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Matrix HiFi – Blind testing high end full equipment

84 points by ZeljkoS 11y ago

rodgerd 11y ago
Their version of "low end" is amusing to me. But this is hardly surprising. Hifi suffers from a taxic interaction of diminishing returns and snake oil, and I say that as someone who has spent more than a few dollars myself.
- nvk 11y ago
  After spending a few bucks myself, I second this. The only thing i'd add is, invest in a good pair of speakers, that's where you'd get the best ROI.
  - barney54 11y ago
    Or alternatively, invest in a good pair of headphones--also good ROI.
    - _delirium 11y ago
      Much cheaper in absolute terms as well. You can get very good headphones in the $100-200 range (even some under $100), while speaker systems in that range tend to be mediocre.
      - e12e 11y ago
        Ah, but if you are 10 people listening, that's suddenly $10 000 (actually more, as you'd probably need a little more expensive amp to drive 10 good headphones. Nowhere near 10x though).
        grkvlt 11y ago
        Er, $1000 for ten people - although this isn't still a small amount it is close to an average mid-range home audio setup. The $10K you mention would be for 100 people, and then you would be looking at audio equipment for small performances and clubs, which can easily cost that much or more. So, interestingly, the 100 x N formula for cost of audio equipment for N people to listen to, seems to hold. I am curious about N=1000 and above, certainly stadium systems cost over $100K and for 10K listeners I guess $1M is pretty small. Maybe there should be a scaling factor in there, or it might be better modeled by a power-law relationship?
        e12e 11y ago
        Hah, lol. Yes ofc. But really, what you need for 10 people is ~1000$ worth of stereo equipment, not 10 sets of head phones... Maybe when we get dac's operated into our ears... http://www.wyldeside.com/rpgs/cp2020/cw-cyberaudio.html http://www.wyldeside.com/rpgs/cp2020/cw-cyberaudio.html
  - PebblesHD 11y ago
    I'm amazed at the quality of older speakers when it comes to value for money. I'm using a pair of Chadwick executive 12 cabinets in my living room and they're simply the best sounding speakers I've owned and they cost next to nothing. The only expense so far is cleaning and light refurb to remove rot.
    - peteretep 11y ago
      > Chadwick executive 12 That term has no Google footprint
      - DanBC 11y ago
        Raudio chadwick speakers returns some relevant results. http://www.stereo.net.au/forums/index.php?/topic/40792-australian-made-speakers-how-good/page-4 http://www.stereo.net.au/forums/index.php?/topic/40792-austr... > The Executive Monitor from Chadwick Audio Furnishings(NSW) was the top model in the Chadwick range and used a modified Etone245(300mm) unit in a rear vented transmission line enclosure with the Audax 160mm mid/range,25mm dome and an aluminium cone super tweeter. I have no idea how it compared to the imports,in the early 80,s,but many Australian designed speakers outshone the competition in performance and value at the top end of the market;unfortunately there was a cheap product area that supplied bulk stores and these inferior items still surface from time to time.A bit like the white van stuff .
        PebblesHD 11y ago
        That sounds quite familiar. I got them from my parents many years ago, and they got them new in an audio store in Sydney. I have the original brochure and manual somewhere, I'll see if I can dig them out.
    - seanp2k2 11y ago
      I have some JBL L100s wired to a PartsExpress-sourced Dayton sonic T amp (read: amazingly competent $30 plastic external hdd-sized box). Sounds amazing for all reasonable volume levels living in an apartment. The speakers are pretty big, but they can be found pretty cheap at garage sales, Craigslist, flea markets, goodwill, etc. Wire it up to an Airport Express and you have a pretty much unbeatable home AirPlay set-up for a few hundred bucks.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- peteretep 11y ago
  > "low end" No commentary here, but I was interested what it cost, so: Behringer A500: $200 Sony DVP-NS355: ~$50 ATC SCM 12: $1,500-$2,500
  - thirdsun 11y ago
    Since the speakers are used in both systems and have the most significant impact on the sound, it had to be something good and not necessarily cheap. The source and amp of the budget system are very affordable on the other hand, I don't see any problem with that setup.
  - rodgerd 11y ago
    > Behringer A500: $200 Interesting, because locally I can only find the A500 for much more than that. Paying huge amounts for a CD player is unutterable wankery in this day and age.
- e12e 11y ago
  Agreed, I'd much rather see a $200 vs a $500 system (vs a $1000 system, vs a $10000 system...). I'm not sure why anyone would invest something on the order of magnitude of the "expensive" system, and not get full-height electrostatic speakers or something (Not that I think it would be worth it then either...). It would have been interesting to see what the result where if they'd simply given the testers blindfolds, and had two whole (or preferably three) set-ups -- where all the components where "matched" (eg: $100 system: integrated "boom box"/ speaker with integrated amp & ipod, $1000 system: speakers ~ $500/pair, amp $300, dac $200 etc).
sjwright 11y ago
If you perform an objective analysis of sound reproduction, it quickly becomes apparent that once you reach a certain price/performance threshold in speakers, the most critical element -- the element that has the greatest influence on the overall sound quality -- is room acoustics. But it's so much easier to sell expensive cardboard boxes containing obscure brand electronics; there is so much more markup in homeopathic rolls of copper wire, than there is in convincing someone to ruin their marriage over living room decor. Plus, it's just not a sexy investment, and requires expertise to be done properly. It has become the industry's inconvenient truth.
