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Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
Someone needs to create a device/program that "increases the bitrate" of your CDs/MP3s while they play. Just a few buttons that say "2X, 4X, 8X and LP Quality" That way that crappy little 128bit rip of dark side of the moon you got on limewire will come alive!

"Before using the Vinylizer app, my iTunes collection was dull, tinny and flat. Now that I've been using Vinylizer there is a significant fullness, richness, and realness to my collection. Despite 1/2 of my songs being mp3's ripped from youtube, I can now close my eyes and pinpoint to the exact inch where each of the instruments are located in the 3D setting my music is painting. This is well worth the $2500! Thanks Vinylizer."

Wait! This already exists. . . . doesn't it?

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Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

frankenbeans posted:

edit: wow, I dug this thread up, didn't I? Apologies.

Nonsense! Gives me an excuse to post these pictures that I also posted in the PYF Funny Pics thread.



The Audiokarma forums are a goldmine for this kind of stuff. I used to have a decent picture collection of "Over $5000 systems in Under $5000 homes" folder that I lost when migrating to Windows 7. Entire trailer/dive walls covered in high-end audio equipment, and letters from social services littering the place. I have not delved any deeper into the community, but I think it's the kind of place where "magic pebbles" proponents are openly mocked.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Devian666 posted:

Probably the $500 version that depends on black body radiation to work. I was hoping it was for a stylus to go with analogue vinyl CDs.

What's the best kind of aftermarket stylus to go with my 1979 (first issue) Sony Walkman cassette player? I know that Duracell delivers the warmest sound, and I have low-thetan earphones, but I'm at a loss on the brand of stylus to use. Seriously though, what's the Audiophile community's opinion on laser turntables? I'm guessing that the digital reading of the groves loses a lot of the richness due to the pure analog waves being turned into soulless 1's and 0's

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0_uEQp2Vg8

My current turntable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDyMe-KtDbE&feature=fvwrel

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
Has anyone ever met an "audiophile" (guy who overspends on poo poo that doesn't help) who actually listens to music other than "THX/Dolby/Quadraphonic Test Record #32" or who doesn't have the most bland/mundane and limited tastes imaginable?

"Oh, you only listen to a first pressing Sgt. Pepper record and you Best of the Beach Boys 8 Track? Good thing you have a $10,000 triple redundant battery backup and a $900 weight for your LP's." :rolleyes:

Seriously, anytime I see someone with a $5000+ turntable (always on Audiokarma, never in real life), his shelves are wall to wall Acoustic test albums and calibration records, with a few inches dedicated to Top 40 pop hits of the 60's.

The only good audiophile I know in real life believes in Chemtrails, NEW WORLD ORDER, and alien manipulation of humans, but his turntable is sub $1000, his stereo is a stock, high end Pioneer from the 80s, he has set up a room in his house to be not only stylish, comfortable, and usable, but acoustically sound as well. His music collection spans several genres, 80 years, and are well organized and set up in a manner that prevents damage from sun and moisture. The vast majority of his LP collection has only been played twice. The first time was when he transfered them over to reel, and the second time when he transfered them over to digital.

Despite the conspiracy stuff, he's the only Audiophile that doesn't make me want to roll my eyes outside my skull every time he talks about his setup.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
/\ You summed up pretty much every "audiophile" (notice the quotations) I've ever had the (mis)fortune to talk to, and also given me some very plausible (probably dead on) explanations for their behaviour.

I also like Dark Side of the Moon, but usually skip over the clanging clocks or cash register clinking for 3 minutes. I like a lot of their later stuff, as I find their early stuff sounds a little too "Beatles-esq" and I've long since been burned out on that stuff since it gets played non-stop on any classic radio station I've heard. Despite not liking the Beatles because they get too much airtime, I cherry-pick favourites from Elton John, Bowie, Kansas, Boston, and Chicago, and any 70-90's music that strikes my fancy.

My current setup is a Sansui 881 I found in the dump and re-capped, a Dual 510 turntable that I made out of two broken units, a pair of no-name 70's era speakers I got in the dump, and two Polk bookshelf speakers I got with airmiles. It's set up in a room with horrible acoustics, and I'm pretty happy with that and honestly don't see any reason to change or upgrade.

Did I just lose my, "ridicule audiophiles ticket", or do I have to stick with only berating them for magic pebbles and $4000 cables?

