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New Year: My Best Advice In Regards To Audio is...


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Stream as much as possible over wired network and ditch USB before it ditches you first!

 

Network players/clients with quality DACs are the future!

Agreed and there's no excuses for anyone not to try that technology now, with the low cost Google Chromecast Audio device:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/chromecast-audio-analog-and-digital-outputs-%2435-25959/

We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

-- Jo Cox

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You are right, performance-wise, sometimes. But then I hear a live broadcast of the Boston Symphony, on the Internet, and there is nothing like it. But then even with less than stellar performances, no recording, no broadcast, no matter how good or bad, will ever sound like live acoustic music, played in a real space. And that's the real point, isn't it?

 

To my thinking the point is love of music, and in aid of that love, to try to asymptotically approach the live experience at home, though we may well never get there.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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I like the last one, especially. Recently I decided to go to a local symphony orchestra concert as it's been a while since I'd heard any live music. First of all, the ticket prices gave me a heart attack: $48 for the cheap seats to $165 for the best seats - and this is for one performance (and they wonder why concert attendance has fallen-off in many cities)!

 

Secondly, I've heard high-school bands play better (and these are supposed to be professional musicians). They were terrible. Not as bad as the Richmond Virginia Symphony concert that I attended in the late 1980's while visiting my parents (I walked out of that one), but still, appallingly bad! Scandalous!

 

Obviously the symphony in your town is not to your liking. My experience is vastly different. Cincinnati has an outstanding symphony. The high school youth orchestra is itself outstanding. Our Music Hall has outstanding acoustics, and my main measure of comparison was Boston during the Seiji Ozawa era. That said I seek out and attend the small performances often free or $20 or $40. I most enjoy live music in small settings. Where we have chosen to live has been blessed with active art scenes. Rather than being too critical, and I can assure you that I've also sat through my share of 3 and 4 year old first recitals, grade, middle and high school orchestras/bands as well as 'experimental' banging on pots and pans by adults in Switzerland etc., rather than being too critical you should seek out and support good music wherever it may be. That's my New Years advice.

Custom room treatments for headphone users.

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To my thinking the point is love of music, and in aid of that love, to try to asymptotically approach the live experience at home, though we may well never get there.

 

Got one of my daughters an electric guitar and cheap amp (Amazon) for Christmas. Sounds incredibly 'live' (and the obvious distortion is part of the sound). Not sure why. Seems like it must have something to do with feedback and harmonics...

Custom room treatments for headphone users.

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The thing with DIY is not just saving money, but empowering yourself through the learning process. 50 years ago, audio as a hobby was very often DIY unless you could afford Mac gear.

 

Fond memories of building ham radio gear with my dad, browsing Healthkit on the weekends etc... throwing the switch and watching the tubes glow for the first time...

 

The desire to "tweak" comes from a desire to DIY. The fascination with >$1000 AC power cords is very curious. Better first look at what is inside a >$30,000 amp, unless you are merely looking at jewelry for your listening room.

Custom room treatments for headphone users.

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Become a real audiophile

 

(1) Choose an audio file format (24/480, DSD-HQX, GCQ-WTF, etc.) and be a total dick about it and refuse to listen to any music not available in your chosen format.

 

(2) Make at least one claim that involves a palpably absurd physical impossibility, post this claim in every thread on every audio forum website, and develop a huge persecution complex whenever the people you relentlessly stalk have the temerity to call your claim into question.

 

(3) Sell redundant organs like a kidney or eyeball (or ear?) to raise more cash for your next purchase of a new DAC that can play your chosen format (see #1) and that a reviewer on the take has stated punches above its veil-lifting potential.

 

(4) Display your cables like jewelry. After all, you paid DeBeers Cartel prices for those things. An invisible wad of cable spaghetti in a corner cabinet is not what this hobby is all about.

 

(5) Be totally obsessive about everything. Your compatriots/competitors in the hobby will think you are more bad-ass if your audiophile compulsive delusions precipitate a divorce. She will get the house, but you will get a new place with a dedicated listening room.

 

(6) Claim to be discovering new physics. Those boys at CERN don't really know what they are talking about. New physics can be discovered by any late middle-aged bald guy with a liberal arts degree and a Zerostat from the comfort of his listening room chair.

