High Resolution, Bye Resolution

In my college days, we invited each other over to listen to our favorite music on giant speakers hooked up to tech'ed-out stereos. The more, the merrier. The acceptable sources were vinyl records or reel-to-reel tape. We got fired up about hearing the highs ("hear that high-hat cymbal crash !") and feeling the lows rattle our bones. This was a shared experience, although usually the guys got the best seats, nearest the stereo "sweet spot." The girls were usually not as enthusiastic anyway, so they didn't mind being pushed to the side a little. We were careful to make sure the speakers were hooked up right so we didn't get a phasing disaster. On a good night with good equipment, we admired the lack of 60-cycle hum, high-end hiss, pops and clicks, and all the other analog distractions that could dampen our listening pleasure. Some geeks got into 4-channel surround, but that was way out for most of us. We dreamed up all kinds of technological developments - multichannel surround, walls full of individual speakers for each instrument, direct-digital recording.

What we never dreamed of was mp3.

If someone had told us that the next generation would be listening to their music through individual earbuds as small as a pea, using compression to purposely ruin the audio quality and dynamic range, we would have reeled with laughter. But apparently, portability trumps quality. Another case in point: telephones. My generation still clings to their "home phones" or "land lines" as we ex-sailors (well, OK, I know some ex-sailors) like to call them, even though we have become just as dependent upon our wireless devices as are the younger generation. This generation of college students will likely see no need for home phones when they graduate and settle into homes. But there is a catch. The reason we older folks like our land lines is because we know something the kids don't (and don't really care about that much): the voice quality is better, unless you are one of the three people left whose wireless service is from Sprint. There are very simple technological reasons for this, but the bottom line is that for those really, really important conversations, especially with older relatives, I want the absolute best connection I can get, and that is still a land line. The "providers" (aka the telephone companies) measure this numerically as QoS, which stands for quality of service. They use specific voice-encoding methods to trade off coverage for sound quality, cost, and a host of other stuff. I switched from Sprint to Verizon for the coverage, but quickly discovered I had suffered a major drop in QoS. But guess what? - I stayed with Verizon, proving that, even for me, portability trumps quality. Worldwide, voice service is a break-even, no-growth business for all the wireless companies. They make their money from text messaging (it costs them next to nothing to provide, and they charge oodles for it) and 3G services, like music & video downloads. Guess who does all that? Certainly not folks my age! (Yes, people actually do pay for ringtones. I still can't believe it.)

So.....right now, the big thing is home theater. Get the biggest monster high-definition monitor, subscribe to the high-def channels, get BluRay....get the picture? I'll bet in one generation it will all be gone, replaced by kids watching compressed videos downloaded on-the-go to their low-res wireless terminals, oblivious to what they are missing. We old folks will be snickering while we watch The Godfather, re-released on BluRay, on our 80-inch widescreens. If we get lucky, maybe we will be able to get the soundtrack on a vinyl LP on eBay and invite some friends over to listen to it with us on our big stereo with awesome speakers.