Digital is always pushing its limits a little further. In Music, a new generation of high-end wireless headphones, combined with lossless sound sources, promises sound quality comparable to good old CDs, or even vinyl. Is this possible?
Posted at 1:08 a.m.
Updated at 7:00 a.m.
In any case, the eternal duality between analog and digital was relaunched this fall by Steven Wilson, British musician and singer of the rock group Porcupine Tree. “Honestly, I no longer distinguish the CD from a 24/96 stream,” he declared in an interview with the specialist publication Stereophile. “Maybe my ears are worse as I get older…”
For 20 years, the CD has been the benchmark for quality music listening. The “24/96” that Steven Wilson speaks of is a 24-bit digital encoding format of 96 kilohertz. At this level of encoding, we speak of high resolution, because on paper, it compares favorably to the encoding of a CD, which is 44.1 kilohertz, at 16-bit.
The CD is the point of comparison often used by people who think that “it was better back in the day”. The CD, whose content is itself digital, would have sound limits higher than those of the human ear. That said, music services like Apple Music or Qobuz offer even higher quality than high resolution. They talk about “lossless” sound, up to 192 kilohertz in 24-bit.
Comparing a digital stream to a vinyl record is trickier. Vinyl is an analog format which, in principle, contains the entire sound recorded at the source. That said, this comparison is a waste of time: there are too many elements, between the musical source and your ears, that can influence your experience.
Question of context
For example: no one would install a record player in a subway car. This is anything but the right place to play an LP. It’s also a little unnatural to listen to vinyl with Bluetooth headphones, even though several recent record players are compatible with this wireless protocol.
Your ears will only hear a digitized and compressed version of the original sound. “Even high-resolution Bluetooth formats like AptX Lossless [de Qualcomm]it’s not lossless,” says engineer Dominique Poupart, of Simaudio.
Simaudio, from Boucherville, does not manufacture headphones. Only high-end sound equipment. Its listening room is so well designed that you have the impression of being seated two meters from the musicians, when you sit two meters from a simple pair of speakers.
Dominique Poupart says, in short, that an optimal sound experience depends on the context, then the source. Among others. The expert cites as an example the first albums of the American group REM
“They weren’t recorded for digital,” he says. “They were converted with poorly performing equipment, by technicians unfamiliar with the technology. The digital format is much worse than the analog one. » You can even hear this on CD: the sound is more “flat” than on vinyl.
Flashy…
It’s changed a lot since then. Even today, we produce vinyl from digital sources… “It may shock people, but vinyl and digital are no longer necessarily superior to each other,” concludes Dominique Poupart. It depends on too many things: the recording, the equipment, the environment… and the preferences of the audiophile.
We must also avoid the trap posed by high-end products, such as state-of-the-art wireless headphones, which claim to push the limits of acoustics using already outdated technologies.
This is the case of the OnTrac headset, from Dyson. Dyson makes vacuum cleaners, has already wanted to build cars, and now sells… stereo headphones. The first contact with the OnTac headset is quite good. You can customize its appearance in hundreds of ways. Its battery life of 55 hours per charge is excellent. Its soundproofing is amazing. All this is perfect if you take the metro.
But it gets bad quickly. The OnTrac headset is not compatible with any high-resolution sound sources. Everything goes through the Bluetooth 5.0 protocol, with very limited sound quality. Also impossible to listen to music via USB. Another flaw: it costs $700. At this price, you can buy a record player, wired headphones and at least twenty good vinyl records.
Above all, the Dyson helmet embodies the main flaw of digital technology: flashy gadgets age quickly. We bet you will be able to listen to your vinyls in 50 years. Maybe even on a stereo from Simaudio.
Who will still remember the Dyson OnTrac?
