Love it or hate it, the Beatles “Love” is bringing hi-fi values to a new generation of music fans. The rise of digital technologies is creating a hi-fi dark age where audio quality is not just taking a back seat to digital convenience and portability, it’s being pushed to the back of the bus.

We’re seeing mass migration to Home Theater In a Box systems, micro-satellite speakers and Bose dubious “mystery” systems. Satellite radio’s bitrates are thinner than a thong bikini and make 128 bit MP3s sound high resolution by comparison. With the digital age is a slightly different attitude toward recorded music. It’s all about scalability and mass numbers of sound files per Gig. Closing your eyes and really listening to the music is becoming an outmoded idea of music’s analogue past.

But now there’s “Love”, a new collection of remixed Beatles tunes given the full high resolution 5.1 DVD Audio treatment. Love is a 26 track mash up of various Beatles songs used in the Cirque Du Soleil. The new recordings were produced by a father and son team consisting of George and Giles Martin, George Martin is the original producer of the Beatles. Early reviews indicate many are sitting back and drinking in the full beauty of the sounds in Love.

Mark Richardson from Pitchforkmedia says “Love is turning everyone into an audiophile”. That can only be a good thing.