Audiophiles lack of respect.

[realhifi]

"Some of that might be self selecting David. If you were the proprietor of say, a grocery store, the percentage might be much much greater"

 

True enough Paul but the point is that these people are building homes and are not in any way "audiophiles" yet know the term and almost to a person the term means being extreme in cost and in pickyness to them. They just want "good" and simply say they are "not an audiophile so we don't need to go overboard". Some are folks that are building seven figure homes and still say that they don't really to spend crazy on the sound system. They ALL look at me like I'm crazy if I show them anything above $1,500 in electronics and they pretty much all smirk if they ask pricing on good seperates. It really is two distinct camps and has been that way for a long time.

 

Here is a story that happened recently. A young guy having a slick condo built nearby wanted to get sound and of course video into his place as they were building it. He has a very successful software company on line that caters to Mac users and is very computer savy, techno savy and in general is way beyond the "masses" as far as being up on things in the computer field. He also is a huge music lover and has a broad and deep appreciation of a lot of different genres. As we were talking about his place I mentioned we will want to have the facility for playing high resolution files throughout the areas he was looking to have music in. He agreed and when I started talking about 24/96 and even 16/44 he was pretty much saying "what do you mean, I have the high resolution from iTunes, MOG, Pandora at 320k so I should be all set".

 

Re-read that.

 

THIS is the state of music consumption today.

 

Until someone like the major lables or Apple gets on board with high resolution music downloads THIS is how it will be.

There will be an even tougher uphill battle to educate anyone (ie. the man on the street) that better sound (ie. "audiophile quality") is actually normal and that we are basically going backwards right now with both the quality of files and also the quality of peoples music reproduction systems. It frankly doesn't seem to be helping that the upper end has caught fire with higher and higher prices for the "best" the audio industry has to offer and from where I sit is only fueling the flames in the perception of the term "audiophile" meaning extremist and fringe.

 

[latitude94941]

Checked out the link to Dynamic Range Day.

 

The "Challenge" is to have a dynamic range of at least 8. Talk about setting a low bar.

 

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

I can certainly understand where you are all coming from, and have bitched about this myself.

 

That said, in reading through this thread I find myself wondering just what it is that we're asking for from "the industry" and why we think we deserve it?

 

There is metric tons of new text to read on the Internet every day. Only a very small percentage of it is worth my time, but there is still more good stuff every day than there used to be in a month.

 

Similarly with music in the sense that only a small percentage of what's available is done well enough to be listenable...and yet every day I find lots of great new good stuff.

 

Wouldn't it make just as much sense to yell at Christina A. for only doing one excellent song with herbie Hancock? She has the chops to make some wonderful music...but most of what she puts out is compressed crap that the kids listen to on their iPods. It is her voice and her career; she is free to do with it as she pleases.

 

If our own Barry D. Will forgive me for using his efforts as an example; I find his work to be, so far, in some ways another example of this. I find his comments here always to be of the highest caliber; he seems like a great guy. Having listened to the demos on his site, I find him to be a very capable recording engineer...but his musical taste differs too far from mine. Would it in any way be fair for me to tell him he is WRONG for "wasting" his talents in this way? I rather strongly think not. Instead I just hopefully and patiently await a recording from him of some different music.

 

The "music industry" is a mythical construct. There are many different artists and companies doing different things for different reasons and for different audiences. For me, the majority of the output from that is pure dross...but the remainder, the stuff I enjoy, is still quite sizable. Perhaps a smaller percentage of the whole than it was long ago, but still much larger in quantity and variety (and discoverability) than it was a half century ago.

 

So on this St. Patty's Day, please raise a mug of green beer with me and give thanks that we live in this time when we have such an embarrassment of riches. And while we're at it, raise them again to Chris for providing this excellent forum that is adding so much to this hobby for me this time around!

 

Cheers!

 

[bdiament]

Hi latitude94941,

 

**"...The "Challenge" is to have a dynamic range of at least 8. Talk about setting a low bar...",/i>**

 

Agreed. When I first read the figure, I thought to myself that a DR of 8 (conservative as the software that makes that determination is) is a very compressed recording.

 

Best regards,

Barry

www.soundkeeperrecordings.com

www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

 

 

[RobbieC]

Couldn't agree more Sik.

 

Btw, I was wondering if you had the inclination (or time) to collaborate on a thread that would explore the mathematics behind sampling/signal processing in a way accesible to non-mathematicians. I think most here could benefit from a clear presentation of some of the concepts and theorems involved. Nothing too in-depth, maybe a little on pulse responses, their dependence on spectral content, and why ringing arises. I'd also like to analyze the energy content of ringing to show what in it is possibly audible.

