Up to 37% in savings when you subscribe to hi-fi+
hifi-logo-footer

Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Acronym Acquisition Syndrome (AAS)

Acronym Acquisition Syndrome (AAS)

There is a shadow hanging over the audio industry ATM. IMHO, the problem is compromising the sales of some extremely good consumer electronics, not only in traditional audio electronics, but in the worlds of AV, TV, DSLR, PC, and possibly even HVAC. IIRC, the problem has never been so significant. Many will dismiss this problem with ‘LOL’, but MMW if this goes unchecked, the consumer electronics market might be FUBAR’d!

OK, I’m talking about the rise of the acronym. 

The consumer electronics world is diverse and complex. It’s an understandable desire on the part of manufacturers and users alike to ‘chunk’ those diverse and complex processes down into bite-sized subsystems, and then give them a convenient and quasi-descriptive name, which can then be shortened to a pithy (typically three or four letter) acronym. This both explains the processes to the cognoscenti and shuts down the need to keep explaining the processes to the rest of us. It doesn’t always work – the photographic industry is incapable of settling on an acronym that best describes a mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera (and yes, it tried ‘MILC’) – but when it does, the acronym has a life of its own: because you rarely need to expand the acronym ‘ABS’, it’s easy to forget it stands for ‘Anti-lock Braking System’, for example.

This convenient chunking of technology into acronyms is extremely useful, but it does have its downside. A pithy acronym can anchor a process in the mind of the user, but that can mean anchoring an unnecessary desire for that process in those who will likely never use it. This can drive whole technologies out of fashion and out of production simply because the market chases the next big acronym.

A relevant example of this was turn-of-the-century DVD players for home cinema/home theater users. In early 2001, universal players began to appear. These supported DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, CD, and Super Audio CD (this was some time before Blu-ray). They began to appear in higher-end players at the time, and almost immediately wiped out sales of high-performance DVD-Video players at a stroke. Many of these early universal players delivered more compromised multichannel audio and video performance than dedicated DVD-Video players, and many of these players were being installed in systems where the chances of playing DVD-Audio, CD, or SACD discs was remote in the extreme. Many buyers at the time admitted they had no interest in playing DVD-Audio or SACD but bought a universal player anyway. Eventually, things began to settle and by late-2002 good performing universal players quickly emerged at all price points, but for about a year, people were buying something in which they were not interested – and that undermined what they were interested in – only because they wanted those ‘DVD-A’ and ‘SACD’ acronyms in little white letters along the bottom of the front panel of their player.

There’s an acronym for that – FOMO, or ‘fear of missing out’.

The seemingly insatiable drive to get the latest and best creates a need to acquire acronyms like they were parts of a collection. This can become an obsession in and of itself – hence my term Acronym Acquisition Syndrome. Let’s say that you attend a demonstration of a component that holds interest. It sounds incredibly good in audition. However, in the listening process, one of those tick-boxes is missing. The natural reaction is to move on and find something that ticks all of those boxes but look closer. If you are deselecting a product simply because it uses the ‘wrong kind of tubes’ or doesn’t support a format that you express no interest, is that really a ‘deal-breaker’?

 

A perfect contemporaneous case in point is the ever-escalating numbers game in DSD replay. Although as far as I can tell there is no music programme produced in anything beyond DSD256, converters are available that can support DSD512 and DSD1024 is waiting in the wings. There are a few test signals available for DSD512 but – to my knowledge – even test tones are not made for DSD1024 as yet. And yet, people are already demanding DSD512 support and rejecting DACs that cannot support the handful of test signals they don’t own because DSD256 ‘is not DSD enough’. It doesn’t matter that the technology used to produce DSD512 needs to be invented before they can gain access to DSD512 music, or even that they only own a handful of DSD files; the term ‘DSD1024’ exists, and we want it now!

Granted, some of this rejection process is simple purchase-avoidance; if I set a requirement that is beyond current technology, I won’t be caught in a trap where I need to buy something. But a lot of this rejection process is sheer ‘specmanship’ on the part of the manufacturer, the reviewer, the retailer, and the end-user. And it needs to stop.

Here’s how it stops. Have an honest conversation with yourself before you get to the audition stage. If you have got this far in life without lying awake at night wondering how many of your PCM files are available in 32-bit, then chasing specifications for their own sake is pointless. Instead, choose the product where its performance best coheres with your tastes and system, and forget about the acronyms. If you feel you want to ‘future-proof’ your system, look at the specs of what you currently enjoy and ‘go one louder’. If you are listening to a mix of 24-bit, 192kHz and DSD128 files, push for a DAC that supports 24-bit, 384kHz (or even 32-bit audio) and DSD256. Also, that next purchase is the time to go listen to MQA to see if it’s the ‘Next Big Thing’ or another ‘Meh!’ for you.

If this sounds like one enormous fence-sitting exercise, then congratulations! I have met people who are utterly convinced by the charms of one or more of the higher-resolution formats that are available, and I have met people who remain completely indifferent to them. Convincing someone living in 2019 who is perfectly happy with 16-bit, 44.1kHz files that they should be listening to high-res PCM, or DSD, or even MQA is a pointless exercise. Similarly, trying to convince someone who is cemented to one of these three-letter acronyms that one of the other three-letter acronyms is ‘better’ has all the argumentative success of telling someone their kid is ugly – at best it leads to angry and heated debate; at worst, violent imagery, broken friendships, and more. These format wars haven’t ended in actual bodily harm as yet, but there have been people pinned to walls.

Back in the old days, when the audiophile really only had the options of LP, reel-to-reel tape, or FM radio, we weren’t plagued by a steady stream of format changes, of acronyms, or of FOMO. We bought an album, played it on our record players, played it again and again, then added another album. Rinse and repeat until we ran out of space to store those albums. Now, space is not a problem, but we worry about having a format that’s not good enough, or not today enough. While nothing will stop this arms race of ever-increasing specs for an ever-wider range of formats, we don’t have to play along. 

Perhaps the rise of the three-letter acronym is why I’ve taken to going back to a couple of two-letter acronyms – LP and CD. They both sound pretty good, too!

Tags: FEATURED

Adblocker Detected

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."