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Regarding your usage of 'cheap', I would read this as the difference between a 50c or $5 component. I can understand spending more to get a reputable brand comp

by fyfy18 8y ago

Regarding your usage of 'cheap', I would read this as the difference between a 50c or $5 component. I can understand spending more to get a reputable brand compared to buying the cheapest no name item from AliExpress. However audiophiles are a whole different level. People spend tens of thousands of dollars on items that have questionable difference in quality. I guess people do the same with cars though, a Toyota Corolla will get you to work just as well as a Rolls Royce Phantom.

SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
Wine might be a better comparison (at least a Rolls and a Toyota look different). Many could tell the difference pretty well between a $5 and $20 bottle (hint: the $20 one is the one not loaded with sugar), but not a whole lot of people can tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $200 bottle. The law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quick with both wine and audio. I think with audio once you’re in over a few hundred bucks for your set that wall comes up pretty quickly.
- robdachshund 8y ago
  You got it. There are degrees here. You can be an "audiophile" and not break the bank.
- Udik 8y ago
  > difference pretty well between a $5 and $20 bottle (hint: the $20 one is the one not loaded with sugar) Wine loaded with sugar??? AFAIK, in a dry wine all the sugar is converted to alcohol- even in the case it's been added before the fermentation, which is still pretty rare, at least in major wine producing countries. That is definitely not the difference between a $5 and $20 bottle of wine (in Italy you can still get excellent wine for $5 a bottle if you buy it from the producer, btw).
  - jmalicki 8y ago
    It also depends on the wine... The difference between a typical $10 bottle of pinot noir and a better $30 bottle is like night and day... But most varieties aren't as delicate and hard to make, so the differences get way more subtle.
  - algesten 8y ago
    whether it's rare depends on the wine. most champagne has added sugar before fermentation. search for "brut nature" which for cava, champagne and the like means it's only the sugar in the grapes themselves.
    - Udik 8y ago
      If it's added before fermentation, it's still not in the final product, as it's been converted to alcohol. But you're right, champagne, even the best brands, has some sugar added after the fermentation, about 12g/l. It's part of the method. It's still a rather tiny amount if you consider that an orange juice without added sugar has about 90g/l (and you do drink it by the litre, as opposed to champagne...)
  - Semaphor 8y ago
    This is incorrect, there is always "Residual Sugar" [0] in wine, even when it's dry. Of course, GP is also not correct as there are plenty of wines with high RS that are very expensive while I can get a 7g/L RS wine for around 4€ here. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetness_of_wine#Residual_sugar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetness_of_wine#Residual_sug...
tinco 8y ago
Yeah, and sometimes one car is better than another car, even if they have the same engine ($5 wolfson DAC), because more love is given to everything around the engine. If you just want to put together a cheap car with a good engine, that's a different thing from wanting to build a comfortable or speedy car with a good engine. Someone who isn't in the market for that extra level will just be a sceptic and say "this Audi is just a volkswagen with a prettier body", but if you sit in one you'll feel the difference. (not sure if Audi's have VW engines)
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  "More love" in this case doesn't have to mean more than maybe a retail price of $50 or so, to get a DAC with a frequency response so flat and a noise level so low that any difference to more expensive items is purely academic. Digital to analog conversion is a solved problem, with inexpensive commodity parts. Even if you buy an expensive DAC, the studio gear used to produce the music you listen to has gone through dozens of A->D->A conversions, all done using standard commodity parts. No one builds fancy audiophile-approved DACs and ADCs into mixer or studio gear. In my home setup, I'm using a DBX DriveRack PX as a DSP EQ and crossover between my main monitors and subs. It's almost a decade old, but its signal/noise ratio is on par with the newest gear you can buy. Any competently built pro gear from the last ~10-15 years with 24-bit conversion can be plugged right into any analog signal chain and be 100% audibly transparent. People worry way too much about the electronics, and way too little about their speakers and rooms.
  - tinco 8y ago
    You think they're overpriced, but I bet you no one is getting (very) rich off these $400 DACs. Even more, I think many of them profit so little every once in a while a company pivots or goes out of business. An Audi also has just a couple thousand of extra love worth of physical cost added to it, but the retail price is easily upwards of $20.000 above the equivalent VW car. That's because if you sell fewer units, the r&d and marketing costs per unit are much higher, as well as the required profit per car sold. If you get a good deal on your hardware, you might have that good DAC in a nice box with a pretty manual for $50 physical costs, then put it on a prime shelf in a nice Hi-Fi store for $130 (30% of $400), maybe $50 to target and prime your customer, and then use $150 to pay your audio engineer, your CEO, maybe outsource the rest of the company infrastructure, and then 8% interest to your lenders. That's 1.7M profit at 10.000 units sold (assuming that you do all of this within a year). I have no idea if 10.000 units is close to reasonable for an indie hardware startup, but calculations become a little more complex if we're going to have to take a multi year ramp up in account.. edit: Sorry I got caught up a little in the startup aspect of it. Your system sounds great, but your DAC (and DSP+crossover system) also cost $400, so you're not making a point?

