Audio Quality - How Much is Necessary?

How much do you worry about audio quality?  Do you ever have high-enough quality?  Does anybody care about audio quality? What is audio quality?

I'm very happy to announce a special Hearing Seminar on audio quality. Join us for a panel of distinguished audio experts who will talk about how they perceive audio, when is the quality high enough, and how do we define quality. Come be part of the discussion.

My interest in audio quality is based on a few observations:

• Unlike my college days, most people don’t care about amplifiers or speakers or needles.
• Most people seem happy with their MP3s/AAC/… and earbuds.
• We heard a talk about sound diffracting down hallways, and around corners. Cool science, but does it matter?

I think many of you interested in audio and hearing will share my questions and concerns.  We'll meet in the CCRMA Stage so we have plenty of room for all.
Our distinguised panelists have spent many decades aspiring to the highest levels of audio quality:

• Marina Bosi -  Audio compression guru and ISO/IEC MPEG-2 AAC Editor
• Poppy Crum - Chair of ITU Audio Quality panel and OTC hearing aid quality standard
• Dan Levitin - Music producer, artist, neuroscientist, and author
• Gautham Mysore - Head of Adobe audio group
• Jan Skogland - Head of web audio compression group at Google

How do you think about audio quality?  When is the quality high enough? Do our audio experts always listen to the highest quality audio? We'll aim for a spirited and high-quality discussion.

Who: Marina Bosi, Poppy Crum, Dan Levitin, Gauthan Mysore, Jan Skogland
What: Audio Quality - How much is enough?
When: Friday February 3, 2023 at 10:30AM
Where: CCRMA Stage (top floor of the Knoll)
No video streaming, I'm afraid


[We'll follow this discussion of general audio quality with a seminar next week (Feb 10) on immersive quality.]