- twerquie 11y ago
  What about testing these systems with headphones then?
  - sjwright 11y ago
    Headphones are great for minimizing issues of room acoustics, but they are not eliminated. Many people swear by various headphone amps and DACs, but the magnitude of difference these components could possibly impart are still pitiful compared to the improvements made possible by controlling the noise floor of the room you're listening in. This is why in any situation with ambient noise (e.g. planes, trains and open plan offices) the highest quality audiophile headphones on the market right now are the Bose QuietComfort series.
    - corv 11y ago
      Active noise cancelling headphones are hardly an audiophile's first pick. Almost all NC headphones introduce audible white noise. They are also ineffective at blocking voices in the background. Earplugs are significantly cheaper and more effective at blocking noise. That said, Bose does make the best NC headphones.
      - wodenokoto 11y ago
        The point is that the sum of added and reduced noise is smaller in the noise cancellation than in non-noise cancellation, unless you are in an optimized environment.
sardon 11y ago
I wonder how much good spanish wine these guys have had before the test
- mafro 11y ago
  It was probably a selection of both cheap and expensive stuff. Joking aside though, your comment adds nothing here. Take the article on merit, and add something constructive here if you have it.
chubot 11y ago
This justifies my setup: $2000 speakers (noticeable upgrade from previous $500 speakers), $100 receiver amp from eBay, noname cables and accessories.
- biftek 11y ago
  This is basically my set up too. My advice to anyone looking to get started is to just buy the most expensive speakers you can afford (used market is good for this), pickup an older amp for peanuts on eBay that can power said speakers, and some bargain bin cables from RadioShack.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    I'm actually in the market for a new pair of speakers, and the only objective advice I've seen is spending more gets you better speakers. While it must be true in some sense, price as an indicator of quality seems like a terrible idea because it's so easily gamed through marketing. The landscape of local competition seems quite limited (Best Buy seems to dominate everything with B&W and ML), so it feels there's no way of knowing if they're actually worth those prices, or if it's just Best Buy's standard sucker pricing. Going up into that price range I also know there is a whole host of speaker manufacturers that are of course impossible to find locally (not that intense listening room tests are super enjoyable for long periods of time either). And going up in price also makes the price of "screwing up" that much larger. So I've given up on that idea and figure I'll simply start with a Fry's special and see if I find them objectionable in any way. I'm not looking to make this a hobby, and higher end just seems so damn intractable otherwise. I've already got the speaker cables from RadioShack (not much time left to obtain them)! Let's hope your exact advice canonizes and I can sell them for Monster cable prices in several years...
    - chubot 11y ago
      How will you be using your speakers and what's your price range? If you really don't know where to start, I could probably suggest something. I've gotten great recommendations from Don Lindich. I tipped him $20 via PayPal some years back because of all his great advice. He is/was a newpaper columnist and has some Internet presence. He is honest, and focused on value for money, and has personally tried and reviewed thousands of products. http://www.soundadviceblog.com http://www.soundadviceblog.com Better speakers do cost more -- there is fundamental physics there, which is NOT the case for amplifiers or cables. But still, you will find easily 5x variation in price for roughly equal "quality". So even though you should spend most of your money on speakers, it's NOT the case that simply spending more gets you better quality.
marze 11y ago
It would be interesting to see this group do a similar test on speakers. They have a nicely designed experimental setup. A speaker test should show a clear cost/performance relationship.
smilekzs 11y ago
From my poor knowledge of music production, in that world "high end" equipment means "as close to truth as possible", not necessarily "pleasant to the ear". I wonder if the expensive set of equipment here measure objectively better than the cheap set. That said, I do believe that the speaker and acoustics of the room determine the objective measures much more than the signal chain...
- cnvogel 11y ago
  > From my poor knowledge of music production, in that > world "high end" equipment means "as close to truth > as possible", Yes, and no... Because it seems to mean "as close to truth as possible, as judged by human ears". The deviation from perfect reproduction of sound is something that could be measured and quantified relatively easy, and even mediocre equipment (probably with exception to the speakers) nowadays is able to reach astonishing linearity. But then people will discuss endlessly about that they feel things sound more "sterile" or "non three dimensional enough" compared to a system that cannot be distinguished by any quantifiable parameter, hence judging them by the tricks that their mind plays on them.
  - e12e 11y ago
