Slashdot Mirror
Insanely Audiophile
wiredog sent us a choice quote from a Washington Post story about high end audio. It compares audiophiles to drug addicts and talks about six figure stereo systems that make me cry with jealousy. Anyway, the true gold mine quote is "For that money [$140k], a local company called the Gene Donati Orchestras will send a string quartet to your home and play on your patio once a week for more than a year. Which is why audiophiles spend a lot of time defending their sanity." I dunno about you guys, but that makes my technology buying habit look like my chewing gum budget.
Super expensive stereo gear has been around for decades. Stereo gear is nothing compared to videophiles (aka home theater nuts). It's all about what gets you off. There are plenty of people who buy $13,000 Civics and add $50,000 worth of parts. Or how about the weirdos who buy dual Athlon 1.2GHz, a 760MP board, 4 gigs of ram and a new 550W PSU for $2,000 so that they can run a free OS like Linux? ;)
Our forefathers did not give their lives to found a nation where we could scamper around with our goldplated headphones and 10 megawatt amps in one giant aureal masturbatory frenzy.
.sig file.
Copy-Paste right into the
seek help.
But vinyl is so much warmer.
I would say excellent troll, but you actually got me to AGREE with you.
The thing about audiophiles is that very few of them ever talk about double-blind listening tests, which are one truly objective way to determine whether or not differences between two pieces of equipment are actually perceptible.
It's one thing to freely and openly admit that you're buying some luxury item because you admire the craftsmanship, aesthetics (think Bang & Olufsen), functionality, or whatever. It's a whole other thing to claim that it sounds better without actually demonstrating that you can hear the difference.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of the high-end audio stuff is very, very well-made equipment, but I have yet to see any even vaguely scientific evidence that shows people can hear the difference between, say, gold-plated speaker contacts and plain copper ones. As an undergrad at MIT, I took Amar Bose's class on acoustics and did a lot of reading on the various psychoacoustic tests that researchers have done over the years. Not one of them has ever shown that the nitpicky measures most audiophiles take to improve sound quality actually have any perceptible effect.
The sad thing is that the guy mentioned in the article got an engineering degree from MIT -- ostensibly a place where you learn to think critically and objectively -- and yet he still claims his refrigerator turning on has an audible effect on the music. I'd be willing to bet he'd fail any properly designed double-blind test on this point.
(And yes, before you start flaming Bose, there are many systems out there that sound better than their stuff -- but realize that their components are built with certain engineering/economic tradeoffs just like anyone else's. Dr. Bose himself is a very, very good engineer.)
-HR
You're just addicted to a costlier substance that does less bodily harm.
Less bodily harm? An amp/sub of that value could easily have enough power to make you deaf instantaneously. I also suppose there has got to be some point at which something is so loud that it will kill you, much like how the stereo systems hitting upwards of 160dB can blow up a baloon.
You obviously don't know the first thing about harm reduction, or about what constitutes harm in the first place.
Or were you going to argue that by merely purchasing an illegal drug, this hypothetical person is harming himself or others? What's the basis for this argument? Is it because the drug is illegal? If so, you're either espousing positivism (what is dictated by the state is good ipso facto) or committing the fallacy of circular argument.
Oh, verb. sap.: Smack == heroin. Crack == rock cocaine. Two different things.
It's the friction of needle and vinyl.
The "*feeling*" of music doesn't come from $140K sound systems or $500 headphones. That feeling comes from participation. Listening to (for example) Mozart's 4th Horn concerto on CD can't compare to playing the lead in person, but you don't even have to invest $7000 in a horn and lessons (although its well worth it if you do). Try just humming along or whistling sometime. You'll be pleasantly surprised. And who cares whether the rest of the music is coming from $5 earbuds or a megabucks stereo? It's just the background. You're the star.
Except Linux is free and doesn't cost $140,000, buttmunch.
who the hell modded this insightful?!
Funny, I work as a paramedic in alphabet city in new york. Do you know how much narcan (nalaxone) I can go through in one week? Not to mention having to fight a puking, combative skell who would like nothing more than to kick the shit out of you and your partner for killing his 10$ high. Did I mention the possibility og getting stuck with a dirty needle and subsequent exposure to HIV, Hepatitis etc.... or being splashed by a large puddle of blood after the "patient" rips out the IV and then proceeds to assauly you. Get a grip.
They have a compulsive need to prosthelitize about their audiophilia. Heh... sounds a lot like another group of enthusiasts well represented here.
In the case of acid in the 60's, that typically meant that you were simply bankrolling a cheerful hippie who made the stuff in his farm-house... but in the case of heroin or any cocaine derivitive, you are bankrolling organized crime and terrorists; the sort of people who have been destroying the lives of inner city youth for decades now. Harlem, NY was a pretty nice neighborhood for a black kid to grow up in before the heroin dealers started showing up.
Like it or not, the very act of buying cocaine from the black market makes you Part Of The Problem.
That's not what they mean by audiophile, sir.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Come on, folks- this stuff is FUN! How can you enjoy stuff like PCs and overclocking and not sympathise a little bit with this audio stuff? It's the same kind of thing! It's stereo system hot-rods and NOT only confined to white-smocked technicians making million dollar patchcords for rich idiots.
Example: all that stuff about magnets? Old news and well discussed at rec.audio.high-end, where there's always an argument but _also_ usually some clued-in people as well. And the thing is- magnets have compliance as well. This is no different from air suspensions- it still has a compliance and a pattern of varying compliance with different amounts of separation. If you want to play with that sort of thing, you can do it for virtually nothing- all you need to do is go get some bike inner tubes. Put 'em under your speakers with the stems tucked out where you can get at 'em. Presto, isolation stand- really works. Using high pressure (stiffer compliance) seems to bring everything forward and make it aggressive- I have no idea why, but can confirm others' reports of that. Really soggy compliance minimizes this- the real fun is tuning the air pressure like it is a 'forwardness' control. Good cheap fun. And isn't that a good thing? About time audio quality went 'open source'.
By the way, I bet if you hid the EQ, compander, and noise gate the audiophile wouldn't have hassled you ;) come on, what are you, post-production? It'd probably sound better without that stuff, honest. Though the guy's response is a BIT harsh, what if you enjoy twiddling knobs a whole bunch? Different strokes :)
He's Right You Know! Geekery is _fun_ to apply to audio. In the spirit of Ogerman's post here's what I've done- copy amend tweak etc to your heart's content...
I have to concur. High end is not about money. It's about _tweaking_ _the_ _gear_, and any overclocker or kernel hacker should appreciate the fun of that
Recent work on dithering has illustrated that with good dithering you can get audible signal to something like 12db _below_ the noise floor, which was previously (early digital) thought to be a hard limit. This explains much about the vinylphiles... more significantly, it means that people also have the capacity to develop great sensitivity to issues of _linearity_ which is what dithering is for in the first place. Linearity is not a pitch-domain thing. It's a resolution-domain thing. You could have someone listening to a 200 hz tone and be able to distinguish when it 'swelled' to 1.00000001 of its previous volume, even if they couldn't hear above 8K. In fact, some types of hearing loss _increase_ sensitivity to resolution issues, though they do so in an un-helpful manner (recruitment- your response to volume boost is no longer as linear).
There's no reason to doubt that when you're 71 your ears will still be as sensitive to resolution-domain stuff. You may be a total loss in the frequency domain, though :)
It got covered by the Absolute Sound magazine. I've written for that magazine, and the _promise_ of the thing sounds very appealing. And yet the guy would not explain what he did, and I just couldn't accept that... I would _love_ to plug a weird device into my studio power strip that would 'polarize' all the electrons or whatever and clean out the soundstage plus also making my TV look better. The TAS guys apparently had experiences like: played system. HP and some golden ear types were in the other room. Install 'clock', keep playing. About 15 minutes later, HP _and_ golden ear types, unaware of the installing, are clamoring into the room demanding "What did you DO?" because the character of the sound underwent an obvious change that they heard from the other room. And yet Tice won't explain what the hell he's doing, if anything... plus, the TAS guys, um, like their herbaceous sustenance ;)
Very frustrating. Now that I think about it in the context of Slashdot, this is an argument for open source _science_. The more people do stuff and conceal it, the less good it all is. This Tice may actually have come up with something for all we know- but prove it! There is nothing, nothing but hearsay...
That's why you need us mastering engineers ;)
I'll concede this: not every tube amplifier or peculiar high end speaker is at all suitable for mastering. Those monster horns are like audio microscopes: it's a selective view of the audio spectrum, not practical to work with. But really- maybe _you_ can work on Yamaha NS-10s but that doesn't mean everybody can and should. Once you have to deal with serious mastering concerns you have got to go a LOT more 'audiophile' or you will simply lose: your stuff won't be consistent, won't translate well to all systems.
Different strokes. You keep mixing, and others will deal with the fine-tuning (and pray that you _are_ using NS-10s vs., say, Genelecs: some Genelecs are so 'forgiving' that you can be mixing in horrible bass and treble irregularities and not even hear it. NS-10s at least distort when you do that :) )
He's reacting to the many, many poor 16-bit CDs out there. You can take CD a surprisingly long way if you dither it really well but there's lots out there which is completely screwed-up: lots of truncation all through the recording process, inadequate bus wordlength, you name it.
Peoples' ears are trained by what they listen to. You live out in the country, you listen to nature sounds off in the distance, and your ear learns to discriminate between different types of distant sound automatically. There's no effort, you just do.
If you listen to a lot of _bad_ CDs, your ear is being trained to pull detail out of a lot of _garbage_: if audio can be said to have a fractal quality (like, oh, everything _else_ in nature?), bad digital recording obliterates this. At the threshold of hearing (actually well before that point for really bad examples) instead of pulling signal out of the noise floor as your ear is constantly trying to do, you are pulling the correlated noise known as quantization distortion out of the noise floor. There _is_ no consistent signal pattern to be had. The signal leaves off right there- at all frequencies, too, this is NOT a frequency domain problem. It's a resolution problem, a quantization problem.
Dithering _really_ helps this. Dithering properly at every single stage of digital transform makes a world of difference. That said, I am not convinced Levinson isn't right: though it makes a difference, I question whether it is a real solution. I think it's sort of damage control.
In one sense he's wrong- we're constantly surrounded with acoustic sound. You may not be getting a healthy sound for audio-brain-center auditory training from bad _CDs_ or any CDs... but all the time, you're getting an optimal sound from passing cars on the highway, and the road crews tearing up the asphalt :) maybe Levinson leads too sheltered a life if his brain only gets CD digital sound to process! He should get a teenage rock drummer kid to move in next door, then his ears would be getting normal healthy acoustic sound to process, whether he likes it or not >:)
That said, you're a sillyperson not to like some of the high points of 'Spike'. I mean, come on, "Chewing Gum"? "God's Comic"? "Any King's Shilling" for God's sake? Geez, it may be an inconsistent album but _damn_...
YOW! Are we OFFTOPIC yet? ;)
Since you like rock, have you ever _played_ in a band? With nothing but drums and amps, no PA, just raw instrument volume? _That_ is what 'rock live sound' really is, but you won't get it at a concert- unless maybe you're catching some really small gig where the drums and amps aren't even miked. You might get it there. ...or, of course, off recordings that accurately convey what live rock instruments sound like- for instance, if you have a killer vinyl-based High End rig, you can put on Creedence's "Bayou Country" and get damn close to the 'live sound' I'm talking about. It's a lot rowdier than classical as you know, but there _is_ still a proper way to do it.
Wow, for 1200 US you can get some *really* good Paradigm Monitor 11s and have decent speakers.
Yes Canada makes some nice speakers and with the strong US Dollar, it's a really good deal.
www.paradigm.ca - Really good, really affordable speakers that aren't a scam like Bose.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Carver's an interesting fellow. He actually built a "real" high-end tube amp that everyone raved over (he probably sold a few), and also built a conventional (by his standards -- it used a highly unconventional power supply that didn't need a monster transformer, but I've long since forgotten the details) amplifier with a matched transfer function that he sold rather more of. The high end critics really hated his much cheaper amplifiers, even if they couldn't tell the difference.
Of all the snake oil salesmen in high end audio, though, I think the cable mafia is the worst. Particularly the digital cables (which others have already commented on) and some of the really bizarre speaker cables, which in some cases look like they would be more counterproductive than anything. I will certainly admit that trashy connectors can cause problems, although simply gold plating them and taking care not to run them right next to a power line should take care of just about anything.
And there's relatively little danger of burning out a tube amp, compared to a mosfet amp or something. Unless, of course, your name is Jimi Hendrix.
Actually I believe that open-circuiting the output stages on tube amps led to a very quick and untimely demise. And a lot of the output stages in decent amps these days has a negative temperature coefficient; they start turning off when they get hot.
Even more interesting, sounds in the real world DO have tons of high-frequency content! 40% of the energy produced by a cymbal crash is above 20 KHz.
This is very important -- you may not hear the 26kHz components but they interact with other frequency components and give you sum and difference components that are well within your hearing range. If you clamp 'em off the low stuff won't be reproduced correctly.
If one uses CD's to play music (rather than to store and retrieve data) timing becomes extremely important. The musical bits simply must arrive at exactly the right time-- hence the need for extremely accurate clocks. Most clocks, are, to a certain extent, sensitive to vibration-- thus, the supposed need for vibration free equipment.
In addition, CD-Audio is not random access. (I think the resolution is limited to one second-- 88200 bytes). This is why "rippers" usually have anti-jitter routines.
For $140,000 I could FLY to London, Boston or where ever and listen IN PERSON...
It shows that you are in the same boat as the guy in a straight jacket... $20,000 for a set of speakers...Insane
44.1 instead of nice round 40 is required for low-pass filter to have some room for operation.
--
"Man in the Moon and other weird things" - wfmh.org.pl/thorgal/Moon/
Well, obviously the speaker itself has to be analog. I doubt that they'd be content to accept whatever digital->analog converter the speaker manufacturer decided to use, either... (No, I don't think a DAC would colour the sound either, but it might add some slight noise if it wasn't great.) Audiophiles will probably also want to choose their own amplifier as well.
Also, you seem to have forgotten that this has already been done, with USB instead of ethernet. You can get USB speakers that (obviously) work without a sound card.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
LOL! How are they for sniffing? Sounds like you've been doing some of that...
(In case anyone hasn't figured out that he's joking, remember that you can read data from a CD with a _very_ low bit-error rate. My Samsung CDRW drive's manual says it has an error rate of "mode 1: 1 block/10^12, Mode 2: 1 block/10^9".)
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
> Passing through each one is a super-cooled liquid nitrogen that pushed
> the temperature of the tube down towards 0 degrees kelvin.
But not very close to 0 there, sissy boy. Real men use liquid helium, which doesn't even liquify until a couple degrees K. There's a good reason why it costs a lot more. Cooling LN2 down to those temperatures could be done, but it just isn't the same. It's texture is all wrong. Just last week, I dropped the temp. a few more degrees, down to where helium becomes superfluid. Now we're talking smooth sound... (err, I mean "I definitely sounded better; It was worth it". Almost missed my audiophile-speak...)
I also use lead cables, which become superconducting at the temperatures I'm talking about. Good old fashioned type I superconduction, because the newfangled high temp. type II superconductors just don't sound as vibrant.
(In real life, silver, gold, and copper don't superconduct, even though they are the best conductors at room temp (in that order, BTW).)
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
My interest in audio equipment nearly died after I learned an instrument. Performing music is much more satisfying than listening to a canned recording of someone else performing music.
I suspect audiophiles have a misdirected desire to make music.
OK, completely unrelated to the issue at hand, but I used to be friends with Gwen Stefani's little sister back when I went to college. I even once met Gwen--I remember preaching to her about the virtues of the internet (this was just before the beginning of the dot-com explosion).
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
-Kevin
Reminds me of Linux zealots: "Windows? I thought you actually wantesd to USE the computer" Really though, some people get way out of hand with it. I mean you have to weigh the $ to quality ratio. Just because a Porsche drives better than a jetta doesn't mean you "have" to buy the Porsche. Just because Intel released a 1.5ghz processor doesn't mean you "have" to buy it. Just because....... you get the picture. A lot of money gets blown for these systems, while maybe they sound good I've learned through personal experience that good sound is a relative concept. I personally like a little harder hitting bass (since I'm a bassist) while my roommate likes a lot of twang (his into country). Saying one system is better than another is ridiculous, and certainly calling one shit is out of control and borderline insane. No system costing 5k is going to "sound like shit". Sorry just wont happen unless you get the positive and negatives crossed.
Buy stylii instead, they last longer. :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Of course at his age, after all those years around jet engines, for his hearing to still be that good is pretty impressive, if true.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
If the purpose is relieving the buyer of $140,000, I'm sure Microsoft would be glad to come up with something. :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The amplifier's output stage may be single-ended or "unbalanced" (one hot, one ground), but after that the unsheilded wires in the cable are out in the air subject to magnetic and electrical fields from all over the place (the twisting helps keep them from acting as antennas, to oversimplify) and the speaker itself isn't "grounded" (even though the woofer, mid-range, tweeter, whatever, and the crossover network may use one side as "common"), so the speaker input is basically a "balanced" input.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You might want to inform Shure Bros., Pickering, Stanton, ADC, Grado, Dual, AR, Fisher, P.E., et cetera.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Okay, some of them spell it "styli".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Au contraire. If the instruments were merely amplified with no distortion, then that would indeed be the case. However, when they are intentionally amplified with distortion, then it is the output of the distorted speaker that is the most pure representation of that sound. Intentional distortion is itself an art form. A finely tuned Marshall stack, four of which could be purchased (for the purposes of the aformentioned electric quartet,) I might add, for easily under $5000; will yield an original sound that must be itself miked in order to achieve maximal purity for reproduction. A small live rock show, for instance, where the performers amplifiers/drums are not miked, is the closest equivalent to being in the audience of an opera you're going to find.
Then there are those unique little gems that don't fit well into these categories. I'm thinking of names like Rotel and NAD. Or, on the mid-tier end, Magnepan.
For Rotel & NAD, they're priced like Chevy, Ford, Honda, and Toyota, but they have a fit and finish that puts them squarely in the Lexus, Infinity, and Volvo range. I'm thinking here of maybe a Volvo when they were first trying to break into the US market. Priced like a Ford, but built like a Lexus.
As for Magnepan, it's priced like a Lexus, Infinity, or Volvo, but some of their gear produces, IMHO, the best sound available at any price. I've heard a number of $100,000 gear, with >$20,000 speakers, but I've never heard any speakers outperform the Magnepan 1.6 speakers (about $1500). Now, to get that level of performance, you need to match it with expensive electronics. But, for $1500, they are an absolute steal. If you're looking for an analogy, I'd put Maggies in the realm of TVR, the British sports car company. Priced like a Japanese sports car, performs like a Ferrari.
This is a very good analogy. Furthermore, I would generally agree with your rankings, too.
--Be human.
Yes, yes, The audio industry is ripe with sham artists. Check out, for instance, the guys selling those green hilighter pens for $20 a piece. They claim it absorbs extraneous frequencies from the laser, refining the sound. But, wait. Doesn't a laser, by definition, produce one, and only one, frequency? Why yes! So, in fact, these green highlighters don't do shit!
Well, one thing to correct you one, though. You generally want to oversample the output from your CD player. This goes by to Nyquist theory. Since you have to filter the output from a digital signal to recreate the analog signal, and since filters introduce all sorts of problems if the filter frequency is remotely close to the audible range (as is the case with a CD, but not the case with DVD's audio), you typically oversample the 44.1kHz signal. This effectively moves the filter frequency higher, so that it doesn't interfere with the audible range. When you oversample, you effectively interpolating. In order not to lose accuracy, you must increase the resolution (16 bits -> 24 bits). So, having a 24 bit, 356kHz DAC is entirely reasonable, even if the input source is only 16 bits and 44.1 kHz.
--Be human.
and yet, the LED that acts as a source produces but one frequency.
--Be human.
The output from the DAC will be a step signal. That is, it needs to be filtered to return it to the original analog signal. This filter works great if you can build a perfect brick wall filter (actually, not quite...but for the sake of argument, it's pretty close--you'll still get aliasing effects). So, what you normally do is simply interpolate the signal, then put the filter at something like 192kHz. That way, these aliasing effects and the effects from a real-world filter (attenuation, etc) occur outside the audible range.
And as for your snotty remark, I don't care how stupid you are, or how little you know about the topic, you still need oversampling and interpolation to higher bits in order to retrieve the same signal you put in.
--Be human.
One of the neat things about LEDs are that they produce only one frequency. Exactly one. Pretty cool. Even cheap ones. And LEDs are used as the source for lasers in CD players. Do a spectrum analysis on a cheap laser, and you'll see what I mean. Other frequencies are effectively below the noise floor, and are probably the result of ambient light. Guess what? Those green pens don't do shit.
Also, you may want to bring your theoretical Nyquist understanding into the real world. The problem comes from the fact that the output of a DAC is a step function. It must then be filtered to retrieve the same signal as the original input. This is the last part of of the theorem. Well, guess what. If we had perfect brick wall fitlers (we don't), and if there weren't problems with aliasing with real filters (there are), you would be correct in saying oversampling isn't necessary. But it is.
Oversampling allows the filter to be moved from 22.05 kHz to, for instance, 178 kHz. This moves the aliasing effects and the filter rolloff into the supersonic frequencies. And, voila, the output signal is a closer match to the input signal.
You know, all those companies investing untold millions into oversampling DACs aren't wasting their money. Oversampling does make sense.
--Be human.
No, it's not like "augementing your analog filter with a digital one". Digital filters can help with the rolloff. But they don't help the aliasing aspect. Furthermore, digital filters still have problems--they affect one of the three basic side effects of filters (analog typically affect two). Those effects are 1) linear phase, 2) linear response, and 3) perfect "brick-wall" step function.
