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I genuinely cannot tell the difference between hi-fi audio and regular audio. My brain says this audio is certainly better since I paid a lot of money for it,
by tediousdemise 6y ago
I genuinely cannot tell the difference between hi-fi audio and regular audio.
My brain says this audio is certainly better since I paid a lot of money for it, but my ears are in disagreement. Perhaps it’s because I suffer from tinnitus.
Is anyone else in the same boat?
- darthrupert 6y agoI have a pair of headphones that cost several thousand $. I can hear things I haven't heard before in songs that I've listened to since I was a teenager. Is it worth the money? Honestly I'm not sure. I probably could've gotten there with an investment of $500-1000. But now I have a beautiful piece of hardware that might last a decade or two.
- C19is20 6y agoLink to item?
- Tepix 6y agoThe Stax electrostatic headphones ("earspeakers") have that effect whenever i put them on.
- darthrupert 6y agohttps://www.focal.com/headphones/stellia/ https://www.focal.com/headphones/stellia/
- _joel 6y agoThat's the quality of the reproduction though, not the stuff you put into it. Agreed, I have Shure semi-opens I use for production that you hear things in that you wouldn't hear in buds but that's still just via regular old 16bit/44Khz WAV.
- samvher 6y agoI think there are some diminishing returns and you need multiple components to line up. I have decent (€250 or so) headphones, the M3K and high quality MP3s and then I definitely hear a world of difference compared to e.g. stock iPhone buds on an old iPhone with 128k MP3s. But I doubt that I would notice a difference with still more expensive headphones, FLACs and a more expensive device. On the setup I have 128k/transcoded MP3 also definitely has less interesting detail than higher quality files.
- sjwright 6y ago> 128k MP3s Twenty years ago, such files would have been barely listenable. Ten years ago, this would have been tolerable but obviously compromised. Today, with the best encoders, 128k MP3s are shockingly good. Certainly not perfect. But good. MP3 encoding has come a long way.
- samvher 6y agoInteresting - I didn't realize this had improved so much. A large part of my library is definitely 10 or more years old so that might explain it.
- Synaesthesia 6y agoA big difference is AAC. 256kbps AAC sounds pretty good.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- doix 6y agoI was at a conference where someone was showing off the TIDAL studio master stuff. It definitely sounded different, I heard things in songs that I've listened to for years that I've not heard before. I then realized that the headphones cost around $2000 (Audeze LCD-3) and a dac that I didn't recognize, but I'm sure it wasn't cheap. But there were too many variables to tell what made the difference. Was it the expensive headphones + dac? Was it the better quality audio? Was it the different mastering of the song that I know? Either way, I still listen to my "shit" audio setup because it's good enough for me and what I'm used too.
- sjwright 6y ago> It definitely sounded different, I heard things in songs that I've listened to for years that I've not heard before. That usually means one of two things— 1. the frequency response of this new system is different, changing the relative loudness of different instruments; 2. the context caused you to concentrate on the music differently and your experience of it was therefore different. The critical thing nobody ever says is "I heard things I never heard before, then I went back to my regular system and I stopped hearing the new thing." That never[0] happens—because the thing you hadn't noticed was there all along. [0] Edit: Okay yes, so not never. I was assuming that the regular system is a reasonably competent modern setup. The median intentional audio system, shall we say.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago> The critical thing nobody ever says is "I heard things I never heard before, then I went back to my regular system and I stopped hearing the new thing." ...well, I have, but only when I was a child, and my “regular system” was a thing my parents bought for probably less than $20.
- DiabloD3 6y agoI can tell you it probably was none of them. I own Stax, electrostats that make Audeze look plebian, plugged into their fancy Stax amp (although not the fanciest), plugged into a Theta DAC that is basically a 44.1/48khz Schiit Yggy, and there isn't some amazing leap. Also, fun fact, want a 90% Audeze LCD clone? Monoprice M1070 and M1570. I have the predecessor, the M1060, fucking amazing for a $300 can, but flawed enough that I recommend the newer models of it.
- jedimastert 6y agoThere is a vast well of diminishing audio in the Hi-Fi world. I think for almost anyone who doesn't want to actively turn listening to music into a hobby, I think ~$100 each headphones and a DAC is the highest end anyone will ever notice.
- mumblemumble 6y agoI certainly am. But I can also believe that it is at least somewhat different for audiophiles. I once took a beer judge certification course, and, by the end of it, I could easily distinguish flavor subtleties that were completely imperceptible to me at the start of the class. Not just in a "I think I can" way, but reliably in blind tests. And I've had a similar experience of imperceptible differences becoming easy to spot when learning to speak new languages. So it seems possible to me that simply being an audiophile makes it possible to care about subtleties that non-audiophiles can't even hear, because brains are magical like that.
- easygenes 6y agoFor me it took getting some good balanced armature IEMs and lying somewhere calm and quiet with a 24-slider EQ and listening repeatedly to familiar music with different EQ adjustments. Play a song. Move one or two sliders. Play it again. You pick up on a lot of subtleties you’d miss otherwise.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sjwright 6y agoThe crucial difference is that compared to our other senses, our ears are really, really, astonishingly shit. They can be highly precise in one context and ludicrously imprecise in another context. And they lie. They often tell us we're hearing what our eyes expect to hear.
- InitialLastName 6y agoOTOH, there aren't many other sensory systems that operate over 3 orders of magnitude in frequency and 6 o.o.m. in amplitude.
- sjwright 6y agoThis is true. Our hearing is well tuned for utility in a pre-modern context. They just don't have anything remotely like the precision of our eyesight, which can judge things like the straightness of a line, or simultaneously compare the properties of distinct objects.
- djitz 6y agoWhat Hi-Fi audio equipment have you listened to
- tediousdemise 6y agoPhilips SHP9500 headphones, TIN HiFi T2 Pro IEMs, AudioQuest DragonFly Black DAC.
- cyberpunk 6y agoYep. My old man used to be a sound engineer for the bbc and he has a ridiculous hifi setup, and he’s convinced he can hear a difference between 24/192 vs a normal 320 mp3 but I sure can’t and the blind tests I’ve done on him does make me think he’s taking shit. Xiph seems to agree: https://web.archive.org/web/20200124190800/https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200124190800/https://people.xi...
- _joel 6y agoIf anything higher sample rates causes more stress on the ear. Shannon-Nyquist theory is definitely a thing.
- sjwright 6y agoAnd more stress on the speaker/tweeter drivers. Of course, when you look at these high resolution recordings, the amplitude of material above 20kHz is piddling. The amount of harmonics/overtones in acoustic instruments is minuscule in the first place.
- Arainach 6y agoYou're confusing frequency and resolution. Just because a set of music fits in a certain frequency range doesn't mean that all representations of it are equal. For example, consider this in graphical form: https://i.imgur.com/ZgU1bgI.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ZgU1bgI.jpg https://i.imgur.com/RZpbyyI.jpg https://i.imgur.com/RZpbyyI.jpg Both have the same 24-bit color space. Both have the same blackest black and whitest white. Both have the same resolution. And yet one preserves more detail and information. This is the nature of lossy compression.
- sjwright 6y agoI am not confusing the two. In a band-limited signal, the Shannon-Nyquist theorem mathematically proves that the sampling rate is the frequency resolution. It also proves that when a signal is band limited, discrete time sampling can be a zero-loss transformation. Your analogy misunderstands audio signals. The resolution components of bit depth and lossy compression are different axes and should not be conflated with or analogised to frequency resolution. They behave very differently.
- ilikejam 6y agoGood speakers or headphones make a genuine difference. Amplifiers don't tend to matter much any more - cheap class B solid-state amps are all fine these days (heaphone amps are a lottery though). Digital sources have largely sounded perfect for the past 20 years. A properly set up pair of good speakers in a room big enough to let them do their thing can be an _astonishing_ thing to hear.
- alias_neo 6y agoIf your audio is of sufficient quality, it really does come down to the headphones and being sufficiently able to drive them. I used to be a earphones or nought when I was a kid, then I started using some "expensive" Sony headphones, had those almost a decade now but have since started using a combination of IEMs, monitor speakers and a pair of planar magnetic headphones with big drivers. Even though I'm decades older than when I started, and in theory my hearing is worse, I hear things in music I've listened to for all of this time that I didn't before. I have a high res audio player, I buy high res music and all that, but the single biggest difference I'd say is having a good size driver, 40mm+ for headphones, the ability to drive them well (a cheapish but not too cheap amp) and some decent quality music, ideally MP3 320 or something or lossless. As someone who doesn't make music or content I wouldn't recommend monitor speakers for general listening unless you're a true purist, they don't sound "fun", they're extremely directional and I can only describe them as "clinical". The same can be said for many IEMs, but not always.
- lucideer 6y agoAnother thing to add to the siblings pointing out that headphones/speakers make a bigger difference than AMPs/DACs/etc.: the room also makes an outsized difference in the case of speakers, even to untrained ears. So I'd say focus on headphones if you want to notice significant improvements.
- gwbas1c 6y agoSo far, the highest frequency that we've been able to determine that humans can process is about 28khz. That's about 1/3rd of an octave above what the limits of CD and most streaming services provide. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range#Humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range#Humans "Old-fashioned" CD, when mastered with modern noise shaping, gets super-close to the fundamental limits of human hearing. Furthermore, as the above link points out, older people often can't hear above 15khz. Thus, if you're older, you might not be capable of hearing the difference between a CD and the same mix on BluRay or DVD. FWIW: There's a lot of psuedoscience in the audiophile market. Things like DSD and sampling rates about 96khz make little sense outside of the recording studio. (This is because the absolute upper limit of human hearing is 28khz. 96khz exceeds the human hearing range by almost an octave.)
- Arainach 6y agoYou're confusing frequency and resolution. Just because a set of music fits in a certain frequency range doesn't mean that all representations of it are equal. For example, consider this in graphical form: https://i.imgur.com/ZgU1bgI.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ZgU1bgI.jpg https://i.imgur.com/RZpbyyI.jpg https://i.imgur.com/RZpbyyI.jpg Both have the same 24-bit color space. Both have the same blackest black and whitest white. Both have the same resolution. And yet one preserves more detail and information. This is the nature of lossy compression.
- moftz 6y agoThe sampling rate and frequency range are tied together though. The Nyquist rate says the sampling rate must be 2x the bandwidth. If you sample at 96KHz, the most bandwidth you'd get is sound waves up to 48KHz and still be able to accurately reproduce them. However, if human hearing taps out at 28KHz, then you could sample up to 56KHz and still reliably reproduce the same sound.
- gwbas1c 6y agoAt that point, the only real advantage to 96khz is that it pushes any potential distortion out of the audible range. But going above 96khz or DSD is silly outside of the recording studio.
- khazhoux 6y agoI went down this rabbit-hole a few years ago. Had some FiiOs, expensive in-ears, and lots of FLACs. I did hear a difference, but it's not obvious. It's not a "OMG WHOA" when you put on the latest crisp FLAC compared to whatever streamed from Apple Music. On some tracks, the difference is nil. But on the occasional track, the hi-fi version is just clearer end-to-end. And on a few tracks, you will hear tiny little things you'd never heard before, and this can be actually exhilarating -- like, there will be a track I've listened to 100 times, and now suddenly I hear the bit of sticky-spit sound as the singer opens his mouth right before starting to sing... and that instantly makes it like you're standing right next to the microphone. Sounds silly, but it's cool.
- m463 6y agoI recently bought a fiio fd5 iems and I really do like the sound. Way better than the $30 earbuds I have around. Unfortunately they're just not comfortable enough to wear all day. So day-to-day I use mmx 300's for everything else. I did have to buy one of those "demonstration CDs" and test stuff out. I wonder how many people do that?
- snvzz 6y agoSennheiser HD600 are definitely worth the money.
- m463 6y agoI can tell the difference between $30 headphones and $300 headphones, you could probably tell too. But between $300 and $3000? I wouldn't trust myself. I think to even try, you need to set up an A/B system and precisely match levels. If you don't match levels, the louder one will always sound better. I've tried it before, but it's hard to match levels. It's even harder if you're swapping headphones or earbuds.