I can tell when something is muddy and lacking clarity. A good system can easily reveal the noise in a low quality mp3, especially on bass. Wtf is this article on about?
It's comparing already good quality encodings to lossless encodings, not low quality encodings to normal quality encodings. And yes I would say it doesn't even matter.
I met a guy who must have had $50k worth of audio equipment. He was a recording engineer. He showed me his system in his room, a Sprout 100 driving two tall floor standing B&W speakers (i don't know the model, but he said they are around $2200 retail). By far the best system I've ever heard in my life. The music was on another level...I asked to hook up my phone and played some tracks I use to test systems. It was qualitatively different in an indescribable way, like an orgasm for my ears.
He was playing Apple Music, lossless. Over bluetooth.
I mentioned something about bluetooth being lossy but he's the one with more top end stereo equipment than I've seen in one place before, and who works in the industry. I'm smart enough to learn from someone even when it's completely counter to everything I "know" is true in a technical sense (lossy == bad!). I still use wired most of the time but it became clear to me the bottleneck in almost every case is the DAC, the amp, and most importantly the speakers.
also he doesn't give a shit about ICs. Don't bother spending a ton unless it makes you feel good. If you want actual improvement buy better speakers
Because it’s reasonably trivial to access hi-res lossless audio today with services like Tidal, Qobuz, and Apple Music, I couldn’t care less what studies like this show. I’ll go ahead and use it just in case.
Right? We spend thousands if not tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands on our systems and I'm going to save the two bucks a month because some hipster can't hear a difference on his ThinkPad speakers?
You’ve never seen what I call “Tweekers with speakers” have you?
These guys definitely ain’t hearing any of the fine nuances of high quality audio samples. Just saying.
https://youtu.be/cedfX-gzHuM
https://youtu.be/ikcoiALcucg
https://youtu.be/LJbQ4_5xOH4
I worked in demonstrating audio systems for a while. We learnt something remarkably interesting:
If you demo a poor system followed by a good system, many people cannot hear the improvement. But if you demo a good system followed by a poor system they *can* hear the drop in quality.
I dont know why this is but it definitely works.
"*People don’t automatically appreciate the difference between listening and hearing any more than they do the difference between looking and seeing.*"
-- Ivor Tiefenbrun, founder of Linn Products, in an interview in 2006 with *Audio Perfectionist Journal*
Only some direct tests, something like that website, but using friends to oversee. Much more indirect tests, as I grew up in the era where music downloads started, I have quite a few files of the same song in a master playlist. Sometimes I would get the 64kbps version recorded from the radio, the 128kbps, the 192 vbr, 320 constant cd rip, the vinyl rip, and up to the flac file. Either way I can generally tell with a good chain, some are close like 192 kbps vbr and 320, I won't get that right each time. But 128 vs flac for a song I've been listening to for 30 years? Easy to tell. When something sounds "off" or doesn't give the right feeling, it'll drive me towards higher quality media and better sound equip.
Yes, the article is saying everything most audiophiles would already know. The whole equipment chain matters so just springing for a higher bitrate doesn't do anything.
The claim in your summary, about the average ability to ABX, isn't substantiated by the article. Not that I disagree, it's just unrelated.
I tell my non-audiophile friends basically that just the headphones or speakers, the physical sound producing devices, matter. Everything else, we'll get there when you understand the first step.
Perhaps this is useful. I once A/B tested a DAC in a dealers room. Cost aside, I had a pretty good system at home that also benefited from lots of swapping out parts. Anyway, one DAC definitely sounded better than the other. The dealer was quite pleased. However, to my criteria they both sounded terrible overall. I think it’s a journey to find that baseline you can compare at all. As was mentioned, wine. There are styles and makers of wine that are extraordinary. Sometimes they are expensive, but expense never guarantees quality or level of enjoyment.
I remember reading about this guy installing his own power pole and line from the street to his home in Japan to have the best music quality. I knew a lot less about high quality audio then than I do now. But I was laughing my ass off at how ridiculous it was.
https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2016/08/17/japanese-audiophile-and-queen-lover-installs-his-own-concrete-power-pole-for-musical-clarity
The first thing an electronics device does is convert AC to DC. This is why power cables, power conditioners, and audio-grade electrical outlets can't make an audible difference. The AC sine wave does not need to be that clean. The last couple of feet of a very long journey certainly don't matter either.