    > even mediocre equipment (probably with exception to the speakers) nowadays is able to reach astonishing linearity. While we have much better cheap amps now than we used to, there's still quite a bit more of noise in the bottom end. You make it sound like $10 of electronics would give great sound (assuming eg: flac audio source, dac and "digital"[1] amplifier). It's not quite that simple. Feeding the whole thing from a battery power source is simple, cheap and can work to reduce the most common/obvious source of noise -- the AC mains (but is only practical for head-phone use). As for measuring distortion -- it's a little bit like with lossy image codecs: it doesn't really matter what the numbers say, what matters is how we perceive it. In audio-mastering/studio production lossy-ness matters (because if you loose n% of the signal on every iteration, and you do 100s of iterations through the pipeline, the noise crowds out the signal). In testing, it helps guide the development and production (quality assurance). But in the end, that's just a guide. The trick, is to not buy into the placebo -- while at the same time recognizing a basic fact: the human brain is great at patterns, and filtering out noise. Listen to a badly tuned radio long enough, and you no longer hear the noise. Until someone walks in and adjust it to be on station again. Listening to really crappy sound (eg: at least two generations old embedded audio from laptops -- not sure about latest generation(s)) -- there'd be a ridiculous amount of noise. Couple it with cheap head-phones with eg, little or no bass -- and listen to music like that for a couple of months -- and you'll be able to convince yourself that that's just fine. Just like if you smeared a thin layer of vaseline on your computer screen and left it on there for months, you'd probably stop actively noticing it was there -- but if you wiped half you would instantly see the difference. Then compare it to any low-end "hi-fi" set-up, and you'd be surprised how much clearer, and better most things sound. If not, stick with what you like. It makes absolutely no sense to buy a more expensive setup than what you can tell the difference between. And even if you can buying the best at any price doesn't make sense. And if you want to sit in a room and really listen to music/soundscapes -- be that classical music, pink floyd, jazz or anything else -- the room is just as important as the gear, as other's have mentioned. Oh, and if you want to get the most out of your setup - calibration is always good. One reason I prefer stereo is that it is comparatively simple. I'm sure that in theory one could develop a "CalMan"[2] for audio -- given that pretty much every source now is digital, one could probably set up a test track that allowed one to correct for many distortions (created by the system, the speakers, the room...) in real-time. But I must confess, while I would love to calibrate my monitor to get more correct color -- I'm highly sceptical of the idea of programming my DAC to get "more natural" sound. But that's probably the audioplacebo talking, not the rational mind. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class-D_amplifier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class-D_amplifier [2] http://calman.spectracal.com/store/p71/CalMAN_RGB_with_SpectraCal_C3.html http://calman.spectracal.com/store/p71/CalMAN_RGB_with_Spect...
fredsted 11y ago
I used the Behringer A500 for a while because of this test. Good amplifier while it's working, but I've had some problems with signal disappearing. Now I'm using a NAD amp from the 80's that works just as good.
davidgerard 11y ago
"However, some people challenges the use of an external ABX box (usually by people unused to conduct DBT's) arguing that the use of a commuter like the ABX might modify or flatten the response of the systems, masking the differences they so easily claim to hear at home or at an audio store (or even at some shows). This challenge does not hold water, as we can see from the measurements conducted to the ABX we use ..." Yeah, people pushing blatant magical woo will, eventually, descend to questioning logic and coherent thought itself. I'll link again to Alan Parsons (recording engineer and recording artist whose records audiophiles are quite fond of): http://www.cepro.com/article/beatles_pink_floyd_engineer_alan_parsons_rips_audiophiles/ http://www.cepro.com/article/beatles_pink_floyd_engineer_ala... Fix the room first.
lucd 11y ago
I use an Emotiva UMC-200 (HC preprocessor, fine for stereo too),a Crown XLS 1500 amplifier (intended for professional use) and Quad 22L loudspeakers.. The most noticeable upgrade was the automated room correction included in the preprocessor. It more or less removes the room acoustics from the equation, as well as the speakers coloration. IMHO correct speakers, powerful amplifiers (professional audio power amplifier may be considered) and good room correction makes a great combination.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Great list. How did you come to choose these components?
  - lucd 11y ago
    Heard several loudspeakers in a local hifi shop and chose the Quad. For the HC preprocessor there wasn't much choice available at Emotiva price point. For the amplifier I was leaning toward a Yamaha from the P-S series (http://www.yamahaproaudio.com/global/en/products/poweramps/ps_series/ http://www.yamahaproaudio.com/global/en/products/poweramps/p...), Crown happened to be more easily available. This one and the Crown have regulated fans. The Yamaha has less distortion and a security cover to lock volume knobs settings..
    - danieltillett 11y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to answer.
- cockles 11y ago
  I too use a similar setup with an Emotiva UMC-1, QSC RMX 1450, Mirage Omni 550s and a Pinnacle Baby Boomer. To be quite honest, a few of the decisions were based on emotion, others on what was cheap or what I already had. I love the setup though, it sounds great and gets louder than my room can handle while staying very clean. Edit: Can't leave out the RasPi running volumio.
