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KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


longview posted:

That reminds me of my favourite 80s stereo feature, the Loudness button. It's pretty funny when literally all it does is apply +10 dB to 60 Hz, especially when the stereo also has bass/treble knobs that already do +-10dB adjustments.

I think it boosts treble as well.

My nearing 2 decades old Pioneer amp has a loudness button, of course. But it also has a 'direct' button which bypasses it and the bass, treble and balance knobs completely. Since I never use any of those, I've probably had the 'direct' button permanently on for like 10 years now. Does it make a difference? Hell if I know!

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Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

KozmoNaut posted:

Replace it with two controls, one marked 'volume' and one marked 'loudness'. The volume control should function exactly like it does today, raising the overall volume of the music. The loudness should function like a compressor, changing how loud the music sounds without altering the volume, in effect applying more and more "radio sound processing" or normalization the farther your turn it up. For simplification, implement it as a "party mode" button on mass-market stereos.

This would also be awesome for watching movies without disturbing neighbors. Turn loudness to max and volume way down, turning down the loud sound effects and turning up the speech track.

Why isn't this part of every stereo made for the last 5-10 years? We have the technology and computing power to make it happen. I know a lot of people have talked about something like this, in this thread too.

You mean like the "night mode" (or similarly named feature) which is present in almost every AV receiver sold in the last few years? The mode that applies a bass boost on lower volume settings, along with applying dynamic compression to give a "louder" sound. It sounds almost like your invention?

Here, this DVD player has it:
http://usa.yamaha.com/product_archive/audio-visual/dv-s5950_black__u/?mode=model

Yamaha posted:

When you're listening to movies late at night and turn down the volume during loud scenes, dynamic range suffers and you may miss some dialogue and other sounds. With the Night Mode, you can reduce the volume and still enjoy proper tonal balance and dynamic range.

And this Sony AVR does it, just like my Denon:
http://store.sony.com/wcsstore/SonyStyleStorefrontAssetStore/pdf/STRDA5300ES.pdf

And Onkyo:

quote:

With the Late Night function, you can reduce the dynamic range of Dolby Digital material so that you can still hear quiet parts even when listening at low volume levels—ideal for watching movies late at night when you don’t want to disturb anyone.

That said, I do agree it would be useful in iPods, cell phones, etc, too.

Now, how are we making fun of audiophiles, again?

Edit: Sorry for the backseat modding. Discuss whatever is amusing, I guess.

Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Feb 18, 2013

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


Hippie Hedgehog posted:

You mean like the "night mode" (or similarly named feature) which is present in almost every AV receiver sold in the last few years? The mode that applies a bass boost on lower volume settings, along with applying dynamic compression to give a "louder" sound. It sounds almost like your invention?

Well poo poo, looks like I'm behind the times again. Consider me schooled.

So uh... How about them wooden volume knobs? Audiophiles :rolleyes:

longview
Dec 25, 2006

heh.

KozmoNaut posted:

I think it boosts treble as well.

My nearing 2 decades old Pioneer amp has a loudness button, of course. But it also has a 'direct' button which bypasses it and the bass, treble and balance knobs completely. Since I never use any of those, I've probably had the 'direct' button permanently on for like 10 years now. Does it make a difference? Hell if I know!

In my Technics it's actually specified as 50 Hz +9 dB, it might do treble on other makes though.
Using the direct button normally bypasses the filtering that the eq. knobs apply, in the technics the filters are very simple passive circuits so they are in fact completely bypassed.

Fake-e: I have schematics for a Pioneer SA-410 and it implements the Loudness in basically the same way as the Technics.

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


longview posted:

Fake-e: I have schematics for a Pioneer SA-410 and it implements the Loudness in basically the same way as the Technics.

Do you have one for a Pioneer A-305R, too? Now I'm curious, it says in the service manual that it boosts both low and high frequencies.

KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Feb 18, 2013

Ron Burgundy
Dec 24, 2005
This burrito is delicious, but it is filling.
Loudness buttons are much older than the 80s. Could personally never recreate the same sound with tone controls though.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Ron Burgundy posted:

Loudness buttons are much older than the 80s. Could personally never recreate the same sound with tone controls though.

