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TheMadMilkman
Dec 10, 2007

GWBBQ posted:

Even at 320, I could probably tell you the difference between mp3 and lossless or mp3 and AAC almost every time. I've re-ripped CDs in AAC for my iPod and found that even on the earbuds that came with it (I'm pretty sure I got one of the better production runs,) music sounds a lot clearer and not muffled.

I had a friend who claimed that there was no audible difference between 320 mp3 and lossless. His rationale was that some computer magazine had sent out CDs with music in different bit rates and had readers compare them, and based on the results they declared that there were no audible differences. So to spite him, I had him set up a blind test for me that I aced with ease. I'm apparently very sensitive to the information that the mp3 codec strips out. I also agree that AAC is a far superior codec and, at least with earbuds or computer speakers, doesn't bother me at all.

proudfoot posted:

This is basically what I meant, after around the 5k mark, you can't really do anything but room treatment.

5k per component, or 5k for the entire system?

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900ftjesus
Aug 10, 2003

TheMadMilkman posted:

I had a friend who claimed that there was no audible difference between 320 mp3 and lossless. His rationale was that some computer magazine had sent out CDs with music in different bit rates and had readers compare them, and based on the results they declared that there were no audible differences. So to spite him, I had him set up a blind test for me that I aced with ease. I'm apparently very sensitive to the information that the mp3 codec strips out. I also agree that AAC is a far superior codec and, at least with earbuds or computer speakers, doesn't bother me at all.


5k per component, or 5k for the entire system?

How dare he tell you what he can and can't hear the difference between.

TheMadMilkman
Dec 10, 2007

900ftjesus posted:

How dare he tell you what he can and can't hear the difference between.

If that's what he had said, I wouldn't have cared. But since he claimed that no one could, I had to respond.

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

TheMadMilkman posted:

5k per component, or 5k for the entire system?

I'm of the opinion that $5k per component is a ridiculous sum to spend, and the law of diminishing returns kills you way before this price point.

Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe

Gromit posted:

I'm of the opinion that $5k per component is a ridiculous sum to spend, and the law of diminishing returns kills you way before this price point.

Time to clarify this; it's $5k per cable.

Traxxus
Jul 13, 2003

WWJD - What Would Jack Do?
Is that including cable elevators?

TheMadMilkman
Dec 10, 2007

Xaranx posted:

Is that including cable elevators?



I hate to say this, but I really want a set of those. Not because they do anything, but because of how they look. It's so neat and tidy.

Devian666 posted:

Time to clarify this; it's $5k per cable.

I wandered around CES with an electrical engineer/audiophile once. It was very entertaining. He would look at the opened components on display and show me the actual audio path through the component. Then he'd point to other parts of the design, like a large bank of capacitors, and explain how they were a waste and could have no effect on the sound. We even visited a few cable manufacturers. He'd just shake his head and walk back out.

Gromit posted:

I'm of the opinion that $5k per component is a ridiculous sum to spend, and the law of diminishing returns kills you way before this price point.

I guess this is what I'm really asking. I'm sure that my tipping point for the law of diminishing returns is higher than most people here. The system I currently dream of owning (but will never be able to afford) would put me back about $35,000, and that's only for 2-channel digital. That's way beyond the tipping point, though, which I would peg at probably about $2000 per electronic component, and about $5000 for speakers.

Turtle Parlor
Sep 12, 2005
village idiot
I'm fortunate enough to have a room all to myself for my stereo, it's main purpose in life is a stereo setup, Boston VR speakers, good amp and a good SACD/DVD-A cd player. There are surrounds and the like with a display, but it's main use is 2 channel listening. Not audiophile level stuff, but prosumer easily. The shop I used for this stuff tried so hard to get me into 1000+ dollar interconnects and hugely expensive isolation systems, even let me demo the things. What I ended up doing that was buying ~200 bucks worth of flame resistant acoustic foam rolls and making the room acoustic friendly. Did way more than exotic interconnects and artificial sine wave inducing power supplies and other such things. Good room to nap in as well, real quiet.

Also for 45 bucks I got enough black fabric to pleat and make the side walls look like the big heavy curtains in a theatre, looks cool and eliminates reflected light from painted walls.

I'm all about cheap mods that garner results.

Deathlove
Feb 20, 2003

Pillbug
http://www.electronichouse.com/article/print/diyer_spends_1_million_on_audio/

That is a lot of money to spend to watch movies.

