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History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

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Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#41

Post by em500 »

vatican_banker wrote: post #35
em500 wrote: post #16

Never heard these myself, but I remember that Nautilus speakers were used in an MP3 listening test by the German c't magazine in 2000[1]. Conclusion: > In plain language, this means that our musically trained test listeners could reliably distinguish the poorer quality MP3s at 128kbps quite accurately from either of the other higher-quality samples. But when deciding between 256 kbps encoded MP3s and the original CD,…

My honest and unscientific opinion is that the difference _is_ discernible but the listener needs to know what to hear for. Also, the reproduction quality is impacted by several factors like room, equipment, and recording quality (not just speaker quality). [Anecdotal] One example of the difference between MP3 and lossless: the "image" [1] on 256kbps MP3s is worse compared to the the original uncompressed, lossless,…

> Important to keep in mind the "size" of the experiment. Two interesting quotes from the article in c't magazine:

>> twelve participants would be asked to come to Hanover.

It's a mistake to apply vanilla statistical thinking here. The 12 participants were not randomly drawn from the German population, they were extremely skewed towards enthusiasts/professionals: audio engineers, an owner of an actual Nautilus 801, someone who worked on MP3/AAC at Fraunhofer IIS, someone who works preparing masters for Deutsche Gramophon. If these are the people who have enormous difficulty distinguishing 256kbps MP3 from the CD original, I'm certainly not going to worry that I am going to miss out on anything with 256kbps MP3.

If 12 Grand Slam participants tell me they can't tell the difference between a standard $100 and a $1000 high end tennis racket, I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that it's going to make any difference for me.

Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#42

Post by voldacar »

em500 wrote: post #16

Never heard these myself, but I remember that Nautilus speakers were used in an MP3 listening test by the German c't magazine in 2000[1]. Conclusion: > In plain language, this means that our musically trained test listeners could reliably distinguish the poorer quality MP3s at 128kbps quite accurately from either of the other higher-quality samples. But when deciding between 256 kbps encoded MP3s and the original CD,…

I got to hear the sennheiser orpheus a few years ago. Honestly it was kind of underwhelming.

It is a very physically beautiful headphone but in terms of sound, it's kind of warm with a slight haze and indistinctness in the treble. That might be pleasant for some people, but I think any modern electrostat like the L700 or SR009 would outperform it significantly if you put them side by side. I assume its value is due mostly to its rarity.

Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#43

Post by k-mcgrady »

JohnBooty wrote: post #27

On one hand I like spare-no-expense halo products like this. They are fascinating, at least visually. On the other hand this is why the hi-fi hobby is dying. With products like this, we promote the idea that high fidelity audio requires all sorts of exotic equipment that few can afford. The happy reality is that excellent audio reproduction can be achieved without spending much money; certainly less than a modern gam…

Studio monitors and HiFi equipment seem like different categories and use cases to me. HiFi speakers should fill the room. To get a good sound from studio monitors you need to be positioned well. Just moving a little bit can make a big difference in the sound.

Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#44

Post by KozmoNau7 »

vatican_banker wrote: post #35
em500 wrote: post #16

Never heard these myself, but I remember that Nautilus speakers were used in an MP3 listening test by the German c't magazine in 2000[1]. Conclusion: > In plain language, this means that our musically trained test listeners could reliably distinguish the poorer quality MP3s at 128kbps quite accurately from either of the other higher-quality samples. But when deciding between 256 kbps encoded MP3s and the original CD,…

My honest and unscientific opinion is that the difference _is_ discernible but the listener needs to know what to hear for. Also, the reproduction quality is impacted by several factors like room, equipment, and recording quality (not just speaker quality). [Anecdotal] One example of the difference between MP3 and lossless: the "image" [1] on 256kbps MP3s is worse compared to the the original uncompressed, lossless,…

A good way to determine the point of transparency of lossy encoding for yourself, is to ABX test on your own equipment, with files you've converted yourself. A good way to do this is with Foobar2000's ABX plugin, which lets you compare back and forth and on whole tracks or short snippets if you want.

