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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
fictionist sounds like a scientologist or something. i doubt anything, even facts, will dissuade him from his belief.
 
Crispy said:
No, here is a test. Get someone else to change, or not change the interconnects and then play back the same piece of music in the same room on the same speakers. Do this many times, sometimes changing the cables, sometimes leaving them alone. Only answer the qeustion "does it sound any different this time?" Do not have the other person tell you what they've done. Do not have the other person in the room or even see you. You might also like to use a fancy recording device to accurately record the emitted sound for later comparison.

Only with complete separation of experimenter and subject will you get rid of the psychological cues that might influence your decision.

Repeat the test with other listeners too.
Click to expand...

This is a better explanation of what I was describing. Thanks C.
 
Doctor Carrot said:
You've spent at least a three figure sum on cables haven't you, Fictionist? :D. Now you've done that your brain will justify the outlandish purchase for you by making you *think* it sounds better. I'm sure you're familiar with the placebo effect, and that's what the vast majority of audiophile bollocks is.
Click to expand...

No - I couldn't afford to! It has taken me some time to get to the current set up I am using. It does what I want it to do - get me closer to the music.
 
gentlegreen said:
I don't know what I will replace my Naim CD player with if I can't get it serviced.
13 years on it's starting to complain about some CDs.
It's basically a high-end Philips mechanism - as used to be found in slightly cheaper Quad CD players, but stripped-down. The magnetic puck has always annoyed the crap out of me, but the sound is so rock solid.

Naim always refused to do separate D to A converters. Their upgrade path was seperate power supplies -1K for the player, £350 or £700 for the power supplies.

Luckily I'm getting on a bit - so my hearing is less acute, and my kit is in a less than ideal room in a terraced house in a city with significant background noise .. and I will be 60 before I'm able to improve on that .. and will no doubt be slightly more deaf, and my brain will have started to turn to mush ...
Click to expand...

Go for a 2nd hand Genki or Ikemi.

:)
 
Fictionist said:
No - I couldn't afford to! It has taken me some time to get to the current set up I am using. It does what I want it to do - get me closer to the music.
Click to expand...

Some headphones should do the trick there. Make sure they have superconducting cables.
 
i like to think i know a decent sound or not so decent sound when i hear it, though who's to say what is or isn't decent? :hmm:;)

on more than a couple of occasions i've told people who swear blind they're encoding their mp3s at 320 that they're doing nothing of the sort and been vindicated upon deeper inspection of their setups. i like soundsystems and speakers but have never felt the urge to have sex with one: ergo i am not an audiophile. :)
 
Oh my god, i have just been to the chord cobra website. What a load of bullshit and pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo.
http://www.chord.co.uk/chordweb/chord_cobra_technical.htm
They even have "Pseudo-balanced cable" FFS. You got that right you tits. It's not balanced.

Glossary of technical terms used in hi-fi and home cinema cablingThe first are irrelivent to cables FFS, then the second set are mostly madness. Look at this.

Silver plating: So far we have chosen to use silver-plating rather than use solid silver wire. We have experimented with this and feel that the extra price of silver wire does not justify itsself in terms of performance. [ top ]
Click to expand...

Yeah, no shit!
 
Fictionist said:
This is a better explanation of what I was describing. Thanks C.
Click to expand...

But this is not what you have ever done.

Everything you've ever written about this sort of stuff revolves around you saying things like "try a Rotel amp, they're more laid back" or "a marantz CD player is usually more forward sounding"

You pay more, you know what is being tested and when it's being changed, so you think they sound better. Until you do a proper blind test you're wasting your time.
 
I have finely tuned ears that can usually detect what key you've farted in - absolute pitch (somewhat messed up by the fact that, as a baroque specialist, I have to work in two slightly different pitch ranges).

But I am pushed to tell the difference between 128kb/s and 192kb/sec MP3, and completely fail to tell the difference between 160 and 192.

I'm old enough to remember people wanking on about various varieties of harmonic distortion, or the effect of different colour turntable mats on sound quality, but most of it seemed like complete bollocks to me.

If you're going to sit in a soundproof darkened room, listening intently to sine waves for some sign that routing your loudspeaker cables anticlockwise round the room introduces an extra 0.000001% THD, that's fine by me. But I do most of my listening in the car, where several hundredweight of aluminium and petrol roaring away two feet out back of the radio is never going to provide the ideal laboratory listening environment...
 
beesonthewhatnow said:
But this is not what you have ever done.

Everything you've ever written about this sort of stuff revolves around you saying things like "try a Rotel amp, they're more laid back" or "a marantz CD player is usually more forward sounding"

You pay more, you know what is being tested and when it's being changed, so you think they sound better. Until you do a proper blind test you're wasting your time.
Click to expand...