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To my thinking the point is love of music, and in aid of that love, to try to asymptotically approach the live experience at home, though we may well never get there.

 

+1: You could befriend a few folks from your local symphony and they might actually play **in your own home** if plied with good wine ;):)

Custom room treatments for headphone users.

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I like the last one, especially. Recently I decided to go to a local symphony orchestra concert as it's been a while since I'd heard any live music. First of all, the ticket prices gave me a heart attack: $48 for the cheap seats to $165 for the best seats - and this is for one performance (and they wonder why concert attendance has fallen-off in many cities)!

 

Secondly, I've heard high-school bands play better (and these are supposed to be professional musicians). They were terrible. Not as bad as the Richmond Virginia Symphony concert that I attended in the late 1980's while visiting my parents (I walked out of that one), but still, appallingly bad! Scandalous!

 

Sorry you had a bad experience.

 

This year we saw The Rolling Stones in a stadium, Stevie Wonder in an arena, bands like Vintage Trouble in a smallish, almost acoustically perfect local theater venue. Oh, and Leon Russell at an outdoor venue in a motorcycle dealer's covered parking lot.

 

A good time was had by all.

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Become a real audiophile

 

(1) Choose an audio file format (24/480, DSD-HQX, GCQ-WTF, etc.) and be a total dick about it and refuse to listen to any music not available in your chosen format.

 

(2) Make at least one claim that involves a palpably absurd physical impossibility, post this claim in every thread on every audio forum website, and develop a huge persecution complex whenever the people you relentlessly stalk have the temerity to call your claim into question.

 

(3) Sell redundant organs like a kidney or eyeball (or ear?) to raise more cash for your next purchase of a new DAC that can play your chosen format (see #1) and that a reviewer on the take has stated punches above its veil-lifting potential.

 

(4) Display your cables like jewelry. After all, you paid DeBeers Cartel prices for those things. An invisible wad of cable spaghetti in a corner cabinet is not what this hobby is all about.

 

(5) Be totally obsessive about everything. Your compatriots/competitors in the hobby will think you are more bad-ass if your audiophile compulsive delusions precipitate a divorce. She will get the house, but you will get a new place with a dedicated listening room.

 

(6) Claim to be discovering new physics. Those boys at CERN don't really know what they are talking about. New physics can be discovered by any late middle-aged bald guy with a liberal arts degree and a Zerostat from the comfort of his listening room chair.

 

Where do you get a "zerostat"? 'cause I've been wasting a whole bunch of time sitting in my listening chair, using my laptop to remote control my music, browsing, posting, sipping, etc. when all this time I could have been discovering new Physics! I'm waay behind the 8 ball, so will need 2 zerostats at least? good source? I'm all in ...

 

priceless.

Custom room treatments for headphone users.

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+1: You could befriend a few folks from your local symphony and they might actually play **in your own home** if plied with good wine ;):)

 

The location where my wife and I intend to move this year has a chamber music series played by members of the symphony from the nearest large city. That was a consideration in determining where we wanted to relocate.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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Obviously the symphony in your town is not to your liking. My experience is vastly different. Cincinnati has an outstanding symphony. The high school youth orchestra is itself outstanding. Our Music Hall has outstanding acoustics, and my main measure of comparison was Boston during the Seiji Ozawa era. That said I seek out and attend the small performances often free or $20 or $40. I most enjoy live music in small settings. Where we have chosen to live has been blessed with active art scenes. Rather than being too critical, and I can assure you that I've also sat through my share of 3 and 4 year old first recitals, grade, middle and high school orchestras/bands as well as 'experimental' banging on pots and pans by adults in Switzerland etc., rather than being too critical you should seek out and support good music wherever it may be. That's my New Years advice.

