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Dexo posted:Holy poo poo. That's like the perfect combination to take stupid people's money. What's even better is that it quite proudly states that they use a $30 Tripath amp module.
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Aug 19, 2013 03:21
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https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/canopener/id690996855?mt=8 So this is a thing. Soundstage on your phone!
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Sep 12, 2013 23:45
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KozmoNaut posted:Even cheap DACs are perfectly fine for anything in the audible range, everything uses one of a couple of standardized chips for DAC duties, and they're all razor-flat from 20hz-20kHz. Not 100% true, even at a 'pro' level different DAC/DSP units measure differently in response and phase coherency for the same EQ and filter settings. You can easily test that for yourself with a bit of software like REW, EASERA, SMAART or similar and some simple balanced cables.
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Oct 30, 2013 18:58
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Even with the duty cycle of film content you're very very unlikely to actually be putting 1200w continuous into them. The amp may be rated for that at a nominal impedance but I seriously doubt a reflex loaded 18" maintains a flat impedance curve especially at tuning frequency, and even top end professional drivers would exhibit thermal compression at that kind of input voltage over a decent length of time. Even the AES standard used by most manufacturers only tests for 2 hours in free air over a relatively narrow band.
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Nov 4, 2013 01:02
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I have a friend who is a relatively successful producer (electronic rather than band) who is totally sold on this emotional frequency stuff and has actually been using it as the basis of his music for some time. I've agreed to stop arguing if he'd stop trying to ask me to let him practice his sonic vibrational therapy on me.
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Dec 25, 2013 17:49
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As already mentioned I'd get an iPhone/android SPL or RTA app and get some data to back it up - there are perfectly passable free options and the fact it's not going to be calibrated won't matter as you're only using for a relative measurement from a to b. There's a good chance the amps just have different voltage gains and you're putting more watts into the speakers than before. Damping factor is another possibility too, it can vary wildly from amp to amp even at a level of 'decent'. Also look at what class of amp design they are, your pioneer could say be a cheap class d circuit and the NAD a class a mono block which naturally has a 'warmer' tone with fatter bass.
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Dec 29, 2013 15:00
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KozmoNaut posted:That doesn't really make any sense, you're screwing up the terminology. A class D amplifier is isn't inherently worse than a class A amplifier, it's not a ranking system. Fully aware what the different topologies refer to. I wasn't saying that the topology itself was directly to blame, but there's no denying that early and some modern, cheaper class D designs sound a bit thin even at a supposedly professional level. A case of bad design implementation rather than the topology itself, sure, but still something to bear in mind when diagnosing a problem/oddity.
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Dec 29, 2013 19:59
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grack posted:I thought this was a great post from Head-Fi today: Ignoring the audiophile ears bullshit, his conclusion that tolerances in manufacturing may account for minor changes in sound is pretty rational. Of course the same can also be said of his tiredness, wax buildup, background noise, etc etc, so it's hardly empirical, but still a lot more reasonable than most.
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Dec 30, 2013 04:55
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http://www.boulderamp.com/3050-p1.html $115,000. It has a 32 amp ceeform connector and needs it's own dedicated circuit.
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Jan 14, 2014 00:15
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Jerry Cotton posted:You forgot to mention one thing: audiophiles do not consider that fraudulent in any way. That extra box acted as a faraday cage that dramatically reduced my interdevice jitter thankyouverymuch
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Jan 15, 2014 22:46
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atomicthumbs posted:let's take a moment to stop mocking audiophiles, refresh ourselves, and do the exact opposite: Psycho acoustics is a mad thing. It's not too far off the complete opposite of the fletcher Munson curve.
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Mar 6, 2014 10:29
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Now you guys have got me curious about measuring the phase and frequency response effects of the presets and the graphic in iTunes. For gently caress's sake.
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Mar 7, 2014 03:38
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http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/9/5488484/neil-youngs-high-fidelity-ipod-competitor-will-cost-399 So there's this.
