Jump to content

Kiwi2

  • Posts

    115
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Country

    country-ZZ

Retained

  • Member Title
    Banned

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. Because there is so much bullshit and snobbery in the audiophile world.
  2. All of which can be achieved in a $20 sets of cables. Even such cheap cables can have double shielding of a copper layer and a aluminium layer. Or the trend of a few years ago of using no shielding and using braided interconnects. You could make those ones yourself for a few dollars. There is no reason for any of that to run into many hundreds or thousands of dollars. Again, given the amount of mass produced speaker cable of different gauges and material and construction available... any of that can be achieved for a few tends of dollars rather than hundreds or thousands of dollars. Actually any shielding for power cables should be kept a few inches away from the core itself so not to disturb the EMF. (the same idea for using braided interconnects rather than shielded interconnects a few years ago) I don't actually see many of the boutique power cable retailers doing that. Adding some fancy looking sleeving and some heat shrink to a jug cord isn't going to do a lot to other than look pretty.
  3. When I try any sort of EQ to fix an less than ideal frequency response, I notice a degradation in the soundstage and imaging. Reading up on it suggests the problem is that you are changing the direct sound of the speakers that were probably pretty good to begin with. What we hear is the speakers plus the room. What a graph shows is a combination of both. Making the graft look better could also be making the speakers sound worse by applying EQ to fix a problem that is actually caused by the room/placement. Of course I used graphs and measurements a lot, but instead any changes I want to make come from placement and/or room treatments. Not from EQ. Thus the natural direct sound from the speakers is preserved and I have hopefully fixed the real problem which was the room. So it stands to reason the more haphazard speakers are thrown into a room and room correction is used to fix the problems, that it is a compromise over well placed speakers in a room and very little or no room correction is needed.
  4. So for every audiophile out there that is using a different brand of fancy expensive cables... their systems aren't sounding as good as they could be unless they change to your particular brand of fancy expensive cables...??? Somehow I think they wouldn't except that, as spending a $1000 for a set of RCA cables should get them as good as it could get. All seems rather strange to me.
  5. Because I'm not stupid. Of course all those fancy cables are about the looks and how 'cool' they are and the bragging rights/snob value because of how much they cost. As with most hobbies, the people in them who spend the larger sums of money on particular gear for the hobby, always seem to think that that automatically makes them the ultimate authority of the particular hobby. I'm simply not impressed by the fact anybody has $$$$ worth of cables or DACs or whatever. It means absolutely nothing to the quality of the audio they could be experiencing in their room.
  6. For all the people that are more worried about what their systems look like rather than what they sound like, audio jewelry will always have a market. Just think of the prestige they will have when they post photos of their systems in interweb forums.
  7. Which is a poor substitute for a properly configured room. For a good sound system, the first and most important step should be the most optimal speaker and listening position placements within a given room. (well, choosing an a appropriate room or choosing to buy/build a house that would have a room with good potential is perhaps the first step) The next step is the application of room treatments to address any remaining problems. The next step would be any *room correction* / EQ, if any at all was still needed. Neglecting the first two steps is creating huge compromises for the third step to fix and will never be as good as addressing the first two steps and not needing any room correction/EQ at all. It will be interesting watching the results of this poll.
  8. Bit of a sampling bias for this poll having it in a DAC sub-fourm. People that aren't interested in external DACs won't be looking in here as much. Me, I've tried all sorts of configuration setups with all sorts of gear. I have ended up with PC to a AVR in order to have proper bass management for my subs. I was using a Nuforce HDP DAC with its USB from PC to AVR's analog in for a good while and was considering trying out some more expensive DACs in the future. However I have ended up using the video card's HDMI to get audio to my receiver and find it sounds better than the external USB DAC route. Plus now I can use JRiver's bass management and output my 2ch music as 2.1 to the receiver and disable the AVR's bass management as JRiver gives me more flexibility with adjustable crossover slopes. I still need the AVR though for the .1 channel. An external 2ch DAC becomes redundant at this point.
  9. Realizing of course the only reason the rock appears solid is because of electromagnetic force. Negatives and positives in the surface of the rock repelling the oppositely charged particles on the bottom of the shoe and stopping them from passing through each other. Yet a neutral particle with no electrical charge can pass straight through like the rock isn't even there.
  10. I don't think you would want to get any closer than 3 feet from them. They need a bit of distance for the two drivers to recombine. I like the GX50s a lot. Lots of detail in a realistic natural way. A fun and enjoyable speaker. Midrange is more neutral and bass is adequate. I like them for my jazz and folk music. Not the speaker for someone that prefers a more warmer pronounce midrange though.
  11. I own some GX50s. Being a ribbon speaker, be careful on a PC nearfield setup as they won't like getting coffee or saliva or snot or semen splattered over them.
  12. Or one could look at the scale's specifications to note its +/- % range and realise they need to buy a better set of bathroom scales next time. Nevertheless someone's subconscious preconceived notions about how a particular product performs is also a big part of the equation that can't be overlooked when discussing such things. It isn't just measurements or someone's opinion that A is better than B... but what that person has been primed to think as well. What the subconscious thinks, will physically alter what the conscious experiences no matter how impartial you think you are being. This isn't eerie theory stuff... it's another branch of science.
  13. Don't forget about 'priming' though. Researchers know full well the power of suggestion to preconceived what we will see or hear or think. Our brains at a very deep subconscious level takes shortcuts where it can in our decision making process and in how we interpret the world around us. If you have been primed to see or hear a particular thing or feel a certain way, then that is what you will see or hear or feel. There are dozens and dozens of such experiments to demonstrate this effect on us. Marketing people know this full well and spend years studying all this at university. Take the priming for this USB filter for example... Aubisque USB Filter | ULTRA FI By having the image of a middle aged man and in a room with a audiophile's sound system with soft warm earthy colours, automatically conjures up thoughts of some nice classical music playing or some such. So this product they are selling has to be better than a similar product you could get for $20 at radio shack. You could even buy both products and compare them yourself. No doubt the $200 one from that classy looking webpage will sound better and you could swear black and blue that it does. But surprisingly (or not surprisingly) the moment it becomes a blind A/B test those "differences" vanish and you can't pick one from the other. It isn't mystical or unexplained. There is a very well known and understood reason for it.
  14. forgive me your holiness. FFS... you people are really up yourselves.
  15. Note "when played back directly" I concede it may be possible there may be some difference in playback due to extra CPU decompressing a file on the go. I think what was mentioned in this thread earlier though, was the ability to change a compressed FLAC into a WAV or uncompressed FLAC after downloading and storing that on your computer. Translation... Putting the files on a DVD is far easier and cheaper for us than developing an running a download site. In typical audiophile fashion we just need to spout the right buzzwords on our web page and have all you mugs out there swallow this hook line and sinker.
×
×
  • Create New...