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Online retailers are getting closer though with things like virtual auditions. For instance Crutchfield now has “SpeakerCompare” “To try out SpeakerCompare, s

Online retailers are getting closer though with things like virtual auditions. For instance Crutchfield now has “SpeakerCompare” “To try out SpeakerCompare, select two or more pairs of home or car speakers to audition, then select your model of headphones from our menu. (We currently have more than 100 to choose from, with more on the way.) Pick a genre of music to cue up a song sample, and hit play. You can then toggle between each speaker in real-time using two listening modes: equal power mode lets you hear differences in loudness as they naturally occur, while equal volume mode gives you a more direct comparison of tonal differences between your selected speakers.” https://www.crutchfield.com/S-MgU7GRLTDvu/speakercompare/default.aspx https://www.crutchfield.com/S-MgU7GRLTDvu/speakercompare/def...

grawprog 6y ago
That sounds like it would work well if you owned a set of studio monitors or headphones with a flat response. Otherwise, it's still not really going to be the same as listening to the speakers or headphones themselves. Whatever headphones or speakers you use to listen to the samples will add their own dynamics to the sounds. It still won't really give an accurate representation.
- pedrocr 6y ago
  If they have the headphones you're using correctly modeled they could in theory pre-process the audio to get close to the output of whatever it is you're testing. The PC/phone DAC may introduce quite a bit of inconsistency though.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  The key benefit to buying expensive audio gear is hearing things you couldn’t hear before, no amount of computational magic is going to add dynamic range or lower distortion on cheap speakers.
  - Raidion 6y ago
    But you don't go from iPod earbuds to high end audio speakers in a jump (usually). I'd say most people buying high end stuff already have a solid pair of headphones at the very least, and monitor speakers are, by definition, fairly flat in response. If you know what you want, you know why you want it, and you know what brands/models will give you the sound you want. If you don't know what you want, a fairly standard pair of monitor speakers will sound terrific. Like I have a hard time believing someone who picks up set of HS series Yamaha monitor is going to be like "Oh wow, these sound too forward for me". That being said, I do think speakers can make a big different. I have a buddy who has a set of Ohms speakers from 72, and listening to music from that era (like Led Zepplin) does sound better than listening to it on something more modern, because it was mixed with similar speakers. It's cork sniffing at a certain point to me, but people who are really into it can really hear it.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      > people who are really into it can really hear it. Citation needed. Sometimes they can, but a large part of the time they are claiming things that they cannot hear if tested. They of course refuse scientific tests.
      - colechristensen 6y ago
        There is a big "emperor has no clothes" effect in high end audio equipment. It is hard to measure, there's a big cognitive effect where it sounds better because you know its expensive, but on the other hand, with the right setup it's trivially easy to demonstrate where higher quality equipment is perceptually better. It's one of those things where the people who talk about it the most have the least idea of what's going on, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything going on.
- deeblering4 6y ago
  This is why they have you select your specific headphone model, and only support certain models. They are compensating for the characteristics of what you are listening with. Its not going to be perfectly accurate, but should get you into the same (or possibly better due to lack of noise/business) ballpark as auditioning in a store.
  - grawprog 6y ago
    How can a set of headphones replicate the experience of hearing and feeling sound through a set of speakers? Sitting in front of a set of speakers is a totally different experience than wearing headphones. With a decent set of speakers, you can feel the sound. There's some nice headphones out there, but they can't replicate the way some good bass feels through a set of decent speakers. I can see the comparison system working alright for some things. It's just not a replacement for listening to something on hardware and if I were out to spend some money on a good set of speakers, i'm going to want to listen to them in person first.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > With a decent set of speakers, you can feel the sound. All hearing is 'feeling the sound' - that's what sound is a, a feeling of vibration of air. > I can see the comparison system working alright for some things. So it's got value? > It's just not a replacement for listening to something on hardware and if I were out to spend some money on a good set of speakers, i'm going to want to listen to them in person first. So it's not perfect? Why does everything have to be perfect?
      - grawprog 6y ago
        I mean, it might be useful for comparing headphones while using headphones within a similar range, not much else. The car systems, home speakers, surround speakers etc. Not so much. So most of the company's inventory based on my browse through the site.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
rdiddly 6y ago
It's a nice idea, but unfortunately also could be manipulated to make underperforming speakers sound better than they are. Wherever there's mediation, there's an opportunity for misrepresentation.
pfranz 6y ago
Call me skeptical. It's like trying to show how good Blu-ray is on a DVD. Headphones are even more different than speakers because there's the ergonomics of wearing them, how they sound when covering your ears, and things like durability.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  not exactly. blu ray is objectively superior to DVD; it supports higher bitrates and better codecs. a lot of the differences between audio products are more subjective. headphones in the $100-200 range are already pretty good in terms of total harmonic distortion. frequency response is a large part of why you might prefer one set of headphones/speakers over another. this is basically equivalent to a final EQ stage, which can be compensated for earlier in the signal chain. I highly doubt they can make my hd555s sound as good as hd800s, but I wouldn't be surprised if the software could give at least a general sense of what hd800s sound like.
  - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
    >I wouldn't be surprised if the software could give at least a general sense of what hd800s sound like. If it could then you would just use the software on all your music and have high end audio for free.
    - hakfoo 6y ago
      The difference is between raw performance and "voicing". You can say "this model of headphones produces peaks at 4kHz, 11kHz and 26kHz compared to a flat reference model" and add that effect with a DSP or pre-rendered sound clips. That will give you some of the "voice" but it won't add the performance aspects-- power handling capacity, responsiveness of the drivers, sharpness of the crossovers, etc. TBH, it's a fascinating idea and I wish it had existed last time I bought speakers-- I recall going all over town to Best Buys and Fry's back when they still had stock to listen to floor samples in rooms completely unlike the ones I would be listening in, using sample media and amplification unlike what I was going to use.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chrisseaton 6y ago
> virtual auditions I don't understand? Don't you audition an artist, not a piece of equipment?
- monktastic1 6y ago
  It's this definition from M-W: 2: the act of hearing especially : a critical hearing // an audition of new recordings

grawprog 6y ago

That sounds like it would work well if you owned a set of studio monitors or headphones with a flat response. Otherwise, it's still not really going to be the same as listening to the speakers or headphones themselves. Whatever headphones or speakers you use to listen to the samples will add their own dynamics to the sounds. It still won't really give an accurate representation.

pedrocr 6y ago
If they have the headphones you're using correctly modeled they could in theory pre-process the audio to get close to the output of whatever it is you're testing. The PC/phone DAC may introduce quite a bit of inconsistency though.
colechristensen 6y ago
The key benefit to buying expensive audio gear is hearing things you couldn’t hear before, no amount of computational magic is going to add dynamic range or lower distortion on cheap speakers.
- Raidion 6y ago
  But you don't go from iPod earbuds to high end audio speakers in a jump (usually). I'd say most people buying high end stuff already have a solid pair of headphones at the very least, and monitor speakers are, by definition, fairly flat in response. If you know what you want, you know why you want it, and you know what brands/models will give you the sound you want. If you don't know what you want, a fairly standard pair of monitor speakers will sound terrific. Like I have a hard time believing someone who picks up set of HS series Yamaha monitor is going to be like "Oh wow, these sound too forward for me". That being said, I do think speakers can make a big different. I have a buddy who has a set of Ohms speakers from 72, and listening to music from that era (like Led Zepplin) does sound better than listening to it on something more modern, because it was mixed with similar speakers. It's cork sniffing at a certain point to me, but people who are really into it can really hear it.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    > people who are really into it can really hear it. Citation needed. Sometimes they can, but a large part of the time they are claiming things that they cannot hear if tested. They of course refuse scientific tests.
    - colechristensen 6y ago
      There is a big "emperor has no clothes" effect in high end audio equipment. It is hard to measure, there's a big cognitive effect where it sounds better because you know its expensive, but on the other hand, with the right setup it's trivially easy to demonstrate where higher quality equipment is perceptually better. It's one of those things where the people who talk about it the most have the least idea of what's going on, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything going on.
deeblering4 6y ago
This is why they have you select your specific headphone model, and only support certain models. They are compensating for the characteristics of what you are listening with. Its not going to be perfectly accurate, but should get you into the same (or possibly better due to lack of noise/business) ballpark as auditioning in a store.
- grawprog 6y ago
  How can a set of headphones replicate the experience of hearing and feeling sound through a set of speakers? Sitting in front of a set of speakers is a totally different experience than wearing headphones. With a decent set of speakers, you can feel the sound. There's some nice headphones out there, but they can't replicate the way some good bass feels through a set of decent speakers. I can see the comparison system working alright for some things. It's just not a replacement for listening to something on hardware and if I were out to spend some money on a good set of speakers, i'm going to want to listen to them in person first.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > With a decent set of speakers, you can feel the sound. All hearing is 'feeling the sound' - that's what sound is a, a feeling of vibration of air. > I can see the comparison system working alright for some things. So it's got value? > It's just not a replacement for listening to something on hardware and if I were out to spend some money on a good set of speakers, i'm going to want to listen to them in person first. So it's not perfect? Why does everything have to be perfect?
    - grawprog 6y ago
      I mean, it might be useful for comparing headphones while using headphones within a similar range, not much else. The car systems, home speakers, surround speakers etc. Not so much. So most of the company's inventory based on my browse through the site.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

rdiddly 6y ago

It's a nice idea, but unfortunately also could be manipulated to make underperforming speakers sound better than they are. Wherever there's mediation, there's an opportunity for misrepresentation.

pfranz 6y ago

Call me skeptical. It's like trying to show how good Blu-ray is on a DVD. Headphones are even more different than speakers because there's the ergonomics of wearing them, how they sound when covering your ears, and things like durability.

leetcrew 6y ago
not exactly. blu ray is objectively superior to DVD; it supports higher bitrates and better codecs. a lot of the differences between audio products are more subjective. headphones in the $100-200 range are already pretty good in terms of total harmonic distortion. frequency response is a large part of why you might prefer one set of headphones/speakers over another. this is basically equivalent to a final EQ stage, which can be compensated for earlier in the signal chain. I highly doubt they can make my hd555s sound as good as hd800s, but I wouldn't be surprised if the software could give at least a general sense of what hd800s sound like.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  >I wouldn't be surprised if the software could give at least a general sense of what hd800s sound like. If it could then you would just use the software on all your music and have high end audio for free.
  - hakfoo 6y ago
    The difference is between raw performance and "voicing". You can say "this model of headphones produces peaks at 4kHz, 11kHz and 26kHz compared to a flat reference model" and add that effect with a DSP or pre-rendered sound clips. That will give you some of the "voice" but it won't add the performance aspects-- power handling capacity, responsiveness of the drivers, sharpness of the crossovers, etc. TBH, it's a fascinating idea and I wish it had existed last time I bought speakers-- I recall going all over town to Best Buys and Fry's back when they still had stock to listen to floor samples in rooms completely unlike the ones I would be listening in, using sample media and amplification unlike what I was going to use.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chrisseaton 6y ago

> virtual auditions I don't understand? Don't you audition an artist, not a piece of equipment?

monktastic1 6y ago
It's this definition from M-W: 2: the act of hearing especially : a critical hearing // an audition of new recordings