My 1974 Sansui 881 has a loudness button, and I doubt it was the first to do so.

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012
RIGHT OR WRONG, I CAN’T HELP BUT EXPRESS MYSELF LIKE A BRATTY CHILD. DON’T LISTEN TO ME.

KozmoNaut posted:

Considering how cheap DSPs and EQing is these days, both in cost and computing power, it's about time that we do something about the solitary volume control that's a part of every amplifier and music player in production.

Well, this isn't the case, is it? Your home HiFi has all that kinda stuff, whereas your portable player doesn't - in a large part because you don't want to be adjusting the EQ settings for everything that hits your playlist when you're walking down the street.

Pop music is always going to be processed to sound best to the people who listen to it, and these people don't WANT to care about setting the right EQ to make the music right; they just want to press play and listen to the song they like.

I'd be inclined to say that for the most part, the people who care don't listen to music that is overly compressed, and the people who don't care, do.

The MUMPSorceress
Jan 6, 2012


^SHTPSTS

Gary’s Answer

Khablam posted:

Well, this isn't the case, is it? Your home HiFi has all that kinda stuff, whereas your portable player doesn't - in a large part because you don't want to be adjusting the EQ settings for everything that hits your playlist when you're walking down the street.

Pop music is always going to be processed to sound best to the people who listen to it, and these people don't WANT to care about setting the right EQ to make the music right; they just want to press play and listen to the song they like.

I'd be inclined to say that for the most part, the people who care don't listen to music that is overly compressed, and the people who don't care, do.

You act like I can't possibly like pop music and orchestral arrangements at the same time.

There's got to be a technological solution. Maybe an audio format that includes some kind of compression profile in the file header. Portable devices could read the compression profile and do all of the EQ automatically when the track begins. Higher-quality systems would just ignore the compression profile.

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


LeftistMuslimObama posted:

You act like I can't possibly like pop music and orchestral arrangements at the same time.

There's got to be a technological solution. Maybe an audio format that includes some kind of compression profile in the file header. Portable devices could read the compression profile and do all of the EQ automatically when the track begins. Higher-quality systems would just ignore the compression profile.

Sort of like replaygain on steroids, then?

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012
RIGHT OR WRONG, I CAN’T HELP BUT EXPRESS MYSELF LIKE A BRATTY CHILD. DON’T LISTEN TO ME.
Except there's no market for it because your music is already levelled, and there's no incentive to release music that doesn't sound right without some adjustment because the equipment isn't available.
EQs in the home have been available for >30 years and people still prefer to listen to music mastered the way it is.

You might just have to accept the market isn't there for barely-mastered music for the end consumer.

jonathan
Jul 3, 2005

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN
I just wish every album was recorded, mixed and mastered with a good Jazz or boring Diana Krall type of attention. That way it sounds good on my detailed high end setup, and sounds good on any quality set of headphones, and the people with their Beats By Dre and awesome $3000 Bose setups won't know any different, because they're not the types that pay attention anyways.

It's sad that I can listen to any normal album from the early 90's and clearly notice a difference in a cleaner sound versus todays albums that probably have 5x the recording budget.

For example:

Rage Against the Machine - Self Titled
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses
Rollins Band - The End of Silence

I've listened to all of these lately on lovely Samsung headphones that came packed with my phone, with my EQ settings "flat". These albums sound loving great, and Henry Rollins can't sing to save his life! Then I listen to something released within the last few years which probably had a fairly large recording budget, recorded at a top tier studio with some of the best engineers at the controls and we get loud muddy lovely drums with no definition. It's like each band member hired their own mix engineer and then told them to make sure THEIR portion of the song was the loudest.

jonathan
Jul 3, 2005

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN
Oh and here is some audiophile bullshit.

Don't let those interconnects touch the ground! It's like dropping your country's flag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCFhBmy6XFQ

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!
I love how the framerate in the video jitters like gently caress. As if his camcorder was like "FUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUU!"

