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EDN Europe's Editor Graham Prophet posts a selection of comments and insights prompted by the many items of industry news and rumour that cross the editorial desk or are gathered on his frequent travels to interviews, press conferences and events around Europe - and further afield - and somehow never find their way to the magazine or the web site, recovering some of the information otherwise lost in the noise level...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Smoke and mirrors

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A press release in my in-box tells us that at the Audio Engineering Show (AES) in New York, a design consultancy called Schwartz Engineering & Design, in the person of one David Schwarz, will demonstrate a completely new principle of microphone. In the Laser-Accurate mic, a laser beam passes through a cell, crossing a laminar-flow air stream that in turn carries fine suspended particles (smoke, basically). Sound entering the cell disturbs the particles, and the disturbance is detected in the laser. This creates a microphone that is, according to the text, completely free of any colouration of the sound, unlike any other microphone technology. The picture of the demonstration, however – allowing that it’s a prototype – shows something that isn’t exactly miniature or portable, so how practical the concept is, is open to doubt.
But the real irony is that the press release goes on to assert that Mr. Schwarz is the “holder of six critical digital audio patents, including one that is the basis for the MP3 file format, [and] is himself an audiophile.”
In terms of audio quality, MP3 was a landmark, coming at the end of – in round numbers – a century of development of recorded sound. The advent of MP3, in the form it has been used (and abused) around the world, represented a big step backwards, and ensured that most people who now listen to any form of music do so at a quality level set at a default value of “just-about-good-enough”. Most don’t know (and, to be fair, probably don’t care) that the sound they are getting is a shadow of what recording technology can deliver. I’d better not say any more on that, otherwise I’ll be in danger of encouraging the wilder fringes of the audiophile faction, who should only be allowed out of their locked rooms on special occasions.
But; contributor-to-MP3 goes on to develop ultimate-fidelity-microphone: I like the symmetry of that.

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