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Steradian wrote:

One area where standards have failed is in HDTV.  I have no sympathy for the morons who decided to have 2 standards, 720p and 1080i.  It is clear they prostrated themselves to corporate bribery to allow such to be called standards.  There is absolutely no justification to have an interlaced signal be a standard when no digital display technology benefits from an interlaced input, and the CRT's which can benefit from an interlaced signal are no longer manufactured.  1080p which Blu-ray produces is clearly the standard that should have been chosen when these morons assembled in Washington or wherever to whore themselves to the highest bidders to establish their "standard".  Discussion of video is off topic here, but I mention it only in relation to the concept of establishing a standard.  Establishing a standard of what shall be correct audio is much more difficult than establishing a simple, uniform standard of video, and even that was botched by our "best and brightest".  There are many people right now watching 4:3 video material stretched to fit a 16:9 screen and don't see anything wrong with it.  I suspect a similar distortion of sound is something they have come to accept as normal as well.

Yes, the discussion of video is off topic here but it is depends what video discussion we are talking about. I think video and audio have remarkably similar fate. In audio we presume that better audio reproduction is able to open some kind of new opportunities to consume music. In video we also presume that better quality of picture give to us more opportunity to see, or to see better.

There is however a twist in all of it.  We can look at a thing but we might not necessary see what we could. Another person can see the “things” without even looking. So, how better sight, of highest contrast ratio of video reproduction would enrich our ability to understand what we are looking at? A person who understands where I am going with it would understand what kind audio I advocate and what I call high-end audio.

Let stay with video examples.  I personally give up on Video in end of 90s and I do not care about quality Video image.  Furthermore, recently buying a new large TV and researching a great number of new technologies and results I was so much disappointed with what I saw that I bought the worst TV, purely intentionally in order to demonstrate to myself the “quality of video doe not mater”. Remind you that I spend a number of years working and running a custom printing lab , the people who use to print  color in the time silver photography are not fools in visual analyses. So, with video examples we have a “better “ video, let say betters TV that doe all the greatest things. However, how much all those greatest thing are able to create more powerful visual metaphors?  I do not think that the contemporary understanding of better TV even includes this definition. The very same with audio.  Sound might be better to the different degree but those degrees just the sounds in most cases not Sound.

Unicon, insist that some kind of mandatory standards in audio reproduction shall be formed. I presume that he implies the true standards of perception not the surrogate crap that we have today. Yes, it might be very useful but there is one bump on this road.

People who read my site might get the message that I am very individualistic in my audio interests. Did you ever ask yourself the question why?  The answer is that I understand that any meaningful socializing in audio interests presume that mutual standards exist. Who in audio is in position to herd audio interests and audio standards? Right the audio marketologs: reviewers, magazine editors, sales personals. However, they are not equipped, neither from cultural nor from the audio-understanding perspective not only to sell audio standards but even to understand them.  So, I feel that until the dirt that run audio today is at power absolutely nothing in meaningful audio standards would be advanced. So, instead to fighting with windmills and to make myself a target for their idiotic accusation I pretty much send everyone to fuck them and do my own this in my very private world. BTW, this is why of the explanation why my audio real are very different from what audio people get out there

I would like to point out that I very similarly behave in video. The difference is that I withdrew myself from any “video pursue to happiness” and just do not care about video as I feel that whatever is happen in there is barbaric anyhow. I did not withdraw myself audio. Yet…

Still, the point is that Audio and Video share the very same illnesses.  OK, now I begin to sound like Ted Kaczynski  but it does not change the fact that Audio and Video underperform and there is NO proper social mechanisms to change anything. Deal with it. 

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