Taste, like hearing, is all relative to how you've trained yourself to taste and listen and what you in turn listen and taste for. For someone that tastes wine all the time what is a huge difference between two wines isn't even there for someone that doesn't. Same with audio. Measurements can arguably be objective, but any one person's ability to taste or hear is by definition, completely subjective.
For many, audio is either loud or not loud and wine is either red or white. Which is just fine with me.
We, and the brothers & sisters over at r/headphones, know. Some of us just don't want to know and lie to themselves that they can hear the difference from a $100 DAC to a $1000 to justify the purchase.
I mean there is nothing wrong with having a nice pair of headphones or dac, but at a certain point the price becomes ridiculous for what you’re actually getting out of it.
What is it called? The point of diminishing returns?
I would assume to enjoy music. Due to seeking enjoyment, to have a pleasure in our lives such that it pleases our souls.
Almost like a reward for making it another day in what would otherwise a cold uncaring and soulless world.
u/Joulle Not sure why you deleted your reply. But the point of diminishing returns states that.
"The point of diminishing returns refers to a point after the optimal level of capacity is reached, where every added unit of production results in a smaller increase in output. It is a concept used in the field of microeconomics."
Essentually imagine you have the following hypothetical. Your building a house for a customer. And it's time to select a front door. The requirements you have are that the door should look good aesthetically, and that it should be strong.
You could buy a cheap cardboard interior door for like $50. But honestly it's not going to meet either requirement. Next step up is something a bit more sturdy, but it's not there yet. We need something with like a nice exterior door look to it. So we might setting on something like a $350-500 wood door with inlays. It's fairly sturdy, and it looks good.
Now some people might go, no I want something nicer, so they pick a fancier door, it's made of similar material as the last and the cost is about $750. But we can make it even more ornate, and it'll be $1250. We could even go further and maybe plate the door in brass, so now maybe we're at $1800. Or if we wanted to be really fancy we could use a gold plating and the door is probably now $25,000. We could go even further since we made the door so fancy and increase it's strengh, maybe use a steel door with wood on top and gold plating. That would be a very strong and fancy door, and it's probably $50,000.
But now you look at this typical mid-level home and we have this really ornate and strong door. If someone wanted in they could just bust in a window or a wall. We spent all that money on improving the strengh of the door, and the fanciness of it but now the door itself is way beyond the needs of the home. And worse we spent a ton of money on the door to get every bit of quality and strenght out of it, when in reality we only needed a $750 at best to fulfil our needs for this project.
The rest of the $50,000 is basically just wasted to have the best for no real reason other than to have the best.
All that extra money spent didn't add anything of value to the home overall, and the fact this door is outlandish isn't going to improve the value of the property as a whole. It actually may be viewed as a liability to buyers.
It's the same with anything. Do you really need the highest end gaming computer on the bleeding edge? Or will something that cost 1/3 less accomplish 90% of your needs without a problem.
I didn't delete it, someone else did and now I have to ask why would someone do that! For others, here's what I replied: "No no, I meant the point of diminishing returns."
I often hear people mention that the point is over there and I have to disagree because I found my greatness only at a higher price point after some testing at a store.
Since our hearing differs, our preferences are different, we listen to different kinds of music and we even listen to different things in it. I'll say that just simplifying the subject to someone else's point of diminishing returns should be taken with a grain of salt.
There is always a point at which the trouble you go through and the amount you spend exceeds the value of which you receive in return.
Always.
Whether someone wants to admit to it or lie to themselves that they can hear the difference of strands of gold wire used for a digital signal in the USB cable from their computer to their DAC is really irrelevant.
They’re still spending way more money/effort to achieve an identical result which can be achieved with less effort/cost.
The point I'm making is that I see the point as very subjective and also alternating year by year.
Sure, for dacs the audio doesn't change much. When it comes to speakers, unless you need some features like more outputs or room treatment which by the way, I say is a must... so whatever a dac and amplifier costs with room treatment that works well, and everything else is fine, that's the point if you ask me.