Basically, the best approach, given these problems, is to simply oversample the frequency, interpolate the signal, and move the filtering to the supersonic frepquencies. The goal is not to introduce more signal than you put in. The goal is to reproduce the input signal as closely as possible in real world conditions. Nyquist theory is fantastic, and the results are wonderful, but the implementation using a 16-bit signal (96dB theoretical S/N ratio, while humans are capable of detecting noise at -120dB) and a 44.1kHz sample rate (because of the filtering effects mentioned) require oversampling.
--Be human.
Ooops...forgot the obligatory link.
--Be human.
I guess I don't understand what you're saying about it augmenting the analog filter with a digital one. There's no digital filtering going on at all. Just interpolation. Interpolation != filtering.
--Be human.
... is that after the years spent in the (related) car audio fanciers (addicts), with jillions of dBs hammering my eardrums, I'm now happy with a 10 year old Pioneer tuner/amp, because I'm so deaf I can't tell the difference between it and a $10K Levinson.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Unfortunately, I can easily hear the difference between a $1k and a $10k setup. This is depressing when I can't afford more than about a $300 system, so I just don't even try anymore.
-- Jeff Paulsen
I can tell you're a troll becaue everybody KNOWS that it's GREEN markers that work the best. Duh.
It's the same thing that makes the green iMacs go faster than the rest of them. Really! Look it up!
My system (and how/why I wound up with it):
Polk speakers (they're too old): $0
Yamaha receiver (it's got a lcd remote control!) (apparently has too much "sclugger" or "frooz" or somesuch): $0
Subwoofer (behind couch, don't know the brand) (rattles in case when turned up to cardiac arrest levels): $0
Koss headphones (apparently not as good as some german ones): $0
Dennon cd player (not changer):$0
Sony CD changer (roommate moved, owed rent, remaining roommates divvied up remaining possesions) : $0
Sony Tape Deck (see Sony CD Changer):$0
BSR Turntable (it's all about direct drive, baby (actual words when given up)): $0
Infinity mid-channel speaker (you can't hear the hiss?) : $0
Wires and cables (here, I don't need this stuff, just replaced everything with monster cable) : $0
Total system cost : $0
So, you see, by cultivating friendships with people who have, ahem, issues with the sizes of their subwoofers, you can wind up with really nice stereo stuff without costing you a dime. Almost all of this stuff was given to me when helping friends move, and they all had this gleam in their eyes, like they were going to, in the virginal hollows of their new homes, be able to build the most bitchin' stereo ever, and didn't need any of that old crap that had been holding them back all these years.
Or the mystery of non existance. I had a 356 s90 and I never liked first gear. It was hard to find, mushy and tentative. After screwing with it I finally took it to a shop that worked on Porsche racing. The mechanic was some old Stuttgart gnome who looked me in the eye and said "vy do you care about first geeer, du only need it vunce."
And that as they say, is that.
dual Mak tube mono power amps, Phase Linear preamp, 24 band eq, compander, noisegate analyzer, Denon TT, Infinity elctrostatic panels, Voice of the Theater, subwoofer/Ampzilla, Sony 1" open reel.
Showed it to an audiophile and he said and I quote: "If all you want to hear is shit just plug it into the fucking television and be done with it."
There's no winning. There's a company that will digitally inject the sound of needle to vinyl into your CD tracks. Just for the warmth of the sound. How fucked up is that?
As a DJ I find myself buying all sorts of cool gizmos all the time, but my hi-fi gear is eclipsed by my record collection which costs me about $1000 a month in new vinyl acquisitions. (BTW - if anyone in the bay area needs a DJ for their party my rates are reasonable)
... for shame the metreon may sound nice, especially the IMAX screens but the AMC on Van Ness is a reference theater for how modern movie theaters should be built. Much clearer and crisper sounds even down at the bottom, better seating and better views.
--- I do not moderate.
I have a townhouse with a window directly behind the stereo (there's nowhere else to put it), and tile floors, and it makes a stereo that sounded excellent in my last house sound like crap. Spending extra money on a stereo in this situation, without fixing up the acoustical environment, would almost certainly be a waste of time.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Lots more opportunities to spend money . . .
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Why are some people, who have obviously never had the experience, complaining about others enjoying music at something closely approximating the way the musicians played it?
Not complaining, just wondering about the priorities. After all, if it's the "live" music experience the one guy in the story was shooting for, he could have spent $140,000 on a stereo rig, sure. Or, at a hundred bucks a pop, he could have gone to three actual live concerts a week for the next nine years...
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Nahh, your equipment's fine - your ear's just wrecked from honkin' on that big bong bassoon.
:)
sorry, the brass player in me couldn't resist
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Moreover, when drug addicts throw their money away, they're usually pumping it back into the local economy instead of shipping it off to hardware manufacturers overseas.
Actually, a lot of "high-end" approved gear is made in the US and Canada (Canada funded some serious speaker research several years ago, and a lot of companies grew out of that, making some fine speakers for a reasonable price).
Just plain nuts. Imperial Bedroom is not only Elvis Costello's finest album, it's his last fine album period. Everything produced after that is crap, utter crap. Don't talk to me about King of America. Don't talk to me about Spike. The guys been recording with Burt Bacharach for Chrissakes! What's next, dinner music and ad medlies with Barry Manilow? Whatever happened to our angry young man? For all I know, Elvis Costello died in late 1982 and they shaved a monkey and sent him into the studio with dear old Bart. Give me a fucking break!
IbMePdErRoIoAmL
--Jim
Decently manufactured Cat5 and Cat7 cable has a certain number of twists per foot, the twists prevent (or lessen) the impact of the EM field around each strand on the whole cable, increasing length, decreasing interference. Check the cable spec, it specifies the proper number of twists per foot(maybe per meter).
To your second point, I agree, messy cables suck...and if they are hanging on the wall....they could 'mess up' her beautiful sound. =P
in this jackass' room is very, very small. Move your chair and you are getting reflected waves. A pair of Meyer HD-1's and a finely shot room will suit me fine any time. This $140,000 crap is still amplifying 50 year old technology. Particularly the Mics for recording Classical. Most purists would tell you that classical is recorded with a Schoeps or Neumann stereo mic and there ain't too far to go with that during mastering. Garbage in, Garbage out. I think the slashdotters are familiar w/that term...
Doesn't a laser, by definition, produce one, and only one, frequency? Why yes!
Actually, no. A laser gain medium will amplify light of any frequency within a certain bandwidth. The cavity will be stable for any wavelength which is an integer fraction of the cavity length. The combination of these can select a single wavelength if you design the system correctly and the gain medium bandwidth is sufficiently narrow but it is also possible to build a system where there are multiple wavelengths present.
What do consider to be the definition of a laser? The acronym stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emision of Raditaion. There is nothing about producing a single frequency. Restricting a laser to a single frequency is as much an engineering design problem as anything else.
This sig is a figment of your imagination.
I am no expert in human hearing, but for one my signal processing work I used a rule to have average power of distortion to be 1/10 of what I considered an intrinsic accuracy of the source/receiver operation. To account to the fact that it is *average* power - many non-continuous signals (think drums) will have strong harmonics well below the normal band - which when folded back in with a brickwall will give you pretty bad distortion...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
I just took my WinAmp, and itroduced a brickwall cutoff at around 14K. If you can not hear a brickwall at 14K - you are deaf. Yes - you will not hear HARMONICS above 12, but you will hear DISTORTION from their absense quite well. In fact, you ear performs something closer to wavelet transformation, rather then Furier, and is quite sensitive to the abrapt transitions with spectrum far beyond 12 or even 20 in some cases..
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
..sorry for bad terminology, by "folded" back, I actually meant "absent" ;-))))
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
.. which is exactly the same. (absense is due to a presense of the filter)
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
..have not heard anything more moronic in a while. What scattered light? Are you nuts? It is either 0 or 1, with great redundancy and error correction. That's the idea of digital. In fact - traffic outside your house will introduce more noise, then you eliminate with this fancy cable. Man, to a large extent physics IS an exact science (now I have said it).. Learn something.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
You are the arrogant m.. here, sorry. Did not you get it? It is not about the quality of the filter, and ringing, or whatever. I can define nice narrow transition, smaller that detector (ear) resolution, and require curtain level of suppresion, well below detector sensitivity floor, get lotsa poles, and for all practical purposes it is an equivalent of an ideal high-frequency cutoff. But back in the time space, I will introduce distortion, that is rather audible: because ear is NOT a detector purely in frequency space - it does have time sensitivity as well, think wavelet transform - with curtain time-frequncy plane divisions. So, nice cutoff of sensitivity to a pure sine above 12K, does not mean dropping above 12K components is not detected. BTW, one of my favorite reviews on time-frequency analysis (not related to hearing) Mallat's "Wavelet tour of signal processing" Nice reading..
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Care to explain, anonymous moron?
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
to clarify - you have not got a slightest idea of what I am talking about, you will probably get an "F" from me, in signal analysis class I tought, and you want detail you are free to E-mail me, anonymous prick..
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Go, do yourself a favor and read some good book on signal physics. If you hear up to 12Khz, you want you equipment to be linear and sampling of the digitization to be up to at least 24Khz. Even then you may get VERY noticable artifacts due to nonlinearity of the system in the area well above 12Khz.. Basically 96Khz/24bit sampling seems to be where you really hit physiological limits. It would seem to me that for all the high end systems, room acoustics would be a bigger factor. It is definitly a huge factor in live performances.. Personally I listen music only in my car. Where even MP3 256kb quality is sufficient. But I DO hear the difference between MP3, CD, and life performance. I just do not care enough.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
There needs to be a middle ground between the mass market junk sold in chain stores and the grossly overpriced and under-engineered equipment sold in "audio salons". Every time I read about $100 a foot speaker wire, hand woven out of virgin silver thread by Buddhist monks in Tibet, I want to beat the salesman to death with a book on transmission line theory.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
problem is that most high-end audiophiles are pretty much morons. They believe the marketing crap that using $10.00 a foot ribbon cable for speaker wires actually sounds better, or using the $40.00 stabilazation rings on your CD's will give you better CD audio.
high end audio is possible without dropping 10K.. I've seen it done for less than 4K you can save even more of you build the speakers, and you end up with speakers that will blow away anything you can buy... ( http://www.aloha-audio.com/Ariel.html for example. These if built right sound better than anything I have found (except for clipsch clipshorns... but you need a GIANT room for those)
Nope most audiophiles are just rich idiots.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I listen to most of my music in the car on MiniDisk , but I'm seriously picky as to what I listen to. Now tell me who is getting the best experience. Him listening to Brittany on £5000 worth of equipment or me listening to Floyd/Zep/Beatles etc on my £200 head unit?
I worked for an architects firm that had the task of designing a listenign room for this guys stereo, he quoted teh price as over 100,000. I saw this here are teh specs.
Two Bass speakers, consiting of 8 - 10" woofers at $300 a peice. they were made into a sculpted speaker box that looked like teh washington monument.
Two midrange boxs that were actually well they looked sort of like a potatoe chip, cept only curved in one dimension. the tweaters were ribbon tweeters with one long one going down the middle.
the speakers were connected with licquid nitrogen wires idea being super cooled equal little resistance and noise. ohh yea the wires were silver and shielded.
the amplifier was a tube amplifier custom built in russia. delivering only about 200W per channel at 5 channels.
he had what looked like a rack of preamps, about 4 feet tall. and last of all was his custom made CD player which was made from granite in the shape of a greek cross. you played teh cd by placing on top of the cross and putting a weight on it.
there was only a single chair in the room which could not be moved.
and all I will say is this it sounded like it was a 100,K stereo, I was completely blown away.
suffice it to say my fisher second hand stereo and teh jenson speakers I bought on sale was significanlty cheaper.
After listening to my new (years ago) system:
"It's OK if all you want to do is listen to music".
I've also noticed that Linux zealots will say just about anything to a Windows user to justify the huge amounts of inconvenience that they go through to support their habit.
One man's passion is another man's wretched excess.
Lucky for me I own Conrad-Johnson audio equipment AND use Linux!
-h-
Lead is a strong coupling superconductor
meaning phonons have more effect on transport.
No, for best sound quality, use niobium 99.9999%
purity. Don't forget to properly anneal your wire,
to get it as close to single crystal as possible,
I personally can hear every grain boundary.
BTW, liquid helium is found at around 4 K. Getting
it to be near 2 K requires pumping on it, which is
a bad idea if you are trying to keep vibrations
down. And as for what real men use, well real men
cool with liquid He^3, not He^4. It costs more
but the temperatures are well worth it. A dilution
fridge system can get you into milliKelvin range.
actually, sony sells high end stereo gear as well. you just don't see it in the states.
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Yeah, right. If audiophilia is a religion, then so is $cientology.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
doing your favorite song for you in your home. I haven't, so I reserve my judgement until i have. But what's this got to do with us normal people with normal paychecks? Well, that particular elusive 'almost perfect' quality isn't for us, alas - but that doesn't mean we should just give up and go buy some pathetic sony boom box. There are companies and store chains that sell you a shiny box that sounds a lot better than the box standing right next to it that about half as shiny and half as expensive - but it's still a robbery. Equipment that gives you decent sound quality can be very inexpensive - a pair of speakers may cost $70 or $80, integrated amp - a hundred and single cd player, also about a hundred. And you know, the difference between that and a typical dept. store box that may cost twice as much (rack systems.. ugghhh) is more than anyone believes it could be before they hear it. It's big enough to make you enjoy music you could never like before (I once realized that I never liked jazz or classical
precisely because I never heard them the way, you know, they really *SOUND*). I literally had some cds I couldn't listen to at all before I got an entry-level system (worth a bit over a thousand). Here's an example - you know that alarm clock sound at the start of Pink Floyd's 'time'? Whenever I heard it on a walkman or computer speakers, I could hardly stand it - it was plain annoying. There's a lot of high frequency sounds there and cheap speakers can't reproduce them anywhere close to reality. On the new system they sound just fine - in fact, pleasant. And that's just an example from the top of my head, the most striking one, but otherwise almost every recording I have sounded much better and I heard sounds I didn't even know were there (no, not burping, the musical sounds!
if the walls of your room were removed and you're listening in a hall that's several times as deep. What's the big deal about that? Well, it makes it feel 'real' and 'alive', a cheap system is like listening with a pillow over your ears - it's just not nearly as good.
But enough, this post is probably too long as it is. Here's my advice: don't be a lazy dog, go to a good hifi store, grab your few favorite albums with you, and make an audition. Don't rush, try various combinations, don't buy anything until you're certain (even if it takes half a year or more), and don't buy anything because someone said it's good. Everybody likes different music, and even if music is the same, people may like it for different reasons. Sound also depends much on placement, a great system may be ruined if it's not placed just right. Some stores have listening rooms properly set up, others don't. Hear as many setups as you can, and your final choice will be good. Here's a site you can read about some decent equipment (but only as a starting point - the dumbest thing you could do is just rush out and buy one of these!!): goodsound.com, and good luck.
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
>> "different qualities of fiber ..."
fiber??
Such tourists.
(spits derisively...)
Tubing is the way to go, my friend.
Connecting my speakers to the amp are super-cooled copper tubes of a quality generally only used in high-end nuclear research facilities. (Don't buy that cheap Russian Super-Cooled-Copper-Speaker-Tubing that's floating around these days! You'll *really* be able to tell the difference.)
Passing through each one is a super-cooled liquid nitrogen that pushed the temperature of the tube down towards 0 degrees kelvin.
As the tube cools, it becomes a super-conductor, causing the signal's electrons to move to the surface of the tubing, where the sound is richer.
(True audiophiles such as myself, can really tell the difference.)
On a side note, I'm moving soon - the excavation is finally done on my new listening room. I've had an accoustically perfect room carved from a layer of granite bedrock under a mountain in the Black Hills. Sadly, my wife will not be joining me - her presence in the room caused the sound waves to ricochet, causing audible distortion.
;-)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET
-- My Weblog.
It depends. My obsession (not addiction) is collecting Rocky Horror items and references. Two years ago, I was spending upwards of 20k a year on the hobby - I was also making 80k a year. Then I started my own company, and have been scraping by, and haven't bought anything in months.
If I had the money, I'd be hitting conventions, eBay, movie memoribelia stores, etc... but I don't, so... oh, well. Now I just update my website.
There's a difference between Jack Nickolas's $500,000 custom built theater that he hired Bose engineers to build (I went to school with his sons... damn fine system), and the kid who works at McDonalds putting a $14,000 system into a $1,400 hatchback Honda.
But, at the same time, they are both welcome to spend their money however they wanted. I was broke when the 25th Anniversary of RHPS rolled around, but I scraped together enough to fly out to Vegas. I decided that the *event* was worth suffering a bit for, but didn't buy anything.
There's a fine line between addiction to items, budgeting for what you want rationally, and simple fiscal irresponsibility. As Robert Heinlein said: "Budget the luxuries first". --
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
He's the best golfer of all time, blowing away Tiger Woods's record by an order of magnitude (of course, he's been doing it longer). I may have misspelled his name; I'm not a golf fan, I just happened to know his sons. He lives down here in Palm Beach, Florida.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Oh, I agree -- that's why I said parenthetically: "of course, he's been doing it longer". I didn't mean to slight Tiger Woods, just that there was somebody breaking records for decades in a row before him (I think - again, I've played and enjoyed golf, but I'll be the first to admit I don't follow it other than in passing).
--
Evan "Lettered in Junior Varsity Golf, then did Varsity Wrestling (Lettered) and Cricket"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I was reading up a while ago about lots of audio stuff....
a few facts came to light.
- In most modern studios, when mixing, the sound engineer is NOT using $20,000 electrostatic speakers with insane frequency response and a perfectly flat response curve. Nor is he using 20,000 electorstatic headphones with the same. Yes, he's using good equipment, but it's not scientifically perfect equipment.
- This same sound engineer is going to master things so it sounds good on his equipment.
- Therefore, it's somewhat silly to buy *perfect* equipment to reproduce sound, when the only way to reproduce what the sound engineer had in mind is to use his room/equipment.
- The exception to this is THX movie systems. THX is a specification that can be reproduced pretty much anywhere, so you can get reliably close to what the sound engineers intended it to sound like. This does not happen in any other recording type.
- Most of the dynamic range available on modern CD recordings, espeically pop music, is no longer taken advantage of. Instead, music is recorded all as loud as possible, in theory, to get a slightly louder recording during radio play, to make your trakcs more noticed. You can see this; take a cd from the olden days of CD (80's) and take something now. The cd from wayback, you will need to turn the volume up, and those bass beats will sound so much more real.
Well...
I've heard super expensive stereo systems (as in audiophile gear, not feature-laden gear).. I've heard symphony on them. Very impressive indeed.
I've also seen live symphony. Still no comparison. Yes, the sound may be excellent, and technically accurate, but it's still not the same.
As I posted in another post...
Studio engineers do not use such high end equipment to mix things. What's the point in trying to reproduce a sound that the mixing engineer never even heard?
ah, but that depends on how much 9000$ is worth to the buyer. For me, 3000$ for an SACD player (tho they have come down a from that) is totally out of my reach, for others it is chump change. There was a guy on the hometheaterforum(.com) that dropped 3K$ on two dvd players because he couldn't choose between them.
The vast majority of studios use Yamaha NS-10M speakers - some just as a stable reference (because they're -everywhere-), and others full-time (because they're -everywhere-, and why bother with more than one pair of monitor speakers in the same room?). Somewhat like Windows on a PC. Moving right a long...
By audiophile standards, it's a horrible speaker. Big, honky upper midrange - and no low bass. Limited low-level detail. Limited dynamic range.
Supposedly (and I'm not sure if I give them this much credit) Yamaha created the speaker with the idea of making something which sounded similar to what most real people have, but "good" enough to be used in a studio. Compared to most Circuit City wares, it's really not bad.
Whatever the case, modern rock (and techno, and rap, and...) is dynamically smashed, harmonically huge, and in some cases, artificially tuned, beaten, massaged, panned, and molested in completely disgusting ways, until it sounds good on a pair of abused Yamaha NS-10s.
If you're really interested in hearing what the engineer and producer hear (these folks have infinately more control of the final result than any member of the band), pick up a pair of NS-10s. If you don't like them, so what? Find something different that makes your music sound how -you- want it to sound, and/or adjust it to sound differently by way of an EQ, a BBE, and boosting the volume of a subwoofer. Throw a compressor in there. How about an expander? A noise gate! Why not fire up the reverb machine in your surround sound reciever? The mind boggles at the signal processing capabilities available today.
If you just want to listen to rock music, it doesn't matter that you're destroying the original signal with any one of these toys, because the signal has already been destroyed a thousand times before you got your hands on it. Tweak it until it suits -you-, because that's exactly what -they- did.
Incidentally, the same logic holds true of the audiophile mentality - except, their goal is to recreate sounds in a manner that -they- find realistic (this is supposedly objective), in the most simple way they can. Which can cost a fortune, and yield remarkable results with a similarly minimalist recording. As an aside, a good audiophile system can made some rock recordings sound particularly good - this is an accidental side-effect, and is in no way intended by the producer of the album.
Kid-proof tablet..
Heh.
.9999 silver, and other hugely-expensive, measurably (and marginally) better parts.
The world of high-end audio is somewhat amiss from the norm of more money buying additional features. A high-end system is typically as -minimal- as possible - extra components are all destructive of the audio signal.
Rather than spending X thousands of dollars on, say, all-wheel drive in a new Audi, an audiophile will spend X thousands just for the assurance that a common feature (simple tone controls, for instance) is not present.
