Sound reproduction and playback

[David Horn]

<WONKISHNESS>
The biggest difference between analog and digital audio is time coherence. With the exception of very high sampling rate ADPCM, which is actually a digital rendering of the analog signal, with sampling rates higher than 4 to 10 times the highest frequency we can hear: 20kHz, almost all coding schemes favor efficiency over fidelity. In other words, the digital files are lossy. What's lost is almost always time coherence, but also can, and typically does, include some of the dynamic range and tonal integrity too.

So what effect does loss of time coherence involve? For one thing, imaging just falls apart. Because time coherence allows your ears to place sound in space if two loudspeakers are reproducing the same sound at slightly altered time offsets, The offsets have to be precise. To be that precise, digital sampling rates have to very high, but that makes files very large and impractical for use outside a studio. Another negative time coherence effect is known as transient intermodulation distortion (TID). If instruments seem harsh, that's the cause.

That's a small primer on the subject. I'll leave it there.
</WONKISHNESS>

[pbrower2a]

Unless one hears live music on stage, one does not know what good imaging is. Again, I notice that most of the new LPs of classical music are of pre-digital recordings that may offer better imaging in whatever format in which they are played back.

If I were to tell people how to buy a sound system I would tell people to first pay attention to speakers because there is no measurable way of discerning sound quality from specifications other than the depth of bass response. When I was looking for stereo equipment the last time (and that was over twenty years ago!) I bought some small bookshelf speakers... and I used music for string quartet to test the speakers for sonic merit. That is difficult music to bring to its fullest, but the typical work for full orchestra is for an ensemble in which most of the instruments are violins, violas, and cellos. Pipe organ? Unless one has a pipe organ, nobody can fully get the sound of a pipe organ in its fullest majesty -- even a small organ.

People are in tinier apartments than they used to be, so they obviously don't have the space for the gigantic speakers that recent college grads were buying. Electronics have been marketed much like toys -- regrettably even sound systems. What many of us considered awful compact stereos in the 1970s and 1980s are better than the schlock that fits the constrained space of apartments in places where there are jobs. (One cannot fully escape economic reality even if one hears Wagnerian bombast!) Economic reality is sweat-shop compensation and management, and that landlords can compel tenants to bid up apartment rents as if tenants were super-rich people bidding for Old Master paintings.

Still -- there was much shoddy recording when digital recording became the norm. It was superficially easier. The electronic section of playback and reproduction is much cheaper than it used to be (in the 1970s one could pay $300 for a receiver that gave 15 watts per channel and $500 for a receiver that offers 30 watts per channel, either of which is grossly inadequate today) -- but almost everything now has horrible speakers.

The problem may be with digital recording. I can find some early stereo recordings from the 1950s fully adequate as a sonic experience, but some more recent mass-market recordings utterly awful as sonic experiences. If I hear a fine 1950s recording on a crappy sound system, I know that I am missing something. If I hear it on a great sound system, I am satisfied. On the other hand if I hear a mediocre recording of a great orchestral performance on a great sound system, I am not excited. If I hear it on a bad sound system I am losing little.

Note well: that many of the sound systems on which people are playing back new vinyl LPs are awful. Most people have no idea of what high fidelity sounds like, having listened to highly-compressed formats on 'sound systems' best described as boom boxes in miniature -- or car stereo (the system might be good, but it comes with road and engine noise.

[David Horn]

(12-03-2018, 11:12 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Note well: that many of the sound systems on which people are playing back new vinyl LPs are awful. Most people have no idea of what high fidelity sounds like, having listened to highly-compressed formats on 'sound systems' best described as boom boxes in miniature -- or car stereo (the system might be good, but it comes with road and engine noise.

Each generation picks the aspects of their lives that matter most to them.  Today, music is ubiquitous and, typically, mediocre as you noted.  The audience for music doesn't seem to care.  If the audience is satisfied, then expect more of the same.  Why work hard to create something people are unwilling to pay for? On the other hand, if you want real quality, expect to pay dearly: you're among the rare few, and the material is priced accordingly.  Sadly, I've heard really excellent performances masked by truly awful production.  Like you, I'm in the minority.  To be honest, I don't listen to nearly as much music now as I did in my halcyon days.  I doubt that will change.  

[pbrower2a]

Economic reality is also a factor. I have noticed that places that even  try to sell high-fidelity equipment are getting scarcer.

