6 ms·

takeaway at end: > Measured THD doesn’t appear to correlate particularly with our reviewers’ subjective impressions. > It is rare to find commercially availabl

takeaway at end: > Measured THD doesn’t appear to correlate particularly with our reviewers’ subjective impressions. > It is rare to find commercially available headphones where harmonic distortion is even an issue worth drawing attention to. Turns out most listeners can't tell or aren't bothered as long as the quality is good-enough.

smackeyacky 5y ago
It's astonishing to read some of the online audio forums and see just how much garbage is touted about noise in hi-fi systems, although most of the forums seem to have moved on from worrying about THD measurements and onto a variety of invented problems. - people who can "hear" different ethernet cables to their system. Audiophile ethernet switches. - endless wittering about jitter, despite nobody ever getting a measurement of jitter in a system newer than about 1985 that would possibly be audible. I'm not sure where most of it comes from other than some unscrupulous operators making devices that "solve" your jitter or ethernet issues with nonsense products that can't possibly work in the way the manufacturer describes. It has made most of the forums worthless as sources of decent information about hi-fi. Any suggestion that the worries about jitter or digital cables (or even good old RCA cables) cannot possibly affect what you are hearing are shouted down by hordes of screaming jitter monkeys. Something of a shame if you were a beginner and wanted some concrete information about what you should be looking for in a hi-fi.
- vt240 5y ago
  I don't really follow the forums as much as I used to, but diyAudio [1] always seemed like it had a good distribution of domain experts to help quash the craziness. [1] https://www.diyaudio.com/ https://www.diyaudio.com/
  - astrange 5y ago
    audiosciencereview is also okay. It seems to get worse the more money the posters have (maybe because salesmen get to sell them more weird speakers), and also if they're British they start talking about special power cables and something called PRAT. Headphone reviews often seem to have incorrect claims about "speed" and "effortlessness", although I think those might actually describe something, just not what they think it is.
- analog31 5y ago
  I think that folks just like to dabble in domains where you can "be your own expert" or at least "choose your own expert." This is impossible if you need to be a technical expert to understand electrical and acoustic measurements, and have a pile of test equipment. And it becomes utterly demotivating if working harder to get better results only proves that what you're seeking is nonexistent or irrelevant. It may also be related to why people want to "do the research" and discover things like their own homegrown immunization protocol, rather than just going and getting a vaccine.
  - vt240 5y ago
    This is an aspect of the audiophile community, I've never quite understood. At work, we have clear cut engineering goals, based on customer requirements, we strive to reach, with empirical measurements of product prototypes. Whether it's loudspeakers or cabinets designs, we're optimizing for variables such as coverage pattern, sensitivity, long-term power handling, etc. It's a holistic, system design approach to the "product". We rarely even think about a lot of the metrics the audiophile cares such much about, except in the design of QC systems for End-of-line testing, to catch manufacturing defects. Most of these items, like various avenues of distortion, are designed around in the early phases of development, by simple mechanical or electrical engineering choices, such as motor design, suspension design, cone material choices, etc. I just always find it interesting. No customer has ever asked me for the plot of distortion products vs freq for a loudspeaker in pro-audio. Or the metallurgic compositions of the tinsel wires.
    - smackeyacky 5y ago
      I like to blame it on Stereophile magazine losing their mind as digital sources of music took over. Turntables / cartridges etc you can pretty much make up what you want about how they sound due to the sheer amount of noise and medium speed integrity issues involved, making it very hard to call them out on their subjective biases. Digital isn't perfect but compared to what an analogue playback system does, it might as well be considered as such. It gave them nothing to write about when a $120 disc player could reproduce audio as well as a $2000 player. They seemed to have doubled and tripled down on the nonsense ever since. Not sure why audiophiles fall for it, other than the general "tweakiness" aspect of some audio enthusiasts who are always looking for the next thing to spend their money on. It's tough to have a hobby when if you buy the gear, you have little to complain about until it's made obsolete. I'm on the opposite side of finding it interesting though. There is a lot of "your ears aren't good enough" dog piling going on to shout down any doubts about cables and whatnot.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  While looking for a longer TOSLINK cable today I ran across some gold plated ones on Amazon. I guess nothing sounds better than thinking it's the best.
- pjc50 5y ago
  It's just orthorexia for your ears. Guys (I have never encountered a female audiophile of the "fancy cables and magic pens" variety) like talking about gear. Many hobbies have forums in which microscopic details of expensive products get scrutinized. Bikes, cameras, cars, outdoor gear, knives. Audiophilia is the same. It certainly used to be the case in the valve era that results were extremely variable. It is still the case that speaker construction matters a lot. But now, in 2021? At the kind of volumes you might reasonably want in your house, pretty much any class D amplifier that has been competently constructed will do the job really well. You need reasonable efforts to avoid PSU noise and accidentally amplifying EMI and that's it. You can get high-quality DACs on a single chip for about $10. https://www.mouser.co.uk/c/?marcom=110885714 https://www.mouser.co.uk/c/?marcom=110885714 That creates a serious problem for hobbyists: there's no longer a barrier to entry! There's no longer an expensive climb up to the higher echelons. What do you do when the gate you were keeping has been bypassed by the affordable electronics barbarians? You have to retreat to a more esoteric ivory tower.
comfysocks 5y ago
Indeed, without a good audio reference it might be difficult to tell if the additional harmonics on a note played by a violin are the result of harmonic distortion or simply a more "harmonically rich" violin.
rasz 5y ago
This is today. 20 years ago you had $400 "Logitech Z-5500 THX-Certified 5.1 Digital Surround Sound Speaker System" "The Z-5500 will consistently give you great sound on a daily basis and was tested by THX experts as well as our audio team." "The Logitech Z-5500 is the best all-around PC speaker system we have used to date." etc. This thing sports 10% THD and sounds like ass (or cheap boombox) when compared to run of the mill home system amplifier from the eighties/nineties (those were usually 0.1-0.9%).