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Fanelien posted:

I changed the locks on an audiophile's house recently, he spent half the time complaining about the girl that left him and the other half explaining how much his audio set up cost and how awesome it was. I got bored about half way through and just noted the brands. Most of the setup was Gryphon, with this turntable

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10143080-1.html

He had "do not touch" signs on everything, including his cable risers. Crazy bastard, wish I'd taken pictures.

I sometimes wonder how someone so spergy could manage to have a job that allows him to afford such a device without pissing off everyone to the point where he no longer has that job.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

KozmoNaut posted:

Regarding the FLAC vs. ALAC thing, those are the same people who think using a different USB cable on their external hard drives will make an audible difference, and the people who think digitally stored music degrades when you play it.

Remember, these are the same people who drag diamonds across their vinyl bumps.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

piratepilates posted:

What's wrong with playing vinyl records, don't knock it :mad:

Nothing wrong with it, but the people he was talking about think there is loss in digital data they are storing/playing, while their listening mode of choice involves friction against soft plastic, physically changing the record.

Also vinyl rocks, I recently restored a Dual 510 turntable and love it.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Khablam posted:

It's more that audiophiles will deliberately stack adjectives on top of one another, none with a particular meaning, to try to build up a description that sounds meaningful but is actually full of poo poo.
There's almost an irony in that they're effectively using confirmation bias on people doing this, but can't see they're victims of it themselves.

My setup has a warm-richness that really showcases the Contrafibularities of the tracks, and the Anaspeptic depth of the Frasmotic recording. It all comes together with real Compunctuous tones and a superb Pericombobulation of sound.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Combat Pretzel posted:

Moronic logic. If you know they sound extremely different, you know in which ways they sound different. As such, you should be able to discern between the two with, wait for it, just your ears!

But hey, one's got to justify silly buying decisions to himself.

No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

agarjogger posted:

Christ, do these people even like music?

Start here then catch up to where we are now. Don't forget to read all of Khablam's posts, as they really sum up the "Audiophile" mentality.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

baka kaba posted:

Sure it's digitally identical, but straighter 1's and rounder 0's translate into crisper images and more dynamic contrast

rear end in a top hat at Best Buy sold me a lovely HDMI cable and I was wondering why my blue rays were looking like poo poo with huge distortions in audio and video. I hooked it up to my PC and analyzed the signal. Seems ever 4th "1" going through the cable got mangled and came out looking like a "7". TV didn't know what the gently caress!

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

baka kaba posted:

Yeah it's meant to be loud and attention-grabbing, so it's compressed to hell and given a 'cool sound' so you'll prefer listening to songs on that station, or that's the idea anyway. But dead air is anathema to commercial radio, so the opposite is... an endless torrent of sound that never stops, even for talking or letting a song fade out!

It's always a weird experience to first hear a song on the radio, get familiar with it, then hear it elsewhere and discover how it actually sounds.

Hearing Wayward son on an LP really opened my eyes to how horrible radio is. The predominant station where I live just takes all the levels and put them up to "11".

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

DELETED posted:

This prompted me to check it out and holy crap does it sound much better. Any other good examples of songs that have been murdered by radio?

Basically any song that was made before studio butchery got to a level where they would find the ideal settings to play everything to sound decent on the widest variety of devices as possible. Almost all radio stations do this, and anything you listen to will even sound better on a CD (assuming it wasn't butchered to have everything at a constant volume).

The studio, producer, and technicians also make a difference. I seem to remember hearing that some classic albums were nearly destroyed because they were recorded and mixed in such a retarded and heavy-handed way. Apparently Bowie managed to barely save something mixed by Iggy Pop way back when?

A lot of the Radio fuckery boils down to how much that station technician wanted to "crank the bass" and "make it sound fuller".

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

bigtom posted:

Back on topic - tried on the Beats heaphones in BestBuy the other day...sounded like someone EQ'ed them for nothing but thump. Mids and highs weren't really there: my $100 Sony MDR-7506's sounded better than the $300 Beats. Amazed that they have the chutzpah to put "HD" on them....

A student of mine had these big rear end things that looked like someone sawed the ends off of a JVC Kaboom, they were huge and all I could hear was "Thump, thump, thump" coming out of the giant PVC monstrosities. I asked the kid if I could try them and played a few tests on youtube (I know, not the best way). Just like you mentioned, they were 80% bass and 5% mid, 5% high, and 10% static.