RoadCrewWorker
Nov 19, 2007

camels aren't so great
So i have no idea about vinyl players, but seeing as the needle very noticeably goes up and down wouldn't that mean the playback tempo followed a sine-wave as the needle gets pulled over incline, top, decline and valley?

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!
The vinyl rotates at a specific constant speed. The vibrations picked up by the needle, which is in the cartridge at the top of the arm, going through the groove, make up the sound. The whole arm is just articulated to follow any warps in the vinyl.

Cawd Rud
Mar 12, 2009
Salad Prong
I love how hard it looks like he's trying to relax. And the pan right over the stain on his shirt to the dog who is visibly disturbed by the whole ordeal.

But seriously, what's with the cables on top of those blocks of wood? Just :aaaaa:

RoadCrewWorker
Nov 19, 2007

camels aren't so great

Combat Pretzel posted:

The vinyl rotates at a specific constant speed. The vibrations picked up by the needle, which is in the cartridge at the top of the arm, going through the groove, make up the sound. The whole arm is just articulated to follow any warps in the vinyl.
Right, that's my point - the vinyl presumably has the recording on it in a constant angular velocity, and if it rotates at a constant speed the vertical deviations will change the speed of the needle on top of the material as the relative surface normal changes, resulting in a non-constant playback speed.

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

RoadCrewWorker posted:

Right, that's my point - the vinyl presumably has the recording on it in a constant angular velocity, and if it rotates at a constant speed the vertical deviations will change the speed of the needle on top of the material as the relative surface normal changes, resulting in a non-constant playback speed.
I think that only happens with an aging or cheap player. Or an unusually bent record.

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!

RoadCrewWorker posted:

Right, that's my point - the vinyl presumably has the recording on it in a constant angular velocity, and if it rotates at a constant speed the vertical deviations will change the speed of the needle on top of the material as the relative surface normal changes, resulting in a non-constant playback speed.
Must be an unusually warped record for it to be noticeable. An audiophile would be morally required to shred a record, if it ain't 110% level.

Twiin
Nov 11, 2003

King of Suck!

RoadCrewWorker posted:

Right, that's my point - the vinyl presumably has the recording on it in a constant angular velocity, and if it rotates at a constant speed the vertical deviations will change the speed of the needle on top of the material as the relative surface normal changes, resulting in a non-constant playback speed.

I think the needle that etched the initial record would have done so at the same constant angular velocity. So while hypothetically there might be peaks and valleys where the needle would increase/decrease the playback of the recorded music in very small amounts, the needle that etched it would have already left a speedly/slow version of the music in those valleys because it had to travel the same vertical distance. So when played back it would be at a regular playback speed.

RoadCrewWorker
Nov 19, 2007

camels aren't so great

Combat Pretzel posted:

Must be an unusually warped record for it to be noticeable. An audiophile would be morally required to shred a record, if it ain't 110% level.
Yeah, i didn't mean it was audible or even noticeable at all. Hell, a 1 mm vertical deviation on the circumference of a 12 inch record (approx 950 mm) in the form of a sine wave means a slope of ~0.0033 somewhere, meaning an increase of playback speed by a factor of ~1.0000054! :haw: So it's completely laughable.

Twiin posted:

:science: So when played back it would be at a regular playback speed.
Yeah, that makes more sense, i wasn't certain how sturdy and persistent those deformations were.
Still, considering all the expensive snake-oil meant to remove unmeasurable nano-jitters on the other side of the universe, that number seems gigantic. I guess i'm having a hard time imagining the mindset that would result in a ridiculous setup displayed in the video that also tolerates (or even welcomes?) those kind of potential mechanical error inducing influences.

I guess i'm an idiot for expecting consistency in insanity.

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


jonathan posted:

I've listened to all of these lately on lovely Samsung headphones that came packed with my phone, with my EQ settings "flat". These albums sound loving great, and Henry Rollins can't sing to save his life! Then I listen to something released within the last few years which probably had a fairly large recording budget, recorded at a top tier studio with some of the best engineers at the controls and we get loud muddy lovely drums with no definition. It's like each band member hired their own mix engineer and then told them to make sure THEIR portion of the song was the loudest.