If it is musical performance - I am a classical music fan, and I am not convinced that the  musical talent is thinning. The repertory certainly isn't thinning, although the discography is thinning. Is Simon Rattle less competent than Toscanini? I think not.  

Economic reality has its role. First, our educational system is more interested in training  people for existing jobs than in showing people how to live. Emphasis on STEM is desirable, but in view of the shrinking workweek we might need to teach people how to spend their leisure time. That means music, literature, and the visual arts.  Second, smaller apartments allow less privacy for enjoying music on a sound system, so having a chance to listen  to a loud, colorful work like a symphony by Anton Bruckner with the volume turned up on a stereo system gets dicey. Third, retailers have no idea of how to sell high-fidelity equipment. Inflating a price tag and then taking a gigantic markdown is good for selling many things -- but not sound equipment. What sounds good for the price (if one must consider price) is  better than something with an impressive markdown.

In any event I have my idea of how to get really-nice sound, and I am surprised that it is not on the market. Do you remember how rich the sound could be on the giant, floor-standing radios of the 1930s?




The speaker was huge, reminding me of a subwoofer. One got very deep bass. It would be possible to create a floor-standing stereo with tweeters and mid-range speakers that opening doors (thus creating stereo separation) to expose a tuner, CD player, and perhaps an LCD screen or at least an input for a reader device to pick off internet videos. A cover may open to expose a phonograph. But my idea is practically retro.

[David Horn]

(12-03-2018, 07:05 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Economic reality is also a factor. I have noticed that places that even  try to sell high-fidelity equipment are getting scarcer.

If it is musical performance - I am a classical music fan, and I am not convinced that the  musical talent is thinning. The repertory certainly isn't thinning, although the discography is thinning. Is Simon Rattle less competent than Toscanini? I think not.  

Economic reality has its role. First, our educational system is more interested in training  people for existing jobs than in showing people how to live. Emphasis on STEM is desirable, but in view of the shrinking workweek we might need to teach people how to spend their leisure time. That means music, literature, and the visual arts.  Second, smaller apartments allow less privacy for enjoying music on a sound system, so having a chance to listen  to a loud, colorful work like a symphony by Anton Bruckner with the volume turned up on a stereo system gets dicey. Third, retailers have no idea of how to sell high-fidelity equipment. Inflating a price tag and then taking a gigantic markdown is good for selling many things -- but not sound equipment. What sounds good for the price (if one must consider price) is  better than something with an impressive markdown. 

Today's values are convenience, not quality.  Earbuds and files on a streaming service are tiny and the music library is huge.  Never mind that the reproduction is horrid.  It's convenient.


First and foremost, the audience for classical music is shrinking.  Interest in jazz and other serious music is also declining.  Attention spans are collapsing even faster.  I don't see a return to the older values any time soon.  So appreciate what you have, and cherish the fact that the recorded music we have is both abundant and excellent if you look for it.

[pbrower2a]

(12-04-2018, 07:07 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-03-2018, 07:05 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Economic reality is also a factor. I have noticed that places that even  try to sell high-fidelity equipment are getting scarcer.

If it is musical performance - I am a classical music fan, and I am not convinced that the  musical talent is thinning. The repertory certainly isn't thinning, although the discography is thinning. Is Simon Rattle less competent than Toscanini? I think not.  

Economic reality has its role. First, our educational system is more interested in training  people for existing jobs than in showing people how to live. Emphasis on STEM is desirable, but in view of the shrinking workweek we might need to teach people how to spend their leisure time. That means music, literature, and the visual arts.  Second, smaller apartments allow less privacy for enjoying music on a sound system, so having a chance to listen  to a loud, colorful work like a symphony by Anton Bruckner with the volume turned up on a stereo system gets dicey. Third, retailers have no idea of how to sell high-fidelity equipment. Inflating a price tag and then taking a gigantic markdown is good for selling many things -- but not sound equipment. What sounds good for the price (if one must consider price) is  better than something with an impressive markdown. 

Today's values are convenience, not quality.  Earbuds and files on a streaming service are tiny and the music library is huge.  Never mind that the reproduction is horrid.  It's convenient, but it is a raw deal.


First and foremost, the audience for classical music is shrinking.  Interest in jazz and other serious music is also declining.  Attention spans are collapsing even faster.  I don't see a return to the older values any time soon.  So appreciate what you have, and cherish the fact that the recorded music we have is both abundant and excellent if you look for it.

