Within the audio industry, both hardware manufacturers and content providers have have reached an interesting impasse, which is how to extract more money from consumers. The bulk of users appear happy with the audio quality they’re getting from their current hardware, as well as being satisfied with their audio streaming services. Unlike the video streaming industry, which is spending billions on generating new content to attract subscribers, audio streamers are largely relying on their back catalogues. Whilst manufacturers and streamers have tried differentiation through enhanced quality, specifically by providing hi-res or lossless codecs, they’ve found the take-up disappointing, mainly because few consumers can notice the difference.
This poses a quandary for the industry. They’ve invested significant amounts of money developing new, high quality codecs, which can sample audio at rates which only bats are likely to hear. The components industry has also poured cash into developing new audio transducers, producing micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) speakers, capable of rendering audio at frequencies way beyond the limits of human hearing. This technology has led to a new generation of microphones with frequency responses which are flat up to 100kHz – a major step forward from common studio microphones, which typically have frequency responses that start falling off at 14kHz. Once again, however, what they capture is beyond human hearing.
It’s all very clever technology. But nobody really knows what to do with it. In the absence of any credible ideas, the the audio industry, which has done what it does best – coin a new initialism of FBA to describe the experience as Full Bandwidth Audio. But, at that point, they have stumbled. With the exception of a small, audiophile market, who will pay obscene amounts of money to convince themselves they have super-human hearing, the audio industry has found little consumer interest in purchasing something they can’t hear. They desperately need to find a new market where consumers will shell out money for new equipment and new subscriptions.
As often happens in audio, when the industry incumbents struggle with innovation, development appears from outside, where a totally different range of companies have started exploring the potential new markets which could be created by embracing Full Bandwidth Audio. In this case, that innovation is coming from a rather unlikely source – the pet industry.
