‘High-Res Audio’ Definition Will Be ‘Blanket Thing,’ Not Technical Spec, Heiblim Says

The Hi-Res Audio Experience initiative, backed by CEA, audio hardware companies and labels such as Sony Music and Universal Music, hopes in the next few weeks to release the first draft “Hi-Res Audio” definition, Robert Heiblim, vice chairman of the CEA audio division, told Consumer Electronics Daily.

The definition won’t be a technical spec, “but more of a blanket thing,” Heiblim said. “We have to get out there by May to have a hope for being in the conversation for holiday,” Heiblim said. As it stands now, the hi-res initiative is focusing on “anything that’s better than CD resolution,” Heiblim said.

Once that definition is agreed on, there will “probably” be a logo on audio equipment and next to premium music downloads identifying them as hi-res audio, Heiblim said. A logo won’t be mandatory but is “helpful,” Heiblim said. “Those things make a real difference in the aisles of a Target, a Best Buy or a Walmart,” Heiblim said.

The goal of the initiative is primarily about awareness that higher quality audio -- beyond that of a typical MP3 -- exists, Heiblim said. “If we can get a buzz among people who have heard it and that they hear the difference, then much of the rest of it can take care of itself,” he said. If a year from now there has been industry-wide promotion “and a constant expansion of the number of tracks, then I'm confident that we'll be able to get the attention of large music sellers like Amazon and Apple,” Heiblim said.

Some artists are venturing into high-res audio already. Heiblim cited Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who launched his most recent release in both MP3 and hi-res. And Neil Young’s Pono high-resolution music service aims to raise the bar for music playback.

Mass adoption shouldn’t be necessary for the top audio download services to become interested, Heiblim said. If large-scale adoption does occur, “then it will be ubiquitous, it will just happen,” he said. Mass-market adoption “can occur within a year with wide product placement and awareness,” he said.

The initiative, which began to come together last fall, is a “confluence of desires” among audio enthusiasts such as Heiblim and his client hardware maker Astell&Kern, artists and studios, Heiblim said. “The artists hear the difference” between a CD of their music and an MP3 version, Heiblim said. As digital recording has become better, differences are more evident, he said. Audiophiles, who are attracted to hi-res audio either for taste, “like fine wine,” or for the advancement of the science, “always want to push the edge,” Heiblim said. And today, state of the art in music recording is 24-bit/96 kHz, which uses more bandwidth to deliver greater bit depth and dynamic range than what is on a standard 16-bit/44.1 kHz CD.

Heiblim calls the initiative “a chance to repair” recorded music quality for a large number of people,” who may never have heard uncompressed music. Audiophiles have taken matters into their own hands over the years and get their hi-res music from disc, LP or niche download services such as HDtracks, Chesky Records and Acoustic Sounds. For hi-res audio to be successful, record labels have to release more music in hi-res formats, he said.

An MP3 version of a recording “throws away 75 percent of the data in an original recording, Heiblim said, and that number can go as high as 95 percent in a complex recording. The factors that led to that compression in the early days of the iPod were a constraint on cost of storage and the number of songs that could fit on an MP3 player. The trade-offs required led to a listening experience with “dramatic” differences between the original recording and final playback, Heiblim said.

Heiblim cited a hi-res listening session with Jason Bonham, son of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. On one master track, the younger Bonham was startled to hear his father playing bongo drums. He had heard the MP3 version but so much detail was lost in it he couldn’t differentiate that it was a bongo drum from another type. Heiblim cited other examples of music “discovered” in audio masters. Members of the initiative conducted a listening audition with a recording engineer who played different versions of a track on CD, iTunes, Pandora, Spotify and other streaming services and found “there are big differences” among the services, Heiblim said. But aside from the “flavor of ice cream” differences, “in some cases it was like, ‘Oh, there were background singers,’ or ‘oh, there were saxophones,'” Heiblim recalled.

A talking point of the hi-res audio initiative is that listeners aren’t hearing all the music they've paid for, Heiblim said. What hi-res audio purports to do is to get listener “as close to that master a you can,” he said. Even if that doesn’t matter to some listeners, the artists and sound engineers know, Heiblim said. Whatever MP3 music is being played on an iPhone or Galaxy smartphone doesn’t sound to artists and producers like what they recorded in the studio, he said.

Digital-to-analog converters (DACs) are available at various price points that can support a range of hi-res files including FLAC, WAV, AIFF, ALAC, DSD and Ogg Vorbis files, Heiblim noted. They decode in different ways, which makes for the kind of product differentiation that audiophile equipment has always been known for. If the hi-res audio initiative is successful, “you'll see everything be able to decode these files,” he said. The initiative isn’t so much about whether one approach is superior to another, Heiblim said, because that’s irrelevant to the goal of making hi-res files available for download. No equipment can “put data back where it isn’t,” Heiblim said.

Cynics might suggest that the initiative on the studios’ part is just another way to get consumers to buy yet another version of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album. There is that side of it, Heiblim conceded, as studios look for ways to revive interest in music. Regardless of intent, Heiblim said, the movement is forward-looking and targeted to downloadable and streaming files, he said.

The initiative isn’t proposing a new format that requires new hardware and it doesn’t propose a fixed standard, Heiblim said. Some hardware already has the capability to play back hi-res files. As the smartphone market becomes more competitive, better audio is one way handset makers are differentiating their product. An iPhone today can play back AIFF and ALAC files, he said. “It’s important that people understand there’s no need to buy everything new,” he said. “All these players will also play MP3s,” he said. “You can adopt hi-res audio and start listening without having to buy anything else new."

High-res audio is an effort by the music community and high-end equipment makers to let consumers know “you can have all the advantages of digital -- portability, storage of a lot of tracks -- and all the sound quality,” Heiblim said. For now, not all the music streaming services are on board and “are still limited” in sound quality, Heiblim said. But record companies have committed to releasing “hundreds of albums” on sites like HDtracks, he said. And roughly a dozen niche streaming services are delivering hi-res tracks. There aren’t any technical roadblocks to delivering a hi-res version of a track, Heiblim noted. Bandwidth requirements are higher, but there’s no reason why a “Pandora-like” service couldn’t stream uncompressed tracks, he said. “Even uncompressed audio isn’t much bandwidth compared with people streaming video from Netflix,” he said.

Heiblim is hopeful about the future of hi-res audio based on the cross-industry efforts of interested parties. “It’s the first time in a long time that we've had the equipment industry and the music industry talking together again,” he said.