caramel 11y ago
What these sort of tests always ignore is that placebo effect really works. I refer to a recent study by the University of Manchester in which people who believed that they had better hearing aids objectively scored better on hearing tests. If you spend time and money on a nice high-end system, the love that you put into your setup will be returned to you as better hearing experience.
- spyder 11y ago
  What placebo? It's a bind test.
  - radialbrain 11y ago
    I think that was his point. The test doesn't consider any placebo effects, whereas placebo effects may have an actual effect in real life.
golergka 11y ago
It always buffles me that people who test HiFi audio don't test studio audio equipment, and vice versa. These two categories of hardware try to achieve practically the same result, but just because they target different people (although in a very similar demographic), they are reviewed by different journalists for different magazines and seldom compared to each other. Why?
- rikkus 11y ago
  Recently, thanks to comments on Hacker News, I've learned to think about where money is being made. In this situation, there are companies competing for business in the studio market, where equipment needs to be functional (easy to move, install, plug stuff into, etc.), not alter the audio signal in a way which is undesirable and - generally - be worth the money in terms of real benefit. The home market is entirely different. Across the price range, (most) customers care about looks, how it alters the sound of the music / films they care about to match their personal preference and - less often - be worth the money in terms of audio quality and practicality. There's also trendiness, which is much more of a factor in this market. A 'classic' example (sorry to use that phrase, especially for such a recent phenomenon) is Beats Audio headphones. They are attractive for the home market because people like how they look (including that they're trendy), they make music sound 'good' (I haven't heard them, but I've been told they enhance the bass but otherwise are lacklustre), and are (based on the other factors) not worth the money in terms of audio quality or practicality. Just because the equipment is made from the same basic components (in fact, much may be made from the same components) doesn't mean that there aren't two separate markets here. They can't be treated as one because the customers are entirely different. Or maybe they can and you should start a company selling to both!
  - huuu 11y ago
    I needed a new headphone so I read a lot of reviews. It's amazing how much reviews are about the looks while sound quality is the main concern. I bought an Audio Technica ATH-M40x. These are monitor headphones for studio work. That's why they sound great but cost less than audiophile headphones. So I must agree with you and our parent.
ghshephard 11y ago
People buy $10,000 handbags without any more functional purpose. Why not luxury electronics? Seriously, if it looks beautiful, and the main purpose is for people to feel good about it, and feel good about other people seeing it - is there any real difference between a luxury handbag (luxury watch) and a luxury HiFi system?
- deleted 11y ago
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- M4v3R 11y ago
  The difference is, nobody is arguing that their luxury handbag can carry more stuff and than acheap handbag. On the other hand audiophiles will swear that they are systems sounds better than others.
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    That flies in the face of every A/B test I've ever seen - and I'm not an audiophile - presumably they know 100x more than I do about audio quality. Nobody buys $900 stereo cables because they think they'll perform better than $45 monster cables. They buy those cables for the presentation, the craftsmanship, and the brand.
mr-mr 11y ago
I must confess, i am an audio tragic and worked out some time ago that for speakers , pro audio was the way to go. ATC and PMC are excellent examples of market leaders in this area and I have listened to systems from 2k to 500k in value, with nothing but disappointment filling me when I have been in the presence of the (100k+) mega dollar setups. After speakers the biggest gain to be had as correctly stated easily in this thread is in room treatments and that's why I have a dedicated room that's heavily treated. Each to their own. I spose I could drive a 20k car as well but I prefer my 200k car because its just better all round, just like my 30k studio monitors :)
okakosolikos 11y ago
Behringer: 300W YBA: 70W ATC sensitivity: 85db A rather unfair competition.
- sjwright 11y ago
  How is it unfair? The cheap products performed as well as the expensive products.
  - okakosolikos 11y ago
    the ATC's need at least 150Watts to perform right. So it doesn't matter if an amp is in the "high end" category if it doesn't have the watts to actually move the speakers.
    - sjwright 11y ago
      If what you said was true, this supposed lack of power would have shown up as a harmonic distortion artifact in the listening test. The fact that both systems were indistinguishable proves that neither system was suffering in any particular way. Of course what you have said is nonsense, and shows a misunderstanding of the relationship between an amplifier and speaker. The watt rating of an amplifier simply indicates the operational range where it can perform with near-zero harmonic distortion. The ATCs are moderately efficient 8 ohm speakers. They barely need 15 watts let alone 150 watts of power to "perform right" at tolerable listening levels. Both amps are capable of delivering ample power with plenty of reserve for transients.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

84 points by ZeljkoS 11y ago

Their version of "low end" is amusing to me. But this is hardly surprising. Hifi suffers from a taxic interaction of diminishing returns and snake oil, and I say that as someone who has spent more than a few dollars myself.

nvk 11y ago
After spending a few bucks myself, I second this. The only thing i'd add is, invest in a good pair of speakers, that's where you'd get the best ROI.
- barney54 11y ago
  Or alternatively, invest in a good pair of headphones--also good ROI.
  - _delirium 11y ago
    Much cheaper in absolute terms as well. You can get very good headphones in the $100-200 range (even some under $100), while speaker systems in that range tend to be mediocre.
    - e12e 11y ago
      Ah, but if you are 10 people listening, that's suddenly $10 000 (actually more, as you'd probably need a little more expensive amp to drive 10 good headphones. Nowhere near 10x though).
      - grkvlt 11y ago
        Er, $1000 for ten people - although this isn't still a small amount it is close to an average mid-range home audio setup. The $10K you mention would be for 100 people, and then you would be looking at audio equipment for small performances and clubs, which can easily cost that much or more. So, interestingly, the 100 x N formula for cost of audio equipment for N people to listen to, seems to hold. I am curious about N=1000 and above, certainly stadium systems cost over $100K and for 10K listeners I guess $1M is pretty small. Maybe there should be a scaling factor in there, or it might be better modeled by a power-law relationship?
        e12e 11y ago
        Hah, lol. Yes ofc. But really, what you need for 10 people is ~1000$ worth of stereo equipment, not 10 sets of head phones... Maybe when we get dac's operated into our ears... http://www.wyldeside.com/rpgs/cp2020/cw-cyberaudio.html http://www.wyldeside.com/rpgs/cp2020/cw-cyberaudio.html
- PebblesHD 11y ago
  I'm amazed at the quality of older speakers when it comes to value for money. I'm using a pair of Chadwick executive 12 cabinets in my living room and they're simply the best sounding speakers I've owned and they cost next to nothing. The only expense so far is cleaning and light refurb to remove rot.
  - peteretep 11y ago
    > Chadwick executive 12 That term has no Google footprint
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Raudio chadwick speakers returns some relevant results. http://www.stereo.net.au/forums/index.php?/topic/40792-australian-made-speakers-how-good/page-4 http://www.stereo.net.au/forums/index.php?/topic/40792-austr... > The Executive Monitor from Chadwick Audio Furnishings(NSW) was the top model in the Chadwick range and used a modified Etone245(300mm) unit in a rear vented transmission line enclosure with the Audax 160mm mid/range,25mm dome and an aluminium cone super tweeter. I have no idea how it compared to the imports,in the early 80,s,but many Australian designed speakers outshone the competition in performance and value at the top end of the market;unfortunately there was a cheap product area that supplied bulk stores and these inferior items still surface from time to time.A bit like the white van stuff .
      - PebblesHD 11y ago
        That sounds quite familiar. I got them from my parents many years ago, and they got them new in an audio store in Sydney. I have the original brochure and manual somewhere, I'll see if I can dig them out.
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    I have some JBL L100s wired to a PartsExpress-sourced Dayton sonic T amp (read: amazingly competent $30 plastic external hdd-sized box). Sounds amazing for all reasonable volume levels living in an apartment. The speakers are pretty big, but they can be found pretty cheap at garage sales, Craigslist, flea markets, goodwill, etc. Wire it up to an Airport Express and you have a pretty much unbeatable home AirPlay set-up for a few hundred bucks.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
peteretep 11y ago
> "low end" No commentary here, but I was interested what it cost, so: Behringer A500: $200 Sony DVP-NS355: ~$50 ATC SCM 12: $1,500-$2,500
- thirdsun 11y ago
  Since the speakers are used in both systems and have the most significant impact on the sound, it had to be something good and not necessarily cheap. The source and amp of the budget system are very affordable on the other hand, I don't see any problem with that setup.
- rodgerd 11y ago
  > Behringer A500: $200 Interesting, because locally I can only find the A500 for much more than that. Paying huge amounts for a CD player is unutterable wankery in this day and age.
e12e 11y ago
Agreed, I'd much rather see a $200 vs a $500 system (vs a $1000 system, vs a $10000 system...). I'm not sure why anyone would invest something on the order of magnitude of the "expensive" system, and not get full-height electrostatic speakers or something (Not that I think it would be worth it then either...). It would have been interesting to see what the result where if they'd simply given the testers blindfolds, and had two whole (or preferably three) set-ups -- where all the components where "matched" (eg: $100 system: integrated "boom box"/ speaker with integrated amp & ipod, $1000 system: speakers ~ $500/pair, amp $300, dac $200 etc).

