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Thread: The Audiophile Thread

  1. #1401
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by simon moon View Post
    I sure wish certain members here would attend one of these at some time. Could be enlightening.
    I stopped going to these dog-and-pony shows because you can't trust what you hear in the booths and a lot of what is promoted is crystals and magic fairy dust aimed at the rubes with too much money.

    I much prefer a one-to-one demonstration in a controlled environment where you can really know what's going on. And, not coincidentally, you can dispense with the woo merchants.
    Last edited by rcarlberg; 04-15-2016 at 07:44 AM.

  2. #1402
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    Quote Originally Posted by strawberrybrick View Post
    Off to Axpona Chicago this Sunday morning. ..
    SBB, I await your report.
    The older I get, the better I was.

  3. #1403
    Unfortunately, I put husband and parental duties (and Blackhawks fan) first and did not make it. My apologies...
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  4. #1404
    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    I stopped going to these dog-and-pony shows because you can't trust what you hear in the booths and a lot of what is promoted is crystals and magic fairy dust aimed at the rubes with too much money.

    I much prefer a one-to-one demonstration in a controlled environment where you can really know what's going on. And, not coincidentally, you can dispense with the woo merchants.
    I agree, in part.

    Most rooms sound worse than what is usually experienced in the home (even homes without room treatment).

    Most decent speakers at shows overload the rooms with bass, among other problems. Most exhibitors spend the 1st day trying to get decent sound in the room.

    But even with those issues, you can still get a very good idea if you like something or not. Many buyers use these shows as their only chance to shop, as it were.

    As far as the "woo' audio you are referring to. That is easily ignored, and just concentrate on the verifiable stuff. I have never been to an audio show where I am forced to pay attention to "woo".

    The problem with one-to-one demonstrations are, there are not very many brick and mortar hi end shops in a lot of areas. And even then, the ones that exist may not have the brand you are looking for.
    And if there were a god, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence - Russell

  5. #1405
    Member Jerjo's Avatar
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    If nothing else, this should amuse Robert. It's a bit of insanity on the Hoffman forum about picking up two seconds of echo from a PA system on an old Bing Crosby recording. It was posted by Hoffman himself and then seven pages of his disciples weighing in. I listened to the clip in question on my PC, couldn't pick it up. I don't think there's enough left of my hearing to catch it even on a perfect system.

    http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/thread...crosby.496472/
    I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart

  6. #1406
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    LMFAO
    What Hoffman is hearing, at 0:27 into the YouTube video he posted, is not "PA echo" at all but the slightly-distorted entrance of muted trumpets in the band backing Crosby. What a doof.
    Reverberation [...] is one of the hardest things to reproduce on a stereo system.
    That's rich. Midrange is THE ONE THING cheap stereos concentrate on!

    Thanks for the chuckle Jerjo.
    Last edited by rcarlberg; 04-30-2016 at 12:20 AM.

  7. #1407
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    I thought you'd enjoy that. There's some things I enjoy about the Hoffman forum. The music section covers many artists not discussed on PE or else just held in great disdain. A certain percentage of the audio hardware discussion is rational but this was just madness to me.
    I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart

  8. #1408
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    Quote Originally Posted by rcarlberg View Post
    LMFAO
    What Hoffman is hearing, at 0:27 into the YouTube video he posted, is not "PA echo" at all but the slightly-distorted entrance of muted trumpets in the band backing Crosby. What a doof.
    That's rich. Midrange is THE ONE THING cheap stereos concentrate on!

    Thanks for the chuckle Jerjo.
    I would agree that it may be difficult to hear the original acoustics on stereo and room combination that is not properly calibrated for reverberation characteristics. Speaker design can't do it and frequency based EQ can't. What can do it is a measurement of the reverberation characteristics with a mike and a finite impulse response filter with a time domain response long enough to cancel it.

  9. #1409
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    The comments below the post are almost funnier than the OP. People saying they hear it, people pointing out other examples in the same piece... Golden Ears Syndrome. I hear something nobody else can hear, because I'm special.

    Except once I write about it, suddenly other people hear it too. But only if I tell them exactly where it is. Gee, Mr. Emperor, those sure are swell clothes you got there!

    Besides which... come to think of it... what's a "PA system" doing in a recording studio?

  10. #1410
    Member Jerjo's Avatar
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    Well, this will have get some audiophiles' hackles raised.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...valley-startup

    Doesn't make much sense to me other than a big payout for Atkins. Then again, maybe Yu is an audiophile, like Woz is.
    I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart

  11. #1411
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    The potential of Apple to purchase Tidal, a high quality music streaming service is great. I first noticed that Tidal was referred to in a description of Oppo's portable powered wifi speaker. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorri.../#70e17b0353fa

    https://www.oppodigital.com/sonica/

  12. #1412
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    Never thought it would happen, Sony supporting DVD-Audio:

    http://www.sony.com/electronics/audio-components/uhp-h1

  13. #1413
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    Quote Originally Posted by Firth View Post
    Never thought it would happen, Sony supporting DVD-Audio:

    http://www.sony.com/electronics/audio-components/uhp-h1
    Especially since Hi-Rez is effectively dead to the regular consumer. It's only us crazy audiophile types that want to pay $25 for an album with better quality.
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  14. #1414
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    Quote Originally Posted by BobM View Post
    Especially since Hi-Rez is effectively dead to the regular consumer. It's only us crazy audiophile types that want to pay $25 for an album with better quality.
    Alot of people have paid for existing albums in those formats. Also, I found out about that player by doing research into ripping SACDs. Along that path, it was mentioned that many are are archiving audio as DSD, and double DSD. DSD is actually a very efficient way to encode high rez audio and I expect to be able to download DSD in the near future. So high rez is not dead yet.

