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shortspecialbus posted:Sorry - I should have clarified that I meant the idea of using a marker on the edge of a cd (or anywhere) actually *improving* the sound of it is ludicrous. I wasn't thinking along the lines of writing on CD-Rs or anything like that. It would certainly be possible to use a marker to wreck a CD, I would say, but you're never going to make it sound better with one. No, you were very clear and I was just adding to the topic. I wrote "has nothing to do with making the disc read better" to say it wasn't related to your exact post. On the same subject, here's a photo I took of one of my old gold CDs that has no protective coating. The photo is dated from 2004 and you can see corrosion in the shape of various fingerprints on the disc, as well as the edge of the SA forums from back then on my CRT. That disc is packed away in my shed somewhere so for all I know it's now just a piece of clear plastic with black writing on it. e: not a great film, but one or two stellar tracks on that album.
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Dec 4, 2018 08:25
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Christ almighty, and I thought all my rotting PDO Blackburn discs were bad. 
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Dec 4, 2018 17:01
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I leave The Absolute Sound in my feedly just for laughs. Here's a $60,000 DAC and "digital transport" comboquote:There is also a “Pure Audio” button—a legacy of the Oppo transport mechanism that MSB is using in a greatly souped-up configuration—which I would advise you to press. (Among other things it turns off the Transport’s LED display, which, as is usually the case when you turn off displays, improves the sound.)
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Dec 18, 2018 22:45
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How much should a standalone CD player with just bit-perfect digital output actually cost, without bullshit? Assuming good build quality that feels solid, and mechanically lasts 10 years or more.
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Dec 18, 2018 22:57
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nielsm posted:How much should a standalone CD player with just bit-perfect digital output actually cost, without bullshit? Assuming good build quality that feels solid, and mechanically lasts 10 years or more. It looks like ~$300 new for a Cambridge, NAD, Yamaha or Integra. My old 1990s college Discman with optical out was bit perfect [unless you picked it up and shook it  ]
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Dec 18, 2018 23:03
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Any $10 no-name optical drive from the bottom shelf at Fry’s can reliably produce bit-perfect digital output. It’s been a solved problem since the 1980s.
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Dec 18, 2018 23:45
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But how can you really be sure unless its a 1996 oppo?
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Dec 19, 2018 00:10
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Just got started reading the thread and lmao I have a very first issue PS1, curiosity says I should see what the hell is going on with that.
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Dec 19, 2018 00:15
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JebanyPedal posted:Just got started reading the thread and lmao I have a very first issue PS1, curiosity says I should see what the hell is going on with that. I know I've said this a billion times before, but the video output noise in the PS1's audio was not subtle. How that doesn't automatically disqualify it from being hi-fi is utterly beyond me
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Dec 19, 2018 00:54
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Uh it adds a warm timbre to the musicality of the soundstage duh
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Dec 19, 2018 00:57
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Lazlo Nibble posted:Any $10 no-name optical drive from the bottom shelf at Fry’s can reliably produce bit-perfect digital output. It’s been a solved problem since the 1980s.
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Dec 19, 2018 00:57
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Wanky audiophile bar/restaurant in London https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l9np3i5xsQ "...we've had producers come in, play their own music and hear elements of it they didn't realise were there" At what point is a system bad considering it's now adding things to a production that the producer never intended?
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Dec 20, 2018 11:15
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Panty Saluter posted:I know I've said this a billion times before, but the video output noise in the PS1's audio was not subtle. How that doesn't automatically disqualify it from being hi-fi is utterly beyond me It's because the earliest models had a separate stereo output that apparently is hooked directly to the audio hardware, bypassing the crappy PlayStation A/V port thing, or something. I've never understood it at all. They go on about the PS1 having an analogue warmth to its sound and the apparently super high quality DSP inside the thing and it's just... why? Isn't the point of CD audio to be as transparent as possible?
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Dec 20, 2018 12:38
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I had one of the first gens with the RCA and it sucked too. Visualizer was cool though
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Dec 20, 2018 15:21
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Olympic Mathlete posted:At what point is a system bad considering it's now adding things to a production that the producer never intended?
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Dec 20, 2018 23:36
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Just for comparison I want to post this review of the Cambridge Audio Edge A integrated amp, mostly because Stereophile actually measures equipment. The Edge components were a "no holds barred" effort from Cambridge to make 50th anniversary gear that sounded as good as they could make it. The thing maxes out at 0.015% THD while this $25,000 Bel Canto barely gets that low at any point. It's not as powerful as the Bel Canto but still, dead silent. It's still 5 grand and it's stupid to spend that much but at least you're actually getting high performance. Of course there's also an accompanying editorial that talks about how awesome a lot of the stuff they review that measures really badly sounds, honest. Please keep buying ads.
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Dec 20, 2018 23:57
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I measure a lot of stuff for work. It's at the point now where anything wired is pretty good, and Bluetooth is okay for most. If you really get up your own rear end about stuff, get a dsp or eq
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Dec 21, 2018 00:21
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GonadTheBallbarian posted:If you really get up your own rear end about stuff, get a dsp or eq In the mind of the hardcore audiophile signal processing [even EQ for some] is equivalent to admitting defeat.
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Dec 21, 2018 00:29
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Lmao then they have to deal with room effects
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Dec 21, 2018 03:36
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Malcolm XML posted:Lmao then they have to deal with room effects Not if you get one of these 
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Dec 21, 2018 13:55
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Too much like
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Dec 21, 2018 14:21
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A Lone Girl Flier posted:Not if you get one of these What the gently caress is this.