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Mar 10, 2014 01:29
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A brief moment of (semi)clarity from one of them, amidst the bickering about whether it'll be good enough for their ears: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/neil-young-announces-launch-ponomusic-19703/index4.html#post304636
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Mar 10, 2014 03:08
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Wasabi the J posted:I know it's not in context here, but I really dislike automatic Bose hate. They aren't accurate and boy do you pay for them, but they have been doing the active noise cancellation game longer than anyone; so, if that's what you need,I always recommend them first. Buy Other Sound Equipment… Am I right? To be fair some of their stuff isn't bad, it's just a couple of hundred quid more than it should be. Also this is one of the worst things I've listened to at it's scale: http://imgur.com/a/bNoAs#28
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Mar 10, 2014 22:22
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Sagacity posted:I finally went ahead and ordered IK Multimedia | ARC System 2 in lieu of treating my room with bass traps and acoustic foam and whatnot. I know it should work *somewhat*, since it's based on Audyssey MultEQ® XT32, but I'm really curious to see how it will solve the standing waves. Knowing how difficult phase alignment and correction can be even in 'clean' environments such as outdoors I'm very, very skeptical of a piece of software that claims such strong results with just a few measurements, especially when it doesn't seem to expose the data points it's working with nor what it's doing to compensate for the anomalies it thinks it's picked up. It's also not going to magically fix a massive standing wave problem, at best it'll create a null in response or phase angle shift at that frequency to minimise the effect but that will then impact all of the mixes you make. Does it need a pass through so that it has a reference signal to work from to gauge what is truly 'flat'?
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Mar 12, 2014 05:04
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Sagacity posted:Haven't tried it yet, but if it's anything like regular Audyssey setups you need to put a microphone (included in the package) in multiple locations in your room. Then, it will play a number of test tones (really annoying sounding frequency sweeps) through each speaker individually and it will work out, based on what comes in through the microphone, what the difference is between the actual tone and the tone that was picked up. Then it essentially tunes a multiband EQ (or rather an FFT-based "infinite number of bands" EQ) based on that. Oh I know exactly what it will be trying to do, but the theory behind it, without being able to do a proper transfer function comparative to source and at least two or three averaged measurement points will massively impact the potential for making any real difference. And ever, EQ is EQ - it affects phase and group delay so the less the better. This is more what I was getting at; ideally it should be working at least to this standard: http://www.wavecapture.com/RoomCapture.html
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Mar 13, 2014 23:49
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jonathan posted:I wouldn't want to work with 10ga wire. Why not? For long cable runs to high power low impedance driver combinations such as subs it's far better to use 6mm soldered into the NLT range of SpeakOn connectors to minimise power loss.
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Mar 20, 2014 03:03
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Today I was thanked by no less than six people after being forced to speak up at a seminar to point out that a well respected audio industry figure fundamentally misunderstood digital audio. He was trying to A-B test a cheap USB cable against a ridiculously expensive one to show how much warmer and more detailed the expensive one was. Whilst telling people which was which. On a PA system, which was purple. The cable was purple too. By unplugging one and plugging the other in whilst a tune was playing continuously. Of course he was using Fidelia. And a £4000 soundcard. And mentioned skin effect as a potential cause. On the whole it was good but you could blatantly tell that he drank the audiophile kool aid.
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Apr 30, 2014 18:13
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longview posted:They say it's soldered instead of crimped -- do they even make solderable RJ-45s? Pretty sure some of the Neutrik pro grade ones are solderable
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May 16, 2014 16:51
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Waldo P Barnstormer posted:I am going to pay someone to measure the room response in my campervan I can do that for you but isn't it a bit too 'science' for an audiophile thread? 
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May 24, 2014 17:21
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jonathan posted:Tool - Prison Sex is my go to song for demoing speakers. The important thing is that you know it inside out. Memory is very fallible but it's the best we have. I personally go for some classics like Thriller (that bass line can be pretty revealing) and such but make a point of using some double bass jazz with glissandos and some crazy drumming to reveal both detail and attack. And then if you really want to test out a system that claims bass down to ~10Hz there's always Avril Lavigne - Sk8r Boi second drop...
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Jun 4, 2014 03:54
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Is nothing sacred??
