Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/04/14/high_fidelity_pure_audio_launch_event_elton_john_goodbye_yellow_brick_road/
Audio fans, prepare yourself for the Second Coming ... of Blu-ray
High Fidelity Pure Audio – is this what your ears have been waiting for?
Posted in Legal, 14th April 2014 09:01 GMT
Pics Apparently, 60 per cent of the population has access to Blu-ray players. Who’d have thunk it? Really, if you include the Sony PlayStation consoles and now the Xbox One, it all adds up... possibly. The statistic came from Olivier Robert-Murphy, global head of new business at Universal Music Group, during an event held at Metropolis Studios in London last week.
Getting across the notion that we’re constantly tripping over Blu-ray players is an essential message for the interested parties gathered to remind us that a couple of weeks ago, the 2014 edition of Elton John’s classic album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was launched.
Metropolis Studios is driving the HFPA mastering effort
Truth be told, this somewhat tardy event wasn’t so much about an excuse for the press to get a surround sound blast of Bennie and the Jets in the Metropolis listening room courtesy of its 2-metre tall PMC speakers, but an opportunity to wave the flag for Blu-ray as the next generation audio format.
Yes, that’s right folks: forget downloads. Discs are where it’s at, though not CD of course: it's time to form an orderly queue for High Fidelity Pure Audio.
Since last summer, this format has been touted by Universal along with Sony Music. What makes it interesting, practical and even plausible for consumers is that High Fidelity Pure Audio discs simply take advantage of the existing provision for sound on the Blu-ray format. Apart from a menu screen you won’t see any video, something which the packaging is at pains to point out.
High Fidelity Pure Audio mix options – no Dolby True HD on this title
What you do get though, are high resolution versions in PCM stereo (uncompressed) and surround mixes in Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio – the latter two relying on lossless data compression techniques. You might get only one of the surround formats or both, it just depends on the title.
Regardless of the playback choice, the prerequisite for all audio to be released in this format is a minimum resolution of 24 bits – which delivers a massive dynamic range – and 96kHz, a frequency response well beyond human hearing. That said, 192kHz recordings are accommodated and being mastered on High Fidelity Pure Audio (HFPA) discs too. A higher sample rate delivers greater accuracy when digitising analogue audio, reducing quantisation errors.
CD and High Fidelity Pure Audio compared – click for a larger image
Last year, the album count on HFPA's launch was around 30 titles, but that has since grown to 100. Metropolis Studios is behind the conversions to the new format, reviving analogue tape for remastering and remixing – a process covered in El Reg's history of magnetic tape – as well as preparing new material for duplication.
One aspect to this is repurposing existing back catalogue remasters that were prepared for CD. While these would have been released in CD’s 16-bit/44.1kHz resolution, the studios would have created higher resolution versions and these are being drawn upon to use on the new format.
Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick road album is a case in point, with Bob Ludwig behind the 2014 remaster of the stereo audio for this higher resolution format. However, the 5.1 surround sound mix was the work of Greg Penny in 2003, which was destined for Super Audio CD (SACD).
Music menu: High Fidelity Pure Audio stereo mix options on a £150 Blu-ray player – click for a larger image
As a format, SACD failed because it demanded that listeners shell out around £400 for a player capable of handling it. By contrast, HFPA relies on readily available equipment that’s a fraction of that cost and installed in many homes already. The catch here is: do these households have home theatre surround sound systems that would do justice to the 5.1 selling point, let alone a hi-fi that would reveal any difference over CD from 24-bit/192kHz stereo playback?
Arguably, the Blu-ray players are out there, but are we really going to see folk rush to revamp their audio gear? Especially, when many of them will have recently coughed up for the convenience of a soundbar for the telly featuring Bluetooth to hook up to a phone for MP3 playback.
AV separates on the decline compared to compact systems and portable audio – click for a larger image
If the chart shown by Olivier Robert-Murphy is anything to go by, the purchase of AV separates capable of doing justice to the format is on the wane. So is High Fidelity Pure Audio just a ruse to raise awareness of quality and sell high end systems so that folk will feed them with the new format to justify the purchase? Isn't that what we were supposed to do with Blu-ray video once we'd bought our HDTV?
Yet rather than buy big panels, viewing on tablets has taken hold, 3D didn't convince and now the supposed immersive experience of a curved panel is the latest enticement to invest in the big picture, with smart TVs all geared up for video streaming.
