4 ms·

That's the problem though - the people who treat "listening to music" as an activity of its own are getting fewer and fewer. I listen to a lot of music, but I m

by rob74 4y ago

That's the problem though - the people who treat "listening to music" as an activity of its own are getting fewer and fewer. I listen to a lot of music, but I mostly do it while commuting, while programming etc., not in the living room. I even have a good old stereo that's served me well for over 20 years now (Sony, not Onkyo), but it mostly only serves as better PC speakers nowadays. I still play a CD on it occasionally though...

leokennis 4y ago
I think “listening to music as an activity” and “buying, tweaking and upgrading expensive audio setups” are two separate activities that often overlap but do not require each other. As an example, I fiercely enjoy sitting on my couch with my eyes closed listening to full albums of the White Stripes or Stars of the Lid or Boards of Canada or Sufjan Stevens on my AirPods Max, streamed via Bluetooth from my iPhone. Every audiophile would laugh in my face because of the poor hifi choices I’m making. But I’m damn sure I’m really attentively listening to the music.
- christoph 4y ago
  It’s exactly this. “Audiophiles” are a weird bunch. Much of what they claim to hear is scientifically proven as total nonsense. Audio Science Review is a great place where they scientifically analyse audio equipment. The quality of speaker wire for all meaningful measurements is utterly irrelevant for instance. Realistically, as long as you are enjoying the art, how you are enjoying it should be irrelevant. I often make the point to people that a terrible movie will be terrible no matter how you watch it - HDR, 4K, Atmos won’t make a difference. A crappy movie, will always be a crappy movie. The same with music, and inversely - a great song will still sound great and enjoyable on a really crappy car stereo.
  - itsoktocry 4y ago
    On one had, totally agree. The audiophile world is full of so much nonsense. On the other, a decent home theatre amplifier and set of speakers is going to blow away a sound bar. I think people who think "it all sounds the same" have never heard a really good stereo. I have an alright, but far from high end, stereo set up in a listening environment in my basement, and everyone I've ever listened to music with down there is blown away.
    - christoph 4y ago
      Absolutely. 100%. Last night we turned the “stereo” up really loud after Eurovision to listen to Mikas album for the first time in years - Full height Revel fronts, monitor audio rear effect speakers, dual subs, blasted it. I spent hours tuning curves on the Denon amp with an external microphone last year… Anyone that thinks a sound bar would sound anything like what we hear is honestly deluded. But, I also wouldn’t spend much more money on it… it’s way more than good enough for us… audiophiles would tell me I could spend another £10k on equipment chasing another 1%, I’m not sure at this point it would deliver anymore intrinsic value. At a different token, two Sonos in Stereo in my kitchen are more than good enough while I’m cooking to listen to music and podcasts. I’d never, ever, want to see high end audio equipment die. When it all works together, the experience is truly sublime, engrossing and immersive like nothing else.
      - jIyajbe 4y ago
        Same. The only thing I miss about owning my own home is that I can't set up a home theater. The last house I owned had a bare-to-the-studs basement when we bought it. I built a home theater to die for there: ran every wire you could think of, built the walls and ceiling where and how I wanted for optimum sound, acoustically treated everything, researched all the audio and video equipment, installed a projector, built my own screen, even built all of my speakers myself, in my shop. The whole process took a year, and I had an enormous amount of fun doing it. And it worked: Watching movies was great, but sitting there with the lights dimmed low, listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony, or (different mood) Dire Straits "Love Over Gold"...There's no experience that compares.
        christoph 4y ago
        Sounds like bliss. Not just the end result, the process as well. I think that’s what people who haven’t gone down the audio highway don’t understand. The constant tweaking and adjusting is sometimes a very cathartic experience. You really do get to enjoy the fruits of your labour like very few other endeavours.
        glouwbug 4y ago
  - mindslight 4y ago
    I don't agree with the inverse. Bad speakers (eg laptops, especially Thinkpads) can make listening to good songs into a meh experience. It's better than nothing when you want music, but rarely will you notice that spontaneous feeling of love for what you're hearing. This doesn't justify the utterly diminishing returns of the audiophile world or the whole speaker cable nonsense, but paying something for a decent setup is worth it. Although from what I understand that effective price point is much lower with headphones compared to speakers. For movies, I watched a cam rip once. The experience was so bad I vowed never again. And the weird bit is all the distortions were like only half-perceptable (warbly audio, mild shadows / reflections from people walking near the camera), so I would just feel like something was wrong but couldn't immediately place it.
    - seanp2k2 4y ago
      There’s also the matter of familiarity — if you’ve already heard a song on good gear many times, your brain will fill in the gaps even on bad playback equipment, but finding new stuff might not be as enjoyable because much will be left out, like bass textures, interesting things happening with sound staging, and even entire bits of melody or background that aren’t easy to pick out with smartphone / laptop / normal car speakers. Edit: the car case is particularly funny as many luxury brands offer $$$$-$$$$$ options for better sound systems when they can’t solve the fundamental flaws of compromised placement and background noise inherent to cars. That McIntosh system in your new $120k Jeep Grand Wagoneer might impress the neighbor but it still won’t do much to quiet the roar of real all-terrain tires on the highway.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    > The same with music, and inversely - a great song will still sound great and enjoyable on a really crappy car stereo. Not really agree on this one. I would say you will still like it and maybe enjoy it because this is the only way you can enjoy it while driving. But that doesn't mean it sound great. The issue is that most music is overcompressed these days to make up for the fact that most people are listening to music in hostile environment or with bad devices. Which make the difference with higher fidelity equipment less important. Without being an audiophile I have records from the 90's that only felt so great on headphones or decent hifi. The music was less compressed these days, there were much higher amplitude difference between parts of the song, instruments. Back in the days listening on the radio felt weird and flat. We just lowered the bar to the point that everything feel weird and flat. Like fast food or premade dishes that only have a general way too salty or too sweet tastes where your palate cannot do the sorting anymore of the different ingredients that have been put to it. I still think a decent hifi equipment would make a ton of difference for someone into classical records. Modern POP music? Waste of money.
  - thirdsun 4y ago
    > It’s exactly this. “Audiophiles” are a weird bunch. Much of what they claim to hear is scientifically proven as total nonsense. Audio Science Review is a great place where they scientifically analyse audio equipment. The quality of speaker wire for all meaningful measurements is utterly irrelevant for instance. You are talking about the extreme kind of audiophiles that aren't really representative of the community, which covers a wide spectrum of people. It's like saying all developers are socially awkward loners. Merely a stereotype. > I often make the point to people that a terrible movie will be terrible no matter how you watch it - HDR, 4K, Atmos won’t make a difference. A crappy movie, will always be a crappy movie. Of course. Noone would argue against that. However a great movie really shines on good equipment. Imagine watching Blade Runner 2049 on a laptop display. No amount of convenience is making that experience worthwhile in my opinion.
    - dagw 4y ago
      Imagine watching Blade Runner 2049 on a laptop display. No amount of convenience is making that experience worthwhile in my opinion. I watched most of the 'classic' movie canon (including the original Blade Runner) on rented VHS tapes and a cheap CRT TV, and many of those where among the most 'worthwhile' movie watching experiences in my life. A great movie will 'shine' on any equipment.
- spindle 4y ago
  Speaking as an audiophile, although I don't exactly agree with your specific choice of headphones (I have to say that or I wouldn't be an audiophile) I strongly agree with using good headphones driven by any old thing. Audio quality these days only really depends on the transducers - i.e. whatever converts things to or from electricity, which, unless you've got a turntable, means just your headphones and/or speakers. Dealing with audio while it's in the electrical domain is a solved problem and your iPhone does it as well as the most expensive equipment.
  - Nav_Panel 4y ago
    I have a pair of nice headphones (Hifiman Aryas, planar magnetics) that need to be driven fairly hard compared to most dynamics, and to that end, I've found that an outboard DAC + amp with enough juice to drive them properly makes a big difference. And not an "unnoticeable to audiophiles only" difference but a very obvious one.
    - spindle 4y ago
      Yes, fair. In fact my best headphones need a dedicated headphone amp too. I'd forgotten that! But it doesn't need to be posh power. Just power.
    - astrange 4y ago
      That's an electrical compatibility thing more than a quality thing. iPhones+headphone jacks have high quality DACs (better than "audiophile equipment" which is a scam) but aren't good with high impedance, partly because it'd drain the battery.
Terry_Roll 4y ago
> the people who treat "listening to music" as an activity of its own are getting fewer and fewer. I used to joke if I made it rich, I'd buy a night club and have my office facing the area where the DJ is doing their magic as I love listening to good mixes when coding and having a work environment which is almost like a recording studio is rare. I've had access to a lot of hifi components some of it quite high end but not as high end as a pair of floor standing speakers that cost £125k today.I also knew a wizard of an electronics engineer who could get anything working, all of the manufacturers have/had their "problems" so most of it came down to branding and what the press said.

