Well,
sure I know Vegas does High Def Audio, and SF can push it to astronomic limits! I was kind of more thinking about authoring!
But I take your point about audio quality, I'm no elitist that's for sure but we sure seem to have gone backwards over the last few decades.
Diskwelder must have come down in price a fair bit from when I last looked but then again it seems the market for DVD-A would be pretty limited.
Now here's a funny thing, I've been rubbing shoulders with some of the older audiophiles and one of them told me he hated this new digital stuff. And what was the basis for that judgement?
Well he bought his daughter one of those new fangled mp3 player things and he thought it sounded pretty bad!
Sadly the guy thinks he's doing well getting 60dB S/N out of his reel2 reel decks.
Bob.

I think of the audio quality debate in the same subjective sense as DV vs 24P vs. film. In the end, it is all about personal preference, influenced by by past experience and future expectations. To many top audio engineers, analogue is still the only way to go - "it just sounds better". You can go into detail about the technical reasons for this; compression characterisitics, analogue "warmth", etc., but personal aesthetics weigh heavily here. With video, we associate the "film" look with 24 fps. What if we could shoot HD resolution with 1000 fps (kind of like 192 khz audio sampling, but not quite...)? Would we "like" this new "super high reolution" video? Or would we still prefer the look of 24 fps shot with a 35mm film camera? All of those film "artifacts" - grain, motion blur, etc., are aesthetically pleasing to many, and look "expensive" because that's what current and past feature films look like.

That being said, for audio, the difference between 44.1, 96, and 192 khz recordings is getting into Golden Ears territory, ie fairly subtle. Bit depth (16 to 24 and up) only increases dynamic range (except with intermediate effect processing). Surround is a big step forward. But for most comsumers, the differences between an mp3 at 384 kbps (see the new Sony HDV camera) and a DVD-A at 192 khz are reasonably small. With video, however, the differnces between frame rates, and film vs. digital, are often easily discerned by the layperson's eye.

My 2 cents,
Kevin.

This "backwards step" for audio is a consequence of the demise of Stereo. I was a classical music audiosnob for many years and when listening intently with eyes closed to the soundstage of a good stereo recording, top quality is discernable and necessary for that experience. But add souround sound, LFE, video and blend it all together and there is a lot of emotion and sensury stimulation to counter the lack of audio precision.

My old stereo system with it $3000 amp and its $3000 speakers is now here on my desk supplying the sound to my computer. In the home theater room there are seven relativly cheap Yamaha speakers and a measly 110w 7 channel Yamaha RXV2400 amp ($700), but with digital effects, a big sub-woofer, a large HDTV screen, the overall experience has much more to offer than the precise detailed stereo soundstage ever did. THX is not quality sound, but with big crashes and sound sources whirling behind your head I don't think it really matters.; the average Joe never says this sound is poor, quite the opposite, theater sound has improved by leaps and bounds in the last decase or so.

The visual thing is different. An exciting car chase, a big red fire ball will not hide poor resolution or lack of detail in shadow or highlights., and anyone like me who has seen a good deal of HDTV just can not fully enjoy lowres anymore. I only watch HD braodcasts now and once HDV becomes available on DVD, SD will be out.

I feel with increased standarisation, ultimately, what ever audio standard becomes associated with HDV will be the norm for all audio including serious music.

If you want to delve into quality sound go to the Klipsch forum and read about $500.00 crossovers, $100.00 #12 wires to feed the speakers, $75,000.00 Wilson speakers, oxygen content of the wires, 8 $3000.00
amps, one for each channel, $4000.00 DVD players, $4000.00 processors, $11,000.00 THX HT systems that they can't supply fast enough, BI-Wiring, BI-Amping, where 48kc sample rate is the pitts, and most of the Sony stuff is junk. They are in a different world than we.

JJK

I had a recording engineer tell me ions ago that spending thousands of dollars on audio gear was wasteful. After a certain price point, all you had were bragging rights. And louder didn't always equate to better.

Jay

the difference between 44.1, 96, and 192 khz recordings is getting into Golden Ears territory, ie fairly subtle.
Not even remotely true! Even a reasonably well-aged person with average hearing can hear the smoothness of a well-recorded vocal or a cymbal decay, piano decay, or other organic sound in it's release or sustain at higher sampling rates.
I'd have to disagree that the audio quality issue is like 24p vs 60i or similar. 24p offers an emotional quality in the motion blur. You'd suggest that a highly compressed MP3 with it's brittle high end and muddy low end can be equated to motion blur or a motion aesthetic?
Higher sampling rates are definitely not necessary, but in the end, the musician strives to create music with the greatest clarity, instrument definition, and artistic sensibility all rolled into one final piece. Then it's dumbed down to 44.1 where it loses feel and air. Then Windows Media Player or iTunes gets a hold of it and crunches it down to flat-sounding audio with no dynamic, smaller frequency range, and less 'feel.'
We are also primarily animals dependent on sound, not sight. As we dumb down audio, and if that's where things are truly going in the future, I wonder if it makes for dumber people? In other words, if we're going to start setting the norm for lower quality of media acceptance, what are we aspiring to? Sounds like a philosophical question, but the truth is, if society comes to expect and accept a lower quality, then we become less of a society and lower quality of humanity. Look at what Walmart has done to the world, and MP3 is the Walmart of the audio delivery world. In fact, that's what they sell on-line.

mhbstevens, I hope you're wrong about HDV and audio. HDV is mpeg 1 layer II audio at a bitrate of 384kpbs. Lesser quality than 44.1/CD audio. It has its limitations.
Jay, on the listener side you're right. You don't need super high end gear. But on the acquisition/authoring side, it's a slightly different story. Do you need 20K Apogee converters and 75K Hothouse monitors? Nope. But you definitely need more than a pair of plastic JBL computer speakers and a soundcrapper sound card. (I know you already know this, because I know you stepped up to a nice system recently.)