Those features which remain because they're needed for the system to function (crossovers in speakers, for instance) are so ghastly overbuilt, from such stuff as hand-rolled matched capacitors, flat-wire inductors made from
And still, the use of these parts is minimized - every component counts as another way to introduce distortion between the microphone in some music hall and the listener's ears in a different time and place.
Joe Consumer buys based on features, because that's what they're accustomed to doing while shopping for cars, electric ranges, and all manner of other expensive items. An automotive purist, in love with driving, will ignore the sticker price and associated list of flash, get behind the wheel and experience a vehicle, and then another, and another until he's found something with the correct balance for his taste. Issues of what color and material the seats are fall aside in favor of their ability to properly support the driver. If the cheapest, low-end fabric seats provide better posture than the supposed-high end, heated leather monstrosities, the choice is obvious and a cow's life is saved. That the buyer saved money is insubstantial.
Audiophiles don't buy components based on what "features" are present, as they can do nothing but color the sound in one way or another - something they're certainly not interested in while questing for absolute transparency. The best component is one which is not present.
Much as someone fixated on performance driving might like to feel every stone in the pavement through the chassis of the car, and would be comforted by the steering wheel reporting the exact condition of a road in an attempt to feel more connected, an audiophile seeks the same experience with music. If someone sneezes in the sixteenth row of a Bethoven performance, or a Zippo is lit in some smoke-filled jazz bar, they want to hear it - and hear it with enough character that they can visualize the person who sneezed, or identify the type of plating on the Zippo.
Whether or not they're insane for wanting such things is left as an exercise for the reader.
Kid-proof tablet..
Heh.
I'm also a recording engineer.
The noise floor of a full auditorium is higher than 16-bit linear PCM, in a typical minimalist recording. Probably due to the sound of a few thousand breathing, shifting bodies.
If one can hear a sneeze from the mic position, it will thus be recorded. Similarly, for the zippo lighter.
If you cannot hear a sneeze from 16 rows (figure 2.5 feet per row, or just 40 feet overall) away, you've got problems. See a doctor. Your hearing damage might even be treatable.
For a further dose of reality, let's assume that a healthy sneeze produces a level of 85dBA at a point 1 foot in front of the sneezer's head, in anechoic free field. At 2 feet, this sneeze is at 79dBA, at four feet, 73dBA. Once we get up to 40 feet, the sneeze is just a little less than 55dBA. In reality, the sneeze will be somewhat louder, due to reverberation - but that's safe to ignore for the purposes of this argument.
Now, let's assume we've got a 16-bit DAT machine with a pair of good mics with good preamps that we're using to record an orchestral work. We've got the gain set such that levels of 120dBA at the microphones, which are at the front of the stage, do not induce clipping (and we're hoping that nothing louder than this occurs and destroys the recording).
Given this enviroment, the aforementioned sneeze would be 65dB below maximum. If 16-bit linear PCM has dynamic range of 96dB (it does), and the final product (a CD) is not fucked with at all (that is, it is bit-perfect from the original DAT), then this sneeze will be at a level of 31dB -above- the floor of the CD, which is also to say that the sneeze has a maximum of 31dB of dynamic range.
This is more than adequate to capture a sneeze - it far surpasses the dynamic potential of most modern rock music.
Oh. In case you missed it: This is completely devoid of being "tweaked all to hell" in the "mixing/mastering process", because such processes do not exist in this example - nor in great numbers of excellent classical recordings.
It's simple, really: Two microphones (surprise, surprise) match up beautifully with two speakers, and two ears. No need to do anything more except, on occasion, mess with levels. And obviously, in this instance, even that is not needed to "capture the level of detail" I describe.
What were you saying about transparency?
Kid-proof tablet..
...and Apocalyptica. They're a Finnish cello quartet who started playing Metallica (*spit*) covers (very well) who've now progressed to a little Sepultura and some original works.
the Kronos Quartet has made Purple Haze a feature of it's set list time and again ... kicks ass too
use Signature::Witty;
It recognized it just fine. The no-name motherboard has an Award BIOS that sees it as an 8GB drive. I guess I just happened to get a decent BIOS. BTW Most drive have a jumper to make them look like 2GB drives to the BIOS if it doesn't like 8GB. Then a real OS or on of those disk driver programs make the rest visible
You won't get Ultra/66 on an old ISA IDE/Floppy/serial/parallel/Joystick card though. The Linux kernel probes the drive for its true capacity and would use LBA mode to get at the whole drive.
A friend of mine works for a company which designs and installs very high end audio and theatre systems. Almost everything they do is featured in magazines somewhere or another. The usually don't touch anything under 6 figures. Most of the people buying the stuff are idiots with too much money who manage to fuck up their programmable remote once a week and pay the company to come back out and reprogram it. Those are the people that spend $1 million or more on their system (he's worked on $3.5 million dollar home theaters).
The people whole spend relatively little on their systems know what they are doing for the most part, can manage their remotes, and actually USE their systems for just listening.
The best part about his job is that people buy new stuff and give him all of their old equipment for free. His house is filled with absolutely wonderful high-end equipment. Once you sit in front of a pair of speakers and close your eyes and it sounds like the music is live and the people playing and singing are in the room with you, you will know the attraction of high-end audio. It's not about "loud" like most people think, it's about quality. I can't get that sort of sound out of my computer sound card (although I'm trying), and the latest $300 bookshelf system won't give it to you either. A nice cd player with a digital out, a good DAC, a good amp, and some Martin Logan or other high-end speakers will give you what you need.
Take a trip down to your local audio shop and ask them to give you a demo of their best sounding system.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Check out the girl angst band Rasputina. Very very crunchy electric cello musc. Cool stuff.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Listen to the music, and then tell me I'm wrong.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
> can they _really_ tell the difference in a blind side-by-side compairison
:)
This is *exactly* how I was selecting my equipment. It is not nearly in The League, but is still *way* better than "some pretty fine [Circuit City] gear for less than $1,000, no air bladder required".
You are right that not everyone may require a quality like that, for the price like that. I ended up not buying RF filter: after testing for a few days I could not tell the difference.
Look at it this way: as a computer geek you would prefer a high-frequence 21" monitor to a cheap 14" one (do they still make them?). You are not going to be satisfied with a built-in PC speaker. Not to mention that the more MHz and Gb the better. This is the same. I happen to share both worlds, without going into extremes.
--AP
Hehe you've obviously never met one... ;)
As someone who can, and regularly does, pick out just about every voice from a 30-strong choir individually (I'm not so good with orchestras - it depends on the venue and their playing), sound is terribly important for me. Indeed, I am physcially pained by certain sounds ('psycosomaticism' is just another word to me ;-), and am especially prone to headaches. Sure, you may think that spending $140K is a lot for pure sound, but then, many people would think that spending $50K on a computer is extreme - yet Sun still manage to sell quite a few such workstations...
So, how would I spend $140K ~= £100K? Well, let's see:
- 1xMeridian 861 'reference' controller, ~£10K
- 1xMeridian 800 'reference' DVD player, also ~£10K
- 7xMeridian DSP8000 loudspeakers, full surround set, ~£120K
Oops, I'm just a littleover budget... And no speaker cables in that list, either. Hmm.As you can guess, I like Meridian - well, given the quite ridiculously amazing technology, they're actually quite cheap, and given as the company designed the up-coming DVD-Audio standard... - anyone feeling exceptionally generous? ;-)
James F.
If you want great quality audio for a fairly cheap price, check out the reviews of headphones at www.headwize.com. Headphones can achieve a far greater quality of audio for less than speakers. I currently have a pair of Sennheiser HD580s and they're fantstic.
You know I was wondering what these people would do when faced with the digital era. No longer will qualitative descriptions be relevant when you can actually say "Yup, the whole signal made it to the speaker."
When will someone just lay some ethernet cable on this, put a few megs of memory in speakers and just cut out the whole cabling dilemma altogether.
would be a direct interface to the hearing nerves ..if that's possible without too much noise or loss in coupling, there you go.. things won't get any better. then everything is upto the microphones and other elements of recording ;-)
not HI-FI.. but AB-FI (for Absolute Fidelity)
Could we at least switch these pasttimes around as to which one is in the banned-by-government slot? You know, teach kids not to use Realistic stereos, as they're just a gateway to harder stuff. Before long, you're passed out on the floor of a studio apartment in a bad neighborhood. No car, you sold it for speakers. No job either...you lost it due to always being late, because you were rewiring everything for the 50th time this week. The power company is sending around mafia goons due to your high power usage. You haven't bathed in a month because the bathtub has been converted into a special listening chamber. All your friends have stopped talking to you, because all you talk about is how wonderful it feels to crank up the volume.
Now all we need is a catchy acronym for the government department in charge of the whole thing.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
not entirely true, many common types of audio tubes are still being manufactured. Maybe they werent from the 60s, but not many people use 60s stereos. furthermore there is the New-Old Stock (NOS), as there is hundreds of thousands of old tubes just lying around.
But modern tube amps (I build myself one) are easy to get replacement tubes for. The only ones which are likely to need replacement are the power tubes, I've already replaced a pair (they got damaged while I was putting this thing together...). I'll likely purchase backup tubes for the smaller signal tubes sometime, but they're cheap.
Its the output tubes which arent the cheapest, USD$50/quad.
But its SOOOOOOOO worth it.
What burns me is the amount of money that high-end stereo stores try to get you to spend on things that don't make a difference, especially cables. We're not just talking about multi-thousand-dollar speaker cables. We're talking about multi-hundred-dollar digital interconnect cables. Hello? Do you understand the concept of digital transmission? I thought not.
I run a mid-fi Sony 5.1 setup that works pretty well for watching DVDs and listening to music. Currently, the level of fidelity is acceptable. When I get around to buying a house and can setup a decent listening environment I'll probably go to a decent 5-digit hi-fi setup.
When acquiring this hi-fi equipment I purchased mostly the lower end Monster cables. The quality on the cables is good, and the price isn't too outrageous for the low-end line. I couldn't find a toslink (optical) cable on the rack so I asked a salesman. He actually tried to sell me on a high-end optic cable telling me that some people say they can hear the difference between that and the lower-end cable. I explained to him that if my components had SC or even ST connectors that I wouldn't even be there in the first place and that I knew more about optical fiber then he would ever hope to know and that no, I wasn't going to pay over $100 for a plastic optical fiber cable when a $20 cable would work just as well. I also asked him to lay off the crack.
Also, does anyone know of a good mid-fi record player? I can't seem to find anything between the ~$125 cheapo units and >$1,000 high end units.
When I get around to buying a house and can setup a decent listening environment I'll probably go to a decent 5-digit hi-fi setup.
Err, that should be, "decent 4-digit hi-fi setup". I.e. less than $10k. I would consider that a reasonable budget for a listening room in a $400k house.
Wow, it bugs me when people do that.
I've been looking at headphones and was considering the grados. Did you look at these at all? It's my understanding that you need a headphone amp to really get the Senns to sound their best.
That gives you the sound, but not the *feeling* of the music.
I'm not one of the people discussed in the article, but I roomed with a guy who had a pair of $500 headphones (with their own amp) hooked up to his computer. He was always bitching about things like that. Apparently, he has a nice room that's built underground apart from the rest of the house, which allows better appreciation of nice equipment than a dorm room.
I'd take the live performers.
I mean, if you are never going to be able to recreate the experience of hearing it live anyway, then it seems to me that $140,000 would buy an awful lot of symphony, opera, and concert tickets. you could probably commute from New York to London or Vienna to hear world class orchestras every week for a few years for that much. Then again, unless you have the right connections, you would probably have some difficulty getting Elvis to play at your house.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
Fabio has (allegedly) a custom made Krell Reference amplifier - one of a few in existence, with Dan D'agastino (ownder and founder of Krell, www.krellonline.com) owning another. These beasts put out 650 Watts/Channel at 8ohms and will drive a load as low as .5ohms with a clean division.
If I'm not mistaken it looked like all of his other gear (cd players, preamps) were Krell as well. The amp goes for around 250k (for a pair of monoblocks - these don't come multichannel and you don't want them to), weighs several hundred pounds, and sounds CLEAN. You can make out every detail of the recording at full volume or at minimal volume. The cd players looked like model 25's, a top loading design, which retails for about $25k.
Alas, I had to settle for an intergrated amp/preamp combination - quite a bit cheaper but blows anything you can find in a retail store out of the water in terms of clarity and soundstage
if you can tell the difference between a $1,000 stereo and a $10,000 stereo, you sure as hell better be able to tell the difference between a waveform that's been smashed, crumpled, and gnawed on by small woodland animals and one that hasn't... i know i can, and i don't even own any audio gear that cost over $200...
i don't care how high you want to crank the bitrate, mp3 always sounds like crap compared to the original recording (assuming the original recording wasn't crap to begin with).
Heh, I would pick a Sound Blaster Live! Platnum 5.1 over that X-Gamer. Adds on another $100 to the total.
----------
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
Of course, to perfectly simulate the effect of having real musicians in your living room, your expensive stereo will drink all your beer, snort coke, throw your television in the swimming pool and take advantage of your wife.
dave "on four. Four!"
Move to Texas. Half the people who go to a symphony wear a coat and tie and the other half wear jeans and a t-shirt. The orchestra even advertises that casual dress is acceptable. There is no animosity between these groups because they're all there for the music. Especially in Houston, since the Houston Symphony is wonderful.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
According to the ones that I have meet unless you are listening on a 100k+ system you *are* living in hell and unless you upgrade you will be damned to stay there forever.
__ Fast - Cheap - Good Pick any two
Actually, since Jack holds the record for tour wins before the age of 30, and Tiger should break that before he hits 26... it puts things in a litlte perspective. Tiger does have quite a ways to go for the total majors and tour events won, but having won the last four consecutive majors, he's made quite a name for himself.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Crunchy?
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Ah, just a standard Mad-Libs sort of thing - can't really describe it, let's just pull out the Adjective-O-Matic(TM) :) Crunchy just makes me think of really bad static or NIN... maybe that's accurate, though.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Oh, I believe you - haven't heard them yet though. I always like the various ways people describe things - "crunchy electric cello" just caught my eye :)
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
OTOH, spending money on computers could be justified as a financial investment that will produce more income in the future. If I hadn't dropped my life's savings on a VIC-20 eighteen years ago (when I was 14), I might not have been as well off as I am today.
Sounds sort of like computer collecting.. However, in my case, it's not as expensive because classic computers can usually be had for almost nothing. :) (My current collection consists of an '040 NeXT Cube, Apple Newton Messagepad 2100, and an SGI Crimson among others)
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Ah.... I have a 60GB hd in a 486... Along with a couple of other large harddrives. Its quite functional. Runs linux and usually has an uptime of over a year. It makes a wonderful file server, print server and X10 controller. I can't imagine why I would need more. The 486 actually has the advantage of only pulling 3 watts of power and since It serves files faster than the internet connection its connected to, and fast enough to stream 4+ channels of mp3's on the local lan what is the point of a faster box?
Oh, and I tend to be one of those people, who pulls out the physics textbook, a couple electronics textbooks and a 4 channel 200mhz O-scope and a frequency generator when I get into a discussion with a stupid idiot who insists that hissing popping LP's sound better when played through a humming, clipping, tube amp than the $150 walmart boom box. I'm an anti-audiophile even though I enjoy good sound reproduction. When it comes to sound reproduction its nearly impossible to beat a cheap little Sony diskman and a pair of $150 Sennheiser headphones.
That's just what they're after. Just like the death heads and the people who paint weed and their favorite bands on backpacks with white-out. JUST like most linux zealots*.
*Disclaimer: yes I actually said this! On a mostly Linux bbs! Why do I say this? Because I used to be one of you! Then I realized: there is a certain social sense that most people possess of when and where to talk about certain subjects, I'm sorry but computer operating systems are not something you need to go tell the whole world about. Not something you need to send a missionary to Africa about.
Regardless, thanks for the info.
--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Thanks for the link. If I understand, it describes a way to interpolate samples in such a way that the result looks as though it came from a source which had been sampled more frequently. The output is the same as if each input sample were replicated N times, and then passed through a low-pass filter to get rid of the stair-step effect. So it still seems to me that it's effectively augmenting the analog filter with a digital one.
:-)
If you still disagree, then I'll just have to admit that I don't know what I'm talking about and move on.
--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I don't understand this. Oversampling an analog signal for greater accuracy is one thing, but on a CD the signal is already digital. I don't care how fast and accurate your system is; the CD only contains a certain amount of information, and that's 16 bits at 44.1kHz.
Is there a website that explains this in more detail?
--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Okay, so I understand "Troll" and maybe even "Interesting", and I'd rate it "Funny" myself. But Informative? Insightful? Who let the monkeys out again?
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Hello,
:).
:).
I can easily see how a stereo system can cost that much money. One of the more interesting people I have heard was of an EE who built his system out of extremely high-end components (a LOT of Mark Levinson), and who actually built the rest of it himself from parts, especially the interconnects. When you've got the knowledge this guy has (and he lives up near Montreal in upstate NY), and the drive to search for not only stereo components, but super-high-grade electronics components to finish off the system, you're going to have yourself a system that will sound better, period.
If you know where to look, you can find the parts you need. The dials and switches in one of the components he built were incredibly sensitive, and easily cost several hundred dollars on their own. Same goes for the capacitors as well. If you want to build your own amplifier or pre-amp, the instructions are readily available on the net.
The funny part was the guy actually paid Lucasfilm, the trademark holders of THX, to certify his system for it. It passed. Yes, that alone will cost you as much as a Lexus if you're not a movie theater chain.
By building the major parts himself, and finding other components and speakers that were just as good, he saved himself over $25K.
There's a site called Madisound that will sell you the components you need to build very high-quality speakers. I will be buying my next speakers and having them assembled from 1" DuPont Corian from these people, when I can actually afford it. If you go for Skanning woofers, they can run as much as $680.00 each. Speakers from them (with parts they will not list on their website because they would have to order them from the manufacturer) can cost over $10K, but the kits run anywhere from $300 to $2000 on average.
However, I built a system that does what I want on a very tight budget (under $1000), most of which was spent on my turntable needle (Ortofon), BA speakers (which are surprisingly good), a Tandberg tape deck, and a Sony CD player (yeah, yeah, I know, but it sounds damn fine and is getting upgraded soon anyways to at least an H/K).
I bought most of it at pawn shops. Sometimes audiophiles have to sell as well. Now I'm just planning a major upgrade to a NAD preamp/amp combination, custom speakers, and I haven't decided on the CD player yet
However, I can understand spending $140K on a stereo if you have it. Larry Ellison spent over $1 million on his (which has a subwoofer that sits in a former indoor swimming pool with special acoustical filling, and yes he had it designed in, it is one of the biggest sub assemblies ever made), and Bill Gates is a serious audiophile as well. We know where Slash's royalty checks from GNR go as well
To really check you need to do a double blind test or in this case double deaf (:
Golden ear audiophiles are notorious for claiming to hear subtle things that no one else can hear. What's more they will attribute these differences to things like skin effect in the patch cables. Skin effect on signal that goes to 30kHz max? Gee, a whole micron's worth of the center of a 12 gauge cable might be getting dodged by the signal. This is the least picadillo one will read in publications like The Absolute Sound. They will use the language of art critics to make technical criticisms. One reads things like "The J13 speakers have a wonderful phase shifted aural spaciality but slightly overmunge the dibalanced low-band spectrum." Truly awful. They mangle fantasy and science together the same way flying saucer and new age enthusiasts do.
It's very easy to suspect that they are in fact full of....stuff. If you're in the business of selling high end audio then it becomes very important to discover to what extent the golden ears are or are not full of it. Bob Carver did a little hands on research at a mid '70s trade show to shed some light on these suspicions. He displayed an impressive system openly. I don't recall the model number but it had the separate tube amps for the right and left channel. It had the oxygen free gold wire to interconnect the type of components that ultra audiophiles have wet dreams about: hand crafted capacitors and resistors and transistors matched to six 9s precision in gain and so on and so forth. In any case the system displayed was in the $30k range at the time. The speakers were no less expensive and no doubt exquisitely hand matched to the amps. But here is where the joke comes in. The speakers were connected to a $200 dollar range bookshelf stereo hidden behind a curtain. Carver injected pink noise into the ultra stereo and displayed the result on a spectrum analyzer. He then set the bookshelf system to a moderate volume and EQed it with the same pink noise as input until it matched the spectrum of the ultra stereo. As long as the controls on the bookshelf were not tampered with, it's sound was good approximation of the ultra stereo at the same moderate volume. He told the audience that he had a top secret experimental system behind the curtain and wanted to field test it to ensure he was on the right track. With some audiophile grade vinyl classical as the input he switched between the ultra stereo (which they COULD see and were familiar with) and the "top secret" bookshelf system behind the curtain.
Lo and behold! The bookshelf system had far better "aural spaciality.........." I've known salesmen who have done this same thing several times with the same result. I suppose this goes a long way toward explaining the audiophile aversion to double blinded A/B listening tests. Those A/B switches must introduce some truly horrible "multiphasic inhibited frequency shifts" into the signal.
Now, it is true that a $5000 system will most likely sound far better than a Soundesign bookshelf from Wal-Mart. But there is a point of imperceptible diminishing returns. I have no trouble believing that point comes long before one has spent $140,000.
p.s. I'll tweak the tweaks a little more by mentioning that Don Lancaster has described similiar experiments in tweak psychology. Every so often in Electronics Now he would describe such shenanigans. Many of his writings can be found at www.tinaja.com. He also critiques would be perpetual motion machine inventers and "free" energy sources that are even BETTER than cold fusion.
Once I read an article that interviewed various stars and their stereos (Robert Palmer has a soundproof bunker with the ultimate behemoth) and Rob Zombie had the same shitty Teac 3-in-1 I used to have. He pointed out something like, "most of my favorite records were recorded on budgets less than what this stereo is worth".
