Article: Editorial: What's Wrong With You?

[Paul R]

Well said!  

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

As an example of how that "terrible A to D converter on the video camera and lossy YouTube compression" can actually demonstrate that a rig is doing the job of delivering the music, with no excuses - in the same series of "World's Greatest Audio Systems",

 

 

 

 

Just an example of how different we all are - that is horribly ugly to me. 

No room for people!

 

To me the very best audiophile systems manage to disappear into the room, and all that is left is the music. Dang bling is just - bling. I have friends that would probably try to choke me for saying that though. They have absolutely gorgeous equipment, and enjoy showing off a bit. The most I really wanna see is my iPad, with Roon up on it.

 

 

 

[Paul R]

7 hours ago, STC said:

 

Another phrase that never made any sense to me. Can we also say in live performance when the sound is so good the performers disappear from the stage?  

 

It's an east-coast kinda phrase. You could just as well say the equipment disappears and you have the illusion of the performers being in your room. If you close your eyes and pretend *real* hard.  

 

I don't typically say it that way, because a lot of the music I love doesn't meet the criteria of "The Absolute Sound."  Pretty much any Alan Parsons, etc. And the ASTribesmen have a lot of very sharp and pointy, if virtual, spears to jab people with. I think they are related to the MQATribesmen. 

 

Sorta like you have one definition of audiophile that isn't exactly the same definition I have. And yes, I am being silly labeling groups with silly names. Better silly names than arguing - over something equally silly.. Have a virtual beer on me. [Slides beer down virtual bar..] 

[Paul R]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

I guess it does show a certain tendency to be tendentious.

 

Darn, I meant to use my Beatles puns Yesterday, but now I gotta Get Back to being on topic! 

 

-Paul 

[Paul R]

41 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Frank, I am doing video recording all the time to compare. I know what to expect from the Youtube videos. I have uploaded many of my own to Youtube. I also record other good systems for reference. 

 

On thing you learn from this is you cannot judge the absolute (sic) SQ from YT. Sometimes, the videos sound will give the opposite results. 

 

Nice summary. Can you post a link to a few of your own videos please? 

 

-Paul 

 

[Paul R]

6 hours ago, Tin said:

Please beware when discussing bass. It is a very difficult subject to discuss, as people often use it to describe different things.

 

First, there are different definitions, which can, but do not have to exist next to eachother:

- loud bass

- punchy bass

- deep bass

There are probably more definitions I don't know about.

 

This thread is the first time I came across 'audiophile bass' (*), so I'm not able to figure out where it fits in. There is also soggy bass, which quite often is caused by room modes.

 

Another difficulty, in my opinion, with bass is that room dimensions make it very difficult to find a common ground when discussing it.

 

My room, which is quite large, makes it very easy to accomodate long wavelengths, helping my setup in delivering very deep bass. At the same time, the dimensions make it difficult to pressurize the room enough to deliver punchy bass. I would need speakers with arrays of woofers to achieve that. Obviously those speakers would be much larger to accomodate those arrays, and that wouldn't work for me.

 

Room modes can make speakers that work great in one room, make them sound overpowered and soggy in another. My room has a very strong mode (over 20dB!) at around 50Hz, and it made some songs absolutely unlistenable. Another room mode gently lifts the lower end of my setup, which is very helpful for some specific recordings, like the organ in symphony no.3 by St Saens.

Luckily my setup has some nice DSP algorithms, so the 50Hz mode can be surpressed.

 

Anyway, please be careful when discussing bass; you could agree and never find out.

 

*) I'm not a native speaker, so it could be just me, but it does sounds polarising, and that never helps.

 

Bass amplified by a room node is almost unbearable to us, and absolutely an annoyance. Where we have that, which it seems, is almost everywhere, we tend to use small speakers and close in  (near field) listening. 

 

Then again, I am one whose “joy” is triggered by precise imaging, depth, and clear horns, strings, and vocals. No ear ripping please.

 

I have found that as I age, with slight tinnitus and hearing loss, that is far more important to me than “punchy” bass, though I do enjoy the occasional great bass demo at shows or at friends homes. Just not in my home! 

 

By by the way, has anyone noticed that digital has improved so much in the past decade, that even low end hardware stuff sounds very good? Not sure exactly where the point of diminishing returns is theses days, but that point is surely lower than it was before! 

