3 ms·

This shit always gets me. I don't care how much you spend on electrostatic speakers, granite slabs, acoustic treatments, and magic speaker wire — your room will

This shit always gets me. I don't care how much you spend on electrostatic speakers, granite slabs, acoustic treatments, and magic speaker wire — your room will never, ever sound as good as a decent pair of headphones. That said there absolutely is a case for high-bitrate, losslessly-compressed, DRM-free, watermark-free audio as the standard, and that is sampling and remixing. Slowing down a 320 kbps mp3 by just 50% sounds like shit.

Mediterraneo10 5y ago
Some of the people concerned about room response are listening to surround-sound classical recordings. In works that involve a spatial element -- for example an orchestra in front and players that move around the hall (or are embedded within the audience), creating a 360° soundstage -- headphones just don't preserve that as well as actual speakers.
- kuschku 5y ago
  Headphones with a proper HRTF preserve that perfectly fine better than any actual speaker setup ever can. The typical demo for this functionality is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
  - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
    Recordings have to be specially recorded and processed for that. There are however many older recordings that were made without the use of such technology and are expected to be played on speakers in 5.0.
    - kuschku 5y ago
      You can apply the same virtually as well: simulate a raytraced environment with 5.0 speakers and furniture, simulate an HRTF, and generate the resulting 2.0 audio. It's possible to do this in a way that's not in any way distinguishable from a real 5.0 setup
      - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
        I don’t think it is realistic to expect an ordinary home listener of some old SACD 5.0 recording to carry out some elaborate simulation involving the specific furniture in his home, just to listen to something on headphones.
        kuschku 5y ago
        The user themselves not, but if you have some apple homepods and airpods max, they can build the same model and actually do that (and that's part of their spatial audio). Dolby provides a similar system, but with a generic room simulation, as do several others.

Mediterraneo10 5y ago

Some of the people concerned about room response are listening to surround-sound classical recordings. In works that involve a spatial element -- for example an orchestra in front and players that move around the hall (or are embedded within the audience), creating a 360° soundstage -- headphones just don't preserve that as well as actual speakers.

kuschku 5y ago
Headphones with a proper HRTF preserve that perfectly fine better than any actual speaker setup ever can. The typical demo for this functionality is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
- Mediterraneo10 5y ago
  Recordings have to be specially recorded and processed for that. There are however many older recordings that were made without the use of such technology and are expected to be played on speakers in 5.0.
  - kuschku 5y ago
    You can apply the same virtually as well: simulate a raytraced environment with 5.0 speakers and furniture, simulate an HRTF, and generate the resulting 2.0 audio. It's possible to do this in a way that's not in any way distinguishable from a real 5.0 setup
    - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
      I don’t think it is realistic to expect an ordinary home listener of some old SACD 5.0 recording to carry out some elaborate simulation involving the specific furniture in his home, just to listen to something on headphones.
      - kuschku 5y ago
        The user themselves not, but if you have some apple homepods and airpods max, they can build the same model and actually do that (and that's part of their spatial audio). Dolby provides a similar system, but with a generic room simulation, as do several others.