Interesting how some music sounds *better* if it's coming through cheap, tinny speakers. LoFi...
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Read about it here
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
...this article would've been better filed under "It's Funny. Laugh."
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
But look at the audiophiles. They're doing nutty stuff that can't possibly help the sound, and saying how great it is. The Post article missed the famous scam of a decade or so back, the green magic marker called "CD Stoplight". Rub it on the edge of your CD and it sounds much better, or so claimed the editors of Stereofool. To a high-end fan, "bits is bits" just doesn't work.
Likewise for power conditioning. If the audio gear has good power supplies to begin with, then it shouldn't matter what goes into the AC line. Refrigerator noise? Sure: The compressor not only takes lots of juice when it kicks in, but it shakes the floor (acoustic low-frequency vibration). But a good amplifier power supply should have enough charge in its capacitors to ride it out.
The whole cable biz is also nutty. Yes, inadequate cables will hurt the sound. But good 8-gauge zip wire is probably just as good as $10/foot gold-plated wire. There's precious little skin effect below 20 kHz anyway. As others have noted, this goes triple for digital cables! Bits is bits.
Good speakers, sure. Good amps, sure, though I suspect a $1k VFET amp will sound indistinguishable from a tube amp, or at least have no worse distortion or noise. Ordinary bipolar junction transistor amps are not good, but back in 1960 you could buy a good tube Williamson (that's a type, not a brand) amp for $100 or so that today would set you back a few grand. Why? Because nutty folks think that paying more makes it better.
Please don't feed the engineers.
Perfect.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
The article doesn't tell what software they use to play 64kbps MP3. Xmms ?
{{.sig}}
If spending money on something you like is an addiction, then everything we do is silly anyway.
Our entire culture is addicted to (or at least obsessed with) gadgets.
1. Geeks spend $3-5K on computers so we can play Quake or some other game. (I know there are lots of legit uses, but still most people use only a fraction of the power of their computers).
2. 70 year old men buy $80K sports cars to drive to the mailbox and back.
3. People buy PDAs, Furbys, DVD players, movies, CDs, $300 Joysticks
My point is that we are a consumer economy. We spend money in ways that are not really cost effective. All that the audiophiles are doing is spending it on something other that what you spend it on.
Oh yeah, I used to have a 3-stage tube amp for my guitar (when I had one), and it was sweet. Transistor distortion and feedback are so different and mechanical sounding than the sound that tube amps provide. And there's relatively little danger of burning out a tube amp, compared to a mosfet amp or something. Unless, of course, your name is Jimi Hendrix.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
High-end audio equipment actually colors sound in a way that they find pleasing, I think; rather than providing perfect reproduction. Witness the typical audiophile's love of vinyl and tubes, which don't offer anything like faithful reproduction. They do, however, provide a characteristic coloration which many people find enjoyable.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Don't forget Alma Gates, creator of The Beast, a Ford Bronco with a 48,000 watt sound system that's louder by a factor of eight or so than a 747 jet engine. Alma's a 6-something retired schoolteacher.
Okay, so maybe that's not the usual definition of audiophile, but she does exhibit quite a love for her kind of audio.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I bought a really cheap pair of speakers with subwoofer at the local retail store for $20 and I think they sound excellent. I listen to all my MP3s on them and they sound fine even with lhigher MP3 compression and the cheap speakers. I'd rather buy a hard drive or RAM.
I'm suprised that at 71 this guy still has the ears to be able to notice subtle differneces. That is very rare.
I hope that when i'm that old my ears are still that good, i have never counted on that though.
OK, so you can hear a difference; but is it $9,000 worth of difference?
You don't work for the Tweeter store in Framingham, MA, do you? 'Cause the guy I bought my head unit from told me he was putting a system into his car just like that... I don't think the price tag he mentioned was quite as high, though.
Anyway, I've seen the Alpine in-dash DVD players, and while it's definitely a sweet gadget to show off, well...when you're usually the only one in your car, and usually not for more than an hour at a time, it's most definitely not worth the $3-4k =)
I still need to get the factory speakers out of my car and put some decent ones in (one that don't have paper cones), and a subwoofer (I like to *feel* my bass). They're decent for now, though. My next step is to check out playing MP3s through it with my laptop that should be arriving on Monday. *grin*
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
I have a program that'll generate pretty much any tone you want it to, and tested out my hearing compared to a few of my friends.
I can hear tones it generates up to about 18kHz. I don't know if that's where my hearing peters out or where my sound card/speakers do, but that's (apparently) pretty damn high. Quite a few of my friends (and, actually, my mother) hear absolutely nothing at 16kHz and even lower. Meanwhile, I'm flinching from the pain. I can hear television sets and older computer monitors from a few rooms over (my Apple IIe's monitor produces a particularly painful shriek that doesn't bother anyone else in the house).
You know what, though? I have an extensive collection of MP3s, most encoded at 128k, and they sound just fine to me, thank you. Granted, this doesn't mean much, but I don't get audiophiles either. I'm picky with my audio, but I'm not a 'phile.
P.S. You can get that tone generator here. Click "other tools", it's the only one in the category. Windows-only.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Alright, I'm bored, I've got some time to kill...let's see how close I can get.
[A couple hours pass]
Alright, I suppose I could keep adding things onto this, but I won't. I got it up to $10,103.46, though. It's a multimedia workstation designed for graphics and digital video editing, high-performance gaming, DVD playback, and DVD authoring, with all the accessories.
That's right, Win2K. I know we all love linux in here, Win2K is actually a decent OS, especially for all of the tasks I've specced this out for.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
You're right - $5000 can get you great sound. But you can have it for less too. The biggest ticket item in many setups is the speakers. I don't have a house, but an apartment, and there's no room for dedicated listening space and all that triangular arranging. I get superb sound from some mid-range ($3000) components (CD & Amp) and a pair of Sennheiser 600s. Awesome headphones! Comfortable too.
Did you know that there was a guy with a cold in the audience of the Deutsche Grammophon recording of Bernstein conducting Beethoven's 9th in D minor? Neither did I until I got the Sennheisers...
Give us the details, what were the speakers?
Also, have you heard the MFSL remaster of DSOTM? What do you think?
other names are less recognizable like Arcam , Marantz, Rega , Rotel , NAD, and Nakamichi . But all make superlative gear for less than you'd think.
my habit has recently been Krell and Vandersteen
above all, any audiophile will tell you to listen, make adjustments, and buy and enjoy what sounds the best. all it takes is love of music
"entymology" means absoluting nothing.
entomology - Study of insects etymology - Study of word origins
I am not a dork.
...on creating the recording?
I'm very sorry to hear that you have a $10000 microphone that apparently isn't able to measure differences that are discernible to the human ear in simple blind listening tests. When I start playing music for the enjoyment of whatever test equipment I have lying around instead of for my own personal enjoyment I guess I'll have to adjust my purchasing criteria.
What exactly are you measuring with your expensive microphone, by the way?
When an individual puts a system more expensive than that found in a concert hall in his living room without doing a thorough assessment of ALL sources of sound interference, then that person is just spending money to look like he is spending money.
Well said; I may have misunderstood the point of your post above. Objective measurements and subjective listening may not be quite apples and oranges, but I cringe when I think I hear people discarding the value of listening entirely in favor of measurements.
I've always been puzzled why people would spend so much money on a home stereo system. Recently a friend was going to purchase the Beosound 3000 from Bang & Olufsen, and I could not tell the difference between that and a Bose Wave until the salesman played different classical CD's in which certain instruments sounded crystal clear on the Bang player, and it was a bit louder.
Personally I don't need music to give me Tinitus just one to enjoy crisp sounds, at a decent price. Hell for a 6 figure price I'd have Gwen Stefani sing to me for a few hours, so this would be monstrous system at a fraction of the cost.
Technics 1200MKII about 450.00
Bose 901's about 1200.00
NAD T770 Receiver about 1200.00
Pioneer combo DVD/CD about 1,000.00
And then a house to go with it. Or I'd just get a Nakamichi SoundSpace8 (unf) instead of beating around the bush. I guess when you have money like that, it shouldn't be a problem to enjoy your life, however people shouldn't be so materialistic, since there are other more important things in life you could do with that money, send a needy person to school, feed some people in a foreign land, etc, etc.
Want Root?
... and we're gonna have a press conference about it?
anyone else think that was rather odd? just wondering, heh
For a fraction of that price, this dude could have built a separate building with its own feed from the power company and installed a full cinema audio system. It seems to me he's the kind of person who gets off on having tons of expensive gear that's completely unnecessary to achieve the goal he's after.
- Milo Hyson
This sounds EXACTLY like a description of a Linux zealot :)
For $140,000, I could make a Beowulf cluster.
Unfortunately, I can easily hear the difference between a $1k and a $10k setup. This is depressing when I can't afford more than about a $300 system, so I just don't even try anymore.
I think I could piece together a system for $300 (provided that I'm allowed to find used pieces) that will sound better than the $1000 system that John Doe just bought at his local Circuit City. It truly isn't all about money with audio equipment. The other day I went up to my local hi-fi shop and listened to a rig that goes for about 60% more than my system. I thought I needed to upgrade something on my system, but listening just reassured me that I'm still happy with what I've got now.
When I graduate and have some disposable income, I probably will upgrade - carefully. Throwing money at the problem is not the way to go about upgrading a stereo. I don't listen to reviewers much, I find a dealer that I trust and who has similar tastes, and I listen to his suggestions. There's always the haunting fear in any audiophile's heart that there's something better out there. That's exactly why a good dealer is imperative.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
That depends on how much power you're using. If you're only throwing out a hundred or two watts per channel, dissipating that is not so difficult. And including the amplifier as part of the speakers means they can be tuned to each other - as is done in most active studio monitors (say, the Mackie HR824's)
Unless you have a very large space or very power-hungry speakers, or are deaf, I can't see why you'd need much more power than that.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
They also sell one with a 24 bit 356khz DAC, in case you can find some cds with that kind of information on them, or something.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
My 19" monitor dissipates 125W, with no active cooling. I guess it is adequately ventilated, in that I'm not stacking lots of stuff on top of it or encasing it in styrofoam or anything, but I'm not really going out of my way or anything. Same with my speakers.
My halogen lamp turns nearly 300W of electrical power directly into heat (the rest turns into light, bounces around a bit, and then turns into heat).
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
out, for instance, the guys selling those green hilighter pens for $20 a piece
Yeah, yeah, I linked to it earlier. If you really want a kick, try reading some reviews of them on AudioReview.com (the site where people can defend their idiot consumer decisions). Incedently I've seen the belt-drive cd player used as an argument that those green pens work. It wasn't a very compelling argument ("If cd playback weren't extremely touchy, why would Parasound make a belt-drive cd player" was the gist if it).
Thanks for the heads up on the DAC speed. I don't spend enough time thinking in the analog world to have a really good handle on oversampling. Is it their boast then pretty much equivalent to advertising 8x oversampling? (a feature I have definitely seen on less exotic cd players)
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
turbonium?
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
> I do want to have the latest Video Card, latest chipset, latest Soundblaster Platinum card, and THX certified speakers..which could set me back a couple of thousand..
Computer equipment is different though. With the latest video card(s) you get a much higher framerate. With the newer sounds cards, they support 5.1 channels.
The poine is, it is much easier to "quantify" the quality with computer hardware, then with high end audio equipment.
Would you rather have a local gig, or be able to listen to the London (or Boston, or pick your other favorite musical source) as if you were sitting in the choicest seat in the house?
Audiophiles often purchase expensive Hi Fi equipment, with a belief that it is superior because it is very expensive and are quite happy to ignore the specs.
I remember seeing a Meridian CD player that was $25,000, which had lower specs (THD, SNR, Dynamic Range, channel seperation) than a $150 Marrantz CD player. Yet an audiophile buys the Meridian because he believes it to have a "warmer", "more fluid", "dynamic", "" sound.
I also remember seeing on TV some moron "audiophiles" comparing the sound of room temperature CD's versus CD's stored in a freezer. They believed that the plastic in CD's cracks during the cool down process of manufacture and the freezing somehow fixes this.
I wished I was there at this hearing to pose the question to these elite, golden eared, arrogant morons, that if this is true, why the fuck do CDROMs work AT ALL without heaps of errors.
Vinyl incorporates both channels into the one groove through a simple analog encode/decode method, which causes that medium to have terrible channel seperation specs, yet some of these elites choose to pour "top flight Porsche" kinda money into thier turntables.
They are being scammed.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
There's all different kinds of Pr0n. For example, here is a gallery of high end systems and components to excite you.
Talk of $140K systems is aiming too low. For *truly* high-end gear check out this fine example. The text associated with it is particulary revealing (once you get past the fanboy drooling).
Net result of viewing these feelthy peectures is it makes me want to go out and buy some better gear. Could I hear the difference? YOU BET. (Too many Who concerts and all.)
You can't take the sky from me!
Ah - you hit it on the head - it's not an addiction - it's a religion ... you gotta have faith .... of course they're protected by the 1st ammendment .... be carefull - don't make fun of them or you'll get prosecuted for 'interfering with a religion' and end up in Canada like Keith Henson ....
ummm ... that was kind of my point ..... and why I mentioned Keith :-)
If you sample at 22khz, you're not going to find any frequency over 11khz. Can't be recorded as the higher frequencies (like 12khz) will fold down to the lower range (10khz). This is a fundamental mathematical issue and applies equally to analog, digital and probably quantom (or other) signals which we've yet to master.
Rod Taylor
My audio hardware is of excellent quality and will outlast any of the mass-market Circuit City units by 15 years, easy
True, but if and when that tube goes, you're screwed. As is, you try finding a triode that was in common use in the sixties, with millions of devices using them, and you're SOL. Or if you're not, it's because the Russians still use them in their radar stations and it's cheaper for them to keep the factory open then it is to refit for SS..
.sig: Now legally binding!
Um, yes it does. Addiciton is addiction. Be it psychological or physical, its still an addiction.
You're just addicted to a costlier substance that does less bodily harm. I smoke, and I'll put myself in the same boat with the crack fiend and the audiophile.
Perhaps you're still in denial, trying to rationalize your purchase of that $30,000 preamp away, by calling it a hobby, instead of what it is.
.sig: Now legally binding!
I'm no EE, but AIUI, the problem is that DACs, like any other component, aren't perfect. Often, the lower bit or two of the DAC isn't particularly accurate. Think of it as the equivalent of "significant digits" in scientific measurement.
So you wouldn't really want to use a 16-bit DAC to play a 16-bit recording; if you have a 24-bit DAC, you *know* those top 16 bits are gonna be accurate.
As for oversampling, same basic problem - the data and components aren't perfect. The more times you look at a digital signal, the more accurate you can be as to whether it was a one or a zero. I seem to remember, from my days hacking around in a Commodore 1541 floppy drive, that some register held the current voltage from the head, and it would check a bunch of times and see how long the voltage stayed above some defined level that meant "1". Or something like that.
Remember that nothing is truly digital. The bits on the disc are still analog representations of digital data, and have to be turned into a one or a zero in memory - which, itself, isn't really a one or a zero, but a close-enough approximation that we can reliably determine which value we originally stored. If the input path of a CD's data was perfect, we wouldn't need Reed-Solomon.
i wonder how many times the slashdot crowd has tried to help out people with their computer and got responses such as "well i have 2 gigs of memory in my computer."
There is a social disutility function of the spread of misinformation. I would search for the relevant research, but i don't want to do all the work for you.
As for anal retentive, I know anal comes from the latin word anus. Retentive, I am unsure about, probably not latin. I would look it up, but I won't for reasons previously discussed.
The point of diminishing returns is NOT where your own ear can no longer tell the difference between a system and a more expensive system.
If you plotted price vs percentage increase in sound quality over some base-reference sound quality. Diminishing returns is every interval on the graph where a percentage increase in price is greater then the percentage increase in sound quality.
For example, if one purchased a 10 dollar system and experienced 10% increase in quality and (not being happy with only 10%) decided to return the system and buy a 20 dollar system and experienced a 15% increase in quality (5% over the 10 dollar system.) The audiophile in question is experiencing diminishing returns, and contrary to your definition could still hear the difference.
Furthermore, by definition there can not be a point of diminishing returns - you need an interval. However, in real life often there usually exists some point x where all intervals beyond that point experience diminishing returns. One might say point x is the point of diminishing returns
Historical Reference : The notion of diminishing returns was first theorized by the British financier and pamphleteer David Ricardo while studying price theory.
Seems to me that many audiophiles tend to be .com nerds with lots of money sans the ability to get a date. Seeings how they have no outlet for their pent up desires, they spend money on audio systems instead of pr0n. A friend of mine actually compared a fine classical performance to sex: a gradual buildup to a climax that leaves you breathless, your heart pumping; begging for more.
.com nerd with lots of money sans the ability to get a date........ somewheres between fifty and a hundred k invested in his home audio system.
;-)
This same friend, of course is a
A pair of Classe Omega amplifiers (yes, I said "pair"), Magnepan Magneplanar main speakers, all digital sources & preamp (don't remember the brands, but they're expensive, too).
Now here's where it gets a little strange. Subwoofers are his own design, homebuilt, based on 15" MTX piledrivers (yes, they look like crap but they sound sweeeeeet; crisp, clean bass). It's not the drivers that make the system, it's the design of the cabinet. He claims he has yet to hear subs as good as these ones, and I'm inclined to agree.
Speaker wires are hand-made using gold-plated copper wire with insulated strands in a woven pattern. Very impressive looking. But because of his electrical engineering background, he just can't believe that spending $30,000 on a speaker cable is gonna make a noticeable difference -- so what he won't tell you is that his speaker cables are homemade out of telephone base cord. The flat stuff. Considering the time he spent making them, however, they're probably worth about $30,000
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
People mistakenly think that all audiophiles care about is sound quality. Well, it's not about sound, it's about the whole experience.
A good audio system not only presents the sound in an accurate manner, but also elicits the other senses (via imagination): a highly accurate reproduction can mentally transport you to a distant place, bringing the imagery of sights, smells, emotions, tactile feelings, tastes... even non-recorded sounds to a very real state. You become a part of the performer's environment, not just an outside observer. This is what I mean about the whole experience: it becomes a reproduction of an actual event, not just an audio track.
Now at first listen, you may say that a $3,000 audio system sounds just as good as a $130,000 system. However, the more expensive system is better able to reproduce inaudible subleties that are only percieved by the subconsious, making the imagery much more vivid.
Seen on an oscilloscope, the waveform at the smallest fractal levels will be much truer to the original than the output of the cheaper system. Because audio is instant, we cannot scrutinize it in the same manner that we might scrutinize a fine painting.
For illustration, if you read this text in a monospace font such as Courier, and then read it in a kerned, proportional font such as Times Roman, you would say that your are reading the same thing. But are you? The proportional font is much easier to read, and probably elicits a different emotional response than the Courier. This is obvious: research has shown that the font is very important to the readability of the text. That's why we have hundreds of thousands of fonts, so we can personalize our writing according to our mood.
Audio systems are the same way. You may be hearing the same audio track from both systems, but the emotional response, the mood you feel will be much different.
~webmoth
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
By building the major parts himself, and finding other components and speakers that were just as good, he saved himself over $25K.
He spent $140k on his system? I doubt that saving money was the reason that he built his own. This type of person (and I have a friend who's one) is probably more interested in the challenge of designing an audiophile system from the ground up. He probably wants to prove to himself that he can make a system that's just as good or better than the ones that anyone else makes.
Saving money is just a bonus; that will probably buy about 1500 CD's for his collection.
~webmoth
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
On the other hand, dropping $20k on speakers when you only make $21k a year then you probably are in the exact same sinking boat.
An addiction is unhealthy because it interferes with a person's normal interaction with the world. If you start caring about audio fidelity more than feeding yourself that is IMHO abnormal behavior.
Besides, at $10-$15 per CD, I bet everyone knows somebody who owns several thousand dollars worth of music. Why play them on a $200 stereo? It's like putting a 60GB hard drive in a 486.
--
314-15-9265
...he suddenly announces that CDs are harmful to people. Harmful? As in physical harm? "Yes, they adversely affect humans," he says. How so? "I can't really go into it," he says. "We'll have a press conference about it soon."
Bingo! Guys, this is the moment we've been waiting for! The MP3 revolution is upon us. This man is brilliant. He is truly a god among men. His company will announce a strategic alliance with all of the P2P programs featuring MP3 files. What amazing timing, considering Napster is soon to be phased out.
This man needs CowboyNeal protection, for he is soon to be hunted by the RIAA. CowboyNeal, you must act now -you are our only hope!
Go swiftly, like the wind!
Don't forget Alma Gates, creator of The Beast...
Oh, you're not talking about that one. Oh. But it's still true, isn't it?
On the topic of subwoofers - check out these babies by SVS - available only via the net:
S .s html
http://www.svsubwoofers.com/
They make them as big as water-heaters, but they are about a third the price of equivalently performming commercial subs. I've got one and it shakes the entire house when called upon - pictures fall off the walls, stuff will 'walk' off the shelves, it is amazing. Especially for watching movies.
Not only that, response is flat - none of that boomy rice-boy stuff most people think of as bass, svs produces bass so pure and clean that you normally don't even notice that it is there - everything just sounds 'fuller' and more complete.
Here are some reviews by about 75 other owners in case you aren't quite willing to take the word of one random dude on slashdot:
http://audioreview.com/reviews/subwoofer/index_
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Hopeless. I got up to $12,704 +tax at ,store.apple.com just by turning on options on the G4 - and I could get far higher if they would sell me more than one monitor.
Your real achievement is that:
;-)
1. Your wife let you buy it.
2. She actually participated in the process.
My hat is off to you
I think that $1000 is the knee on the cost curve for speakers... maybe a few hundred each for the other components. Most houses are not quiet enough that spending more makes much difference. I have far more invested in CDs and vinyl. Spend the money on the music! Pay 140K for that string quartet to come perform for you every week!
