-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Let's talk about how dumb audiophiles are
- Thread starter pj
- Start date
- Status
While researching and putting together a decent system over the last year, I spent a lot of time deep in audiophile territory. I find the extreme subjectivists like whoever penned that absolute sound article, embarrassing and laughable; on the other hand, the extreme objectivists come off as insufferable twats (maybe they're just fed up), dogmatic and condescending to a T. I decided to take everything with a grain of salt and listen with my ears and judge. I found I can't hear the difference between speaker cables, interconnects, power cables, high res digital vs cd, or even mp3 vs flac. However, the objectivists also claim no difference between amplifiers, and having had five separate integrated amps/receivers in my system over the last year, I can't say that view conforms with my experience: three sounded quite different, two extremely similar.
The rare bit of new material does get a separate master for vinyl. The problem is, as you say, the vast majority does not, which is why I don't purchase new vinyl. On the other hand, a well mastered lp from the analog era just sounds incredible. Digital sounds better in many ways, but it's missing the depth and palpable presence I can hear in a good analog record. I'm not sure what accounts for the difference I hear: better mastering, preference for analog tape recordings vs digital, the limitations and distortions of vinyl format, or some combination of those factors? But I hear it, even if I wish it wasn't so -- after all, the majority of my music is digital and I'm no fan of pops, ticks, or even the whole ritual of playing a record (i'm lazy). I've only heard DACs up to the $1k range, but none have been able to bring that extra smidgen of magic my turntable and cart -- a nice used table from 1979 with a denon 110 @ less than $400 total investment -- has been able to provide on some recordings.
The rare bit of new material does get a separate master for vinyl. The problem is, as you say, the vast majority does not, which is why I don't purchase new vinyl. On the other hand, a well mastered lp from the analog era just sounds incredible. Digital sounds better in many ways, but it's missing the depth and palpable presence I can hear in a good analog record. I'm not sure what accounts for the difference I hear: better mastering, preference for analog tape recordings vs digital, the limitations and distortions of vinyl format, or some combination of those factors? But I hear it, even if I wish it wasn't so -- after all, the majority of my music is digital and I'm no fan of pops, ticks, or even the whole ritual of playing a record (i'm lazy). I've only heard DACs up to the $1k range, but none have been able to bring that extra smidgen of magic my turntable and cart -- a nice used table from 1979 with a denon 110 @ less than $400 total investment -- has been able to provide on some recordings.
How does your subjective test of a few amps say anything about claims that they all sound the same? I don't think anyone claims that ALL amps sound the same. Tube amps clearly sound different because of the intentional distortion. I would love to see a group of level matched 200wpc stereo amps that cost between $1000 and $10000, and have a group of GOLDEN EARED audiophiles do a double blind test. My suspicion is that there will be no clear preference for any amp and the testers will not be able to rank them by price with any better success than random guessing.
I'd also like to see the same test with amps costing between $500 and $1000, but I am not as confident that there wouldn't be audible differences.
If I'm wrong, then hooray, I get to upgrade my amp in the future instead of being boringly stuck with the one I'm not. If I'm right, then a lot of people have wasted a lot of money.
I should have explicitly stated SS amps to avoid confusion. This claim is made all the time, even at the $300-1000 range, which is where I have personal experience. I don't think you need to spend a lot for good sound, as once an amp reaches a level of distortion and noise floor (which does cost a little bit), it comes down to flavor of presentation, which is largely just EQ differences across the frequency range either in the preamp stage or based on the power supply reaction to your speakers impedance curves. My second favorite amp I've had was a $300 Harmon Kardon receiver. It rolled off the highs and made everything quite pleasant to listen to, certainly not neutral or expensive.
Bullshit. The vast majority of people can perceive the difference between 30fps and 60fps. What's being discussed in the OP is the exact opposite.
NervousXtian
Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
I love the similarities between audiophiles and vinophiles.