I want to know who it was that decided the bass should be completely impossible to pick out in just about every single vaguely popular recording released in the last 10-15 years.

Instead of a nicely defined bass line where midrange is a huge part of the sound (think The Who, Black Sabbath or Deep Purple), you get this vague warbling that has no midrange and doesn't even hit bass frequencies particularly well. And the kick drum is reduced to single-frequency thumps.

Goddammit, both the bass guitar and kick drum have significant midrange content when recorded properly. As someone who used to play the bass and whose dad is a drummer, it pisses me off to no end when both of these instruments are completely neglected in the mix. They're the spine of the music, they make it "danceable" and rhythmic and fun. But nooooooo, let's just add another couple of rhythm guitarists instead of bothering with an actual rhythm section.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

RoadCrewWorker posted:

Yeah, i didn't mean it was audible or even noticeable at all. Hell, a 1 mm vertical deviation on the circumference of a 12 inch record (approx 950 mm) in the form of a sine wave means a slope of ~0.0033 somewhere, meaning an increase of playback speed by a factor of ~1.0000054! :haw: So it's completely laughable.

I think you mean, "completely profitable". Any true audiophile will hear feel that variation, and only "RoradCrewWorker's magic yarn tassles (attached to your house's main breaker box) will correct this horrible impurity in sound".

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012
RIGHT OR WRONG, I CAN’T HELP BUT EXPRESS MYSELF LIKE A BRATTY CHILD. DON’T LISTEN TO ME.
The wear a single play of a vinyl will cause is more measurably affecting than literally anything else mocked in this thread, so expecting them to be consistent will just leave you amused :D

But I'm not suggesting one can hear the wear from one play, either. Pretty sure most of them can't "hear" it either - remember they experience it emotionally which is why blind trials don't work.

Penguissimo
Apr 7, 2007

jonathan posted:

Oh and here is some audiophile bullshit.

Don't let those interconnects touch the ground! It's like dropping your country's flag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCFhBmy6XFQ

Hahaha, even the dog knows this is all bullshit.

HATE TROLL TIM
Dec 14, 2006
It makes me angry that these old dudes spend tens of thousands of dollars on audio gear and most likely can't hear for poo poo anyway.

longview
Dec 25, 2006

heh.
Unless you keep your listening room at a constant temperature the frequency drift of the turntable oscillator (for direct drive) or power line frequency will probably be higher than any variation with lp wobble.

The solution is to modify your turntable to accept a rubidium time-base instead of the inferior crystal timing used in commercial turntables.

Ron Burgundy
Dec 24, 2005
This burrito is delicious, but it is filling.
I don't think LP wear is all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes when I get real shitfucky 80's linear trackers through that people want me to "look at" I have two choices one is opening the rear end in a top hat up with those stupid pop pins and re-greasing the guides, the other is just playing the same record on repeat for like 24 hours. Seems to loosen the gantry trackers up nicely. Always use the same record. Still sounds fine.

I have a good enough system to know, my wires don't touch the floor.

Seriously though, is that guy the Cardas of Cardas tonearm wires? Because that's a lot of cartridge camber for someone who hawks $80 cartridge clips.

Ron Burgundy fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Feb 20, 2013

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012
RIGHT OR WRONG, I CAN’T HELP BUT EXPRESS MYSELF LIKE A BRATTY CHILD. DON’T LISTEN TO ME.
LP wear isn't a thing you can hear for a long time, my point was it's at least measurable which is more than can be said for CD paste, quantum boxes, oxygen free copper or the rest of it. :)

But at the same time as telling you realigning the dark matter in the room gave "brighter soundstage" they'll proclaim LP is a superior format despite CD being digitally identical on every play.

teknetik
Jan 13, 2010

SO
JEWISH
I wanted to get earphones for my brother as the ones he has for his iPhone keep falling out when he goes out running. Any recommendations within the $50-70 range? He'll only be using it while in the gym or to run.