Convenience, low cost, and superficiality -- such is exactly what one wants if one is overworked, underpaid, and scared of the boss. Such says much about American politics and economics. Our economic order practically demands that people become philistine because the enrichment and pampering of elites is not the means but the end. Confusion of means and ends always gets perverse results because life becomes nothing more than compromises.

I am a classical fan because I love the predictable richness of sonority, counterpoint, and emotional range of the genre. Jazz and folk have respectability in that aspect, as did rock on occasion. Classical music almost exclusively offers musical entertainment that lasts between two and three hours, paradoxically the attention span necessary for appreciating a sporting event. The question remains: what can one listen to for two hours?  It might be an opera.

At my age, I would love to share my cultural values as a worthy and enriching tradition. Maybe the Millennial generation is at fault for its philistine ways... but that is how they were brought up. For a Boomer, government was a friend until one became an adult due at the least to inexpensive college education if one needed or wanted it and was able to apply oneself. One could take a 'useless' major because employers appreciated intellectual rigor. One might get a major in history and show the ability to program a computer or do traveling sales; after showing one's abilities, who cared what one's college major was?

X got the shock as the system changed in the early 1980s when it was not fully grown up. The Millennial generation knows that their world is not only hardscrabble (the GI Generation experienced that and were no worse for it) but, far worse, pay-to-play.  One might be trained (at the cost of going deeply in debt) to perform competently at an entry-level, technical role -- but that is where one gets stuck. Because of the rigid class system even in offering opportunity. Birth and affiliation matter more than competence because the system churns out plenty of competent people who have the 'wrong' birth and affiliation. Add to this, the cost of things so basic as housing, utilities, and transportation become fiendishly expensive. Add that employment is increasingly transitory, and one could never do something that takes time and attention must be sacrificed for a critical, capricious communication that orders one to one's next gig. Orders? Sure -- because economic reality is the only reality in contemporary America, and it is nearly as harsh a master as the fictional Simon Legree.

People have to be warned to turn off their cell phones while at live theater, the opera, or the concert. The tools of 'connectivity' are our masters and not our servants -- because most of us are now servants of rapacious, ruthless, selfish classes of owners (now mostly heirs) and managers (now mostly affiliated by birth) to owners. There might be exceptions on this, probably between white Christians and everyone else, because white Christians (and the worst expressions of American capitalism, like Donald Trump) still have some residual faith in capitalism at its worst and everyone else knows that our plutocracy is no ally. If one starts a small business (more likely for people either non-white or non-Christian) one is in as much rebellion against the established order as if one were an out-and-out Commie. That is the political divide and the meaningful cultural divide in America.

We are as productive as ever -- indeed so productive that we make more stuff than we need or can even keep. We even produce huge amounts of bilge in 'culture'. The paradox is that we can do better, and occasionally do so. We are in a second Golden Age of Cinema -- maybe not as brilliant as the late 1930s, but the generational constellation suggests that we are in a parallel time. Maybe people who can watch a ninety-minute feature film can just as easily listen to and watch an opera or listen to a symphonic concert.

For me, intensity of experience is the cause of bliss if the experience is benign. I am willing to ride an emotional roller coaster that culminates in catharsis. I can listen to The Art of the Fugue in one setting because the masterful counterpoint creates its own drama. To those who lack the time -- can they watch a football or basketball game? If one can watch a sporting event on TV, then one has the time. But if one watches a sporting event on TV one has a distance from the 'stage' and one may need to do something on the side (like guzzling mass-market beer and devouring snacks heavy in caloric content but 'light' in nutritive value).

So my discussion of a cultural trend and the technology that it rejects becomes a social critique. That's how things go in this Forum.

[pbrower2a]

Brought over from another thread because this issue rapidly goes off the topic of the quality of music...reproduction qualities matter.Maybe I can revive the topic of this thread.

Recordings are the only way a living person can now have of how Pavarotti (let alone Caruso!) sang; how Artur Rubinstein played the piano, how Mstislav Rostropovich played the cello, how Jascha Heifetz played the violin, or how George Szell conducted. (Add musicians of other categories too). Recordings are one way to rediscover music that has gone undeservedly out of style.

But this said, you are not going to get people to spend real money to go to a concert hall to listen to a recording. Obviously the copyrights get in the way... Recordings always lose something, and in the era of digital recording they really lose something. Compression and decompression? Or did recording companies and recording engineers get excessively complacent with the word "digital" that they lost the concept of musicality?