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Jun 4, 2014 12:48
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cosmo321 posted:I don't get why anyone even care about ALAC over FLAC. ALAC too is now open source as well as being better supported on devices.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:01
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KozmoNaut posted:The Driverack is a piece of pro audio equipment, it's kinda overpriced (and over-featured and over-specced) for ordinary home use. I'm just using it because I got a good deal on it. The PA range also sounds like poo poo has very few features and the RTA is a joke. You shouldn't be using it to EQ 'flat' as that's not how we hear and it will become stupidly fatiguing over time. If you want a live sound sort of experience then you want a rising 3db per octave slope from about 1KHz down and more importantly to have everything phase aligned. Which takes half an hour with a trial version of SMAART or similar if you know what you're doing. You can even use a Behringer $40 mic.
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Jul 2, 2014 18:09
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KillHour posted:It's 8, "Necropolis". Lots between 20 and 40hz. But mostly, I'm just a big fan of slap bass. Any other good artists I should look into? And then some… 
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Jul 4, 2014 03:46
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GutBomb posted:He's saying he can hear a difference between lossless and 360kbps lossy files. His purchases don't make a lot of sense, but this does. I can hear the difference (I just don't care) pretty easily. Whether I'd be able to identify which was compressed or lossless is another matter but I'd be able to hear a difference. How's that psychoacoustic superiority complex working out for you?
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Oct 14, 2014 21:29
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KillHour posted:I agree that in your case, XLR is the only choice (I use them in my office setup for the same reason). It's not a particularly convenient cable for home use, though. The connector is just too big - equipment would need to be much larger if XLR was the standard. If space is an issue then a TRS 1/4" jack is only marginally larger than an RCA in diameter and maintains balanced connections. I don't really see any reason for unbalanced connections to be used in home audio at all. The margins are clearly large enough to add a fraction of a penny's worth of components.
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Jan 3, 2015 21:58
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Palladium posted:Has Class D amps made Class A/B completely obsolete for audio? I find it exceedingly hard to believe the claims that A/B sounds different/better than D in a DBT when all of them are competently designed for transparency and working within normal parameters. It depends on the amp, early class D definitely had a drier sound to it due to less experience with PWM and filtering. The newer tech I think much less so, but you will always find purists who don't want to make the leap. For home audio stuff I don't really see why you would need Class D though, it's not like the weight savings from avoiding a massive toroidal are needed due to shifting the units about day in day out, and the increased efficiency also is a bit of a moot point unless you're using the amp for more than a few hours a time and over thousands of watts. Plus there's such a wealth of good quality old class A or AB out there on the secondhand market that you can pick up some real bargains.
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Jan 18, 2015 19:04
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KozmoNaut posted:In the pro audio segment, things are a like less crazy. Behringer's iNuke amps are quite good yet inexpensive, similarly with amps from IMG, Thomann etc., but they're still somewhat more expensive than similarly-powered class A/B amps. They're all pretty ugly to have in your living room, though. Those are definitely brands that still struggle with good sounding class D topology. MC2, Lab.gruppen, Powersoft and EV are the brands who've cracked it and are well regarded, but they're a lot more cash than the ones you've listed.
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Jan 18, 2015 22:54
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KozmoNaut posted:Behringer's offerings sound perfectly fine, FWIW. They're alright, but reliability is poor and they don't manage to sustain rated power for even the sort of standard 20ms burst that other people tend to use. That and there's a high noise floor. Again it's a case of not using the cheapest for other reasons than plan audio quality at low level, particularly when they're going to be carted about and potentially abused.
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Jan 18, 2015 23:16
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88h88 posted:Do any audiophiles use things like RTA? It's kinda standard in my PA kit but I've never seen anything like it in an audiophile environment which is weird considering they're supposedly looking for perfection in audio quality and that's a decent investment in doing so. Forget RTA, what about RT60 / RT30? Phase alignment and positioning for an even dispersion and summation at a designated listening position? Hell, do most people actually choose a box with a dispersion pattern remotely suited to their room, and then look at wavelets to determine what axial room modes to treat? Or perhaps STIPA for intelligibility if accuracy really is your bag? There are literally endless important measurements that happen in any good quality modern bar/club/arena installation, but don't seem to get a look in on audiophile stuff. The guys over at DIYAudio forums and a few others at least seem to push REW and ask people for measurements and photos to offer advice on what to do to improve the end result.
