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Audiophile GAF

Haint

Member
I wish one of these popular youtubers will do a blind test of different speakers, dac/amp, and headphones. I want to know where is the diminishing returns.

YT'ers doing this would be voluntarily putting themselves on unemployment. Most of them are paid by the manufacturers to review their products--in channel sponsorship, cash reviews, and thousands of dollars in free gear (sometimes all 3). Most of them vet their reviews with the manufacturers before publishing. The best of them will just decline to post a generally negative review the manufacturers take issue with. The worst of them will ammend it to focus only on open ended vagueries or just let the manufacturers write the review themselves. An honest level matched blind evaluation would find no difference in a $10 Apple dongle and $4000 DAC (or worse yet a preference for the Apple dongle) as Apple's DAC's are objectively audibly transparent (beyond the capacity of human hearing and modern media). AMP's are much the same, once you hit sufficiently clean power and linear response (which happens at a very low cost), it's all snake oil beyond that point. The mind is a helluva drug, and the esoteric shit is virtually all sold on placebo and bias, with some actually introducing intentional flaws to sound different (vinyl and tube amps for example). It ultimately becomes an argument of philosophy, if your mind convinces you there's a difference when there's objectively not, you're left with a fake difference that's real. The $10,000 power cords, $50,000 speaker cables, and $3,000 wood block isolators/cable risers are just the same nonsense dialed to 1100.

Now differences in speakers and headphones are very real, but not always correlated with cost. Very small deviations on a graph can be hugely audible though. Fortunately the Harman group has decades of research on speakers/headphones published in peer reviewed scientific journals. They have a robotic room that will physically shuffle speakers blindly. 1000s of people (including Harman employees, audio critics/reviewers, dealers, and college students) have blindly preference rated a wide variety of makes/models. Their goal was to find a preferred target frequency response though, not point out any particular "Best Speaker/Headphone". In speakers, they found that around 97%+ of people prefer an anechoically linear (flat) response. Note that is flat in an anechoic chamber, not a real room. In a real room such a response will have a bit of a bass bump (due to room gain, bass waves are ridiculously long and omnidirectional), and there was some deviation in this preferred "room curve" . Some people preferred slightly more or less bass/treble, but the mid-range was unanimously flat. This room curve is not something the speaker can control though as it will change from room to room (size, materials, furnishings), placement, and listening position/distance, it has to be created/controlled with positioning and DSP EQ/Room Correction.

Since headphones are easily identifiable by weight and touch in a blind test, they used 1 model and EQ'ed it to create "virtual headphones" that matched the measurements of many different makes/models. Since this was again a tonality target curve test, this virtual headphone was found to be indistinguishable from the real ones by like 85% of the respondents. They had participants assign a preference score to all these different models, which they then used to derive the "Harman Curve", which was ironically used for the Moondrop Aria which Neo is extolling above, and it's also no coincidence the Sennheiser HD600 has one of the closest raw matches to the curve. Beyond tonality, there are also real differences in the dispersion characteristics of speakers/headphones, which is where soundstage and imaging come into play.

On the larger point of what is or isn't snake oil in the audio industry, room treatments, placement of the speakers and listener, and DSP/EQ/Room Correction are also all very real and make profound differences when properly applied.
 
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tsumake

Member
YT'ers doing this would be voluntarily putting themselves on unemployment. Most of them are paid by the manufacturers to review their products--in channel sponsorship, cash reviews, and thousands of dollars in free gear (sometimes all 3). Most of them vet their reviews with the manufacturers before publishing. The best of them will just decline to post a generally negative review the manufacturers take issue with. The worst of them focus only on open ended vagueries or just let the manufacturers write the review themselves. An honest level matched blind evaluation would find no difference in a $10 Apple dongle and $4000 DAC (or worse yet a preference for the Apple dongle) as Apple's DAC's are objectively audibly transparent (beyond the capacity of human hearing). AMP's are much the same, once you hit sufficiently clean power and linear response (which happens at a very low cost), it's all snake oil beyond that point. The mind is a helluva drug, and the esoteric shit is virtually all sold on placebo and bias, with some actually introducing intentional flaws to sound different (vinyl and tube amps for example). It ultimately becomes an argument of philosophy, if your mind convinces you there's a difference when there's objectively not, you're left with a fake difference that's real. The $10,000 power cords, $50,000 speaker cables, and $3,000 wood block isolators/cable risers are just the same nonsense dialed to 1100.

