7 ms·

I've always felt totally alone falling somewhere between hardcore audiophiles and the 'norm,' which seems to feel a cell phone or cheap laptop speaker is as goo

by _yb2s 4y ago

I've always felt totally alone falling somewhere between hardcore audiophiles and the 'norm,' which seems to feel a cell phone or cheap laptop speaker is as good as anything else for music. I really notice the difference between cheap crap, and say an older used brand name receiver with freestanding floor speakers, the kind of system you can find on craigslist for about $100. But I cannot notice a major difference between the $100 system, and say a $100k system (or whatever audiophiles spend). I also do notice a big difference between a 96Kbps MP3 and 320Kbps, but not between 320Kbps and lossless.

LoganDark 4y ago
Same here! We stopped using laptop speakers around 5 or so years ago when we got some good bookshelf speakers[0] instead. We mounted them to the foot of our bed where we use our laptop. We've since built our own subwoofer and also mounted a bass shaker[1] (transducer) below the bed, which produces actual vibrations in response to low frequencies, by moving a heavy weight instead of a speaker cone. The tactile stimulation from low frequencies actually significantly helps with immersion, focus, and relaxation, similar to some can easily fall asleep in a running car. Of course, it also helps when we're just in the mood to transmit high-power bass frequencies straight into our fricken' bones... Anyway, I think the total for our sound system is below $1k. We never made a parts list for our subwoofer but we estimate the cost to have been around $300–400. The rest of the system consists of the $180 (at the time) bookshelf speakers[0], the $50 (at the time) bass shaker[1], and the $80 (or so) amplifier to drive said shaker[2]. We also use a device called a "line driver"[3] (around $20) to raise the signal level for the input to our bass shaker's amplifier. "Line driver" is indeed the magic search term, and "preamp" will get you garbage (either $2 op-amp boards, or phonographs). But aside from all the engineering effort that went into it, because it was a really fun hobby project, it's mostly just a mediocre system. We're totally content with that, and proud because it is a great experience for us, and very fun to listen to. At this point, the only upgrade we would really want would be to find a new living space that can accommodate a rotary woofer[4], which changes the air pressure of the entire room to produce frequencies from around 20Hz down to even 0Hz. But our current setup is more than enough to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate. <3 Also we store our entire music library in mp3 format >:3 [0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GMPDAHM https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GMPDAHM [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CDDPJTI https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CDDPJTI [2]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TTMN51V https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TTMN51V [3]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/271412659106 https://www.ebay.com/itm/271412659106 [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_woofer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_woofer -Emily
emptyfile 4y ago
[dead]
yamtaddle 4y ago
I think there are a lot of us, but we aren't very visible because we just buy some best-bang-for-the-buck equipment to get us above trash-tier sound, or hit a few pawn shops, get set up to our satisfaction, then don't think about it again. Shit lasts decades, once you hit good-enough there's not much reason to keep messing with it. Only thing you might be replacing about once a decade is headphones—maybe.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tristor 4y ago
I'm in the same camp. I consider myself an audiophile, but spend most of my time reading things and laughing at "them". There's definitely a fair bit of critical thinking required when you're investigating audio gear for personal use. That said, a proper DAC/Amp stack and a good set of headphones are well worth the investment, it's just that you are strongly into the diminishing returns area once you spend more than about $1k all-in on the entire setup. The thing is, I think of it like I do many of my "hobbies" which are really just about improving my actual quality of experience/quality of life in the things I do every day. I am typing this comment on a custom-built $900 mechanical keyboard, and just got off a conference call where I was speaking into $1k worth of microphone gear, with a $3k camera setup pointed at me, and listening to the other person through $2k worth of audio output gear (headphones + DAC/Amp stack). To the casual observer that's utterly ridiculous and I've wasted all this money for nothing. On the other hand, I spend 8+ hours a day wearing those headphones, on meetings, and typing, anything that even marginally improves the quality of my experience doing the things I do for 8+ hours every day and intend to do for most of the remainder of my life, means that I am improving my overall quality of life in a meaningful way. I do this for the exact same reason I spent big on my chair, desk, lighting, and my bed. Between my home office and my bedroom, I spend 75% or more of my entire life (roughly 18 out of every 24 hours) in those two places until I retire. It is absolutely worthwhile for people who spend a lot of time listening to audio to optimize the way they listen to audio. You just have to really keep your critical thinking hat on, though, because the market is full of snake oil.