smackeyacky 5y ago

It's astonishing to read some of the online audio forums and see just how much garbage is touted about noise in hi-fi systems, although most of the forums seem to have moved on from worrying about THD measurements and onto a variety of invented problems. - people who can "hear" different ethernet cables to their system. Audiophile ethernet switches. - endless wittering about jitter, despite nobody ever getting a measurement of jitter in a system newer than about 1985 that would possibly be audible. I'm not sure where most of it comes from other than some unscrupulous operators making devices that "solve" your jitter or ethernet issues with nonsense products that can't possibly work in the way the manufacturer describes. It has made most of the forums worthless as sources of decent information about hi-fi. Any suggestion that the worries about jitter or digital cables (or even good old RCA cables) cannot possibly affect what you are hearing are shouted down by hordes of screaming jitter monkeys. Something of a shame if you were a beginner and wanted some concrete information about what you should be looking for in a hi-fi.

vt240 5y ago
I don't really follow the forums as much as I used to, but diyAudio [1] always seemed like it had a good distribution of domain experts to help quash the craziness. [1] https://www.diyaudio.com/ https://www.diyaudio.com/
- astrange 5y ago
  audiosciencereview is also okay. It seems to get worse the more money the posters have (maybe because salesmen get to sell them more weird speakers), and also if they're British they start talking about special power cables and something called PRAT. Headphone reviews often seem to have incorrect claims about "speed" and "effortlessness", although I think those might actually describe something, just not what they think it is.
analog31 5y ago
I think that folks just like to dabble in domains where you can "be your own expert" or at least "choose your own expert." This is impossible if you need to be a technical expert to understand electrical and acoustic measurements, and have a pile of test equipment. And it becomes utterly demotivating if working harder to get better results only proves that what you're seeking is nonexistent or irrelevant. It may also be related to why people want to "do the research" and discover things like their own homegrown immunization protocol, rather than just going and getting a vaccine.
- vt240 5y ago
  This is an aspect of the audiophile community, I've never quite understood. At work, we have clear cut engineering goals, based on customer requirements, we strive to reach, with empirical measurements of product prototypes. Whether it's loudspeakers or cabinets designs, we're optimizing for variables such as coverage pattern, sensitivity, long-term power handling, etc. It's a holistic, system design approach to the "product". We rarely even think about a lot of the metrics the audiophile cares such much about, except in the design of QC systems for End-of-line testing, to catch manufacturing defects. Most of these items, like various avenues of distortion, are designed around in the early phases of development, by simple mechanical or electrical engineering choices, such as motor design, suspension design, cone material choices, etc. I just always find it interesting. No customer has ever asked me for the plot of distortion products vs freq for a loudspeaker in pro-audio. Or the metallurgic compositions of the tinsel wires.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    I like to blame it on Stereophile magazine losing their mind as digital sources of music took over. Turntables / cartridges etc you can pretty much make up what you want about how they sound due to the sheer amount of noise and medium speed integrity issues involved, making it very hard to call them out on their subjective biases. Digital isn't perfect but compared to what an analogue playback system does, it might as well be considered as such. It gave them nothing to write about when a $120 disc player could reproduce audio as well as a $2000 player. They seemed to have doubled and tripled down on the nonsense ever since. Not sure why audiophiles fall for it, other than the general "tweakiness" aspect of some audio enthusiasts who are always looking for the next thing to spend their money on. It's tough to have a hobby when if you buy the gear, you have little to complain about until it's made obsolete. I'm on the opposite side of finding it interesting though. There is a lot of "your ears aren't good enough" dog piling going on to shout down any doubts about cables and whatnot.
zamadatix 5y ago
While looking for a longer TOSLINK cable today I ran across some gold plated ones on Amazon. I guess nothing sounds better than thinking it's the best.
pjc50 5y ago
It's just orthorexia for your ears. Guys (I have never encountered a female audiophile of the "fancy cables and magic pens" variety) like talking about gear. Many hobbies have forums in which microscopic details of expensive products get scrutinized. Bikes, cameras, cars, outdoor gear, knives. Audiophilia is the same. It certainly used to be the case in the valve era that results were extremely variable. It is still the case that speaker construction matters a lot. But now, in 2021? At the kind of volumes you might reasonably want in your house, pretty much any class D amplifier that has been competently constructed will do the job really well. You need reasonable efforts to avoid PSU noise and accidentally amplifying EMI and that's it. You can get high-quality DACs on a single chip for about $10. https://www.mouser.co.uk/c/?marcom=110885714 https://www.mouser.co.uk/c/?marcom=110885714 That creates a serious problem for hobbyists: there's no longer a barrier to entry! There's no longer an expensive climb up to the higher echelons. What do you do when the gate you were keeping has been bypassed by the affordable electronics barbarians? You have to retreat to a more esoteric ivory tower.

comfysocks 5y ago

Indeed, without a good audio reference it might be difficult to tell if the additional harmonics on a note played by a violin are the result of harmonic distortion or simply a more "harmonically rich" violin.

rasz 5y ago

This is today. 20 years ago you had $400 "Logitech Z-5500 THX-Certified 5.1 Digital Surround Sound Speaker System" "The Z-5500 will consistently give you great sound on a daily basis and was tested by THX experts as well as our audio team." "The Logitech Z-5500 is the best all-around PC speaker system we have used to date." etc. This thing sports 10% THD and sounds like ass (or cheap boombox) when compared to run of the mill home system amplifier from the eighties/nineties (those were usually 0.1-0.9%).