 

[Paul R]

I think we all do. I do have a small sub attached to the Maggie MMGs, but it is tuned so low you don’t know it is there, just like a sub should be tuned. Does it’s job just perfectly, but does not really enhance the soundstage that much. 

 

Point of diminishing returns is hard to tell, and it is all individual of course. Recently upgraded turntable for instance. Wanted Rega Planar 8, could easily live with Planar 3, stretched for Planar 6.  Probably not that much better than a Planar 3, but I liked the tougher components, and you would not believe how light the plinth is. Still replaced the LP120 with another LP120UX though. There are just some albums I am not gonna play on a $800 cart attached to a $1900 table! I will play em on the cheap table and work on them in the digital realm. 

 

But that there is a point of diminishing returns, for pretty much everyone, is pretty non controversial. It is also pretty certain that point has moved downward price wise over the past decade or so. 

 

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, Tin said:

I have to disagree with you, although I agree with you as well.

 

Consider a F1 car, driving on less than ideal tires. Changing the tires will make a huge difference to the driver.

People in lesser cars, even if those are very fast cars in their own right, will not be able to appreciate the difference the upgrade made to the F1 driver.

It's a probably bit like that.

 

 

I'm not at all sure I agree with the F1 analogy. F1 cars require huge investments, usually supplied by sponsors, and are very much a commercial enterprise.  A home audio system is usually not a commercial enterprise, nor does it usually have sponsors. (Unless of course, you are part of the press, and sometimes, not even then.) 

 

It's more like buying a particular color rug for your home - you like it, it fits well with the way you live, this or that one may be tougher or last longer, it may be from a particular designer, and it may require professional installation to "get it right." 

 

-Paul 

 

[Paul R]

42 minutes ago, Brian A said:

I think the answer to the question as to why there is so much turmoil on this forum is also the answer to the question why audiophiles even need an online forum.

 

It strikes me that all forums have a big social aspect to them.  In addition to the stated practical purpose for any forum – be it living with stage 4 cancer or rebuilding carburetors – people come to a forum because of the community.  If that community has a common purpose, people need each other, support each other and help each other; dealing with their cancer or rebuilding their dang carburetors.

 

I struggle to be able to clearly state the purpose of a general forum for audiophiles.  The solution to the “equipment problem” is very subjective; lots of obvious options all of which are personal value judgements.  There is no right answer.  As for music, musical taste is a very personal and private thing that absolutely should not need to be justified to others.

 

I was an intensive poster on this site a few years ago.  Now I just visit intermittently.  The reason for my change in behavior was that I did have a “problem” that the audiophile community could help me solve.  My problem was that I wanted to migrate my large music collection from CDs to digital files.  This site was a tremendous help in teaching me how to rip CDs and guiding me toward the extra equipment I needed to optimize playback. 

 

I am very grateful for the help you all provided.

 

Socially, I found the forum more challenged.  While I recognized that I needed to participate intensively at the social level to gain credibility with the community, I didn’t enjoy the banter very much.  I cannot deny that it was a one-way street in that I didn’t have much technical information to contribute, but is was surprised at the number of acidic responses I received to my questions.  I interpreted the behavior as posters seeking validation, some desperately, of their subjectivity.  Perhaps it is because music is an emotional thing; not so much about thinking.

 

I knew F1 would draw you out.

 

Actually, I think it is a lot simpler - some people want to take a shortcut to excellence, and when their native brilliance is not recognized they tend to turn into jerks. At least for a little while. Happens to all of us I suppose, but it is part of being human.  Not specific to audiophiles.  

 

I know one guy on the Jeep forums who absolutely hated Texans, and was a total jerk when I asked about a windshield or something. I mean, far more of a jerk than you see much of anywhere on here except possibly the MQA is Vaporware thread.  

 

-Paul 

 

[Paul R]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Nope, the "noise contamination" is from the playback chain - I've been here so many times, and one can always "denoise" what you hear - at times it's staggering how impressively "miserable" recordings can come across; eg., needle drops from ancient shellac emerge doing high kicks - "rescuing" unlikely recordings is part of the fun ...

 

Okay - you caught my interest. Damaged record from 1954. Ultrasonic cleaning, followed by vacuum cleaning, followed by a treatment with a roller buddy. Lots. Of. Noise Contamination, groove damage, and of course thousands or 10’s of thousands of clicks and pops. 

 

How to optimize a system to get to get rid of that? Me? I clobber it with iZotrope RX7. WD40 did not work.

