Dear fellow Kaiboer owners: I wish I could pontificate the state of digital audio, but I am as confused as the next guy. As a former software engineer, I contest most of it could exist in the software domain. Today’s processor chips are powerful enough to handle it. Yet being an >50 year audiophile I understand the industry is stuck in hardware mode. But I will get off my soap box and let this thread go in any direction it deems necessary. When it comes to “best sound” what matters in digital? As grateful as I am to Philips and Sony, what happened since 1980 is circumspect. Certainly not in the interest of the audiophile community. But allow me to be clear. I am mostly in the Philips camp, as Sony only is hell bent is keeping their technology proprietary. At this point I said enough. Let the games begin !
Powerful processors do not automatically produce great products.
Great software is incredibly difficult, especially in Hi-Fi. The obvious trap is to keep adding features and ticking specification boxes because modern processors can do almost anything.
But that is not really the point.
The real opportunity is to use software to make the technology disappear and bring the user closer to the music. Make discovery easier. Make setup easier. Make the system understand what the user is trying to achieve instead of forcing the user to understand the machine.
AI could become extremely interesting here. Not as another feature on a list, but as something that helps us navigate and find our music, optimise the experience and remove complexity.
That is one of the reasons I find the Kaiboer products interesting. I see some genuinely good signs of thinking beyond the traditional hardware box and towards the complete user experience.
That, to me, is where some of the biggest opportunities in modern Hi-Fi are for those who dares to boldly go, where no-one has gone before 😘
Stjernholm