JohnBooty 4y ago
I've always felt totally alone falling somewhere between hardcore audiophiles To me, the "hardcore" audiophiles are the ones who understand a bit of actual science & engineering and don't go chasing ridiculous crap like audiophile USB cables. The lunatic fringe gets all the attention, because they're comically delusional, but they are not hardcore to me. or whatever audiophiles spend Bought new, the modern equivalent of that $100 Craigslist system is (vast simplification and approximation) about $500. A well-researched $500-$2500 (new) stereo system is in my experience and opinion the range where you get appreciably better and better sound. At $500 you are already getting a system that is not doing a whole lot wrong. But not massive output or deep deep bass. By $2500 you're getting something that's doing very close to the full 17hz-20khz at output levels that will more than exceed just about any reasonable residential situation. And in fact your listening room is the bottleneck now. Above that price you're paying for very boutiquey exotic stuff that can pull off certain tricks, very high levels of output, etc. Those prices are very approximate and assume a well researched and set up system.
- SomeoneOnTheWeb 4y ago
  You certainly aren't getting any speaker going correctly to 17 Hz even for ten times this price. Stereo speakers are not made to go very low, that's what a subwoofer is for. Not all subwoofers even go that low! Above $2500 for a good stereo system will get you a better sound, but as always, the more you pay, the less you'll be able to hear the difference. Also, the better the sound is, the more you'll have to be careful about amp pairing and room acoustic.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    Right. I was including subwoofers in the cost of those systems approaching $2500. It's a broad topic, of course, and I'd already typed a zillion words. It's always a challenge what to type and what to leave out, huh? A stereo system with subwoofers is still a stereo to me. My main system is 2.2 and I call it a stereo. But I see the confusion. Some people don't call it a "stereo" unless it's strictly 2.0!
  - aforwardslash 4y ago
manv1 4y ago
You can notice the compression at the edges of the audio, like vocals or cymbals. Linda Ronstadt is one singer who's voice makes compression obvious - her line turns into a hacksaw blade on some songs. That said, every system has distortion - the question is what sound do you like/want. Do you want a sound that's more forward or more laid back? Do you like more midrange? Vocals? Audio also becomes more complicated because of hearing loss. I can't hear anything over 12-13k, so I'm sure that's affected my audio setup at some level.
hannasanarion 4y ago
I do not think that it is a controversial opinion to say that a floor speaker sounds better than a phone speaker.
- brianmcc 4y ago
  I OP means most people really just don't care
  - greatwave1 4y ago
    I don't think that's true either, because most people I know (even ones who don't have tons of disposable income) have invested in some form of speaker system or headphones. I don't know anybody who just listens to music from their phone speakers. I doubt that $40 billion of AirPods would be sold every year if most people didn't care about audio quality to some extent.
    - bakugo 4y ago
      > I doubt that $40 billion of AirPods would be sold every year if most people didn't care about audio quality to some extent. The original airpods did not sound good at all, so I don't see what your point is here. Yes, they're still better than phone speakers, but if people actually cared about quality they wouldn't sell as much.
      - greatwave1 4y ago
        > The original airpods did not sound good at all, so I don't see what your point is here. Yes, they're still better than phone speakers, but if people actually cared about quality they wouldn't sell as much. The point is that there's a $100b+ industry towards selling audio devices. You can debate to what extent people care about audio quality, and what tradeoffs they're willing to make for better quality, but you can't deny that the majority of people appreciate that phone speakers are not the optimal audio setup.
      - hannasanarion 4y ago
brianmcc 4y ago
