There is Hope!

Many people have talked about the demise of high quality audio because so many of today’s youth are listening to mp3s and other lossy codecs on small earbuds.  I, for one, shared those fears – until today.

Today a group of high school sophomores participating in the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership program came and toured WITF.  I was able to show them the audio production area, and explain how FM production and broadcast work.  The last group of 15 students participated in an in-depth discussion of audio, radio and production session.  The conversation quickly progressed to the differences of quality between CDs, radio, satellite radio and audio downloads.

I had to quickly explain the difference between mp3 and wav files.  As soon as I got through this explanation (which, quite frankly, was quite short to get my point across) hands shot up throughout the group.  “Wait, those songs aren’t great quality?” “Yeah, they don’t sound the same” and the best “Wait, how can we get high quality songs?” I kid you not.  They were sincerely concerned about how to get better audio quality!

They high school students also found the concept of public radio as something they were interested in, especially when they looked at commercial radio and satellite.  They understood the business concepts between the three.

Every generation worries that the ones following it don’t work as hard, don’t have the same values, or the quality of their work won’t be the same.  But, don’t you think the generation before you worried about you?

Will audio delivery be the same in 2020 as it was in 1990?  No.  Will there still be high end audio for you to enjoy?  Yes.  Will there be low quality audio formats for those who can’t afford the better quality?  Yes.  It will be different, but the future of audio is bright.