101–110 of 270 posts
Any recommendations for people that are tempted to build this but should really put their time elsewhere?
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Yea, I removed the Vinyl argument. That's for another time. Nothing wrong with Records but I've had the same issue talking to people about Records wrt to audio quality. I own Records and like you, I enjoy the experience. There is something amazing about listening to the entire album without distractions and in the sequence that the artist intended. You could do this with mp3/CD, but Records get me in the right mood :…
There are objective reasons to favor vinyl even today. The 'audio quality' if measured in terms of SNR is objectively much worse than any modern medium, however the mixes used for vinyl tend to not be compressed to death so the dynamic range can offset this shortcoming.
It is ironic that higher quality mastering is done on a vintage outdated (barring recent resurgence) and objectively lower fidelity medium. It'd be nice to see CD's having great mastering and may be some of them do?
I'm probably the only one with this opinion...but I sure miss the old days of tube amps that weren't able to be highly accurate. They would roll-off the on the high end, distort a bit all over, and gave a very warm and relaxing feel to the albums I played obsessively. Now I've owned high-end tube and solid-state gear, and the music hasn't sounded good for decades. Combine that with the very limited bits provided by C…
I suspect this is a classic case of "you think you want X, but what you actually want is your youth."
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Please don't lump all audiophiles in with some sort of distorted (irony...) stereotype. I don't have a $10k system, or anything close to it, but yes, my system that I put together for about $1000 is way way way way better than what you're listening onm because I care enough to have a good external DAC, and feed that into a good amp paired with either a set of decent used speakers or one of a couple of sets of good he…
Your external dac is indistinguishable to your ears from the internal one in whatever device you are using to supply it with bits. This is precisely what OP is talking about.
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If your input is balanced, it will be handled by some op-amp circuit or whatever, which converts to single-ended internal signal, like the "balanced line input module" shown in this page: http://sound.whsites.net/project30a.htm You can easily insert a volume control right after such a stage.
Yeah, but in the context of this article, I'd have to cut some traces on the PCB to get there. Doesn't sound like the ideal solution to me :)
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Of course they’re anecdotal - listening to music is a subjective experience. If someone really thinks their music sounds better after adding $100 cable lifters and taping $50 bags of rocks to their $10,000 system, they are automatically correct . Their ears, their hobby. It would be like saying that something can’t work because it’s a placebo - even if all they’re getting is a sugar pill, if the symptoms went away, t…
Please don't lump all audiophiles in with some sort of distorted (irony...) stereotype. I don't have a $10k system, or anything close to it, but yes, my system that I put together for about $1000 is way way way way better than what you're listening onm because I care enough to have a good external DAC, and feed that into a good amp paired with either a set of decent used speakers or one of a couple of sets of good he…
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(EDIT: Parent deleted argument about Vinyl) Vinyl has a few more dimensions than the "quality" aspect. I totally agree that there is no argument for vinyl offering superior quality. However, I have bought a few records simply because they were actually the _easiest_ way for me to buy something I could play back for a few albums/tracks that never saw a proper online release. It's also easier to display a 12" sleeve as…
This is a Quora answer of mine from (sigh) 2011: I _like_ vinyl, but I'm happy to admit its almost certainly due to non-audio non-hifi reasons. I like the "ceremony" associated with cleaning the disk, dropping the needle on the lead in track, and getting up to flip it over and do it again every 5 or 6 songs. I like the cover art - there is arguably a loss to the world of a beautiful art form due to the demise of the…
Then, the "digital revolution" came to music, and you could buy it online. Which, for nearly every case, was better. Especially for people who weren't in driving distance of a major city.
However, once I started to get a digital collection going, the size was overwhelming. Especially in regards to dj'ing. With vinyl, your entire collection isn't always available. You make little stacks, shift things in and out, and it's much more organic. Digital misses that. Plus, I never really knew track names. I just remembered album or record artwork. It was easier to find things that way.
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Wait, what? The “volume” of MIDI? I’m guessing they’re not referring to cc#7...? (Also, I’ve never encountered a 9-pin MIDI connector. 5-pin maybe?)
I usually see midi as a 5-pin DIN, but some sound-cards used a DB-9 which required an adapter.
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There are objective reasons to favor vinyl even today. The 'audio quality' if measured in terms of SNR is objectively much worse than any modern medium, however the mixes used for vinyl tend to not be compressed to death so the dynamic range can offset this shortcoming.
You have a good point and I've heard of this before. The problem is that it depends on the artist/mixing engineer and production process. There is no guarantee. It is ironic that higher quality mastering is done on a vintage outdated (barring recent resurgence) and objectively lower fidelity medium. It'd be nice to see CD's having great mastering and may be some of them do?
It's because there is a very limited number of people whom care about accurate sound reproduction. The _vast_ majority of listeners use garbage sound reproduction systems (Beats headphones, bluetooth cannon speakers, almost everything Bose makes now, etc). The small segment that cares is also heavily dominated by the audiophile sub-segment, selling vinyl to them is icing on the cake. The segment that _really_ cares about audio quality, those that care but are not 'audiophiles', is _extremely_ small and not worth targeting at the consumer level.
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Your external dac is indistinguishable to your ears from the internal one in whatever device you are using to supply it with bits. This is precisely what OP is talking about.
There’s a huge gap in quality between most onboard DACs and externals. It’s not necessarily because the onboard is worse at C-ing the Ds to the As, but because they’re not isolated from the noisy electronics that share the power supply. My laptop emits different squeals when I scroll a window, for example.