In my experience, the late analogue era of recording (1970s), before record companies pushed "DDD" as if it were a revolutionary improvement instead at times of a mangling, offered some superbly-recorded recording of music. Digital recording was great for the bean-counters in the recording cartel.

But that topic goes to sound quality.I might take that discussion to an old thread for revival.

[pbrower2a]

You-tube video suggesting some of the debate:

[pbrower2a]

[quote pid='44551' dateline='1561977313']
Vinyl-record sales peaked in 1978, cassettes in 1990, recorded music altogether in 1999 (and by then the music CD and DVD utterly dominated as sales of vinyl records and cassettes had all but disappeared from the market). downloads not overtaking music DVDs and CDs until about 2014 and themselves starting to fade, with streams now the biggest part of expenditures of purchases of recorded music.

No allowance for inflation is recognized. Purchase of a $6.98 vinyl disc in 1978 may have been a more expensive real purchase than a $15.98 CD in 1998. Only in 1985 did CD purchases overtake vinyl (but not cassettes, probably dedicated heavily to car stereo) and only in 1990 did CDs overtake cassettes. By 2002 the recorded cassette all but completely disappeared from the market, and it has yet to return. In 2017, streaming was #1 in purchases, with downloads and CDs nearly tied for #2, vinyl still a small share of the market with a few devotees (it looks like a fad), music videos people actually paying for never having been a large market, and recorded cassettes 'dead and buried' as a share of the market.

I suspect that many of the vinyl purchases of the 1970s were replacements of older vinyl LPs that had been damaged due to warping or bad needles. Compact discs still have some viability as a market, but notice that they are much more difficult to destroy.

I recall Blu-Ray being touted as a storage system for recorded music, although there seems to be "4D" storage for video even more advanced. I suspect that the Powers That Be in the business of recorded music (the dinosaurs of the recorded music industry itself) are chary of using a medium that can store huge amounts of music on one disc. Obviously the sound quality would be extremely good -- but compact discs that have about an hour of music would lose such viability as they now have. Remember well: in contemporary America, profit is the only virtue and the only constraint is that the business must not hurt the customer. Such can slow the availability of a technology in a monopolized business.
[/quote]

[Hintergrund]

Yeah, 3T's are the times when technology spreads to the mainstream.

[pbrower2a]

(08-14-2019, 07:45 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Yeah, 3T's are the times when technology spreads to the mainstream.

Heavily the technology of hedonism and entertainment. This is when the VCR and the compact disc player, and eventually the DVD player, became cheap enough to be commonplace.

High fidelity came earlier, of course.

It is telling that there has been little innovation in the mass market for something so obvious as Blu-Ray, let alone 4K music fidelity. Blu-Ray can compress sound into really-convenient packages with little seeming loss. Maybe it is the recording business that frustrates change.

[pbrower2a]

OK -- a synopsis of something I read in Stereophile Magazine. A reviewer recalled that Plato related that all good statues have exaggerated heads and shoulders because a perfect depiction would be seen from the wrong angle (usually below) and look wrong. Then to music -- all stereo systems distort, and you would not want perfect reproduction because it would sound wrong  where you listen to music. A recording of the Berlin Philharmonic is recorded to fit the acoustic conditions of the Philharmonie... and not your living room or the passenger compartment of your car.

Perfect speakers are obviously impossible, and some are so designed that you must place them in the corners of a room or they will sound horrid. Such is the design to take advantage of the corners of a box-shaped room. One sort of speaker that was sold in large quantities forty years ago (acoustic suspension) is hardly being made anymore because those speakers draw huge amounts of power, and toward the high range of amplifier power one gets much more distortion.

Some people swear by the quality of high-priced tube amplifiers, but those who love them brag about their warmth. "Warmth" is itself a distortion in contrast to what solid state receivers offer. Maybe a strictly analytical sound isn't so welcome, but that is what one now gets with mass-market stereo amplifiers.

..................

New stuff, basically my own. There's much crap on the market. Maybe due to the expiration of patents (28 years) one can imitate electronics of that time and get good results -- so long as one can market them. I notice that mass-marketers such as Wal-Mart and Target sell innumerable small speakers (which implies compromises -- plenty of boost in the mid-range) that offer a light show in addition to the sound. At least those speakers are cheap, and if you listen to music without listening critically, the light show can distract you from the inadequacies of the speaker. Small size means that one will get a pallid representation of a great organ if such is the music that you cherish.