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Or, of course, "What Zarathustra Said".
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
They sell all the crack they own at fire sale prices to buy more audio equipment
There's always the haunting fear in any audiophile's heart that there's something better out there. That's exactly why a good dealer is imperative.
on the topic of this story if you substituted "audiophile" with "drug user" the quote above would be just as applicable.
- j
They have got to be kidding! Does that quartet come with a free SUV, too?! When I was in music school, I can't recall how many gigs my friends and I played simply for food.
Let's see. $140/4 people = $35,000 per wirehead, and what, let's say 4 hours on the patio? So, that's 208 hours. That's $168/hr. That's attorney-range, not musician range.
Um, musicians don't make that kind of cash. (That's the reason I got a job being a programmer, not a pro musician.)
Even if the biz agency took a 90% cut, it's still ridiculous.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Are you saying that stereo effects are the only concern when reproducing audio, and that response and dynamics are inconsequential? Or are you saying that all but the most obscure releases are poor quality and sound engineers get paid lots of money for a job that could be done by a trained monkey?
Short of having the actual musicians in my living room, manually panned is what I get. Even if the music is entirely artificial there is a huge difference between qualities of reproduction.
Most people just don't understand, even those who like music. They shell out money for their sony integrated system, turn the bass up and think their sound is great.
What they don't realise is that for a relatively small amount more you can buy a system which is really good at reproducing sound. Those "companies with name you've never heard" are experts at reproducing music, comparing them with Sony or Panasonic is like comparing Porsche to Hayundai or GM. And the price difference is not necessarily that much, many hi-fi companies are producing cheaper components which are still high quality, to compete with the generic brand names. They continue to develop and use technology to reproduce music with cheaper equipment at higher quality.
If you're one of these people, I urge you to go down to your nearest hi-fi shop and ask to have a listen to some of their systems. If you have a typical integrated stereo at home, even the cheapest setups will amaze you. If you're willing to shell out a bit more, the music will be so realistic you can imagine the musicians standing in your living room when you close your eyes.
Admittedly, it can be a slippery slope but spending $140,000 is rare and really ridiculous. My system cost a bit over $3000 australian ($1600 and falling for you yanks) and I'm quite satisfied with it for any type of music (until I can afford a better one :-). But these days you can get a reasonably cheap system from companies who actually care about the music rather than their brand image. And you can also buy them from more local businesses, instead of sending the profits to some head office in Asia for products made as cheaply as possible in Taiwan.
Nice troll.
Informative though?
Of course, if it is not - have you ever been robbed 3 times by an audiofile trying to get a bit of quick cash by selling your camera and other stuff for probably 20 bucks?
Your not one of these people who like to turn up their system as loud as it will go, and dont even notice that the distortion is killing both the cones and your ears, are you?
God, I hate those fools who do that in an enclosed room.
I would so much rather appreciate music than put up with the crap they listen to.
...is what I keep reading from people. Person A says, "Come on, it can't sound so much better that it's worth THAT much more money." Person B responds with, "You've just never heard a really good high-end sound system! Go down to your local hi-fi shop and you'll see what we're talking about!"
:)
I have a problem with this. Near the beginning of the article, he said that the apparent goal of hardcore audiophiles was to be able to recreate the exact sound and feel of live music.
I don't really like live music. I've been to a lot of concerts (Metallica, Offspring, Green Day, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Joe Satriani, plus festivals like the KROQ Weenie Roast and Almost Acoustic Christmas, to name a few) and even though these are a few of my favorite artists, and I usually do enjoy the show, I've found that I never liked the way live music sounds nearly as much as the studio albums. I don't really know why this is; certainly live music is a HELL OF A LOT LOUDER THAN RECORDED MUSIC, but I never enjoy it as much.
If the goal is to sound like it's live, then, well, you won't catch me spending more than $25 on a pair of headphones -- I wear them at work so that I can tune out the marketing yahoos who hover around the programmers' desks all day, not so that I can enjoy the sublime essence of Clapton's farts -- because I don't really like live music very much. If live music isn't the goal, then what is?
Also, I was annoyed by the guy in the article who said, "Would you take a book to the symphony?" No, asshole, I wouldn't -- if I was ACTUALLY AT A SYMPHONY, not sitting in my oak-paneled den grooving on how awesome I am. I was amazed that the writer didn't interview any of these guys' wives or girlfriends to see what they think of their man's habits. Then again, maybe these guys don't have an SO... for whatever reason.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Well, I've been to a couple of really small gigs (Naked to the World at the Genghis Cohen Cantina in Los Angeles, to name one) and they sounded fine, not really any different than other rock concerts (if a lot quieter and smaller than, say, Metallica). Spending even $500 to recreate that kind of sound is simply not important to me; I really only listen to music to make driving and programming more bearable. (Granted I LIKE doing both, but I *have* to drive to work and then I *have* to program when I'm there; oddly enough I don't listen to music when I code at home.)
:) I mean, that guy who spent $140,000 on sound equipment... extreme, yes, but he could have gotten $500 front-row seats to 280 concerts for that money!
As for symphony orchestra stuff... there, I'll agree. I've been to several symphonies a number of times, and it's a full, deep sound; I really enjoy it when I do go. The problem is that spending thousands of dollars to recreate that in my home is, to me, a waste, when I could use that money to simply GO to the symphony!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
If you have a tin ear, consider yourself fortunate then go buy that Mercedes Gull Wing you always wanted, instead of the car you actually did.
This is the thing that amazes me most about audiophiles. The things they claim they can hear. I can easily hook up my Bruel and Kjaer sound level meter microphone, and demonstrate perfect reconstruction from cheap speakers. I can demonstrate to them that they can hardly hear anything over 12 kHz. I can demonstrate that their hearing threshold at 15 kHz is about 50 times higher than it is at 5 kHz.
Yet still, they continue to buy $10k+ speakers. They continue to buy 96 kHz sound cards. It is not a form of addiction - it is a way of peacocking around. Ludicrous. It is as though they were unaware that total harmonic distortion had been a non-issue in even cheap sound amplifiers for over a decade.
Then walk over to the same person's computer and listen to the 50 dB whine from the hard drive...
When I was younger, I performed a blind test and found I could hear 22KHz. Not sure where it's at now, but it's still better than 12 KHz.
Largely irrelevant. Your hearing threshold at 12 kHz is about 7-8 times greater than it is at 5 kHz, as long as you are human.
Your audio recordings contain VERY little signal at 12 kHz that is 7-8 times louder than signal in the 1-5kHz range. It is a non-issue. You cannot hear it.
The point behind an increase in sample rate past 44.1 KHz is because of the interaction of harmonics on the brick-wall filtering that is taking place.
Audio frequencies above half the sample rate (Nyquist frequency) are filtered, but to avoid a particular type of aliasing the frequencies above the Nyquist frequency are translated to frequencies below, typically in the 5-8 KHz range.
You are making little sense. Almost all sound equipment contains anti-aliasing output filters to prevent aliasing. This creates a substantial problem for a researcher who works with an animal that hears above 20 kHz.
There are quite reasonable digital to analog algorithms that reconstruct the signal with translating frequencies.
I can listen to my $3500 stereo and hear how it is better than a $500 stereo. I can listen to a $40,000 stereo and tell that it improves on my own stereo. Hear it for yourself, or maybe you can't. Maybe you don't care. But there's something there, and if others value it you needn't deface their hobbies.
When I can measure that there is no improved sound resolution in the more expensive system, I can safely conclude that the audiophile in question is full of crap. Since I do auditory research for a living, I do measure this all the time. I know that the sound production in my systems in the lab does what it is supposed to do.
How many audiophiles have taken a $10000 microphone to test the fidelity of their $40000 system ??? Go ahead, take the test. Record the difference. And tell yourself what the 0.00001% improvement in signal reconstruction is worth the extra $39,500.
I'm very sorry to hear that you have a $10000 microphone that apparently isn't able to measure differences that are discernible to the human ear in simple blind listening tests.
I didn't claim there were not differences. Just that there was not improved sound reconstruction. Most auditory researchers use B & K microphones to measure sound levels and determine frequency:transfer functions. They are expensive because they are sensitive and have broad dynamic range.
When you get into the magnitude of the differences between well constructed $3500 systems and well constructed $40000 systems, the rest of the system plays an important role too. By "rest of the system", I mean the acoustic reflectance and placement of walls and other obstacles, things that might absorb sound, placement of speakers (especially sub woofers) relative to walls...
When an individual puts a system more expensive than that found in a concert hall in his living room without doing a thorough assessment of ALL sources of sound interference, then that person is just spending money to look like he is spending money.
As an engineer I would like to think that if you can hear a difference, you should be able to measure it. If you hear a difference that is not reflected in the specs in some way, maybe we are measuring the wrong things?
/L
I remember when I bought my last CD player and the guy was explaining to me that there are different qualities of fiber (for CD digital IO). He told me he could hear the difference, that the sound with a lesser-quality fiber had a different "color" (I didn't tell him I had an EE degree). I would have liked to see this guy to do a listening test and try differentiating fiber quality.
Sure, there's a lot of different quality, but at these distances they're all equal. Moreover, bit errors will sound like (additive) white noise and will not "color" the sound. I don't know whether the guy believed what he said or was just trying to sell expensive stuff.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
One thing that may be worth it because you can actually _feel_ the difference is subwoofers. These should preferably shake the entire house when "Alzo Spake Zarathustra" is played at high volume (for those of you that don't recognize the name: you have heard the music, it's usually refered to as "2001").
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Heroin is illegal, buying speakers is not and as long as he is not going bankrupt he isn't hurting anyone. The singular purchase of expensive speakers hardly qualifies as a habitual act so it is not an addiction. In fact using your income on things you enjoy is healthy. Most of the idiots here are a)confusing obsession and addiction and b)calling something bad just because it goes outside the bounds of their limited experiences. If someone buys an expensive computer system I am not out calling him an addict. If someone buys a Lamborghini I don't judge that either. His use of the word addiction was a joke that you failed to get. Perhaps your post is a joke as well but all too typical of the sort of inanities that is being posted here. Since you put your legal smoking habit in the same boat as the crack habit you obviously are confused about judging things in general. Legality and effect on a persons life through a constant and repetitive action is one way to consider the harm of addiction. On the other hand a singular purchase of expensive speakers hardly qualifies as a habitual act.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Funny, a double-blind cable test is what convinced me that cables sounded differently. I thought it was bullshit and that I would be able to hear, at best, the tiniest difference. Instead it was huge and I was convinced. Since then I have come to accept some things and not others. I am skeptical about shun mook discs but live and let live, I have never been able to borrow some to try in my system and it's hard to tell at audio shows whether they make a difference or not. But some of that really high end equipment sure sounds sweet. Too bad these guys play the worst fucking music ever. The classical is fine but the rock music they choose sucks. All they care about is if it is well recorded or not. To me I want to hear the inner detail of good music not have a stereo check disc become my life. When I listen to grungy music I want to say "Hear that? There's more shit there in that sound, where it goes Skreeieieihcchkchczgzghekazzzzz!" The only thing as good would be mag wheels, man that'd be sweet......
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Idiots are everywhere.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Thanks for making generalities for the rest of us you fucking retard. It all depends on how much listening you do and how much you care. Which will differ from person to person. You can't set a dollar limit on this sort of stuff and say that is the marker point. Typical AC idiot comment. Almost as stupid as the tone of the retarded washingtonpost article that this is all about.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
I met Fabio once and he told me that he and some friends had eaten out and gone back to his place to watch a movie and everyone started getting sick. They figured it was the shellfish, but Fabio didn't think that they had had enough time to digest the food to be gettting sick. So he changed the settings on his subwoofer in the massive home theater system and suddenly everyone felt okay! Now that's good squishy!
Hey, you think your house is cool?
I've got a reasonable hi-fi system which I've spent a lot of time and money (for me) building up. I can only play the same records and CDs on it that I could play on a chain store own-brand integrated system, but there's more to it than that.
I love music, and get enormous pleasure listening to it, but since my system reached a certain point, I've found that as well as enjoying the music itself, I can enjoy the way it sounds. Double the fun.
Even lo-fi home recorded stuff is so much better when you can hear the hum of the cheap guitars, the crackle of dodgy cabling, and cars going past the house where it was recorded.
Another thing is that it looks way cool. A lot of high-end audio, especially turntables, looks fantastic. It's like having a piece of avant-garde sculpture in the corner.
No, I don't *need* a 6000ukp turntable, but then you don't need a 4 Xeon PIII machine with a 28" LCD display to read Slashdot. You'd have one if the option were open to you though, right?
No need to justify it: I want a ridiculous stereo system, I can afford a ridiculous stereo system, so I have a ridiculous stereo system.
"For that money [$140k], a local company called the Gene Donati Orchestras will send a string quartet to your home and play on your patio once a week for more than a year. Which is why audiophiles spend a lot of time defending their sanity."
What I don't understand about the original quote is that most people listen to their music more than once a week for a year.
A string quartet is one thing. Will they send a whole opera company to your house too?
But if they could, that'd be one awesome string quartet.
Hey, why not? Electrify the instruments (it can be done, with great results), maybe slap some distortion pedals on... wow. I wish I still played the cello now....
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Instead of mounting pickups or mics on the instruments, you could use an electric cello, electric violin, etc. You'd need a keyboard amp to handle the range of the cello, but it'd work....
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
In a society where business is actively trying to induce desire (for goods) in people is this really so surprising?
It reminds me alot of people obsessed with modifying their cars -- its always "Im gonna get this new window tint..." , "Im gonna have it lowered another 1.5 inches ...
In hobbies like this, acquiring the stereo *IS* the hobby. Its easy to get addicted to purchasing gear, (im a hobby musician myself) its called "Gear Lust" and is quite common ... Its only really "dangerous" if you debit finance the thing -- because at some point you have to pay off the credit cards and can't get your next "fix" by purchasing something.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
"You know. ... the thing is .. when you buy furniture, you tell yourself, thats the last one of those I'll ever have to buy ... whatever else happens I've got that sofa problem taken care of." - I am jacks stereo problem :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
If I had the money, I'd rather spend it on software (i.e., music CD's) rather than hardware. I consider my 600 dollar shelf system extravagant :)
NO CARRIER
yes. but put the sandboxes AFTER spending 140k? I always thought it's the 1st thing you should do after purchasing your first audio system, and house.
I wonder what audio mag he is reading...
I particularly like how it takes a full 15 minutes before being 100% effective - them electrons must not move at the speed of light after all.
Truthfully, I've always wanted to market a device in a dark matte box with a single button and an LED that takes about 10 seconds to come to full brightness. It needs to weigh about 30 pounds. It will make your soundstage wider and your highs clearer. The magic, of course, is in the specially treated LED. I can sell you one for $10,000 due to the rigorous nature of conditioning the LED with my extra-harmonic stabalizer. Have I finally found my market?
About five years ago I looked into the type of earphones you speak of. What you really want are professional musicians' earplugs, which are custom-molded to your ears and (unlike the cheap pieces of foam you get outside arena concerts) actually do something. Find an ear doctor in your area, get a hearing test, then ask him where to buy musicians' custom earplugs in your area. If he doesn't know, talk to local musicians, hell, just ask any DJ who's been spinning for more than five years and they might know.
Where do you live? I'm in DC and I don't even know if there is an electronica scene here... or maybe I just don't hang out with ravers. (Who all seem to be high-school drug addicts, forgive me if that hit close to home. :-)
The sad fact, however, is that even these type of earplugs can't protect you from all damage. Sound is just vibrations in the air, and these vibrations travel through bone. Human beings just weren't designed to be subjected to such noise levels. We're so obselete -- ears that go deaf from loud music, tissue that gets cancer from cell phones, hands that get CTS from using a keyboard/mouse... hey God, where's the fucking 2.0? ;-)
--
--
I like to watch.
--
--
I like to watch.
--
--
I like to watch.
That's what a camelback is for :).
Yes, Time Out is one of the best albums ever. However, no matter how good your equipment is, the album will always only be a reproduction of the music. There's a lot more to be gained by going out and listening to real music, which comes from people, rather than from machines. There's a huge difference in the complexity of real music which can't be simulated in recordings for any reasonable cost.
A friend of mine designs amps, and he says high-end systems alter the sound on purpose so they sound different. So allthough you're getting a less faithful reproduction you can `hear' the difference.
Got to the love it..
Weren't we just through this with the "brain shields"? The market will provide what people want, even if their desires arise from self-delusion. At least when you lust after the latest hard drive, we can all agree on how fast it turns and can read and write.
Two words: Tice clock.
The audiophile (diminished significantly by 20 years of highway commuting) yearns for the listening room free of parallel surfaces or right angles, containing only a turntable, preamp, monoblocks, speakers and me. That guy spent a few years as a consultant to a high-end dealer, evaluating new gear he was thinking of selling. (Bad eyesight, good hearing.) And the turntable better not damage the records either.
The home theater guy only cares about something that plays all the things I need to play, with relative simplicity. Video fidelity is much more important to him than audio fidelity.
The DJ doesn't care a whit about fidelity. His rig plays loudly, reasonably well, and with unshakable reliability. He doesn't mind that a record will only last about a dozen plays on the 1200 with the Stanton cartridge.
But if there's one thing that playing around in high-end audio has taught me, it's that being exposed to the $100K systems also exposed me to $2500 systems that would beat the pants off the trash you'd spend $2500 on at Circuit City.
High end is not synonymous with high price.
Those imperceptable gaps never "get out" of the DAC. This is due to the slew rate of DACs not being perfect (transistor swing, capicitor leakage, line impedence), meaning you don't get square edges, and that most of them are explicitly filtered to remove frequencies beyond the Nyquist frequency. There isn't anything extra for the ear to hear.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
But if you're that much an audiophile, then you're going to need that same rig to handle the output... not to mention the team of engineers to set up and tear down every time the instrumentalists show up.
[|]
You may hear a difference, but one is not necessarily better than the other. They are just that: different. It's the same reason that a recording studio carries a variety of microphones. They all sound different. Since music is generally mixed for a normal grade playback system, an audiophile system essentially re-tunes the music to something that the piece was not originally intended to sound like.
maru
Of course a major difference between live and recorded music is due to the physical environment. If you are playing back studio-recorded tracks and getting a live sound then your listening area is screwed.
maru
Of course there is a difference between the different "audiophile" cables. That's because the same audiophiles who think an equalizer is the product of satan, and work towards the perfectly flat frequency response through only mechanical means, use speaker cables that typically have inductive networks in them.
maru
Yet another audiophile who claims that the more expensive systems sound "different" but mentions nothing about whether the system sounds better.
Spend your money where it counts. On improving the acoustics of your listening area. This will make a more significant difference than any of the other items you mention, unless you are just trying to change the sound of the sound for the sake of saying it sounds different, which seems to be the objective of many of the audiophiles whose messages I have read here.
maru
You are insane if you think modern recordings can capture the level of detail you describe without the signal being tweaked all to hell at some point during the mixing/mastering process. Now about that transparency?
maru
The point behind an increase in sample rate past 44.1 KHz is because of the interaction of harmonics on the brick-wall filtering that is taking place.
Audio frequencies above half the sample rate (Nyquist frequency) are filtered, but to avoid a particular type of aliasing the frequencies above the Nyquist frequency are translated to frequencies below, typically in the 5-8 KHz range. This creates intermodulation distortion. By increasing the sample rate to 88.2 or 96 KHz, this aliased range is moved out of the frequency spectrum in which the original source's audio information will reside, which eliminates intermodulation distortion.
It's not an audiophile thing, it's real.
maru
24 bits is better than 16 bits because the noise floor drops with 24 bits, thus you can record at a lower level and thus have greater dynamic range.
maru
Not the sneeze, the Zippo! Christ, the sound could be picked up from outside the building with the way some people sneeze. As for the Zippo, assuming that the microphones were actually directed at the players, and located within reasonable proximity of the playing area, I question the ability of modern microphone technology (which really hasn't had any noteable advanced in 30 years) to capture in great detail a low amplitude sound that potentially originates from outside of the microphone known area of sensitivity.
maru
I can't explain it much simpler. Essentially, the sampling process at 44.1 KHz results in artifacts in the audible frequency range. Although filter techniques largely eliminate this, artifacts do still remain. Sampling at 96 KHz moves the artifacts out of the audible range, thus requiring no mucking-around in the audible spectrum.
maru
The problem is with the analog low pass filter's ability to remove material right on the edge of the audio spectrum. It either attenuates some of the desired audio or doesn't filter enough (it's not a brick wall). Getting the entire filtering process out of the edge of the audio spectrum is a primary point behind 96 KHz.
maru
Jesus, I am not talking about consumer grade stuff. The point behind the move to 88.2 and 96 KHz in pro recording is a known fact, the artifacts exist. I cannot possibly explain it any clearer, it's like arguing the answer to 1+1. The reason consumer sound cards are moving to 96 KHz is because it's next to impossible to get a modern convertor that does less than 24 bit/96 KHz.
maru
Where are you getting this stuff from? The sample rate has absolutely nothing to do with digital mixing. Digital mixing has been used in sound cards since the SB16. In addition, I know of no sound card that does 96 KHz internally and has only 44.1 KHz output. I really have no idea where this stuff is coming from.
naru
The SB16 definitely had a digital mixer. I just verified this on Creative's web site.
The SB Live can use 48 KHz on its output.
The sample rate is not related to the quality achieved by internal operations (volume, effects). You are confusing bit depth with sample rate.
maru
-
My biggest complaint about CD's is the 16 bit part. Irregardless of the encoding scheme, soft sounds take a beating. Perhaps when they create/implement an audio DVD standard we can all be happy.