TheMadMilkman
Dec 10, 2007

Deathlove posted:

That is a lot of money to spend to watch movies.

On a regular flat screen, no less. $1 million and no front/rear projection? That's insane.

I wonder how hot it gets in that room.

bacon!
Dec 10, 2003

The fierce urgency of now

TheMadMilkman posted:

On a regular flat screen, no less. $1 million and no front/rear projection? That's insane.

I wonder how hot it gets in that room.

According to the site,

Sony VPH-G90U Projector
Stewart Filmscreen 120-inch Screen

So he has multiple ways of watching movies

TheMadMilkman
Dec 10, 2007

bacon! posted:

According to the site,

Sony VPH-G90U Projector
Stewart Filmscreen 120-inch Screen

So he has multiple ways of watching movies

My mistake for not reading the equipment list a little more carefully. At least he has good tastes, the G90 was easily the best CRT projector ever produced.

Neurophonic
May 2, 2009

Doc Spratley posted:

You may also try digital room eq'ing.



I was thinking about getting a thread going on this, just need to get a new mic for measurements.

Did you prefer the sound like this? It goes quite strongly against the measured average response curve of the human ear, and every time I’ve EQ’d a system perfectly flat it’s sounded far too bright in the midrange and like there’s nowhere near enough bass.


http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/EARS.htm

RustedChrome
Jun 10, 2007

"do not hold the camera obliquely, or the world will seem to be on an inclined plane."
I'm confused. Are we supposed to ridicule you for that stuff? It looks a bit logical.

Sunesis
Apr 17, 2003

RANPHA IS MAD LOL
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.

Doc Spratley
Mar 4, 2007
Miskatonic U. Alumni

Neurophonic posted:

Did you prefer the sound like this? It goes quite strongly against the measured average response curve of the human ear, and every time I’ve EQ’d a system perfectly flat it’s sounded far too bright in the midrange and like there’s nowhere near enough bass.



self quoting from earlier this thread.

"Granted, you can't always get ruler flat response everywhere in your environment, and in fact it might sound kinda dead, many clubs and live venues might dial in a 'house curve' to sweeten the sound a bit."

Pibborando San
Dec 11, 2004

oh yes. two kinds... of dances

Neurophonic posted:

Did you prefer the sound like this? It goes quite strongly against the measured average response curve of the human ear, and every time I’ve EQ’d a system perfectly flat it’s sounded far too bright in the midrange and like there’s nowhere near enough bass.


http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/EARS.htm

What you're saying doesn't make sense to me. If you want an accurate reproduction of an instrument, the response curve of the microphone used to record said instrument should be flat and the response curve of the speakers you are listening to should also be flat. Why would you try to have the speakers emulate the response curve of your ear? That's irrelevant.

TheMadMilkman
Dec 10, 2007

Pibborando San posted:

What you're saying doesn't make sense to me. If you want an accurate reproduction of an instrument, the response curve of the microphone used to record said instrument should be flat and the response curve of the speakers you are listening to should also be flat. Why would you try to have the speakers emulate the response curve of your ear? That's irrelevant.

No, that's not what he's saying. The digital calibration shown was used to create a perfectly flat response at the listening position. Even a perfectly flat speaker response will not create a perfectly flat in-room response, thanks to boundary reinforcement, beaming, room modes, and other things. While digital calibration of bass frequencies to correct in-room response makes sense to some degree (and we could argue for days about how far it should be taken), doing so for the entire spectrum can create an incredibly harsh and unnatural sound.

The graph is just to show that a perfectly flat in-room response won't sound flat or natural.

Rescue Toaster
Mar 13, 2003
I had a real winner on the line a few months ago on diyaudio.com, he claimed that the same CD ripped using EAC would result in different sounding wave files depending on if it was ripped with any old drive and a fancy blu ray burner.

This INCLUDED him showing md5 hashes of the two files clearly showing they were identical down to the last bit. He claimed the two .wav files clearly sounded different. Must have been the hard drive storing the jitter! :suicide: Except even then he claimed he could copy the files around (burn them to a data disc, etc...) and still hear it.


I try to stay away from the tweakers, but I've enjoyed the semi-audiophile Do-It-Yourself community for many years. Most of the guys are pretty level headed, it's an incredibly fun hobby, and even if you do want to try something crazy, it's not costing nearly as much when you're building it yourself.

