As an audio engineer I am often witness to the conversation that bemoans the ascendance of the mp3. Sure the format offers portability, but in terms of actual fidelity it is a worse standard than full bandwidth audio in either .wav, or .aiff, or whatever other format.

The rest of that conversation will usually point out how despite the industry producing ever higher quality formats for music consumption, the consumer for the most part (audiofiles excluded), does not care, and in fact what influences that consumer is not ‘better’ sounding music, but convenience (a case can be made for the transition from LP’s to cassettes resulting in a loss of fidelity), efficiency of production (SACD vs. Blu Ray), and other music industry machinations that I am not entirely equipped to talk about.

There might be a similar sentiment in the video community about VHS vs DVD – another compressed end-user format that does a great disservice to the original content – maybe the readers informed about video can talk about this, and the opinions on the topic that exist in that community.

you hint at something interesting here: “…or won’t advertise itself as worse.”
yes, “the industry” wants to keep selling us the next best thing. But, there are also contexts where, as you put it “Lo-Fi would make perfectly good sense.” Musicians that are interested in recording sometimes embrace what some would call Lo-Fi aesthetics, and there are fans that come along. Lo-FI in this context takes on different meanings: either actually using the cheapest recording equipment and instruments, or using really old equipment that by some contemporary standard lacks high fidelity. Is this the type of scenario you wonder possible?

misha
spacesound.tumblr.com

in other responses to this post… was showing little printer to a not so digerati colleague and they’re like: “what would you use that for?” . Up until the part in the video where the thankyou note pops out on the bedside table. Lovely direction there, Berg.

re sound – the buddha machine app is just lovely, and the devices are an interesting take on your fidelity comment

oh yeah. the time capsule? thanks for that link. Besides (finally) doing my holiday shopping at their store (yay!) I *loved* sending a message to my future self from their email. Genius bit of provocative theater there.

riffing on all this: a piece of (e)paper, polaroid format maybe? that changes to be your memento mori. shake it to go back in time…