But you definitely need more than a pair of plastic JBL computer speakers and a soundcrapper sound card

So very true! Just got a pair of Genelec 1031A speakers - used, but in good condition. They sound so much better than the hi-fi tosh I was using before. Much easier to work with and I can hear so much more with them.
I used to be convinced that hearing subtle details was easier to do with headphones (and I suppose it still is to an extent) but with the Genelecs suddenly all that detail is right there in front of me!

Playing commercial releases through them really shows up the difference between ones that have been recorded on a budget/poorly mixed. (This through an Emu 1820M btw)

SPOT: "Not even remotely true! Even a reasonably well-aged person with average hearing can hear the smoothness of a well-recorded vocal or a cymbal decay, piano decay, or other organic sound in it's release or sustain at higher sampling rates."

Spot, let me qualify my comments by admitting I'm an advanced hobbyist, an audio guy at heart, and admire your participation in this forum, your books (I own the Vegas 4 book), and respect your extensive experience. That being said...

I think this a matter for debate. A lot of debate, in fact - try posting the above comment on rec.audio.pro and see what the old audio hacks have to say. I admit, I have not had the opportunity to compare between higher sampling rates in an acoustically treated room with high-end monitors, but to my ears (somewhat aged!), in my small recording space on a pair of Event monitors, the difference is subtle. The comparison, I agree, between mp3 and even WAV 44.1 is much more noticable (I archive my CD collection on hard drives as WAV files). My point is, for the consumer, we are starting to reach the point of diminishing returns. The (I feel) very small differences between 44.1 and 192 are not even an issue in most home listening environments; until major problems like standing waves, early reflections, room modes, low-end nulls and peaks, etc are addressed the consumer will likely never hear the difference between higher sampling rates, even with good ears and even A/B'd.

SPOT: "I'd have to disagree that the audio quality issue is like 24p vs 60i or similar. 24p offers an emotional quality in the motion blur. You'd suggest that a highly compressed MP3 with it's brittle high end and muddy low end can be equated to motion blur or a motion aesthetic?"

Not at all. Personally, I think mp3 at 128kbps sounds very "phasey" and flat. A better comparison is between analog and digital recording media. Some engineers feel there is a similar "emotional quality" recording to 1/2" tape - even at the expense of reduced dynamic range, higher noise, and other artifacts unique to analog tape.

Kevin.

(ps - now that I have your "ear" - maybe you could convince your Sony friends to port over the MIDI and VSTi capabilites in ACID to VEGAS...after Pinnacle bought Steinberg, things haven't been the same...)

There is so much BS thrown about in some audio circles it reminds me of some of my wife's cosmetics--"Deep-cleanses and renews with the essence of lotus oils and replenishes essential cellular lubricants..." Yeah, right.

Two comments:

(1) I have to laugh when people talk about the "purity" of tube amplification. Man, I am old enough to remember all the pains we students (electrical engineering) went through to try to mask all that tube "purity" when designing amps. We jumped for solid-state as soon as it became available, and not because we clamored for sound "impurity." The only fair way to judge something is to do it A-B style, and also double-blind (neither the listener or the tester knows which source is which). From what I've read there is very little gain in such tests by going to exotic audio hardware or supersonic sampling. More bit depth obviously gains you dynamic range, which IS very useful.

(2) Even if there were obvious coloration effects, the human brain is an amazing filter. Just consider how blown away you were the first time you saw just how extreme the color temperature shift is between daylight and incandescent. But you come indoors, and your brain very quickly and unconsciously recalibrates its "reality" to accommodate the color temp change. Another example: we used to have an old rear-projection TV set that produced a decent picture, but there was a pronounced color shift as one moved around the room. Nevertheless, no matter where you sat, it only took a couple of seconds for your eyes to automatically adjust.

(ps - now that I have your "ear" - maybe you could convince your Sony friends to port over the MIDI and VSTi capabilites in ACID to VEGAS...after Pinnacle bought Steinberg, things haven't been the same...)

I'm not a fan of this concept, I know others are. The Audio tools in Sonar and Cubase are weak because everything is mishmashed, and I think the MIDI tools in ACID could use tremendous improvement. Trying to throw Audio, Video, and MIDI into one application would be uber fat and slow. There was a tool proposed long ago called "Manifesto" that would do just this. I think it's gluttony at best, and would tick an awful lot of users off. I'd rather see better communication between Vegas and ACID, myself.

SPOT: "I'd rather see better communication between Vegas and ACID, myself."

I'd accept this - with ReWire? Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll bet there are a lot of audio guys out there like myself who are being turned on to video as it has become more affordable, especially in the last 5 years. The ability to write soundtrack music using VSTi (like Garritan's products, among others), and tweak it while editing the video at the same time, would be wonderful. You really think it would be "fat and slow"? My two year experience with Vegas suggests that the developers are capable of an awful lot, and I certainly have much more faith in them than with Steinberg. They managed to meld video and amazing audio tools seamlessly, so I would think that adding MIDI and VST would be a baby step for them.

Kevin.