Sunesis
Apr 17, 2003

RANPHA IS MAD LOL
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?

qirex
Feb 15, 2001

Rescue Toaster posted:

I had a real winner on the line a few months ago on diyaudio.com, he claimed that the same CD ripped using EAC would result in different sounding wave files depending on if it was ripped with any old drive and a fancy blu ray burner.

This INCLUDED him showing md5 hashes of the two files clearly showing they were identical down to the last bit. He claimed the two .wav files clearly sounded different. Must have been the hard drive storing the jitter! :suicide: Except even then he claimed he could copy the files around (burn them to a data disc, etc...) and still hear it.
I'm pretty sure this guy ended up getting different MD5s because the filenames were different.

qirex fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Oct 5, 2009

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

qirex posted:

I'm pretty sure this guy ended up getting different MD5s because the filenamees were different.

I hope you're joking here.

qirex
Feb 15, 2001

Gromit posted:

I hope you're joking here.

I know for a fact I read about something like that once it might have been on the Slim Devices "Audiophiles" forum. The dude was all "why are the file sizes 6 bytes different if they're EXACTLY the same, huh smart guys?" and someone finally noticed the 6 more letters in one of the file names.

qirex fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Oct 5, 2009

vanilla slimfast
Dec 6, 2006

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome



qirex posted:

I know for a fact I read about something like that once it might have been on the Slim Devices "Audiophiles" forum. The dude was all "why are the file sizes 6 bytes different if they're EXACTLY the same, huh smart guys?" and someone finally noticed the 6 more letters in one of the file names.

That's not how md5 hashes work. The file name does not affect the computation of the hash

edit:

code:
mythtv@theking:~$ echo "this is data" > a.txt
mythtv@theking:~$ cp a.txt asdf.txt
mythtv@theking:~$ md5sum a.txt
e2fd7861105ee473a045343e6e921faa  a.txt
mythtv@theking:~$ md5sum asdf.txt 
e2fd7861105ee473a045343e6e921faa  asdf.txt

vanilla slimfast fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Oct 5, 2009

Rescue Toaster
Mar 13, 2003
Yeah my point was he ADMITTED that the md5 of the files, and thus every single bit of data was the same. But he insisted that they consistently sounded different.

The one credit I will give him is he actually didn't try to come up with some bullshit reason for it. He just said "This is what I hear, I don't know why." And at least that I can respect. It's still crazy, but whatever floats his boat I guess.

It's the people that make insane claims about how things work, like the existence of 'optical jitter' in CD players, that drive me insane. Shut up. If you think one thing sounds better, just say it. People will either try it or ignore you, so be it.

thataaronguy
Jul 21, 2005

being and becoming
I am not big on large speakers; I prefer headphones.

I want the full experience when listening to my cans, so I've been pioneering a head dampening system, with some pretty impressive results!

I have pierced my ears, and wear earrings made of carbon nano tubes under my headphones.

Easily 47.3% performance increase over undamped heads.

Turtle Parlor
Sep 12, 2005
village idiot

thataaronguy posted:

I am not big on large speakers; I prefer headphones.

I want the full experience when listening to my cans, so I've been pioneering a head dampening system, with some pretty impressive results!

I have pierced my ears, and wear earrings made of carbon nano tubes under my headphones.

Easily 47.3% performance increase over undamped heads.

For a smoother listening experience slowly leak a noble gas (argon for instance, radon for the hardcore audiophile) under the cups. The consistency of the gas will ensure a proper soundstage and being an ideal gas the results of any tests will be very repeatable.

mr. nobody
Sep 25, 2004

Net contents 12 fluid oz.
Perform all non-double-blind testing inside a pure helium environment for the best sound if you want to die

Fuzz1111
Mar 17, 2001

Sorry. I couldn't find anyone to make you a cool cipher-themed avatar, and the look on this guy's face cracks me the fuck up.

Rescue Toaster posted:

he claimed that the same CD ripped using EAC would result in different sounding wave files depending on if it was ripped with any old drive and a fancy blu ray burner....
It's technically possible to end up with different files from an audio CD ripped using different drives because different drives can rip with different offsets, basically you can end up with the start and end point of the tracks in slightly different places (were talking like 50 samples/1 millisecond here).

You will see offset compensation settings if you look hard enough in EAC's drive settings, and though you may wonder what the point is, it can matter on a mixed CD if you rip some tracks on one drive and some on another (you may end up with a click between tracks).

