Where are all the damn Audiophiles?????

  • Thread starter Thread starter smellyfuzz
  • Start date Start date
My audio phile's are on my hard drive!

Where are your's?

I agree with the transducer being the most important part's of the chain. But......

I don't discount wire in the signal chain. I also don't get too carried away with it. Monster SP 1000 works very well, and really has an audible difference (something I proved awhile back with some posted .wav files) over Horizon, Hosa, APC, ProCo, etc......If you can't hear the difference between them through your system, well, something else is wrong, and it should be addressed, which brings us back to transducers being important.

I bought the Event 20/20's for a couple of difference reasons. The creators of those monitors also created many of the upper end JBL/Urie monitors, and (although I don't care for them, they work okay, sort of...) the Alesis Monitor One's. Also, they didn't waste a lot of money in the price point on some weird looking fancy box, but rather, put the money into good tranducers and crossovers. The 20/20's also came with some impressive endorsements, and were and still are what my studio consultant would recommend for near field monitoring.

I bought the Hafler P-3000 Trans Nova because you can see it as the amp of choice in many big time studios that can afford much more expensive amps. Hafler's upper end amp's are not a tough decision to make if you want a great sounding amp with power o' plenty.

I have compared the Monster SP 1000 speaker cable to Mogami, and there is no comparison at all. Extended low's and high's, deeper resolution, really nice rise and fall times, etc.....It is as advertised. Simply a stunning sounding wire.

smellyfuzz. I have a new "anti-flame" policy for posting on this BBS, and you should be so lucky that I do. Two months ago I would have delivered a tounge lashing on your character that would have been legendary.....But I am sure that some of the other replies to this thread are making up for my lack of offense....:)

It is usually a good idea to post some of your work before passing value judgements about the people on this BBS. I certainly don't get complaints about my work (I do from those who never post any of theirs though.....????.....) I don't consider myself an audiophile, but, I think I am a competent engineer, and I am using relatively crap gear. I have also heard some very stunning recording from some of the people on this BBS, some of which has made me envious! But, I guess I missed your's. Maybe you could share some of it with us. If not, well, expect some negative responces to your seeming "uppity" attitude about audio production.

Also remember that the reason that many of the people on this are trying to learn and share how to make music sound real, and how to reproduce it. If everyone knew, this site would be useless. Get it?

Ed
 
Smellyfuzz does at least have one point. Apart from all of the audiophile bullsh*t and black magic, the high-end loudspeakers he’s referring to do generally win hands down. The B&W 801 series ( http://www.bwspeakers.com/n800/pro.html ) for example spent the better part of the 80’s and 90’s as the benchmark for both consumer loudspeakers and recording monitors (mainly classical and jazz). “Weird looking fancy box” designed to be sonically inert and control diffraction. Of course, most of us don’t have the extra $12k I think they go for now days.
 
I think that a true high end audiophile, would only listen to recodings through headphones. It's closer an ideal listening source.

Speakers present a whole new set of acoustics, and coloration into the sound of the original recording, a true "high end" audiophile would never stand for that.

Phones give you a much better hear through quality, due to isolation, and they are much faster due to much less mass to have to move to make sound.

Speakers are so inferior to phones inherently for hearing through to whats happening in a recording that if your listening to speakers, you are no longer listenig to "high end".

So anyone who wants to claim to be into "high end" better damn well be talking about head phones.

I never heard Jimi Hendrix cough, on Purple Haze, till I listened to it on headphones.
 
Headphones can be very good, but they also have their problems. Here are a few:

1. they don’t offer a natural soundstage (out in front) unless the music was recorded binaurally using a dummy head exactly like the listener’s, or played back through some sort of virtualizing algorithm having, once again, specific information about the listener’s head and ear lobes.
2. bass is not experienced as viscerally as with loudspeakers since the body also feels low frequencies.
3. small transducers are lighter and more responsive, however, since one source is producing the entire frequency range there is more intermodulation distortion (the low frequencies shift the highs up and down due to the Doppler effect). This gives the music a sense of confusion and fatigue .
4. headphones get uncomfortable after a while, not to mention they’re antisocial.

Despite their problems, I still think headphones might have the potential of being part of a very good, reproducible, and relatively inexpensive reference monitoring system for recording. I’m investigating this.
 
Barefoot,

I used to have a guy deliver firewood, whose last name was Barefoot, he said it was an indian name.

Very good points about headphones.

I hardly ever listen to phones, used to more when I was younger.

You were especially corect about binaural recording, very astute Grasshopper.

Do yourself a favor, and don't use phones for recording (mixing) use speakers, get it to sound good on them and headphones will follow suite, not usually visa versa.
 
OK, let's back up a few. At what point in Puple Haze do you hear a cough?
 
Pchorman,

Right before he starts singing, on the very first verse, panned far right. Let me know if you hear it!

Like I said phones are the only true hi end!
 
GT - I listened. Several times I listened through the Harman/Kardon speakers that came with the puter and heard nothing.

Then I plugged in the Sony MDR-55 headphones (like the "Mega Bass" sets which run for only $30-40) and it jumped right out at me on the first pass.

Gee, didn't you just get through saying something like this? Naturally I've always favored headphones but this simple example makes it clear why. Proximity means a lot, not to mention the thin, responsive diaphram transducer.

Not nearly as challenging, do you hear someone yelling to Page, "go Jimmy go" during the Black Dog solo?
 
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