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Panty Saluter posted:This is actually a huge hi-fi selling point I was going to add that hearing your friends talk to you is easier with earplugs too, the music is the same volume, your friends aren't shouting louder yet it's still clearer than without. The only thing I could personally put it down to is a combo of reverb and distortion among other stuff I have no clue about. Really no idea to be honest, just what I've experienced. There's definitely a feeling that distorted = loud though, while I had my system running 116db I did have a couple of people suggest it could be louder which is true but 116db recorded by a reference mic and a hand held SPL meter is still 116db, surely?! All I know is the world of sound is weird which is why this thread exists and why people piss money away on gadgets and gizmos. 
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Jul 21, 2016 16:27
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Oh man, everything in this god drat thread  And I thought the soundcard I bought for my PC was ridiculously overdesigned.
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Jul 22, 2016 11:21
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wayne curr posted:Oh man, everything in this god drat thread I'm the "studio grade content creation" next to the picture of unbalanced connections
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Jul 22, 2016 13:03
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Panty Saluter posted:I'm the "studio grade content creation" next to the picture of unbalanced connections I'm the "studio grade" next to anything made by Creative.
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Jul 22, 2016 13:33
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 Notice how the rear end-end (the plate that screws into the back of your PC case) is also gold plated? 
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Jul 22, 2016 13:58
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You reckon there's a market for audiophile grade gold plated PC cases?
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Jul 22, 2016 14:34
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Those are 6.3mm jack plugs next to the RCA plugs, they might be balanced outputs.
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Jul 22, 2016 16:03
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KozmoNaut posted:Those are 6.3mm jack plugs next to the RCA plugs, they might be balanced outputs. Probably, but it's still driven by Creative  I miss my old Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. That thing just squashed noise, it was a real revelation after the screechy, awful output of my old Live! card
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Jul 22, 2016 17:44
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Panty Saluter posted:Probably, but it's still driven by Creative  What is the go to card now anyway? High end asus on sale? Onboard is supposed to have improved by leaps and bounds and a dac would fix a lot, I heard the asus is supposed to be more interference resistant...
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Jul 25, 2016 13:52
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I've been using a home studio audio interface for as long as I've had a desktop, but if you're not into having an outboard DAC you can probably just use motherboard sound and it'll be fine. If you are getting noise or if you want surround then you can put in pretty much any current sound card and get decent quality.
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Jul 25, 2016 16:26
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galahan posted:
Outboard is the common recommendation for those who actually want an improvement over motherboard audio. ASUS has some technically good products, but their customer service is so bad and dealing with their warranty can be so terrible that they are probably not a good choice.
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Jul 25, 2016 22:17
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If you don't need positional audio for gaming the Fiio E10k is an excellent choice.
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Jul 26, 2016 02:01
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What about for those who find their audio gear is limited by the power supply and seek the manually adjustable DC rectifier power supply that will cause everything connected to it to deliver "the ultimate in sound quality" that has "never been equaled" by everything from mercury rectifiers through selenium and up to bridge rectifiers, active bridge rectifiers and so on? Why, it's coupling an old wire wound variable resistor to tungar bulbs, a NOS analog voltmeter (because a new one would be unreasonable) and a dial so the user can adjust the DC voltage themselves! I suppose the next step is a vibrating rectifier and then maybe a motor-generator spinning away to power some amplifiers. Luckily, for those into horn speakers they have an ultimate horn speaker with special conical horns. Their whole thing is that conical horns are the absolute best over every other horn type, how most audio cable is snake oil, but then they drop a "but this $800/4ft and up cable is very good and worth it" and apparently their speakers are 60% efficient compared to the .1% that other speakers are. there is just the slight issue that conical horns actually seem to have issues with wavefronts being disturbed and various higher order mode issues even at frequencies lower than what would load it. That said if I had a box of parts and scrap wood I'd build a tungar bulb powered tube amplifier with conical horns because I have very bad taste and like some aspects of the look of their gear despite the very real performance and part availability issues those will have. On a related possibly audiophile tangent, how is Arkhipov's Laboratory? The only stuff I can find on their gear is a head-fi article praising them and the website of the maker with some product photos and mostly Russian descriptions, so I'm very unsure if they fall into audiophoolery or are just fairly ordinary tube amplifiers with some marketing added in the form of audiophile grade components but are decent enough as far as tubes go.
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Aug 8, 2016 21:18
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grack posted:If you don't need positional audio for gaming the Fiio E10k is an excellent choice. There is software for that. I got Razer's surround app for free with a mouse and it works fine with my Schiit DAC. Turning positional audio on and off before and after gaming sessions with the godawful Razer Synapse interface is too much of a bother though. 