Just like audio their is a distinct difference between bad stuff, good stuff, and great stuff. It's when it gets past a certain level it has no real direct reflection on what the product is, but all allure of price and prestige.
Just like audio their is a distinct difference between bad stuff, good stuff, and great stuff. It's when it gets past a certain level it has no real direct reflection on what the product is, but all allure of price and prestige.
can a mod please make this the first reply
DonasaurusRex
Online Ho Champ
yeah audiophiles are a dedicated bunch.
the only thing i even pay attention to when buying music gear is
1) the player , cowon and sony are two i've used and noticed they drive headphones well, cant speak for other brands but a good mp3 player that will drive your headphones is not an elusive thing these days, ive heard good things about samsung, sansa, creative etc. Just dont get phones that need alot to drive them and your fine
2) headphones there are clearly levels of quality you can tell the difference between bundled phones and more costly ones. We've all had shit headphones at some point but again the list of capable makers is vast, audio technica, akg, sennheiser, sony, grado, etc etc
3) good source, we all remember the days of shitty mp3s that were 128k mp3 files...but they were already copied from a shit source so of course they sounded bad, fact is they dont sound much better past 160k if they are from a good source. Even Wav files dont retain as much data as we think with thier large file size its still not like being there live and air to ears is the data rate, there is some file format that has like 300mb files for songs that retains more data....so yea not gonna be a hit anytime soon.
past that...i dunno what your gonna do get better cables?? please every cable you need is reasonably priced and available at radio shack. Get better speakers? well where are you using said super awesome speakers just as much planning goes into speaker placement when your trying to get great sound out of them. Unless you have a "sound" room wtf would you care theres a reason people record in studios.
I know you can hear more definition from tracks by getting better gear ....but not at the prices audiophiles are throwing away their money for it, the options are VAST and the differences for the non professional minimal. I cant see people buying Headphones over 200 unless they are made of wood then ok hard to make and rare so expensive. Cant think of some ultra exclusive mp3 player past 240 that is just omg gotta have unless its again new and rare so being charged a premium for either storage or manufacturing costs. Cant think of a file format thats readily available to replace the standards we have now to increase the accuracy so why worry.
the only thing i even pay attention to when buying music gear is
1) the player , cowon and sony are two i've used and noticed they drive headphones well, cant speak for other brands but a good mp3 player that will drive your headphones is not an elusive thing these days, ive heard good things about samsung, sansa, creative etc. Just dont get phones that need alot to drive them and your fine
2) headphones there are clearly levels of quality you can tell the difference between bundled phones and more costly ones. We've all had shit headphones at some point but again the list of capable makers is vast, audio technica, akg, sennheiser, sony, grado, etc etc
3) good source, we all remember the days of shitty mp3s that were 128k mp3 files...but they were already copied from a shit source so of course they sounded bad, fact is they dont sound much better past 160k if they are from a good source. Even Wav files dont retain as much data as we think with thier large file size its still not like being there live and air to ears is the data rate, there is some file format that has like 300mb files for songs that retains more data....so yea not gonna be a hit anytime soon.
past that...i dunno what your gonna do get better cables?? please every cable you need is reasonably priced and available at radio shack. Get better speakers? well where are you using said super awesome speakers just as much planning goes into speaker placement when your trying to get great sound out of them. Unless you have a "sound" room wtf would you care theres a reason people record in studios.
I know you can hear more definition from tracks by getting better gear ....but not at the prices audiophiles are throwing away their money for it, the options are VAST and the differences for the non professional minimal. I cant see people buying Headphones over 200 unless they are made of wood then ok hard to make and rare so expensive. Cant think of some ultra exclusive mp3 player past 240 that is just omg gotta have unless its again new and rare so being charged a premium for either storage or manufacturing costs. Cant think of a file format thats readily available to replace the standards we have now to increase the accuracy so why worry.
Really no different than videophiles going deep into calibration menus and buying Kuros for around $5000 or so when they first came out... or gamers who upgrade to a new graphics card every couple of years. The people who say they can't hear difference between equipment, say for example a $300 Harmon Kardon receiver and between more expensive separates probably haven't tried much equipment.