sjwright 11y ago

If you perform an objective analysis of sound reproduction, it quickly becomes apparent that once you reach a certain price/performance threshold in speakers, the most critical element -- the element that has the greatest influence on the overall sound quality -- is room acoustics. But it's so much easier to sell expensive cardboard boxes containing obscure brand electronics; there is so much more markup in homeopathic rolls of copper wire, than there is in convincing someone to ruin their marriage over living room decor. Plus, it's just not a sexy investment, and requires expertise to be done properly. It has become the industry's inconvenient truth.

twerquie 11y ago
What about testing these systems with headphones then?
- sjwright 11y ago
  Headphones are great for minimizing issues of room acoustics, but they are not eliminated. Many people swear by various headphone amps and DACs, but the magnitude of difference these components could possibly impart are still pitiful compared to the improvements made possible by controlling the noise floor of the room you're listening in. This is why in any situation with ambient noise (e.g. planes, trains and open plan offices) the highest quality audiophile headphones on the market right now are the Bose QuietComfort series.
  - corv 11y ago
    Active noise cancelling headphones are hardly an audiophile's first pick. Almost all NC headphones introduce audible white noise. They are also ineffective at blocking voices in the background. Earplugs are significantly cheaper and more effective at blocking noise. That said, Bose does make the best NC headphones.
    - wodenokoto 11y ago
      The point is that the sum of added and reduced noise is smaller in the noise cancellation than in non-noise cancellation, unless you are in an optimized environment.

sardon 11y ago

I wonder how much good spanish wine these guys have had before the test

mafro 11y ago
It was probably a selection of both cheap and expensive stuff. Joking aside though, your comment adds nothing here. Take the article on merit, and add something constructive here if you have it.

chubot 11y ago

This justifies my setup: $2000 speakers (noticeable upgrade from previous $500 speakers), $100 receiver amp from eBay, noname cables and accessories.

biftek 11y ago
This is basically my set up too. My advice to anyone looking to get started is to just buy the most expensive speakers you can afford (used market is good for this), pickup an older amp for peanuts on eBay that can power said speakers, and some bargain bin cables from RadioShack.
- mindslight 11y ago
  I'm actually in the market for a new pair of speakers, and the only objective advice I've seen is spending more gets you better speakers. While it must be true in some sense, price as an indicator of quality seems like a terrible idea because it's so easily gamed through marketing. The landscape of local competition seems quite limited (Best Buy seems to dominate everything with B&W and ML), so it feels there's no way of knowing if they're actually worth those prices, or if it's just Best Buy's standard sucker pricing. Going up into that price range I also know there is a whole host of speaker manufacturers that are of course impossible to find locally (not that intense listening room tests are super enjoyable for long periods of time either). And going up in price also makes the price of "screwing up" that much larger. So I've given up on that idea and figure I'll simply start with a Fry's special and see if I find them objectionable in any way. I'm not looking to make this a hobby, and higher end just seems so damn intractable otherwise. I've already got the speaker cables from RadioShack (not much time left to obtain them)! Let's hope your exact advice canonizes and I can sell them for Monster cable prices in several years...
  - chubot 11y ago
    How will you be using your speakers and what's your price range? If you really don't know where to start, I could probably suggest something. I've gotten great recommendations from Don Lindich. I tipped him $20 via PayPal some years back because of all his great advice. He is/was a newpaper columnist and has some Internet presence. He is honest, and focused on value for money, and has personally tried and reviewed thousands of products. http://www.soundadviceblog.com http://www.soundadviceblog.com Better speakers do cost more -- there is fundamental physics there, which is NOT the case for amplifiers or cables. But still, you will find easily 5x variation in price for roughly equal "quality". So even though you should spend most of your money on speakers, it's NOT the case that simply spending more gets you better quality.

marze 11y ago

It would be interesting to see this group do a similar test on speakers. They have a nicely designed experimental setup. A speaker test should show a clear cost/performance relationship.

smilekzs 11y ago

From my poor knowledge of music production, in that world "high end" equipment means "as close to truth as possible", not necessarily "pleasant to the ear". I wonder if the expensive set of equipment here measure objectively better than the cheap set. That said, I do believe that the speaker and acoustics of the room determine the objective measures much more than the signal chain...