What the late Paul Fussell lamented as BAD -- not only awful, but pretentiously so -- applies to some speakers that I saw in a rent-to-own (and, yes, that is a BAD business, an unambiguous rip-off) -- is a sound system made by a company of which I have never heard that involves giant speakers, a more elaborate and variable pulsation of colored lights, and awful sound quality. It has a shoddy feel to it, so I assume that it will barely last the time of the rent-to-own contract.  I wouldn't get that sound system if I got it for free, and not simply on an installment plan with a huge level of implicit interest, which defines rent-to-own places as BAD business. You get something with the quality of a toy (about like computer printers -- I have gone through ten of them in twenty-five years), probably with poor construction, and -- it will lack durability. It will be out of style within five years.



 
Yuck!

[pbrower2a]

Something now available is HD (high-definition) radio. It has nothing to do with musical fidelity, but instead with multiple channels of FM music.

[pbrower2a]

One thing is certain: people are generally going to live much differently after the Crisis of 2020 than before, but I can expect music to be part of their lives. The technology on which they enjoy it will differ more than will the music to which they listen due to economic realities. Single-family houses allow people to enjoy loud pieces of music without headphones, which has its sonic virtues. Tiny apartments do not.

Whether the landlord becomes even more the King of the American Economy as his share of national income rises and thus consolidates his economic and political power or has his powers reduced through political choices may decide how people enjoy music.

[beechnut79]

Sounds as if you are indicating a possible reduction in the number of single family homes. Sadly (for many at least) this will have to happen for both environmental reasons as well as addressing the now out of control homeless issue. This is the time of year when this should really start before the cold weather envelops the area with four season climates. Our love affair with single family homes then will have to end. However, the chief paramour is the powerful coalition of homeowners associations which have been very influential in whipsawing jurisdictions to enact strict zoning laws which in many cases will not allow anything other than SFHs or the occasional upscale condo project from being built.

I would be an advocate for bringing back the concept of rooming houses, which would do a lot to begin to get more homeless into housing. Not luxury but an improvement over having to be on the streets, especially during the winter months.

[pbrower2a]

(08-19-2022, 02:19 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Sounds as if you are indicating a possible reduction in the number of single family homes. Sadly (for many at least) this will have to happen for both environmental reasons as well as addressing the now out of control homeless issue. This is the time of year when this should really start before the cold weather envelops the area with four season climates. Our love affair with single family homes then will have to end. However, the chief paramour is the powerful coalition of homeowners associations which have been very influential in whipsawing jurisdictions to enact strict zoning laws which in many cases will not allow anything other than SFHs or the occasional upscale condo project from being built.

I would be an advocate for bringing back the concept of rooming houses, which would do a lot to begin to get more homeless into housing. Not luxury but an improvement over having to be on the streets, especially during the winter months.

With 150 million people, America  could have the suburban ranch house as a norm for (at the least) the white middle class. Land was cheap, so mortgages weren't as fiendishly expensive even as urban rent is for what are frankly slums by the standards of the 1950's. With 300 million people, most of the population is damned to live in over-priced slums.

Many communities killed the possibility of suburban ranch-style houses  with zoning that mandated quarter-acre lots. Apparently those communities saw the "mere" middle class as riff-raff who would require services and not pay exorbitant taxes. People still need housing, and if America has a shortage of single-family ranch houses then we could end up with something like the prefabricated monstrosities characteristic of Communist countries. 

Housing on quarter-acre lots implies high expenses of building roads and establishing utilities... and the not-so-rich end up subsidizing the rich who can afford quarter-acre suburban lots. The public utilities probably lose money on these customers while making money off apartment dwellers. Ouch!

[pbrower2a]

The audiophile stuff was a spending war, and some people were willing to spend huge money. The problem is that such systems often cost more than a sports car, and you can imagine which one sold and which one didn't with young men with unlimited funds. Speed or (perhaps refined beyond the potential distinction within the human ear) extreme music? People who had the money for music tended to buy the recorded music.

There was huge money in the audiophile world, at least in theory. Someone might buy it. The only problem was that the people who could afford to buy such equipment with their huge incomes were busy developing real estate or making bid deals in business.  They had little time for passive listening to music. A Porsche made far more sense to the fairly-young in this group.