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Feb 1, 2015 09:58
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taqueso posted:I prefer the pure tones of sine waves to the cacophony of music. Music is a lot of pure sine waves just aid on top of each other. Also if you want good results and have a spare bit of cash the MiniDSP Dirac stuff is as close to a magic box as you'll get without straying off into stupid pseudoscience. A good combination of FIR and IIR filters to compensate for early reflections and room modes plus impulse and phase linearisation is well worth the small trade off in delay. I think it starts around $800, includes the DSP box and mic and software.
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Mar 26, 2015 00:03
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Theris posted:From a position of ignorance about what they actually do "behind the scenes:" what does that do that the auto-calibration mic/software that comes with most receivers doesn't? I mean we're talking $800 vs free, (at least if you're buying a new receiver anyway) so it should be something major, right? Most auto calibration simply runs IIR filters to generate a 'flat' (often bass boosted or gradual downward sloping but whatever) magnitude response. Essentially you're correcting in only the frequency domain, which can cause issues with phase shift and exacerbate room modes or end up with weird sounding results. The Dirac thing is basically a hand holding baby's first approach to seeing those same measurement results, and allowing you to pick a target response before aiming to correct towards that using convolution in DSP to correct not just magnitude but phase and cabinet anomalies such as horn reflections, smearing etc. It's a little hard to explain the core concepts without getting super into AES paper stuff that assumes a chunk of prior knowledge, but their own site has a fairly rudimentary 'whitepaper' and some links to other similar tools/apps that explains it to an extent. http://www.dirac.se/media/12044/on_room_correction.pdf In practice the difference can be quite startling even for a novice though. You end up with more consistent coverage in the target listening area, better pattern control/rejection outside of it and a more 'natural' sound due to many frequencies arriving at the same time, closer to a real instrument. $800 is cheap for the results it can get, partly because it only works on a few channels. Doing this for a multi-driver multi-cabinet array at say an arena level carries costs of many many thousands of dollars in software, DSP/amp channels and measuring hardware alone. However like anything it isn't a magic bullet, just a set of compromises that can yield positive results in return for a bit of effort and sacrificing overall delay in the system.
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Mar 26, 2015 00:42
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KillHour posted:If you're willing to put the work in to learn it, you can get similar results from REQ wizard (free) a USB calibrated mic (~$70) and a Mini DSP without the dirac software (~$100). You just have to put a lot of effort into manually tweaking your settings instead of following the directions on the magic box. Of course. But it's a LOT of effort to learn how to know what data to use and what to throw away, how to measure for different things, etc. Also, use of IIR filtering can only get you so far. There is some really, frankly quite mad stuff going on with high end FIR and mixed-phase DSP going on right now that just pickles my brain, but at the base level it can make a huge improvement in a system if used properly. The Dirac thing is out of my 'yeah I'll buy that' range but if you suddenly won big on a scratch card and wanted to make an extremely good room just to listen to music without throwing away oodles of cash and time learning about acoustics then combining the (not so) black box with some proper nice off the shelf oblate spheroid horns and reflex subs is a good way to go. Could do it for under $7000 total and poo poo all over most audiophile setups.
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Mar 27, 2015 03:01
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KillHour posted:http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2849356 http://www.diyaudioandvideo.com/Calculator/APCXOver/
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Mar 27, 2015 16:27
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http://test.tidalhifi.com/ Wow.
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Apr 1, 2015 02:29
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slomomofo posted:You should check out the headphones thread. Are they actually going to be used as IEMs or just headphones?
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Apr 11, 2015 11:20
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qirex posted:Dude at AVS made 25' speaker wires out of aluminum foil and compared them against 4' of Monster Cable XP, measured* results were nearly identical. That is just an SPL measurement to be fair, SPL, phase, waterfall and THD would be more useful in shutting the idiots up.
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Oct 13, 2015 17:48
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 16:09 |
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http://www.flareaudio.com/flare-audio-launches-zero/ Asking price is as you'd expect - it uses off the shelf drivers from pro audio manufacturers, albeit their top end stuff, but not the usual hifi bits you'd expect. There was a nice orange anodised coaxial model at the PLASA show too mind. Although it seems they forgot to read this: http://www.trueaudio.com/st_diff1.htm
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Oct 19, 2015 14:26
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