What ceases to amaze me is the lack of attention to room acoustics when listening to serious audio systems. The room acoustics have as much as 50% impact on what we, the listener's hear, and it impacts the quality of sound and there is so much lack of attention in this area. Perpendicular walls with 90 degree angles, parallel walls producing flutter echo, hard surfaces producing lots of reflections that smear and distort the sound radiating from the speakers, poor sound proofing which allow outside noises that increase the noise floor, poor low frequency absorption which masks and muddies up the bass. First things first, GET THE ROOM PROPERLY DESIGNED AND TREATED BEFORE YOU PERFORM SERIOUS LISTENING TESTS. People that spend gobs of money on sound systems should spend time and money on their room FIRST, it will enhance and improve the listening experience.
Ester Samuels What's High End all about? Do you have factual evidence to support your theory? So, by your theory, low end audio IS about honestly trying to get the best sound? If not that, then what is? Well, I guess it's all about who you talk to. I know there are some companies and people in the industry that do an honest approach to obtaining better sound and some don't and some are just taking wild guesses.
Ester Samuels That's not evidence.... There are some cable mfg that do exhaustive tests that are beyond what is normally taught in courses taught in colleges about designing cables. I know of one cable mfg that analyzes cables with test equipment and software that they helped developed that looks at more aspects of audio and what they are doing is trying not to damage the signal as much as it goes through their cable designs. ALL cables will damage the incoming signal to what comes out at the other end. Cables are filters, just like any piece of audio equipment. The goal is to not damage the incoming signal as much. Putting just a 1K Hz signal isn't going to give you enough information to test and design a cable. The problem with audio is that it's not a bunch of test signals like sine waves or square waves, etc. Which is what traditional EE's use. Music is complex wave forms with a lot of different harmonics, etc. that are in musical notes being played. Harmonic structure of musical notes is VERY complex and being able to reproduce it accurately is difficult to achieve. Just to let you know, a simple audio cable (analog) has measurable amounts of capacitance, resistance and inductance, there is no such thing as a perfect cable. And these measurable amount of RLC change as you put under load. to an untrained ear, it's harder to tell the difference in cables, but certain cables sound close to each other and certain cables don't. If you have a more accurate system, it can do a better job at revealing how much different cables can sound from one another. An electronic band filter is a RLC circuit, which is what analog cables and electronic components are. You should talk to Bob Ludwig. He's considered one of the top mastering engineers in the recording industry and he is considered one of the top "ears" in the industry. he uses equipment that is very accurate and his job is to listen to different ways he masters a recording to give the record label the sound they are looking for. Some record labels spitting out pop music want higher levels of compression, limiting, etc. because of their listening audience and what equipment and how they listen to music, which is typically in cars, wearing cheap ear buds and on cheap stereos. Whereas the classical, jazz crowd typically doesn't want a lot of compression, limiting, etc. because they are more likely going to listen to their music on a higher quality stereo system in their home where they want a wider dynamic range, sonic accuracy to the original master and hopefully an accurate representation of the actual performance that's done in a acoustically superior room than some pop recording where they many times put drums in a small drum booth that's sonically dead, and a lot of instruments doing direct into the mixing console. But high end audio sounds a LOT better than low end audio. I can't listen to music on a cheap stereo anymore, it's not listenable, it's annoying. Unfortunately, that's one of the side effects to a good stereo system. It's just a matter of figuring out your budget and trying to get the best sound that fits your budget. My stereo I'm currently using cost me less than $7000 since I bought a lot of it used in mint condition. That's how I saved money. But it sounds pretty damn good for the room size that I have. $7000 on a full system (without computer) is not an expensive system when you get in the realm of high end, they can go much higher than that without trying real hard. But it's possible to put together a decent system for less than $5000 for a 2 channel system, and you don't have to buy super expensive cables. just some decent cables is all that's necessary. For some that have the higher end systems, cables can make a bigger difference, but how much someone spends on cables is entirely up to the user. Because cables are actually filters, some people prefer the sound of certain cables with certain equipment and it depends on the speakers and equipment they use, since speakers, amps, pre amps, etc. also filter the sound as well.
Oneness100 "$7000 on a full system (without computer) is not an expensive system when you get in the realm of high end, they can go much higher than that without trying real hard." If you're talking about a regular sized room and two regular stereo speakers there can't be any reason for going any higher than $7000 dollars unless you're talking about custom work, very advanced room treatments or special room correction electronics. Generally something exotic. How could going higher than $7000 improve the sound? And cables make no audible difference. It may be measurable, but it's not audible to humans. Maybe bats.