-
I agree with you there. I just read an article in an audio trade rag that said quite a few bands are starting to record both at DVD-A bit and sample rates and are also starting to make 5.1 mixes. The major labels are supposedly specifically requesting DVD-A versions of new albums, or at least full compliance with such. So maybe higher bit depth in the consumer audio market is actually making some headway.
maru
Yes, you can get carried away and go nuts. You can spend all your money on audio equipment. But before you laugh at these guys, you might want to take a listen, particularly if you like music. It doesn't need to be extremely expensive if you've got a brain on your shoulders--in fact, many of my audiophile friends are pathologically cheap. There's 'budget' audiophile equipment, getting cheaper and better every year, and there's used stuff ten years old, that has another thirty years of use left.
As for playing with cables and stuff like that, it's part of the game. Some of my friends change things every week, buying used and selling used and usually making money on the deal. Or listen for free at other guys' houses and the local audio club before buying.
Constant trading up will result in a good, well-matched system at half the price of new. I've got a very nice $25,000 system on which I've spent maybe $14,000 over ten years. I do use a $1200 interconnect, but it didn't actually cost me anything.
I also 'pay myself first' and keep many times this money in financial assets. No use being a damned fool about anything...
My roommate last semester in colledge was at least a form of audiophile. Although his equipment was well around reasonable (he had the frugality representative of many technical profesions) he still complained of the strangest things. The most apparent was his complaint about mp3 audio. He said that there was always a 16KHz tone which always bugged him. I, on the other hand, had never heard it. So one day, we performed a small test.
At the local engineering lab, we hooked up the wave generator to a small speaker, adjusted it to the right volume, and started cranking up the Hertz. My hearing petered out around 14KHz. When we hit 16KHz, several of the nearby people were covering their ears in pain, while others (and myself) were completely unphazed.
Which brings me to my point. I theorize that those people who complain about the quality of audio equipment are probably those with the best hearing among us. Although there are probably a handful which are doing it just for the status symbol ("I have a 140K$ sound system. What do you have?"), I would assume most of them actually can make some sort of differentiation, leaving us people with poor hearing wondering what the heck the problem is.
In that case, I guess good hearing is sort of a curse. IMHO, Never being completely satisfied with a recorded version of a song, being forced to buy fantasically rare and expensive equipment, and so on seems like sort of a personal hell to me.
So, to summarize a final time, Don't knock all those audiophiles out there. We, literally, don't know what we're missing
Save a life. Eat more cheese
So there I was, juggling apples and small animals, when I accidentally bit into the wrong one...
just because it's an addiction doesn't mean it's unhealthy ...
just because i drop 20k on speakers doesn't mean im in the same boat as the guy who hops down to the local steet-corner to grab some smack.
_f
Eddie VanHalen was a fanatic about cables and sound in his guitar rig. GFTPM ran articles back in the early eighties about him recording via patch cable direct into the recording console. I thought he was a nut until I tried it. The difference in sound quality vs. cable lenghth was amazing. I went from a 20 whirlwhind cobra coil to small patches staright into the console for that stuff right after that. I never bought into what the specs of equipment were after that. Went for what sounded good. The specs can be pretty much taken as marketing bs. My point is if you are grinning like an idiot when you hear something that sounds as wonderful as it possibly could, the hairs on the nape of your neck standing and a shiver through your body ... don't think your the only one :)
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
The sound reproduced from a vinyl record seems warmer because the pops and scratches inherent in vinyl remind the subconscious of a warm fireplace.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Oh.. didn't /. feature a house with a half million dollar subwoofer that some guy built into his foundation and was the size of a swimming pool?
That guy was Oracle founder and all around rich guy Ellison.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
I acquired a pair of series IV 901's and I love them for music. Really fill the room. As a general speaker, however, they do not work well in a surround sound setup due to the wave propagation. They also need a large amp and the perfect shape room to sound right. For anybody who can't remember, these speakers were / are sort of a pentagon shape with 8 drivers, all the same size pointing out the 2 back sides, and one driver pointing out the front.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
It seems to be too mocking, attempting to cast audiophiles in a freak-show light, which I find is unfair. If you have a $10M, $100K for a stereo isn't really all that much. Hell, I wish I could afford half that stuff!
And what was that weird thing about CD's anyway???
sig:
-raph
As someone who has "gone down the road to hi-fi" so to speak, I see a lot of reviews/interviews that look at the megabuck systems. You can actually get close to that for a fraction of the cost, say about 1500-2000. That seems reasonable to me, considering that the gear will last long enough so that if you purchased "consumer" gear you would need to replace it enough to make up the difference. As a note, stated previously about price depreciation in high end audio, the other good thing is that the service what they sell to the death. My (multi kilobuck) amp is 20years old last month and I can call Audio Research and get every part ever made for it, and still get service. Try that with a (insert your common mid-fi stereo here) unit. Ah, enough with the good things... it is still hard to justify buying an amp/cdplayer/preamp/speakers that costs more than a new car. :)
Does anyone have a technical explanation if, and why, this would make a difference in sound quality?
same reason for using twisted pair cabling in networks. to keep noise and interferance to a minimum
who sez death can't be funny....www.endlesssorrow.com
exactly this is especialy true in car audio where they are not only exposed to normal em fields in the air but additional ones from the cars electronics and generating systems.
who sez death can't be funny....www.endlesssorrow.com
Fisher amplifier and tuner, bought at estate sale for $20.
;-)
..
Denon DCD-660, bought years ago for about $200.
Four element tuned port speakers with one cubic foot cavities, homebuilt from Radio Shack car stereo triaxials and piezo tweeters and some mahogany I had lying around, about $60 total, and I tuned the cavities myself.
Close your eyes and listen to it, and you'll swear it's one of those $10K plus systems.
The trick isn't in how much money you spend, it's in getting the sound right. Most people have never heard midrange before, let alone a system that's truly flat from 30Hz-20kHz, and if you can get the whole system that flat, and get the phasing and staging right, and get decent efficiency out of the speakers, you can get a $10K sound out of garage sale gear for a couple of hundred bucks.
And mine doesn't have surround speakers because it doesn't need them
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
"Whereas the Good News club is just trying to save your soul, the audiophiles are both trying to steal your soul and bilk your wallet at the same time."
/me watchs his karma drop
I believe the Good News club wants to bilk your wallet as much as the next guy. But its for the good of baby Jesus and not an overseas business man.
As I may have mentioned in another post the human ear doesn't operate the way a typical ADC does. It has lots of hair cells tuned to various frequencies, and there's lots of other things going on in the brain.
Someone's ear might just have a bunch of "hair cells-neurons" that only respond strongly to 20KHz and another set for 20.1KHz. That's possible right?
So if you have someone who can't hear greater than 22KHz but can tell the difference between 20KHz and 20.1KHz, then sampling at 44.1KHz might not be good enough.
How do you reproduce 20KHz and 20.1KHz accurately with 44KHz sampling and a filter that must also pass 20Hz to 22KHz through?
Cheerio,
Link.
Well I don't have golden ears but there is a problem I noticed with sampling.
For example if you try to generate a 12999Hz sine wave when you are sampling at 26K you end up with a 13KHz tone that changes in amplitude once a second or so (ick!). Given an appropriate filter you'd get 12999Hz but in practice you don't.
If you sample at 44KHz, you can produce 22KHz, 11Khz, 7333Hz, 5500Hz and other fractions of 22KHz easily, but the rest need the filter to do the job.
Now the human ear doesn't operate the way a typical ADC does. It has lots of hair cells tuned to various frequencies, and there's lots of neural sound processing. Someone's ear might just have a bunch of "hair cells-neurons" that only respond strongly to 12.1KHz and another set for 12KHz.
So if you have someone who can't hear greater than 13KHz but can tell the difference between 12KHz and 12.1KHz, then sampling at 44KHz might not be good enough.
Don't underestimate human sound processing. We're not as good as dolphins, but I believe there are many genuine cases of "golden ears"[1].
Cheerio,
Link.
[1] Golden ears: An unfortunate syndrome that is difficult to cure without undesirable side effects. Treatment involves use of expensive equipment.
I don't understand..the goal of an audiophile is to attempt to reproduce the sound of live music, which, ironically, was recorded using audio equipment, and subsequently mixed in the artificial confines of a studio..let's not even begin to contemplate what exactly audiophiles are attempting to reproduce the experience of when playing stuff recorded in the studio, where the creation of music has basically nothing to do with playing live...
Truly amazing.
What I find funny is that most people don't understand that modern production and cd's don't offer the sound quality that can make a 100k system stand out. A cd which runs at 16/44 will probably start to same the same after a stereo system that costs a grand. Mabye in the future with the HDCD format coming it might make more sense.
Actually, though, the really significant thing is the difference in quality between a $1000 system from Circuit City and a $1000 system from a high-end stereo store. It's real, noticable, and probably bigger than the difference between the $1000 system and the $10000 system at the high end place. The difference is between a system that was designed with good sound reproduction as its primary goal and one that was designed with features and raw power as its primary goal.
When I was in college, I got a stereo from a high-end store that cost about the same as the systems that several of my friends got from big chain stores. Mine couldn't shake the whole house the way my friends' could, but it sounded a whole lot better at reasonable listening volumes. At just about any price point beyond bare bottom you can get a better sounding system- often much better sounding- by finding one that focuses on quality over gizmos.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
That depends a lot. There are probably genuine, if marginal, gains in theoretical sound quality all the way up the scale to that $100,000 system you mention. But my impression is that at just about any price point you can get further by careful comparison shopping than by throwing 2x more money at the problem blindly. It's definitely worth your time to go to the shop with your favorite music in hand and have the guys there hook up the different components you're considering for you to listen to. Even better is if you can get a home trial, since different set ups can sound different in depending on the environment.
Eventually, you'll find that the limit to your system is either your ears or (more likely) your listening environment, rather than your equipment. For most people that's going to be well before they reach the true high-end. Let's face it, most people don't have a place where they can listen to their music that would let them get anything close to the full available range out of a mid-range system, much less a super high end one. Unless you also have the money to invest in an anechoic room for your house, that $100,000 system is going to be money down the drain no matter how good your ears are.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Well, if you are at all interested in hifi, you wouldn't care much about how loud your equipment can play. The idea is to reproduce sound as if you were there, and you will never hear a violin playing at 160dB at a concert. Besides, beyond a certain threshold, all sound starts to sound badly simply because your ears aren't designed for it. If you want to enjoy music, you listen at a comfortable level!
Actually, a lot of "high-end" approved people are made and live outside of the US and Canada.
people and lose friends.
i did a blind a to b comparison of my home built $180 speakers to a commercial pair which cost over $1000 made somewhere in nyc.
my friend who owned the $1000 speakers picked the $180 speakers each time [thinking they were his!] in a blind test!
granted i had a friend who knew a lot about speakers design and spec my set, but my other friend was angry with me that i had showed up his fancy commercial speakers.
we ran the test with a cd of the 1812 and a cd of the firebird, good for excercising audio systems, the rest of the equipment was about $1500 and the cables were $25 stranded flat copper intelaced.
the differences were quite dramatic, even the german landlord's family could easily tell the superiour sound...
i first realised the audio people were nuts 20 years ago when i heard one of them say he was 'listening' to solder, ie, he could tell to 1% the lead-tin mix in the solder used to build the pre-amps! and they all nodded wisely in agreement...
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
hey, i still use that green cd-rom edgemarker highlighter that cost me $6.99 at the checkout counter to color the edges of the cd green which helps trap the red laser light energy by reflection and makes the rap 'music' 'sound' much better than letting it all leak out...
and it sure is cheaper than $140k systems...
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
... The stuff that works and the stuff that doesn't.
Every piece of fiber out there is the first kind. All the stuff that doesn't work, well, that's what a QC department is for.
Can you actually hear/notice the difference between a $100,000 system and a $10,000 system? Between a $10,000 system and a $1,000 system? A lot of times, the more you pay, the more features you get. What features besides being able to provide good, clean sound for your music and movies do you need? Will is wash my dishes?
Truly incredible high-end audio doesn't have to cost a fortune. The article is right when it says high-end audio isn't sold at Circuit City. That's an understatement. But the key for those on a budget is.. Do It Yourself!
I'm a hard-core audiophile, but I'm by no means ready to shell out mega-bucks on a sound system. When it comes to audio, think like an engineer. There are two ways to solve this "problem" of creating a great sound system: throw money at it until you (think) you're satisfied, or think first (do the math) and then spend wisely. As an engineer, look for elegant solutions. Remember that people who spend exorbitant amounts on their systems are only wasting it on "snake oil" or a really nice finishing job! It's the old law of diminishing returns at work..
The best thing about DIY audio is that you learn a lot about electronics, acoustics, physics, and even woodworking in the process. For starters, I recommend the book "The Complete Guide to High End Audio." Read it cover to cover, then do some serious searching for DIY audio resources online. The wealth of info is rather overwealming at first, but stick with it and learn the tech-speak and background theory. Once you know what you doing (groan), begin a project to replace one of your current audio components--speakers are kinda obvious as a newbie project. If all this stuff interests you, run with it. It's almost as much fun as building a Beowulf cluster out of old 486's pulled out of a dumpster! (-:
For those interested, here's my current rig.. I might add that it sounds better than ANY system I've ever listened to (and that includes crazy $50-100k systems at ultra-high-end stores.)
Discontinued Carver THX power amp, 5 chan. ($500 ebay)
Custom built Linkwitz-Riley active crossover so I can bi-amp the mains ($0, spare parts from broken crap)
Custom built main speakers using Vifa drivers, MTM vented enclosure, MDF + plywood ($300, parts and wood)
Denon AVR-2000 AC-3 decoder / surround pre-amp for DVD movies and receiving digital Toslink from my sound card ($200, used)
Sonotube + MDF (tubular) subwoofer using Shiva driver that produces 115db at 20Hz. and -3db at 17Hz. ($200, parts)
Paradigm Titans as surround speakers ($175, store)
Cable and interconnects made from Plenum CAT5 (yes, that's right, network cable!) and special-ordered Teflon coated Silver-plated copper wire ($150, parts and wire)
Sand-weighted speaker stands using leftover MDF from speaker cabinets, spikes added ($25, spun-metal spikes)
AC Line conditioner ($50, mostly spare parts)
Ok, so that's a fair amount ($1600), but that's a far cry from what some people spend, and I'll have this system the rest of my life. (Not to mention the fact that now I am a much more diversified engineer) Ultra high-end audio is well within the reach of your average geek.
Good luck with your own!
I like music. And if you cannot tell the difference between live music and music played back through a $2000 stereo, then you are deaf. Live music is much much more enjoyable. Indeed, it is a different experience. Many people seem to think that this is because of the different physical environment in which live music is played. They are wrong. The experience that I get from my stereo is fairly close to live. People who visit me who would not think of themselves as audiophiles have found the same.
Why are some people, who have obviously never had the experience, complaining about others enjoying music at something closely approximating the way the musicians played it?
And in an interesting twist of the space-time continuum, the builders of the pyramids were the first to put Ricardo's theory to the test.
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand". -Milton F.
Minor correction: it's Also sprach Zarathustra (thus spoke Zarathustra) and was written by Richard Strauss. The only well-known part BTW is the opening fanfare, which is about the first minute. If you're referring to music that should preferably shake the entire house and you're into classical music, try the dies irae from Verdi's Requiem. And when you're at it, try the libera me at the end of this master piece too: it's about the opposite of the dies irae and is guaranteed to send shivers down your spine.
The Organ Symphony from Camille Saint-Saëns is worth a try too, especially the fourth part: a full symphony orchestra plus a church organ playing fortissimo. Breath taking, I guarantee.
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
I'm pretty sure it's "Thus Spake Zarathustra".
I have a website. It's about Macs.
...was an audiophile of sorts. He was many things. A carpenter, an electrician, an engineer, and others. He went so far as to build, completely from scratch, not only his own stereo system, but a room completely separate from the house in order to listen to it. The room was designed to be acoustically perfect so that if you sat on the stool (single legged bar stool - no chair - that would interfere with the acoustics) in the center of the room, the sound waves would reach your body at as close to the exact instant as possible. He spent over $90,000 across 10 years to make his audio dream come true, and when he finished, it was amazing. You could stand in that room, and listen and be awestruck. One of the most amazing things I remember, was that talking to him in that room sounded like nothing else - your voice was LOUD. It was clear. You've never heard what you sounded like until you've been in a room designed for perfect acoustics. It's not just the stereo, the speakers, the amps, pre-amp, tuner, sub, turn table, needle, interconnects that makes the sound, it's the acoustics of the room itself. It's something else.
.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
Sorry there bad-badtz-maru, but you are crackheaded. The low-pass filtration is pretty danm good nowadays. There is hardly any distortion. Anyway, most people cannot even hear much past 17khz, much less a slight attenuation at 20khz.
Anyway, if there was any data left, it would be reflected onto the high end frequencies, not the low as you mentioned. Nobody would be able to hear the distortion anyway. The true use of having such a high rate on a sound card is for the uninformed consumer looking for big numbers. Where would you get music encoded at 96k anyway???
-Jones
Speeding never killed anyone. Stopping did.
First off, a joke (that someone else has probably already told).
Q: Define Audiophile.
A: Someone who listens to the stereo rather than the music.
I do think the whole thing is a little warped. And I don't quite get the "warm" thing at all (I think I did as a kid, because I had a slight allergy to FM radio, but I grew out of it...).
/Brian
Guitar amps ain't got nothing to do with this. In fact, the reason so many guitarists use tube amps these days has nothing to do with sound *reproduction* at all -- if you're using a Marshall stack, you're essentially using a tube-based preamp as an analog signal processor. Go to a guitar store if you don't have a guitar in your closet to see what I mean.
Tube amp distortion softens the fuzz; if you distort a transistor amp you get a sort of clipping effect that creates the crashing buzzsaw distortion you hear in grunge music, but that effect doesn't work so well for blues or classic rock. Tube amps sort of round that out, and the net effect is rather different.
/Brian
It is better to look at a techno junkies spending habits in comparison to their income. A cocain addict may spend 100% of their income plus whatever they can beg borrow or ho for. I get the distinct feeling that 140K is just a small percentage of this guy's disposible income. Personnaly I spend about 60% of my disposible income on techno gadgets.. Not everyone wants a beowulf cluster in their garage though.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I think that was his point.
Retentive, I am unsure about, probably not latin. I would look it up, but I won't for reasons previously discussed.
From the Latin retenere, "to hold back". Not sure if it's second or third conjugation. Wow, I never though those five years of Latin would come in use here. God, I'm such a dork.
-Nat
When "audiophiles" first reported audible differences between cables, including digital interconnects, they were laughed at, until double-blind tests showed that they *could* tell the difference. Measurements showed nothing.
But then new measurements (of "jitter") came along and correlated rather nicely with the observed audio properties; the listeners provoked the measurers into improving their technique.
I approve of the goal of measurement, coupled with listening; I buy equipment which sounds good *to me*, and use measurements just to narrow the field for what I'm going to test. My system looks boring, and sounds divine. Was it worth the money? Hell yes, I grin like an idiot sometimes when listening. (Draw your own conclusions...)
The storage world is almost as bad as the audio world... a 6 TB SAN is the equivalant of a $500 all-in-one Sony stereo from Circuit City. An IDE/ATA RAID is a used, first-generation Rio MP3 player with a pair of $3 headphones. Get yourself a (4 - 512 CPU) SGI Origin 3000 or a Cray SV1ex and (25 - 500 TB) storage from EMC. Don't forget a 1.5 PB robotic tape silo from StorageTek for backup.
You're assuming I have tube gear -- I do not. Tubes are not automatically better, there is some excellent transistor equipment on the market. In fact, some say that tube gear is an acquired taste. So called high-end equipment typically eschews lots of features and buttons for simplicity and something that is dependable. My favorite low-end high-fidelity (or cheap high-end, as you might want to call it) is Rega. Great sounding, solid gear.
The thing is, most people have never heard a high-end (or moderately high-end) system. So it's easy for them to dismiss it as people blowing money. My audio hardware is of excellent quality and will outlast any of the mass-market Circuit City units by 15 years, easy. It's highly unlikely I'll ever have to replace my stereo due to it being broken.
Perhaps the most important thing in buying high-end equipment is listening. A surprising number of people don't do this. They look up specs for watts and distortion not realizing that the stereo companies actually engineer their equipment to come in with "better specs" but in doing so they completely ruin the actual sound quality. I have a very good system "on the cheap" (comparatively) because I spent a lot of time in my local dealer's showroom matching components with speakers. You wouldn't think you could tell a difference?? Even my wife could, and she's deaf in one ear! She had very distinct opinions about the various equipment we listened to, even though at first she thought the idea of expensive audio equipment was pretty silly. She even wishes we could've got the more expensive integrated amplifier because it sounded obviously better.
It's easy to think some of these audio nuts are smoking crack -- thousands of dollars on speaker wires or interconnects (patch cords)?? I borrowed two sets of interconnects from my local dealer for a week to decide which set I wanted to keep (each one was about $100). A friend and I sat around for hours comparing the two and there were obvious differences! If you'd told me five years ago that there are significant, audible differences between two patch cords (which just conduct the electric signal) I would've called you crazy! Alas, it's true. You just have to make out a budget and then stick to it -- try different combinations of components until you get the one that sounds best to your ears.
And oh yeah, Bose is not the best , not even close. They just have marketing that has convinced people that they are the cat's meow. Walk into your local store and listen to Bose, then go into a high-end dealer and listen to their cheapest equipment--you'll laugh at yourself for considering Bose.
