Ridicule Audiophiles - Find the cat shit's resonant frequency

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Ridicule Audiophiles - Find the cat shit's resonant frequency

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

Reference Audio Mods website posted:

High Performance Behringer Mods!
...
Behringer DCX2496 Modification Features:
Audiocom Superclock 4-S Clock
RAM installs a reference quality clock designed by Audiocom UK, Superclock 4-S. Replacing the stock crystal oscillator results in significant jitter reduction. Yes, this speaker system has jitter!!
...
Audiocom Superclock Mini PSU
RAM installs a dedicated low noise Power Supply with discrete voltage regulation for the Superclock 4-S

Yes, upgrade the clock and the power supply, surely those are the weak spots of Behringer gear, and nothing from dbx, Ashly, EV, Rane, or even Peavey would be better designed. And FCC certified.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2009 06:53

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:53

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

RexSS345 posted:

Let's try this from the other side.

You're all fairly rational individuals re: the audiophile stuff. What do you think the rational ceiling is for the cost of a private, one-chair listening room?

In other words, at what price point are you just wasting money/be unable to tell a difference double-blind? Equipment would include a SACD or other source, receiver/amp, interconnects, speaker wire, and of course a pair of speakers. YOu can assume we already have a chair.

I'm betting $1000-1500. Just guessing though, wouldn't be able to give examples of equipment.

Well, in my opinion the money should go into the acoustics of the room first, then the speakers, then the amp, then the source gear, then the cables.

Assuming the use of competent gear, the biggest factors are room acoustics and speakers. An extremely live (or extremely dead) room with lots of resonant frequencies is going to ruin the sound of any speakers you use. Speakers are the most variable piece of actual gear in the chain - different frequency response characteristics, speaker size/number/composition being some big variables between different speakers.

You could easily spend $10,000 on the room, $15,000 on some B&W 801D speakers, and use some basic pro gear (say, a QSC amp and Denon pro CD player) and some homemade cables (Belden cable with Neutrik or Switchcraft connectors) for everything else and you'll hear a world of difference between that and a random room with $1000 speakers with the same basic pro gear.

Right now I'm listening to Polk R20 bookshelf speakers through an Onkyo TX-SR304 and a Creative E-Mu 1212m sound card. In another room I have Infinity Reference 4s and a Kenwood VR-407 that I mostly use for listening to records with a vintage Technics D3. I've heard much better, but it's all I can afford at home and it sounds pretty decent for normal listening and at levels that won't disturb my neighbors.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2009 20:40

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

Neurophonic posted:

Actually, the DCX2496 is a surprisingly high end bit of kit for the money. The interface is horrible but the components certainly aren't.

If you're bothered, there's a pretty detailed breakdown of the DCX2496 vs. a BSS SoundWeb and a DBX DriveRack (admittedly the low budget PA version) here:
http://forum.speakerplans.com/inside-compared-bss-9088-dbx-pa-dcx2496_topic25538_post252872.html#252872

There's a lot more to it than the components used. Uwe Boll uses the same equipment that other filmmakers use, but makes shithouse films. The specs that count aren't the ones of the chips, it's the end result. Compare the specs sheets between the dbx PA DriveRack and the Berhringer and the only one that gives specs that even make sense or aren't misleading is the dbx.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2009 02:40

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

CuddleChunks posted:

Looks like I am the alpha male of this confederacy of VP's with my Optimus XL-3 System that uses Nagia interconnects. I didn't really look much at the price but you know, probably a cool 50 grand or so.

Ho ho ho, not so fast Bob. Your quaint little system has nothing on my Dunkenschmaker Valkyries which were assembled by the last known Speakermachenmeister in all of Germany before he died. I barely glanced at the six figure price tag since I just have to have The Best.

fuuuuuuukkkk.

Old. Rich. Audiophile.

50 grand for Radio Shack gear? (Optimus used to be a brand of audio/video electronics sold by RS.)

# ¿ Aug 1, 2009 02:14

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

TenementFunster posted:

something tells me these dudes would be totally terrified if they knew how much oxygen is present in commercial/industrial "interconnects"

Mogami Negflex OFC :smug:

# ¿ Oct 22, 2009 13:55

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

The cable they're selling is probably using balanced cables, but obviously they're using them with an unbalanced connector (and they probably aren't even connecting them properly).