You certainly aren't alone! I find 128kbps unlistenable but I A/B tested 320 vs lossless and - nope, couldn't tell the difference, even trying hard to do so. I consider myself an enthusiast/hobbyist, not an audiophile, and hold a pretty high level of scepticism about the truly devoted tbh. That said I've never had the pleasure of listening to anything north of around the £10k mark, so I would love to be convinced of a genuine move-the-dial listening benefit of the really high end gear!
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  That said I've never had the pleasure of listening to anything north of around the £10k mark I've listened to gear well north of that and I certainly don't have "golden ears" (I don't think many do) but the TL;DR is that you hit diminishing returns way before £10k. Ultimately, we're talking about signal reproduction here, and inexpensive gear can put out some seriously accurate sound thanks to onboard DSP processing that uses software to compensate for less than amazing hardware. As long as the sound reaching your ears is correct, doesn't matter how it was achieved. The one thing you can potentially gain once you get in to the realm of paying thousands of dollars is oodles of power from the amplifier and oodles of power handling from the speakers, which may or may not let you begin to approximate the sound of live music. If you have ever had the pleasure of hearing an orchestra perform live, the average SPL (sound pressure level) may not be that high, but the fleeting momentary peaks from something like a timpani might be north of 100dB. That's a bit of a feat for your stereo system to pull off and there's no substitute for horsepower there. But even then, this doesn't necessarily cost megabucks.
  - lukas099 4y ago
    Good point. If you are entertaining a large party, you can expect to pay a lot more for quality too, for similar reasons.
    - JohnBooty 4y ago
      Yes. And for large rooms, IME dealing with the room itself quickly becomes the challenge. I heard this system in person at this event. A million dollars of objectively great gear, and the end result was it sounded like the PA system at a high school football game. https://www.stereophile.com/content/vac-statement-452iq-power-amplifiers-and-statement-line-and-phono-preamps-von-schweikert https://www.stereophile.com/content/vac-statement-452iq-powe... The reflections in that room were a nightmare. Look at the giant glass wall behind the seating area, perpendicular to the speakers. Holy jesus. So you have the speakers putting out some massive waves, and then you have waves reflecting off of the glass wall with nearly equal energy, and then you have everything coming together and canceling out and/or creating resonances... right at the seating area. Absolutely insane, absolutely pathological.
miloignis 4y ago
I don't think you're alone at all (I'm in that range, for one) I just think people liking good audio without spending a ton doesn't grab a lot of attention. There are decent articles on headphones in the $60-300 range, mobile DACs that don't break the bank, etc, that I think show that our contingent is alive and well.
dsr_ 4y ago
Your position is completely reasonable. It's just that most loonies like to argue more than most sane people care to respond.
gizmo 4y ago
Tiny class-d amps, containing barely $20 worth of parts, produce perfect (to my ears) sound. I don't know why receivers are still so expensive, but I suspect it's a total racket (literal price fixing). On the other hand, TVs, sound bars, and the HomePod mini produce audio so bad I can't believe people put up with it.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  > On the other hand, TVs, sound bars, and the HomePod mini produce audio so bad I can't believe people put up with it. I can chime in on this one. I used to be like OP: Not an audiophile, but someone who can appreciate the difference between a $1000 setup and a $100 setup. Once I got married, and someone with better interior decorating taste started having a vote on home decor, that appreciation had to go out the window. Nobody with any taste wants floor-standing big ugly black boxes positioned at the "Optimal" listening positions in the living room. Do an image search for "high end speakers". Yuck.
- sheepybloke 4y ago
  Now days, receivers are much more of a home theater setup and less of an audio setup, if that makes sense. Lots of 4k upscaling, DSP for video, and handling the different standards like Dolby Vision and Atmos. If you're just looking for something to play music, you can get a lot of amazing receivers from the late 80s - 00s for pennies on the dollar.
Sebb767 4y ago
> But I cannot notice a major difference between the $100 system, and say a $100k system (or whatever audiophiles spend). You definitely will, but at lot of it will come from the fact that the latter system will be set up well in an isolated room with proper speaker placement, while the former will be some speakers thrown in a living wherever they fit.
- aforwardslash 4y ago
  Sensitive speakers are the huge difference, because they will give you more detail at normal listening amplifications. A good pair of speakers and 25-50W of amplification power is more than enough for most domestic scenarios, and even then you'll be using it with volume in half. The difference are the speakers - and sensitive speakers are expensive compared to a "$100 system"
tensor 4y ago
Sounds like audiosciencereview.com might be your crowd. There are a lot of us science minded audiophiles!
wilsonnb3 4y ago
> But I cannot notice a major difference between the $100 system, and say a $100k system (or whatever audiophiles spend). I more or less agree with this but the main problem is that people listen in untreated rooms with horrible acoustics. Once you hit that "medium good" threshold, which is pretty easy these days, more expensive speakers aren't going to make a difference until you get your acoustics under control. If you do have a nice room, you will definitely notice the difference between the medium good setup and a nicer one, although you will hit diminishing returns WAY before you reach the $100k speakers.
- gmarx 4y ago
  absolutely and whether you think you care about sound quality or not, one thing I have found is that it makes a huge difference for dialog clarity. I watched Dune when it came out in a brand new theater in Los Angeles and then a few months later on my home system. I was quite surprised by how much more of the dialog was intelligible than I had thought
bob1029 4y ago
The money is irrelevant. The biggest differences are almost universally going to be detected when you move from a loudspeaker with minimal volume to one with large volume. Basic physics, dimensions of rooms, etc are way more important than anything else. Sure - more lumber costs more, but there are clever ways around this too.
ekfruwhekrwhk 4y ago
I can genuinely tell the difference between 320K MP3 and CD, and between CD and HD, (a group of enthusiasts got together and double-blind tested each other) but only in carefully controlled circumstances with a LOT of focus. As in, wearing really good headphones in a silent distraction-free room with my eyes closed and focusing on particular features like cymbals and chimes and staging, and even then only after switching back and forth between samples a dozen times. So after realizing that, I always aim to have CD quality, but I couldn't care less about HD audio. And like you said, $100 Craigslist systems from 1990 sound drastically better than modern consumer-grade systems. People started caring more about "smart" convenience features and less about sound quality a long time ago.
kstrauser 4y ago
That's the way with so many things, huh? I got a one of the nicer sets of Logitech computer speakers, and while it's not amazing, it's fine, and definitely better than the junky speakers that use to come with desktop systems. I can tell the difference between $.99 coffee and $3 coffee, but $50 coffee is lost on me. A $10 wine is likely to be better than Three Buck Chuck, but I don't know if I could tell the difference between $10 and $100. For almost everything, unless you're really, really into that thing, there's a segment of the price curve where more money == more better, but afterward you're just shoveling cash into a black hole.
audiodimish213 4y ago
There is a lot of diminishing returns for audiophile products. You should be able to hear the difference between a $100 speaker system and a $1,000 speaker system. But there are other things like room acoustics and stuff that can cause issues. If you put a really good system in a bad room I could imagine it would be harder to tell a difference. $1,000 to $10,000 might be a lot harder to tell the difference assuming you sourced a good performing setup at each price point. Same for MP3 vs Lossless, you could probably hear the difference between 320Kbps on specific songs if you know what to listen for but I doubt you can hear it on everything and you would have to concentrate pretty hard rather than enjoying the music.
delecti 4y ago
I think that fundamentally, everyone agrees that there are diminishing returns with audio products, people just have different tolerances for bad audio, different amounts of fucks to give about it, and different levels of ability to configure their setups. I don't know what the distribution of people looks like along those axes, but you sound "normal" to me in regards to taste, and by virtue of being on this forum are probably above average in regards to technical ability to configure things. Lots of people would probably find it a bit too much trouble to worry about and configure the external audio receiver and freestanding floor speakers (which incidentally describes my setup as well), but I don't think that's equivalent to them not recognizing the improvement. Sound bars seem to be deliberately intended to fill the market segment for people who want and can afford better sound, but can't manage the configuration.

