Published in News

Sony wants high-res audio

by on06 October 2014



Walkman is back

A quarter of a century after its Walkman made people walk into lamp posts, Sony is hoping to set the agenda again with "high-res" audio.

Things are not going well for Sony, it is expecting a $2.14 billion annual loss this year, is betting that music of superior quality to compact discs. High-resolution audio players have been on the market for a year, but now Sony wants them mass marketed.

Audio purists have long complained that digitised music has to be compressed so much to fit into the standard mp3 file format that it sounds far removed from how the musician or studio engineer intended. High-res digital music has a sampling frequency around four times that of a CD which means that more musical detail is captured, resulting in a far richer sound, if the player can handle it.

Sony's worldwide audio and video sales totalled around $3.9 billion dollars and it wants 20 percent of global audio sales to come from high-res products in a few years. Of course the new NW-ZX1 Walkman will set you back $700 so it is not cheap. Part of the problem is the huge size of the files, which are 10 or 15 times bigger than mp3s.

Rate this item
(0 votes)

Read more about: