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https://meh.com/deals/polk-audio-bookshelf-speakers https://meh.com/deals/polk-audio-bookshelf-speakers (No longer for sale) I bought these for 40$ a few years

https://meh.com/deals/polk-audio-bookshelf-speakers https://meh.com/deals/polk-audio-bookshelf-speakers (No longer for sale) I bought these for 40$ a few years ago and have them powered by a sony receiver and they handle anything I throw at them. I constantly have to turn them down for sake of my eardrums and work just fine for this layman. I do wonder if I'm missing out sometimes but I genuinely can't hear what audiophiles hear when they try to show me. I doubt anyone is interested in my setup, but I have a harmony hub that coordinates my entire little set up. I have presets for my PS5, computer, nintendo switch, and turn table. I hit a preset and the hub will fire all the IR + bluetooth signals needed to power the TV and other necessary systems. All go through these little speakers and I get blown away every time. Edit: A funny anecdote, but I bought these 40$ speakers and realized I needed an amp or receiver to use them. Ended up buying a sony receive for a few hundred open box. I then decided I was going to buy blue rays since I had such a nice video and audio set up but first I needed a blue ray player. Waited on the PS5 and bought that. 1000$ later, I finally can use my stupid 40$ speakers I got on sale. Now my PS5 can output HDR which I hear is divine and my current TV can't handle it. It just never stops does it? lol

leephillips 6y ago
“I genuinely can't hear what audiophiles hear” Often they can’t, either, as blind listening tests show.
- xeromal 6y ago
  So is it mostly a scam like wine then? I just tune it to what sounds good and I'm off. I just managed to do it for 40$ lol
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    There's probably some price point below which there is a perceptible difference in quality, but, yes, a lot of it is a scam. At a minimum, you there's no guarantee of bang for buck above a certain fairly low price ceiling.
  - squarefoot 6y ago
    Not technically scams, obvious ones aside (ie, hundred bucks for a wooden knob or "directional" cables); audiophile gear is indeed top quality, but the excellence they aim to would never be recognizable by any human ear on the planet because the incredibly small improvements, if any, would be measurable only by lab instruments. One can spend ten times less and still not hear any difference, but as any psychologist could confirm, once someone spends a fortune in something he believes it will sound better, he will surely hear that difference. Too bad nobody else will, unless they also fall in that trap.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      What I like from higher end equipment is volume controls that don't have scratchy spots.
  - PascLeRasc 6y ago
    It's only a scam if you don't enjoy it.
    - xeromal 6y ago
      That's actually a very fair take. Placebo isn't fake.
- sn_master 6y ago
  I used to think the same until I got my first set of 300$ headphones (QC 35). There is very real difference between those and any 30$ earbuds. You hear the music in a very different way.
  - naavis 6y ago
    The difference between $30 and $300 headphones is significant, but the difference between $300 and $3000 headphones is likely pretty small.
    - sn_master 6y ago
      Probably, I haven't tried those myself tho.
    - starky 6y ago
      Yes and No. There are so many preferred sounds out there that a $300 and a $3000 headphone are likely to be quite different, and you would expect the $3000 headphone to be technically better, but it comes down to preference. I have a $1000 pair of headphones, and they do just about everything really well, but I also have cheaper headphones that are more accurate (to different target curves, but that is getting into psychoacoustics), or more enjoyable for certain genres. Price doesn't necessarily correspond to audio quality very well. For example, Ultrasone sells some objectively terrible headphones for $3000.
  - headShrinker 6y ago
    An audiophile would spend more than $25k on a pre-amp, amp, and two speakers. A single speaker cable might cost more than $1000. $300 headphones are vastly better than $30 pair. That is a difference an untrained ear can hear. However they don’t even scratch the surface of high-headphones much less something an audiophile would purchase. A pro level reference headphone might be in the range of 2 or 3k. Pros can hear the difference and properly identify characteristics. A 10k or 15k headphone? Many would conclude that the unbelievable pricing of some ultra expensive audio is snake oil because claims are subjective/unsubstantiated and the science behind them are flimsy or nonexistent.
- cardiffspaceman 6y ago
  I can't name what I do hear. And there are A-B comparisons that I can't call the winner of but my wife can. I can't imagine reproducibly labeling various audio qualities with terms reminiscent of the "citrus notes" that wine people use. I can tell if I need external speakers instead of the monitor's internal speakers and I pretty much always do.
hakfoo 6y ago
I will nod to your choice of using a reciever and "conventional" speakers. In addition, you can get amazing value on that stuff used. Nobody wants, say, pre-HDMI AV recievers, so you can buy top-of-the-line units that sold for $1000 in 1995 for $30 today, and it's perfectly capable for 2-channel PC audio. Go back a few more years and you get into the domain of vintage 70s silver gear-- not so much cheap anymore, but a lot of of it has truly impressive build quality and servicability. Same with the big old speakers which predate the "tiny satelites + subwoofer" designs. I think you could set up an empty Goodwill in a sealed enclosure, never let a person into it, and several sets of Fisher and Technics speakers with 12" or 15" woofers and $19.95 price tags would spontaneously generate. I splurged a bit and got the Pioneer "Andrew Jones" floorstanding speakers (about USD250 per pair) like 5 or 6 years ago, and power them with a 1980 JVC A-X4 amplifier (about USD100 used, but I put about 75 more in rebuilding it) Since it's in a 10x15 room, you don't need a remote to change sources.
- xeromal 6y ago
  I never considered that, but I can totally see major discounts in pre-HD era equipment. Has there not been a lot of gains (like going from 420P to 4k) in the audio-side of things in that past 10 or 20 years? If not, can I use that same reasoning and buy some top shelf old speakers? I've always wanted to do it but I didn't want to be ripped off.
  - acdha 6y ago
    Uncompressed digital audio hit the limits of human perception around the turn of the century. The big things affecting people’s perceived quality were bad compression, noise due to things like poor shielding on low-end computers, or using something like Bluetooth where bandwidth constraints forced heavy compression. If you get a decent DAC (which isn’t a ton of money - USB devices are quite mature) a 20-30 year old system is going to sound great. Newer ones might be smaller or use less power but sound reproduction has been mature for many decades.
    - fggg444 6y ago

leephillips 6y ago

“I genuinely can't hear what audiophiles hear” Often they can’t, either, as blind listening tests show.

xeromal 6y ago
So is it mostly a scam like wine then? I just tune it to what sounds good and I'm off. I just managed to do it for 40$ lol
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  There's probably some price point below which there is a perceptible difference in quality, but, yes, a lot of it is a scam. At a minimum, you there's no guarantee of bang for buck above a certain fairly low price ceiling.
- squarefoot 6y ago
  Not technically scams, obvious ones aside (ie, hundred bucks for a wooden knob or "directional" cables); audiophile gear is indeed top quality, but the excellence they aim to would never be recognizable by any human ear on the planet because the incredibly small improvements, if any, would be measurable only by lab instruments. One can spend ten times less and still not hear any difference, but as any psychologist could confirm, once someone spends a fortune in something he believes it will sound better, he will surely hear that difference. Too bad nobody else will, unless they also fall in that trap.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    What I like from higher end equipment is volume controls that don't have scratchy spots.
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  It's only a scam if you don't enjoy it.
  - xeromal 6y ago
    That's actually a very fair take. Placebo isn't fake.
sn_master 6y ago
I used to think the same until I got my first set of 300$ headphones (QC 35). There is very real difference between those and any 30$ earbuds. You hear the music in a very different way.
- naavis 6y ago
  The difference between $30 and $300 headphones is significant, but the difference between $300 and $3000 headphones is likely pretty small.
  - sn_master 6y ago
    Probably, I haven't tried those myself tho.
  - starky 6y ago
    Yes and No. There are so many preferred sounds out there that a $300 and a $3000 headphone are likely to be quite different, and you would expect the $3000 headphone to be technically better, but it comes down to preference. I have a $1000 pair of headphones, and they do just about everything really well, but I also have cheaper headphones that are more accurate (to different target curves, but that is getting into psychoacoustics), or more enjoyable for certain genres. Price doesn't necessarily correspond to audio quality very well. For example, Ultrasone sells some objectively terrible headphones for $3000.
- headShrinker 6y ago
  An audiophile would spend more than $25k on a pre-amp, amp, and two speakers. A single speaker cable might cost more than $1000. $300 headphones are vastly better than $30 pair. That is a difference an untrained ear can hear. However they don’t even scratch the surface of high-headphones much less something an audiophile would purchase. A pro level reference headphone might be in the range of 2 or 3k. Pros can hear the difference and properly identify characteristics. A 10k or 15k headphone? Many would conclude that the unbelievable pricing of some ultra expensive audio is snake oil because claims are subjective/unsubstantiated and the science behind them are flimsy or nonexistent.
cardiffspaceman 6y ago
I can't name what I do hear. And there are A-B comparisons that I can't call the winner of but my wife can. I can't imagine reproducibly labeling various audio qualities with terms reminiscent of the "citrus notes" that wine people use. I can tell if I need external speakers instead of the monitor's internal speakers and I pretty much always do.

hakfoo 6y ago

I will nod to your choice of using a reciever and "conventional" speakers. In addition, you can get amazing value on that stuff used. Nobody wants, say, pre-HDMI AV recievers, so you can buy top-of-the-line units that sold for $1000 in 1995 for $30 today, and it's perfectly capable for 2-channel PC audio. Go back a few more years and you get into the domain of vintage 70s silver gear-- not so much cheap anymore, but a lot of of it has truly impressive build quality and servicability. Same with the big old speakers which predate the "tiny satelites + subwoofer" designs. I think you could set up an empty Goodwill in a sealed enclosure, never let a person into it, and several sets of Fisher and Technics speakers with 12" or 15" woofers and $19.95 price tags would spontaneously generate. I splurged a bit and got the Pioneer "Andrew Jones" floorstanding speakers (about USD250 per pair) like 5 or 6 years ago, and power them with a 1980 JVC A-X4 amplifier (about USD100 used, but I put about 75 more in rebuilding it) Since it's in a 10x15 room, you don't need a remote to change sources.

xeromal 6y ago
I never considered that, but I can totally see major discounts in pre-HD era equipment. Has there not been a lot of gains (like going from 420P to 4k) in the audio-side of things in that past 10 or 20 years? If not, can I use that same reasoning and buy some top shelf old speakers? I've always wanted to do it but I didn't want to be ripped off.
- acdha 6y ago
  Uncompressed digital audio hit the limits of human perception around the turn of the century. The big things affecting people’s perceived quality were bad compression, noise due to things like poor shielding on low-end computers, or using something like Bluetooth where bandwidth constraints forced heavy compression. If you get a decent DAC (which isn’t a ton of money - USB devices are quite mature) a 20-30 year old system is going to sound great. Newer ones might be smaller or use less power but sound reproduction has been mature for many decades.
  - fggg444 6y ago