Salon Hifi 2011 Paris: An Interview With Ricardo Franassovici

Jean-Marie Hubert and Ricardo are good friends of mine, so it feels great when les beaux esprits se rencontrent à Paris…

I opened the debate about the new music server trend, and it was immediately clear that, although not against the technical principle per se, Ricardo thinks that HD-Music over the net is in its infancy and that real audiophiles, as opposed to audio geeks, should stand their ground and defend both LP and CD as the mains sources of music supply for highend systems.

Not just because of the sound quality (most of the alleged 192 kHz/24 files are just upsampled red book recordings anyway). There is not enough “content” to satisfy the true music lover, Ricardo says in the interview. The great music making is still in the LP and CD format. And so is the emotion of listening, he confessed.

You can watch the interview both in English and Portuguese (there´s a little editing to give it some extra flavor). And by all means you can agree with it or contest it, by sending us an email either in English or Portuguese. Or just tell us about your own experience. I have attended many fine demonstrations where music servers were used throughout. But he is right about that je ne sai quoi that LP conveys to the soul and that is somehow lacking in computer assisted music.