Pretty bad recording quality considering it was done by a fanatical audio hobbiest
Is it just me or is it ironic that we sit through the horribly mastered audio track because we are learning about audio reproduction
What ceases to amaze me is the lack of attention to room acoustics when listening to serious audio systems. The room acoustics have as much as 50% impact on what we, the listener's hear, and it impacts the quality of sound and there is so much lack of attention in this area. Perpendicular walls with 90 degree angles, parallel walls producing flutter echo, hard surfaces producing lots of reflections that smear and distort the sound radiating from the speakers, poor sound proofing which allow outside noises that increase the noise floor, poor low frequency absorption which masks and muddies up the bass. First things first, GET THE ROOM PROPERLY DESIGNED AND TREATED BEFORE YOU PERFORM SERIOUS LISTENING TESTS. People that spend gobs of money on sound systems should spend time and money on their room FIRST, it will enhance and improve the listening experience.
High end audio isn't about honestly trying to get the best sound.
Ester Samuels
What's High End all about? Do you have factual evidence to support your theory?
So, by your theory, low end audio IS about honestly trying to get the best sound? If not that, then what is?
Well, I guess it's all about who you talk to. I know there are some companies and people in the industry that do an honest approach to obtaining better sound and some don't and some are just taking wild guesses.
Oneness100 Here's the evidence: the money audiophiles will spend on cables.
Low end audio isn't about good sound. It's about saving money.
Ester Samuels That's not evidence.... There are some cable mfg that do exhaustive tests that are beyond what is normally taught in courses taught in colleges about designing cables. I know of one cable mfg that analyzes cables with test equipment and software that they helped developed that looks at more aspects of audio and what they are doing is trying not to damage the signal as much as it goes through their cable designs. ALL cables will damage the incoming signal to what comes out at the other end. Cables are filters, just like any piece of audio equipment. The goal is to not damage the incoming signal as much. Putting just a 1K Hz signal isn't going to give you enough information to test and design a cable. The problem with audio is that it's not a bunch of test signals like sine waves or square waves, etc. Which is what traditional EE's use.
Music is complex wave forms with a lot of different harmonics, etc. that are in musical notes being played. Harmonic structure of musical notes is VERY complex and being able to reproduce it accurately is difficult to achieve.
Just to let you know, a simple audio cable (analog) has measurable amounts of capacitance, resistance and inductance, there is no such thing as a perfect cable. And these measurable amount of RLC change as you put under load. to an untrained ear, it's harder to tell the difference in cables, but certain cables sound close to each other and certain cables don't. If you have a more accurate system, it can do a better job at revealing how much different cables can sound from one another. An electronic band filter is a RLC circuit, which is what analog cables and electronic components are.
You should talk to Bob Ludwig. He's considered one of the top mastering engineers in the recording industry and he is considered one of the top "ears" in the industry. he uses equipment that is very accurate and his job is to listen to different ways he masters a recording to give the record label the sound they are looking for. Some record labels spitting out pop music want higher levels of compression, limiting, etc. because of their listening audience and what equipment and how they listen to music, which is typically in cars, wearing cheap ear buds and on cheap stereos. Whereas the classical, jazz crowd typically doesn't want a lot of compression, limiting, etc. because they are more likely going to listen to their music on a higher quality stereo system in their home where they want a wider dynamic range, sonic accuracy to the original master and hopefully an accurate representation of the actual performance that's done in a acoustically superior room than some pop recording where they many times put drums in a small drum booth that's sonically dead, and a lot of instruments doing direct into the mixing console.
But high end audio sounds a LOT better than low end audio.
I can't listen to music on a cheap stereo anymore, it's not listenable, it's annoying. Unfortunately, that's one of the side effects to a good stereo system. It's just a matter of figuring out your budget and trying to get the best sound that fits your budget. My stereo I'm currently using cost me less than $7000 since I bought a lot of it used in mint condition. That's how I saved money. But it sounds pretty damn good for the room size that I have. $7000 on a full system (without computer) is not an expensive system when you get in the realm of high end, they can go much higher than that without trying real hard.
But it's possible to put together a decent system for less than $5000 for a 2 channel system, and you don't have to buy super expensive cables. just some decent cables is all that's necessary. For some that have the higher end systems, cables can make a bigger difference, but how much someone spends on cables is entirely up to the user. Because cables are actually filters, some people prefer the sound of certain cables with certain equipment and it depends on the speakers and equipment they use, since speakers, amps, pre amps, etc. also filter the sound as well.
Oneness100 "$7000 on a full system (without computer) is not an expensive system when you get in the realm of high end, they can go much higher than that without trying real hard."
If you're talking about a regular sized room and two regular stereo speakers there can't be any reason for going any higher than $7000 dollars unless you're talking about custom work, very advanced room treatments or special room correction electronics. Generally something exotic. How could going higher than $7000 improve the sound?
And cables make no audible difference. It may be measurable, but it's not audible to humans. Maybe bats.