by fyfy18 8y ago

SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago

Wine might be a better comparison (at least a Rolls and a Toyota look different). Many could tell the difference pretty well between a $5 and $20 bottle (hint: the $20 one is the one not loaded with sugar), but not a whole lot of people can tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $200 bottle. The law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quick with both wine and audio. I think with audio once you’re in over a few hundred bucks for your set that wall comes up pretty quickly.

robdachshund 8y ago
You got it. There are degrees here. You can be an "audiophile" and not break the bank.
Udik 8y ago
> difference pretty well between a $5 and $20 bottle (hint: the $20 one is the one not loaded with sugar) Wine loaded with sugar??? AFAIK, in a dry wine all the sugar is converted to alcohol- even in the case it's been added before the fermentation, which is still pretty rare, at least in major wine producing countries. That is definitely not the difference between a $5 and $20 bottle of wine (in Italy you can still get excellent wine for $5 a bottle if you buy it from the producer, btw).
- jmalicki 8y ago
  It also depends on the wine... The difference between a typical $10 bottle of pinot noir and a better $30 bottle is like night and day... But most varieties aren't as delicate and hard to make, so the differences get way more subtle.
- algesten 8y ago
  whether it's rare depends on the wine. most champagne has added sugar before fermentation. search for "brut nature" which for cava, champagne and the like means it's only the sugar in the grapes themselves.
  - Udik 8y ago
    If it's added before fermentation, it's still not in the final product, as it's been converted to alcohol. But you're right, champagne, even the best brands, has some sugar added after the fermentation, about 12g/l. It's part of the method. It's still a rather tiny amount if you consider that an orange juice without added sugar has about 90g/l (and you do drink it by the litre, as opposed to champagne...)
- Semaphor 8y ago
  This is incorrect, there is always "Residual Sugar" [0] in wine, even when it's dry. Of course, GP is also not correct as there are plenty of wines with high RS that are very expensive while I can get a 7g/L RS wine for around 4€ here. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetness_of_wine#Residual_sugar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetness_of_wine#Residual_sug...

tinco 8y ago

Yeah, and sometimes one car is better than another car, even if they have the same engine ($5 wolfson DAC), because more love is given to everything around the engine. If you just want to put together a cheap car with a good engine, that's a different thing from wanting to build a comfortable or speedy car with a good engine. Someone who isn't in the market for that extra level will just be a sceptic and say "this Audi is just a volkswagen with a prettier body", but if you sit in one you'll feel the difference. (not sure if Audi's have VW engines)

KozmoNau7 8y ago
"More love" in this case doesn't have to mean more than maybe a retail price of $50 or so, to get a DAC with a frequency response so flat and a noise level so low that any difference to more expensive items is purely academic. Digital to analog conversion is a solved problem, with inexpensive commodity parts. Even if you buy an expensive DAC, the studio gear used to produce the music you listen to has gone through dozens of A->D->A conversions, all done using standard commodity parts. No one builds fancy audiophile-approved DACs and ADCs into mixer or studio gear. In my home setup, I'm using a DBX DriveRack PX as a DSP EQ and crossover between my main monitors and subs. It's almost a decade old, but its signal/noise ratio is on par with the newest gear you can buy. Any competently built pro gear from the last ~10-15 years with 24-bit conversion can be plugged right into any analog signal chain and be 100% audibly transparent. People worry way too much about the electronics, and way too little about their speakers and rooms.
- tinco 8y ago
  You think they're overpriced, but I bet you no one is getting (very) rich off these $400 DACs. Even more, I think many of them profit so little every once in a while a company pivots or goes out of business. An Audi also has just a couple thousand of extra love worth of physical cost added to it, but the retail price is easily upwards of $20.000 above the equivalent VW car. That's because if you sell fewer units, the r&d and marketing costs per unit are much higher, as well as the required profit per car sold. If you get a good deal on your hardware, you might have that good DAC in a nice box with a pretty manual for $50 physical costs, then put it on a prime shelf in a nice Hi-Fi store for $130 (30% of $400), maybe $50 to target and prime your customer, and then use $150 to pay your audio engineer, your CEO, maybe outsource the rest of the company infrastructure, and then 8% interest to your lenders. That's 1.7M profit at 10.000 units sold (assuming that you do all of this within a year). I have no idea if 10.000 units is close to reasonable for an indie hardware startup, but calculations become a little more complex if we're going to have to take a multi year ramp up in account.. edit: Sorry I got caught up a little in the startup aspect of it. Your system sounds great, but your DAC (and DSP+crossover system) also cost $400, so you're not making a point?