Now differences in speakers and headphones are very real, but not always correlated with cost. Very small deviations on a graph can be hugely audible though. Fortunately the Harman group has decades of research on speakers/headphones published in peer reviewed scientific journals. They have a robotic room that will physically shuffle speakers blindly. 1000s of people (including Harman employees, audio critics/reviewers, dealers, and college students) have blindly preference rated a wide variety of makes/models. Their goal was to find a preferred target frequency response though, not point out any particular "Best Speaker/Headphone". In speakers, they found that around 97%+ of people prefer an anechoically linear (flat) response. Note that is flat in an anechoic chamber, not a real room. In a real room such a response will have a bit of a bass bump (due to room gain, bass waves are ridiculously long and omnidirectional), and there was some deviation in this preferred "room curve" . Some people preferred slightly more/less bass/treble, but the mid-range was unanimously flat. This room curve is not something the speaker can control though as it will change from room to room (size, materials), placement, and listening position/distance, it has to be done with positional EQ and DSP EQ/Room Correction.

Since headphones are easily identifiable by weight and touch, they used 1 model and EQ to create a "virtual headphone" that matched the measurements of many different makes/models. Since this was again a tonality target curve test, this virtual headphone was found to be indistinguishable from the real ones by like 85% of the respondents. This is how they derived the "Harman Curve", which was ironically used for the Moondrop Aria which Neo is extolling above, and it's also no coincidence the Sennheiser HD600 has one of the closest matches to the curve. Beyond tonality, there are also real differences in the dispersion characteristics of speakers/headphones, which is where soundstage and imaging come into play.

You bash all high end audio electronics as snake oil yet wax on about the Harmon Carve. Good on ya!
 
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Haint

Member
You bash all high end audio electronics as snake oil yet wax on about the Harmon Carve. Good on ya!

Not all, there are some high end electronics that actually put their cost into the components and engineering rather than marketing and dealer kickbacks. It's purely academic bragging rights and fancy aesthetics though, -140dB+ SINAD's are so far beyond the threshold of audibility you might as well be in a different universe. The noise floor of a subjectively silent domestic room is around 40dB. Very loud music is around 80dB. Not even fucking Superman could pick up noise or distortion 100x quieter than a silent room, quadruplely so when it's being masked by musical content most would describe as uncomfortably loud. That's like hearing a mouse squeak from the surface of the moon while headbanging from the front row of a rock concert, comical levels of ridiculousness.
 
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tsumake

Member
Not all, there are some high end electronics that actually put their cost into the components and engineering rather than marketing and dealer kickbacks. It's purely academic bragging rights and fancy aesthetics though, -140dB+ SINAD's are so far beyond the threshold of audibility you might as well be in a different universe. The noise floor of a subjectively silent domestic room is around 40dB. Very loud music is around 80dB. Not even fucking Superman could pick up noise or distortion 100x quieter than a silent room, quadruplely so when it's being masked by musical content most would describe as uncomfortably loud. That's like hearing a mouse squeak from the surface of the moon while headbanging from the front row of a rock concert, comical levels of ridiculousness.

You cherry pick one aspect of audio electronics as if it proves your point. I suggest becoming a member of the Audio Science Review forums.
 

Haint

Member
You cherry pick one aspect of audio electronics as if it proves your point. I suggest becoming a member of the Audio Science Review forums.

If a place called Audiosciencereview is telling people to buy $4000 DACs on grounds of audibility and shitting on Harman's published scientific research, it sounds like they need to change their name to Audiophoolreviews.
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
Speakers go brrrrrrrrr
Question: are there any good sites that track headphones and audio equipment sales, akin to Cheapassgamer?
nothing I’ve found. Reddit sometimes will post sales but most of the community is toxic af so I avoid it when possible.
 
