Rolling Stone: They might sound like great song titles, but "21st Century Record Player," "Earth Storage" and "Thanks for Listening" aren't new Neil Young tunes. They're trademarks that the rocker recently filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Rolling Stone has found, and they indicate that Young is developing a high-resolution audio alternative to the MP3 format.
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Neil Young Trademarks New Audio Format
Rolling Stone: They might sound like great song titles, but "21st Century Record Player," "Earth Storage" and "Thanks for Listening" aren't new Neil Young tunes. They're trademarks that the rocker recently filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Rolling Stone has found, and they indicate that Young is developing a high-resolution audio alternative to the MP3 format.
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4 comments:
I watched the All Things D video and enjoyed Bob Lefsetz's commentary on it, but I think that some of Mr. Young's reasoning is flawed.
His 100% right now is ludicrously too high for the consumer. It makes sense to record at 192/24 if you're going to edit that content with plugins that alter audio on a per-sample basis and gain something from the increased resolution, but there's plenty of evidence that after a song is mastered, most consumers can't hear any improvement above 44.1/16 (CD quality), and nobody can hear the difference between 96k and 192k. Yes, we can all hear the difference between a 128mbps MP3 and a 44.1/16 WAV file under proper conditions, and, as it turns out, the current hardware (iPods included) can play 48/16.
The problem lies in distribution, not hardware. Apple is getting better at this with iTunes plus and a transition to Apple lossless (another format that makes format no longer the weakest link). As for "some rich guy" and Mr. Young's personal goal, Apple, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube, and the labels are the people who need to drive this, and they'll only do that if the consumer demands it... but Spotify already does this with improved audio quality with the paid service, and iTunes is getting there.
So Mr. Young probably won't be successful, but if his efforts raise consumer awareness, then they're worthwhile.
Where as I am familiar with Neil Young's body of work as a singer songwriter/musician, I was unaware that he moonlighted as a computer software innovator. I figured there was a new audio format in the works but I assumed it was in production by Sony or the good people at Bell Labs (thank you Joe Pino). I too am not an expert on sound media files although I did think his unplugged album had some pretty good tracks on it.
I had no idea that Neil Young was so involved in the production side of the music industry as well as the performance side. It's kind of crazy how he can just go create new audio formats and patent them. I've heard from other sources before what Daniel said about consumers not being able to perceive the difference between 44.1/16 and any higher sample/bitrate combinations, and I can't think of a more applicable situation than this one to question the necessity of even higher "quality" file formats when we have uncompressed .WAV that can run about 44.1/16 already and few people listen to recreationally.
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