The key with audio is system synergy as well. You can't just slam expensive stuff together and get great sound. You have to take the sound characteristics of each component and decide how that will fit into your system as well.
The key with audio is system synergy as well. You can't just slam expensive stuff together and get great sound. You have to take the sound characteristics of each component and decide how that will fit into your system as well.
It's pretty clear you didn't actually read the article referenced in the OP.
It is TOTALLY different.
Highres audio isn't pointless, but highres audio encoded from a 16-bit source is.
If we let apple have their way, studios will begin mastering audio for aac.
If we let apple have their way, studios will begin mastering audio for aac.
this needs to stop. the tubes can be as linear as transitors, they all have cutoff, saturation and linear zones. they aren't intentionally designed to sound distorted. the "warm" sound signatures are usually from vintage tube amps which weren't high bandwidth amps. you will find plenty of modern tube amps, that use negative feedback loops, to sound as accurate or more accurate than solid state amps. however, many modern tube amps are also designed to sound melodic or distorted. which actually what many people prefer.
Play any movie or game in an HD CRT tv, then go play in almost every LCD HDTV and you'll see why videophiles are right.
The only thing worse than audiophiles are the hacks they jump to their defense when they're been proven thoroughly thoroughly wrong and misguided.
Audiophiles are on par with homeopaths as far as money and effectiveness goes.
DonasaurusRex
Online Ho Champ
...no the video complaints are valid..crt's weakness was size, weight and i guess power...but response, color, contrast, pixel density were great for CRTS something LCD's had to catch up to or try i should say. It was way too much to make a 55 inch crt that would be heavy as shit.
HappyBivouac
Member
I hate that we call them audiophiles.
The English term "audiophile" should refer to someone who loves and appreciates sound, not someone who obsesses over meaningless numbers and bullshit.
For example, the sax solo in Pink Floyd's "Us And Them" is absolutely pure bliss in my ears that can bring me to what I consider one of the heights of human experience, even if it's coming from a pair of $5 earbuds. In my definition, that should make me an audiophile.
The English term "audiophile" should refer to someone who loves and appreciates sound, not someone who obsesses over meaningless numbers and bullshit.
For example, the sax solo in Pink Floyd's "Us And Them" is absolutely pure bliss in my ears that can bring me to what I consider one of the heights of human experience, even if it's coming from a pair of $5 earbuds. In my definition, that should make me an audiophile.
This guy bought a power cable for $25,000 a few years back:
And, according to his website (which is super crazy, go figure), he was able to resell it recently for about $24,000.
And, according to his website (which is super crazy, go figure), he was able to resell it recently for about $24,000.
I consider myself to be an audiophile and yes there is plenty of bullshit in this hobby. But to be fair, any hobby that places a strong reliance on human senses to be the judge of quality is subjected to the same type of cognitive dissonance as well. Just look at wines, violins and paintings. It's all the same shit. There will always be plenty of fools out there.
Solid headphones, solid amp and a good source.
but hey if you want I can sell you some random crap I found on my desk that you can wrap around your cables and pretend it cancels interference or some such shit.
Video Calibration is super important though. Black level, white balance, gamma. You can wind up with a really ugly looking picture if you have the wrong settings.
but hey if you want I can sell you some random crap I found on my desk that you can wrap around your cables and pretend it cancels interference or some such shit.
Video Calibration is super important though. Black level, white balance, gamma. You can wind up with a really ugly looking picture if you have the wrong settings.
holy shit
billy beane
Banned
I've been slowly upgrading my entire music collection to lossless. There are certain times where it's actually sounded better than my MP3 version, and other times I can't hear much a difference. But whatever.