 

Cincinnati has always had a good symphony orchestra, so has Cleveland (Something about Ohio-ans and music!). Look at the conductors that Cincinnati has had over the years: Leopold Stokowski, Fritz Reiner, Eugene Goosens, Walter Susskind, and Eric Kunzel, to name a few. The Cincinnati Symphony is a major US Orchestra, and has been for generations. That's nice, but there are a number of lesser US Symphonies and Philharmonics who, none-the-less, play very well, and put on concerts that truly satisfy and are worth attending and supporting. For many years I was the recording and broadcasting engineer for the San Jose (CA) Symphony under the late Maestro Georg Cleve. They never had a recording contract, and they weren't world-renowned, but they played well, made great music and had many famous guest artists. I recorded people like Aaron Copland conducting his own works, The world premiere of Virgil Thompson's Requiem Mass, Phillippe Entremont (Piano), Pierre Fournier (Cello), Frederica Von Staadt (Soprano), Eric Stoltzman (clarinet), Lou Harrison and Alan Hovhaness conducting their own works, etc. My recording of Phillippe Entremont playing Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, is not only the best performance of that work I've ever heard, it's also the best recording of the work I've ever heard - if I do say-so myself :)

 

It's too bad that Reno's symphony is so poor. They have a magnificent and fairly new hall in which to perform, and it is acoustically excellent. Not every city in the country with a symphony orchestra can have a great one like Cincinnati, and Kansas City MO, though. Super-rich Marin County has a symphony that plays in a concert hall designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright and company; it doesn't help!

 

Look, I agree with you about being too critical, I can take an occasional clinker or two in a live concert, but when a supposedly professional (as in paid to play and unionized) ensemble cannot start and stop together, are able to hit the right notes only occasionally and play off-key perennially, it's like listening to a recording that's full of wow and flutter and is off-speed. There's no pleasure in it for me, especially at ~$50 a seat and up!

George

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Sorry you had a bad experience.

 

This year we saw The Rolling Stones in a stadium, Stevie Wonder in an arena, bands like Vintage Trouble in a smallish, almost acoustically perfect local theater venue. Oh, and Leon Russell at an outdoor venue in a motorcycle dealer's covered parking lot.

 

A good time was had by all.

 

That's nice, I'm glad you enjoyed them, but what that has to do getting out and listening to live, un-amplified music or attending a symphony orchestra concert where the supposedly professional musicians play like the "Portsmouth Sinfonia"* while charging an arm and a leg for tickets, I don't know.

 

*The Portsmouth Sinfonia was an orchestra founded by a group of students at the Portsmouth School of Art in England, in 1970. The Sinfonia had an unusual entrance requirement, in that each player had to be either a non-musician or, if a musician, play an instrument that was entirely new to them. Among the founding members was one of their teachers, English composer Gavin Bryars. The orchestra started as a one-off, tongue-in-cheek performance art ensemble but became a cultural phenomenon over the following ten years, with concerts, record albums, a film and a hit single. They last performed publicly in 1979.

George

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Where do you get a "zerostat"? 'cause I've been wasting a whole bunch of time sitting in my listening chair, using my laptop to remote control my music, browsing, posting, sipping, etc. when all this time I could have been discovering new Physics! I'm waay behind the 8 ball, so will need 2 zerostats at least? good source? I'm all in ...

 

priceless.

 

 

Audio Advisor sells the Milty Zerostat for about $50. For vinyl records they are very useful!

George

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Well? Tell us what your best advice is! :)

 

Please restrict your advice to something at least tangentially connected to the Audio Hobby, and of course, no sniping at other folks. Thanks

-Paul

 

 

1. Put some effort in room acoustics

 

2. Don't get hung up on formats. It makes no sense to exclude music because one locks themselves into a particular file format or one medium as a front end

 

3. Get the best system you can afford. Tweak and tune it and then forget it and enjoy the music, the reason we got into the hobby in the first place.

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My recording of Phillippe Entremont playing Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, is not only the best performance of that work I've ever heard, it's also the best recording of the work I've ever heard - if I do say-so myself :)

Is it available?

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

- Einstein

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There goes my BIOS...

 

Catchy phrase. I can hear it put to the music of "There goes my Hero". You could have a real hit on your hands.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

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Become a real audiophile

 

snip

 

(3) Sell redundant organs like a kidney or eyeball (or ear?) to raise more cash for your next purchase of a new DAC that can play your chosen format (see #1) and that a reviewer on the take has stated punches above its veil-lifting potential.

