The Term "High Resolution" no longer means anything in terms of speakers

[Flint]

The most abused marketing phrase of CES 2018 related to small Bluetooth speakers claiming to be "High Resolution."

How can a small speaker box with two 1.5" speakers and a passive radiator or two be called "high resolution"? Well, I cannot explain it but it was a common term in the small portable speaker marketing space this year at CES 2018. What are they possibly thinking? Well, to be fair, today's tiny fullrange speakers are better than they were just a few years ago. So, they are better than we may have heard in the past. But they are nowhere close to what anyone who frequents this forum would call a high resolution speaker.

So, the use of English is again being abused to sell $25 Bluetooth speakers.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

High Fidelity is dead.

 

[Dentman]

Not dead, it's on life support.

 

[Haywood]

Let's face it. Mass market audio gear sounds way better than it ever has before and is therefore "good enough" for most people. That makes our hobby even more niche than it was before, but it doesn't make it dead. The upside is that even we can enjoy the ability to toss small, decent sounding speakers all over the house and play music across all of them. Pervasive music used to be very expensive. Now it is ubiquitous. I would take just about any of these speakers over a Fisher shelf system from the 1980s for sound quality alone, let alone cost, convenience and size. This is a GOOD thing.

 

[Towen7]

Let's face it. Mass market audio gear sounds way better than it ever has before and is therefore "good enough" for most people. That makes our hobby even more niche than it was before, but it doesn't make it dead. The upside is that even we can enjoy the ability to toss small, decent sounding speakers all over the house and play music across all of them. Pervasive music used to be very expensive. Now it is ubiquitous. I would take just about any of these speakers over a Fisher shelf system from the 1980s for sound quality alone, let alone cost, convenience and size. This is a GOOD thing.

This is pretty much my view. But I'm an eternal optimist.

 

[Flint]

I totally agree that "average" sound quality us light years better today than just a few years ago.

But I struggle with a term like "high resolution" being applied to 24 bit, 192 kbps digital audio in the same space as a 6 inch wide $75 Bluetooth speaker. Simply adding a qualifier would fix it completely, such as "the highest resolution BT speaker ever in its class" would quiet my bitching on this issue.

 

[Dentman]

Agreed.

Let's face it. Mass market audio gear sounds way better than it ever has before and is therefore "good enough" for most people. That makes our hobby even more niche than it was before, but it doesn't make it dead. The upside is that even we can enjoy the ability to toss small, decent sounding speakers all over the house and play music across all of them. Pervasive music used to be very expensive. Now it is ubiquitous. I would take just about any of these speakers over a Fisher shelf system from the 1980s for sound quality alone, let alone cost, convenience and size. This is a GOOD thing.

 

[Haywood]

I totally agree that "average" sound quality us light years better today than just a few years ago.

But I struggle with a term like "high resolution" being applied to 24 bit, 192 kbps digital audio in the same space as a 6 inch wide $75 Bluetooth speaker. Simply adding a qualifier would fix it completely, such as "the highest resolution BT speaker ever in its class" would quiet my bitching on this issue.

This goes in the same general category as shitty stereo systems in the days of old that had huge stickers across the front saying things like "600 WATTS".

 

[heeman]

I am still striving for "highest resolution" at my place...............

 

[TitaniumTroy]

I'm with heman, the search for audio perfection lives on at my place too. I try my best to remain faithful to the original sound.