by _yb2s 4y ago

LoganDark 4y ago

Same here! We stopped using laptop speakers around 5 or so years ago when we got some good bookshelf speakers[0] instead. We mounted them to the foot of our bed where we use our laptop. We've since built our own subwoofer and also mounted a bass shaker[1] (transducer) below the bed, which produces actual vibrations in response to low frequencies, by moving a heavy weight instead of a speaker cone. The tactile stimulation from low frequencies actually significantly helps with immersion, focus, and relaxation, similar to some can easily fall asleep in a running car. Of course, it also helps when we're just in the mood to transmit high-power bass frequencies straight into our fricken' bones... Anyway, I think the total for our sound system is below $1k. We never made a parts list for our subwoofer but we estimate the cost to have been around $300–400. The rest of the system consists of the $180 (at the time) bookshelf speakers[0], the $50 (at the time) bass shaker[1], and the $80 (or so) amplifier to drive said shaker[2]. We also use a device called a "line driver"[3] (around $20) to raise the signal level for the input to our bass shaker's amplifier. "Line driver" is indeed the magic search term, and "preamp" will get you garbage (either $2 op-amp boards, or phonographs). But aside from all the engineering effort that went into it, because it was a really fun hobby project, it's mostly just a mediocre system. We're totally content with that, and proud because it is a great experience for us, and very fun to listen to. At this point, the only upgrade we would really want would be to find a new living space that can accommodate a rotary woofer[4], which changes the air pressure of the entire room to produce frequencies from around 20Hz down to even 0Hz. But our current setup is more than enough to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate. <3 Also we store our entire music library in mp3 format >:3 [0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GMPDAHM https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GMPDAHM [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CDDPJTI https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CDDPJTI [2]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TTMN51V https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TTMN51V [3]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/271412659106 https://www.ebay.com/itm/271412659106 [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_woofer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_woofer -Emily

emptyfile 4y ago

[dead]

yamtaddle 4y ago

I think there are a lot of us, but we aren't very visible because we just buy some best-bang-for-the-buck equipment to get us above trash-tier sound, or hit a few pawn shops, get set up to our satisfaction, then don't think about it again. Shit lasts decades, once you hit good-enough there's not much reason to keep messing with it. Only thing you might be replacing about once a decade is headphones—maybe.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tristor 4y ago

I'm in the same camp. I consider myself an audiophile, but spend most of my time reading things and laughing at "them". There's definitely a fair bit of critical thinking required when you're investigating audio gear for personal use. That said, a proper DAC/Amp stack and a good set of headphones are well worth the investment, it's just that you are strongly into the diminishing returns area once you spend more than about $1k all-in on the entire setup. The thing is, I think of it like I do many of my "hobbies" which are really just about improving my actual quality of experience/quality of life in the things I do every day. I am typing this comment on a custom-built $900 mechanical keyboard, and just got off a conference call where I was speaking into $1k worth of microphone gear, with a $3k camera setup pointed at me, and listening to the other person through $2k worth of audio output gear (headphones + DAC/Amp stack). To the casual observer that's utterly ridiculous and I've wasted all this money for nothing. On the other hand, I spend 8+ hours a day wearing those headphones, on meetings, and typing, anything that even marginally improves the quality of my experience doing the things I do for 8+ hours every day and intend to do for most of the remainder of my life, means that I am improving my overall quality of life in a meaningful way. I do this for the exact same reason I spent big on my chair, desk, lighting, and my bed. Between my home office and my bedroom, I spend 75% or more of my entire life (roughly 18 out of every 24 hours) in those two places until I retire. It is absolutely worthwhile for people who spend a lot of time listening to audio to optimize the way they listen to audio. You just have to really keep your critical thinking hat on, though, because the market is full of snake oil.

