ASA allows Nokia 5300 CD quality

Nokia supported by ASA that the 5300 can deliver CD quality sound

25 April 2007 16:22 GMT / By Ryan Haynes

Nokia has succeeded where Creative didn't, but it has all come down to the marketing bumf to go with it. This week the Advertising Standards Authority gave cleared Nokia of misleading consumers.

In a recent advert for the Nokia 5300 Xpress Music phone, the company claimed the handset could deliver CD quality sound from compressed, lossy audio formats. The reason for this news? Well a complaint had been raised against the manufacturer.

However, the ASA in a statement: "We considered that readers [of the ad] would interpret the claim 'CD quality sound' to mean that when they listened to files played on the Nokia 5300 Xpress Music the sound would be indistinguishable from CD sound", the ASA said.

"We considered the tests provided proved that most listeners were unable to distinguish between compressed AAC files encoded at 128Kbps and CD sound. We concluded that Nokia had substantiated the claim 'CD quality sound' and it was unlikely to mislead."

This is much unlike Creative who used the wording "better than CD quality", which the ASA ruled against.

Unfortunately for Creative, Nokia argues using research showing that people can not tell the difference in quality - the "Report on the MPEG2 AAC Stereo Verification Tests" found listeners were largely unable to distinguish between the two, 128Kbps AAC could be said to be of CD quality - and a 160Kbps playable on the 5300 certainly would.

Most tech geeks will say a 128Kbps AAC file can't possibly deliver the same audio quality as the 1411Kbps CD.

Full tags

Phones, Mobile phones, Nokia