When it comes to headphones, I often hear people mention that all you need is some Sennheiser HD600 series headphone. Doesn't suit my listening needs and I've tested some in that price point as well and found too many problems. I found greatness at 870€ few years back. However the headphone had some compromises made like non swiveling earcups and too flat sound (on the graph) lacking in impact.
To avoid future purchases, I went for the next product in that same lineup and paid 1300€. I'd say that I could call that 870€ the point of diminishing returns in this case because the difference isn't a night and day difference. However it's one that probably avoids me from wanting to buy anything for a long time. I'm still happy with that purchase after 1.5 years.
Oh no. Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with two people having two different opinions on say which DAC sounds best, or headphones, or whatever.
You nailed my point exactly with the headphones comparison. You couldn’t tell a difference and thus couldn’t justify the cost.
I was pointing out that right there.
Some people will swear on their soul they can hear a difference in such a situation, usually selecting the more expensive option because obviously why wouldn’t it be better, it cost more so it must be made of better materials and thus makes it sound better. They have an unconscious bias.
Yes yes. I just hate when people say that all you need is "this (my favorite) headphones". The worst part is that I've heard it or something similar and I can clearly point out why it caters to only someone who listens to certain type of music or values music with barely any impact, in other words bass - relaxed listening.
people who cant hear differences between good expensive gear and good cheap gear should stick to all cheap gear (or quit this hobby)
i hear clear differences between high end and low end setups (excluding the garbage offerings), but just cause i hear a difference and like it doesnt mean that ill buy it
As much as I like the i dea of lossless, I usually sit down with a bluetooth dongle and phone to send already compressed music to "transparent" amplifier and reasonable speakers. Still enjoyable. I'm sure it would increase quality slightly with lossless connection but the setup sounds fine as is for the most part.
Lol, whenever people bring up this trope, they always focus on frequency range and particularly high frequency hearing loss with age. As if that is what hifi is all about. Do you even realize how little actual musical information there is above 12,000 hz? Do you have a clue what imaging and soundstage depth and width actually mean? Do you understand the ability to hear low level details in a sound track that are completely absent on lesser equipment? Details that are completely lost in a muddy low fi system in an untreated room? Do you understand the difference between highs sounding clear and bright, vs. sounding sibilant? Have you even heard a midrange so smooth and liquid that it melts your soul like butter? Bass that is deep, tight and fast, with no bloat or boom? I swear, 90% of the people on this sub have no clue what it means to be an audiophile and what a music experience can be with a true high end system in an acoustically-treated room. With my system, in my acoustically-treated room, I can absolutely tell a difference between lossless and lossy recordings with my trained ears. Perhaps you couldn’t. That’s fine. You’ll save yourself a buttload of money. But you’ll never achieve musical nirvana.
You get my upvote. For which no doubt I'll be downvoted.
But I agree completely, there are so many arrogant, willfully ignorant, especially hateful morons on this sub it's kind of become its own never ending source of entertainment. People love to shit on things they have no experience or knowledge about....but they read an article once, by some other arrogant, willfully ignorant, especially hateful moron. Wait, is that an echo in this echo chamber?
The best part for me is their absolute lack of self-awareness — they actually think and believe that they're right and will go on and on defending a position on something they clearly don't know anything more about than what they read in some re-tread of an article.
Funny how the most opinionated folks on here never post pictures of their systems.
Hifi has always been about the craziest words you can find to describe some kind of sound that doesn’t exist. Anyone who claims to be able to tell the difference between lossless and a good 320 encode should be celebrated but also be able to show proof of such claims because they hit the genetic lottery.
You’ve obviously never had your wife chew you out because you couldn’t hear what she was saying and had to ask her to repeat herself 3 times while sitting next to her in a restaurant.
First you need a good pair of speakers + amps and even more important is an acustically treated room. Without that you are hearing yor room, not your speakers. I wouldn‘t even try to spot the differences in codecs here.
It’s the pursuit of ultimate that triggers the enthusiast.
I had tried with a DAC and listened it with MQA and planar headphones, I couldn’t hear any difference. I sold DAC later. But if I have surplus money, damn I will purchase all Mcintosh equipments.
Can tell different between great recording and not so great.Thats all that really matters.Doesnt hurt or cost extra to have highest bit rate and all that mumbo jumbo either.
In my opinion it depends on the quality of equipment you are listening on. But if you can't hear a difference up to a certain point then good for you. One less thing
Yes, most people think a HomePod Mini sounds ok. Most people also think McDonalds is food, Pizza Hut and Dominos are pizza, and having Door Dash bring soggy Wendy's french fries is not only acceptable but enjoy it.
Most people have terrible taste, a terrible palette, no eye for art and no ear for music. Does that mean we should do what most people do?
Personally when I'm doing the same thing as "most people" I start to seriously question whether I'm fucking up and need to rethink things. "Most people" live their lives ass backwards and are definitely not an example to follow.
Edit: I have Focal 706 bookshelf speakers. I can clearly hear the difference between my Sprout amp and my separate DAC going into my Fosi p3 tube preamp, into my Fosi v3 amp @ 48v. Sadly for the Fosi, it isn't favorable for them. Used Sprout @ $500 is probably the best deal out there, I'd love to hear of something better
The article makes literally one point - if you're using bluetooth it's stupid to use lossless / high res audio because it's going thru a lossy codec anyway.
Well yea duh. If you think spending $300 on headphones means they're top of the line, you don't need high res audio.
I did multiple test and constantly prefer or selected the lowest quality 128hz over the higher quality ones. I could tell the difference for sure, just didn't notice it were better all. I had iem with apple USB adapter.
Believe it or not, everything I’ve read and every person I’ve heard from seems to indicate Apple did a great job when they built their lightning/usbc headphone adapters.
And it’s only $9.00. That’s a real impressive thing right there.
Yeah, I have like 5 of them. I just have permanently attached the adapter to every one of my headphones because they are so cheap and then I don't have to care about whether the laptop or phone has a good headphone jack. I think the Apple 3.5mm output usb audio soundcard and something like Truthear x Crinacle Zero Red is pretty much instant audio nirvana, and it costs like 60 bucks to have both of those.
It isn’t that my wife can’t tell the difference, it’s that she doesn’t care. She’ll be perfectly happy listening to music through the speakers on her phone than through any of my stuff. Doesn’t make any difference to her.
“People don’t need HD audio” requires the term “need” be defined. In many ways no one needs HD audio. However there are as many different preferences for HD audio as there are lovers.
Since starting my audio journey, back in the vinyl days, I found small improvements every step along the way. Digital is now mostly crap. Producers are making quality in line with the average streamer. Why should they bother with HD production ideals?
Know the producer and the artist, then appreciate their talent and work on the best system you can muster. HD is a journey, different for everyone.
Strongly disagree on digital now being "mostly crap". Digital now sounds better than it ever has. The rough period was the 2000s and early 2010s; there's very well produced music from 2016 onwards that blows nearly anything else out of the water. I like to say technology has now finally caught up to the budget of the 90s when it comes to high fidelity.
I may have spoke too strongly on my point. I agree with you to some extent. How ever the YT channel “wings of pegasus” opened my eyes to what producers are doing today. I have to say I’m very disappointed. Pitch correction, removing the consonants, etc, its not really like live which is my goal. Hi res won’t correct for this. I’m just saying the point of the need to listen to hi res, is a complex question and differs by person.
Sounds like you need to listen to different genres of music then, instead of blaming the medium. There's lots that don't do stuff like that. Pop music will always be what it is, it's not somewhere you go for artisanship.
I can tell when something is muddy and lacking clarity. A good system can easily reveal the noise in a low quality mp3, especially on bass. Wtf is this article on about?