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Aug 9, 2016 22:48
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evilcat posted:What about for those who find their audio gear is limited by the power supply and seek the manually adjustable DC rectifier power supply that will cause everything connected to it to deliver "the ultimate in sound quality" that has "never been equaled" by everything from mercury rectifiers through selenium and up to bridge rectifiers, active bridge rectifiers and so on? the one problem i have with the free $800 amp/dac combo amazon's incompetence got me is that the power supply is this ancient toroidal linear power supply design that makes it a space heater it's nice in the winter, not so good in the summer 
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Aug 9, 2016 23:17
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Have a warm steaming pile of audiophilia: http://ultrafi.com/a-little-side-trip-into-esoterica/
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Aug 10, 2016 23:00
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I really can't figure out what's happening in that story. He just yanked an ethernet cable and found that his wifi connection gave better audio somehow? Who runs audio through ethernet??
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Aug 11, 2016 13:21
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well why not posted:I really can't figure out what's happening in that story. He just yanked an ethernet cable and found that his wifi connection gave better audio somehow? Who runs audio through ethernet?? Someone with a ground loop, probably
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Aug 11, 2016 13:28
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I ended up buying some Dynaudio Emit M10s and the Emit center from the UK, and saved a few dolla dolla bills thanks to Brexit. Of course now I need to get them and make sure everything is ok with them, so there's still a chance this was a terrible idea. I also backed the Heaven 11 Billie amp on kickstarter, which again could be a giant comedy of errors.
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Aug 12, 2016 16:45
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Ooh that's a good point. Time to scope some British hifi. If the shipping doesn't kill me...
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Aug 12, 2016 17:05
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well why not posted:I really can't figure out what's happening in that story. He just yanked an ethernet cable and found that his wifi connection gave better audio somehow? Who runs audio through ethernet?? Even better, he was listening to music stored on his local hard drive, but somehow pulling the ethernet cable made it sound better.
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Aug 12, 2016 22:40
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Konstantin posted:Even better, he was listening to music stored on his local hard drive, but somehow pulling the ethernet cable made it sound better. Yep, voting ground loop.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:26
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Panty Saluter posted:Yep, voting ground loop. Correctly implemented Ethernet is already isolated from the ground planes of the connected devices, precisely to avoid these sorts of problems. You're buying into his claim that the sound quality actually improved, which I highly doubt. Especially on such a massive scale as he claims. It's just bullshit from an audiophile who doesn't understand digital audio. Unless he has measurements to show, it's all just wild-rear end guessing on his part It's blatantly obvious when reading his assertions that "computer and IT people" cannot possibly understand music on the same level as analog engineers ("artists and artisans"), that he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Aug 13, 2016 |
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Aug 13, 2016 09:32
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The IEEE standards for Ethernet have mandated electrical isolation since 1990 and you'd be hard pressed to find a device that didn't conform.
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Aug 13, 2016 11:01
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KozmoNaut posted:Correctly implemented Ethernet My, don't we have a lot of faith in audiophile gear!
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Aug 13, 2016 12:01
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Well, I would assume that a Mac Mini has a correctly implemented Ethernet port, even though it is Apple
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Aug 13, 2016 12:16
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KozmoNaut posted:Well, I would assume that a Mac Mini has a correctly implemented Ethernet port, even though it is Apple So trusting! Also, it's probably some dumbass audiophile "hot rodded" thing.
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Aug 13, 2016 12:26
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He would have obsessively detailed every single little modification to it, were that the case. If there's one thing to be said about audiophiles, it's that they're all rather predictable.
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Aug 13, 2016 12:40
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KozmoNaut posted:Well, I would assume that a Mac Mini has a correctly implemented Ethernet port, even though it is Apple The 3.5mm analog side of my iMac kicked out the most horrendous noise to my amp to the point where I had to use an optical cable and put it through a DAC instead just to get clean audio. I don't know whether my case was a one off or not, but there could be something up with his hardware.
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Aug 13, 2016 17:18
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There was talk of this in the relics GBS thread and got my wondering: do you guys use the EQ on your PC / phone? I always have and always will put it on Rock, immediately (apart from my Cowon M2 which has some ridiculous custom setting I found online). Do you just leave everything flat or use presets? Are presets the devil to an audiophile?