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Dec 22, 2018 00:32
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The BDSM thread is thataway my dude
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Dec 22, 2018 00:33
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That's a HeadClamp™. It allows the listener to repeatably position their ears spatially, preventing aberrations in frequency and phase response. Once a target curve is dialled in, the HeadClamp™ effectively eschews the need for room treatment, contributing to a positive WAF.
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Dec 22, 2018 01:57
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 "For years I've loved my HeadClamp™, but I always felt it was missing a little something. After I got used to the mild discomfort from the installation of the cranial pins, I really began to appreciate the transparency of the carbon fibre support rods and the warmth of the fleece lining." - John Audioman, HeadClamp™ Platinum User A Lone Girl Flier fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Dec 22, 2018 |
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Dec 22, 2018 02:24
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A Lone Girl Flier posted:
Holy gently caress whoever wins this thread deserves this as a Avi/text combo.
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Dec 22, 2018 03:10
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Oh thank gently caress that's not real
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Dec 22, 2018 05:45
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I don't know if this qualifies or not, but NPR aired a short item yesterday about the record show scene and they had this guy share his wisdom on compact discs vs vinyl: "...Compact disc is a big lie. It's 'compact' - you can hear the hollowness of it. So yeah, vinyl has always been the best." Because obviously the name of the medium, coupled with its diminutive size, would affect the quality of its sound. Why don't they just make bigger records for higher quality? me your dad fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Jan 3, 2019 |
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Jan 3, 2019 15:52
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Audiophiles: somehow still mad about CDs after four decades
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Jan 3, 2019 15:56
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Panty Saluter posted:Audiophiles: somehow still mad about CDs after four decades I think they're actually mad about the lack of DSD products.
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Jan 3, 2019 16:24
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It's an amazing coincidence that the people who sell 50 cent pieces of stamped vinyl for twenty dollars think it's the best way to listen to music.
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Jan 3, 2019 17:53
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GnarlyCharlie4u posted:I think they're actually mad about the lack of DSD products. or music. even the cheapest dacs are supporting it, but nobody, save for tidal, wants to mess with it.
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Jan 3, 2019 20:24
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5-HT posted:or music. even the cheapest dacs are supporting it, but nobody, save for tidal, wants to mess with it. Tidal doesn't even use DSD, they use MQA which is even weirder and much less common for DACs to support. My fancy rear end DAC can do 768/32 and DSD256 but can't do a thing for MQA unfolding because of how stupidly proprietary it is.
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Jan 4, 2019 07:55
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BurritoJustice posted:Tidal doesn't even use DSD, they use MQA which is even weirder and much less common for DACs to support. MQA isn't an audio signal encoding, it's just a DRM scheme?
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Jan 4, 2019 08:27
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nielsm posted:MQA isn't an audio signal encoding, it's just a DRM scheme? True, but it is also a way of packing PCM audio. So yeah, it's not really equivalent to PCM or DSD but it is relevant as content that requires dedicated hardware. Tidal masters by default "unfolds" the MQA stream in software into 24b/96KHz PCM, but if you have a DAC that supports MQA in hardware then it can pass the stream to the DAC directly which then is capable of playback at a substantially higher sample rate (up to 384KHz). Manufacturers have to pay not-insignificant licensing for the pleasure. I also think this is pretty irrelevant and snake oil and I pretty much exclusively listen to 16/44.1.
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Jan 4, 2019 11:20
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BurritoJustice posted:True, but it is also a way of packing PCM audio. So yeah, it's not really equivalent to PCM or DSD but it is relevant as content that requires dedicated hardware. Tidal masters by default "unfolds" the MQA stream in software into 24b/96KHz PCM, but if you have a DAC that supports MQA in hardware then it can pass the stream to the DAC directly which then is capable of playback at a substantially higher sample rate (up to 384KHz). Manufacturers have to pay not-insignificant licensing for the pleasure. It's 100% snake oil. That higher sample rate just gets you the ability to accurately reproduce frequencies that you can't hear.
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Jan 4, 2019 12:20
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Blue Footed Booby posted:It's 100% snake oil. That higher sample rate just gets you the ability to accurately reproduce frequencies that you can't hear. No, it also has very meager improvements in frequencies some people can hear. Now the way that MQA does things, a lot of that advantage which is mostly useful for literal audio research scenarios gets discarded to fit the MQA encoding into other data streams, as they do.
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Jan 4, 2019 12:27
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Ridiculous audio files: mostly useful for literal audio research
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Jan 4, 2019 14:51
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fishmech posted:No, it also has very meager improvements in frequencies some people can hear. Some people think they can talk to god.
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Jan 4, 2019 14:59
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Anyone follow Resident Advisor on Facebook? They posted a story they did about cabling and the difference it makes and some of the quotes are HILARIOUS. https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2974?fbclid=IwAR002jkF1ASeURZZr0JB--KUKN-0EgwdgoUZUBZPeqMZpkJvlP_PqFfXKv4 quote:"If we listen to the first minute of a reference track, change the cable and re-listen to the same portion of the track and so on," Miyoshi says. "We have a tendency to naturally feel that something has changed just by virtue of the act of physically changing the cable. You shouldn't listen to too much of the track, perhaps just the intro, and judge how the feeling changes between cables. If you listen all the way through to the chorus, there could be large variations in the mood and volume of the track, making it difficult to judge neutrally." quote:Cables are built from materials like copper, silver and gold, which each have subtly different tonal characteristics. However, discerning these differences is often a subjective exercise that many people still can't agree on. Some people say copper is thick and dense, leading to a narrow image. Gold allegedly adds a sheen to the sound, while silver's characteristic is smooth and low on resonance.
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Jan 28, 2019 12:10
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