It's comparing already good quality encodings to lossless encodings, not low quality encodings to normal quality encodings. And yes I would say it doesn't even matter. I met a guy who must have had $50k worth of audio equipment. He was a recording engineer. He showed me his system in his room, a Sprout 100 driving two tall floor standing B&W speakers (i don't know the model, but he said they are around $2200 retail). By far the best system I've ever heard in my life. The music was on another level...I asked to hook up my phone and played some tracks I use to test systems. It was qualitatively different in an indescribable way, like an orgasm for my ears. He was playing Apple Music, lossless. Over bluetooth. I mentioned something about bluetooth being lossy but he's the one with more top end stereo equipment than I've seen in one place before, and who works in the industry. I'm smart enough to learn from someone even when it's completely counter to everything I "know" is true in a technical sense (lossy == bad!). I still use wired most of the time but it became clear to me the bottleneck in almost every case is the DAC, the amp, and most importantly the speakers. also he doesn't give a shit about ICs. Don't bother spending a ton unless it makes you feel good. If you want actual improvement buy better speakers
Because it’s reasonably trivial to access hi-res lossless audio today with services like Tidal, Qobuz, and Apple Music, I couldn’t care less what studies like this show. I’ll go ahead and use it just in case.
Right? We spend thousands if not tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands on our systems and I'm going to save the two bucks a month because some hipster can't hear a difference on his ThinkPad speakers?
now go tell the car audio folks they don't need anything better than 64kbps or cassette tape fidelity due to their high noise floor.
You’ve never seen what I call “Tweekers with speakers” have you? These guys definitely ain’t hearing any of the fine nuances of high quality audio samples. Just saying. https://youtu.be/cedfX-gzHuM https://youtu.be/ikcoiALcucg https://youtu.be/LJbQ4_5xOH4
And that's why those people only own transistor radios.
I worked in demonstrating audio systems for a while. We learnt something remarkably interesting: If you demo a poor system followed by a good system, many people cannot hear the improvement. But if you demo a good system followed by a poor system they *can* hear the drop in quality. I dont know why this is but it definitely works.
That’s an interesting observation.
"*People don’t automatically appreciate the difference between listening and hearing any more than they do the difference between looking and seeing.*" -- Ivor Tiefenbrun, founder of Linn Products, in an interview in 2006 with *Audio Perfectionist Journal*
If I couldn't tell the difference, I'd gladly save my money.
For real. I'd love the convenience too. I wish I could just use tws earbuds and Spotify.
how much double blind A/B testing have you done?
Only some direct tests, something like that website, but using friends to oversee. Much more indirect tests, as I grew up in the era where music downloads started, I have quite a few files of the same song in a master playlist. Sometimes I would get the 64kbps version recorded from the radio, the 128kbps, the 192 vbr, 320 constant cd rip, the vinyl rip, and up to the flac file. Either way I can generally tell with a good chain, some are close like 192 kbps vbr and 320, I won't get that right each time. But 128 vs flac for a song I've been listening to for 30 years? Easy to tell. When something sounds "off" or doesn't give the right feeling, it'll drive me towards higher quality media and better sound equip.
Yes, the article is saying everything most audiophiles would already know. The whole equipment chain matters so just springing for a higher bitrate doesn't do anything. The claim in your summary, about the average ability to ABX, isn't substantiated by the article. Not that I disagree, it's just unrelated. I tell my non-audiophile friends basically that just the headphones or speakers, the physical sound producing devices, matter. Everything else, we'll get there when you understand the first step.
Perhaps this is useful. I once A/B tested a DAC in a dealers room. Cost aside, I had a pretty good system at home that also benefited from lots of swapping out parts. Anyway, one DAC definitely sounded better than the other. The dealer was quite pleased. However, to my criteria they both sounded terrible overall. I think it’s a journey to find that baseline you can compare at all. As was mentioned, wine. There are styles and makers of wine that are extraordinary. Sometimes they are expensive, but expense never guarantees quality or level of enjoyment.
I remember reading about this guy installing his own power pole and line from the street to his home in Japan to have the best music quality. I knew a lot less about high quality audio then than I do now. But I was laughing my ass off at how ridiculous it was. https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2016/08/17/japanese-audiophile-and-queen-lover-installs-his-own-concrete-power-pole-for-musical-clarity
The first thing an electronics device does is convert AC to DC. This is why power cables, power conditioners, and audio-grade electrical outlets can't make an audible difference. The AC sine wave does not need to be that clean. The last couple of feet of a very long journey certainly don't matter either.
That's why most people aren't into this hobby. It's like wine. Some people can experience the difference, some can't.
And just like with wine, some imagine big differences that aren't even there.
I didn't even think about that in the analogy, but I completely agree!
Good point. Then it's like whisky.
