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I love reading audiophile stuff. I cant believe that people buy this crap, and think it makes a difference. If you want to listen to it "how its sposed to sound" then get a setup the same as the studio that recorded and mastered the CD. Whats more, these crazy power cable stuff really gets me. If the wires running through you house are crappy cheap 20 amp stuff (like in Aus, double that i guess for the US) used by builders and electricians, what makes you think that 2 meters of your special cable is going to make a difference to the sound. Do bigger speaker cables sound better? Absolutely. Is there a point of no return? Yep, there is. Does running stuff of batteries sound better? Yep, it will. Is it practical?? Hell no. Does changing your knob on your Hifi from metal to wood make a difference? Hell no. Does raising your speaker cable off the ground, or buying crazy interconnect cables from your CD player to your amp, or any of the other dozens of stuff make a difference? You will never see the pros in music production and mastering using this crazy rear end stuff, so why should the end user? But i guess even pro audio has it audiophiles who chase down decades old Neve gear and treat it like its the holy grail of sound.
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Jul 10, 2009 16:25
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:42 |
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Before i listen to music i like to clean my ears to make sure my ears are in there most pristine condition. I used to use generic cotton ear buds, but after upgrading to these http://www.amazon.co.uk/Biosun-Hopi-Ear-Candles-Pair-Pack/dp/B0013GAFJ6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=drugstore&qid=1247581268&sr=1-3 Its like i have a new pair of ears! Lows seem fuller and more meaty, mids seem to massage my ear lobs, and the highs send a twinkle down my spine! Music seems to be more alive, with different sorts of colors and tastes i didn't notice before! Purples and chocolates, burnt orange and deep reds! I think I even noticed new instruments that weren't even in the original recording! I also now keep my haircut short, so that my hair doesn't create standing waves on my head and effect the sound. But I have noticed that keeping the top and sides short, and the back of my hair long seems to give music more THUMP and KICK in the lows. I will keep experimenting!
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Jul 14, 2009 15:25
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Somehow we have moved away from snake oil onto real things that will actually effect sound quality! Thats not what this thread is about! I have decided to rotate my entire listening room by 90 deg, so my listening area and cables run at right angles to the Earths magnetic poles. I believe this will cause less bend in my signal as it travels across the room. Musical notes will stay more sharp and more curved as they travel through the air, and not get "flattened out" as they would if affected by a magnetic field.
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Sep 28, 2009 15:56
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I build my own gear, and currently have a 2x600w (into 4 ohms) power amp waiting to get some attention. But I just like loud sound with good bass and lots of power behind it. I typically use PA speakers to listen to music though, so its perhaps not the best possible reproduction of the sound! Jitter implies that the bits that are being read are either falling before or after the clock, or that the ones and zeroes are slightly longer or slightly shorter than they should be. If he has ripped a CD and got the same hashes, then clearly the jitter was the same? I don't get how these guys think the laws of physics don't apply to them. Threads on DIYaudio where they compare opamps. Low amounts of distortion mean what goes in, comes out! How can changing one opamp, which mind you, probably share the same basic layout internally as most opamps, make such a difference?
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Oct 5, 2009 04:25
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>.< How can they argue it sounds different! The optical and coax would use the SAME DAC, so if it sounds different, then there is something wrong with the bits travelling down the wire! and if the bits are wrong, it wont be "a little bit more bass and treble" it will be ASSHHIIHIHIHMMHMMMAAAAAASSSSSSSHHHHHH OMG TURN IT OFF WHITE NOISE. This whole idea that a cable is selectively delaying bits and messing the timing up too is nonsense. Yes, A USB device would buffer a few samples and reclock them, but a digital audio stream is digital audio. The issue of clocks comes in when you have MULTIPLE sources talking to one device, hence why a world clock can solve those problems. AGGHHH! At least its not my money!
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Nov 19, 2009 04:15
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I regards to the whole DAC thing, the DAC isn't using a resistor bridge to convert from Digital world to analog. It uses a bunch of comparators hooked upto precision voltage sources. Or they convert the stream to PWM first, then just filter out the crap above the audio range. Both ways are a little more advanced than a few resistors (although a few resistors is basicly the same thing). Jitter is when a one or a zero should arrive NOW, but arrives NOW plus or minus a few microseconds or nano seconds. That means that the clock of the signal and the actually signal are shifted. This is only an issue in large systems with many components that add their own little bit of delay to each bit. The bitstream coming off a CD drive would be reclocked anyway, and would be fairly jitter free. Any jitter that would be there would be BELOW the noise floor of the system anyway. Its a total non issue. That said, a proper CD Player or a CD that was ripped as lossless would probably play better than a computer CD drive. Once those bits are off the drive and have been reclocked into a normal digital bitstream, then jitter is a non issue! There is nothing else in the chain that will introduce jitter, certainty not the cable. Whats more, the bits are process a sample at a time, so all 16 bits would be taken together. If one of them arrived late, it would have to be 22 MICROseconds late for it to matter to the converter. Sorry, /rant off. There we go. Do a google search on Balanced Power.
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Nov 24, 2009 04:28
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Gromit posted:On a slightly serious note, wouldn't freaks buy ECC RAM so that the audio data is "how god intended it"? I would market the poo poo out of that to audiophiles, especially given that it is already such a pricey item, and they seem to like that. Again, because of the way digital audio works, missing even one bit from the stream would create something akin to static noise, or a thump. It would be very noticeable, because its just not that sample that gets affected, its the samples around that broken sample, because the samples make up a waveform, and that waveform just got mangled. The only way this wouldn't matter would be for the LSB, but if its happening randomly to the LSB, it will be happening to the other bits too. Same thing with the USB cable. The bits are buffered into samples before being decoded. The audio either ends up at the sound card in one piece, or it becomes a mess.
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Dec 25, 2009 13:36
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Gromit posted:So you're saying yes, they should be wasting their money on ECC RAM? What i am saying is it either works, or doesn't work. Little 1% improvements don't work for Digital Audio, unless you are in a dealing with lots of different clocks from different devices, or lots of digital gear hooked up after each other. so no way, no ecc ram or anything crazy like that.
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Dec 29, 2009 08:12
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Fantastic video that debunks a lot of these myths and snake oils. Even though they talk about bits and bytes, you can extrapolate a lot of what they say to audiophile nonsense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ
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Aug 24, 2010 13:51
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:42 |
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It takes cats to expose the stupidity of audiophiles.
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Dec 8, 2011 08:34
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