Token gesture
Although high resolution audio is to be welcomed, as a fillip to quality audio gear sales, probably the best that can be hoped for with this format is that punters will buy into it with a mind to upgrade to a home theatre system one day, but will make do with the stereo mix for now.
For those with concerns about music on the move, the format can’t be ripped or so we’re led to believe. However, you get a free download token inside each HFPA title. In France, you’re entitled to FLAC 24-bit lossless tracks but in the UK it’s a 320kbps MP3 at the moment, as Joshua Phillips, UMG's high fidelity pure audio product manager explained.
Voucher for MP3 downloading in the UK – the French get FLAC though
“It’s something we are interested in rolling out worldwide, we’re kind of, a little bit torn at the moment in terms of internal policy on how to proceed with such a thing. At the moment, we’re content with MP3, purely because of the portability aspect which is the main perk of this [voucher scheme]. We’re aware of the demand and constantly reminded [regarding the FLAC option].”
Time will tell who gets the FLAC, but perhaps the lure of high definition audio will see some movement in demand for surround audio systems among ardent fans, who are tempted by the notion that this listening experience would be akin to the band playing in your living room. Certainly, the remasters played at Metropolis were robust and squeaky clean, but for those intimately familiar with the original mixes from the 1970s, the 5.1 material offered quite a few surprises.
Redemption Song: registering intrusively demands date of birth and gender
Unlike the stereo remasters from the back catalogue that will enhance the original mix – taken either from original analogue tapes or high resolution digital copies – the 5.1 surround content consists of brand new mixes created using the digital copies of the analogue multitrack master tapes.
So it’s highly unlikely you’re getting any of the original personnel manning the faders here, just some carefully chosen engineer whose work goes through a process of approval from (surviving) members of the band or studio production team.
In effect, the surround content is a Mix MkII with none of the original equipment, everything is emulated – the sound engineering equivalent of being a tribute band with better recording gear than the original artist. Another way of looking at it is that it's like getting hold of a Bill Brandt negative, scanning it and then putting it through Instagram to make it seem more authentic. By contrast, remastering is more akin to scanning the original photographic print and digitally processing it so that it can be enlarged it without noticeable artefacts.
A selection of High Fidelity Pure Audio discs on show at Metropolis
To those gathered checking out tracks from Selling England By The Pound by Genesis and brilliantly engineered by Rhett Davies back in 1973, the quirks in the 5.1 mix with an over enthusiastic top end, elevated minor details and slightly extended outros were distracting rather than enhancing.
You’ll have to make up your own mind whether Mix MkII is for you. I would prefer to say “Mix two point oh” but that could be confused with 2.0 that appears on the packaging to describe the stereo content. Still, these inconsistencies regarding the sound created by the band’s esprit de corps in the studio at the time and the 5.1 mixes by someone who wasn’t even born then will be a matter of personal taste. It’s a form of versioning and not everyone is going to buy into it.
Home theatre? The Metropolis listening room has 2 metre tall speakers, with a surround array in the walls
That said, for new material, High Fidelity Pure Audio does offer the artist some obvious benefits to deliver a product of fantastic quality, technically speaking at least, with the additional creative expression of surround sound mixing. Indeed, George Michael’s Symphonica is the current flagship HFPA title among the new releases.
It goes beyond 5.1 too, as Auros3D can deliver 9.1 content from within HFPA format, you just need an Auros decoder on your amp/receiver to take advantage of the extra four channels. The idea of having four extra speakers on top of 5.1 is to deliver height in the spatial mix.
Pay it again, Sam: High Fidelity Pure Audio Blu-ray disc alongside the remastered CD
It’s difficult to say whether High Fidelity Pure Audio will endure but Josh Phillips sounded hopeful, “We’re now also seeing releases being made available from all the other major record labels as well, which is very encouraging for the future of HD music, especially in a physical format.” Adding that 3/4 million units had been manufactured, he wouldn’t say how many had been sold.
Admittedly, I still buy CDs as I’m a sucker for sleeve notes and I prefer PCM audio because of the freedom it offers regarding encoding for mobile use. However, much as I admire the engineering talents of Alex Sadkin on Nightclubbing by Grace Jones, I don’t think I’ll buying it for a third time – vinyl, CD… HFPA?
The reason is one that seems likely to sound the death knell of HFPA unless somebody in marketing wakes up. Who wants to pay £17 for an album they’ve already got? Not me. And in a world of streaming services, what about £17 for a new release? Knock off a fiver and you might be getting close. ®