# ¿ Jan 20, 2011 06:53

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

CheapImitation posted:

A lot of people hate on the expensive cables, but sometimes they're worth it rather than going to, say, Monoprice. For example, my headphone amp. I have a Woo Audio 6, which is a tube amp, and one morning while listening to it (with monoprice's 'premium RCA cable') I start to hear voices in between songs. I think I'm going crazy or something. So I stop the music and listen closely and yes, the voices are there. They're talking about how many times you've cheated on your partner and what happened when they found out. Then I realized what happened...I was in the audience at a Murray show. No. My set up was picking up interference from a local radio show and that's what I was hearing. A quick swap to some semi-expensive cables with good shielding means no more radio interference.

Were your cables from Monoprice a different length than the other cables? It's entirely possible that the semi-expensive cables didn't have any better shielding, but were a length that wouldn't pick up that AM station because it wasn't close to a even fraction of its wavelength.

# ¿ May 4, 2011 00:38

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

Technics haters think direct drive is inferior technology despite the entire line of Technics' DD turntables having better wow/flutter and rumble specs than virtually any belt drive turntable, even $10,000 belt drive audiophile turntables.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2012 01:52

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

The problem with "detailed brights" is that both words are adjectives so it makes little sense on its own.

Though there is a lot of nonsensical stuff in this thread that are worse than a linguistically-awkward phrase.

# ¿ May 25, 2012 04:54

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

He's referring to a phenomenon called skin effect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_wire#Skin_effect

# ¿ Jul 14, 2012 04:50

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

says they didn't even apply the hotfix for Windows 7 audio described here:

http://www.indexcom.com/tech/WindowsAudioSRC/

# ¿ Jan 4, 2013 23:05

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

baka kaba posted:

This is what I was getting at earlier really, asking if part of the reason mastering engineers brickwall their tracks is so radio stations don't have any room to stick their oar in. If everything's pushed right up there's not a lot you can do to push any parts up any more and reshape the sound, so it may sound overdone but at least the sound is consistent. Whereas with older recordings that have a bit of headroom (not all of them) there's space for dynamics and detail... which is space for radio to invade and go YEAH CRANK THIS BIT AND THAT and push it into a new, crappier, louder shape

That doesn't really have anything to do with it. Mastering these days is done for the lowest common denominator - iPod/iPhone earbuds, lovely iPod dock speakers, etc. where all nuance goes out the door. Besides, radio processing can still radically change the sound regardless of how brickwalled the recording is. Radio processing usually involves at least dual band AGC, multiband compressors and expanders, limiting, etc. which will have a huge effect on both dynamics and equalization/frequency response.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2013 01:05

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

baka kaba posted:

Expanders sure, that's basically undoing the mastering compression so they can remake it, but as far as multiband compressiona nd limiting goes, that's what I was getting at - if it's already massively compressed in every band, to within an inch of its life, there's a lot less a radio station or whatever can do to put its signature stamp on there, without trying to reverse a bunch of it first. I mean expanding it and recompressing it into a lovely track might be super easy and not a problem at all, but I was really asking if that was the idea - trying to enforce some consistency and uniformity of the mix, so the band/label etc. are more in control of how it sounds than the radio station. At least in part anyway. Maybe it's not

Oh, sure, as bigtom said that was part of the original intent with the Loudness Wars I and Loudness Wars II, but today radio isn't nearly as important and nothing about current mastering would change if radio or other sources looking to process their audio didn't exist.

I was just trying to point out that multiband compression isn't just a tool to eke out more palatable compression than a wide-band compressor, it's also an EQ since each band has separate settings for drive, expansion, compression etc. that will affect the EQ of the sound. I think this resultant EQ is often more noticeable than differences in the brickwalling between the master and the radio version, and there's not much a mastering engineering can do to prevent this EQing.

bigtom posted:

The newer processing rigs can detect material already compressed/limited and will bypass those sections of the processor and only do a minimal amount of EQ and final limiting to keep it at legal mod levels. We are trying to put cleaner audio on the air....it's just that we only now have the tools to do it.

Which ones can do this? The Wheatstone AirAura processors? I'm about to take over a college radio station that has the quietest audio in the area and might be looking for a processor. I didn't get to see their transmitter site yet, so I've no clue what they're running now (if anything). I'm expecting the worst at every turn since they have an Arrakis console :eng99:

Megiddo fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Feb 16, 2013

# ¿ Feb 16, 2013 14:22

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

88h88 posted:

Audio nerd thread, what's the best piece of software to rip CDs these days?

dBpoweramp

Has AccurateRip and secure ripping, uses several databases (no gracenote support), and if you have a million drives or a robotic loader you can use their Batch Ripper.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2014 20:11

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:53

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

And at 2x

# ¿ Feb 9, 2015 08:13

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Ridicule Audiophiles - Find the cat shit's resonant frequency