by rob74 4y ago

leokennis 4y ago

I think “listening to music as an activity” and “buying, tweaking and upgrading expensive audio setups” are two separate activities that often overlap but do not require each other. As an example, I fiercely enjoy sitting on my couch with my eyes closed listening to full albums of the White Stripes or Stars of the Lid or Boards of Canada or Sufjan Stevens on my AirPods Max, streamed via Bluetooth from my iPhone. Every audiophile would laugh in my face because of the poor hifi choices I’m making. But I’m damn sure I’m really attentively listening to the music.

christoph 4y ago
It’s exactly this. “Audiophiles” are a weird bunch. Much of what they claim to hear is scientifically proven as total nonsense. Audio Science Review is a great place where they scientifically analyse audio equipment. The quality of speaker wire for all meaningful measurements is utterly irrelevant for instance. Realistically, as long as you are enjoying the art, how you are enjoying it should be irrelevant. I often make the point to people that a terrible movie will be terrible no matter how you watch it - HDR, 4K, Atmos won’t make a difference. A crappy movie, will always be a crappy movie. The same with music, and inversely - a great song will still sound great and enjoyable on a really crappy car stereo.
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  On one had, totally agree. The audiophile world is full of so much nonsense. On the other, a decent home theatre amplifier and set of speakers is going to blow away a sound bar. I think people who think "it all sounds the same" have never heard a really good stereo. I have an alright, but far from high end, stereo set up in a listening environment in my basement, and everyone I've ever listened to music with down there is blown away.
  - christoph 4y ago
    Absolutely. 100%. Last night we turned the “stereo” up really loud after Eurovision to listen to Mikas album for the first time in years - Full height Revel fronts, monitor audio rear effect speakers, dual subs, blasted it. I spent hours tuning curves on the Denon amp with an external microphone last year… Anyone that thinks a sound bar would sound anything like what we hear is honestly deluded. But, I also wouldn’t spend much more money on it… it’s way more than good enough for us… audiophiles would tell me I could spend another £10k on equipment chasing another 1%, I’m not sure at this point it would deliver anymore intrinsic value. At a different token, two Sonos in Stereo in my kitchen are more than good enough while I’m cooking to listen to music and podcasts. I’d never, ever, want to see high end audio equipment die. When it all works together, the experience is truly sublime, engrossing and immersive like nothing else.
    - jIyajbe 4y ago
      Same. The only thing I miss about owning my own home is that I can't set up a home theater. The last house I owned had a bare-to-the-studs basement when we bought it. I built a home theater to die for there: ran every wire you could think of, built the walls and ceiling where and how I wanted for optimum sound, acoustically treated everything, researched all the audio and video equipment, installed a projector, built my own screen, even built all of my speakers myself, in my shop. The whole process took a year, and I had an enormous amount of fun doing it. And it worked: Watching movies was great, but sitting there with the lights dimmed low, listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony, or (different mood) Dire Straits "Love Over Gold"...There's no experience that compares.
      - christoph 4y ago
        Sounds like bliss. Not just the end result, the process as well. I think that’s what people who haven’t gone down the audio highway don’t understand. The constant tweaking and adjusting is sometimes a very cathartic experience. You really do get to enjoy the fruits of your labour like very few other endeavours.
      - glouwbug 4y ago
- mindslight 4y ago
  I don't agree with the inverse. Bad speakers (eg laptops, especially Thinkpads) can make listening to good songs into a meh experience. It's better than nothing when you want music, but rarely will you notice that spontaneous feeling of love for what you're hearing. This doesn't justify the utterly diminishing returns of the audiophile world or the whole speaker cable nonsense, but paying something for a decent setup is worth it. Although from what I understand that effective price point is much lower with headphones compared to speakers. For movies, I watched a cam rip once. The experience was so bad I vowed never again. And the weird bit is all the distortions were like only half-perceptable (warbly audio, mild shadows / reflections from people walking near the camera), so I would just feel like something was wrong but couldn't immediately place it.
  - seanp2k2 4y ago