Look at any headphone box, 9 times out of 10 the first thing they mention, or put the most emphasis on is the Bass.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Skeleton Ape posted:

Oh man, I tried those things in Best Buy, too. I thought they were broken. I'm normally not all spergy about what other people choose to spend their money on, but it bugs me in a very special way when I see someone who spent $300 on Beats because... well, famous people have them and they're expensive so they must be really good, right? :argh: Do you have any idea what kind of awesome, actually good headphones you could have gotten for that kind of money?

The general consensus over at Head-fi is that the entire Beatz line is a waste of money as they do not sound anywhere good enough to justify the cost. I have not spent much time there, so I don't know how spergy and prone to magic rocks they are, but they seem to know phones. For that money I'd probably get some professional studio phones off ebay or something that looks and sounds nice. I missed getting a pair of sansui ss 100's that went for $30 (no reserve) because I was 5 minutes late getting home from work.

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.

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".

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
Could someone give me the rundown on Bose? I keep getting guys in their 40-50's telling me that they make the best of everything, and their magic allows them to have a super overpriced "worthwhile" clock radio sound like you're holding an orchestra hostage. From what I understand they make decent enough stuff, but their own hype is pushing the capabilities beyond belief or even the the realm of possible.

Am I right, wrong, or is it even worse than that?

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Entropic posted:

I just found out what "DBT-free" audiophile forums are. God dammit people. :eng99:

Ah, the homeopathic medicine of Audio Forums.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Combat Pretzel posted:

Which led me to this device. A "power conditioner"!

http://www.lessloss.com/firewall-p-196.html

Quoting the page itself:

Which pretty much implied that a male and female power plug are connected by a simple wire.

But the wire is Thetan free, delivering a much warmer, richer sound!

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

RoadCrewWorker posted:

Yeah, it's like the color of a room changing the perception of temperature in it.

Most would be willing to accept that while the actual objective temperature that can be measured using sensors doesn't change different people "feel" warmer or colder depending on other subjective priorities and tastes, so a raw temperature reading doesn't capture "the full experience".

Audiophiles would be the guys who argue that red painted walls (as opposed to blue) change the light refraction to cause undetectable micro-heat-spots that can only be sensed by skin trained over decades and alters bouncing behavior of air molecules and the filtered photon quantums give the brownian motion a smoother, more natural unidirective flow - just plain snake-oil.

The people arguing the former have a point.

The latter "points" are either theoretically true but irrelevant or just complete pseudo-science nonsense.

Go back to your iPod docks and Britney Spears! Those of us will ears trained on decades of only 5 Albums (two of which are Quadraphonic test LPs*) know the real deal! :bahgawd:

*the other two are (insert widely accepted mainstream albums because we're afraid to say anything straying from the pack mentality for fear of being teased).

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
That turntable bugs me. It's $70k, it's going out of its way to look clean and expensive. . . and it has bare wires and threaded rod sticking out of the back of the tonearms?

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
He has the same acoustic tiles that are on the wall in the raised parts of the ceiling (you can see them in the first picture). Naturally the rug and the furniture will help, and I think the giant shelves of vinyl will make a difference as well (CD cases might even be ok). The room also has interesting geometry to it (I'm looking at the angles, juts, and those weird columns built into the walls to the left and right of the chair), and I would not be surprised if he had an expert design it to give him better results without having to sacrifice sound quality too much. Then again he's also the kind of guy that would probably have mentioned it if an expert did plan the room to have better acoustics.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Oh, missed that.

I was pretty sure a guy that puts over 1/2 a million into audio equipment at least has the brains to get the room set up properly.

Edit: Link the the build process of the room: http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue16/lavigneroom.htm

Blistex fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Apr 29, 2013

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Lazlo Nibble posted:

If they got burned in with the wrong music it could make your Peter Green Fleetwood Mac records sound like Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac records. :colbert:

poo poo! I'm going to need three sets of cables when listening to Van Halen and four for Pink Floyd. This really is an expensive hobby.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

KillHour posted:

Was your impression that he was insane, or just gullible?

I'm going to guess rich.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Skeleton Ape posted:

Be sure to use audiophile-grade solder when sweating your speaker pipes.

Might as well not even try if you're going to spend all that money on Audiophile grade solder and wires, and skimp on ordinary propane! You need Audiophile grade propane! Don't use an electric soldering iron, lose electrons will get stuck in the wire and clog up the music in the cable. Then your cable insulation is going to burst and leak jumbled music all over your carpet.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

AppleCobbler posted:

:spergin: :"Listen to this here..." *stares at you while music plays*
:spergin: : *pauses music*
*gets on floor and starts blowing on tips of cables*
:spergin: : "Now, check this out..." *rewinds music*
:spergin: *stares at you intently waiting for a reaction*

*gets a loving slap in his mouth and told he's a moron.
*never visits him again.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Herv posted:

plus two more experimental settings we only share with customers.