Pretty sure you shouldn't be asking that here
That said, I doubt it exists. You can't actually 'rip' an SACD because there are no PC SACD drives to my knowledge. The only way to do it would be if someone had a hacked HDMI receiver, set the player to PCM output (don't think there is any commercial DSD conversion software), and then used something akin to a packet sniffer to capture/buffer the PCM data. The only alternative would be if someone actually sampled the multi-channel analog output from a high-end SACD player with some high-end capturing HW. I'd be surprised if anyone has bothered with either of these scenarios ... but who knows, maybe someone was bored.
If you look around however, you can find info on how to rip MLP (DVD-A) content and convert it to multi-channel FLAC 94/24.
Not necessarily. Many of the things claimed to be analogous are entirely subjective. The issue with 'audiophiles' (in the negative connotation) are claims that can be shown through measurement to not actually make the changes being claimed. That's a very different thing.
Obviously this isn't the case with all aspects. For example, one can prefer the sound of the even-order harmonics a certain tube produces ... or the response curve of a certain set of speakers ... but what's being argued in the OP are the sorts of things that can be shown to simply not exist in ABX testing.
No. Audiophiles are much worse.
I need to start doing this.
Really? I didn't know much about the audiophile community coming into this thread. I'm trusting you, Zap.
CoffeeJanitor
Member
Now what bothers me is the guy telling me he can tell the difference between 80fps and 100fps when the refresh rate of his monitor is 60Hz.
Pretty sure you shouldn't be asking that here
That said, I doubt it exists. You can't actually 'rip' an SACD because there are no PC SACD drives to my knowledge. The only way to do it would be if someone had a hacked HDMI receiver, set the player to PCM output (don't think there is any commercial DSD conversion software), and then used something akin to a packet sniffer to capture/buffer the PCM data. The only alternative would be if someone actually sampled the multi-channel analog output from a high-end SACD player with some high-end capturing HW. I'd be surprised if anyone has bothered with either of these scenarios ... but who knows, maybe someone was bored.
If you look around however, you can find info on how to rip MLP (DVD-A) content and convert it to multi-channel FLAC 94/24.
but dvd sound quality isn't inferior than 94/24 ?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Audio
DVD-A is not the same thing as DVD movies. It's a high resolution lossless audio media format that was a direct competitor to SACD.
It's a tricky area. There is some degree of efficacy to what audiophiles say. They're not quite as bad as homeopaths... but many of them can be.
Basically, the likelihood of people conflating subjectivity with objectivity is far more apparent and far more likely to occur when it comes to audio and acoustic products.
The threshold for good listening isn't all that high - doesn't require multi-thousand dollar audio setups, where things like audible pops, clicks and hiss (which can occur on multi-thousand dollar setups, because of how accurately they reproduce all the defects) have significantly more impact on a person's perception of the audio quality than things like bit-rate (128 v 320 is the common one that goes around)... but is commonly ignored, even from time to time exhorted by self styled audiophiles.
The problem with audiophiles is when they start to go pseudoscience, conflating real differences, with percievable differences. As in the article in the OP; claiming that the real, but unpercievable differences of high bit rate and kHz range improves listening quality, when it doesn't.
This goes for things like gold plate connectors too. One of the largest selling points of audio-equipment over the last 2-3 decades, it does actually have electrical efficacy in its impedance and noise... but do an A-B blind test, and you'd be lucky to find a greater than chance threshold of hearing differences.
Another common one is burning in headphones - as though the scant milliwatts of energy that are sent through the headphones could actually change... melt the metal and components just enough so as to change its acoustic characteristics. But it's a meme that gets repeated again and again and again, with the straightest face by the guys that review this stuff and the people that consume those reviews.
To put it all another way... if effective knowledge in audiophile circles is a drug... then audiophiles in general have had their shit cut and mixed with a whole fuck-load of crazy.
Is there anything else to discuss here?
Incorrect, anyone can wear any sort of headphones they want unless they are brainless slaves to corporate-designed fashion.
PjotrStroganov
Member
Depends. Are you an audiophile?