 

Also, for the bit perfect proponents, I think an exploration of the effect that even a simple filter has on "perfectness" would be beneficial. Perhaps, the thread could even define accuracy and precision as pertains to sampling and touch on the concepts of differential linearity and integral linearity.

 

Just a thought...

 

[crisnee]

The original article this thread is about is so incomplete it's laughable.

 

It touches the surface of a subject that may have some merit, but the research this writer may have done is near to non-existent and his conclusions not only seem suspect in themselves but are necessarily based on very little.

 

BTW, this subject is often written about in a much more thoughtful manner in magazines such as Stereophile.

 

So, as a card carrying reader I will brand this writer as a numbskull who's only out to make a living and doesn't care what kind of trashy reading he foists on the literate public. And I hope my kind of attitude puts a giant dent in the venerable hack writers profession and leads to its demise.

 

-Chris

 

 

[Teresa]

I listened to the streaming audio of some of your releases and they sound very promising, I am sure they are very realistic in their high resolution disc versions.

 

The idea of engineers using a forest of microphones goes way back and I am not sure how it got started since to my ears less microphones sound better and good microphones are very expensive.

 

Back in 1976 when Lincoln Mayorga and Doug Sax started Sheffield Lab they used a single stereo microphone in their direct to disc sessions and they are some of the most realistic recordings my collection and some of the most enjoyable as well, especially Dave Grusin's Discovered Again and the Harry James Big Band LPs.

 

The CDs from DMP are done "Direct to Digital" and their SACDs "Direct to DSD" with no editing within a movement or song. I find the DMP SACDs very impressive with a spontaneity missing from many otherwise fine sounding recordings.

 

I am looking forward to hear your recordings since they are also "Direct to Stereo". As a listener mic'ing the event is my preferred way too.

 

 

[wgscott]

Feel free to revive it:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Fourier-Nyquist-and-all

 

 

 

[Talk2Me]

I listened to Barry's streaming recordings. Once again (not to sound like a broken record), I can understand how the lower res might sound inferior or bad to some people. But to me on my system, it seems you are trying to count how many angles are on a pin head.We are talking about very small increments, and frankly, I would rather have/get better speakers, than trying to squeeze the last drop out of the toothpaste.

 

[sandyk]

The streaming recordings are more of a guide to what the album

is about. It is IMPOSSIBLE to judge how good a 24/192 track will sound from streaming. In fact, they will sound very mediocre even compared to a good CD, when streamed.

The only way to judge something like this is to DL tracks from the Formats Comparison area. Even then, the highest resolution version is unlikely to sound quite as good as when installed on your PC from the DVD that is made to order and shipped to you.

 

SandyK

 

[bdiament]

Folks, the streaming samples on the site are mp3s (or as I call them "eMPty3"s).

These contain about 20% of the audio information that is on the CD, which itself contains only a fraction of the information that is on the 24/192 originals.

 

Whether they sound identical to any given individual or whether they sound worlds apart, will depend on the individual, their sensitivities, their gear and how it is set up.

 

For me, they are more than worlds apart but that's just me.

The only purpose of the mp3s is to allow folks to sample the music in fast downloading samples.

 

Best regards,

Barry

www.soundkeeperrecordings.com

www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

 

[Jeff In San Diego]

...since they are your recordings, which makes you the defacto expert on them, I'll phrase this as a question rather than a statement (even though I think I know the answer).

 

I think they also show off your "un-fooled-around-with" recording engineer style and that one can actually tell a well recorded/engineered track vs. a poorly done one, even with an "eMPty 3" .

 

So here's the question...If you took one of your hi-res files and then did the nasty things to it that many music companies do to released music (compression, unrealistic bass-boost, etc.) and then put it into MP3 format even at 64k, wouldn't you be able to tell the difference between that and the MP3 you share with the world on your site?

 

I rather think you would (and easily so).

 

[bdiament]

Hi Jeff,

 

I think the changes would be rather obvious as you suggest.

And I would agree that a fine recording is identifiable as such even, as I've often said, when converted to an eMPty3 and played in the car, on the highway, with the windows open.

 

But the sort of difference in engineering approach you describe is pretty radical and (in my opinion) in many ways, the typical approach would do more damage than the data reduction to mp3.

 

But I would not suggest the mp3 does anything more than offer a pale suggestion of what is contained in the original.