    There’s also the matter of familiarity — if you’ve already heard a song on good gear many times, your brain will fill in the gaps even on bad playback equipment, but finding new stuff might not be as enjoyable because much will be left out, like bass textures, interesting things happening with sound staging, and even entire bits of melody or background that aren’t easy to pick out with smartphone / laptop / normal car speakers. Edit: the car case is particularly funny as many luxury brands offer $$$$-$$$$$ options for better sound systems when they can’t solve the fundamental flaws of compromised placement and background noise inherent to cars. That McIntosh system in your new $120k Jeep Grand Wagoneer might impress the neighbor but it still won’t do much to quiet the roar of real all-terrain tires on the highway.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  > The same with music, and inversely - a great song will still sound great and enjoyable on a really crappy car stereo. Not really agree on this one. I would say you will still like it and maybe enjoy it because this is the only way you can enjoy it while driving. But that doesn't mean it sound great. The issue is that most music is overcompressed these days to make up for the fact that most people are listening to music in hostile environment or with bad devices. Which make the difference with higher fidelity equipment less important. Without being an audiophile I have records from the 90's that only felt so great on headphones or decent hifi. The music was less compressed these days, there were much higher amplitude difference between parts of the song, instruments. Back in the days listening on the radio felt weird and flat. We just lowered the bar to the point that everything feel weird and flat. Like fast food or premade dishes that only have a general way too salty or too sweet tastes where your palate cannot do the sorting anymore of the different ingredients that have been put to it. I still think a decent hifi equipment would make a ton of difference for someone into classical records. Modern POP music? Waste of money.
- thirdsun 4y ago
  > It’s exactly this. “Audiophiles” are a weird bunch. Much of what they claim to hear is scientifically proven as total nonsense. Audio Science Review is a great place where they scientifically analyse audio equipment. The quality of speaker wire for all meaningful measurements is utterly irrelevant for instance. You are talking about the extreme kind of audiophiles that aren't really representative of the community, which covers a wide spectrum of people. It's like saying all developers are socially awkward loners. Merely a stereotype. > I often make the point to people that a terrible movie will be terrible no matter how you watch it - HDR, 4K, Atmos won’t make a difference. A crappy movie, will always be a crappy movie. Of course. Noone would argue against that. However a great movie really shines on good equipment. Imagine watching Blade Runner 2049 on a laptop display. No amount of convenience is making that experience worthwhile in my opinion.
  - dagw 4y ago
    Imagine watching Blade Runner 2049 on a laptop display. No amount of convenience is making that experience worthwhile in my opinion. I watched most of the 'classic' movie canon (including the original Blade Runner) on rented VHS tapes and a cheap CRT TV, and many of those where among the most 'worthwhile' movie watching experiences in my life. A great movie will 'shine' on any equipment.
spindle 4y ago
Speaking as an audiophile, although I don't exactly agree with your specific choice of headphones (I have to say that or I wouldn't be an audiophile) I strongly agree with using good headphones driven by any old thing. Audio quality these days only really depends on the transducers - i.e. whatever converts things to or from electricity, which, unless you've got a turntable, means just your headphones and/or speakers. Dealing with audio while it's in the electrical domain is a solved problem and your iPhone does it as well as the most expensive equipment.
- Nav_Panel 4y ago
  I have a pair of nice headphones (Hifiman Aryas, planar magnetics) that need to be driven fairly hard compared to most dynamics, and to that end, I've found that an outboard DAC + amp with enough juice to drive them properly makes a big difference. And not an "unnoticeable to audiophiles only" difference but a very obvious one.
  - spindle 4y ago
    Yes, fair. In fact my best headphones need a dedicated headphone amp too. I'd forgotten that! But it doesn't need to be posh power. Just power.
  - astrange 4y ago
    That's an electrical compatibility thing more than a quality thing. iPhones+headphone jacks have high quality DACs (better than "audiophile equipment" which is a scam) but aren't good with high impedance, partly because it'd drain the battery.

Terry_Roll 4y ago

> the people who treat "listening to music" as an activity of its own are getting fewer and fewer. I used to joke if I made it rich, I'd buy a night club and have my office facing the area where the DJ is doing their magic as I love listening to good mixes when coding and having a work environment which is almost like a recording studio is rare. I've had access to a lot of hifi components some of it quite high end but not as high end as a pair of floor standing speakers that cost £125k today.I also knew a wizard of an electronics engineer who could get anything working, all of the manufacturers have/had their "problems" so most of it came down to branding and what the press said.