 

snip

 

 

Now you begin to talk some sense. The mono part of it anyway. Redundancy is distortion. Any natural sound can only come from one source, and that source has to match the physical location. More than one channel by physical necessity causes comb filtering. Since we can't match enough channels so that each source has its own channel the only way to remove the distortion from playback is for everything to be in mono. Only then can we have true natural sound capability of any sort. And no crossovers either. No hifi product can use a crossover.

 

So DSD-SQUARED_AMQ (180.6336 mhz Authenticated Mono Quality assuring it was recorded using only one microphone and no mixing) done the original natural way with only 1 bit (you have to rid your system of distorting redundancy at all levels) played over one full range speaker is the only possible way to be an audiophile. Way of the ONE is the ONE way.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

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Now you begin to talk some sense. The mono part of it anyway. Redundancy is distortion. Any natural sound can only come from one source, and that source has to match the physical location. More than one channel by physical necessity causes comb filtering. Since we can't match enough channels so that each source has its own channel the only way to remove the distortion from playback is for everything to be in mono. Only then can we have true natural sound capability of any sort. And no crossovers either. No hifi product can use a crossover.

 

Sounds like Owsley Stanley.

 

 

So DSD-SQUARED_AMQ (180.6336 mhz Authenticated Mono Quality assuring it was recorded using only one microphone and no mixing) done the original natural way with only 1 bit (you have to rid your system of distorting redundancy at all levels) played over one full range speaker is the only possible way to be an audiophile. Way of the ONE is the ONE way.

 

It actually isn't so far off from the home theatre center channel ideology.

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Sounds like Owsley Stanley.

 

Would that be on or off LSD?

 

It actually isn't so far off from the home theatre center channel ideology.

 

Yeah, it is those other 4 speakers and the sub that mess it all up.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

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Would that be on or off LSD?

 

In his case, I don't think there was much of a distinction.

 

cf: For the unrepentant patriarch of LSD, long, strange trip winds back to Bay Area - SFGate

 

By conservative estimates, Bear Research Group made more than 1.25 million doses of LSD between 1965 and 1967, essentially seeding the entire modern psychedelic movement.

 

Less well known are Bear's contributions to rock concert sound. As the original sound mixer for the Grateful Dead, he was responsible for fundamental advances in audio technology, things as basic now as monitor speakers that allow vocalists to hear themselves onstage.

 

His heart attack several years ago had nothing to do with his strict [pure carnivore] regimen, according to Bear, but more likely the result of some poisonous broccoli his mother made him eat as a youth.

 

As a sound mixer, Bear holds equally strict viewpoints, insisting that the most effective rock concert systems should have only a single source of sound, his argument quickly veering into the realm of psycho-acoustics.

 

"The PA can only be in one spot," he says. "All the sounds have to come from a single place because the human brain is carrying around the most sophisticated sound processing of any computer or living creature. It equals the bats that fly by echo. It equals the dolphins. It equals the owls that hunt at night without any daylight at all. It is a superb system for locating and separating one sound from everything else."

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There goes my BIOS...

 

LOL! As a (former) computer professional, I do sometimes have to chuckle at some of the otherwise well meaning advice I hear around something called "computer audio". Now, if I could just find a USB cable that "really nails the midrange" all will be well, all will be well...

Hey MQA, if it is not all $voodoo$, show us the math!

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I definitely believe that. I am using an MSB Diamond Plus IV with the upgraded QUAD USB interface (although currently limited to 128 DSD until I upgrade it to the V) and while I have been and continue to be incredibly satisfied with my system (virtually unchanged) for the last three years, HQP has been a true revelatory product for me. While I have sung the praises of the UI of Roon I haven't necessarily found the SQ to be better than my goto BUT that has all changed with HQPlayer. Truly looking forward to the evolution of these two fine products in the year ahead.

 

Going way OT but you are the guy that is willing to evangilize a new product that fascinates you and for this I will alway listen to what you have to say. HQPlayer has such a geeky interface as though Miska delights in drawing a line between the technical and the rest of us. Even with some proding he's unrepentent. So what gives?

Should I revise my position on computer driven audio....go back into a server and computer. What are the artifacts that make HQPlayer so completely musical, as reported on this site so frequently.

Best,

Wdw

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