I think, to be fair, part of what you say is partly correct, and the fault for that lies with me. What I have not provided is the most detailed possible account of how I purchase or listen to audio equipment. Having sat through the video link that you posted I can see why the 'snake oil' approach to Hi-Fi is ridiculed - purchasing pebbles (13.26) in a jar to sit in a corner is nonsense (and I have never been convinced by some of the claims made by some manufacturers), and clips to go on the back of an interconnect is just silly - but some folks undoubtedly have more money than sense.

The video highlights some of these extreme practices, and there is (of course) truth to the fact that an individual is open to suggestion (this does not extend only to Hi-Fi!), as seen at 4.37 in the video - for some this means that the more expensive something is the better it is (a+b=c).

I don't consider this to be the case. What I care about is the sound, and when I hear something I will know if it works. I'm fortunate enough to have a dedicated music listening room, and (as Ethan Winer is at pains to point out in this and other videos) things like speaker positioning and room furnishings are important (suspended floor / concrete floor) and all can have an effect on the way a component will sound. I took it for granted in thinking that this was common knowledge and practice - on the evidence of this thread clearly not.

I also insist (wherever possible) on being able to take a component home to try in my set up and listening environment. If it sounds good to me and improves the perception I have of sound then great. So when auditioning for a new cd player I listened to three or four within my system and listened to a very wide range of music. This isn't a blind listening test but it does work - and I did not buy the most expensive cd player (a £2400 Naim player) because it didn't perform well across the range of music that I listen to.

I do not accept that all equipment sounds the same, manufacturers have developed particular 'house sounds', and I would cite the Marantz KI range as a particularly good example of this. But I suspect that part of the issue is the language used (as higlighted in the video), which might differ according to what we do. You claim to be involved in the music industry (Sound Engineer?) and that explains the language you use. I'm not, never have been, and so am not conversant with the technical terms you use. What I might describe as PRatT you might describe as extended treble and midrange with a a slightly elevated bass. What I describe as the 'boom and tizz' brigade you might describe as extended bass and treble response with a mid range 'suck out' (Mission 733s!). What I call the 'house sound' you might call a particular distortion wave. Crude examples but I'm sure you get the point.

The magic of Hi-Fi is being able to put together a system that sounds right to the individual, and component synergy (I hear the laughs!) may be little more than finding the distortion that suits you best in particular circumstances (room etc).
 
But seriously folks... it's all about the music at the end of the day. Isn't it?

I loved 5th generation tape dubs of Mike Allens Hip Hop show in the day. I love my Jazz vinyl and my Dynavector 10X5. I love Joy Orbison FLACS DL'ed from Boomkat. I love the lo-fi sketch of Bollywood soundtracks, Blank Dogs and Rangers. The music should always speak first.
 
And some of the best music you'll hear was produced on pretty basic kit. Early stuff just a two track recorder and overdubbing, with very few effects used.
 
existentialist said:
I have finely tuned ears that can usually detect what key you've farted in - absolute pitch (somewhat messed up by the fact that, as a baroque specialist, I have to work in two slightly different pitch ranges).

But I am pushed to tell the difference between 128kb/s and 192kb/sec MP3, and completely fail to tell the difference between 160 and 192.
Click to expand...

That's surely because of your more direct attachment to the music itself as a musician. ?

I have no musical talent whatsoever and was changed forever when I heard the Quad Electrostatic speaker .. though I listen to a great deal of heavily processed music so am able to suspend my critical faculties ... and bass-heavy music is very undemanding of digital bandwidth ...
 
Fictionist said:
I'm fortunate enough to have a dedicated music listening room, and things like speaker positioning and room furnishings are important and all can have an effect on the way a component will sound. I took it for granted in thinking that this was common knowledge and practice - on the evidence of this thread clearly not.
Click to expand...
In the pro audio world these are all important, I engineer and master at home so I have a dedicated room set up. Can't be arsed to stick all that on and sit in the optimum position just for putting a record on though.

Anyway the shape and size of a room and what damping it has etc involves actual science that can clearly make a difference that can be explained in very simple diagrams. What cable you use doesn't and can't because it's bollocks. My speaker cabling is actually 'balanced' and pro audio and costs sod all compared to that crazy shit you are on about.

The fact that you really do buy into the cable bullshit leads me to believe that you probably buy into a lot of other audio bullshit. Because of this nothing you say on the subject can really be taken all that seriously.

Fictionist said:
If it sounds good to me and improves the perception I have of sound then great.
Click to expand...
Ah, I see. Maybe you really should do blind testing then. Could save yourself a bundle.
 
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