It's About The Return Of High Fidelity

On June 20th, Universal Music Group announced the release of it's new high resolution audio disc called High Fidelity Pure Audio at Dolby Head quarters in London. What's interesting about this news is that this is not the first attempt to introduce such a product. About 10 years ago, it was DVD Audio and SACD. And, there's the question of why now, when consumers are beginning to move onto digital downloads and streaming media?

The High Fidelity Pure Audio disc is basically a Blu Ray disc that can be played back on any Blu Ray device or PS3. The bit resolution is 24/96kHz which has become the standard for recording major releases and is much greater than the 16 bit 44.1kHz found on today's CDs. Most high end mp3s may be 256kbps to 320kbps and the file is a lossy file, which means that some audio was removed when the music was encoded.

The mp3 has been a great start for the age of digital distribution, but it only provides a measure of immediacy, The sound quality has always been lacking. The average listener may not be able to discern the difference between an mp3 and a lossless music file such as FLAC, but with digital, the higher the resolution the better the sound.

There are those who think this move by the High Fidelity Pure Audio group or, HFPA will only meet with failure. There is, and this is just my opinion, the possibility that there maybe new audio devices in the works. And, the release of another optical playback media is a good way to not only take advantage of the growth of Blu Ray, but possibly to introduce new hardware. Also, HFPA discs will be sold with the added bonus of downloading your music as a 320kbps mp3 or lossless FLAC.

This might be a good time to bring the FLAC file to the forefront. A FLAC file is like a zip file for music. No information is lost when the file is encoded. The same amount of data that goes into the file is what you get back when it is decoded. Plus, a FLAC file can be played while in it's encoded form and still deliver the same sound as the file it was made from. Making major releases available as FLAC files would give listeners both the immediacy that they've come to enjoy from downloading, with the added bonus of improved sound quality.

I think that it will be interesting to see just what will happen in the months ahead. While it's clear that most music lovers have kind of forgotten about high fidelity in this digital age, there's always the possibility that all that is needed is time and opportunity for music fans to find their way back to true fidelity at last.