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Aug 14, 2016 07:35
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I use the "bass punch" setting on my Moto X for the built in speaker, and flat for headphones
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Aug 14, 2016 09:46
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My AV receiver doesn't offer more than a sound boost to any pair of speakers or to the front speaker, so I don't really apply anything there. My phone I can't be bothered, and for my PC the speakers have an issue where the left speaker cuts in and out and has varying levels of static through one part of the volume range, and it's the only part where it's loud enough to hear yet quiet enough to not be painfully loud. EQ won't save those speakers, but I probably will apply something when I replace them with a setup that works.
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Aug 14, 2016 19:35
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Oh right. On the main stereo (PC, CD player, 360, turntable and so on), I have: -8.5dB at 45Hz (Q 4.41) -5dB at 75Hz (Q 5.71) -3.5dB at 150Hz (Q 7.38) -4.5dB at 190Hz (Q 7.38) -3.5dB at 335Hz (Q 0.94) For room correction, mostly narrow cuts to lessen room modes. Of course, that makes everything very even and awesome at reference levels, but since I live in an apartment and can't play at reference level all the time, I've also got a ~3-4dB bass boost dialed in on my preamplifier, centered around 100Hz, just to make everything come alive at lower volumes. The reason I have that on my preamp and not on the DSP crossover along with the room correction, is that I can turn it off and on again using the remote control. On the secondary stereo in the bedroom, I have the selectable mute set to -30dB, in order to get the volume control in the correct range to properly taper off the loudness, which I have enabled. It's a little heavy-handed on the bass on my Akai AM-2600 (like +8dB or something), so I knock off -4dB with the bass control. Now it's just the way I like it  On the stereo in the kitchen, I don't bother. I move around so much when cooking and the bass changes wildly from the middle of the room to near the walls, so it's hopeless trying to adjust it.
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Aug 14, 2016 20:01
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I don't use a phone for audio, I have a Sansa Clip+ and I have that set to flat but with a 2db bump in bass when using my headphones (DT770s)
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Aug 15, 2016 09:32
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Alan_Shore posted:There was talk of this in the relics GBS thread and got my wondering: do you guys use the EQ on your PC / phone? I always have and always will put it on Rock, immediately (apart from my Cowon M2 which has some ridiculous custom setting I found online). Do you just leave everything flat or use presets? Are presets the devil to an audiophile? I'm a neophyte and don't use any equalizer on my PC. I use the 3.5 jack split to RCA into my NAD receiver. I have bass and treble dials and a loudness button. Sometimes I boost the bass but usually I leave it flat. I do like the loudness feature unless I'm already playing my music really loudly. From what I understand, the loudness feature will boost low and high frequencies at lower volumes, which makes it easier to hear details. It makes a big difference with my bookshelf speakers, especially for drum details in rock music.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:17
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Filthy Hans posted:From what I understand, the loudness feature will boost low and high frequencies at lower volumes, which makes it easier to hear details. It makes a big difference with my bookshelf speakers, especially for drum details in rock music. That is pretty much correct. The reason for doing so is that human hearing is less sensitive to low and high frequencies than it is to middle frequencies, so music has a tendency to sound 'thin' and boring at low volumes. The loudness function is meant to compensate for that. On some amps, the loudness compensation tapers off as you increase the volume.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:23
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A feature sometimes known in modern AV receivers as "Audyssey Dynamic EQ". Not a bad thing for those of us in apartments.
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Aug 15, 2016 18:26
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As audiophile  goes, not all that expensive but just the samehttps://www.engadget.com/2016/08/15/japan-audiophiles-install-own-electricity-poles/ WSJ via Engadget posted:When Takeo Morita worried that "tainted" power would affect the quality of his tunes, he installed a roughly $10,000 utility pole with his own transformer to get more electricity straight from the grid.
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Aug 15, 2016 18:38
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Idea: Sell diesel generators for audiophiles, using marketing bullshit about how electricity from Big Power can't be trusted not to taint the sound. Also recommend that for optimal quality they only run it on your brand name audiophile grade diesel.
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Aug 15, 2016 19:21
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Qwijib0 posted:As audiophile I came to post this article but from WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-for-music-lovers-who-have-it-all-a-personal-utility-pole-1471189463 I'm impressed they'd even bother with such a request! quote:A Japanese magazine, “Power Sources & Accessories,” specializes in power sourcing for audio equipment, including the deployment of private poles. quote:Mr. Morita, the Queen fan, decided to get his own pole after visiting a Tokyo audiophile who had one. “We listened to rock and vocals sounded dramatically better.” Check this other private pole dude out in his listening room; 
Olympic Mathlete fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Aug 15, 2016 |
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Aug 15, 2016 21:53
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