cnvogel 11y ago
> From my poor knowledge of music production, in that > world "high end" equipment means "as close to truth > as possible", Yes, and no... Because it seems to mean "as close to truth as possible, as judged by human ears". The deviation from perfect reproduction of sound is something that could be measured and quantified relatively easy, and even mediocre equipment (probably with exception to the speakers) nowadays is able to reach astonishing linearity. But then people will discuss endlessly about that they feel things sound more "sterile" or "non three dimensional enough" compared to a system that cannot be distinguished by any quantifiable parameter, hence judging them by the tricks that their mind plays on them.
- e12e 11y ago
  > even mediocre equipment (probably with exception to the speakers) nowadays is able to reach astonishing linearity. While we have much better cheap amps now than we used to, there's still quite a bit more of noise in the bottom end. You make it sound like $10 of electronics would give great sound (assuming eg: flac audio source, dac and "digital"[1] amplifier). It's not quite that simple. Feeding the whole thing from a battery power source is simple, cheap and can work to reduce the most common/obvious source of noise -- the AC mains (but is only practical for head-phone use). As for measuring distortion -- it's a little bit like with lossy image codecs: it doesn't really matter what the numbers say, what matters is how we perceive it. In audio-mastering/studio production lossy-ness matters (because if you loose n% of the signal on every iteration, and you do 100s of iterations through the pipeline, the noise crowds out the signal). In testing, it helps guide the development and production (quality assurance). But in the end, that's just a guide. The trick, is to not buy into the placebo -- while at the same time recognizing a basic fact: the human brain is great at patterns, and filtering out noise. Listen to a badly tuned radio long enough, and you no longer hear the noise. Until someone walks in and adjust it to be on station again. Listening to really crappy sound (eg: at least two generations old embedded audio from laptops -- not sure about latest generation(s)) -- there'd be a ridiculous amount of noise. Couple it with cheap head-phones with eg, little or no bass -- and listen to music like that for a couple of months -- and you'll be able to convince yourself that that's just fine. Just like if you smeared a thin layer of vaseline on your computer screen and left it on there for months, you'd probably stop actively noticing it was there -- but if you wiped half you would instantly see the difference. Then compare it to any low-end "hi-fi" set-up, and you'd be surprised how much clearer, and better most things sound. If not, stick with what you like. It makes absolutely no sense to buy a more expensive setup than what you can tell the difference between. And even if you can buying the best at any price doesn't make sense. And if you want to sit in a room and really listen to music/soundscapes -- be that classical music, pink floyd, jazz or anything else -- the room is just as important as the gear, as other's have mentioned. Oh, and if you want to get the most out of your setup - calibration is always good. One reason I prefer stereo is that it is comparatively simple. I'm sure that in theory one could develop a "CalMan"[2] for audio -- given that pretty much every source now is digital, one could probably set up a test track that allowed one to correct for many distortions (created by the system, the speakers, the room...) in real-time. But I must confess, while I would love to calibrate my monitor to get more correct color -- I'm highly sceptical of the idea of programming my DAC to get "more natural" sound. But that's probably the audioplacebo talking, not the rational mind. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class-D_amplifier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class-D_amplifier [2] http://calman.spectracal.com/store/p71/CalMAN_RGB_with_SpectraCal_C3.html http://calman.spectracal.com/store/p71/CalMAN_RGB_with_Spect...

fredsted 11y ago

I used the Behringer A500 for a while because of this test. Good amplifier while it's working, but I've had some problems with signal disappearing. Now I'm using a NAD amp from the 80's that works just as good.

davidgerard 11y ago

"However, some people challenges the use of an external ABX box (usually by people unused to conduct DBT's) arguing that the use of a commuter like the ABX might modify or flatten the response of the systems, masking the differences they so easily claim to hear at home or at an audio store (or even at some shows). This challenge does not hold water, as we can see from the measurements conducted to the ABX we use ..." Yeah, people pushing blatant magical woo will, eventually, descend to questioning logic and coherent thought itself. I'll link again to Alan Parsons (recording engineer and recording artist whose records audiophiles are quite fond of): http://www.cepro.com/article/beatles_pink_floyd_engineer_alan_parsons_rips_audiophiles/ http://www.cepro.com/article/beatles_pink_floyd_engineer_ala... Fix the room first.

lucd 11y ago

I use an Emotiva UMC-200 (HC preprocessor, fine for stereo too),a Crown XLS 1500 amplifier (intended for professional use) and Quad 22L loudspeakers.. The most noticeable upgrade was the automated room correction included in the preprocessor. It more or less removes the room acoustics from the equation, as well as the speakers coloration. IMHO correct speakers, powerful amplifiers (professional audio power amplifier may be considered) and good room correction makes a great combination.

danieltillett 11y ago
Great list. How did you come to choose these components?
- lucd 11y ago
  Heard several loudspeakers in a local hifi shop and chose the Quad. For the HC preprocessor there wasn't much choice available at Emotiva price point. For the amplifier I was leaning toward a Yamaha from the P-S series (http://www.yamahaproaudio.com/global/en/products/poweramps/ps_series/ http://www.yamahaproaudio.com/global/en/products/poweramps/p...), Crown happened to be more easily available. This one and the Crown have regulated fans. The Yamaha has less distortion and a security cover to lock volume knobs settings..
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to answer.
cockles 11y ago
I too use a similar setup with an Emotiva UMC-1, QSC RMX 1450, Mirage Omni 550s and a Pinnacle Baby Boomer. To be quite honest, a few of the decisions were based on emotion, others on what was cheap or what I already had. I love the setup though, it sounds great and gets louder than my room can handle while staying very clean. Edit: Can't leave out the RasPi running volumio.