Instead of being a speaker junkie, be a headphone junkie! The best headphones ever made sound better than a $50k speaker system, and they're $12k at headphone.com. And get yourself a HeadRoom Max/Blockhead and some Sennheiser HD600s and you've got the equivalent of the world's best dynamic speaker system in the space of a an old color inkjet, for maybe $4k. If you change the Max to a Cosmic then the whole thing is portable and is maybe $1.5k if you spend a lot on a CD player. If you are interested in getting some good headphones check out the nice folks at headwize.com, a nonprofit site dedicated to the high-end headphone community, with forums poplulated by experts. And despite the ad-like wording of my post, I don't profit from any of the aforementioned sites.
This
First, if you mainly listen to MP3's, why bother. You're already cutting away ~20% of the frequency response. Any kind of rock(pop, rap, punk, basically anything with a guitar and drums in it), the technology going into creating the music in the first place isn't as good as these stereos. Guitar in particular is very lo-fi - hell, we purposely distort the guitar signal to make it sound better. Basically you need to be listening to classical music or something sonically similar to Pink Floyd to need a high end system. That throws out about 95% of all recorded music right there.
I love classical music, and I love Pink Floyd, but that kind of stuff represents 5 percent of what I listen to. I also really get off listening to hard rock played loud through an average system.
I suspect the vast majority of us would be quite happy with a $300 receiver and a set of surround speakers. I know I am, and I've listened to 70,000 dollar systems.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
All men. Men love stuff with knobs, plugs and lights, and they adore technical jargon about ohms and impedance. Women spend just as much on CDs and cassettes, according to industry surveys, but men are typically more ardent about music, more willing to contend that only an idiot could think "Imperial Bedroom" is Elvis Costello's finest album.
Wrong.
I know of at least one female audiophile. She's a teacher who uses her excellent knowledge of science to put together a great system. Instead of simply plunking down loads of money (though I'm sure she's done that too), she has carefully constructed a special room in her house dedicated to excellent listening. Some examples of her modifications include:
- She re-twisted each or her speaker cables at just the right twists per length to get the best sound of the music she's used to.
- She measured exactly the length of each wire and suspended on the walls.
She claims if she's hearing a recording of a building she's been in, she can tell where a person is standing up (which seat) when they perform a solo.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Well I myself have gone investing in some really good headphones which are sonically comparable to much more expensive stereo/speaker systems. For example, the $6,000 Stax Omega II has been considered the most accurate sound system... period, in anything (well then you need to worry about your source).
I myself have a ~$1000 setup and it sounds extremely good. This is a very viable solution if you don't want/can't to spend huge trucks full of money.
Case in point: Cables. There are people (like the one mentioned) that spend $20,000 on cables. Some are silver, but a lot are copper. In double-blind tests, even the audiophiles can't tell the difference in sound between the $15,000 cables and some 0-gauge welding wire.... but they still swear up and down that they *can*.
"Here, sir. I've got a dollar and a half worth of copper, but because it sounds so darn nice, it's going to cost you $10,000."
I suppose that quite a few other 71-year olds are paying $6,000 for a hearing aid, he's just a little more ambitious.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
"Who are these people? Fabio, the hunky romance novel cover boy, is an audiophile. So is Slash, the former Guns N' Roses guitarist"
What? The same Slash that used to whine and cry about his tinitus?
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Oh.. didn't
I love this part.
Hoang was so amazed by the sound, and so depressed by the life of a doctor, that he quit his job. "I sold my stuff, including my stereo, and lived on it for two years. I tried a few other jobs, but mostly I just wanted to listen to music.
It's kind of like cocaine, the rich pricks that can afford it, deserve it. Me - I'll just go to a live show and sit way the hell in the back with the rest of the vulgar.
Peace.
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Have you guys seen Fabio's stereo system? He was on one episode of Tom Green. Its HUGE. Tom was sitting next to one of these speakers that had to be like 6 feet tall, and kept asking him how much it costs. He kept saying he wouldnt say. Tom was like "did you spend over 100 thousand?!" And then he admits that one of those speakers costs over a million dollars. wow.
Moderation Totals:Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Funny=1, Total=4.
Don't forget a turntable to listen to those LP3s you downloaded!
yeah but at least he won't make you listen to listen to Stravinsky and then talk loudly through it just when it is starting to sound good....
Ask any audio professional. We all laugh at these so called "audiophiles".
Why? Because all this "audiophile" gear only serves to sweeten the sound rather accuratly reproduce it in a way intended by the musician, producer and engineer.
Although a recording studio can cost millions of dollars, most of that is spent on gear used to capture and record the audio signal. Not play it back.
The play back chain is as simple as it can be:
Source -> Amp -> Monitors -> Ears
Granted, the amp and the monitors can cost thousands of dollars but its still nowhere near the amounts spent by these so-called "audiophiles".
Its really silly to think that they can somehow make it sound "better" than the recording studio from whence it came.
Any audio recording engineer will tell you the same thing:
We'll take a good clean amp feeding two good montitors in a good room over these sweetened "audiophile" systems any day.
Back in the 70's, if you were buying mass-produced components, you were buying junk. Since that time, cheap electronic parts have been built to more and more exact specs, so it is now possible to sell a great-sounding amp for a few hundred bucks, and I have even seen really good 100W amps for as little as $99.
That said, the snooty ultra-expensive amps to a much better job at creating the illusion of a 3 dimensional soundstage between your speakers. Some amps are worth a few extra bucks.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I have the MFSL release of DSOTM on CD. Most audiophiles swear that the "Island Cut" (the vinyl pressing originally sold in England) is the best possible source, but I have yet to encounter a copy of that pressing in acceptable condition. The MFSL CD (which is not really a "remaster", just a very careful transfer of the original master tape) sounds really great. I have yet to do any A/B comparison with the standard-issue CD from the record store, so I can't confirm for certain that I didn't pay an extra ten bucks for a funky case and a gold disk... but every time, in the middle of "The Great Gig In The Sky", when I hear the words "I never said I was afraid of dieing" softly wispered, it sends a shiver down my spine.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Audio cable is like laptop PC's. Just as 95% of laptops come from one of two Singapore factories (yes, that includes those cool Apple powerbooks and the Sony Vaio), nearly all speaker cable (including the fancy stuff that you bought) comes from one of six factories.
In one famous case, Monster Cable had a wire with a little plastic box near one end (similar to the one you see on computer monitors). Curious about what it could be, the audio testers for a hi-fi mag cracked it open. It was just an empty piece of plastic that was slapped on just before shipping.
High End cable manufacturers are con artists. Electrical conduction is electrical conduction. Buy cable that is properly shielded, wide enough, just barely long enough, has good connections (the gold ones are popular) and don't run it parallel to power cables. Anybody who does more than that is buying for status, not sound.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Having recently helped a hi-fi nut shop for speakers, I would have to disagree.
$1000 get you right in th edge of high-quality speakers. Most speakers in that price range that we listened to demanded some small compromise or another. Either the highs would be a little too aggressive, or the imaging would be a little limited. Each $1k speaker sounded better than the others in some ways, and worse in some ways.
When we moved up to the $2000 - $3000 speakers, it was like magic. I don't recall off the top of my head the name of the monitors we auditioned... they were not electrostats... Some kind of side-mounted subwoofer tower... Anyway... Listening to Marni Nixon sing "Someone To Watch Over Me" was like having her in the room with us. On a live jazz record, I was able to close my eyes and visualize the dimensions of the stage with total confidence. Then came the clincher... The opening wash of sound from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" almost knocked us out of our chairs, not from the impact of the bass, but the heavenly beauty of the sound! I have listened to that album at least a thousand times on a lot of great systems, and thought I knew how good it could sound. I was wrong. It was a transendantial experiece.
I'm no snob... I get by (for now) with a sub-$1000 pair of B&W speakers myself, and I am a big believer in hi-fi bargain hunting. That said, I have never heard a $1k pair of speakers pull off that level of quality. Were in not for my expensive PC and musical instrument habits, I would have bought a pair of those $2k speakers on the spot that day, and I wasn't even the one shopping for them.
(As for the hi-fi nut that I was shopping with... He didn't buy them either. He agreed that they were the best-sounding ones we had heard, but his wife didn't like the way they looked.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I didn't realise that insects had anything to do with unusual words. More of a dork?
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Not sure about (b)...
:).
I just bought a hand built ~1985 Onix amplifier on eBay for 80 UKP.
OK, it wasn't worth $50k when it was made; they retailed for around 5,000 UKP. I imagine inflation since the mid-80's would push that amount up quite a bit.
Considering it's in almost perfect condition and sounds very nice
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
If you think kraftwerk and aphex twin are weird then you've never heard Autechre, Aube, Oval, some of the more abstract Coil works, Mouse on Mars, etc.
Fans of weirdness, check those out.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Also, does anyone know of a good mid-fi record player?
Rega Planar 3.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
What are you talking about?
Accelerat* is ultimately derived from the Latin celer, swift, via celerare, to quicken.
I'm interested if you have any further information.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
You are, of course, correct.
Two dorks in the hand is worth one in the bush.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Help me out here... in english-speaking areas we use Mb, MB, Gb... etc for megabit, megabyte, gigabyte. In french areas you use Mo, Go... etc. What does the 'o' stand for? Unfortunately when I took french immersion technology wasn't top of the list of things to be taught. Thanks - seeing Mo/Go really bugs me everytime I see it until I realize it's from another language.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
"Dance like it hurts. Love like you need money. Work when people are watching." So dogbert makes your mottos for you too?
"The example in the article about putting an air bladder underneath your equipment so the vibrations don't disturb it sounds to me like so much hooey. As long as your CD transport isn't shaking so much that it's getting a lot of errors, what difference can it make? The improvements that the owner claimed are probably placebo effect. "
You consider your self an audio snob?
You must not know what it is to be a true audio snob with the comments you made...
First of all cds? What the hell...Most audio snobs are still listening to vinyl. Secondly, whos 00 guage wire is running into 12 gauge wire in the wall? Any true audio snob has power regenerator to keep the power smooth to those large gauge wires.
If you don't think speaker cables make a difference then you simply cant be an audio snob, it think its illegal. Cables certianly make a large difference! Maybe not for a under 1000$ system, but anything putting out lots of smooth watts will certainly be influenced by the type, size, and length of the cables.
Do not refer to yourself as an audio snob anymore...You aren't one yet:)
-tm
As an audio engineer, it took me years to decide on what to get as a home system. I put up with the most cheap, crappy shelf system 'coz I knew that nothing would compare with the studios that I worked in unless I spent over 100k and happened to find a house to rent with a room to put it in, with perfect geometry, security, clean power etc... I resigned myself to the fact that it wasn't possible or even remotley practical. And worse still, I was afraid that if I did by the system of my dreams, my girlfriend would destroy it by turning on the amps in the wrong order or by playing Destiny's Child or f%$king Sting!!
Then one day, I walked into a Bang and Olufsen showroom just to check out the super-wank-factor end of the marke, reserved for industrial designers, e-business directors and real-estate agents...
I thought I was going to be the sale rep's worst nightmare, going to destroy his marketing spiel with my "audio engineer" title and knowledge.
He basically kicked my arse!!
I had no idea how good the stuff actually is, the research and design that goes into the gear is amazing, I didn't expect to be so blown away by the frequency response, dynamic range and general "quality" of the sound from such small, stylish speakers.
I really can't believe that they don't push the quality and detail of their products in their marketing, it absolutly stupid! I know heaps of other engineers that would've bought B&O gear had they known more about it and if it didn't have such a wanky stigma attached to it.
The concept behind B&O products is Quality & practicality, they are so easy to use and the attention to detail is amazing. All the speakers are active and the links from the AV sytems are via a proprietory balanced line. If you've got more than one B&O device in the house you can connect them via the "link system" so that each device can controlled by the same remote and sound can be piped form one device to the other... Even the lights and curtains can be linked into the system, even the B&O telephones are linked in, so you can turn the audio down when you're on the phone.
So I gave up on the idea of a $100+ audiophile system in favour of a practical, good looking, extremely good sounding less than 10k system that I know will last for 15+ years and will also be compatible with new B&O gear for the next 10 years.
Best thing is, my girlfriend can use it without me having to tell her how, and she can't break it very easily. And if someone breaks into the house when I'm not there, she can beat the crap out of them with the remote, it's solid nickle!
Go to a showroom and check the stuff out, you'll be surprised.
but if it was an obsession, taking up substantial portions of my income to a destructive level, then there is a problem.
A human can be obsessed with anything. Take the previously discussed example of hypnotism. Now if you have people in a chronic hypnotic state, such as via you favorite recreational chemicals, or what ever, - well I imagine that advertising might be much more effective.
heck, any positive feedback loop can be addictive. Maybe we should just make sure that only negative feedback loops are legal?
sounds like a plan to me.
My point is that Positive feedback loops are destructive if there is not a limiter on them. The word Addiction is used too broadly to cover things and classify positive things as negative.
"He was addicted to life. But we cured him"
;-)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
From the Article : quoted by Mark Levinson
:)
And in the middle of the interview, he suddenly announces that CDs are harmful to people.
I think he meant to say "RIAA harmful to Music"
Rapid Nirvana
On a lower scale though. I do want to have the latest Video Card, latest chipset, latest Soundblaster Platinum card, and THX certified speakers..which could set me back a couple of thousand..
But then again theres one thing that sets us apart. The Son of a gun has money, I am broke!
Rapid Nirvana
Yes, there is a big difference. I have been an audiophile for a long time, but I also care about my pocket. You will find there is an intermediate segment with a very high quality for far less money than the one described in the original article.
Speakers for example. Low end is just low end. But in the 5-6K range, you can find speakers that rival to those in the 12K and above. I've noticed that people in Canada and the UK are much more sensible to that issue than people in the US, and they have interesting magazines like the $ensible $ound, and What Hi-Fi, that recommend great systems for lower budgets. I personally own legacy-audio signature speakers and Krell electronics, and I'm extremelly happy with them. Regarding to cables, you can do your own
Cheers,
For people who think that all high-end audio is bunk, I'll say that the difference between what you can get at Circuit City for $1000 and a high-end stereo store for $3000, even, is pretty considerable, and the differences between $3000 and $25,000 are noticeable, and it's diminishing returns after that. You have to care about sound, though, and not everyone does, which is fine.
What burns me is the amount of money that high-end stereo stores try to get you to spend on things that don't make a difference, especially cables. We're not just talking about multi-thousand-dollar speaker cables. We're talking about multi-hundred-dollar digital interconnect cables. Hello? Do you understand the concept of digital transmission? I thought not.
Or, for example, the high-end audio store I was in this weekend that had high-end AC power cables running to the amplifier that were bigger in diameter than your typical garden hose. Kinda silly when you consider that on the other end of that wall plug is very low-tech 12-ga copper wire.
The example in the article about putting an air bladder underneath your equipment so the vibrations don't disturb it sounds to me like so much hooey. As long as your CD transport isn't shaking so much that it's getting a lot of errors, what difference can it make? The improvements that the owner claimed are probably placebo effect.
Spend your money where it counts. Speakers, first and foremost. Amplification next. Then a halfway-nice CD player. Forget about the rest.
-----
To take from a list of past-times which cost more than drugs if you get too deeply in to them:
... The list goes on. Audiophiles are no different.
This one's going in the archives. Every time my girlfriend gives me crap about some high tech purchase I can just pull this out as a kind of threat. I wonder how many people get killed over stereo equipment.
The problem I've found with high end hi-fi equipment is finding the software that puts it to good use.
It's all very well buying £2000+ speakers, but if your favourite music isn't mastered to the quality that is demanded by such hardware, then you'll suceed only in highlighting the flaws in the recording. MP3s are particularly good at this (sounding crap I mean.) They sound "good enough" through low end hi-fi equipment, but really are a tortuous experience through an expensive set up.
I took it to a new level ;) I decided not only did i want to hear the bass from the music while driving down the road, but if I had a movie on I wanted to feel the monstrous sound effects as well. :)
People say to me, you're mad, spending $10500 on a car stereo, but what the hell, it's my money, I'm going to enjoy it the way I want to.
Accordingly I bought an Alpine Multimedia head unit and Alpine in dash DVD player. Now we can watch The Matrix while cruising down the road
On the other hand, you have fingers
Naw, I'm an aussie, and me and the family spend long hours on the road, usually a trip for us (which we do every couple of months or so), is somewhere around the range of at least 10 hours driving, good for the kids :) So the headunit/dvd player is worth it.
On the other hand, you have fingers
nah, over here in Aust, that's classed as being an idiot with too much time on his hands. I'm more a sound freak, and spend mass amounts of time trying to get the best performance and clarity out of the system that I can. Got a couple of shows coming up, to enter it in, I'll see how it sums up against others. BTW, having sound booming out of your car = less sound booming inside the car, so what's the point? Unless you're a mindless idiot that likes everyone to see how big it is. For me, that's a waste of time hehe.
On the other hand, you have fingers
Reading music reviews is a surreal experience. They all read, IMHO, like a creative adjective exercises.
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
Why do that when you can spend:
$10K on a really kick-ass audio system
$80K on a ludicrous amount of hard disk storage...let's say mega-RAID with a rack and the whole deal
And $50K on a really, really fast 'net connection...
A technophile AND an audiophile's dream...
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
Could you possibly spend this kind of money on a computing rig?
...), whereas she probably wouldn't mind if you gave her a $100 CD player (assuming she can still hear).
I challenge someone here to rough up some specs for a US$140,000 general purpose PC rig, running whatever OS is appropriate for its purpose.
Speculating on why audiophiles spend so much - I guess it's a question of standards. Even your granny would not be happy working on a 286 with Windows 2.x (she'd have a shit of a time connecting to the net
Luke.
Ash OS durbatulk, ash OS gimbatul, ash OS thrakatulk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul! Uzg-MS-ishi amal fauthut burgulli.
they spend $100k on their stereos, $1k on their car itself, $2.55 for duct tape reparing it and it's 'custom exhaust'... and nothing on anything else.
Runnin' On Empty
"As to attesting to spending money, I have probably put in close to 45k into my system."
Are you crazy? Do you realize how much computer equipment you could have bought for that?
Oh well, I bet your mp3's sound pretty good on it.
I agree! Except that my price point is - or should I say was - $2K. I got the Cambridge Soundworks MovieWorks 5.1 with a Marantz SR5000 receiver. (Don't worry, I have no relationship with CS other than as a happy customer.) It is a $2K system that is currently on sale for about $1500.
It sounds better than any movie theater I've ever been to, except for the Sony Metreon theaters in San Francisco.
Plus, I'm free to drink a malted barley beverage while I watch...
"I know - let's make Quake...AGAIN! They just might be stupid enough to buy it..." (overheard at id)
Can you tell the difference between a $100,000 system and a $10,000 system? I don't know. I do know that I can tell the difference between a $100,000 system and a $1,000 system (which is probably about what my home stereo system cost). I go to my friends' houses and listen to music and it's almost as if the instruments are there in the room. The sound staging is phenomenal. The precision and power and detail is unbelievable. I'm constantly hearing things that I never hear on my own stereo, and it almost depresses me to listen to my system for days after listening to their because the quality of mine is so inferior.
I am not by any means a hard-core audiophile, and in fact I'm highly skeptical about the value of, say, $10,000 *cables*. Even if I had all the money in the world to spend, I'm not sure I'd spend it on a higher-end stereo, because the reality is that for the listening I do, what I've got is good enough. But I can't deny that the really high-end stuff sounds absolutely spectacular -- and as far as what you're paying for, it's definitely quality rather than features.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Wrong... The audiophile next door did not break into my shed and steal my lawn mower, trimmer, rototiller.. They got their money the old fashioned way. They inherited it and invested it.
The truth shall set you free!
The CD will never play back in the 19-40 Khz randge the vinyl does. (remember the quad records, They had a high frequency pilot that the turntable was able to repoduce to make the decoder work.) This is unable to be recorded on a CD because it is higher than the sampling frequency of the CD. It is true the CD has a flatter requency response over a smaller bandwidth. It is also true the CD recording is more linear (less distortion) within that range, However the vinyl does not have ailising and quanitization noise added to the recording. These artifacts are many times more offensive to some people than a little hiss. Adding warmth to a CD does not remove these artifacts while adding the artifacts of tone-arm resonance and surface noise to an already flawed recording.
The truth shall set you free!
and sound better to send the sound directly to your brain. (In the future.)
Got friends?
Yes you can set a dollar limit. That dollar limit is the point where YOU do not want to spend any more. For example, there is a world of difference between a Honda Civic and BMW M5, but many people will not spend the money for it. I was asking people if THEY would spend the money for a 100k system. Spend some time reading audiophile mags and you find that many of the writers do not have the 100k systems (even though they care and listen a lot) because THEY DON'T THINK IT'S WORTH IT.
By the way, people will take you more seriously if you don't use a form of "retard" in almost every sentence.
--- On the other hand, you have five fingers.
Just spend a few minutes browsing through Stereophile. 100k for a pair of JM Labs Grand Utopia speakers, plus amps, transports, preamps et al.
But still, it's addictive. I'm working on my own (low) high end system right now and the difference is amazing between a five hundred dollar system and a fifteen hundred one. So what about higher? Is true High End worth it?
--- On the other hand, you have five fingers.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yeah, but anytime you wanted to? The symphony only plays certain pieces, at certain times of year, at certain times of day. There's the whole hassle of getting seats with good acoustics. Dressing up in a coat and tie, elbowing your way through the crowds...the symphony is really more of a social experience and an excuse to dress up than it is a way to listen to live music. I could go on, but I haven't been to a symphony or any kind of arty thing in years and years...I'm sure someone more current could express these thoughts more coherently.
I can understand spending on something which you enjoy. For me it's home theatre, and I'm probably still on the low end of the scale because that's all my budget can hanele at the moment, but Who's to say what's crazy. I was suprised to fin that the author of the author was a guy, because this is does seem to be a male dominated spending habit, but hey, who am I to judge?
