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Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

stereophile.com

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Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#51

Post by krautsourced »

thefounder wrote: post #42

I wonder what's a fair price for a pair of tower speakers? Is $10k crazy expensive? $5000? People pay crazy amounts of money for some paintings so I don't see an issue paying crazy amounts of money for audio gear that looks and sounds nice. I visit Stereophile from time to time to see what's new but never bothered to read all the crap. If you are into audio gear/hifi there is 10% useful content though(i.e pictures, p…

Having owned speakers in that range and listened to numerous pairs in the 5k range: a fair price is the price the speaker that sounds good to you costs. Measurable differences do not matter, what matters is your ear and your taste, both of which change over time. So whatever you do, don't buy anything based on reviews, go into a hifi store with a CD (or usb or whatever) with your favourite songs that you have a good idea of how you would like them to sound, and ask them to have a listening session with a number of different models. Then buy the pair that sounds best.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#52

Post by colanderman »

lb1lf wrote: post #48
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is the history of a successful charlatan. Agreed. Its tough though... I know of a couple times in my life I've thought something was OK until I saw something else. Examples, Glass. Binoculars, camera lenses, rifle scopes, telescopes. Glass differences are very real. You might be A-OK with some Bushnell Binos, but USE Swarovski or Vortex Razor or something lower-highend and you'll get it. Now, I didn't write LOO…

>Its tough though... I know of a couple times in my life I've thought something was OK until I saw something else. Examples, Glass. Binoculars, camera lenses, rifle scopes, telescopes. Glass differences are very real. -Aye. I had a rather absurd discussion with a colleague here the other day; he keeps a pair of el cheapo grande binoculars in his office, some 10x50 monsters which he proudly announced cost less than $1…

Apparently, at least a decade ago, a lot of people prefer the sound of poorly-encoded MP3s: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/the-sizzling-sound-of-music... There's no accounting for taste.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#53

Post by mbell »

thefounder wrote: post #42

I wonder what's a fair price for a pair of tower speakers? Is $10k crazy expensive? $5000? People pay crazy amounts of money for some paintings so I don't see an issue paying crazy amounts of money for audio gear that looks and sounds nice. I visit Stereophile from time to time to see what's new but never bothered to read all the crap. If you are into audio gear/hifi there is 10% useful content though(i.e pictures, p…

You can get a pair of Ascend Sierra towers for ~$2k. From an objective measurement standpoint you won't find anything substantially better than these at any price point.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#54

Post by opencl »

beat wrote: post #44
mikeash wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Audio is subjective but differences in quality can still be objectively measured. You play the same music through different equipment and have the listener rate them without knowing what they are . Consistent improvements will show up across different listeners, and differences that come down to personal taste will still show up across different sessions with the same listener. The most telling thing about the audiop…

Some things are very hard to measure objectively, though, despite being real. (Anything subject to chaos theory, for sure.) I mix records. I use two different sets of monitors for mixing - a pair of Tannoy System 12 DMT monitors (equivalent would cost about $4000; they were very popular in hip-hop studios back in the '90s), and a more modern pair of Focal Alpha 50 powered monitors (about $800/pair new). Both monitors…

What you're talking about absolutely is measurable. There has been tons and tons of research into various aspects of audio reproduction and how to measure different things and to what degree they're audible. Techniques for measuring transient response have been around since the 1940s.

Unfortunately most places writing reviews of audio equipment don't bother to go much beyond frequency response and distortion. Audioxpress ran a really nice 2 part article a decade ago describing a bunch of different types of speaker measurements and summarizing some research into how audible each aspect is.

https://www.audioxpress.com/article/testing-loudspeakers-whi...

https://www.audioxpress.com/article/testing-loudspeakers-whi...

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#55

Post by ip26 »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #15
ip26 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If swaros are low-highend, what's high-highend?

The bring up a different discussion about highend and impractical highend. Swaros cheaper models are practical. They're well built, they're expesnive but not outrageous. They're REAL products. There are high-highend products that AREN'T REAL. Things that come out of shops that sell 100 all year, things that can't be used like normal products. Etc. In this case, Miyauchi Binos or something like that. It's a bad descri…

Thank you, that was a helpful answer.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#56

Post by janekm »

beat wrote: post #46
janekm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At audio frequencies (and well beyond), you won't be able to measure any meaningful differences: https://www.lifewire.com/speaker-cables-make-a-difference-31... And the absurdity becomes much more obvious when contrasting with the differences in speakers and speaker crossovers...

That depends on impedance behaviors between components, too. As a guitarist, I did guitar cable listening tests. With passive guitar pickups (high impedance, low output devices), different cables have easily audible fingerprints. With active pickups, there's no difference at all. The difference between cables is no longer enough to audibly affect the signal. And within this realm, more expensive doesn't always mean b…

That's a point, I was assuming low impedance output stages as would be standard for any ordinary hifi equipment these days (but not necessarily for the really expensive stuff of course...).

Some of the expensive cables are over-dimensioned or crazily constructed leading to excess capacitance and/or impedance which would lead to terrible performance with a high impedance driver.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#57

Post by beat »

janekm wrote: post #56
beat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on impedance behaviors between components, too. As a guitarist, I did guitar cable listening tests. With passive guitar pickups (high impedance, low output devices), different cables have easily audible fingerprints. With active pickups, there's no difference at all. The difference between cables is no longer enough to audibly affect the signal. And within this realm, more expensive doesn't always mean b…

That's a point, I was assuming low impedance output stages as would be standard for any ordinary hifi equipment these days (but not necessarily for the really expensive stuff of course...). Some of the expensive cables are over-dimensioned or crazily constructed leading to excess capacitance and/or impedance which would lead to terrible performance with a high impedance driver.

Impedance is a difficult and complex thing (which is why failure mode #1 for dudes on the internet being all "objective" and "scientific" is failing to grok the difference between impedance and resistance). So how an output stage is constructed (or an input stage, for that matter) has a lot to do with its behavior in the face of 10 octaves of frequency range and 50+ decibels of real-world dynamics.

Is it transformer-coupled? (Rare in hi-fi, common in pro audio) Capacitor coupled? Direct coupled? Differential? All of these have different and frequency-dependent capacitative, inductive, and resistive behaviors. Put in those terms, it's kind of a no-brainer that cables would matter.

But in "objective" internet-land, it's all straight wire with gain, perfect flat resistance. Which is fine on paper...

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#58

Post by beat »

opencl wrote: post #54
beat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things are very hard to measure objectively, though, despite being real. (Anything subject to chaos theory, for sure.) I mix records. I use two different sets of monitors for mixing - a pair of Tannoy System 12 DMT monitors (equivalent would cost about $4000; they were very popular in hip-hop studios back in the '90s), and a more modern pair of Focal Alpha 50 powered monitors (about $800/pair new). Both monitors…

What you're talking about absolutely is measurable. There has been tons and tons of research into various aspects of audio reproduction and how to measure different things and to what degree they're audible. Techniques for measuring transient response have been around since the 1940s. Unfortunately most places writing reviews of audio equipment don't bother to go much beyond frequency response and distortion. Audioxp…

I did transient response measurement while studying recording in college (onto recording media). But when you start getting into things like frequency-dependent phase response, radiation patterns, reflections... there's a tremendous world of logically audible speaker behaviors that could maybe be measured in isolation, but you get so many of them that you can't assemble a meaningful picture of how a speaker is going to sound.

And that's the goal, isn't it? Measurements provide expectations. And that's where the conversation breaks down - the "objective" mind gets so preoccupied with the measurement that they assume what isn't measured cannot exist. The map replaces the territory, and there are no hills because the map is obviously flat.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#59

Post by mbell »

beat wrote: post #58
opencl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're talking about absolutely is measurable. There has been tons and tons of research into various aspects of audio reproduction and how to measure different things and to what degree they're audible. Techniques for measuring transient response have been around since the 1940s. Unfortunately most places writing reviews of audio equipment don't bother to go much beyond frequency response and distortion. Audioxp…

I did transient response measurement while studying recording in college (onto recording media). But when you start getting into things like frequency-dependent phase response, radiation patterns, reflections... there's a tremendous world of logically audible speaker behaviors that could maybe be measured in isolation, but you get so many of them that you can't assemble a meaningful picture of how a speaker is going…

> But when you start getting into things like frequency-dependent phase response, radiation patterns, reflections... there's a tremendous world of logically audible speaker behaviors that could maybe be measured in isolation, but you get so many of them that you can't assemble a meaningful picture of how a speaker is going to sound.

These things aren't particularly difficult to measure, we even have standard plots for them. Polar response, energy time curves, cumulative spectral decay, electrical phase and group delay are all standard measurements for a loudspeaker.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#60

Post by beat »

mbell wrote: post #59
beat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did transient response measurement while studying recording in college (onto recording media). But when you start getting into things like frequency-dependent phase response, radiation patterns, reflections... there's a tremendous world of logically audible speaker behaviors that could maybe be measured in isolation, but you get so many of them that you can't assemble a meaningful picture of how a speaker is going…

> But when you start getting into things like frequency-dependent phase response, radiation patterns, reflections... there's a tremendous world of logically audible speaker behaviors that could maybe be measured in isolation, but you get so many of them that you can't assemble a meaningful picture of how a speaker is going to sound. These things aren't particularly difficult to measure, we even have standard plots fo…

Yes, but can consumers look at those and derive meaningful expectations for their subjective experience of using the speakers? And how many of those things are sensitive to dynamics, volume, signal complexity, etc?

I think this stuff says a lot more about psychology than it says about technology.

When I'm mixing music, my "final arbiter" for mix quality is the crappy stock speakers in my car. A mix may sound great on my studio monitors, but if it's not happening in that extremely inaccurate car system, it's not happening. A lot of professional mixers use "bad" speakers like Auracubes or Minimus-7s just to emulate that experience.

And of course, this kind of experience is also inseparable from context. It's not just that they're car speakers... it's that they're in a car. They're in the door, not aimed at my ears. Their bass-reflex behavior is from the volume of the door and whatever venting it has, and reflections are completely crazy.

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