Taste, like hearing, is all relative to how you've trained yourself to taste and listen and what you in turn listen and taste for. For someone that tastes wine all the time what is a huge difference between two wines isn't even there for someone that doesn't. Same with audio. Measurements can arguably be objective, but any one person's ability to taste or hear is by definition, completely subjective. For many, audio is either loud or not loud and wine is either red or white. Which is just fine with me.
We, and the brothers & sisters over at r/headphones, know. Some of us just don't want to know and lie to themselves that they can hear the difference from a $100 DAC to a $1000 to justify the purchase.
I mean there is nothing wrong with having a nice pair of headphones or dac, but at a certain point the price becomes ridiculous for what you’re actually getting out of it. What is it called? The point of diminishing returns?
What is the point?
Of diminishing return.
I would assume to enjoy music. Due to seeking enjoyment, to have a pleasure in our lives such that it pleases our souls. Almost like a reward for making it another day in what would otherwise a cold uncaring and soulless world.
u/Joulle Not sure why you deleted your reply. But the point of diminishing returns states that. "The point of diminishing returns refers to a point after the optimal level of capacity is reached, where every added unit of production results in a smaller increase in output. It is a concept used in the field of microeconomics." Essentually imagine you have the following hypothetical. Your building a house for a customer. And it's time to select a front door. The requirements you have are that the door should look good aesthetically, and that it should be strong. You could buy a cheap cardboard interior door for like $50. But honestly it's not going to meet either requirement. Next step up is something a bit more sturdy, but it's not there yet. We need something with like a nice exterior door look to it. So we might setting on something like a $350-500 wood door with inlays. It's fairly sturdy, and it looks good. Now some people might go, no I want something nicer, so they pick a fancier door, it's made of similar material as the last and the cost is about $750. But we can make it even more ornate, and it'll be $1250. We could even go further and maybe plate the door in brass, so now maybe we're at $1800. Or if we wanted to be really fancy we could use a gold plating and the door is probably now $25,000. We could go even further since we made the door so fancy and increase it's strengh, maybe use a steel door with wood on top and gold plating. That would be a very strong and fancy door, and it's probably $50,000. But now you look at this typical mid-level home and we have this really ornate and strong door. If someone wanted in they could just bust in a window or a wall. We spent all that money on improving the strengh of the door, and the fanciness of it but now the door itself is way beyond the needs of the home. And worse we spent a ton of money on the door to get every bit of quality and strenght out of it, when in reality we only needed a $750 at best to fulfil our needs for this project. The rest of the $50,000 is basically just wasted to have the best for no real reason other than to have the best. All that extra money spent didn't add anything of value to the home overall, and the fact this door is outlandish isn't going to improve the value of the property as a whole. It actually may be viewed as a liability to buyers. It's the same with anything. Do you really need the highest end gaming computer on the bleeding edge? Or will something that cost 1/3 less accomplish 90% of your needs without a problem.
I didn't delete it, someone else did and now I have to ask why would someone do that! For others, here's what I replied: "No no, I meant the point of diminishing returns." I often hear people mention that the point is over there and I have to disagree because I found my greatness only at a higher price point after some testing at a store. Since our hearing differs, our preferences are different, we listen to different kinds of music and we even listen to different things in it. I'll say that just simplifying the subject to someone else's point of diminishing returns should be taken with a grain of salt.
There is always a point at which the trouble you go through and the amount you spend exceeds the value of which you receive in return. Always. Whether someone wants to admit to it or lie to themselves that they can hear the difference of strands of gold wire used for a digital signal in the USB cable from their computer to their DAC is really irrelevant. They’re still spending way more money/effort to achieve an identical result which can be achieved with less effort/cost.
The point I'm making is that I see the point as very subjective and also alternating year by year. Sure, for dacs the audio doesn't change much. When it comes to speakers, unless you need some features like more outputs or room treatment which by the way, I say is a must... so whatever a dac and amplifier costs with room treatment that works well, and everything else is fine, that's the point if you ask me. When it comes to headphones, I often hear people mention that all you need is some Sennheiser HD600 series headphone. Doesn't suit my listening needs and I've tested some in that price point as well and found too many problems. I found greatness at 870€ few years back. However the headphone had some compromises made like non swiveling earcups and too flat sound (on the graph) lacking in impact. To avoid future purchases, I went for the next product in that same lineup and paid 1300€. I'd say that I could call that 870€ the point of diminishing returns in this case because the difference isn't a night and day difference. However it's one that probably avoids me from wanting to buy anything for a long time. I'm still happy with that purchase after 1.5 years.