Your friend's an idiot though, even if the files had a diffent checksum (that they didn't surprises me) it will just be the offset and the files won't sound any different on their own though unless you are ripping a badly scratched CD and one drive copes better than the other (I have an old Teac 32 speed CDROM drive which is excellent for this, can take hours to rip though. I also recently built a PC for a mate with an IDE LG DVD burner which I found was excellent for EAC CD ripping - EAC reported it doesn't internally cache but does report C2 error info - this is the best case scenario for EAC, and it ripped even fairly scratched CD's fast).

CrazyLittle
Sep 11, 2001





Clapping Larry
Has anyone tried suggesting that they listen to their devices under water? (Like in their bathtub)

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

CrazyLittle posted:

Has anyone tried suggesting that they listen to their devices under water? (Like in their bathtub)

You should try and convince as many audiophiles as you can to do this. Either they'll get electrocuted or possibly damage their hearing beyond reapair! Win/win.

Promoted Pawn
Jun 8, 2005

oops


CrazyLittle posted:

Has anyone tried suggesting that they listen to their devices under water? (Like in their bathtub)

Use mineral oil instead of water to make it more plausible (it won't short the electronics) and expensive.

edit: Hell, create (read:label) a special 'Audio Grade' mineral oil specifically for this purpose and mark it up by 1000%.

HKR
Jan 13, 2006

there is no universe where duke nukem would not be a trans ally



TheMadMilkman posted:



I hate to say this, but I really want a set of those. Not because they do anything, but because of how they look. It's so neat and tidy.



Here, a super awesome looking DIY speaker cables that will cost you under $100 for the set:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=94203

They perform no better then $20 radio shack speaker wire, but look 1000x better, and I'll gladly pay the money for that.

mr. nobody
Sep 25, 2004

Net contents 12 fluid oz.

Promoted Pawn posted:

Use mineral oil instead of water to make it more plausible (it won't short the electronics) and expensive.

edit: Hell, create (read:label) a special 'Audio Grade' mineral oil specifically for this purpose and mark it up by 1000%.

Now you're talking. But to make it plausible to audiophiles you would have to put it in an inverted glass pyramid shape, mounted on a sound dampening pedestal made of teak and canary beaks. Claim it broadens the auravisual potency of the pathways of the bits that aren't played from any CD or DVD (get the videophiles too).

edit: don't forget the expensive (but super cheap compared to the selling price of the item) box to store it in when not in use

mr. nobody fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Oct 10, 2009

Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe

Boiled Water posted:

You should try and convince as many audiophiles as you can to do this. Either they'll get electrocuted or possibly damage their hearing beyond reapair! Win/win.

There are two episodes of Metalocalypse that will help with convincing them. One where they record underwater and another where they record their entire album into a jar of water (for a more analogue sound).

Tsaven Nava
Dec 31, 2008

by elpintogrande
Man, reading this thread makes me grateful that I have bad ears or something. I'm pleased as punch with 128k MP3s off my iPod with cheap-rear end $10 Skull Candy earbuds.

Lupin
Feb 21, 2007

Tsaven Nava posted:

Man, reading this thread makes me grateful that I have bad ears or something. I'm pleased as punch with 128k MP3s off my iPod with cheap-rear end $10 Skull Candy earbuds.

If you're happy with them, my recommendation is to never try anything more expensive/better. It's a terrible downward spiral from there

Acinonyx
Oct 21, 2005
Back when I was a TA, I had a student who spent about $2500 putting a sound system into his $300 car. Before reading this thread, I thought he was the dumbest A/V related person ever. I was so sheltered.

About the guy with the million dollar theater/sound install; Do you think he realizes that for less, he could have built an actual theater with 100+ seats with state of the art projection and sound? I was also trying to figure out why he would just keep buying more amps. What would he think he was gaining?

davepsilon
Oct 12, 2009

Acinonyx posted:

About the guy with the million dollar theater/sound install; Do you think he realizes that for less, he could have built an actual theater with 100+ seats with state of the art projection and sound? I was also trying to figure out why he would just keep buying more amps. What would he think he was gaining?

Why would he want a 100-seat theater? Part of the allure is probably the expense. He has money and wants to turn that money into nice things. He gains the ability to show it off as well. Just like other rich guys collect fine art I suppose.

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qirex
Feb 15, 2001

I just wonder how much of that $1 mil is markup. $600k? $700?

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