 

Best regards,

Barry

www.soundkeeperrecordings.com

www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

 

 

 

[Talk2Me]

I am sorry, but all of a sudden this thread has become rather (for lack of a better word) boring. Please, no offense to Barry.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi talk2me - Feel free to make the thread more appealing or to continue on to the next thread, but offering a comment like the thread is boring is a bit bizarre.

 

 

[crisnee]

"Hi talk2me - Feel free to make the thread more appealing or to continue on to the next thread, but offering a comment like the thread is boring is a bit bizarre."

 

I'll be a little more precise. It's destructive, as opposed to constructive, informational or funny. Not to mention that your apology to Barry seemed to be in the eMPty3 format.

 

-Chris

 

[Julf]

"the highest resolution version is unlikely to sound quite as good as when installed on your PC from the DVD that is made to order and shipped to you"

 

I'd love to hear why you think that would be the case.

 

[bdiament]

Hi Julf,

 

I'll let sandyk answer for himself but I can say why I believe this is true.

 

Due to an "overload" on my ISPs servers, I recently had to relocate the samples from the "Format Comparison" page to a third-party service. (The page looks the same to users; but the links now take you to another page with a "download now" button.)

 

When I first moved the files, I moved them as the .wav files they are. But as soon as I clicked "play" on one of them, I found that coming from that site, there were a lot of artifacts in playback, chief among them a "swishy" kind of distortion that reminded me of mp3s.

 

So, I decided to force local listening by zipping the files. Now the user must download the samples, unzip them and listen to them from their own computer. This actually worked out well. When the .wavs were on my ISPs server, this issue didn't seem to exist but it isn't really how I intended the files to be heard. If one wants to compare the versions of a given album in a way that would reflect what they'd actually hear from the product (on ours or any other site that offers a similar comparison), it is much better to have the files locally and hear them from their computer, eliminating the Internet and streaming completely.

 

As always, just my perspective.

 

Best regards,

Barry

www.soundkeeperrecordings.com

www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

 

[Jud]

Just to try to avoid needless misunderstanding:

 

- Barry appears to be talking about streaming vs. local playback

 

- It's unclear to me whether SandyK is talking about (1) streaming vs. local playback; (2) local playback of a downloaded file vs. local playback of a file copied from a DVD; or (3) local playback of a downloaded file vs. local playback of a DVD.

 

I think it's important to clarify exactly what SandyK is saying before anyone else decides to agree or disagree.

 

[Julf]

Barry,

 

I agree that there can be big variations in sound quality when listening to files directly off the web, but it is my understanding that sandyk was not talking about streaming or real-time listening. The way I read the posting, sandyk feels that even when the files are downloaded as a file transfer, and then listened to locally (from the local hard disk) they still sound different than files that have been moved to his hard disk using a physical DVD.

 

 

 

[sandyk]

Jud

Barry understood what I was trying to say.

"it is much better to have the files locally and hear them from their computer, eliminating the Internet"

Further to that, it is better to send them as UNCOMPRESSED ZIPS. My understanding is that is what Cookie Marenco says too.

I refuse to be drawn into any further pointless ON LINE discussions on this, with the king of sceptics.(it's not you, grin).

Regards

Alex

 

P.S.

Barry was talking about format comparison files available for downloading.

 

[Julf]

"it is better to send them as UNCOMPRESSED ZIPS"

 

So what you are saying is that file transfers corrupt wav and FLAC files, but not zip files (unless they are compressed)?

 

[sandyk]

"I refuse to be drawn into any further pointless ON LINE discussions on this, with the king of sceptics."

Good night.

 

[Julf]

You say it almost like it would be a bad thing...

 

[Jud]

SandyK says: "it is much better to have the files locally and hear them from their computer, eliminating the Internet"

 

Julf says: The way I read the posting, sandyk feels that even when the files are downloaded as a file transfer, and then listened to locally (from the local hard disk) they still sound different than files that have been moved to his hard disk using a physical DVD.

 

Yes, Julf, I thought that might be the way you were reading SandyK's initial note, but as you see from his comment above, that isn't what he meant. Rather, he is agreeing with your statement:

 

[T]here can be big variations in sound quality when listening to files directly off the web

 

I personally feel in the interests of a more free and robust overall discussion, we must guard against tendencies to pounce immediately when seeing something that might, but does not necessarily have to, be interpreted in a way we feel is incorrect. I don't know about you, but I don't spend ages slaving over most of my comments to ensure they can only mean exactly what I intend them to, and don't wish to feel I must do so. I also feel our own thoughts can be stated without having to cast them as disagreements with what others have said.