A music critic looks at this:





There was huge money spent in marketing the super-high-end stuff. Who bought it?

Around 12:10 you will hear two names among twenty or so who bought speakers that cost $20K a piece and required incredible power to run back in the 1990's. They are two people whom you would not want to be associated listed on the brochure. I would not have found "Elizabeth II of the UK", "Emperor Akihito of Japan", "Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands". "King Juan Carlos of Spain", or heads of royal households who own the oil wealth so troubling. The promoter of this equipment mentioned that two very nasty people were among the purchasers.

[pbrower2a]

The two vike people mentioned as purchasers of the most expensive sound equipment that money could buy were the deposed genocidal tyrant Idi Amin, then very much alive, and Jean-Claude Duvalier, recently-deposed dynastic President of Haiti. Both were fantastically rich from looting their countries through corruption and outright theft but plenty of time with nothing to do.

If you were thinking of Otto von Hapsburg,

(1) he was anything but disgusting
(2) he could go about anywhere to hear great music live
(3) he was highly active as if he were a Kaiser
(4) there were no international arrest warrants awaiting him

[nguyenivy]

(08-16-2019, 11:55 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-14-2019, 07:45 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Yeah, 3T's are the times when technology spreads to the mainstream.

Heavily the technology of hedonism and entertainment. This is when the VCR and the compact disc player, and eventually the DVD player, became cheap enough to be commonplace.

High fidelity came earlier, of course.

It is telling that there has been little innovation in the mass market for something so obvious as Blu-Ray, let alone 4K music fidelity. Blu-Ray can compress sound into really-convenient packages with little seeming loss. Maybe it is the recording business that frustrates change.

There were 2 competing optical formats around 1999 till the late 2000s that never really took off due to streaming and other issues: Super Audio CD from Sony and DVD-Audio from the DVD consortium (not to be confused with music DVDs which were just 'movie' DVDs with a concert or whatnot in lossy compressed audio). SA-CD had an advantage of its discs also being able to be manufactured to store standard CD content on them too. Both of these high res formats promised high resolution sound and multi-channel capability with no lossy compression needed to fit the content on a disc. My guess at why these formats failed was the experience of music already even as of 1999 becoming more of a portable/personal experience. There was no point in making multi-channel formats if people were listening in headphones on their way to work. Regarding the higher resolution, people can't hear past approx 20 KHz so a sample rate beyond the existing CD's 44.1 KHz made no sense. What's left? 24-bit dynamic range (CDs used only 16 bits). 24-bit stuck around into the current streaming era with some services offering it (Tidal).

[David Horn]

(10-02-2022, 03:21 AM)nguyenivy Wrote:

(08-16-2019, 11:55 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-14-2019, 07:45 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Yeah, 3T's are the times when technology spreads to the mainstream.

Heavily the technology of hedonism and entertainment. This is when the VCR and the compact disc player, and eventually the DVD player, became cheap enough to be commonplace.

High fidelity came earlier, of course.

It is telling that there has been little innovation in the mass market for something so obvious as Blu-Ray, let alone 4K music fidelity. Blu-Ray can compress sound into really-convenient packages with little seeming loss. Maybe it is the recording business that frustrates change.

There were 2 competing optical formats around 1999 till the late 2000s that never really took off due to streaming and other issues: Super Audio CD from Sony and DVD-Audio from the DVD consortium (not to be confused with music DVDs which were just 'movie' DVDs with a concert or whatnot in lossy compressed audio). SA-CD had an advantage of its discs also being able to be manufactured to store standard CD content on them too. Both of these high res formats promised high resolution sound and multi-channel capability with no lossy compression needed to fit the content on a disc. My guess at why these formats failed was the experience of music already even as of 1999 becoming more of a portable/personal experience. There was no point in making multi-channel formats if people were listening in headphones on their way to work. Regarding the higher resolution, people can't hear past approx 20 KHz so a sample rate beyond the existing CD's 44.1 KHz made no sense. What's left? 24-bit dynamic range (CDs used only 16 bits). 24-bit stuck around into the current streaming era with some services offering it (Tidal).

Interest in quality audio is virtually nill.  The few who do love it can get streaming versions from a few services (Deezer has the most loss-less material, but they're French and may not match American tastes).  I doubt this will be a permanent thing, but a general lack of in-person acoustical concerts makes it hard to know what qualifies in any case.