CD quality audio and higher resolution format and the chance of a high resolution format convincing people to go back to purchasing music is basically nil.
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I totally agree with your premise that higher quality won't lead people back to purchasing music and you are probably correct in that SD TV to HD TV is much more drastic than with audio. I wouldn't go so far as to call hi-resolution audio a placebo effect however. True, most people would be hard pressed to distinguish cd quality 44.1 khz from hi-res 96khz but comparing a compressed mp3 (the most widely distributed format currently) to 96khz is much more obvious. Also much of the 96khz music that's currently available to consumers has been up-sampled from a CD master which literally adds nothing to the quality. Music that has been been recorded, mixed and mastered at 96khz (a practice that is only just now starting to become common) is a world of difference IMO...