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cosmo321 posted:Really? From my experience I've seen more and more devices supporting FLAC, but almost nothing supporting ALAC (that wasn't made by Apple). Yeah when he says "better supported on devices" he's referring exclusively to Apple devices.
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Jun 10, 2014 22:35
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jonathan posted:One of the original tool vinyl releases (undertow?) Had dual track. Half way through the album you either got one song or another live version. Then it rejoined. I think Monty Python did something like this on one of their vinyl albums as well, specifically to troll their fans.
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Jun 10, 2014 22:58
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univbee posted:I think Monty Python did something like this on one of their vinyl albums as well, specifically to troll their fans. Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief.
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Jun 10, 2014 23:34
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baka kaba posted:which is probably bollocks anyway, since probably every single stage of his omg analogue gear will introduce compression as part of its characteristic sound. That or it'll sound like a school project I think he means bit reduction compression. Throw some loudmax and volumax's on the tracks!
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Jun 11, 2014 00:14
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If I remember right, MAD Magazine put out a flexi disc bound into one of their issues that was listed as one track, but actually had 8 concentric tracks with variations of the song that got progressively weirder depending on where you dropped the needle.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:18
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Nintendo Kid posted:If I remember right, MAD Magazine put out a flexi disc bound into one of their issues that was listed as one track, but actually had 8 concentric tracks with variations of the song that got progressively weirder depending on where you dropped the needle. Yeah, I had that. It was called It's a Super Spectacular Day or something like that. I don't know if it was eight tracks but it was definitely more than two.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:24
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strtj posted:Yeah, I had that. It was called It's a Super Spectacular Day or something like that. I don't know if it was eight tracks but it was definitely more than two. It had eight "endings": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mkHdnyr2RU
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Jun 11, 2014 00:31
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KozmoNaut posted:Don't bother. It offers literally nothing of any value over say a Sansa player with Rockbox. There will be no difference in sound quality whatsoever, I promise. I've just looked these up, and they just seem to be audio players for people in the gym. My Note 2 probably sounds better, right? Would I really not be able to tell the difference between 16bit FLAC and 24 bit 96khz FLAC? Is it a scam? drat these audiophiles!
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Jun 11, 2014 05:17
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Alan_Shore posted:I've just looked these up, and they just seem to be audio players for people in the gym. My Note 2 probably sounds better, right? Would I really not be able to tell the difference between 16bit FLAC and 24 bit 96khz FLAC? Is it a scam? drat these audiophiles! You won't be able to tell; this is doubly true if your music is from  because those are often encoded poorly.
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Jun 11, 2014 05:32
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A fun game is to download an old MP3 encoder and try comparing the same song encoded with it and the latest version of LAME using the same bitrate. This MP3 encoder was last updated in 2004 and it just sounds so incredibly awful at 128kbps.
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Jun 11, 2014 05:54
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That was an interesting read! Shatters my preconceptions about FLAC! How about if I bought albums directly from say HDtracks, they must sound better right? Or its very possible to that HD audio is a lie.
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Jun 11, 2014 06:15
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No, the same rule applies and even more-so for HD audio. It has it's uses in the studio, but for home listening, there is zero benefit. More required reading - http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html I think this link gets posted every 5 pages. BANME.sh fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 06:18
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Alan_Shore posted:That was an interesting read! Shatters my preconceptions about FLAC! How about if I bought albums directly from say HDtracks, they must sound better right? Or its very possible to that HD audio is a lie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zwjn7hgFV4 It's really down to how much attention you're going to pay to your music; if you're literally sitting there trying to hear every difference, you want every edge you can get with accuracy -- but most people don't do this; hell, I record someone as a serious hobby and I don't even care about it too much. People aren't focusing 100% of their conscious brainpower to listen to music, which is why I say it doesn't matter. People "know" that compression is bad, but there's so much variation of what "compression" means to different people. To some, it's poor data compression, displayed best by the hissing/shimmering cymbals and ill-defined bass of early 2000's Napster files; to others, it's the compression of dynamic range, or loudness (which is a whole different  ); others even think that compression is some kind of mystical quality that magic wires and vacuum tubes eliminate -- this one is the only one that's completely bullshit.I have heard (I don't know where they are now) some tracks recorded at 16 kbps that are utterly clean and clear, but they were mastered flawlessly, and only had one instrument; I have also heard FLAC's that sound like poo poo because they originally were an mp3 Limewire encode from 2004.
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Jun 11, 2014 06:33
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Alan_Shore posted:That was an interesting read! Shatters my preconceptions about FLAC! How about if I bought albums directly from say HDtracks, they must sound better right? Or its very possible to that HD audio is a lie. Some of the HDTrack releases have better-sounding mixes than what you would find on the CD or iTunes, but as near as I can tell there is no way to figure out which tracks do and which tracks don't. me your dad posted:I can't think of a better thread to ask about this. Capital Audio Fest is a pretty small show, both in the number of rooms and the attendance numbers. The small number of rooms is kind of a letdown, but the low attendance numbers means that if you like something, you can generally listen for a long time without bothering anybody. The size of the show seems to keep away the really big players, although to me this is almost a plus. You likely won't see the obscenely expensive gear that you would at T.H.E. Show or RMAF, but the owners and designers you'll meet are usually very personable and open to questions/discussions. Looking at the exhibitor list, there are a few rooms that would be pretty interesting. Audio Note UK can be a good listen if the presenter is willing to have fun with the music (they sometimes have a guy who seems a tad too preoccupied with "audiophile-quality" classical music). The Classic Audio room is always a blast. I recall almost always hearing great classic rock from their rooms, with prodigious amounts of very good bass. I personally would enjoy the Zu Audio room, but I'm biased, since I own a pair and they're a local company. For $10 it would be a no brainer. For $20, it's a bit tougher, but to me it would be worth it. Shows are the best way to hear a lot of systems back to back, which makes it easy to determine what kind of sound you like, and what kind of sound you absolutely want to avoid in the future. It only took a few hours attending my first show to determine that I hate sibilance, generally dislike horns, and am better off avoiding ribbon tweeters.
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Jun 11, 2014 07:41
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I think by no compression they mean the album will have dynamic range in volume. Anti loudness war. The sad part is, if they want lots of dynamic range, CD is a better format than vinyl.
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Jun 11, 2014 08:54
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Wasabi the J posted:It's really down to how much attention you're going to pay to your music; if you're literally sitting there trying to hear every difference, you want every edge you can get with accuracy -- but most people don't do this; hell, I record someone as a serious hobby and I don't even care about it too much. People aren't focusing 100% of their conscious brainpower to listen to music, which is why I say it doesn't matter. Even if you're trying your very best, even in an acoustically perfect listening environment and even with the best equipment in the world, your ears will not be able to distinguish between a HD Audio version and a CD-quality version of the same track (based on the same master). Higher sample rates extend the frequency response upwards, but no one can hear above 20kHz anyway. Even if they could, content above 20kHz is severely limited, because all musical instruments throughout history have been designed for human hearing, not superhuman hearing. The usual audiophile wank excuse is that a lot of instruments produce high-frequency overtones. They do produce overtones, but at so severely attenuated levels that you need specialized measurement equipment to even detect them. Higher bit rates only expand the available dynamic range available. The available dynamic range of CD-quality audio is commonly stated as 96dB (110+dB with noise shaping). That's the difference between an anechoic chamber and a jackhammer at 1m. For 24bit, replace the jackhammer at 1m with a fighter jet taking off at 30m. That's 20dB above the threshold of pain, BTW. In other words, to fully utilize the dynamic range of 24bit audio in a normal listening room, you would literally have to make your ears bleed or worse. Not to mention that you would require an amplifier capable of delivering tens of kilowatts, and of course speakers made to take that much power. High sample rate and high bit rate audio only makes sense when you're editing sound, in order to avoid trunkation and quantization artifacts as you're raising and lowering levels and adding effects. For playback, even CD quality audio can be considered overkill. Even the most dynamic recordings ever made of classical music reach only 40-50dB of dynamic range, far from what the CD format is capable of. It's much more important to focus on good mastering practices and ending the practice of excessive audio compression (as in "loudness war", not "mp3") than it is to wank around with HD audio bullshit. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 09:03
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Don't forget as well that the ultra high frequency stuff that can be detected subliminally is always linked to stress and fatigue. The low end of the hearing spectrum, 16hz and below... That's the fun frequencies to attempt to duplicate. Olympus has Fallen has a scene that reaches down to 0hz. Yeah, DC.
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Jun 11, 2014 09:12
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jonathan posted:Olympus has Fallen has a scene that reaches down to 0hz. Yeah, DC. 
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Jun 11, 2014 09:22
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Yeah but my speakers can do 0hz. All speakers can. 
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Jun 11, 2014 09:40
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Wasabi the J posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zwjn7hgFV4 I do notice that a lot of music, especially pop music, from the late 90's and early 2000's has kind of a poor mp3 quality sound too it. I used to blame it on the fact I had an mp3 version only. However, with Amazon deals, I've nabbed a number of them and did the encode myself. The poor sound remains. Timberlakes -(On No) What You Got exhibits it, and Beyonce's Crazy In Love both drive me nuts. jonathan posted:Don't forget as well that the ultra high frequency stuff that can be detected subliminally is always linked to stress and fatigue. True silence? HFX fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Jun 18, 2014 |
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Jun 18, 2014 21:59
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HFX posted:I do notice that a lot of music, especially pop music, from the late 90's and early 2000's has kind of a poor mp3 quality sound too it. I used to blame it on the fact I had an mp3 version only. However, with Amazon deals, I've nabbed a number of them and did the encode myself. The poor sound remains. Timberlakes -(On No) What You Got exhibits it, and Beyonce's Crazy In Love both drive me nuts. quote:True silence? More like "park the speaker cone fully extended and burn out the voice coil". Thankfully, most equipment (active subs, at least) have subsonic filters built in to prevent that kind of damage.
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Jun 18, 2014 22:09
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Nuh-uh! 0Hz is either pressurising your room or making it a partial vacuum  http://www.rotarywoofer.com/
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Jun 18, 2014 23:23
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Waldo P Barnstormer posted:Nuh-uh! 0Hz is either pressurising your room or making it a partial vacuum There was a guy on avsforum who had one of those installed a number of years back. He had also excavated under his garage's foundation to build his theatre, so over-the-top was kind of his thing. He said that when he had it all the way up the first time, he had a few neighbors wondering if there was an earthquake.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:21
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TheMadMilkman posted:There was a guy on avsforum who had one of those installed a number of years back. He had also excavated under his garage's foundation to build his theatre, so over-the-top was kind of his thing. He said that when he had it all the way up the first time, he had a few neighbors wondering if there was an earthquake. This man is now a supervillain, yes? I mean earthquake machine, it kind of follows. And it would be a step up from being an audiophile.
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Jun 19, 2014 03:44
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grack posted:This man is now a supervillain, yes? Found a link where he details the install and posts some frequency response graphs. http://bassment.wordpress.com/page/2/
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Jun 19, 2014 03:52
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Wasn't there also a similar guy who was absolutely obsessed with bass response who ended up killing himself? His house pretty much looked like a speaker by the end of it all.
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Jun 19, 2014 09:23
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KozmoNaut posted:Over-compressed and squashed sound, from mashing everything into the last 2-3dB of dynamic range, in order to sound as loud as possible on the radio. Thankfully, the trend seems to be reversing. I assume you would have had to use a generator to create that. The question is why would you? As to going down to sub 20hz or more. Are we trying to communicate with elephants now? I understand making things shake. It is just that I don't particularly like making cracks in my house.
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Jun 19, 2014 15:09
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Custom DACs...  http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/76815710-post8.html
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Jun 26, 2014 15:31
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Jerry Cotton posted:When a person says they listen to rock they generally don't mean they listen to Yello Yello's Flag was the go-to "rock" demo disc at my local shop in the late '80s/early '90s. It's tailor-made for the job, with a super-clean sound, insane dynamics that are obvious from the start of the first track, and instrumentation that covers all the obvious "rock" territory, so it showed off a $50,000 system like nobody's business. It also had the advantage (for the sales people at least) of being material most people weren't really familiar with, so it was harder for customers to pick out anything that sounded "off" to them.
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Jun 26, 2014 16:14
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Lazlo Nibble posted:covers all the obvious "rock" territory Yeah just no.
