So, you’re saying you don’t want to buy the Brilliant Pebbles or the Clever Little Clock?
Super high end audiophile stuff is indeed bullshit. But a lot of people extend this to apply to low end stuff where it’s inappropriate. For example, you can probably get the best sound you’ve ever heard out of a pair of good $300 headphones, and you’d gain little by having $3000 headphones. But I’ve heard people scoff at the idea of having headphones that cost more than $20, because hey, they’re just headphones. So this idea shouldn’t be taken to extreme levels where you’d assume that there’s almost no difference in the quality of audio equipment.
Edit: Then again, maybe people just have crappy hearing or aural appreciation, since there are lots of people who scoff at the idea of being able to tell the difference between 128kb MP3s and CDs, or who spend $300 for an ipod and then use the shitty packaged earbuds to listen to them (not that ipods are a good indicator of sound quality - they’re among the worst mp3 players in terms of sound production).
That is clear to me-I used to have a boss who had a room full of high-end audio stuff. Can a case be made for analog recordings sounding better that CDs? T his guy had “direct disc” analog recordings, and they did seem to havea wider dynamic range.
But as others have pointed out, once you get above a certain level, the incrase in fidelity per additional dollar spent is pretty negligible.
Yes, there is a case for analog recordings being subjectively superior. They color the music in a way that a digital recording doesn’t. If you find that coloring pleasant, then the format will sound superior to you. Similarly in audio equipment, there’s stuff out there that focuses on accuracy - they want to reproduce sounds as accurately as possible - whereas other reproduction systems change the output to something that the engineers hope people find more pleasant.
Exactly. That is why some folks still love vinyl - it colors the sound in a way that digital examples can’t. I would argue that neither is superior, more of a YMMV type of thing…
It’s kind of a moot point since most music is only released on CD. At least for pop/rock, not sure about other types.
Same reason car nuts spend $500,000 on a Ferrari or wine nuts spend $1000 on a single bottle, or …
I used to wonder why car magazines always focused on cars that 99% of us can’t buy. (Ferrari, Porsche, etc) Then it hit me - the same reason Playboy has girls that 99% of us won’t ever date - it’s all about fantasy.
The whole vinyl fetish drives me nuts. I’ve mastered recordings for vinyl and CD, and I can assure you, the limiting, compression and bass summing necessary for vinyl makes the sound audibly and measurably worse. It’s just the technical limitations of the format, of the physics of carving sound out of lacquer. Even the best vinyl starts at a disadvantage compared to CD. Now, for reasons having nothing to do with the technology, CDs are sounding worse, due to the record company executives desire to make their releases “loud” (heavily compressed and limited), throwing away the huge advantage CDs have in dynamic range.
I’ve posted about this before, with links to a really amazing test comparing CDs to much higher quality advanced audio formats via an A/B/X comparator. As they say in the House of Commons, “I refer the learned gentleman to my earlier remarks.”
I’m an analog sort of guy, and I’d have trouble arguing that vinyl records generally sound better than CDs or cassettes (note - I grew up with records and still enjoy handling and playing them, though these days it’s entirely for the purpose of putting the music on an Ipod). I’ve even heard people claiming that they love the sounds of record hiss and pops/scratches, because it makes for a more authentic experience. :rolleyes:
I guess my hearing must be horribly degraded, because I also can’t hear a consistent measurable difference between Ipod files recorded at 128 bps and those at 256. The quality of the original recording seems to be paramount.
Last week there was a column in the Wall St. Journal reeking of contempt for people who’ve bought into the accessibility and convenience of Ipods and similar devices with their “degraded” sound. It’s just part of our general societal decline, or somesuch.
Sometimes I think I should set up some kind of dedicated classy audio setup to get what I’m so obviously missing from my albums. And then I think - Nah. I’m too far gone. Best to just have fun on my own primitive, degraded terms.
I remember reading that study 20 years ago about the blind tests! Mr. Sali had a fairly pricey stereo system set up in the living room, but of course he’d have to sit right in front of it and blast his music. That was unfair to the rest of us who lived there who didn’t want to rock out to the one billionth playing of Aqualung. And he was busy doing stuff in the yard, in the garage, in the basement, in his den…I had a cheap-o boom box I used while walking on the treadmill, or listening to the radio late at night. So guess who was always ‘borrowing’ the cheap-o boom box (until he bought his own)? … I say, if you can afford to set up your own private music room (preferably soundproofed), then buy that expensive stereo, set it up in there, and have at it.
