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Speaking of horrendously expensive music players that do nothing from CES 2015, what the hell is the Astell & Kern AK500N meant to do? Costs £9000 and...it rips CDs fast and slow...?
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Jan 14, 2015 06:39
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The audiophile company who designed and manufactured this product, Ayre Acoustics, refuses to release the device's output impedance and claims that output impedance has no impact on audio quality. There's really no chance that the Pono is going to sound good when these sort of comments are being made by the designer and manufacturer.
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Jan 28, 2015 10:58
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Wait, the Pono is running Android 2.2? That's at least 4 years ago holy poo poo.
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Jan 28, 2015 19:50
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KozmoNaut posted:And that's enough borderline-audiophile bullshit from me. I just love these headphones. They're not for everyone, but they're definitely for me. Yeah, the Beyerdynamic DT880 are seriously top notch headphones. A lot of headphones have garbage transient response, especially in the bass, but the DT880 are one of the few headphones that don't have this issue. Its so good that you can easily tackle that treble spike that some people find bothersome by EQing down the 5kHz - 10kHz region by a few decibels. Were the DT880 born as a studio headphone? Its funny how to bothered to put damping material into the DT880 while completely omit this with their audiophile T series.
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Feb 2, 2015 15:02
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synthetik posted:Probably the wrong thread to ask, but I currently use a pair of DT990s - is there a huge difference between them and the 880s? DT990 is your typical fun headphone with huge midbass and treble hump:  DT880 is a lot more even:  Decay measurements are better on the DT880 but the DT990 isn't horrible or anything (its really good). Its far better than, say, your typical Grado or AKG headphone that can sound sibilant and just plain nasty. Chafe fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Feb 2, 2015 |
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Feb 2, 2015 15:42
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To be quite honest, I don't think I've ever heard a line array design by an audiophile company sound good.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:06
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There's a not-zero number of people who intentionally buy Xeons and workstation boards for the purpose of a music server. They're the same people that intentionally use linear PSUs for their desktops.
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Feb 14, 2015 01:52
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After owning a Cyrus amp for a short while, I've convinced 50% of the manufacturing budget went into the 3" thick enclosure because that poo poo isn't cheap from my experience. It definitely didn't go into the internal components. Form factor is really nice but it sounds like every other "high end audiophile" piece of hardware: crazy bright because audiophiles have hearing damage and equate brightness with "detail". Chafe fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 00:23
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KozmoNaut posted:There's around $2,500 in gear once everything is accounted for (for all three of my current systems including Chromecasts etc.), which I admit is not exactly cheap, but it's been built over a period of time, and most of the gear is second-hand. And it's certainly nowhere near the $5,000 that noted audiophilia apologist Steve Guttenberg considers the starting point for an entry-level "decent" high-end system. Even so, the equipment that he recommends is objectively worse in every possible way compared to gear costing less than half the price, except for the crazy woo-woo audiophile forums cred factor. Steve Guttenberg is one of those hard line subjectivist audiophiles who think anything that sounds bad isn't actually bad but just "different". Most people that could be considered audiophiles actually hate his guts because his subjective opinions often decrease the quality of discussion as they're extremely inconsistent or plain incorrect. Probably because he's a shill at this point, like most audiophile reviewers working at a website or publication. I've actually been to a few of those crazy hardcore audiophile audio shows and the majority of speakers there are always consistently disappointing. Most stupidly priced speakers at these shows always: - Play boring rear end audiophile music that sounds decent on anything. - Have wimpy sized woofers completely incapable to rendering any sort of bass. - Have too much treble emphasis, probably for people severe hearing damage. - Have too much bass that it makes the midrange muddy as hell. - Really specific "sweet spot" listening positions that might not even be where the audition area is. - Have something wrong, like incorrect DSP implementation, resonating cabinets or strange crossover point. The more I go to these shows, the more convinced I am that deep end audiophiles are pretty much deaf. Chafe fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 09:02
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The strange thing is that I would expect old rich audiophiles to be the types to put speakers with huge woofers, like vintage JBLs, in their listening rooms yet a lot of speakers at these shows are wimpy things that can't do anything below 200hz.
Chafe fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 09:19
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qirex posted:*Why do audiophiles like them so much? Like with a lot of music popular with audiophiles, Dire Straits are pretty inoffensive and the majority of their music sounds good on anything. Which also explains why every rear end in a top hat shows off their gear with Diana Krall or that acoustic cover of Hotel California. With subwoofers, I find a lot of people are actually integrating subwoofers into their systems now. The equipment is so cheap and resources so plentiful that most people reach a conclusion that everything sounds way better if you take a more objective approach to audio. That's really the thing, most audiophiles who still hate subwoofers for music are the same types of people who couldn't position a pair of speakers if their life depended on it.
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Oct 20, 2015 04:27
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Panty Saluter posted:That was probably a factor. That and the lack of an appreciable difference in sound quality One of the things I love about the SACD format was the fact that Sony sometimes (often?) used completely different masters for the DSD and PCM layer. So while audiophiles were correct that DSD could sound different to PCM, their complete lack of investigative skill lead them to automatically assume DSD was better than PCM. DSD was one seriously stupid format, no matter which side of the fence you were on. Its a format that isn't compatible with the vast majority of hardware and software, files sizes are loving huge, and its actually objectively a shittier "high resolution" format compared to PCM if you're one of those crazies who believe in the importance of ultrasonic frequencies. KozmoNaut posted:Turning on the new $50K Sennheiser HEV-1060 that 88h88 posted earlier: Gotta say, the volume knob taking longer to extend out than the tone (?) controls would really piss me off. Chafe fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Nov 8, 2015 |
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Nov 8, 2015 10:41
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Panty Saluter posted:http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/324/#t7WB6sQUh3Jag2Wl.97 Unlike the 5 Series or Porsche, it isn't even good. Audiophile hardware is really weird in that the more expensive it is, the more likely it is tuned for deaf people (Magico + Wilson stuff) or designed by people who still live in the 1960s (Harbeth).
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Jan 8, 2016 14:11
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KozmoNaut posted:I had to comment on this, because for all their faults and stubbornness in sticking with a 1960s speaker design that is known to be flawed in significant ways, Harbeth is actually one of the more reasonable and well-grounded audiophile darling companies. The issue with every Harbeth speaker I've listened to is that the cabinets resonant...and its really noticeable when they do and you're left wondering who the hell thinks resonating cabinets sound good. Really, most of these "high end" speakers have strange issues that just make the speaker sound really weird and really should have been dealt with before being brought to the market. Yeah, you get too much treble, too much bass, too little bass, or too much bass distortion but you can argue that audio is subjective and people want this. But then you have other issues like astronomically small sweet spots that are the size of a chair, really strange tonality issues as if the sound is being forced out of a toilet roll, or parts of the speaker literally ring and rattle when played loud. Like I dunno how you don't notice this stuff during development. Chafe fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 04:47
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:09 |
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Because the clientele is always a very specific demographic that sort of aesthetic appeals to.
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Feb 29, 2016 09:43
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