High resolution portable Audio is almost here...

[Zing]

A great read from CNET.

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And I don't mean just the headlining topic but the entire article, including all its subtopics.

 

[Towen7]

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Audio pioneer John Meyer says FLAC is where it's at!

 

[mcad64]

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Audio pioneer John Meyer says FLAC is where it's at!

Pono files will be FLAC files that are available at different resolutions like, 192 kHz/24 bit, 96 kHz/24 bit , 44.1 kHz/16 bit. He says just use FLAC. He makes it sound like FLAC is some new audio format. My understanding is that it is just a compression algorithm..albeit a very good one. What he says doesn't make any sense to me!!?? He says using 96 kHz/24 bit is no good if it isn't recorded in 96 kHz/24 bit. The whole idea of Pono is to get (hopefully) the high resolution master in the first place.

 

[Flint]

Yeah... he makes no sense.

FLAC is just like ZIP or RAR in that it compressed the data through cool coding but in a way which can decoded on the fly for streaming media.

And, he is correct, what matters is the source - even if it was recorded in 192 kHz / 24 bit, if it is massively compressed, limited, over-equalized, and poorly mixed, it will still sound like crap. Think Radiohead, those recordings are terrible regardless of the format.

But, a clean, natural recording with minimal processing captured well with great microphones and great care on the engineers' part, well, that can be amazing.

 

[Zing]

Think Radiohead, those recordings are terrible regardless of the format.

Uh oh. I think CMonster is going to want to have a word with you. :violence-smack: