Backfoggen
Banned
FLAC -> archival purposes
Transcoding transcoded files gives you crap results that everyone can hear.
Transcoding transcoded files gives you crap results that everyone can hear.
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Let's talk about how dumb audiophiles are
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Glass Rebel
Member
Relax guys, I was just poking fun at him for using the term FLAC rips.
what exactly is wrong with people who prefer lossless audio and high-quality headphones? i don't understand what the big deal is. i don't see how it can even compare to elitist douches who determine whether or not an artist has heart or soul.
yeah, i noticed that after i posted ha.
Are you suggesting that such online stores do not exist? Because they do.
PjotrStroganov
Member
Pristine_Condition
Member
You are only using the $1200 cables, aren't you? Because on my system, I was able to experience the full subtle beauty of that joke, with none of the noise you are talking about.
I'd have rated it a solid 8.72649/10
(See, unlike your system, my superior system allows me to get down to that level of granularity.)
For me audiophile is somebody who buys 25000$ amplifier and tells me it sounds so much better then any cheaper amplifier out there.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
On sample rate:
Different frequencies feel different on our skin. It's most obvious with bass, but it's true with frequencies above the range of our hearing, too.
Obviously, that doesn't help if you're listening on headphones.
On bit-depth:
24-bit can enable you to have the ear-drum-smashing loudness people want these days while retaining some dynamic range.
Different frequencies feel different on our skin. It's most obvious with bass, but it's true with frequencies above the range of our hearing, too.
Obviously, that doesn't help if you're listening on headphones.
On bit-depth:
24-bit can enable you to have the ear-drum-smashing loudness people want these days while retaining some dynamic range.
I seriously hope you don't compress that shit.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
OP's argument is that they are harming people by spreading their inaccurate information which happens to involve spending a shitload of money for non-existent benefits.
I think it's a worthy cause, just like advocating against homeopathy and other junk science.
Next, let's talk about people who think vinyl sounds objectively better than digital.
Pristine_Condition
Member
Nah, my favorite is the guy who just has more money than obvious common sense.
A good friend of mine (he really is a great guy despite being a total nerd who is just kinda clueless about the real world) actually spent around $40,000 on a boutique AV system for his loft apartment.
Me: So what are you planning to do with the space?
Him: You mean the 'listening area?' What are you talking about? I've got a rug over there.
Me: You live in a loft, with leaky windows, 1/4 mile away from a freeway overpass.
Him: ???
A good friend of mine (he really is a great guy despite being a total nerd who is just kinda clueless about the real world) actually spent around $40,000 on a boutique AV system for his loft apartment.
Me: So what are you planning to do with the space?
Him: You mean the 'listening area?' What are you talking about? I've got a rug over there.
Me: You live in a loft, with leaky windows, 1/4 mile away from a freeway overpass.
Him: ???
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
those people are the equivalent of tv folk thinking monster cables are worth the money... I don't know if I would consider them audiophiles due to their utter ignorance. most audiophiles I know accept properly ripped flacs as the end all be all.
personally, I am fine with 320kbps, VO, or V2 unless I plan to transcode the file again in the future, in which case I need to have the flac so the transcode isn't absolute shit... but I can't hear the difference between flac and these lossy formats
e: I think the level of obsession, denial, and delusion going on in the OP is a sign of mental illness.
personally, I am fine with 320kbps, VO, or V2 unless I plan to transcode the file again in the future, in which case I need to have the flac so the transcode isn't absolute shit... but I can't hear the difference between flac and these lossy formats
e: I think the level of obsession, denial, and delusion going on in the OP is a sign of mental illness.
Do you have any idea how loud a >20khz sound would have to be to make a feel-able impact on your skin? I don't know enough physics and anatomy to do the math, but that is completely ridiculous. Do you also think inaudible parts of the audio spectrum add "air" to musical playback?
Have you or anyone else tested this theory? It would be pretty simple. Sit in a room, blindfolded while holding a clicker. Another person controls a stereo capable of playing sounds >20khz without audible distortion. Click when you FEEL the sound.
What % right do you think you'd be?
Dreams-Visions
Member
Just their turbines. Everything else should be about half the price they are being sold at. Monster isn't shit...they're just drastically overpriced and receive scorn in accordance with that reality. As the article alluded to, you won't find the kind of quality headphones that will make an appreciable difference in your music experience in a big box store. Unless they carry Denon, Sennheiser, Grado, Ultrasone, Shure, etc.
You should read the article again, then. or just Ctrl+F "amplifier". It was briefly mentioned, hence my comment.
I don't know how much anyone should or shouldn't spend on an amplifier, but I know they work as a basic and essential addition to your audio setup. They lower the noise floor, reduce hissing, and can greatly impact the sound signature coming through your speakers or headphones.
You don't need an in-depth analysis to tell the difference between a $100 pocket amp, a $500 solid state amp, and a $500 tube amp. Your ears and a decent pair of headphones will do just fine. Though I have yet to hear more expensive amps than that, the people here who own them have no doubt about their value. Could be confirmation bias at work, but who knows.
Glass Rebel
Member
2 seconds in HiFLAC format (you don't know this yet, it's from the future) taking up ~60GB that he keeps in constant loop. If he's serious about good audio quality.
dr3upmushroom
Banned
Nah, I agree with the OP, many audiophiles advise others that their absurd purchases are worthwhile, and many totally have their heads up their asses with regards to which electronics have "synergy" with others (as in "Oh my god, THAT amp with THAT DAC?! Surely you aren't serious!")
Plus, I don't see anyone bitching. We're talking about people who convince themselves that they can sense differences in listening quality when the overwhelming evidence is that they can't. Laughing at someone when they slip on a banana peel isn't bitching about them.
Your such a noob, Bose obviously makes the best audio equipment in the world by 10000x
Hari Seldon
Member
Yeah when I got into higher end music I found out quickly how many crazy bastards are out there. I will say, that for a fact, vacuum tubes are better than transistors for audio amplification. But really, for less than $1000 you can get a headphone setup that will rival anything at any higher cost.
Dreams-Visions
Member
This is a Furutech SK II electrostatic brush. It costs 200 USD. Audiophiles are crazy.
just because a product is on the market, it doesn't mean someone is buying it.
Yes it does. Companies don't market products that have zero sales.
When you go to the length of actively looking up audiophile comments to create an op with I imagine its more than just about laughing bit actively trying to prove them wrong. No one should give a fuck if they want to buy 500 cables and 90 rocks.
Dreams-Visions
Member
I'm bitching...at you.
You didn't read the OP, did you? The article was principally about an analysis of digital and analog recording quality, bit depth, frequency range, master quality, testing problems, and the mistakes "audiophiles" have made in the past regarding their assumptions about those things.
The article is NOT about particulars of equipment purchases. To the contrary, it goes out of its way to talk about the value of good quality headphones and equipment, and lossless/near-lossless tracks that are well-mastered. Yet here you are, using it as an opportunity to tee-off about a subject with which you're probably not all the well versed in the first place. There may be a future thread about the lack of value provided by quality equipment...but this thread and this OP sure as shit isn't it.
it's the fucking internet. how much do you think they had to spend to take a picture of the "product" and post it on a website? let's not all fall into the stupid boat.
dr3upmushroom
Banned
But... they are wrong. If nothing else it's interesting to see how strongly the placebo effect can influence some people.
And I'm not sure if you've used this new "Google" thing they have out now but "actively looking up audiophile comments" probably took the OP all of ten minutes tops.
I'm guessing you're an "audiophile" yourself? You seem weirdly adverse to discussing the topic.
I did. Of the 7 instances found, the first 6 were about dealing with the problem of intermodulation distortion from ultrasonic sound when playing content with needlessly high frequency content.
The last is:
"It means people 'hear' differences because of subconscious cues and preferences that have nothing to do with the audio, like preferring a more expensive (or more attractive) amplifier over a cheaper option."
I am more talking about full stereos, where the scale of obscenity goes much higher. I have no doubt that an amplifier can be made to color the sound in a certain way, since that is very simple. The problem I have is the existence of multi-thousand dollar amps that, if not poorly designed, should have differences far below the threshold of audibility. I'd really like to see a double blind comparison of a $500 stereo amplifier and as many $3000+ amps as possible. I would bet a lot of money that there would be no conclusive preference for any amp.
http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8909
Audiophiles are crazy.
(it do however looks like it might be cheaper in the US than over here)
The amount of psychoacoustics that gets passed off as gospel among the audiophile community is astounding.
One mastering engineer from a respectable studio insists that digital audio philes degrade over time and even e-mailing them reduces their overall quality.
I'm a firm believe that if I can't pick something out in a double blind test, it isn't worth buying. I fully realize that my perception of something can be greatly altered by my preconceptions. Why many audiophiles trust their ears more than an unbiased test or scientific measurements, I'll never know.
One mastering engineer from a respectable studio insists that digital audio philes degrade over time and even e-mailing them reduces their overall quality.
I'm a firm believe that if I can't pick something out in a double blind test, it isn't worth buying. I fully realize that my perception of something can be greatly altered by my preconceptions. Why many audiophiles trust their ears more than an unbiased test or scientific measurements, I'll never know.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
Delusional people need to be proven wrong sometimes.
dr3upmushroom
Banned
The article in the OP, sure, but there's any number of other well-known studies that electronics are equally useless after a certain point. See the article already posted in this thread about the audiophiles who couldn't tell the difference between extremely expensive speaker wire and coat hangers in a blind listening test.
"but this thread and this OP sure as shit isn't it."
Ooooohkay. The topic is titled "Let's talk about how dumb audiophiles are." You really think I'm off topic by mentioning electronics?
I don't think they're trying to say that FLAC is bad, they're just proving that if you want to get really, really technical, it's not actually lossless.