JohnBooty 4y ago

I've always felt totally alone falling somewhere between hardcore audiophiles To me, the "hardcore" audiophiles are the ones who understand a bit of actual science & engineering and don't go chasing ridiculous crap like audiophile USB cables. The lunatic fringe gets all the attention, because they're comically delusional, but they are not hardcore to me. or whatever audiophiles spend Bought new, the modern equivalent of that $100 Craigslist system is (vast simplification and approximation) about $500. A well-researched $500-$2500 (new) stereo system is in my experience and opinion the range where you get appreciably better and better sound. At $500 you are already getting a system that is not doing a whole lot wrong. But not massive output or deep deep bass. By $2500 you're getting something that's doing very close to the full 17hz-20khz at output levels that will more than exceed just about any reasonable residential situation. And in fact your listening room is the bottleneck now. Above that price you're paying for very boutiquey exotic stuff that can pull off certain tricks, very high levels of output, etc. Those prices are very approximate and assume a well researched and set up system.

SomeoneOnTheWeb 4y ago
You certainly aren't getting any speaker going correctly to 17 Hz even for ten times this price. Stereo speakers are not made to go very low, that's what a subwoofer is for. Not all subwoofers even go that low! Above $2500 for a good stereo system will get you a better sound, but as always, the more you pay, the less you'll be able to hear the difference. Also, the better the sound is, the more you'll have to be careful about amp pairing and room acoustic.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Right. I was including subwoofers in the cost of those systems approaching $2500. It's a broad topic, of course, and I'd already typed a zillion words. It's always a challenge what to type and what to leave out, huh? A stereo system with subwoofers is still a stereo to me. My main system is 2.2 and I call it a stereo. But I see the confusion. Some people don't call it a "stereo" unless it's strictly 2.0!
- aforwardslash 4y ago

manv1 4y ago

You can notice the compression at the edges of the audio, like vocals or cymbals. Linda Ronstadt is one singer who's voice makes compression obvious - her line turns into a hacksaw blade on some songs. That said, every system has distortion - the question is what sound do you like/want. Do you want a sound that's more forward or more laid back? Do you like more midrange? Vocals? Audio also becomes more complicated because of hearing loss. I can't hear anything over 12-13k, so I'm sure that's affected my audio setup at some level.

hannasanarion 4y ago

I do not think that it is a controversial opinion to say that a floor speaker sounds better than a phone speaker.

brianmcc 4y ago
I OP means most people really just don't care
- greatwave1 4y ago
  I don't think that's true either, because most people I know (even ones who don't have tons of disposable income) have invested in some form of speaker system or headphones. I don't know anybody who just listens to music from their phone speakers. I doubt that $40 billion of AirPods would be sold every year if most people didn't care about audio quality to some extent.
  - bakugo 4y ago
    > I doubt that $40 billion of AirPods would be sold every year if most people didn't care about audio quality to some extent. The original airpods did not sound good at all, so I don't see what your point is here. Yes, they're still better than phone speakers, but if people actually cared about quality they wouldn't sell as much.
    - greatwave1 4y ago
      > The original airpods did not sound good at all, so I don't see what your point is here. Yes, they're still better than phone speakers, but if people actually cared about quality they wouldn't sell as much. The point is that there's a $100b+ industry towards selling audio devices. You can debate to what extent people care about audio quality, and what tradeoffs they're willing to make for better quality, but you can't deny that the majority of people appreciate that phone speakers are not the optimal audio setup.
    - hannasanarion 4y ago

brianmcc 4y ago

You certainly aren't alone! I find 128kbps unlistenable but I A/B tested 320 vs lossless and - nope, couldn't tell the difference, even trying hard to do so. I consider myself an enthusiast/hobbyist, not an audiophile, and hold a pretty high level of scepticism about the truly devoted tbh. That said I've never had the pleasure of listening to anything north of around the £10k mark, so I would love to be convinced of a genuine move-the-dial listening benefit of the really high end gear!

