Digital Commodities

Welcome to the digital revolution, but perhaps it's a bit late for that salutation. The last 25 years have seen amazing changes in the audio/video business and most of the technical advances were related to digital technology. Is there a high performance side to digital or is it mass market mediocracy or bust?

Way back in the 1980s my research project when I was a musician and audio engineering student at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University was focused on comparing the sound of the CD to good old analog. From my perspective 24 bit, 96K audio has finally fulfilled the promise of digital quality, but the debate still rages today. The one item on which I think we all can agree is that the CD made good sound much less expensive and easier to access. Digital technology in audio would certainly be labeled a disruptive technology which redefines the value equation in each product category it devours. After digital redefined source product it moved down the playback chain to the preamp. The arrival of the DSP chip in the preamp to carry out the surround sound decoding changed the landscape of component audio electronics forever. 

In the days of analog, a better preamp was made with more expensive op-amps or discrete circuitry and expensive clean linear power supplies. Your old ADCOM or Rotel preamp was better than a receiver because manufacturers could spend more money on parts and provide less noise and extended frequency response relative to a mass market stereo receiver. But, when it comes to digital chips the semi-conductor manufacturer becomes the key supplier and everything changes. Making chips is all about volume, we all know how Moore's law drove down the cost of processing in computers ultimately turning them into commodities. The same dynamic took over the audio preamp/receiver. You had to be a larger company like Yamaha or Denon to get access to the new technology and you had to spend millions of dollars on hardware and software engineering to bring your products to market. Now higher performance is defined by how many logo's are on the front panel and which one has the latest software algorithm. It wasn't enough to have better sound if you did not have the latest technology. Preamps became commoditized and we all now speak of the ubiquitous $1,000 dollar receiver being specified into $50,000 home theaters.

Moving now from audio to video we have seen this same race to the bottom with performance and features in flat screen televisions. We all know how little profit is left in TVs for resellers and how quickly the digital processing in the TV gives the latest and greatest for less. So where does performance still matter?

Loudspeakers and rooms while improved through the use of some digital technologies like class D amplifiers and room equalizers are still area's of the playback chain where performance can be improved through mechanical elements like better drivers and tweeters, better placement of subwoofers and listeners and better designed acoustic environments. When you are looking for better, look to the technologies which have not changed dramatically since the 1930s when the dynamic speaker was invented. Marry that fine loudspeaker with great dispersion and dynamic range to a room that is designed for good low frequency modal distribution and has the correct balance of reflection and absorption and you will create a system that blows away the home theater in a box.

 

Digital technology has made wonderful improvements to all areas of audio and video. Just don't forget where better performance can be achieved on the other side of the digital to analog converter.