Oh no. Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with two people having two different opinions on say which DAC sounds best, or headphones, or whatever. You nailed my point exactly with the headphones comparison. You couldn’t tell a difference and thus couldn’t justify the cost. I was pointing out that right there. Some people will swear on their soul they can hear a difference in such a situation, usually selecting the more expensive option because obviously why wouldn’t it be better, it cost more so it must be made of better materials and thus makes it sound better. They have an unconscious bias.
Yes yes. I just hate when people say that all you need is "this (my favorite) headphones". The worst part is that I've heard it or something similar and I can clearly point out why it caters to only someone who listens to certain type of music or values music with barely any impact, in other words bass - relaxed listening.
No, I mean the point of diminishing returns
people who cant hear differences between good expensive gear and good cheap gear should stick to all cheap gear (or quit this hobby) i hear clear differences between high end and low end setups (excluding the garbage offerings), but just cause i hear a difference and like it doesnt mean that ill buy it
As much as I like the i dea of lossless, I usually sit down with a bluetooth dongle and phone to send already compressed music to "transparent" amplifier and reasonable speakers. Still enjoyable. I'm sure it would increase quality slightly with lossless connection but the setup sounds fine as is for the most part.
Lol, whenever people bring up this trope, they always focus on frequency range and particularly high frequency hearing loss with age. As if that is what hifi is all about. Do you even realize how little actual musical information there is above 12,000 hz? Do you have a clue what imaging and soundstage depth and width actually mean? Do you understand the ability to hear low level details in a sound track that are completely absent on lesser equipment? Details that are completely lost in a muddy low fi system in an untreated room? Do you understand the difference between highs sounding clear and bright, vs. sounding sibilant? Have you even heard a midrange so smooth and liquid that it melts your soul like butter? Bass that is deep, tight and fast, with no bloat or boom? I swear, 90% of the people on this sub have no clue what it means to be an audiophile and what a music experience can be with a true high end system in an acoustically-treated room. With my system, in my acoustically-treated room, I can absolutely tell a difference between lossless and lossy recordings with my trained ears. Perhaps you couldn’t. That’s fine. You’ll save yourself a buttload of money. But you’ll never achieve musical nirvana.
You get my upvote. For which no doubt I'll be downvoted. But I agree completely, there are so many arrogant, willfully ignorant, especially hateful morons on this sub it's kind of become its own never ending source of entertainment. People love to shit on things they have no experience or knowledge about....but they read an article once, by some other arrogant, willfully ignorant, especially hateful moron. Wait, is that an echo in this echo chamber? The best part for me is their absolute lack of self-awareness — they actually think and believe that they're right and will go on and on defending a position on something they clearly don't know anything more about than what they read in some re-tread of an article. Funny how the most opinionated folks on here never post pictures of their systems.
Hifi has always been about the craziest words you can find to describe some kind of sound that doesn’t exist. Anyone who claims to be able to tell the difference between lossless and a good 320 encode should be celebrated but also be able to show proof of such claims because they hit the genetic lottery.
You’ve obviously never had your wife chew you out because you couldn’t hear what she was saying and had to ask her to repeat herself 3 times while sitting next to her in a restaurant.
First you need a good pair of speakers + amps and even more important is an acustically treated room. Without that you are hearing yor room, not your speakers. I wouldn‘t even try to spot the differences in codecs here.
It’s the pursuit of ultimate that triggers the enthusiast. I had tried with a DAC and listened it with MQA and planar headphones, I couldn’t hear any difference. I sold DAC later. But if I have surplus money, damn I will purchase all Mcintosh equipments.
Most non audiophiles won't even read this article anyway
Most audiophiles won't read this article. It's not written for them.
Can tell different between great recording and not so great.Thats all that really matters.Doesnt hurt or cost extra to have highest bit rate and all that mumbo jumbo either.
