The Future Of Audio

In my opinion, the future of audio is going to be something to do with the fashion and style that goes with listening and consuming audio. Comparing the past to the present is a good way to decipher what we will be doing in the future. In the past, the technology and the trends that have changed have been based around both the quality and the quantity of audio available to the consumer. The first devices that could record and playback audio were wax cylinders, followed by vinyl, magnetic tapes, digital tapes, compact discs and now digital formats like MP3 and WAV. All of these advancements have been stepping in the direction of clearer more accurate sound. Along with the progression of sound quality we have also gained the ability to store and carry around thousands of songs

in our hand.

I think the future of audio is going to be stepping away from this pattern of quality and quantity, I have made this judgement because at the moment a majority of people have access to endless amounts of music and we are also making, sharing and discovering music faster than we can listen to it. We have also got to a stage where the music devices that we are listening too are capable of giving incredible quality, yet most people are happy to listen to it from a cheap pair of headphones, that even then sound incredible compared to what was available ten years ago. With these observations I can say that quality and quantity is not a large issue when it comes to the consumption of modern audio thus no one is trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.

I think the future of audio is the way we listen to it and the different ways we can express ourselves through it. We have already seen a rise in vinyl and cassette because people want to experience the warmth of the sound and the nostalgic process of physically setting a needle or winding a tape. I think there will be a rise in recording albums on analogue tape machines to create the ‘vintage sound’. I also predict that old mediums like vinyl, tapes and even gramophones will become a household object, A recent Kickstarter campaign for an upright vinyl player has raised over 1.5 million dollars from people who are interested in this project. The same company has also just started another campaign to make a Bluetooth gramophone that sits in your living room. With more than 6,000 people preordering these gadgets, it shows that there is a large market for audio to be a fashion statement just as much a recreation.