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Do you consider yourself an audiophile?

Are you an audiophile?

  • Yes

    Votes: 31 13.5%

  • No

    Votes: 83 36.1%

  • Audiophiles are deluded bullshitters

    Votes: 116 50.4%
  • Total voters
    230
Long long way from proper audiophile kit, but think it really shows the laws of diminishing returns when you start spending lots of money. What really made me stand up a listen to how music should be played was getting my first old school Yamaha amp and some cheap floor standers. Made the mistake on selling the amp when I left uni and buying the poshest 2.1 system I could find for the space value. Missing in so many ways! You could get a decent amount of base out of it, but listen to music at mid level and so much was missing. To make matters worse when they died I ended up using at set of these for a good few months and you almost forget what good music sounds like.

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Anyway just traded this amp for an old phone, still far from state of the art, but paired it with a pair of Whardale monitor speakers. Total cost £100 although I've taken a gamble and ordered this sound card to see if it really is better then onboard sound, but for £20 it's not the end of the world if it's not. Even if it doesn't work it still sounds lush. :)

IMAG0177.jpg


Spent the afternoon just listerning to music, been a long time since I've done that rather then just background noise
 
editor said:
Have to say that my 20 year old Audiolab 8000A amp absolutely crushes the five star rated Teac DR-H300 all-in box I bought a while ago.
Click to expand...

That's the ace thing about audio kit. 5 years on your PC is a dog, but 20 year old amps put out far nicer sound then modern all in one/ipod docks. £100 quid on second hand kit is a mile apart from any PC sound system, if it's mostly music you use it for. I almost cried with joy when I listened to whilst my guitar gently weeps on Flac.
 
gavman said:
the soundstage is the dimensions of the space within which the instrument is located.
for example, a good subwoofer can give additional acoustic information to a recording of unaccompanied vocals, recorded in a church. turn it on and the space just sounds huge, even though in theory there's no bass to speak of. well designed speakers and powerful amps are required to give a convincing illusion of space and size. imaging is the precise locating of instruments within the soundstage

the reason i've such a hard on for soundstaging is that's the bit that disorients you, makes you feel as though you're no longer in a crappy little house on an estate in luton but falling through the void to northern exposure
Click to expand...

Pardon?
 
I think it's fair to say I'm lost in the audiophile world... never really understood the importance of balanced pairs and gold-plated interconnects - I shall read this thread from the beginning shortly and learn!

My Dad was well into his hi-fi when I was young - he had a mixture of Rotel, Marantz and Teac stuff and a wonderful Garrard turntable. I know I like the sound of my current gear (Technics with Acoustic Solutions speakers) which is now in excess of 10 years old. It's all still remarkably crisp and clear to me and has a nice depth.

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ATOMIC SUPLEX said:
I wonder why nobody has recorded a band like that. Or have they?
Click to expand...

UH?

Pink Floyd more or less started the whole dummy head thing off when they used it for their Final Cut album back in the 80s.

I remember one of my true "audiophile" pals being most pissed-off when he decided that the dummy head recording fucked-up his "speaker geography" (yes, really!) and needed to be totally different in order to listen to that one god-awful album properly.

:D
 
twentythreedom said:
I like the idea of an audiophile weirdo at a gig trying to record through a plastic head on a stick at the front of the stage :D
Click to expand...

Its called "Kunstkopf" Recording and yes you do get head on a stick systems to lug around with you.

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However, the only serious use I've heard of is by architects/environmental engineers trying to sort out noise/sound problems in building spaces.

Mind you, I suppose you could stick a dready-wig on it to try and blend-in at a festival? :eek: :D
 
i've just given myself major headache studying the data sheets for the new xta digital signal processor. One lot of press release say its like the last model on steroids. Had to laugh til i tried getting my head round the specifications. Its a pretty fancy bit of kit. Needs to be for over three grand! I can source all the parts cheap if sumone can be arsed putting it all together :D

My boss saw the chinese copy already sat in the office of xta. He said the only difference was the colour of the front panel and its said 'cup' where the led are. Wonder if it makes a decent brew? i'd want it to secrete pure cocaine for the price they're asking.

The offending chinese factory has been closed down.

Really intrigued by this new dsp because apparently it has a function that can trick a db monitor. How clever is that. A big fuk off to the environmental health when they come round telling us to turn it down. I will be amazed if that senario ever happens.

I'll reserve comment on how a db reading could actually be obscured, until i've got my head round it a bit more i wouldn't like to speculate. My heads throbbing, i've spent the last three hours engrossed in the data sheets. i need a masters degree in wire touching or a bucketload of anadin to fathom it any further.

I just think Wow.
I'll sort a link if anyones interested when i access the laptop.
 
Basswhore said:
Really intrigued by this new dsp because apparently it has a function that can trick a db monitor. How clever is that. A big fuk off to the environmental health when they come round telling us to turn it down. I will be amazed if that senario ever happens.
I'll sort a link if anyones interested when i access the laptop.
Click to expand...


How is that going to work? Plus the environmental health people usually check levels from other properties and outside don't they?
 
Basswhore said:
Really intrigued by this new dsp because apparently it has a function that can trick a db monitor. How clever is that. A big fuk off to the environmental health when they come round telling us to turn it down. I will be amazed if that senario ever happens
Click to expand...

I call bullshit.
 
The easiest way to make something sound louder than it is is to make it sound really shit, by pumping up the harsh treble and taking away the bass. People will beg you to turn it down!
 
I can't see how it would work. I know you can build the speaker cabs themselves to be 'short throw' but don't see how you could do it from the other end.
 
editor said:
The easiest way to make something sound louder than it is is to make it sound really shit, by pumping up the harsh treble and taking away the bass. People will beg you to turn it down!
Click to expand...

Nah, it's probably a compressor / limiter. If you really push it and crush the dynamic range it really does sound louder and generally has the side effect of making the bass sound too loud so you have to re eq which gives you more 'headroom' (even though we are not talking about headroom as such). It also will fuck up how the music sounds.
 
editor said:
The easiest way to make something sound louder than it is is to make it sound really shit, by pumping up the harsh treble and taking away the bass. People will beg you to turn it down!
Click to expand...

in the 80s my uncle used to love his hifi separates to bits, and his eq of choice was +8 treble -2 bass, and then crank up Queens One Night at The Opera followed by a bit of BeeGees! Definitely considered himself an audiophile...
 
That party I went to recently had a rig with short throw bass...until you got about 20ft away it sounded like they only had the mid and tops on...up close it sounded ok, but meh, you can identify the track from the bassline on ours from two miles away.
 
Global Stoner said:
Still not proper audiophile kit I'm, but blown away by how much better a £20 sound card is compared to on-board sound through an old 2 channel amp. All the hisses are gone. :)

It's got a headphone amp, but not had a chance to test it yet.
Click to expand...

Still worthwile - Over the weekend, I was interested to compare the sound quality of my old cheap laptop to one of my new hi-end laptops for work - The cheapo blew it away by some margin!

Then I added-in my new mid range laptop and it sounded better than both but by only a small margin over the cheap one. :)
 
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