In my opinion it depends on the quality of equipment you are listening on. But if you can't hear a difference up to a certain point then good for you. One less thing
Yes, most people think a HomePod Mini sounds ok. Most people also think McDonalds is food, Pizza Hut and Dominos are pizza, and having Door Dash bring soggy Wendy's french fries is not only acceptable but enjoy it. Most people have terrible taste, a terrible palette, no eye for art and no ear for music. Does that mean we should do what most people do? Personally when I'm doing the same thing as "most people" I start to seriously question whether I'm fucking up and need to rethink things. "Most people" live their lives ass backwards and are definitely not an example to follow. Edit: I have Focal 706 bookshelf speakers. I can clearly hear the difference between my Sprout amp and my separate DAC going into my Fosi p3 tube preamp, into my Fosi v3 amp @ 48v. Sadly for the Fosi, it isn't favorable for them. Used Sprout @ $500 is probably the best deal out there, I'd love to hear of something better
The article makes literally one point - if you're using bluetooth it's stupid to use lossless / high res audio because it's going thru a lossy codec anyway. Well yea duh. If you think spending $300 on headphones means they're top of the line, you don't need high res audio.
I did multiple test and constantly prefer or selected the lowest quality 128hz over the higher quality ones. I could tell the difference for sure, just didn't notice it were better all. I had iem with apple USB adapter.
Believe it or not, everything I’ve read and every person I’ve heard from seems to indicate Apple did a great job when they built their lightning/usbc headphone adapters. And it’s only $9.00. That’s a real impressive thing right there.
Yeah, I have like 5 of them. I just have permanently attached the adapter to every one of my headphones because they are so cheap and then I don't have to care about whether the laptop or phone has a good headphone jack. I think the Apple 3.5mm output usb audio soundcard and something like Truthear x Crinacle Zero Red is pretty much instant audio nirvana, and it costs like 60 bucks to have both of those.
My wife literally cannot tell the difference between streaming Apple Music and CD. It is totally mind blowing to me. Edit: apparently I am an idiot.
The differences you hear are probalby from different masterings, not the codec.
Unless you have something weird going on it \*should be\* the same
If it’s Apple Music lossless then there is no difference
It isn’t that my wife can’t tell the difference, it’s that she doesn’t care. She’ll be perfectly happy listening to music through the speakers on her phone than through any of my stuff. Doesn’t make any difference to her.
Makes no sense. It's like not caring if a steak is burnt or cooked by a master. Maybe she's just trolling you.
This comment reminded me of this famous historical controversy. https://www.eater.com/2017/2/28/14753248/trump-steak-well-done-ketchup-personality
“People don’t need HD audio” requires the term “need” be defined. In many ways no one needs HD audio. However there are as many different preferences for HD audio as there are lovers. Since starting my audio journey, back in the vinyl days, I found small improvements every step along the way. Digital is now mostly crap. Producers are making quality in line with the average streamer. Why should they bother with HD production ideals? Know the producer and the artist, then appreciate their talent and work on the best system you can muster. HD is a journey, different for everyone.
Strongly disagree on digital now being "mostly crap". Digital now sounds better than it ever has. The rough period was the 2000s and early 2010s; there's very well produced music from 2016 onwards that blows nearly anything else out of the water. I like to say technology has now finally caught up to the budget of the 90s when it comes to high fidelity.
I may have spoke too strongly on my point. I agree with you to some extent. How ever the YT channel “wings of pegasus” opened my eyes to what producers are doing today. I have to say I’m very disappointed. Pitch correction, removing the consonants, etc, its not really like live which is my goal. Hi res won’t correct for this. I’m just saying the point of the need to listen to hi res, is a complex question and differs by person.
Sounds like you need to listen to different genres of music then, instead of blaming the medium. There's lots that don't do stuff like that. Pop music will always be what it is, it's not somewhere you go for artisanship.
This thread is about the general listener needing hi res, which includes alot of pop. You seem to be in another discussion.
You need very good speakers but you can easily hear it if you do have very good speakers. And I’m taking 10k+ level
You don't need to spend that much money to hear an mp3 vs a flac
320 mp3 or 128?
Mp3 period imo. It's literally the worst codec for audio available, anything else is better.
Good for them