Jay Leno has how many cars now? He works how many hours per day? Is he crazy... well maybe but no one would say it to his face (read: chin).
So, what's wrong with investing in the high end of anything, really? DO I need a rack of 1.2Ghz servers in my home? PRobably not, but, if you asked me if I needed them all, I'd come up with reasons that each one was essential to my wellbeing. OK, well the article is worth a read for it's entertainment value, which, of course is it's intent, as far as I can tell.
--CTH
---
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Just this week I bought a $200 pair of headphones (Sennheiser 590's) arguably the 3rd best pair of dynamic headphones manufactured today. As I was buying them (at work) everyone was ridiculing me saying their $40 headphones were fine... Believe me they were extremely impressed by the audio reproduction.
Maybe some day I'll upgrade to the $15,000 electro-static headphone and vacuum tube amp combo Sennheiser manufactures.... Some day....
"Madness and Genius are separated solely by Degrees of Success." -Unknown
My biggest concern as an audiophile plus raver regards the future of my hearing on account of the countless raves I've attended over the last 7 years. Right now my ears seem to still be reasonably "golden", and I don't feel as though I'm not fully discerning the superiority of my "audiophile" equipment, but how long is this going to last? I understand that hearing loss tends to set in way after the fact (in other words I may not be deaf now, but even if I stopped raving immediately, I'll still be deaf in 20 years). I've been meaning to get a good pair of quality earplugs (the kind sound engineers use) for years, but never did, and now I feel like it's too late. Can anyone tell me whether or not it will still be possible for me to be an audiophile in the future and/or where to use my credit card to order earplugs now and/or whether or not there is any chance my still decently youthful cilia will be able to heal/regenerate if I stop the unprotected raving now?
Check out the M-Audio Audiophile soundcard which supports 24-bit 96kHz audio and HAS LINUX DRIVERS.$229.95
Check out the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard which supports 24-bit 96kHz audio and HAS LINUX DRIVERS.$229.95
I am EE myself. After you learn basic stuff about signals, you will never buy a speaker cable for 1500$/ft.
The problem with audiophiles is :
they never do BLIND tests!!!
I am not even talking about double blind tests, which is the really scientific method for subjective measurements. These guys have to see the equipment and know the price before they agree to listen and compare. This is why I think they are insane.
My "Audio System" ;-) and 6 speakers I bought at the Flea market, 2 in front, 2 in back, and 2 as my center channel on the ceiling.
consists of an ancient Zenith Amp (it has an 8-track in it
My speaker wire is actually Cat-5.
Works great though, I have never took the Volume past half way, as I'm afraid of blowing my front speakers (which are actually pretty good, they are semi-audiophile grade from the 80's).
I'd rather listen to music by throwing a CD into my CD-Player or grabbing my MP3 player. No complications. Even if it doesn't sound like the band's playing 6 feet away.
--------------------------------------
No sig for you.
In the 70's, I worked briefly for a high end audio store. The buzz at that time was that America would adopt high end stereos in a craze. What they didn't see coming was the portability trend. A few years later, there were boom boxes and Sony Walkman players and its been portability ever since. High end audio is now relegated to a few very rich and very crazy individuals. Another lesson in how technology geeks guessed wrong!
That is both an extremely witty critique of the silly topics Slashdot often covers as "news", and a precise argument against the social impact of masturbatory corporate-funding consumer practices. Bravo.
"Or, for example, the high-end audio store I was in this weekend that had high-end AC power cables running to the amplifier that were bigger in diameter than your typical garden hose. Kinda silly when you consider that on the other end of that wall plug is very low-tech 12-ga copper wire."
I'd really like to see the customer lists who bought this kind of stuff. I bet they get on every marketing database known to man. Really, they're buying stuff because the seller said they should and at the price the seller said was reasonable. Then they're feeling like they got a good deal. These are a bunch of chumps that deserve the crap that marketers pawn off on them.
It's because of people like this, that companies like MidiMan exist. Great Linux sound/midi card from these folks.
Yeah..but imagine how many mp3s I could download on that budget. That's enough to buy a T3 line for a year, and maybe a hundred cheap ATA hardrives. I think more people would be impressed if I had a 6 Terrabyte SAN in my bedroom than if I had one of those sound systems. While i'm stil dreaming I'd also buy a Sun E10000 and a....ok, I digress :)
Maskirovka
Then I take out a book or a jotter and use a pencil and paper for a while.
And, you know - it's great.
The only noises are my (distant) neighbours' generators kicking in and the huge variety of birdlife in the marshy area opposite my home getting on with their lives.
Now, I ask you. Who gives a flying fuck whether one set of interconnect cables is better than the next?
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
Try the Jamo CS-5 multimedia speakers. Real audiophile powered speakers with bi-amplification, Surround output and sub-woofer output, gold-plated connectors, etc. and amazing basses. Meant for the geek with deep pockets. Paid mine 1500 FIM (about 250 USD) and they are worth the price. My stereo became useless after that and is currently gathering dust in the basement.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
I'd hate to see these guy's reactions when you tell them that their precious cd's that supply their $140,000 systems have remarkably poor sound reproduction compared to the real thing. Its not possible to get perfect sound out of a medium that is inferior to the original sound. Information regarding individual instrument output, placement, etc. is lost to a general mux'd signal of all the sound which is then sampled and digitized. They're fighting a battle that cannot be won under the terms they chose. A good example of this is in a book written by a MIT professor, its called something like When Things Start to Think. Basically one of the chapters is regarding digitally produced sound of a stratevarius cello. The sound was not true, but a result of a supercomputer running modeling algorithms on the input of cellist Yo Yo Ma on purpose built sensors. Although it produced a unique sound, it was not as good as the real thing. The moral, a digitized model of the real thing cannot, with our current technology, be as good as the true thing. If your really that picky about sound, give up, because short of kidnapping all the musical groups you want to hear and locking them in your basement between listenings, your never going to get what you want.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
I dont personally own a nice audio system, but if i did, i would definitely use components from a company such as outlaw. They are a small, direct order company. They make very high quality components, with no extraneous features, and keep the price VERY low.
Personally, i dont buy all the sony, bose, panasonic and circuit city garbage. They just rip you off
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Spend a little extra money on a quality belt-drive turntable. Rega makes some nice ones, in, IIRC the $800 range.
Guns don't kill people - bullets do!
I don't know about the rest of you, but I laughed my ass off at this comment
Now to figure out why this is modded up as "insightful" instead of funny....
On that topic, I play the cello, and you can get a good string quartet for alot less than 140k a year, that's over $2000 per performance. Most quartets will play weddings for less than $1000, and while I'm sure it would be more expensive to have Yo-Yo Ma play, the 140k is still more than anyone should be paying for live music.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
now having Britney Spears show up on a regular basis.....
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
The point is that most rooms have an inherant noise above the noise floor. In Crowder it is probably somewhere between 30-40dBSPL. Well, that means that if you record something that peaks to 110dB using a 16-bit recording, the inherant noise of the room will be recorded and still be above the digital noise floor. However, you can hear things below that level, hence why 24-bit yeild superior sound, even though there is inherant noise in the room.
Since then I've also done recordings simeltaniously in 16 and 24-bit and the 24 ditherd to 16 always sounds better in my opinion.
Now of course their strength is also their flaw. To always produce this pleasing sound they have to change and distort the signal a whole lot so they can never sound great. You can back up Bose with the best gear available and they still sound the same as they did with the cheap stuff. They still have that distinctive Bose sound. Well, that is not what I want. IMHO the best sound equipment has NO audible charicteristics of it's own. IF you use really great gear, you should be able to swap any component for another great component and hear no change in sound because the gear isn't changing it in any way, jsut reproducing it. Well Bose speakers change the sound, and change it a lot.
Basically it comes down to what you're looking for. Bose speakers are great for people like College kids that want good sound on a budget. They'll sound just fine with a cheapie RaidoShack amp backing them up and you can throw them any old place you have room for them. However if you want something that is going to let you hear the music, and not itself, then Bose is not the answer.
I once read an interview with Bob Carver in Stereo Review. He was talking about the psychology of high-end audio and how even though he'd been able to perfectly duplicate the sound of any tube amp ever made with a pure transistor amp, there were always going to be some people who looked at their tube amps and saw the tubes glowing and automatically knew that the tube amp sounded better than any transistor amp and there was no way they'd be convinced otherwise.
The problem with many audiophiles is that they'd never bother with double blind a/b comparisons to test their beliefs. Carver performed such double-blind tests with audio critics who never believed he could make one of his amps sound like any randomly-chosen amp. The test in question occurred at a high end audio trade show. Carver was given 24 hours notice of the exact amp he needed to duplicate. He'd put that amp on an oscilloscope and as closely as possible matched what he called the amp's "transfer function."
When the tests were run, the critics couldn't tell the difference between Carver's amp and the amp he had cloned.
Carver also told a story about the time he tested some $1,000 silver patch cables. He and a friend were astonished at the amazing quality difference. When he switched back to his original patch cables, he and his friend marveled at how sonically dead and flat the soundstage had become. They swapped back and forth a few times, with Carver's friend continuing to hear the difference, but eventually, Carver was able realize the effect had been completely created within their own minds. When he listened to the sound as critically and objectively as he could, he no longer heard the difference.
In general, audiophiles are an irrational bunch. Yes, there are differences between high-end audiophile components and even the best "audiophile-grade" mass-produced consumer stuff, but don't tell me putting your power supplies in sandboxes will make that much of a difference. And definitely don't tell me your CDs sound better when you paint the circumferential edge green with a felt pen.
Audiophiles are a great source of income, especially if you sell cables - they'll buy all sorts of overpriced rubbish.
I think the difference, though, is the Audiophile group doesn't lead you to believe you can rot in hell for eternity if you listen to your music on a walkman, they just think you don't get it. I also don't recall my high school having an audiophile group at it, or a religious group.
Drug addicts will at least leave you in peace, shooting their arms up in abandoned alleyways and passing out with friends around the bong. Moreover, when drug addicts throw their money away, they're usually pumping it back into the local economy instead of shipping it off to hardware manufacturers overseas.
Audiophiles, in contrast, aren't content to waste their money in private or among other like-minded individuals. Oh no. They have a compulsive need to prosthelitize about their audiophilia. As if there weren't enough of their kind in this world as it is, they will openly moan and complain about the quality of others' audio equipment and wax on end about the relative merits of whatever their latest hobbyhorse format is over mp3 which is far too lossy or whatever they're bitching this week.
In all my years of knowing dope smokers and heroin addicts, I've never known any to spend half as much time trying to justify the benefits of their drug of choice as audiophiles do about their wares. It just isn't done. Drug addicts are content to enjoy their recreational substances and leave it at that. Audiophiles feel a need to go so much further.
The other day, I was reading about the US Supreme Court's latest court case upholding the constitutionality of religious groups' use of public school space for after-school bible classes. But what I think was left out of the debate was how religious groups are such a small threat when compared to other secular groups. Whereas the liberals would like to bar the Good News club from coming to elementary schools, they would happily and cheerfully admit an audiophilia club. Whereas the Good News club is just trying to save your soul, the audiophiles are both trying to steal your soul and bilk your wallet at the same time. That is the true threat in our society today.
I'm glad someone is finally casting the light of public scrutiny upon this pestilence in our midst. Audiophilia must be banned and criminalized as it has no place in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Our forefathers did not give their lives to found a nation where we could scamper around with our goldplated headphones and 10 megawatt amps in one giant aureal masturbatory frenzy.
I am a Computer Geek.
I got 3-4 computer @ home.
the latest can easily grade an a small Server (Dual P3 1Ghz / 512 Mo Ram / 80 Go)
So what !
All that to hit 150 fps on Quake !
I also own a nice sound System.
More in the $2000 range.
And you know what the difference is ?
Once it's set up and propped to your choice, you don't have to do more.
Because I can't tell the difference...
And let me tell you that Quake 4 will ask most of you to upgrade your CPU
BtW, Office 2003 will also, not Wagner 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
"Ignore it? Unplug the fridge? No way. Campbell headed back to the store and purchased a pair of power regenerators, which smooth out the electricity coming from the wall socket, and send it in a steady flow straight to his stereo system. Price: $4,000." Is it me, or did this guy just spend $4000 for a surge protector?
You ARE the Missing Link. Goodbye!
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
Likewise, be it food, golf, cars, etc. where there are rich people, there's also greedy bastards selling stupid overly priced products with useless show-off options.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
the beowulf cluster I could have set up with that money?
True. I borrowed a set of embarrasingly expensive ($2500 or something like that)headphones from a friend of mine. I had to go back to my old $50 phones immediately. I missed the "crunch" of my own setup. The sound was just too correct, I guess, clean and clinic. No...balls.
To make them work the way they are supposed to I would had needed the rest of the high-end setup too. And even then some music would sound hollow.
I listen quite alot to (intentionally) lo-fi rock music. In a high-end context those recordings lose all meaning. But on the otherhand, Im a discophile and not an audiophile. Music, not sound, is mu turn-on.
...um...like...a sig...
...I'd prefer the string quartet. Then again, I doubt they can play Pink Floyd loud enough to induce brain damage in small children.
Depends on how close you sit.
Ever heard Flesh Quartet? When they feel like it they're both amped, distorted and quite damn loud.
...um...like...a sig...
anyone else curious about the bit on cd's being bad for humans? my first thought is the digital reproduction is not full enough and the ear has to work harder to fill in the "imperceptable" gaps that accompany any digital scan of an analogue wave. my second thought is that he's just joking.
Yup. You are. (so am I, because I know the entymology of at least 5,000 unusual words in the English language, which makes me less of a dork, I think.
Another guy was an industrial design student so you can guess those two teamed up pretty well. And the logical endresult was two guys designing a set of speakers which 1) looked good and 2) sound great.
They still cost a fair amount of money, probably more than I would ever shell out for them, but my God, it was really most impressive how, armed with some books on the subject and some good quality material, these guys made a speakerset that really sounds awesome! If you're a true audiophile, I definitely think it's worth to experiment with building at least the speakers yourself, for relatively little money you can built speakers that are far better than most commercially available. The speakers are very often the quickest and most rewarding improvement even the average listener can make to their stereo equipment.
"overcompensation".
The difference is probably that: (a) audiophiles run around in far less numbers than computer addicts and (b) when you buy an amplifier for $50k, you can be fairly assured that in five years you're not going to see it on eBay for $50.
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
Whether you're upgrading a car, stereo, or computer, there is just a real thrill in knowing that you and you alone are determining the components going into your system. Your upgraded car or stereo or whatever is uniquely you, with any custom tweaks or whatnot that you inserted through your own skill. Overclocking a CPU, when one takes into account the expenses of cooling systems, is rarely economical - but it delivers a powerful feeling of accomplishment.
Building your own custom rig isn't just a matter of "mine is faster/better/bigger". It's a way of displaying your own abilities in a very specialized hobby. It's a source of pride. If I can keep my Athlon T-Bird stable at just ten more megahertz than my friend, that is very cool to me.
I'm the stranger...posting to
...we'll get the same loss of quality we'd get with the 140,000 dollar sound system. In that case, I guess I would prefer the sound system.
I'm the stranger...posting to
...I'd prefer the string quartet. Then again, I doubt they can play Pink Floyd loud enough to induce brain damage in small children.
I'm the stranger...posting to
When I'm feeling high tech I go into the living room and play them on the Pioneer that has dolby noise reduction.
but stereo cost about 1500....and i use electrical tape cause it looks better and stretches
-OR_BraveHeart "there's nothing certain in life except death and taxes"
i just want to feel the music so when i'm driving down the street and the bass kicks in my stomach flutters and i can feel my chest vibrating....now that is power
-OR_BraveHeart "there's nothing certain in life except death and taxes"
My father's friend owns a high-end audio shop. He sells insanely-priced stuff to people, but says that it's largely wank-value. His home system sounds unbelievable, and is so remarkably simple. A single bit CD player. An (old-ish) Perraux amp and pre-amp. A DAT player. And 4 Magneplaner MGIII speakers (at around 8 foot tall each...) It's a sub-$50,000 NZ system (or around 25K US) and you would have to have the ears of a piano tuner to want better (in my opinion mind...) No boomy subwoofers needed, the house shakes anyway when 1000 watts goes into the 2 foot wide main woofer. But really, the sound is so good that you don't need big volume to enjoy it, just loud enough to block out any annoying bird noise, car / neighbour / airplane etc etc etc. But I'd rather spend that sort of money on fast cars and loose women. - If you want light at the end of the tunnel, turn around.
Our forefathers did not give their lives to found a nation where we could scamper around with our goldplated headphones and 10 megawatt amps in one giant aureal masturbatory frenzy....... Yeh, and damn all that other tech crap that young people are spending their money on too! I think we all have our money and time sucking "friends" let to each man (or women) his/her own.
I seriously pity all of these people who claim to tell me the "color" of the sound.
Gives a new meaning to "touching music."
- You'd be surprised at what one can do with a prolapsed rectum and a great deal of determination....
...save for albums from the largest studios, these systems cost more than the recording equipment used to make the recording you're listening to.
Jebus! 20k for speakers? 50k for anything? I spent $300 on a stereo and I though that was bad... And comparing an addiction to something that costs $50 to something that costs $50,000, sheesh... georgewbush@fightcapitalism.com
Whether somebody has a stereo system worth $100 or $100,000 doesn't make any difference. If you have fun listening to music, it's all that matters. Audiophiles tend to want to get more of a sense of hearing the live event and be able to listen for hours at a time if they want. If it helps them experience more of the emotion of the music, they like it better. What's wrong with that?
The ones that really ought to be shown for what they are are the jerks making and selling the "audio jewelry" that sounds like crap. They're busy pushing fancy faceplates instead of selling music. Pardon the flamebait, but Bose is the absolute worst IMO, contrary to what people who've been blinded by their marketing savvy have been led to believe. You can do so much better for less. But I digress.
Think of all those trading in their cars every year or two, spending tens of thousands of dollars to get the latest toys. How's that any different from a shutterbug who has to have the latest great lenses and other photo accessories, or the guy changing expensive stereo components every few years? Closer to home, how about all you Slashdotters with more computer stuff than you know what to do with?
When somebody gives me a weird look and tells me I'm stupid for owning a high end turntable and lots of records and that Ceedees are so much better, I consider it reverse snobbery. It's kind of like somebody telling me I ought to be using Windows because it's so superior. You and I know better.
I am the Director of IS for the fastest growing audiophile software retailer in the US, and am thus in a unique position to observe the strange culture of Audiophilia from the inside. There are a lot of generalizations made both in the article and in previous postings here. Let me promote hypocrisy and generalize further by classifying Audiophiles into one of three categories: - Music lovers who want their sound to be extremely accurate, or want it to sound "as good as live" - Extremely wealthy people who crave the new, the expensive, the tweakish and the braggable - Men going through a midlife crisis ALL audiophile women ( 1% of the culture) with whom I have interacted have fit into the first category. No matter which category an audiophile fits into, the one common characteristic is their persistence. Someone likened this to a drug addiction and it ain't far from the truth. For example, people in the first (and most respectable, IMO) category are often relatively poor compared to other audiophiles. Yet they will send in orders to us with instructions to "keep trying their credit card 'til it goes through" or "hold this order until the 30th when I get my paycheck." We sit around the office and debate their priorities. As in drug dealing, there is even a morality issue; On the streets, "the first one is always free." Here in the audiophile industry, we have "Free shipping on your first order." Before a full-blooded audiophile flames me, please note that I am with you guys; I have heard LPs and I think they beat CDs hands-down; I have heard tube gear and I think it sounds better than solid state. But I CAN'T hear the difference between two different AC power cords, and I don't think you can, either. ;)
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Coming from the "music making" side of the game, I still can't stop wondering about those audiophiles. Sure, good speakers and amps matter. But there's more idotic stuff to be found in the scene than just inchwide speaker cables. The german computer mag c't just recently tested a CD-Demagnitizer. Of course it didn't change anything but one of those audiophile crazes really had the guts to send a letter in the reigns of "It's not my problem if you can't hear it, I certainly can !" Didn't CDs work with Lasers and stuff ? But how in god's name can music sound "better" in a home environment than in the studio ? It might sound "different" (because only a handful of studios have THAT expensive speaker equipment), to what the musican (or the engineer) heard, but can you really claim that it sounds better ? Doesn't it (philosophically speaking) always sound worse, because it doesn't match the intentions of the creator ? If I only could afford those Tannoy Reveal monitor speakers... A few very interesting points have been made by Mrs. Wendy "Switched on Bach" Carlos who has some good points on yer beloved vinyl platters and other hi-fi matters www.wendycarlos.com
-- superfunny sig coming up...
For the most part i wondered about "true" hi-end audiophiles i.e. the post $2k speakers, the "high grade" copper interconnects and all of that paraphernalia that seemed to be all to expensive to justify.
e r.htm) - he couldn't use them anymore.
Then a friend's father gave me (don't ask why) his apogee calipers (http://www.apogeespeakers.totalserve.co.uk/calip
The speakers were damaged, the bass one one side was broken and the mid-high range ribbons were loose. I hooked them up to my mother's sony amplifier with standard telephone'esque cables. (i.e. about 3/4mm thick)
The high end on those speakers blew me away. The difference between those and any other speaker's i've heard since is incredible. You can hear things in the upper range that you didn't even know was there.
An earlier comment about "software to run on these systems" is very true - good speakers allow you to hear everything, so a poor recording is much more noticable.
A hi-fi store owner here told me something that was very pertinent. get a system, that allows you to listen to what you want to listen to and be happy with it. no more.
Still and all. i think the expensive (>$3/meter) interconnects aren't all that neccesary, and spending about 10k per speaker (or even on 2) seems quite outrageous.