A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire • Hacker News Board

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#221

Post by Tao3300 » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 1:53 AM UTC

nerfbatplz wrote: post #28

gwern wrote: post #2

"The fallout of the MoFi revelation has thrown the audiophile community into something of an existential crisis. The quality of digitized music has long been criticized because of how much data was stripped out of files so MP3s could fit on mobile devices. But these days, with the right equipment, digital recordings can be so good they can fool even the best ears. Many of MoFi’s now-exposed records were on Fremer and…

Not only can you not tell the difference between analogue and digital, you also cannot tell the difference between lossless and properly transcoded MP3. Most audiophile mania is poorly informed at best and astrology at worst. http://abx.digitalfeed.net/

Cymbals always sound like bubbling shit in mp3.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#222

Post by drewzero1 » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 1:54 AM UTC

ryukoposting wrote: post #103

kstrauser wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That whole line of thinking just blows me away. It's possible to accurately sample and reproduce any vinyl recording in the digital realm. It's absolutely not possible to accurately record every digital recording onto vinyl. For instance, it's not hard at all to make bass so loud that it causes the needle to leap out of the track, or treble so high that the needle can't accurately track the high frequency vibrations.…

I absolutely despise most of the vinyl community. Don't get me wrong, I love my records. I have hundreds of them and I play them regularly. For some reason, almost everyone I come by has this delusion that vinyl is objectively better than a good digital recording. Anyone who dissents from that narrative gets gaslit: "oh what kind of turntable do you have? oh that's not good enough, there's your problem right there."…

I love records (78s and vinyl) for the tactile and visual experience-- and the fact that I can get something for a few bucks at the thrift store and not feel too bad about my toddler ruining it trying to put the needle on. To that end I have stuck to cheap, sturdy, school-grade equipment and mostly secondhand records.

It's so fascinating to me that an inert physical disc is engraved with sound waves that are reproduced by dragging something along to return them to sound, in the case of the 78s without the need for anything electrical in between. It's an added bonus that it has zero opportunity to inspire screen time for my kid, who absolutely doesn't need to stare at a screen while listening to music.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#223

Post by wrycoder » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 1:55 AM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #36

wrycoder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I miss with the Apple audio chain is a user-controlled equalizer. With my hearing issues, I really need to boost treble, and I prefer to boost bass. I haven't yet discovered a way to do that. Apple thinks that flat is best, and so should you, apparently.

On OSX Music, window>equalizer. You can also grab Rogue Amoeba’s “SoundSource” to have volume controls for every noise-generating app on the computer, and apply effects chains to them, including EQ.

Great, thanks very much. All their products look useful.

I've tried Sound Source and not only do the eq's work, but I can boost the volume so I'm listening at 6/10, where before I was at 9/10 and had no headroom.

I knew I'd get an answer by saying something wrong on the internet.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#224

Post by bigiain » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 1:56 AM UTC

taylorportman wrote: post #80

jrajav wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time people will argue that vinyl has "warmth" and this makes it subjectively better. This is true, but it's actually because of the pleasing distortion record players add to the music. Being distortion, even if it improves your listening experience (and this depends on genre, though it generally does), it is certainly objectively worse in terms of accurate reproduction.

An instrument amplified by vacuum tubes does have a distinct sound, "vinyl" also has its own signature.. magnetic tape is pretty analog too. All of these signature sounds can be digitized/discretized at sampling rates that preserve the vinyl crackle or tube warmth or combinations. To me it seems like marketing and the consumers justification of their susceptibility.

> An instrument amplified by vacuum tubes does have a distinct sound

Only if it’s pushed into distortion.

Guitar players (generally) like tube Amos because of the way they distort compared to transistor amps.

If you are not pushing the amps into distortion, they will only sound different if they’re badly designed.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#225

Post by hemogloben » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 1:57 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #208

bayindirh wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any more is just placebo. This is a very simplistic view of things, on many fronts, but I'll try to be as concise as possible. In a classical wind/bow orchestra, there are more harmonics at play than the 20Hz-20KHz band, and these harmonics affects our perception of the sound and soundstage. However, recreation of this is very hard, because you need both recording and playback chains which can handle these harmonic…

> To faithfully reproduce such orchestra [...] It has never been clear to me what the goal of home playback is supposed to be. Let's simplify from a full orchestra to just a solo piano. Is the goal 1. to sound like it would if that piano was being played in my living room, or 2. to sound like what I'd have heard if I was there in the concert hall sitting in a good seat when the recording was made, or 3. to sound like…

I worked in guitar audio effects for a while (the exact opposite of this discussion), but I started playing with stereo guitar rigs and then thought about three speaker setups and beyond.

At a certain point the speakers really start to interfere with each other and you have to worry about the stability of the image at each point in the room...

It occurred to me at that point that you're really starting to approach 3. You're trying to recreate the sound pressure patterns within the room.

That's about the point I moved on to something simpler. Granted my explorations were super simple, but it was a VERY weird thought that got me thinking about the question you've asked.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#226

Post by wrycoder » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:15 AM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #135

wrycoder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I miss with the Apple audio chain is a user-controlled equalizer. With my hearing issues, I really need to boost treble, and I prefer to boost bass. I haven't yet discovered a way to do that. Apple thinks that flat is best, and so should you, apparently.

There are hearing accommodations in iOS that can even use your audiogram. Settings -> Accessibility -> Audio/Visual -> Headphone accommodations

Yes, I've used a couple of those iOS apps, but the end result is not boosted enough in the higher frequencies. My $500/pair of MDhearingaid Airs work a lot better, but they don't connect to my Apple devices.

I also have the latest AirPod Pros. With Apple Music, they are not too bad, but Apple is preventing me from having enough volume. I switched to Tidal - the sound is better, and their overall audio out level is higher than Apple. (Tidal also has notes on the music and the bands like the liner notes in the old days.) I tried Idagio, but their output level is even lower than Apple's Music. Basically, I couldn't hear the music well enough to bother with them.

If I play music on my sound system at a comfortable level, and ask people, "Is it too loud for you?", they say, no, it's fine.

The other problem I have with the AirPod Pros is their transparent mode doesn't provide any gain or much EQ for external sounds (even with the audiogram), so I can't hear people nearly as well as I can with my cheap hearing aids. I still have to remove the AirPods and put my hearing aids on, if I want to talk with people in anything but a silent room.

What I need more than anything else is compression. I can hear loud sounds fine - in fact, they bother me. What I can't hear any more is quiet sounds. That's what I need amplified, along with treble boost to compensate for my aging ears.

Apple is really missing a market here for OTC hearing assist. They have all the tech needed, even already built into existing hardware - AirPod Pros are an engineering marvel. They are holding back for some reason, probably some contractural arrangement we're not aware of.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#227

Post by jccalhoun » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:26 AM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #35

Seems like now that it's out in the open, there'd be a lucrative market in selling the DSDs directly, rather than waiting until it goes to the labels or vendors to re-rip the vinyl remasters into FLAC/MP3?

DSD is used for SACD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#228

Post by toast0 » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:26 AM UTC

FullyFunctional wrote: post #187

defterGoose wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still true that it takes a skillful ear/hand to do that mastering. I've heard terribly mastered older (not abused) records and modern releases that are excellent. A good original copy of Rumours is about as good as it gets IME. Vinyl _does_ also provide a nice soft upper limit to the loudness wars.

Couldn't we characterize vinyl limitations and capture that as a digital filter? And if so would you be able to tell the difference between the vinyl and filtered digital?

The premise in this part of the thread is that the mastering engineers will not make a record that exceeds the limits of the medium, and what fits on the medium sounds nice.

Assuming this is correct, and that the digital mix intended for cds or streaming/downloads outside vinyl's range, you might be able to filter the digital mix to fit in vinyl's range and that might approximate the vinyl mix, but maybe the mastering engineer would make different choices (of course, maybe they just use a filter). It'd be interesting to explore with actual data.

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#229

Post by wrycoder » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:31 AM UTC

cwillu wrote: post #104

cratermoon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not hard at all to make bass so loud that it causes the needle to leap out of the track Reminds me of the LP my band teacher in high school had. It was the 1812 overture, and the groves for the cannon shots at the end were easily distinguishable with just a casual examination. Based on what you're saying, I suspect that recording was pushing the limits of vinyl.

I'm imagining a recording of a nuclear blast with sufficiently deep grooves to accurately reproduce the shock wave. With the satisfying full warm tone vinyl is known for.

Fermi just dropped small pieces of paper :)

Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire

#230

Post by analog31 » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:32 AM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #212

analog31 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no a priori reason why any recording medium needs to have a flat response curve, so long as the curve is known so it can be reversed. The reason for the RIAA curve is that most sound has an inverse relationship between amplitude and frequency. The RIAA recording curve limits the overall amplitude of the groove, allowing for better management of dynamic range and distortion in the cutting and playback processe…

More people own CD players than record players. Indie bands would be better off selling CDs if that were really the main intention.

Indeed, that's true. The vinyl thing is probably more about the vinyl trend.

I go to a lot of "indie" performances, and have the musicians directly: How do I buy your stuff, so you make the most money? The answer is always the same: Buy the CD right here.