YT'ers doing this would be voluntarily putting themselves on unemployment. Most of them are paid by the manufacturers to review their products--in channel sponsorship, cash reviews, and thousands of dollars in free gear (sometimes all 3). Most of them vet their reviews with the manufacturers before publishing. The best of them will just decline to post a generally negative review the manufacturers take issue with. The worst of them will ammend it to focus only on open ended vagueries or just let the manufacturers write the review themselves. An honest level matched blind evaluation would find no difference in a $10 Apple dongle and $4000 DAC (or worse yet a preference for the Apple dongle) as Apple's DAC's are objectively audibly transparent (beyond the capacity of human hearing and modern media). AMP's are much the same, once you hit sufficiently clean power and linear response (which happens at a very low cost), it's all snake oil beyond that point. The mind is a helluva drug, and the esoteric shit is virtually all sold on placebo and bias, with some actually introducing intentional flaws to sound different (vinyl and tube amps for example). It ultimately becomes an argument of philosophy, if your mind convinces you there's a difference when there's objectively not, you're left with a fake difference that's real. The $10,000 power cords, $50,000 speaker cables, and $3,000 wood block isolators/cable risers are just the same nonsense dialed to 1100.

Now differences in speakers and headphones are very real, but not always correlated with cost. Very small deviations on a graph can be hugely audible though. Fortunately the Harman group has decades of research on speakers/headphones published in peer reviewed scientific journals. They have a robotic room that will physically shuffle speakers blindly. 1000s of people (including Harman employees, audio critics/reviewers, dealers, and college students) have blindly preference rated a wide variety of makes/models. Their goal was to find a preferred target frequency response though, not point out any particular "Best Speaker/Headphone". In speakers, they found that around 97%+ of people prefer an anechoically linear (flat) response. Note that is flat in an anechoic chamber, not a real room. In a real room such a response will have a bit of a bass bump (due to room gain, bass waves are ridiculously long and omnidirectional), and there was some deviation in this preferred "room curve" . Some people preferred slightly more or less bass/treble, but the mid-range was unanimously flat. This room curve is not something the speaker can control though as it will change from room to room (size, materials), placement, and listening position/distance, it has to be created/controlled with positioning and DSP EQ/Room Correction.

Since headphones are easily identifiable by weight and touch in a blind test, they used 1 model and EQ'ed it to create "virtual headphones" that matched the measurements of many different makes/models. Since this was again a tonality target curve test, this virtual headphone was found to be indistinguishable from the real ones by like 85% of the respondents. They had participants assign a preference score to all these different models, which they then used to derive the "Harman Curve", which was ironically used for the Moondrop Aria which Neo is extolling above, and it's also no coincidence the Sennheiser HD600 has one of the closest raw matches to the curve. Beyond tonality, there are also real differences in the dispersion characteristics of speakers/headphones, which is where soundstage and imaging come into play.

On the larger point of what is or isn't snake oil in the audio industry, room treatments, placement of the speakers and listener, and DSP/EQ/Room Correction are also all very real and make profound differences when properly applied.
Thanks for that detailed explanation. I didn't think about the endless factors that come into play. I thought blind test whiskey's on youtube all the time, why not sound lol.
 

Ribi

Member
Question: are there any good sites that track headphones and audio equipment sales, akin to Cheapassgamer?
At best hifi forums for a particular set. (like 7hz timeless sale for 170 on ali) or slickdeals but more mainstream options. Or headpho Reddit
 

Korranator

Member
YT'ers doing this would be voluntarily putting themselves on unemployment. Most of them are paid by the manufacturers to review their products--in channel sponsorship, cash reviews, and thousands of dollars in free gear (sometimes all 3). Most of them vet their reviews with the manufacturers before publishing. The best of them will just decline to post a generally negative review the manufacturers take issue with. The worst of them will ammend it to focus only on open ended vagueries or just let the manufacturers write the review themselves. An honest level matched blind evaluation would find no difference in a $10 Apple dongle and $4000 DAC (or worse yet a preference for the Apple dongle) as Apple's DAC's are objectively audibly transparent (beyond the capacity of human hearing and modern media). AMP's are much the same, once you hit sufficiently clean power and linear response (which happens at a very low cost), it's all snake oil beyond that point. The mind is a helluva drug, and the esoteric shit is virtually all sold on placebo and bias, with some actually introducing intentional flaws to sound different (vinyl and tube amps for example). It ultimately becomes an argument of philosophy, if your mind convinces you there's a difference when there's objectively not, you're left with a fake difference that's real. The $10,000 power cords, $50,000 speaker cables, and $3,000 wood block isolators/cable risers are just the same nonsense dialed to 1100.

Now differences in speakers and headphones are very real, but not always correlated with cost. Very small deviations on a graph can be hugely audible though. Fortunately the Harman group has decades of research on speakers/headphones published in peer reviewed scientific journals. They have a robotic room that will physically shuffle speakers blindly. 1000s of people (including Harman employees, audio critics/reviewers, dealers, and college students) have blindly preference rated a wide variety of makes/models. Their goal was to find a preferred target frequency response though, not point out any particular "Best Speaker/Headphone". In speakers, they found that around 97%+ of people prefer an anechoically linear (flat) response. Note that is flat in an anechoic chamber, not a real room. In a real room such a response will have a bit of a bass bump (due to room gain, bass waves are ridiculously long and omnidirectional), and there was some deviation in this preferred "room curve" . Some people preferred slightly more or less bass/treble, but the mid-range was unanimously flat. This room curve is not something the speaker can control though as it will change from room to room (size, materials, furnishings), placement, and listening position/distance, it has to be created/controlled with positioning and DSP EQ/Room Correction.

Since headphones are easily identifiable by weight and touch in a blind test, they used 1 model and EQ'ed it to create "virtual headphones" that matched the measurements of many different makes/models. Since this was again a tonality target curve test, this virtual headphone was found to be indistinguishable from the real ones by like 85% of the respondents. They had participants assign a preference score to all these different models, which they then used to derive the "Harman Curve", which was ironically used for the Moondrop Aria which Neo is extolling above, and it's also no coincidence the Sennheiser HD600 has one of the closest raw matches to the curve. Beyond tonality, there are also real differences in the dispersion characteristics of speakers/headphones, which is where soundstage and imaging come into play.

On the larger point of what is or isn't snake oil in the audio industry, room treatments, placement of the speakers and listener, and DSP/EQ/Room Correction are also all very real and make profound differences when properly applied.
Some good points with a lot of truth, but its called a "curve" for a reason.
 
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Hey guys, I just got a 5.1 soundbar (Vizio SB3651N-H6) and I'm having trouble figuring out how to place the satellite speakers. My couch is directly against my wall so I can't put them behind it. Should I get speaker stands and put them to the side of the couch? What height/distance/angle? Any recommendations for stands?
 

Con_Z_ǝdʇ

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
Hey guys, I just got a 5.1 soundbar (Vizio SB3651N-H6) and I'm having trouble figuring out how to place the satellite speakers. My couch is directly against my wall so I can't put them behind it. Should I get speaker stands and put them to the side of the couch? What height/distance/angle? Any recommendations for stands?
My couch is also standing pretty much directly at the wall and i mounted my speakers to the wall with an angle more closer to the inside. So more to my head than to the TV. I can adjust the listening position in terms of volume and dynamic software wise and i feel happy with the outcome. The height of the tweeter should be at the height of your ear while you are sitting. Distance to each speaker is about one meter if i sit in the middle.
 
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ItsGreat

Member
So Apple are charging extra for a switch to enable spatial audio? Where the processing is done client side?

Why not just release the album's as the producer intended. If the producer of Pink Floyd want spatial audio versions why not let them deliver the tracks.

Everyone has headphones with left and right channels.

For a full Atmos setup with speakers all over the shop it's fair enough. For headphones though? Sounds like a swizz.
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
So Apple are charging extra for a switch to enable spatial audio? Where the processing is done client side?

Why not just release the album's as the producer intended. If the producer of Pink Floyd want spatial audio versions why not let them deliver the tracks.

Everyone has headphones with left and right channels.

For a full Atmos setup with speakers all over the shop it's fair enough. For headphones though? Sounds like a swizz.
AFAIK Apple Music is the only one that offers Atmos & Spatial, so the availability to the general public is still new for streaming. There’s going to be bumps until it’s more widely available.
 

T8SC

Member
Once Spotify offers, then I think we hit the mainstream.

Worth noting that Amazon don't charge any extra. Also, if you have a Prime membership, you still get the full AMU with the HD audio etc with the Prime discount too. (I assume the amount is dependent on country/currency).

Spotify seem to get by on their name, that won't last forever when there's better/cheaper alternatives. People have rising energy & fuel bills to contend with, Spotify needs to step up their game, & quickly.
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
Worth noting that Amazon don't charge any extra. Also, if you have a Prime membership, you still get the full AMU with the HD audio etc with the Prime discount too. (I assume the amount is dependent on country/currency).

Spotify seem to get by on their name, that won't last forever when there's better/cheaper alternatives. People have rising energy & fuel bills to contend with, Spotify needs to step up their game, & quickly.
Spotify was meant to rollout hi-res tier but I think Apple & Amazon offering it at the base level took them by surprise.
 

T8SC

Member
Spotify was meant to rollout hi-res tier but I think Apple & Amazon offering it at the base level took them by surprise.

It was meant to be Q3 this year wasn't it? It's now almost the end of December. They can't rely on their name forever, people will eventually wise up, especially with the Apple/Amazon ecosystems pushing their brand.
 

tsumake

Member
It was meant to be Q3 this year wasn't it? It's now almost the end of December. They can't rely on their name forever, people will eventually wise up, especially with the Apple/Amazon ecosystems pushing their brand.

Fingers crossed. I use Spotify because of the playlists and albums I’ve found but my ears are waiting.
 

tsumake

Member
Has anyone had any experience with portable dongle dacs like the Dragonfly? I’m currently using the Apple dongle dac with my iphone. I’ve also heard that it beats many $100 dacs so I’m wondering if it’s worth investing in a more expensive portable dac.

Edit: Hell, speak of the devil:

 
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Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
Has anyone had any experience with portable dongle dacs like the Dragonfly? I’m currently using the Apple dongle dac with my iphone. I’ve also heard that it beats many $100 dacs so I’m wondering if it’s worth investing in a more expensive portable dac.

Edit: Hell, speak of the devil:


I have a FiiO E10k and hated it.
 

Ironbunny

Member
Has anyone had any experience with portable dongle dacs like the Dragonfly? I’m currently using the Apple dongle dac with my iphone. I’ve also heard that it beats many $100 dacs so I’m wondering if it’s worth investing in a more expensive portable dac.

Edit: Hell, speak of the devil:



I use the FiiO BTR5 bluetooth DAC (https://www.fiio.com/btr5) and it does the job. Sounds good and easy to use. Only gripe I have is the button layout which is ankward to use. I use it on my car and headphones & phone (android).
 
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Durask

Member
My main concern about audio quality is knowing what do we actually get when streaming.

Let's say you stream Spotify to your amp and speakers. Is there any difference between
Apple TV
Amazon Echo Link
Laptop with USB DAC
iPhone with analog converter dongle
Android phone with USB-C converter dongle

When you research things, there's always some weird issues, like "if you use Echo Link with spotify, you only get low bitrate audio"
 

T8SC

Member
My main concern about audio quality is knowing what do we actually get when streaming.

Let's say you stream Spotify to your amp and speakers. Is there any difference between
Apple TV
Amazon Echo Link
Laptop with USB DAC
iPhone with analog converter dongle
Android phone with USB-C converter dongle

When you research things, there's always some weird issues, like "if you use Echo Link with spotify, you only get low bitrate audio"

I use Denon HEOS to stream Amazon Music Unlimited Hi-Res. It outputs 24/192.