In my experience, headphones always yield the best results, and surprisingly it doesn't matter if I use the stock earbuds from my phone or a nice set of AKG over-ear headphones. It's not a matter of absolute sound quality, just the fact that you cut out room interactions and get the sound straight to your ears makes a big difference.

MP3 has some built-in flaws that no encoder can completely cover up, short sharp sounds like castanets really expose the pre-echo, harpsichord shows similar issues. It also has a tendency to make cymbals sound "washy" or "underwater", which all lossy codecs do to some degree, but MP3 is especially bad.

Still, at 192kbps I have to really focus to hear it in normal listening, but it's more or less always there even at 320kbps in problem tracks, if I really focus in on short sections. It just sounds subtly "off". But I hope no one actually listens to music like that, in short repeated sub-1 second sections to narrow in on a specific castanet snap ;-)

As for more modern codecs like Opus and AAC, it's generally completely transparent for me at 128kbps, and that's with a bit of playing it safe, I'm pretty sure I could drop Opus down to 96kbps. Modern codecs are really impressive.

I keep my music library in FLAC, both because I know it's CD quality and because it's an archive. I want to be able to convert the tracks to any new codec that may come along, if I need to.

My library is 280GB currently, and storage is cheap :-)

Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#45

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

JohnBooty wrote: post #25
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can DIY high-end speakers, saving thousands. Sounds weird, but its true. Here is one example that is popular, there are others: http://www.donhighend.de/?page_id=3212

This is true. I'm going to make a vast oversimplification here, but a rule of thumb is that a lot of the well-regarded DIY kits on the market compare well with retail speakers that cost 2-3X as much. Some examples: https://www.parts-express.com/speaker-components/speaker-sub... https://www.diysoundgroup.com/home-audio-speaker-kits/home-a... https://meniscusaudio.com/product-category/speaker-kits/ etc.

And this is a conservative estimate, its more like 10-20x as much. Huge parts of the budget for high-end gear is marketing.

Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#46

Post by DenTheRed »

Gauge_Irrahphe wrote: post #39
ninjaoxygen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in high-end AV. Perceptually, in a good space, those fantastic speakers often do not make the sound people associate with "loud", no distortion, no top end becoming hissy, just the concert-level bass to clue you in to how loud it is. People who have paid a lot for their system want that "wow" factor that immediately makes anyone think it's loud. The other issue is that different listening material definitely n…

Bass distortion is the only big factor. Everybody knows it doesn't matter, but it's actually where distortion is the easiest to hear. Chinese manufacturers don't know, and do care, so even cheap USB speakers blow out of water the majority of even much more expensive products.

Do you have an example of some of these cheap USB speakers please?

Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#47

Post by em500 »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #44
vatican_banker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My honest and unscientific opinion is that the difference _is_ discernible but the listener needs to know what to hear for. Also, the reproduction quality is impacted by several factors like room, equipment, and recording quality (not just speaker quality). [Anecdotal] One example of the difference between MP3 and lossless: the "image" [1] on 256kbps MP3s is worse compared to the the original uncompressed, lossless,…

A good way to determine the point of transparency of lossy encoding for yourself, is to ABX test on your own equipment, with files you've converted yourself. A good way to do this is with Foobar2000's ABX plugin, which lets you compare back and forth and on whole tracks or short snippets if you want. In my experience, headphones always yield the best results, and surprisingly it doesn't matter if I use the stock earb…

> I keep my music library in FLAC, both because I know it's CD quality and because it's an archive. I want to be able to convert the tracks to any new codec that may come along, if I need to.

I understand the sentiment. But the reality is, if the re-encoding is not likely going to happen within the next 10 years, your hearing will probably have deteriorated so much that you probably won't hear the difference anymore anyway (assuming you can hear a difference today, which is a big assumption).

Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#48

Post by dagw »

growt wrote: post #31
JohnBooty wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but 90% of the road can be traveled with just basic, but good components IMHO. Amen. No expert here but I've been in the hobby for a while and have demo'd some high end stuff at audio shows. I strongly believe a really good "90% of the way there" system can be put together for well under $500 retail, or even less if going DIY or used.

Can you give an example of such a <$500 system? I'm genuinely curious.

Lots and lots of variations. But basically get a $250-350 pair of speakers for a decent brand (Dali Spektor 1 or 2 are a good bet) and plug them into a $100-200 second hand amp and you've got a great set up. If you don't want to go second hand then Yamaha and Sony have some decent amps in this price range.

Spend whatever you have left over on a second hand CD player or DAC for your phone, depending on what you want to use as a source.

Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#49

Post by vatican_banker »

em500 wrote: post #41
vatican_banker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My honest and unscientific opinion is that the difference _is_ discernible but the listener needs to know what to hear for. Also, the reproduction quality is impacted by several factors like room, equipment, and recording quality (not just speaker quality). [Anecdotal] One example of the difference between MP3 and lossless: the "image" [1] on 256kbps MP3s is worse compared to the the original uncompressed, lossless,…

> Important to keep in mind the "size" of the experiment. Two interesting quotes from the article in c't magazine: >> twelve participants would be asked to come to Hanover. It's a mistake to apply vanilla statistical thinking here. The 12 participants were not randomly drawn from the German population, they were extremely skewed towards enthusiasts/professionals: audio engineers, an owner of an actual Nautilus 801, s…

> It's a mistake to apply vanilla statistical thinking here. The 12 participants [...] were extremely skewed towards enthusiasts/professionals

It is still undetermined if having 12 highly-skilled professionals in the experiment is enough to have a conclusive experiment.

Also, this subject is so difficult to get right that the authors of the article themselves hedged by saying that experiment "does not support watertight conclusions".

Re: History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

#50

Post by KozmoNau7 »

ninjaoxygen wrote: post #8
bwang29 wrote: post #4

I used to work in boutique audio retail. One of the big challenges of the business is how big and heavy good speakers are. In the old days we would need to crate the speaker to customers’ house for audition as every room has a different acoustic, and try a few different speakers with more crates with a upfront fee/credit to purchase, but it doesn’t happen nearly as often anymore. Showrooms nowadays also mostly do not…

I work in high-end AV. Perceptually, in a good space, those fantastic speakers often do not make the sound people associate with "loud", no distortion, no top end becoming hissy, just the concert-level bass to clue you in to how loud it is. People who have paid a lot for their system want that "wow" factor that immediately makes anyone think it's loud. The other issue is that different listening material definitely n…

A well put-together powerful system with low distortion is quite an experience when you really crank the volume. It just gets bigger and bigger sounding but not really "loud" (ie. distorted), and loud clean sound is just a lot more satisfying and less fatiguing.

It's all about headroom, dynamics and being able to move air. Audiophiles may laugh, but a speaker like the Cerwin-Vega XLS215 one of the best choices you can make for reasonably affordable speakers, provided you have the room for them. They do look somewhat low-rent, but CV have taken some important lessons from PA speakers to heart, so they're surprisingly efficient and have large drivers that can effortlessly move significant amounts of air. Combine them with a powerful amplifier with plenty of headroom and you have a setup that can handle serious dynamics with very low distortion, better than 99% of concerts I've attended[¤].

For an actual PA speaker that can do much of the same thing, the JBL SRX835 is a similar powerhouse, but it has horn-loaded midrange and tweeter drivers, for those who prefer that sound. They are also effortlessly dynamic and I want a pair for my living room, despite the very utilitarian looks.

Unfortunately logistics and space constraints mean bookshelf speakers are the only practical setup in this apartment, so I picked ones that were as big as I could reasonably get away with, and supplement them with two reasonably well-hidden 12" subwoofers. I should have never sold my JBL 4410s, I'm sure I could have made space for them somehow.

[¤] The best sound quality I have ever heard at a concert and honestly better than most home setups, was when Opeth played in DR Koncerthuset here in Copenhagen in 2016. The sound is always insanely good there, but the combination of prog metal, an outrageously well-designed acoustic space, a seriously impressive sound system and world-class people behind the scenes, elevated everything to a completely new level.

It was the cleanest and most pristine amplified sound I have ever heard, and what really impressed me was how clean and deep the bass reproduction was, with absolutely no distortion or wooliness. It is my measuring stick that all other concerts are compared to.

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