RoadCrewWorker
Nov 19, 2007

camels aren't so great

teknetik posted:

I wanted to get earphones for my brother as the ones he has for his iPhone keep falling out when he goes out running. Any recommendations within the $50-70 range? He'll only be using it while in the gym or to run.
I think you're looking for this thread. :)

Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

RoadCrewWorker posted:

I think you're looking for this thread. :)

See what happens when we let the conversation drift into useful discussion of audio stuff!? :arghfist:

snorch
Jul 27, 2009
drat I got to get me a slice of the audiophile bullshit pile. I apprenticed under an audio engineer who did this stuff to some extent, but he really knew what the hell he was doing, and mostly sold either to studios who wanted low-noise spot-on monitoring gear (souped up Korean line conditioners, speakers with massive concrete enclosures weighing 30kg a piece), or audiophiles who acknowledged that tube distortion is good distortion. Without a doubt, his doings rated very low on the audiophool bullshit scale.

I can definitely tell you what sounds good and why it sounds good, and the secret is that how good your ears are means pretty close to jack poo poo in the listening equation. Sure, some people have dog ears, and that's great, more airy highs and snappy transients for you, but the truth is that most recordings are mixed by people with worse ears on worse equipment than the $50,000+ marble-weighted oxygen-free electrostatic tweeter quadruple-shielded rig in your lovely apartment.

The funniest thing about the whole audiophile scene is they seem to take jargon that they heard somewhere that in some way actually does affect your listening experience, and then apply it in the wrongest ways imaginable. Yeah, jitter, phase-smearing, transient degradation, even-order harmonics and all that are all things, but they all won't be affected by the type of cables you buy.

gently caress it, I've found a new hobby, and that's to tear this market a new one.

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012
RIGHT OR WRONG, I CAN’T HELP BUT EXPRESS MYSELF LIKE A BRATTY CHILD. DON’T LISTEN TO ME.
How? Even when you show them verified, repeatable, iron-clad proof they still claim it doesn't matter. Hell, even discussing ways to prove something is literally an instaban on most audiophile forums.

However, it's always entertaining when someone tries as we get to read the responses. :D

snorch
Jul 27, 2009

Khablam posted:

How? Even when you show them verified, repeatable, iron-clad proof they still claim it doesn't matter. Hell, even discussing ways to prove something is literally an instaban on most audiophile forums.

However, it's always entertaining when someone tries as we get to read the responses. :D

I'm talking about introducing a line of products completely opposite of everything on the market now. Currently everything is geared towards getting your sound across as clean as possible, but anyone who has ever been in a recording studio can tell you that's not a favorable listening situation when it comes to enjoying music. Accurate and detailed reproduction is mainly there to reveal flaws in a recording. You wouldn't monitor on a tube amp, because what comes out is fubar, but audiophiles go crazy over them. So the idea is to create a series of devices that deliver instead of another bullshit cable that doesn't. Want detailed airy highs? Have a linear phase presence equalizer. Harmonic richness and subtle overtone enhancement? Tube saturator. Widen your sound stage with the stereo field enhancer. These are very real ways to optimize your listening experience, because chances are whoever mastered that album you're listening to hosed it up anyway.

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


The real beauty of this is that you implement all of these functions with a basic DSP box.

You'll obviously need some tubes sticking out of the cabinet in a ridiculous fashion for the tube saturator, though.

KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Feb 25, 2013

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

One's tubes can never be saturated enough.

qirex
Feb 15, 2001

Audioholics did a review of the Pioneer Andrew Jones speakers and they only listed "con" in the summary is

quote:

Lacks high-end feel & pride of ownership factor
which to me is hilarious because they could have said the same thing in several different ways, like "design kind of ugly" or "cabinet finish feels cheap" [which he did say later in the review] but they decided to state it in the lamest way.

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Khablam
Mar 29, 2012
RIGHT OR WRONG, I CAN’T HELP BUT EXPRESS MYSELF LIKE A BRATTY CHILD. DON’T LISTEN TO ME.

qirex posted:

Audioholics did a review of the Pioneer Andrew Jones speakers and they only listed "con" in the summary is

which to me is hilarious because they could have said the same thing in several different ways, like "design kind of ugly" or "cabinet finish feels cheap" [which he did say later in the review] but they decided to state it in the lamest way.

He's stated it in a way which tells his target audience what they want to know :colbert:

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