It'd be comparable if, you know, they touted 'high end audio equipment' as treatment for cancer, but they don't. If they want to waste money let them waste money.
teruterubozu
Member
It's no different than the inane graphics arguments in Gaming.
cloud_sleep
Member
There are people out there with early model PS3s who can use software (google "PS3 SACD ripper") to extract the DSDIFF (DFF) or DSF files directly from SACDs, then use other software to convert to 24/88.8 flacs.
That's a pretty decent retort. But would I be wrong in assuming that most homeopathic treatments aren't used by cancer patients as an alternative? And that the treatments, expensive as they can be, don't quite go up to the 25k range for a power cable kind of crappy efficacy to money spent ratio?
I do my fair share of audiophile bashing, but there is definitely a world of difference between 128kbps and 320kbps. 128kbps can be so bad it sounds like you're listening to the music underwater. I don't believe there's a perceivable difference between 320kbps and lossless, though. At the very least I certainly can't hear it.
I keep my collection at V2.
I keep my collection at V2.
I think the main problem with audiophiles is that they are trying to turn a decision into a hobby. You can really only have one stereo, and if it's basically good enough, then the forums, websites and magazines are worthless to you. Audiophiles get the "upgrade itch" because they are bored, and since hearing is so subjective and fallible, they are able to spend tons of time researching, auditioning and debating characteristics that may not actually exist.
Videophiles I would say have the same problem, but since current display technologies and devices all have different strengths and weaknesses, and new displays come out every year that are measurably better for the same or less cost, they can more easily maintain the discussions and debates without resorting to the magical superlatives of the audiophile.
Fair enough. I'd like to see an accurate tube amp added to the double blind amp test, then.
Headphone and speaker burn in is one of those things that I don't think has been proven either way. I think most of it is probably the listener's ears getting used to the sound, but I don't think it's unreasonable that a mechanical device may sound different after it has been used for a while. There was an article about it fairly recently where someone tried to test it, but I believe the results were inconclusive.
Videophiles I would say have the same problem, but since current display technologies and devices all have different strengths and weaknesses, and new displays come out every year that are measurably better for the same or less cost, they can more easily maintain the discussions and debates without resorting to the magical superlatives of the audiophile.
Fair enough. I'd like to see an accurate tube amp added to the double blind amp test, then.
Headphone and speaker burn in is one of those things that I don't think has been proven either way. I think most of it is probably the listener's ears getting used to the sound, but I don't think it's unreasonable that a mechanical device may sound different after it has been used for a while. There was an article about it fairly recently where someone tried to test it, but I believe the results were inconclusive.
Homeopathy is a shit science that claims to offer (false) cures to maladies. Audiophiles are just people who think spending cash on shit makes shit sound like better shit. One is malicious and potentially harmful, the other is just stupid.
oh lord hadn't heard that
I'll look into it. Maybe I'll have to pull out my 60 gigger from retirement.
the biggest issue is people who insist on first hand evidence. when you're dealing with physics, witnessing something is meaningless. You need readings, data, hard proof. Saying it sounds better/worse/the same is pretty much worthless. Especially when you're the one who just spent five grand on the magic rocks you stick up your ass to change the conduction coefficient of your body, or something.
Even if i find stupid the people who buy the new enthusiast graphics card to replace the one who was highest end on market 15 days ago only to have a 20% boost performance it isn't nearly the same thing.
Also have you ever seen a Kuro or a CRT HD in action?
It depends on what people mean when they say something is running at x fps. A lot of times it will mean the average fps. In that case, it's possible to tell the difference between 80 fps average and 100 fps average if during the most complex scenes, the minimum fps of one goes down to 40 while the other only goes down to 60. If they're actually talking about scenes where the fps never falls below 80 and 100, then they're probably full of it. However, people who are super-sensitive to screen tearing might notice differences in how much tearing there is at different 60+ frame rates.
GamePnoy74
Member
'Why camera nerds are the worst nerds'The whole thread reminds me of this xkcd strip.
(this was posted in the camera equipment thread a while back)
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked