Darko's Future-Fi

[christopher3393]

The future is fun! ... The future is fair! ... You may already have won! ... You may already be there!

[adamdea]

You're saying you can ABX 10/10 320 Kbps aac from 320 Kbps MP3 with non pathological samples? [and not transcoded from MP3 to AAC obvs]

I think you'd cause a stir on Hydrogen Audio.

[Samuel T Cogley]

You're saying you can ABX 10/10 320 Kbps aac from 320 Kbps MP3 with non pathological samples? [and not transcoded from MP3 to AAC obvs]

I think you'd cause a stir on Hydrogen Audio.

 

 

I'm saying 10/10 AAC VBR highest quality (usually higher than 320kbps) against mp3 CBR 320kbps. Yes. These are both converted to WAV before I begin the ABX. To be candid, I typically have to use input material that has a lot of high frequency energy to reliably discern the two.

[adamdea]

I'm saying 10/10 AAC VBR highest quality (usually higher than 320kbps) against mp3 CBR 320kbps. Yes. These are both converted to WAV before I begin the ABX. To be candid, I typically have to use input material that has a lot of high frequency energy to reliably discern the two.

I'm impressed. I would expect both of them to be transparent to flac and presumably to each other as long as one was avoiding "killer samples" and each had been encoded from flac/wav using a modern encoder. How about 320 Kbps OGG (i.e. Spotify) ?

[james45974]

Funny to see how quickly this thread has eroded into a technical debate of MP3 vs AAC! You are exactly the old white guys who would be barred at the door from entering Future-Fi Now! I can picture Darko having a bouncer at the door to keep the audiophile riffraff out.

[GregWormald]

The major reasons that the "younger" crowd aren't into hi-fi are (to me) very simple.

 

1 Many of the "younger" crowd who do listen to music don't listen as an activity. They use music as a soundtrack for other activity--walking, clubbing, working, driving, etc.

 

2 Hi-fi has ALWAYS been a minority choice. When I tell anybody outside the hi-fi interest group what I have spent on any piece of equipment, I'm always labelled as crazy--or at least eccentric. It's been that way for more than 50 years for me; and when I was young my father was the only person I knew who had a real hi-fi, and then later a stereo.

 

Greg

[Rt66indierock]

Of course. Sometimes the nonsense is thought-provoking and/or interesting, which I thought his piece was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'd respectfully disagree with the largely perfected and hasn't demonstrably improved parts. I'm old enough to've been into high end audio (more than) 30 years ago, and I do think my rig now sounds substantially better than my rig then. I also think demonstrable improvements can be shown in tech like proper digital filtering being available now versus that available in most CD players in 1987, something I do think provided a difference in sound quality. And certainly the utter convenience of having virtually any song in your collection available at a moment's notice is different.

 

Regarding dull and old - versus virtual worlds available relatively cheaply with a phone and goggles, yeah. Audio hasn't been able to deliver spectacle on the order of consumer video products for decades now.

 

Jud,

 

I’ve been around audio a little longer than you and I don’t hear a substantial improvement in sound quality. Very little equipment of any era will play Pet Sounds the way I want. And the thing that puzzles me the most almost no new equipment can play the recordings of harmonica, banjo and Cajun saw fiddle I’ve made.

 

In fact what many audiophiles consider improvements may actually turn off the rest of the population.

 

I’ve enjoyed your comments.

 

Take care,

 

Steve

[findog3103]

Growing up with the Jetsons, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, I thought the future would be cooler.

[firedog]

Funny to see how quickly this thread has eroded into a technical debate of MP3 vs AAC! You are exactly the old white guys who would be barred at the door from entering Future-Fi Now! I can picture Darko having a bouncer at the door to keep the audiophile riffraff out.

 

+1 Just what Darko was talking about.

 

Who cares about some tiny difference in SQ (maybe, in some cases) between mp3 and AAC, except grouchy old guys on a forum like this one?

As noted, mp3 has become, in the vernacular, a generic term for the types of lossy music files most people listen to.

[firedog]

Jud,

 

I’ve been around audio a little longer than you and I don’t hear a substantial improvement in sound quality. Very little equipment of any era will play Pet Sounds the way I want. And the thing that puzzles me the most almost no new equipment can play the recordings of harmonica, banjo and Cajun saw fiddle I’ve made.

 

In fact what many audiophiles consider improvements may actually turn off the rest of the population.

 

I’ve enjoyed your comments.

 

Take care,

 

Steve

 

Steve-

Are you referring to very high end? Then maybe you have an argument.

 

At the lower to mid end, certainly not. I had a system in 1975 that cost about $450 in 1975 dollars. For that price in 2017 dollars, I can get a MUCH better sounding system. Several orders of magnitude better. Inexpensive speakers today can rival some expensive and well regarded speakers from decades ago. Modern Class D amps sound way better, with lots more power, than anything I considered back then - the lower end of the Japanese electronics imports. Many of today's powered/active speakers (with DAC) sell for less than that and sound much better than what I owned 40 years ago.

 

And none of that takes into account that my hard earned $450 in 1975 would be over $2000 today. And for $2000 today, you can get a system that is true audiophile and even high end ( as long as you don''t demand extremely low bass and the ability to play loudly in a big room).

[m5sime]

I always like reading Darko's articles and this event sounded great but I wanted to comment to him (thread not open as he was holidaying this week). I would love to see a cost performance challenge and shoot out/bake off. Get dealers and manufacturers to create the best sound for the least spend - perhaps in brackets of budget.. while I love the Windsor UK show for high end... I agree that the target audience as a visitor isn't going to be people that would feel a sea of special racks, supports, pucks for keeping cables off floors and general other magic devices to tweak the sound would be their equivalent of finding themselves in an auto jumble or adult industry event.

 

I read the superlatives of exotica cable reviews etc and genuinely wonder what is possible when price is most important but to win in performance. That would be very interesting in my view and would be a mass appeal to draw people into HiFi.

[crenca]

While I agree with Darko on many things, as an middle age white guy I tire of being blamed for all that's wrong with the world (audio or not). However I am all on board with getting "the kids" more access to better sound, but that is mostly a $cost$ issue IMO. Andrew Jones/Elac, Schiit, the personal audio trend - these are really where it is at and those guys do more for Hi-Fi than a 1000 Bob Stuart's could ever do.

 

That said, the shows (such as RMAF) I think are really beside the point. Those shows would not be $possible$ without the cash flow generated by a handful of - how should I put this, gullible middle aged white guys with fat wallets - purchasing the obscenely overpriced products that are on offer (cables that sell for 100 times their real value for example). They serve the niche and I don't think there is any real use of them outside the niche.

 

Darko would have done better if he had imagined an audio show that was not an audio show at all. Not sure what this would look like - perhaps something virtual, perhaps something at the mall, or perhaps something inside a Verizon store...

[lmitche]

I don't know about down under but here in the states for men, middle age coincides with the peak earning years. Given this, it is no surprise that some choose to spend their fat wallets on audio gear.

 

Happily there will always be a supply of new middle aged men, more or less then before depending on the local demographics, so I think the industry is relatively safe in the long run. Yes, product quality, features and price performance ratios will change over time, but that's progress. Audio manufacturers need to compete for wallet against other hobbies for sure, but who said it was going to be easy.

 

I'm sorry, and I may be missing something, but I don't read anything remotely insightful in Darko's essay.

[Booster MPS]

I don't know about down under but here in the states for men, middle age coincides with the peak earning years. Given this, it is no surprise that some choose to spend their fat wallets on audio gear.

Happily there will always be a supply of new middle aged men, more or less then before depending on the local demographics, so I think the industry is relatively safe in the long run. Yes, product quality, features and price performance ratios will change over time, but that's progress. Audio manufacturers need to compete for wallet against other hobbies for sure, but who said it was going to be easy.

I'm sorry, and I may be missing something, but I don't read anything remotely insightful in Darko's essay.

 

 

Minority audiophile chiming in to shed some light.

 

Darko bangs his drum pretty hard against the tropes of current audiophile culture/demographics/listening habits. I think your comment kind of makes his point in that the world of music/audio is larger than that white middle age demographic and the industry should NOT need that demographic in an ideal situation to save it or be it's protector. Indeed all businesses compete for wallets and those more economically able will always be able to buy the $5,000 DAC. No shame or guilt to anybody in that bucket economically.

 

Darko is just stepping back and saying this should be about the enjoyment of music and the gear for ALL, that can be enjoyed on your own terms, in your own space, listening to whatever you dig and makes you groove. Darko very vocally is on record with what he likes to listen to and what he does not - on digital and vinyl. That's cool. I have my own tastes as do we all. Beyond the nominal walls of what most/many audiophiles dig are the worlds of electronica, pop, rap, rock, country that make up the heart of the majority of at least north america's tastes. All of those listeners, their genre, in all the ways that the genre are consumed is music also that should be collectively valued. Chris's quote of "nobody is killing babies" is appropriate here - let's not let MQA/ethernet cables get in the way of the groove. Just groove!

