Distortion of Sound ...

This video is really an advertisement for Harman's Clari Fi software which claims to restore the missing data from low bit rate MP3 files. Frankly, I'm not buying it.
 
James Tanner - Bryston said:
Yes I think it is a stretch to assume you can get something back???

james
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Whatever they "get back" they just guessed at by using some algorithm that attempts to put the pieces of Humpty Dumpty back together again. My guess is that the people who bought MP3s in the first place and deemed them "good enough" are not going to be willing to pay money for a gadget that will supposedly make their "good enough" better. I could be wrong, but I don't think this will be a money maker for Harman.

I found the overall premise of the video to be somewhat misleading knowing what the ulterior motive of Harman are. The main truth in this video was when someone said people will basically sacrifice anything for convenience. Digital audio has screwed itself and the recording companies that thought it was going to make them a fortune. Digital was introduced before it was really ready in terms of SQ of both the recordings and the first generation CD players used to play back the recordings. Those of us with good analog systems cringed when we first heard CDs. And then, in the name of convenience, a way was found to make digital sound even worse by using lossy compression in order to shrink the amount of space used to store the recorded material. And then we had the equivalent of a Beta/VHS format war when some people tried to take digital to a level past RBCD and introduced competing formats in DVD-A and SACD. Neither really took off, although DSD is making a comeback.

And now the record companies have found themselves in the position where they no longer control the distribution and sales of their music in the digital realm. Once the digital genie came out of the bottle and people could make bit for bit perfect copies of imperfect music, the game was basically over. It's ironic that many of the major labels have returned to pressing LPs because it's one of the few areas they can actually make some money.

Getting back to Harman, it's hard to educate people about something they really don't give a damn about. If you went to work tomorrow and started asking your coworkers to explain what they know about digital audio, some of them might know there are MP3s and CDs, but they probably couldn't explain what the differences are. The vast majority will have no idea there is such a thing as hi-rez digital audio and wouldn't know the sampling rate of RBCD let alone any higher bit depth and sampling rates. Ask the same people if they know what DVD-A is or what SACD is and see if they don't look at you like you have 3 eyeballs. So Harman is going to try and educate these people and suddenly make them care about their low-rez digital??
 
Yes Clari Fi is a fools errand if you ask me. The right answer is obvious and that is to get music labels to make at least CD-quality but better yet hi-rez downloads available of all their catalogs and educate the consumer on why this is the right way of consuming music. As storage becomes cheaper and as network bandwidth improves, file sizes becomes increasingly irrelevant and getting high-quality sound should become widely available. Neil Young and Pono is one push to do this. Sony has been on a push to market their new hi-rez digital players and educating the public on the merits of hi-rez digital. Clearly Harman is trying to do this here as well but their push behind ClariFi is misplaced if you ask me.
 
It was a nicely produced video with ulterior motives. I expect to see a part 2 version soon where Harman claims victory for "fixing" the compression problem. You also have to remember that compression is used not only to save hard drive space but also to increase loudness which is all part of the digital loudness wars that plagues everyone who likes having dynamic range in their music. My point in saying this is we need to separate compression from lossy compression so they don't become blurred in the discussion. Harman's video was all about lossy compression and not compression used on 16/44.1 digital.

Instead of worrying about a fix for something that was broken from the start (and was designed to be broken), companies that deliver digital music to consumers should give us the best they are capable of, not the worst. If the artists really gave a damn about their sound quality, more of them might be demanding to be recorded in analog. It's not like good recording studios are clueless on how to make great recordings.
 
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