An audiophile's nightmare?

[k4kyv]

For the past 100 years or so ... every new format that came along was an improvement over the previous one," from 78s to vinyl to tape and high-grade cassettes.

After CDs arrived and files became digitally encoded, there was a push to make files small and still "fairly listenable." The technology used to create MP3s - "lossy" compression - strips away what might be viewed as "unnecessary audio information" - information that can, in fact, contribute to richness.

So MP3 is one of the first times where a newer format is of poorer quality than the one that came before it.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1201/p11s01-stct.html

[WBear2GCR]

I think that cassette was another example.

Imho, MP3 is todays cassette, although better in terms of S/N for certain.

What gets lost in MP3 isn't so much "richness" as the term is usually used, what gets lost are the subtle (and not so subtle sometimes) "ambient information" and "naturalness" (if you had any of that in the first place) as compared to uncompressed, high quality source material. In short it is processed, but not so you'd notice in a casual listen... imho, of course.

but, otoh, I can fit the equivalent of 360 or so CDs on a 15gig portable player, which is fairly incredible.

           _-_-bear

[n2bc]

From a PC point of view, there is no need for compression.   Hard drives are well under $.50/gigabyte so the 'lossless' techniques and their big files are no problem. 

For direct attach to the home audio system you can get a 300 disk CD player for under $200.

Compression on portable devices is no big deal - unless of course you are pushing a few hundred pounds of amplifier and speakers on a cart as you jog thru the park.

I got an iPod Shuffle for my kid for Xmas...   $80 direct from Apple:  1gig, engraved, delivered Fedex in 2 days. It's abt 1" x 1" x .25", holds 25+ hours of music (compressed).  Sounds terrific on the included ear buds.  Dunno how it would sound lashed to an amplifier and speakers - but who cares!

The thing that must drive the true audiofools nuts is not knowing if the original recording was done with oxygen-free mic cord.  I guess the best thing for them is to attend an oxygen-free concert.

73, Bill  N2BC      Anybody seen my 8-track cart of Jim Morrison?

[WBear2GCR]

Fyi, if you bring your cheapo, or even expensive interconnects and speaker cables over here for a listen, you're likely to be surprised by what you hear when you compare them. If, of course, the person doing the listening still has to have reasonable HF response in the ears... makes a diff.

I'm not trying to say that *all of the "tweaks"* make sense or are legit, they're not.
But on a very high resolution system you can hear a lot more than on even pretty good systems, which is of course a double edged sword.

For most people it makes no difference whatsoever.
For a large number of the people who think or want it to make a difference, it doesn't either for a variety of reasons that we're better off leaving for another forum...

      _-_-WBear2GCR

[k4kyv]

The thing that must drive the true audiofools nuts is not knowing if the original recording was done with oxygen-free mic cord.  I guess the best thing for them is to attend an oxygen-free concert.

Hey, I think that would solve the problem once and for all.  Just make sure the concert lasts for at least 10 minutes.  For good measure, make it 30 minutes in length.   

[John Holotko]

Fyi, if you bring your cheapo, or even expensive interconnects and speaker cables over here for a listen, you're likely to be surprised by what you hear when you compare them. If, of course, the person doing the listening still has to have reasonable HF response in the ears... makes a diff.

I'm not trying to say that *all of the "tweaks"* make sense or are legit, they're not.
But on a very high resolution system you can hear a lot more than on even pretty good systems, which is of course a double edged sword.

For most people it makes no difference whatsoever.
For a large number of the people who think or want it to make a difference, it doesn't either for a variety of reasons that we're better off leaving for another forum...

      _-_-WBear2GCR

When I listen to music I can tell the difference between music played over cheap speaker cables versus quality cable There is a notable difference in what  I hear. Perhaps it is psychological but I think that if I were given the blind test of which is which I would be able to tell when the cheap cable was in use versus the quality cable..

[VE1IDX]

When I listen to music I can tell the difference between music played over cheap speaker cables versus quality cable There is a notable difference in what  I hear. Perhaps it is psychological but I think that if I were given the blind test of which is which I would be able to tell when the cheap cable was in use versus the quality cable..

I think a lot of it IS psychological. It reminds me of the times when a certain radio announcer I worked with would piss and moan about the off air sound quality in the main on air studio. I would go behind the equipment rack and just stand there a minute or two and then ask "That any better now Ken?" Invariably he would say that it was much better and thank me. My response to him was always truthful when I said "Oh it was nothing to it". 

