71–80 of 367 posts
People who claim CDs have more dynamic range than analog are missing the point. Think of it in terms of graphics. 8 bit graphics can represent totally black, or totally white. That's a complete dynamic range. But it's the in-between shades that require more bits to specify. It's the same with audio. It's not how soft or how loud a recording can get. It's the subtle shades of variation. 16 bits is pretty good, but not…
Audiophools got played yet again.
Audiophile here - if they were using a proper master, minimally a true lossless file I don’t really see the problem. On the other hand, it seems to me like I meet more people who are just into buying new gear rather than enjoying the music, which is what the hobby is to me. Don’t even get me started on snake oil like cables.
People who claim CDs have more dynamic range than analog are missing the point. Think of it in terms of graphics. 8 bit graphics can represent totally black, or totally white. That's a complete dynamic range. But it's the in-between shades that require more bits to specify. It's the same with audio. It's not how soft or how loud a recording can get. It's the subtle shades of variation. 16 bits is pretty good, but not…
I don't think this is true. A long time ago I was involved in the headphone audiophile community and people were always using the shimmer of a cymbal as how they could tell the difference between MP3s and Lossless, Analog vs Digital, CD vs SACD or whatever. Then they'd do a blind test using Foobar2000 and start saying the whole blind testing methodology is flawed because surely they can hear the difference under normal listening conditions with their $1000 headphone connected to their $3000 amp using their $2000 DAC.
My favorite quote was from somebody who said "Nobody in this community cares about music. They only care about their equipment."
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> 100% fine for someone to say that they subjectively prefer the sound quality of a record player to a CD It's not intellectually fine, only fine in the sense that it's well within the bounds of free speech.
No; it's really fine - same with tube amps etc. It's OK to have a subjective preference for some kinds of distortion. It's not OK to say it's "truer to the original sound", which is where this usually comes off the rails.
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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.…
> 100% fine for someone to say that they subjectively prefer the sound quality of a record player to a CD It's not intellectually fine, only fine in the sense that it's well within the bounds of free speech.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So it's been many years since I looked at this stuff, but the reason for higher sample rate isn't to do with humans being able to hear over 20khz. If you sample at 44khz you need a high pass filter at 22khz to avoid aliasing. Since that's pretty close to 20khz, it needs a pretty sharp drop off. Having a filter with a sharp drop off can introduce artifacts. With 96khz sampling rate, you don't need as a sharp drop off…
Yes, i hate when people talk about Nyquist as if its some Panacea. Its vwry “spherical cow”. It assumes all your filters, DACs, are perfect, and that time is infinite.
Yes, your filters, DAC and speaker wire could still create a less than ideal listening situation, but the fundamental aspect of the Nyquist frequency is not concerned with any of that.
This is no different than a section HNers fooled by companies like DuckDuckGo and VPNs
"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…
Don't worry, the crisis will not last long. Audiophiles will find a way to get over it and buy some better cables that would have revealed they were using a Digital source all along.
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.…
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.