If I used Spotify, it'd use TDK SA90 with Dolby B noise reduction quality. /sarcasm
 

Haint

Member
Has anyone had any experience with portable dongle dacs like the Dragonfly? I’m currently using the Apple dongle dac with my iphone. I’ve also heard that it beats many $100 dacs so I’m wondering if it’s worth investing in a more expensive portable dac.

Edit: Hell, speak of the devil:



Fingers crossed. I use Spotify because of the playlists and albums I’ve found but my ears are waiting.

If you're spending $100 on a dongle the only one I'm aware of that's worth considering the Quedelix 5K. It has an onboard battery providing a lot extra drive power Vs. the passive dongles and 10 band parametric EQ which makes a clear night and day difference to SQ if your headphones have reputable measurements available. Also Spotify Premium is already 320Kbps, the only thing the Hi-Fi tier will offer is making your wallet $5 lighter every month. 320Kbps is transparent to 99% of people in 99% of tracks. Even if by some chance you can ABX a difference, you're only picking out a difference (which may or may not be better, and may or may not be the lossless track) and is so utterly meaningless it might as well not even exist.
 
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Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
This looks cool but I bet it was outrageously expensive.

More pics on the store page:
 

Con_Z_ǝdʇ

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
This looks cool but I bet it was outrageously expensive.

More pics on the store page:
Fancy!
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
I'm positive that you could make them work in a confined space. I'd also bet a buck that they are good at low volume for late night listening sessions.
Yeah, John’s mentioned before he listens at low volumes and even calls these speakers good for that during the review. I mistook the 4’s for the 3’s, as when I was considering them, it was circa 2019.
John continues to be my favorite YT reviewer.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Some Christmas holiday goodness, treating myself to Sennheiser HD820s, with a HDV820 amp, and a NAD C 658 streamer, with a WyWires cable and a dram of Hibiki

XQA9EpB.jpg
 
Yeah, John’s mentioned before he listens at low volumes and even calls these speakers good for that during the review. I mistook the 4’s for the 3’s, as when I was considering them, it was circa 2019.
John continues to be my favorite YT reviewer.
I'm glad that he's out there planting seeds and it's good food for thought.

I also considered them for a while but then I realized that I don't want to confine them to a small space. I wouldn't say that they are massive but they are indeed big boys.

G7aExUs.jpg


PBrsICK.jpg
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Diminishing returns occur relatively early in and the sweet spot will entirely depend on your budget and how much attention you give. You can easily spend $200 on a pair of headphones and feel pretty good about the purchase. Hell, people buy the Koss Ports Pros and swear by them and they're only $50.

I think this vid might be a good starting point if you want to figure out how much is enough for you.

True. I stand by koss porta pro with my whole heart !
Sound is open, wide and somehow full. You look at this little piece of shit and imagine dry, empty sound. Then whenever I put it on anyone's head, their mouth open "what?! how?!"
haha of course it's not for everyone. Might be a bit too fun sounding (too much mids) for some.
I myself switched to Sony Pulse 3d due to ease of use and wireless.... I did a lot A/B with porta pro and pulse 3d is very similar sounding. Maybe a tiny bit less bassy but able to recreate lower thumps easier. In fact, Pulses sound a bit more precise but I might be crazy.
Comfort is still unbeatable with porta pro disappearing on the head
 

tsumake

Member
True. I stand by koss porta pro with my whole heart !
Sound is open, wide and somehow full. You look at this little piece of shit and imagine dry, empty sound. Then whenever I put it on anyone's head, their mouth open "what?! how?!"
haha of course it's not for everyone. Might be a bit too fun sounding (too much mids) for some.
I myself switched to Sony Pulse 3d due to ease of use and wireless.... I did a lot A/B with porta pro and pulse 3d is very similar sounding. Maybe a tiny bit less bassy but able to recreate lower thumps easier. In fact, Pulses sound a bit more precise but I might be crazy.
Comfort is still unbeatable with porta pro disappearing on the head

Porta Pros are excellent for their soundstage and quality at their price. Probably the best in their price if you leave out dubious chi-fi and iffy QC.

Though, has anyone tried Crinacle’s iem collab with KZ?
 
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