I worked for a guy once who was really into audio equipment. He told his kids one summer “We’re not going on vacation this year. I bought a new CD player* instead.” Then added “Don’t touch it.” I’ll bet his kids were thrilled.
- This was back in the early days of CDs when a brand new CD player could easily run several hundred to a couple thousand dollars.
Genius!
I’ll remember this the next time I wind up my Victrola. Hint - When it sounds like the music was recorded on asphalt, it’s time to change the needle.
But there is something to be said for the physical acts - it’s altogether different to flip through a stack of records, pick one, put it on the turntable, change the needle, wind up the motor and gently set the needle down on the spinning shellac vs scrolling through a music library and selecting a track.
Interestingly, there’s a whole lot of world-class musicians out there who have old cobbled-together stereos at home. Stuff like a Radio Shack turntable or CD player feeding a Panasonic receiver and Sony speakers. Stuff that makes audiophiles cringe in terror just at the thought that someone would dare use such junk.
But to the musician, it’s all about the music.
In a related note someone told me that pro photo guys want to talk about their pictures. Amateurs want to talk about their equipment.
What is even more astounding is that hiss, scratches and pops are being added to pop records! I thought we had seen the ass end of that shit. Nope!
If you A/B the 128k MP3 versus the original CD or an uncompressed WAV file of the CD, you can tell. The main apparent difference is applause. If the MP3 bitrate is not high enough, applause will have a “sizzle” quality to it, literally like bacon frying.
I can see it to some extent. It has nothing to do with iPods as such, but with the way people listen to music. It’s no longer something you sit down and do, it’s something you do while doing something else.
If you sit down and listen to an album, you concentrate on the music. You can appreciate music with a wide “dynamic range” - variations from soft to loud. But if you listen to music on a bus, you want music loud enough so even the quietest passages are louder than the noise of the bus and the other people on the bus.
My favorite artist, Kate Bush, released a CD a few years back that was wonderfully engineered. Great recording, and wide dynamic range, it was a wonderful listening experience. And younger fans were complaining that it wasn’t loud enough. That the quiet parts were getting lost while they were listening on headphones while running.
I wanted to scream at them “It’s not music to be listened to while jogging you philistine!” Instead, I told them how to use Audacity to rip the CD tracks and compress the living shit out of the music so they could have their crappy version.
It depends on your relationship to your music. The music I like is created by artists who are out to create aural soundscapes, and bury details in the mix. This sort of music rewards concentrated and attentive listening. But whatever works for you is fine.
That’s always been true of music.
People arguing that MP3 etc are bad for music quality don’t get it. Killing CDs will be the best thing for music quality.
Right now, every music release is compressed to fit the Redbook audio CD standard, which is FINE but not the best it could be. Once CDs are dead, that won’t be the case necessarily. Music can be released at higher quality and simply downconverted as necessary to fit, say, your iPod or whatnot.
Oenophiles who criticize people for enjoying cheap wine. Hey, I know great wine, I’ve had great wine, but on a random weeknight, I’m cool with something I can pick up at the Safeway for $12. I’m not investing, I’m drinking– I want it to taste good.
It’d be interesting to see a graph of all the “snob hobbies” showing at what point diminishing returns come into play. Like stereo systems that can’t be heard unless you’re a bat or a puppy, at what point do things just become entirely about price and prestige of ownership versus any actual quality?
I’ve had Cristal, I’ve had Dom. Korbel works fine for me.
(Although, I will say that I definitely appreciate Johnnie Walker Blue. . . best $200 a man can spend, totally worth it).
There’s an awful lot of confirmation bias in high-end audio.
Years ago, I was in a high-end audio store in Pittsburgh with a friend (high-end enough that they carried Hill Plasmatronics Type Vs (now, their was a speaker…)), and I watched the salesman do a demo of a turntable spindle clamp. He was “showing” how much better it sounded when the clamp was on compared to when it was off. Now, neither my friend nor I could hear the slightest difference, and we were both freshman in college. They guy he was showing this to agreed that the sound was much better, and he must have been at least 70 years old. We just sort of snickered and left the store.
Now, there are truly excellent audio systems out there, and some are fantastically expensive. But once you pass the $10K mark, more money is just going to make extremely minute improvements.
FWIW, I sold my massive ACI Sapphire IIs / Sub Is and replaced them with Rocket ELTs. They are not quite as good at stereo, but they are much, much less obtrusive and they are much better at surround sound, which is most of my listening these days.