 

[Paul R]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

The basic principle is to lift the quality of the playback chain, so that the brain gets enough data to sort the wheat from the chaff - not intuitive with audio, but that's how it works; it seems pretty amazing, but it works every time - I shaken my head many, many times at the ability of the mind to filter out crap in the recording, if the underlying replay SQ is in place.

 

Thought experiment: the cocktail party, everyone is yabbering away; you still can pick up what the person in front of you is saying. Now, replace each person with a just OK mini PA relaying what they're saying; the room is full of loudspeakers filling the room with a jumble of sound; rather than live people. How do you think your ability to sort out the key conversation you're in would go? ... this seems to be the principle in operation, with regard to human hearing.

 

So you are saying two contradictory things here. First “lifting” the playback chain may reduce some of the noises, but will greatly increase others. The chain will faithfully reproduce whatever errors are there.  But then you seem to be saying, just live with and pay selective attention to the music and ignore the noise. 

 

Either path can work, though in this case, lifting the playback chain means inserting software manipulation to declick, decrackle and perhaps equal8ze some of the sound. Ignoring it is also an option, but an easier option to swallow if you remove the gross errors first.  

 

I am am afraid I will have to disagree with some of your conclusions about the quality possible from low end equipment. Just because AM radio can actually be listenable does not mean other things, say FM are not inherently better. I think you are having a lot of fun doing what you do though, and honestly? That *is* what counts at the end of the day. 

 

 

[Paul R]

50 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

A Glen Miller album I have with some denoised tracks, professionally done, has exciting tracks, and, dead, army blanket over the speakers efforts - guess which are which?

 

 

Yep, too much processing equals dead sound. Just right though, is magic. And fun to make happen as well. 

 

 

[Paul R]

There an be any question?  Great records!  

 

[Paul R]

4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

For some people it’s tubes for others it’s tunes and for many it isn’t one or the other.  Either way, who really cares. 

 

Nobody should, but if you went back that far in the past, there really wouldn't be any great equipment to use the tubes in, not by today's standards. The nostalgist sound we might long for would probably be very disappointing to us now, especially if it was the best sound available.  Also, no digital music at all. Thus, the only logical thing is to hunt down records and keep 'em until Roy Gandy gets busy in the 1970s.

 

 

[Paul R]

5 hours ago, Summit said:

I liked the editorial and can certainly get tired of some of the audiophile bashing and comments like audiophiles don't listen to music, they listen to their gear etc. But I suppose that “we” likewise can find some "ugly truth” behind those comments and also some adequate reasons why we maybe should care a little about how “Audiophiles” are categorized and how we are behaving. No smoke without fire so to speak. And Chris original question can be flipped 180 degrees and we could ask: What's wrong with many of us so called Audiophiles?

 

To be clear I’m an audiophile and am not pretending to be Mother Theresa or anything, but still like to know:

 

• Is it really necessary to purchase two of the latest FOTM, and every year?
• Why does the big audio shows and its attendant focusing so much on systems that cost more than a house?
• Why are HIFI magazines so obsessed about reviewing audio gear that cost more than a “normal” working audiophiles can ever buy? And equally important why do audiophiles like to read all those reviewing’s about DACs, AMPs etc that cost more than a new car?
• Back in the day then I started out Quad and some other (often British) companies made good gear without the bling and fancy boxes, and took pride in it.
• My main concern is how does the FOTM Audiophile lifestyle equal the goal of sustainable development? All other branches of industry are to some extent trying to “sweep clean in front of their own door”. I have seen very little about that in High End audio. Does for example any reviewer ever point out that this product is more “environment friendly” because it consumes much less energy, can be recycled and are made without any substance on the REACH candidate list and so on?
• Maybe it’s simple and the bragging right of owning the latest, most admirable audio gear, is very important to many audiophiles and it doesn’t matter in the end if those big speakers won’t sound very good in your small room.

 

 

Happy Easter

 

LOL! I think the answer is pretty easy -  because it is FUN to read about, listen to, look at, talk about things most of us will never buy. Or can afford to buy to be honest, me included!

 

There is always some fun things included everywhere that are affordable. My jaw dropped when TAS had a review of an $800 AT turntable, but I was glad to see it there. It ain’t an AirForce but it is something I might buy sometime if I wanted to... 

 

Best place to find reasonable and reliable reviews of affordable gear? Right here.