Dreams-Visions
Member
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
I agree with the points you're making and I'll add that the OP isn't even attacking ALL audiophiles. He's attacking the crazy ones. A person who enjoys high quality stereo equipment can rightly call themselves and audiophile without also embracing the insanity evidenced in the OP. All one has to do is read the OP to see that he's attacking very specific kinds of claims, not literally audiophiles as a group, as the thread title implies.
Let's just be clear: The Absolute Sound magazine article (not the online article linked in the OP) is definitely making the claim you describe. The point of my ridicule is that their claim is total horseshit. FLAC is lossless, no matter how psuedo-technical you get.
PigSpeakers
Member
I feel like there's a bit of a difference between these people and the people who actually mix and record music. Spending a lot of time on recording forums, you tend to notice there's some crossover between these groups. They're the types that think you need to spend $1000 on a microphone and monitors right off the bat, and that there's NO WAY you could get a good sound out of that. It's sort of an unfriendly and unhelpful community sometimes.
All of that being said, I had some mp3s that I got at some russian site when I was a kid that were 24Kbps and I spent the other night replacing them all with higher quality mp3s. It made a lot of difference. That being said, I'm perfectly comfortable with music at 192Kbps etc. There's only so far I will go though.
For the record, I think the thing that matters more in music recording than bits and lossless audio is both the composition, and the spacing between instruments. I care more about how interesting or well made the mix is than how it was compressed. Not that it doesn't matter to a certain degree. If you lose a lot of what was in the DAW mix when bouncing to an mp3, then all of that mixing you did won't matter quite as much.
All of that being said, I had some mp3s that I got at some russian site when I was a kid that were 24Kbps and I spent the other night replacing them all with higher quality mp3s. It made a lot of difference. That being said, I'm perfectly comfortable with music at 192Kbps etc. There's only so far I will go though.
For the record, I think the thing that matters more in music recording than bits and lossless audio is both the composition, and the spacing between instruments. I care more about how interesting or well made the mix is than how it was compressed. Not that it doesn't matter to a certain degree. If you lose a lot of what was in the DAW mix when bouncing to an mp3, then all of that mixing you did won't matter quite as much.
I must now go do this.
Wait, what? I'm quite well versed in confirmation bias and so-on. I was just saying that of my own double-blind testing to satisfy my curiosity (e.g., wasn't for the sake of proving/disproving anything, choosing between products, etc.), I didn't have near the success rate I was expecting/hoping for in picking things out. Yes, it probably wasn't an ideal setup and many other factors but I never claimed it was.
And I'm saying this as an audiophile (or, rather, I'd be more of one if I had the money to support it).
Although I'm not really able to pick it out, it's at least possible for music in Foobar to sound better than music in Winamp for one reason: bit perfect streaming. You can set Foobar to output audio in ASIO, WASAPI, or Kernal mode. These modes bypass the Windows sound mixer and therefore the audio can be sent out bit perfect to an external DAC. Winamp would use the Windows sound mixer, which is an extra layer which takes all of your applications' audio, blends them into one audio stream, and outputs it as a mix. This could, theoretically, reduce the precision and effectively contaminate the source material.
Like I said, I can't really pick out the difference, but I won't outright dismiss the fact that it might sound better in Foobar, because it's a valid theory.
Not really. My speaker set up cost less than 2k and I won't subscribe to cable / magic stone / etc nonsense. I prefer iems tht don't require amplification.
With that said the OP specifically states audiophile sites that he goes to check out, so I'll guess that hes done this before and visited those sites despite saying that there dumb.
Yet the title generalized that all audiophiles are dumb its that dog
I mean, I could only up on people walking with beats on and show them how wrong thus are, I just don't care to
Quietly weeping at 320kbps.
dr3upmushroom
Banned
Oh, I totally agree. I actually have a somewhat decent headphone setup myself, Beyer DT880s and a decent amp. I don't really consider myself an audiophile though, because I think almost anyone would prefer my setup to Apple earbuds if they did an A/B test. I get what you're saying but when I hear audiophile I basically only think of the crazies.
So that's where I'm coming from. With a nice but practical setup, in my mind you're not an audiophile, you're a guy with nice speakers. If you self-identify as an audiophile I can see why you'd be offended by the topic, but it's clear no one is talking about people like you when they're saying someone's dumb.
As for not caring about other people's business, I hate to be the one to give the typical retort, but you could, you know, not post in the thread if you're not interested in the discussion.
CoffeeExpress
Member
I hate it when you get 240p on Youtube..
The Big Rig
Member
Uhh, I like alac because I can use it with my iPhone. Glad I could share that.
People prefer tubes because they find the distortion they add to be pleasant. Measured on the basis of the accuracy of their sound reproduction, tubes are inferior.
Eh, I just like to think of audiophiles as people who care about sound quality to the point of actively doing something to better it. It's a bit loose, sure, but I feel comfortable with it like that.
But, yeah, I tend to think of the crazies whenever audiophile gets tossed around negatively :x
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