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Jun 26, 2014 17:25
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Jerry Cotton posted:Yeah just no.
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Jun 27, 2014 00:45
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KozmoNaut posted:Higher sample rates extend the frequency response upwards, but no one can hear above 20kHz anyway. Even if they could, content above 20kHz is severely limited, because all musical instruments throughout history have been designed for human hearing, not superhuman hearing. HFX posted:I do notice that a lot of music, especially pop music, from the late 90's and early 2000's has kind of a poor mp3 quality sound too it. I used to blame it on the fact I had an mp3 version only. However, with Amazon deals, I've nabbed a number of them and did the encode myself. The poor sound remains. Timberlakes -(On No) What You Got exhibits it, and Beyonce's Crazy In Love both drive me nuts.
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Jun 27, 2014 03:33
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Lazlo Nibble posted:It's got guitar, bass, drums, keyboards/synths and vocals, so I'm not sure what typical "rock" instrumentation it's missing unless you think a sweet sweet Clarence Clemons tenor sax solo is mandatory. This reminds me of when you hit the 'Rock' accompaniment on a Casio keyboard and you're immediately disappointed
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Jun 27, 2014 04:09
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EL BROMANCE posted:Wasn't there also a similar guy who was absolutely obsessed with bass response who ended up killing himself? His house pretty much looked like a speaker by the end of it all. Yeah, I posted that guy's story in GBS a year ago or so. He was on AVSForum but can't remember the name now. He used an "infinite baffle" setup which essentially uses a wall or ceiling or floor as the mount, and the connecting room/basment/attic as the speaker enclosure.
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Jun 28, 2014 07:21
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HFX posted:I assume you would have had to use a generator to create that. The question is why would you? A lot of us get a kick out of low low bass and also the typical male macho ego trip of knowing your basement theater can post better numbers than any professional public venue. I'm not just like that with home theater though. I pretty much do that with anything I own. Cars, 4x4's, bicycles, my snowblower. I modify it until it's over the top awesome and then when the initial fun wears off it becomes impractical and I sell it or forget about it. Also check this out: http://data-bass.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/134-the-longest-most-intense-bass-scenes-from-movies/
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Jun 28, 2014 07:32
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jonathan posted:A lot of us get a kick out of low low bass and also the typical male macho ego trip of knowing your basement theater can post better numbers than any professional public venue. I think it's something primal. Low bass and the rumbling and shaking that accompanies it suggests power and something to be in awe of, and that tickles a part of our primitive brains in a particular way. Everything in nature that produces deep bass is something to fear and respect. Earthquakes, thunder, rockfalls, giant icebergs breaking off, that sort of thing. Of course there's the obligatory penis measuring contest that's embedded into basically everything that men do, but I think it's mostly about the awe of something bigger and more powerful than ourselves.
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Jun 28, 2014 08:05
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KozmoNaut posted:I think it's something primal. Low bass and the rumbling and shaking that accompanies it suggests power and something to be in awe of, and that tickles a part of our primitive brains in a particular way. Everything in nature that produces deep bass is something to fear and respect. Earthquakes, thunder, rockfalls, giant icebergs breaking off, that sort of thing. thanks. You posted that perfectly!
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Jun 28, 2014 08:11
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If this guy could buy surround sound vinyl I think he would. http://dangerousminds.net/comments/blu_ray_audio_wont_save_music_biz_but_gourmet_audiophile_format I get the love for 5.1, I mean I haven't experienced it but mastering music to take advantage of it makes a lot of sense, but there's a fair bit of audiophoolery mixed in here. quote:the majors began releasing 5.1 surround and high resolution audio in 1999 with the introduction of the Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) which allowed for the reproduction of DSD audio streams that had the same “warmth” as vinyl.
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Jul 1, 2014 06:12
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Always remember that vinyl warmth = mastering against a response curve made in the 50s to account for lovely players and shoddy record cutting.
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Jul 1, 2014 06:19
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I'm considering buying this. I've heard similar hardware based systems, and I love the idea of doing EQ in software before any conversion to analog: http://www.sonicstudio.com/amarra/amarrasymphony_irc It makes some audiophiles very, very angry.
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Jul 1, 2014 07:20
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