caramel 11y ago

What these sort of tests always ignore is that placebo effect really works. I refer to a recent study by the University of Manchester in which people who believed that they had better hearing aids objectively scored better on hearing tests. If you spend time and money on a nice high-end system, the love that you put into your setup will be returned to you as better hearing experience.

spyder 11y ago
What placebo? It's a bind test.
- radialbrain 11y ago
  I think that was his point. The test doesn't consider any placebo effects, whereas placebo effects may have an actual effect in real life.

golergka 11y ago

It always buffles me that people who test HiFi audio don't test studio audio equipment, and vice versa. These two categories of hardware try to achieve practically the same result, but just because they target different people (although in a very similar demographic), they are reviewed by different journalists for different magazines and seldom compared to each other. Why?

rikkus 11y ago
Recently, thanks to comments on Hacker News, I've learned to think about where money is being made. In this situation, there are companies competing for business in the studio market, where equipment needs to be functional (easy to move, install, plug stuff into, etc.), not alter the audio signal in a way which is undesirable and - generally - be worth the money in terms of real benefit. The home market is entirely different. Across the price range, (most) customers care about looks, how it alters the sound of the music / films they care about to match their personal preference and - less often - be worth the money in terms of audio quality and practicality. There's also trendiness, which is much more of a factor in this market. A 'classic' example (sorry to use that phrase, especially for such a recent phenomenon) is Beats Audio headphones. They are attractive for the home market because people like how they look (including that they're trendy), they make music sound 'good' (I haven't heard them, but I've been told they enhance the bass but otherwise are lacklustre), and are (based on the other factors) not worth the money in terms of audio quality or practicality. Just because the equipment is made from the same basic components (in fact, much may be made from the same components) doesn't mean that there aren't two separate markets here. They can't be treated as one because the customers are entirely different. Or maybe they can and you should start a company selling to both!
- huuu 11y ago
  I needed a new headphone so I read a lot of reviews. It's amazing how much reviews are about the looks while sound quality is the main concern. I bought an Audio Technica ATH-M40x. These are monitor headphones for studio work. That's why they sound great but cost less than audiophile headphones. So I must agree with you and our parent.

ghshephard 11y ago

People buy $10,000 handbags without any more functional purpose. Why not luxury electronics? Seriously, if it looks beautiful, and the main purpose is for people to feel good about it, and feel good about other people seeing it - is there any real difference between a luxury handbag (luxury watch) and a luxury HiFi system?

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M4v3R 11y ago
The difference is, nobody is arguing that their luxury handbag can carry more stuff and than acheap handbag. On the other hand audiophiles will swear that they are systems sounds better than others.
- ghshephard 11y ago
  That flies in the face of every A/B test I've ever seen - and I'm not an audiophile - presumably they know 100x more than I do about audio quality. Nobody buys $900 stereo cables because they think they'll perform better than $45 monster cables. They buy those cables for the presentation, the craftsmanship, and the brand.

mr-mr 11y ago

I must confess, i am an audio tragic and worked out some time ago that for speakers , pro audio was the way to go. ATC and PMC are excellent examples of market leaders in this area and I have listened to systems from 2k to 500k in value, with nothing but disappointment filling me when I have been in the presence of the (100k+) mega dollar setups. After speakers the biggest gain to be had as correctly stated easily in this thread is in room treatments and that's why I have a dedicated room that's heavily treated. Each to their own. I spose I could drive a 20k car as well but I prefer my 200k car because its just better all round, just like my 30k studio monitors :)

okakosolikos 11y ago

Behringer: 300W YBA: 70W ATC sensitivity: 85db A rather unfair competition.

sjwright 11y ago
How is it unfair? The cheap products performed as well as the expensive products.
- okakosolikos 11y ago
  the ATC's need at least 150Watts to perform right. So it doesn't matter if an amp is in the "high end" category if it doesn't have the watts to actually move the speakers.
  - sjwright 11y ago
    If what you said was true, this supposed lack of power would have shown up as a harmonic distortion artifact in the listening test. The fact that both systems were indistinguishable proves that neither system was suffering in any particular way. Of course what you have said is nonsense, and shows a misunderstanding of the relationship between an amplifier and speaker. The watt rating of an amplifier simply indicates the operational range where it can perform with near-zero harmonic distortion. The ATCs are moderately efficient 8 ohm speakers. They barely need 15 watts let alone 150 watts of power to "perform right" at tolerable listening levels. Both amps are capable of delivering ample power with plenty of reserve for transients.

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