[k4kyv]

Undersize speaker cable can have an effect.  The source impedance driving a speaker needs to have low internal resistance compared to the nominal speaker impedance, similar to a class-B audio driver stage, and for at least one of the same reasons.  The internal resistance affects speaker damping, and no speaker presents a uniform load to the amplifier throughout the audio range.  A long speaker cable made with #16  wire, driving a 4-ohm speaker will add substantial internal resistance to the amplifier.

But I still maintain that heavy duty a.c. line cord stock or even Romex cable will work just as well as the $50+ -per-foot stuff sold in the audiophool stores.  Marine suppliers sell a type of electric power cable that resembles Romex, but is made with stranded wire instead of solid.  It is against code to use it in residential wiring, but for some reason it is preferred for wiring on boats.  It is more flexible than standard Romex, and would make ideal speaker cable.

I use "Monster Cable" that I picked up several years ago at Home Cheapo.  It was thrown in with a pile of scrap cables of odd lengths of every description, that they had on sale for a few cents a foot.  I think I got about a 50' roll for less than $15.

[Bacon, WA3WDR]

Bob Pease was talking about one test where different speaker cables were compared - and they were swapped with cheap switches.  The contacts of the switches had to introduce more non-linear crap than any difference between the wires.

Wire resistance, if it is over about half an ohm, can start to make a difference.  Speaker impedance varies all over the place with frequency, so you get response variations and damping loss with extra resistance in series.  Tube-type guitar amps use high plate resistance tubes, and only a little feedback, so they work with the speaker resonance to produce sound.  But hi-fi amps have very low source impedance, to control the speaker like a motor.

And you can sure hear a difference with certain amplifiers.  WB2CAU Eric showed me this difference with two solid-state audio amplifiers.  He played a recording using one amp, and I could hear right away that the top end wasn't right.  It was extended, but cymbals were just white noise.  I even said "The brass is white!" but I don't know if Eric understood what I meant.

He swapped in the second amp and played the same recording, and the cymbals had real quality.  They sounded like brass, and I could imagine an orange-yellow color to the cymbal sound.

These amps test with essentially identical high quality specs.

Who knows, maybe the first amp was marginally stable, and the tweeters were slightly reactive, and there were triggered parasitics all over the place when cymbals were played through the system.  Maybe the second amp was also marginally stable, but it happened to like the load that the speakers provided better than the first amp.  I don't know.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

I think a lot of it IS psychological.

It's ALL psychological to some extent. The study of human hearing is called psycho-acoustics for a reason.

[kf6pqt]

The Apple format, AAC, is claimed to be a "lossless" codec. Don't know if it is or not, but I don't care, I buy my headphones from either the dollar store, or BigLots!

-Jason kf6pqt

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

AAC is not from Apple, nor is it lossless. It is part of the MPEG spec, both MP2 and MP4. It is the default format used by Apple's iPod and iTunes though. It's considered a replacement/evolutionary step for/from MP3 (which is actually MPEG 2, Part 3).

[WBear2GCR]

I think a lot of it IS psychological.

It's ALL psychological to some extent. The study of human hearing is called psycho-acoustics for a reason.

The term "psycho-acoustics" does not mean or imply "imaginary" or "imagined sound(s)". If that is what you were aiming at...

Differences between two amplifiers or two sets of cables can be measured without much difficulty. The only question is what can be perceived. Measuring what can be perceived is much much more difficult. Because sound is not a "thing" like a hunk of rock and it is deciphered in real time by the mind, it is a very complex process. Clearly, MP3 shows exactly where these threshold(s) of "perceived" quality are. To simplify this greatly, if one doesn't hear/perceive a significant difference between MP3 and some higher quality source (like well done CD for example) then all of this stuff is moot - and there are no real differences between gear, and "wire is wire."

At a certain point there is a limit to the finite and subtle differences that one can either control or effectively perceive, if you are trying to do that. Somewhere out in that range is where people who do not have a good technical grounding get lost in the world of "tweaks." They're just trying to control these relatively small differences by means that they can handle. Others modify the electronics or build their own gear to accomplish this... even so, things that you'd expect to have little or no effect in terms of what you hear constantly surprise by making things sound different or not as expected.

It's not all a joke or nutters doing voodoo...

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

Nothing nutty about it. It's a long standing scientific and medical field. The reality is that human hearing involves the ear/brain interface, so undoubtedly, perceptions, biases, emotions and the like will be involved in the brain, along with the more mechanical (and better understood) functions of the ear. Yes, people WILL hear what they want to hear, just as they will NOT hear what they don't want to, at least to the limits of the functioning of the mechanical portion of their ears.