JohnBooty 4y ago
That said I've never had the pleasure of listening to anything north of around the £10k mark I've listened to gear well north of that and I certainly don't have "golden ears" (I don't think many do) but the TL;DR is that you hit diminishing returns way before £10k. Ultimately, we're talking about signal reproduction here, and inexpensive gear can put out some seriously accurate sound thanks to onboard DSP processing that uses software to compensate for less than amazing hardware. As long as the sound reaching your ears is correct, doesn't matter how it was achieved. The one thing you can potentially gain once you get in to the realm of paying thousands of dollars is oodles of power from the amplifier and oodles of power handling from the speakers, which may or may not let you begin to approximate the sound of live music. If you have ever had the pleasure of hearing an orchestra perform live, the average SPL (sound pressure level) may not be that high, but the fleeting momentary peaks from something like a timpani might be north of 100dB. That's a bit of a feat for your stereo system to pull off and there's no substitute for horsepower there. But even then, this doesn't necessarily cost megabucks.
- lukas099 4y ago
  Good point. If you are entertaining a large party, you can expect to pay a lot more for quality too, for similar reasons.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    Yes. And for large rooms, IME dealing with the room itself quickly becomes the challenge. I heard this system in person at this event. A million dollars of objectively great gear, and the end result was it sounded like the PA system at a high school football game. https://www.stereophile.com/content/vac-statement-452iq-power-amplifiers-and-statement-line-and-phono-preamps-von-schweikert https://www.stereophile.com/content/vac-statement-452iq-powe... The reflections in that room were a nightmare. Look at the giant glass wall behind the seating area, perpendicular to the speakers. Holy jesus. So you have the speakers putting out some massive waves, and then you have waves reflecting off of the glass wall with nearly equal energy, and then you have everything coming together and canceling out and/or creating resonances... right at the seating area. Absolutely insane, absolutely pathological.

miloignis 4y ago

I don't think you're alone at all (I'm in that range, for one) I just think people liking good audio without spending a ton doesn't grab a lot of attention. There are decent articles on headphones in the $60-300 range, mobile DACs that don't break the bank, etc, that I think show that our contingent is alive and well.

dsr_ 4y ago

Your position is completely reasonable. It's just that most loonies like to argue more than most sane people care to respond.

gizmo 4y ago

Tiny class-d amps, containing barely $20 worth of parts, produce perfect (to my ears) sound. I don't know why receivers are still so expensive, but I suspect it's a total racket (literal price fixing). On the other hand, TVs, sound bars, and the HomePod mini produce audio so bad I can't believe people put up with it.

ryandrake 4y ago
> On the other hand, TVs, sound bars, and the HomePod mini produce audio so bad I can't believe people put up with it. I can chime in on this one. I used to be like OP: Not an audiophile, but someone who can appreciate the difference between a $1000 setup and a $100 setup. Once I got married, and someone with better interior decorating taste started having a vote on home decor, that appreciation had to go out the window. Nobody with any taste wants floor-standing big ugly black boxes positioned at the "Optimal" listening positions in the living room. Do an image search for "high end speakers". Yuck.
sheepybloke 4y ago
Now days, receivers are much more of a home theater setup and less of an audio setup, if that makes sense. Lots of 4k upscaling, DSP for video, and handling the different standards like Dolby Vision and Atmos. If you're just looking for something to play music, you can get a lot of amazing receivers from the late 80s - 00s for pennies on the dollar.

