Industry Background

Back when music was analogue, the way to get better sound was simply to buy a better audio player made from better components. Then as CD was introduced, the HiFi people were claiming that the sound was compromised. Later came the compressed Mp3’s making the audio quality very poor. Compared to CD, Mp3 music files were almost 85% smaller. This did not only enable the sharing of music but it also enabled the development of small and inexpensive music players and speakers.

Music started to become popularised and record companies public. There was much more money to be made with music. And for business reasons, music production became mainstream to attract large audiences.

Music as a form of art suffered from this and the consumer audio products became very inexpensive with good appearances instead of being good in quality, durability and sustainability. Now, with a variety of different streaming services available, the lower quality audio has become a standard making the speed for music streaming as low as 320 kbps while the full CD speed is 1411 kbps.

As the quality of video and visual content today is very high, the sound quality is still in the low even though there is a growing need for High Resolution (HiRes)  music streaming. Today composers and artists have a growing need to bring back the good old quality of music and sound. We already have streaming services like Tidal, the leading company offering full CD quality for smartphones. To top it off, the introduction of Bluetooth 5 and G5 will speed up the development of HiRes music. 

The only bottleneck left are the portable speakers, which are not able to play the best possible quality. With our WestendXFi technology, however, this is possible.

Music needs to be considered again as more a form of art and not as a business model. WestendXFi is the forerunner to provide better standards and the best quality for speakers. 

Best regards, the Westend Team