What will the next breakthrough in Audio be?

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Speaker Dude

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Joined 2005
Or will there only be refinements from now on?
Seems like the technology has not advanced much over the last decade except for maybe digital recording/compression/encoding. Speakers and amps are better but fundamentally the same. Here's some things I'm looking forward to:
1. Wireless speakers. These will happen once we figure out a practical way to transmit power wireless-ly or maybe when batteries become really good.
2. Directed sound. People have tried it with some success but with poor efficiency and fidelity. Possibly eliminates the need for wireless speakers.
3. Big sound in a small box. This is one area where things have been getting better. It is amazing how much sound they can get out of those little bluetooth speakers these days. Too bad the sound isn't very good.
4. Direct sound-brain interface. Imagine the soundstage!
 
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Waly

Banned
Joined 2011
Speaker Dude said:
Or will there only be refinements from now on?
Seems like the technology has not advanced much over the last decade except for maybe digital recording/compression/encoding. Speakers and amps are better but fundamentally the same. Here's some things I'm looking forward to:
1. Wireless speakers. These will happen once we figure out a practical way to transmit power wireless-ly or maybe when batteries become really good.
2. Directed sound. People have tried it with some success but with poor efficiency and fidelity. Possibly eliminates the need for wireless speakers.
3. Big sound in a small box. This is one area where things have been getting better. It is amazing how much sound they can get out of those little bluetooth speakers these days. Too bad the sound isn't very good.
4. Direct sound-brain interface. Imagine the soundstage!
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5. Stereophile files for bankruptcy.
 
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Circlomanen

Member
Joined 2004
The general trend is to abandon the old high Qts (more then 0.1) drivers that achieves a flat response by the resonant behaviour of the driver and enclosure. Once you get some real Bl and some low Qes and Qts (below 0.1 - Qts=0.01 would be even better) and you shape the response by DSP, you can start to get some real efficiency and a much improved transient response. A sloppy resonant behaviour (Q above 0.1) can never achieve any precise control over the cone.

B&C IPAL are great early examples of this trend.

Cheers,
Johannes
 
billshurv

billshurv

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Joined 2014
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If you want high fidelity it is.

There are solutions (smyth realiser) but too expensive. The rise in headphone listening should mean its time to happen again. I would prefer ambisonics to take off, but dobly dooberry seems to won the wars on the source format.
 
billshurv

billshurv

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infinia said:
uggh no one wants 'high fidelity' and what ever that means to you.
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Means sounding like I was there. Which in the case of a concert needs a soundfield not some crippled 2-speaker rendition.
sorry IMO headphones and brand names isn't advancing audio

but I tend to focus on the music and lifestyle not hardware and synthesis
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Vive la difference (with apologies to all our French friends). If we all wanted the same it would be boring. I listen to more hours a day of music on headphones than elsewhere and the tech is closer to being mainstream on those for full soundfield, so that is my hope.

As for lifestyle, I certainly don't put on my tux just to listen to opera :p
 
infinia

infinia

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live concert recordings and studio (productions) are 2 different things! the former I tend to despise (live records ) but not because of my "bad" reproduction methods for them. but "being there" would mean crowds / noise, not mention smells , but I can see our differences from the last thread in the music forum, otherwise 'being there" is a false goal set 2 generations ago
 
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Speaker Dude

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Joined 2005
gpauk said:
On a more serious note, the technology of creating sound in space by "beating" 2 ultrasonic sound beams by creating nonlinearities, so you hear the difference frequency, is fascinating. There's one or two products out there, eg Soundlazer, but there's a long way to go...
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I've tried this with tweeters running one tweeter at 20KHz and one at 19KHz, I could hear the 1K difference signal. However it took several watts of power to each tweeter to make a sound that was just barely audible. I'm sure it would make all the dogs go crazy.
 
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Speaker Dude

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Joined 2005
billshurv said:
As the whole thrust of Atmos is object oriented sound, yes. Your receiver effectively will do the mix in real time against the calibration for your speakers and room.
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Yes Atmos does sound good. But I was thinking more of the sound that goes with VR headsets. Will it seem as though the sound is actually coming from VR objects or, like most headphones, sound like voices in my head. The little bit of VR I've tried made me nauseous after 30 seconds and it had no sound.
 
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