I know one of them is stage placement!
When enabled you can close your eyes and tell exactly where everyone was standing during the recording session.

I was thinking it would have been great to have done this thread 100% tongue-in-cheek/sarcastic (with a title to match). Would have been hilarious to see random goons posting in here and losing their poo poo thinking we were serious and spending more on cables and magic crystals than the posters at AI were on new cars.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Just thinking about this, and I can't fathom the lack of cognitive dissonance these people have.

Unless they are using a battery backup or something, how could this possibly make any difference in their minds? It's like taking tap water from your town water supply, and running it through a section of gold pipe directly before your kitchen tap. All you've done is take the exact same thing (water/electricity) and run it through something very expensive, that in no way affects the quality of it.

Hell that picture is like the same analogy, but at some point in time your water has been filtered through a used gym sock (the APC taskbar).

:psyduck: I can understand the whole expensive speaker cable "thing", as proper shielding can make a difference when analyzing the signal using very sensitive scientific equipment, but this will in no way help the "cleanliness" of the electricity, unless those last 6' from your taskbar to the stereo happen to pass under a transmission tower. I think this might rank higher on the bullshit scale with me than Magic Crystals, as the very obvious is staring you right in the face with these cables.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Khablam posted:

Well friend, that's not an issue because they first run it through their $3000 A/C conditioner (not pictured) to clean the electricity first.

It's like you don't know anything.

I totally get you, (not autistic).

My other problem is that they are powering their stereo as follows.

Battery bank/AC conditioner -> $50 Surge Protector -> $2000+ cable -> Stereo

You'd think just from their "more money = better" philosophy, they wouldn't let that stand, as everyone knows, anything under $2k is going to dirty the power going to your stereo and ruin the sound. It's both glaringly obvious, and not an expensive component. You'd think at least one of those would get to all the audiophiles.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
Any science wizards care to explain if there is any difference between a brand new cable that has never been used, a cable that has had 1 second of sound played through it, and a cable with 300 hours of sound played through it. Is there some manner of subtle change to it at the molecular, atomic, or even sub-atomic level? Any at all?

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

Neurophonic posted:

In theory yes, but in practice they just put numbers on a box. Without an actual measured response curve, phase and group delay plots it's more or less irrelevant.

But my 3000 watt home theater system from Walmart ($59.99) is legitimately 3000 watts. . . right?

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

KozmoNaut posted:

That is probably the geekiest thing I have ever seen on Youtube.

Well that can't stand.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb3UobSZl34

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

KozmoNaut posted:

I think sir, that you will find that video to be nerdy, not geeky :colbert:

So,it I have this right:
Nerdy = Anime, Swords, etc...
Geeky = Technical stuff...
Creepy = Ponies...

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

grack posted:

That's okay. There's a thread on head-fi right now talking burning in cables for 400 hours. Not like, speaker cable, headphone cable. From an iPod.

The only thing that I can come up with that's similar are people who believe in faith healers. Although that isn't even a fair comparison, as the placebo effect is an actual thing that has been scientifically documented with double blind tests, as opposed to cable burn in.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

AlexDeGruven posted:

The audiophile community is easily one of the biggest circle jerks on the planet.

The audiophile community is like a group of horribly inept boys who hang out in a basement and call themselves "The Ladykillers Club". They talk about all of their amazing seduction techniques and pickup lines that they are going to use on girls to get laid. All they do is brag to each other about their lines and what they will do to their theoretical women . . . naturally never acting on them but patting each other on the back for doing nothing. If by some chance one of them somehow manages to get laid and comes back and tries to explain that horribly awkward pickup lines and "suave" techniques don't work in reality, he's immediately banished from the club.

Most audiophile forums dogpile or ban anyone who even hints at blind or double-blind tests disproving $6000 magic rocks.

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Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
Wasn't there a post from some forum where a guy's dog chewed a very expensive cable it it turned out that it was just cheap wire encased in run of the mill flex hose with a horrible soldering job keeping it together? I'm trying to find it but google isn't cooperating. It was some really beefy cable that turned out to be nothing but cheap materials from a hardware store and some flashy connectors.

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