13 ms·

I think about the audiophile fringe approximately the same way I think about flat-earthers: I'm sure there is a core of true believers, but that at this point t

• de6u99er 4y ago
  I built my own audiophile stereo set based on Nelson Pass' Directly Coupled B1 pre amp design, Pavel Dudek's PA03 power amp, a pair of DIY loudspeaker kits from lautsprecherbau.de, and an audiophile Rasperry Pi DAC board which I sponsored on Kickstarter running Volumio player distribution. I went even as far as using discrete OpAmps because they sounded better to me. Was totally worth it! Here's some pictures of my amps: https://www.bursonaudio.com/pa03-gainclone-power-amp-by-pavel-dudek-with-burson-v5-upgrade/ https://www.bursonaudio.com/pa03-gainclone-power-amp-by-pave...
• snickerbockers 4y ago
  No, audiophiles are absolutely real. Look at how many of them buy vinyl records of music that was produced digitally; any sampling artifacts that might hypothetically be audible would be replicated on the vinyl. As long as the master is digital there's no way a vinyl record could possibly sound better than a lossless digital recording like FLACC or CDDA. And then there are people who buy vinyl records of video game sound-tracks, in which case it doesn't even make sense to remove sampling artifacts since those would be present in the original game.
  • Jataman606 4y ago
    > As long as the master is digital there's no way a vinyl record could possibly sound better than a lossless digital recording like FLACC or CDDA Isn't the point to actually reduce quality by using imperfect media so recording has more oldschool vibe? Kinda like all the lo-fi mixes being so popular today. At least thats what I always thought, I didn't really research that at all.
    • com2kid 4y ago
      The honest ones know this. Same as using vacuum tube amplifiers, they distort the sound, but in a way that some people find pleasing.
    • Tor3 4y ago
      Yes, kind of.. and I do get it. Back in the eighties I used to do long drives for work, and in the noisy car environment I found that what sounded "best" was old Rolling Stones recordings played from a low-quality cassette tape. The same songs played from a record on a hi-fi system at home in a quiet environment actually sounded worse, subjectively. Strange that. But it's all about the experience.
      • implements 4y ago
        Led Zep might be worth a try, too.
  • kokekolo 4y ago
    As a vinyl enjoyer, the sound quality is absolutely not why I buy it. I also use film cameras, and image quality (meaning, definition, color accuracy, etc) is definitely not why I use it. There definitely are those that fit your description, but they are a minority.
  • disantlor 4y ago
    thats not a great argument because often the master for a vinyl record is different (crucially, less hyped and compressed) to even be cuttable on vinyl. thus the final product actually can sound better in some cases (not all), not directly because of the vinyl playback but the production processes leading up to that.
    • lukas099 4y ago
      Are you sure? I thought the limitations of vinyl required music to be compressed, but that was not true for digital. Back in the day music was definitely less compressed, but I thought that was more due to different mixing philosophies.
      • enneff 4y ago
        If you like the sound of a higher noise floor and less dynamic range then vinyl might sound better to you. I’m not being facetious, some people genuinely prefer the sound of records.
      • kalleboo 4y ago
        Vinyl requires compression within a certain range - too little or too much is no good. Digital allows for far higher compression - historically digital released have been compressed to hell into a "brick" with very little actual dynamic range. This is so that when they're played on radio they're going to sound louder than anything else. Vinyl doesn't allow for this same amount of compression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war Modern streaming services will recompress songs to a common standard, negating all of the loudness war stuff, but I haven't looked at new releases to see if heavy compression is still common practice on the master releases but I'd assume they still do it because practices change slowly. In that case they're just throwing away bit depth for no reason.
        • lukas099 4y ago
          Interesting reply, thanks.
        • 4y ago
  • siffland 4y ago
    I think where the difference comes in with vinyl is the mastering process. CD's/Digital and Vinyl usually go through two entirely different mastering processes. This will make listening to the two sound different even though the mix is the same, kind of like listening to your favorite song at home from CD, then hearing it on the radio with a more in your face sound because of brick wall limiters in the sound chain. I am not going to debate if one is better than the other, but they will sound different just due to mastering. So it is not a direct apples to apples comparison. I think most people buy video game vinyl just to display them, haha.
  • lukas099 4y ago
    > As long as the master is digital there's no way a vinyl record could possibly sound better than a lossless digital recording ...Unless you happen to like the particular brand of distortion that every song you loved growing up happened to have.
  • antihero 4y ago
    This isn’t really the entire point of vinyl.
  • pelorat 4y ago
    There is no way a vinyl can ever sound better than digital. Different and maybe more "pleasurable" (for some), but definately not better. It's more of a built in EQ profile that stems from the physical medium itself.
• squarefoot 4y ago
  This. And would add that for each absurdity with a movement believing it, there is someone smarter and ruthless ready to make money out of it.
• NikolaNovak 4y ago
  That is always my initial thought... until I remind myself that audiophile products exist, and they are being bought by somebody! Trolling on internet is cheap/free; buying audiophile equipment is not :O
  • ajuc 4y ago
    I think these people are kids of 70s-80s who dreamed of hi-fi gear back then and now can afford it but it's no longer a thing. They are paying for nostalgia.
    • arlcode 4y ago
      There might be something to this. Sometimes I noticed older people going into tech discussion about things which were super important once but no longer is relevant. Most are able to recognize their nostalgia as such and are willing to accept it (e.g. by doing cb radio or retro game development on deliberately limited hardware).
      • whstl 4y ago
        I see this a lot with guitars, too. Lots of 60+ people trying to find the holy grail they dreamed about when they were kids. But HOW can a 2000, 1000 USD guitar be a "holy grail"? So they end up with collections of six, seven, eight high-end Les Pauls, Strats, etc. Or perhaps buying USD 5000+ custom shop instruments. Some of them get to collections of 30, 50, 60. Of course it's a lot of fun, and not as expensive as, say, a Cello or Oboe collection. So I get why they do it. But as someone who moves often, I'd rather have just one :D
  • lbriner 4y ago
    I think there is probably more psychology going on than people think. I know people are assure me that some weird Swiss water contraption (a piece of wood) makes water taste noticeably better and "aligns molecules" and what have you. I can imagine someone giving you a taste and you already assume it must be nicer so you confirm the lie. It is also possible that other variables like the fact it has been standing in a jug for longer allowing the chlorine to evaporate make people think that it tastes nicer for the wrong reason.
• llanowarelves 4y ago
  All depends. No doubt the fringe is fixating on the 0.1% that doesn't make a difference. When it comes to hardware: if you have a great and clean signal chain, good ears, decent monitors +/ good room, good headphones, you can record and hear the difference of good gear (diminishing returns though, you are paying for throughput (channels), latency, or even just build-quality/brand (Apple esque) etc at some point). Of course marketing adds hyperbole and takes certain aspects into woo territory. At the software level: sampling rate can (depending on programming of individual plugins) make a difference in your mixing session (you get nasty artifacts, like EQ cramping, in plugins that don't have internal over-sampling). This is all the professional gear with a track record rather than the "prosumer" gear (maybe that's the definition of audiophile you were connotating).
  • stametseater 4y ago
    > good ears Most audiophiles seem to be men in their 50s+, which makes their claims of exceptional hearing extremely dubious. Degradation of hearing with age is a virtual certainty. If audiophiles tended to be teenagers I'd be more inclined to believe them. But old guys? Old guys with a long habit of listening to loud music? Their ears are not golden.
    • bennelsonweiss 4y ago
      Somebody who says "good ear" can be talking about how well trained a listener is rather than the physical characteristics of their ear, similarly to how when somebody says "good eye" when you spot a bug in their code they're probably not actually implying your vision is extra sharp.
    • lukas099 4y ago
      I’ve lost a noticeable bit of hearing, but my ability to discern different instruments is much greater than it used to be. I think practice more than offsets hearing loss up to a limit.
    • Tor3 4y ago
      Yes. You still see the claim that humans can hear 20Hz-20000Hz. Well, no. We had lab equipment at school and we regularly listened to signals from test equipment - IIRC I could hear up to about 17kHz when I was 16 or 17 (when I could still hear the (European) 15625 whine from TVs). A couple of guys could hear almost up to 20kHz. All of that was gone when we arrived in our twenties. I couldn't hear the TV anymore (younger people: That applied to analog CRT TVs back in the neolithic). I was tested in the military when I was 22. They didn't even bother testing anyone up to more than maybe 14kHz - intense volume would anyway be needed to hear that. I can't imagine even very careful people will be able to hear a particularly wide audio range when they're 50+, not even people who walk around with ear plugs all the time for protection (some audio engineers do).
• kybernetyk 4y ago
  My pet conspiracy theory is that flat-earthers are actually a false flag operation by some 3letteragency to make actual conspiracy theorists look bad. ;)
  • bell-cot 4y ago
    Vs. my pet conspiracy theory is that the 3 letter agencies are all false flag operations by the kooks, to convince us "normals" that trusting government is a ridiculous idea... /s...maybe
  • Nursie 4y ago
    That would be more comforting than the idea of people actually being that stupid.
  • gs17 4y ago
    Well, the International Flat Earth Research Society was founded while MKULTRA was active... But I have met at least one genuine flat Earth believer, who was a Biblical literalist and considered it must be true to match his other beliefs.
  • criddell 4y ago
    Any theories on what’s going on with audiophiles?
    • gs17 4y ago
      It doesn't need much of a theory to me. People who don't understand the engineering involved are being taken advantage of by charlatans selling phony products with explanations that almost make sense at first glance and induce a placebo effect due to that and price (so they do "sound better"). The audiophiles (and likely some amount of sellers) naturally try to defend their purchases, but they're trying to reason based on the nonsense they were sold, and end up in a feedback loop of nonsense. People getting older and trying to reclaim their faltering hearing probably plays a part in it too.
    • whstl 4y ago
      It's people that want to spend money on their hobbies and have fun collecting "cool" gear, but end up going overboard with it. I don't do it, but IMO it's totally fine to spent thousands on a speaker or even hundreds on a cable if it brings you joy and doesn't cause financial problems, but you don't have to justify it to anyone, even (and especially) to other audiophiles. The problem is when you somehow believe that you have to justify your purchases and come up with crazy excuses. :(