Hacker News Reader

Comment by zwnow | Hacker News Reader

I worked in this industry for years. Its actually sad what people consider "good" audio nowadays.

Kids these days literally have no idea how things can sound, so content is mastered for them and their el cheapo Bluetooth inears, so proper equipment (not necessarily expensive and most definitely not audiophile-tier, mind you, just something that acknowledges physics) owners get scraps and leftovers.

Yea I used to listen with Focal speakers for a while. Dali is also pretty good. In the shop I used to work at we would have vinyl play a lot, real vinyl, not the plastic that is mostly fabricated nowadays. But considering to what kinda music some people listen (autotune rap) quality doesn't matter I guess. Its mostly about vibes now.

It's not just "kids these days", look at the popularity of sound bars as well. Sure, they're better than what comes built in to a modern TV but as you note physics is still physics and small speakers will never sound as good as large ones.

Hell, we can even chase that one back further, remember how much money Bose spent in the '90s convincing people that tiny speakers plus magic can somehow sound comparable to a proper stereo or home theater system? They were absolutely full of shit, but a ton of people believed every word of it.

While I don't disagree, I find that small speakers are dramatically better today than they were even 15 years ago.

> While I don't disagree, I find that small speakers are dramatically better today than they were even 15 years ago.

Then why is what comes out from my "modern" soundbar so crappy compared to the one I bought 15 years ago?

I had to retire my ancient soundbar because it had Bluetooth without security and would regularly pump out 100db of some show that our neighbors were watching at random times.

However, the sound quality was vastly better than any soundbar I can buy now--even my wife complained about the soundbars we tried--they were that obviously worse. I had to suck it up and buy a full blown sound system to match a stupid cheap-ass JBL soundbar from 15 years ago.

JBL is unfortunately one of the brands that people buy nowadays and think of as "good". Well already was a thing 8 years ago... Please do not buy JBL nowadays. Its crap made for being thrown away after a few years. Real speakers are repairable usually. The expensive ones we sold even had 70 year - lifetime warranty. Its true that old speakers often have really good sound though. A lot of it is mechanical which didn't change a lot in the last decades. Modern speakers have electronic shenanigans that might work, but doesn't provide a noticeable difference in my opinion. Except for noise canceling.

No argument. All the "modern" JBL soundbars were just as crappy as the rest of the "modern" soundbars.

I remember buying that soundbar (back at Fry's!) and all the soundbars were pretty much just as good (well, the Bose ones were garbage and overpriced, but let's not get started about that ...). They weren't audiophile quality, but they were good enough that an amateur like my wife really couldn't tell much difference.

What the hell happened that caused soundbars to go to shit?

Soundbars in the past were a niche market for people with expensive Plasma screens so they had to appeal to that group.

Soundbars today are a cheap addition to make up for the horrible sound on everyone's cheap $300 LCD 65 inch TV that in addition to horrible sound looks worse at 4k than the 720 Plasma did.

I vaguely remember reading about heterodyning speakers in the mid 90s - the physics does check out, and such technology should be able to deliver perfectly flat response along the entire audible spectrum and with a tiny footprint. I guess they never managed to make it work or cheap enough or safe enough (yes, it’s also supposed to be flat at the harmful subsonic frequencies)

IIRC the idea is to have two crystals, one at a constant e.g. 100khz, and the other at (100+x)kHz for x corresponding to the sound you want. By physically connecting them, you get the sum (ultrasonic, lost energy but not a problem) and the difference - which is the sound you want - with most of the physics across half an octave so easily flat. Something along those lines.

An interesting idea, but that kind of mixing requires a nonlinear element somewhere. Otherwise the resulting signal is just an independent superposition of both waveforms with no new frequency components. (Think about what a colony of bats would sound like to us, if that weren't the case.)

Given a high enough sound pressure level, your own eardrums might end up providing the required nonlinearity. The warranty sure sucks, though.

The nonlinear element was provided by some intricate physical structure connecting both crystals, with perhaps some other material providing it in the junction.

To be fair to those Bose speakers, to someone that didn't have a proper stereo set up, nor ever experienced one, they sounded amazing and people are notoriously bad at discerning audio quality

Same with the headphones. I got a WH-1000xm3 that all reviews praise for sound quality and it sounds like complete shit, muffled, over emphasizing bass, no clarity. You're supposed to "fix" it using EQ. And you can't even adjust eq if you want to use the bettter audio codecs. If I paid the original list price for this i would be furious

One thing you can try with headphones is changing the earpads: specifically the shape, but maybe also the material. I have Shure SRH840A headphones, and out-of-the-box I was NOT happy with the sound. Someone suggested trying different aftermarket earpads, and I found a pair of "angled" pads that changed the sound quality to exactly what I wanted. I was surprised how dramatic the effect was. The pads are huge and look ridiculous, but I only use these headphones at home so it's fine.

> all reviews praise for sound quality

objectively or compared to similar bluetooth, noise-cancelling headphone? Most of the reviews I heard agree that even a mid-tier IEM or wired headphone beats shit out of them.

The large number of people complaining that the new iPhone Air only has one speaker instead of two opened my eyes to this. There are a large number of people listening to music and watching Netflix using just the built-in phone speakers. Scary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com