 

Cashed up middle age white dudes are not a problem. The problem is the echo chamber of all the debates/threads like some of the ones here at CA that are within the niche of the niche of the broader musical experience. Just know when you are "in the echo chamber" and also know when you are "listening to the echo." We can all step back from time to time and just appreciate the musical experience knowing how diverse it is in how people spend their money and enjoy it. I think Darko's ideal show would look a lot like the Zu experience when you see them with their gear.

[mourip]

Growing up with the Jetsons, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, I thought the future would be cooler.

 

That's because the future does not exist. It is always NOW :-)

[crenca]

... I think your comment kind of makes his point in that the world of music/audio is larger than that white middle age demographic and the industry should NOT need that demographic in an ideal situation to save it or be it's protector. ....Darko is just stepping back and saying this should be about the enjoyment of music and the gear for ALL, that can be enjoyed on your own terms, in your own space, listening to whatever you dig and makes you groove....Cashed up middle age white dudes are not a problem. The problem is the echo chamber of all the debates/threads like some of the ones here at CA that are within the niche of the niche of the broader musical experience.

 

So which is it? That's the thing about the "diversity" angle. On the one hand it says that the current emphasis on "middle age white dudes" is a problem, but then turn around and says that everyone and everything has its place. "Echo chambers" are alleged to be a problem, but then the content of said chambers IS what "middle age white dudes" care about and so their perspective is just as valid as anyone else's, so echo chambers then can not actually be the problem...

 

But of course this is too easy. Darko's point still stands in that better sound is not going to find it's way to many through esoteric purpose built listening rooms and debates about high res, and the audio show's don't speak to these "non-audiophiles"...but so what? They speak and attract who they attract and are not going to do what they are not going to do.

 

IMO, the imagined "audio show" that Darko wants already happens virtually on the internet - on forums such as this one, Head-Fi, etc. The Elac's and Schiit,s and Sonos's are doing what they are doing largely apart from the shows as far as I can tell...

[Confused]

I think something has changed over the years. 30 years ago I could visit my local shopping town and there were a number of fairly mainstream stores selling turntables, amps, speakers and so on. Some of those stores were big department stores that still exist. They now sell Sonos, Bose and similar, but most of the floor space is now taken up with 4K TV's, soundbars, tablets and so on. To buy a genuine hifi separate would now involve a long drive to what would appear most to be a very niche and slightly elitist specialist shop. I think this reflects a general lack of interest in audio reproduction amongst the younger demographics. However, I think the TV manufacturers are doing a much better job at pushing the possibilities of technology than the world of audio. As an example, if I chat to younger folk at work, they will generally know nothing of MQA, 24bit files, DSD or any of this stuff. They all have opinions on 4K TVs though.

[semente]

'Cause even iDevice users know what you mean by "mp3," while "AAC"...? Also, aren't they pretty well the same sort of thing in different packages anyway?

 

For most members of my extended family mp3 means portable digital music player.

[ed71]

To the OP, thank you very much for posting the link to Darko's article. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd certainly enjoy attending an audio show like he describes.

 

As a white guy in my mid-40s who has neither the free time nor the money to devote to the pursuit of audiophile nirvana, I could relate to at least some of what Darko described. I do not have a dedicated listening room, and I never will. It would be a waste of a room for me. As much as I love music, I listen to it while I am doing other things. My primary audio setup surrounds my main desktop computer and is used only while I am using the computer. It is far from audiophile grade, but I'm fairly content with it for the time being. I recently bought into the Sonos ecosystem by picking up a couple of Play:1 speakers (one for the kitchen and one for the bedroom). Although they sound better than I expected them to, the best part is that I am listening to music more than I was before I picked them up.

[earnmyturns]

I think something has changed over the years. 30 years ago I could visit my local shopping town and there were a number of fairly mainstream stores selling turntables, amps, speakers and so on. Some of those stores were big department stores that still exist. They now sell Sonos, Bose and similar, but most of the floor space is now taken up with 4K TV's, soundbars, tablets and so on. To buy a genuine hifi separate would now involve a long drive to what would appear most to be a very niche and slightly elitist specialist shop.

30 years ago, or even 15 years ago, you bought records or CDs at a physical record store too. The two things, physical records/CDs and physical music reproduction equipment, went together. I built my first stereo system when I was a teenager, from amp and speaker kits, at the same time as I started my record collection. The first thing I bought when I moved to the UK from Portugal and left behind my kit gear was a decent stereo system. I moved to the US just as CDs started to take off, and got my first CD player to connect to that stereo system. I frequented independent CD stores to find the exotic modern classical and jazz issues I like. I got my first iPod to listen to at the gym and when traveling right after Apple released it, and proceeded to rip many of my CDs into AAC for it. I'm still amazed today that I put up with the white earbuds for so long, but the convenience and portability were big wins. As a result, for the following 10 years, I ended up listening to mainly AAC, not just when on the move but also connecting the iPod to my home stereo system. Did it sound the very best, in hindsight? Of course not. But that's still the period when I "discovered" Bill Frisell, Toumani Diabaté, Jason Moran, Béla Fleck, and many others that are now mainstays of my listening. I switched back to lossless-only after I left the old gear behind on another move and started rebuilding with a UnitiQute and KEF LS50s streaming from the home NAS I used for laptop backups. One day we had an accidental side-by-side play of AAC and 44.1/16 versions of Frisell "Ghost Town" when my wife (who has a great ear, much better than mine) noted how much better one of the versions sounded, without knowing anything about which was which. There we went down the lossless/higher-end rabbit hole.

 

All of this to explain that there are many ways to enjoy music, even high-quality instrumental music that is nor murdered by the loudness wars. Indeed, many years ago a friend of a friend who was a professional musician explained that he owned only a really crappy portable record player because there was no way any system, however expensive, would satisfy him, so why bother. He still listened to and explained eruditely the latest music. If memory doesn't fail it was he who introduced me to Dave Holland's amazing "Conference of the Birds," which opened for me decades of enjoyment of post-avant-garde jazz. Still, listening to that masterful early ECM album through my definitely-not-cheap living room system, with Holland's bass driving the action from the back, Rivers and Braxton dueling up front, and Altschul's cymbals filling in the bass's rhythms from the rear right, as if the quartet was right here (being a frequent front-row visitor to SFJAZZ and other jazz venues I have a bit of a sense of what that sounds like), is something I really value now that I've gone through the trouble of putting it all together. Which is not to say that I would never enjoy "Conference of the Birds" again if life was to send me back to MP3s, a phone, and earbuds. Thus I resonated completely with Darko. Music is the driver, gear is the vehicle. If you know where you are going, even a clunker can take you there, but it's nice to have good-handling wheels.

[realhifi]

To the OP, thank you very much for posting the link to Darko's article. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd certainly enjoy attending an audio show like he describes.

 

As a white guy in my mid-40s who has neither the free time nor the money to devote to the pursuit of audiophile nirvana, I could relate to at least some of what Darko described. I do not have a dedicated listening room, and I never will. It would be a waste of a room for me. As much as I love music, I listen to it while I am doing other things. My primary audio setup surrounds my main desktop computer and is used only while I am using the computer. It is far from audiophile grade, but I'm fairly content with it for the time being. I recently bought into the Sonos ecosystem by picking up a couple of Play:1 speakers (one for the kitchen and one for the bedroom). Although they sound better than I expected them to, the best part is that I am listening to music more than I was before I picked them up.

 

You are a perfect example of his point in the article. Now get another one and make one that you have into stereo pair!

[Toolio]

I'm a middle-aged white guy. I bought my first "audiophile" system in my early 30s, which was about the earliest I could afford one. I find it disturbing that as my purchasing power grows, along with my nose hair, my hearing fades. To add insult to injury, I now live most of my life in a country (Brasil) where good audio equipment is practically unavailable, and if it can be found sells for at least three times the price of the same gear in North America. If I were young again, I'd be happy to discover the joys of good audio. But I suspect that cost would remain an issue.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Computer Audiophile

[Norton]

as an middle age white guy I tire of being blamed for all that's wrong with the world (audio or not)

 

+1 I'm getting bored of the endless apparent need to make cultural and leisure activities more "inclusive" and "relevant" to non participating groups. Why can't we just accept that people of different genders, ethnicities and ages may have different leisure interests and leave it at that? I've never heard of a (legal) activity looking to increase the participation of white middle aged men, so it's a bit of a one-way street. The age and ethnicity part is a lazy stereotype too - if you want to see big money being dropped on HIFi I'd suggest looking as much to customers of asian/far eastern nationality or heritage as to the white, western middle classes. I'll concede the male bit though.

[Toolio]

Remember, we invented the Internet and half the shit that all the young 'uns walk around with.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Computer Audiophile

[Samuel T Cogley]

Remember, we invented the Internet and half the shit that all the young 'uns walk around with.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Computer Audiophile

 

Yes, but some of us haven't figured out how to turn off the default signature text on the iPad.