Ten Failed Tech Trends for 2005

Ten Failed Tech Trends for 2005: "High Fidelity Digital Audio

Most digital audio on portable players is highly compressed. For the majority of pop and rock music, that's not a big deal. Recordings are often 'too hot' even for CDs, and compressing already distorted audio doesn't have much audible impact. But compressed MP3, WMA, and AAC files often will throw away too much.

This isn't exactly a new argument. The iPod and its camp followers in the digital audio player business seem to be the modern incarnation of the 1960s transistor radio. Way back then, audiophiles complained vociferously about how the transistor radio was creating a generation of consumers who couldn't appreciate quality audio. That lament is echoed by industry pundits (me included) who yearn for even higher-fidelity sound than current CD technology can deliver.

While a scant few players do support lossless compression formats (mostly FLAC), lossless formats are generally unavailable for portable players. As the storage capacity of these players increases, the designers seem to think you want to watch tiny video, rather than listen to clean, pristine, losslessly compressed music. So we get ten gazillion songs in 128KB format, rather than a few hundred encoded with lossless compression."