Sebb767 4y ago

> But I cannot notice a major difference between the $100 system, and say a $100k system (or whatever audiophiles spend). You definitely will, but at lot of it will come from the fact that the latter system will be set up well in an isolated room with proper speaker placement, while the former will be some speakers thrown in a living wherever they fit.

aforwardslash 4y ago
Sensitive speakers are the huge difference, because they will give you more detail at normal listening amplifications. A good pair of speakers and 25-50W of amplification power is more than enough for most domestic scenarios, and even then you'll be using it with volume in half. The difference are the speakers - and sensitive speakers are expensive compared to a "$100 system"

tensor 4y ago

Sounds like audiosciencereview.com might be your crowd. There are a lot of us science minded audiophiles!

wilsonnb3 4y ago

> But I cannot notice a major difference between the $100 system, and say a $100k system (or whatever audiophiles spend). I more or less agree with this but the main problem is that people listen in untreated rooms with horrible acoustics. Once you hit that "medium good" threshold, which is pretty easy these days, more expensive speakers aren't going to make a difference until you get your acoustics under control. If you do have a nice room, you will definitely notice the difference between the medium good setup and a nicer one, although you will hit diminishing returns WAY before you reach the $100k speakers.

gmarx 4y ago
absolutely and whether you think you care about sound quality or not, one thing I have found is that it makes a huge difference for dialog clarity. I watched Dune when it came out in a brand new theater in Los Angeles and then a few months later on my home system. I was quite surprised by how much more of the dialog was intelligible than I had thought

bob1029 4y ago

The money is irrelevant. The biggest differences are almost universally going to be detected when you move from a loudspeaker with minimal volume to one with large volume. Basic physics, dimensions of rooms, etc are way more important than anything else. Sure - more lumber costs more, but there are clever ways around this too.

ekfruwhekrwhk 4y ago

I can genuinely tell the difference between 320K MP3 and CD, and between CD and HD, (a group of enthusiasts got together and double-blind tested each other) but only in carefully controlled circumstances with a LOT of focus. As in, wearing really good headphones in a silent distraction-free room with my eyes closed and focusing on particular features like cymbals and chimes and staging, and even then only after switching back and forth between samples a dozen times. So after realizing that, I always aim to have CD quality, but I couldn't care less about HD audio. And like you said, $100 Craigslist systems from 1990 sound drastically better than modern consumer-grade systems. People started caring more about "smart" convenience features and less about sound quality a long time ago.

kstrauser 4y ago

That's the way with so many things, huh? I got a one of the nicer sets of Logitech computer speakers, and while it's not amazing, it's fine, and definitely better than the junky speakers that use to come with desktop systems. I can tell the difference between $.99 coffee and $3 coffee, but $50 coffee is lost on me. A $10 wine is likely to be better than Three Buck Chuck, but I don't know if I could tell the difference between $10 and $100. For almost everything, unless you're really, really into that thing, there's a segment of the price curve where more money == more better, but afterward you're just shoveling cash into a black hole.

audiodimish213 4y ago

There is a lot of diminishing returns for audiophile products. You should be able to hear the difference between a $100 speaker system and a $1,000 speaker system. But there are other things like room acoustics and stuff that can cause issues. If you put a really good system in a bad room I could imagine it would be harder to tell a difference. $1,000 to $10,000 might be a lot harder to tell the difference assuming you sourced a good performing setup at each price point. Same for MP3 vs Lossless, you could probably hear the difference between 320Kbps on specific songs if you know what to listen for but I doubt you can hear it on everything and you would have to concentrate pretty hard rather than enjoying the music.

delecti 4y ago

I think that fundamentally, everyone agrees that there are diminishing returns with audio products, people just have different tolerances for bad audio, different amounts of fucks to give about it, and different levels of ability to configure their setups. I don't know what the distribution of people looks like along those axes, but you sound "normal" to me in regards to taste, and by virtue of being on this forum are probably above average in regards to technical ability to configure things. Lots of people would probably find it a bit too much trouble to worry about and configure the external audio receiver and freestanding floor speakers (which incidentally describes my setup as well), but I don't think that's equivalent to them not recognizing the improvement. Sound bars seem to be deliberately intended to fill the market segment for people who want and can afford better sound, but can't manage the configuration.