  15. #1415
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Of course hi-res is not dead. Wherever audiophiles seek to listen to the highest fidelity possible, the closest to "live" sound possible, they'll turn to the best technology available. The whole chain-of-technology between the musician playing in a studio (or on stage), and the listener sitting in his "man-cave" listening to that recording playing back, should evaporate into an invisible curtain of nothingness. 100% fidelity is totally transparent.

    "High resolution" means a lot of money spent for nothing -- no distortion, no coloration, no equalization, no compression, no improvement, no compromises.
    Last edited by rcarlberg; 07-29-2016 at 10:38 PM.

  16. #1416
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    ... in other words ... VINYL!
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  17. #1417
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Okay

  18. #1418
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    Last edited by hFx; 07-30-2016 at 09:22 AM.
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  19. #1419
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    I was making a distinction between "high resolution audio" and 24/192, which as that very old article points out is not actually high resolution despite being labeled "hi-res audio" by its promoters.

    Jerjo reopened this thread 3 weeks ago with an article about a speaker manufacturer, followed by Firth posting about Spotify steaming 320kbps FLACs allowing the full 16/44 Compact Disc bitrate. Neither of these have anything to do with Neil Young's PONO service.
    Last edited by rcarlberg; 07-30-2016 at 09:29 AM.

  20. #1420
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    ..the truth never get outdated

    I was reacting to those SACD-references above. I've removed the misplaced quote...
    My Progressive Workshop at http://soundcloud.com/hfxx

  21. #1421
    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hFx View Post
    ..the truth never get outdated
    Yup ...and bullshit still rules the audiophile discussion boards

  22. #1422
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    Quote Originally Posted by Firth View Post
    I found out about that player by doing research into ripping SACDs. Along that path, it was mentioned that many are are archiving audio as DSD, and double DSD. DSD is actually a very efficient way to encode high rez audio and I expect to be able to download DSD in the near future. So high rez is not dead yet.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wikipedia
    There has been much controversy between proponents of DSD and PCM over which encoding system is superior. In 2001, Stanley Lipshitz and John Vanderkooy from the University of Waterloo stated that one-bit converters (as employed by DSD) are unsuitable for high-end applications due to their high distortion. Even 8-bit, four-times-oversampled PCM with noise shaping, proper dithering and half data rate of DSD has better noise floor and frequency response.[34] In 2002, Philips published a convention paper arguing to the contrary.[35] Lipshitz and Vanderkooy's paper has been criticized by Jamie Angus.[36] Lipshitz and Vanderkooy later responded.[37]

    Fundamental distortion mechanisms are present in the conventional implementation of DSD.[38] These distortion mechanisms can be alleviated to some degree by using digital converters with a multi-bit design. Historically, state-of-the-art ADCs were based around sigma-delta modulation designs. Oversampling converters are frequently used in linear PCM formats, where the ADC output is subject to bandlimiting and dithering.[39] Many modern converters use oversampling and a multi-bit design. It has been suggested that bitstream digital audio techniques are theoretically inferior to multi-bit (PCM) approaches: J. Robert Stuart notes, "1-bit coding would be a totally unsuitable choice for a series of recordings that set out to identify the high-frequency content of musical instruments, despite claims for its apparent wide bandwidth. If it is unsuitable for recording analysis then we should also be wary of using it for the highest quality work."[40]

    When comparing a DSD and PCM recording of the same origin, the same number of channels and similar bandwidth/SNR, some still think that there are differences. A study conducted at the Erich-Thienhaus Institute in Detmold, Germany, seems to contradict this, concluding that in double-blind tests "hardly any of the subjects could make a reproducible distinction between the two encoding systems. Hence it may be concluded that no significant differences are audible." Listeners involved in this test noted their great difficulty in hearing any difference between the two formats.[41]
    Science doesn't lie.

  23. #1423
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    Quote Originally Posted by hFx View Post
    This article is only true, if you consider that DSD (binary format of SACD) is a superior format to 24/192 or 96. It requires a lower bit rate and can be more readily converted to analog without distortion. The article doesn't get it, it is not about whether I can hear 25 KHz, it's really about the compromises made to master to less than DSD, and the end result of conversion to analog. Interesting enough at the heart of modern analog to digital and digital to analog is a 1 bit convertor. DSD is a 1 bit stream. So your 24 bit X KHz samples that get archived, actually were sampled very fast at 1bit, and those single bits were weighted and added up to produce your 24 bit samples.

    ISO files are the future and the image of the data on any format.

  24. #1424
    Member Jerjo's Avatar
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    Bowers & Wilkins celebrates 50 years of audio excellence with a list of 49 albums (you pick #50). There's some proto-prog but some of this list has me scratching my head. I'm posting it here rather than starting a thread.

    http://bowerswilkins50years.co.uk/
    I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart

  25. #1425
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jerjo View Post
    Bowers & Wilkins celebrates 50 years of audio excellence with a list of 49 albums (you pick #50). There's some proto-prog but some of this list has me scratching my head. I'm posting it here rather than starting a thread.

    http://bowerswilkins50years.co.uk/
    It seems to be directed specifically to audiophiles, since most of the commentary has to do with pressing, mastering, etc.

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