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Is Audiophiledom a confidence game?


crenca

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6 minutes ago, marce said:

Yes and No

Yes to help the mystique and exclusively...

No its over priced to achieve the above.

And cable prices are the Goose that lays golden eggs.....

I meant, does it need to be expensive in order to perform well. Of course it needs to be expensive in order to be expensive.

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22 minutes ago, wgscott said:

It is no longer unusual for people to spend $7K to $10K on a road or mountain bike, with carbon frames and components, sometimes electronic shifting and hydraulic disc brakes, and various other things that the industry is pushing as essential.

All those things have demonstrable advantages, even if the casual rider is unlikely to benefit (much) from them. In audio, people pay silly amounts of money for gimmicks that are demonstrably useless.

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53 minutes ago, firedog said:

Probably true. But with high end audio, it's common that 50-70% of the MSRP is due to item cosmetics.

I'd have no problem with bling if it were sold as bling rather than with sketchy claims of superior performance. Hell, I might even pay a little extra for better-looking amp, just as I wear a $1000 watch even though it tells time no better than a cheap Casio.

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7 minutes ago, vmartell22 said:

I certainly agree with that - you hit it right in the head -   specially when their attacks are based on what is by implication, economic status  - "what do you know??!!!  you haven't heard what a $250,000 dollar amp sounds like" <---- hate it when they do that, it only makes me want to fight it harder.

And the related "you're just jealous because you can't afford it."

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17 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

I just realized that you shared the cost of your watch = $1,000. So you clearly can relate to paying for things beyond utility. Why is it you don't allow for this same impulse in hi-fi? After all, a watch is about as utilitarian as you can get.

Congratulations, you completely missed the point.

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2 hours ago, sandyk said:

Perhaps Michael got out the wrong side of the bed this morning ?

It doesn't seem characteristic of him.

On the contrary. He's been here on and off for a few months, and every time he has quickly resorted to insults when people have disagreed with him.

 

Like here:

On 2/11/2017 at 7:24 PM, Michael Lavorgna said:

And he told me to tell you to grow up. I see that you and "Mansr" continue with your silly views about other people's motives which only serves to put yours into question.

 

Just so I'm clear, what I'm saying is that you don't know what you're talking about but for some reason you enjoy making shit up at other people's expense. This isn't me protecting my business, it's me telling you to fuck off.

 

Or here:

On 9/5/2017 at 10:35 PM, Michael Lavorgna said:

OMG. That was so clever. Damn. And what do you do, Bystander, beyond being clever on a hi-fi forum?

 

Those are just a couple of random examples I found quickly, and they're not even the worst. He has demonstrated a clear pattern of being rude and abusive. Now he finally crossed the line and got himself banned. Good riddance.

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2 hours ago, sandyk said:

Engineers  developed mpeg 4. It is Engineers that implemented the changes thinking that the General Public wouldn't notice the obvious degradation with both Audio and Video.

Sorry, but that's not how it happens. At sufficiently high bitrates, both MPEG2 and MPEG4 are visually indistinguishable from the original. For MPEG4, this threshold is considerably lower than for MPEG2. If the bitrate is lowered, visual degradation sets in. With MPEG2, the picture quickly becomes blocky and unwatchable. MPEG4, on the other hand, smooths the block edges in a way that is much less visually offensive, enabling even lower bitrates. If the available bandwidth is truly constrained, this is a good thing. Now the broadcast decision makers seized on this and crammed even more channels into the existing spectrum in order to increase revenue, knowing that most people wouldn't notice the difference. Had they done the equivalent quality reduction using MPEG2, too many would have noticed the poor quality. Don't blame the engineers for corporate greed and general ignorance. It's the same MPEG4 that lets you watch Netflix in high quality even over a poor ADSL connection.

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14 minutes ago, sandyk said:

That's not the problem. It is being used at less than optimum bit rates, in Australia at least, and most likely in many other countries including the USA,  to squeeze in more channels, usually ones that are so called "Lifestyle" channels, which really are mainly long commercials, undoubtedly in order to get more advertising revenue.

Having worked in the broadcast industry, I can assure you that this indeed the case.

 

14 minutes ago, sandyk said:

Yes , I do blame the Engineering body who developed the new .mpeg 4 standards for not specifying MINIMUM bit rates to be used for SD and HD, that would not result in degradation of the picture and audio in comparison with well established .mpeg2 practices.  

That's just not feasible. There are far too many parameters in play.

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13 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 It's engineers that develop these new standards. It's engineers that implement them.

 Is it naïve to expect that the general public should meekly accept continual lowering of Radio and TV transmission quality simply because nobody from the engineering side is willing to accept responsibility  for the abuse of the new standards that they have created ?  

Perhaps vested commercial interests are subsidising the creation of these new standards ?

Please stop. You're embarrassing yourself.

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16 minutes ago, sandyk said:

Can YOU still hear 20KHZ, or read the complete bottom line on an Optometrist's chart without the need for vision correction?

Neither can mansr !

You got me. I'm nearsighted, so without correction, I can't even see the bottom line.

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42 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

Having seen pictures and videos of manrs, "old fogey" is not the term I would use to describe him. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he was asked to show ID when buying a drink. :)

I'm less than half Alex's age. Not that it really matters.

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6 hours ago, jabbr said:

Yes! This indeed means the measurements are comprehensive, are done accurately, with highest sensitivity and correctly.

 

That is the electromagnetic physics with which we have a great deal of confidence. What happens when the air or light hits the brain is not nearly so well known nor established.

Fortunately, what happens in the ear or brain isn't relevant to sound reproduction. If identical signals are fed to identical speakers, identical sound waves will emerge.

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6 minutes ago, sandyk said:

Providing that the signals are comprehensively, and accurately measured, and are shown to be identical by actual measurements, (not check sums) then that is indeed correct.

At least we agree on something. Would you also agree that if the peak difference between two signals is less than some threshold, they can be considered identical?

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10 minutes ago, sandyk said:

I would need to consider that on a case by case basis. You can also have "identical" signals  with different noise floors   ( residual Tape Bias etc.) that MAY make them sound a little different.

If the noise level is high enough, the measured signal (including noise) will obviously be different.

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3 minutes ago, sandyk said:

My understanding is that the change from mpeg 2 to mpeg 4 TV transmissions is the new Industry standard, and does not apply to just one country.

You're right, it's an industry standard. The government is not involved.

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2 minutes ago, sandyk said:

mpeg 4 is a new Industry standard world wide, as also agreed by Mansr.

 It wasn't the result of greedy commercial interests in any country. It was developed by The MPEG working group (formally known as ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11) is part of JTC1, the Joint ISO/IEC Technical Committee on Information Technology.

  It was designed by groups of Engineers worldwide.

It was a designed by engineers, and a fine job they did.

 

Next you'll be blaming aeronautical engineers for the terrible food in economy class.

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6 minutes ago, sandyk said:

The specifications should have stated the minimum bit rates needed for equivalent quality to the mpeg 2 HD format it is replacing.

It's not that simple. You clearly don't know a thing about how these codecs actually work.

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