Hacker News Reader

Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

> Some people buy $500 wooden knobs to make their volume pots sound better. (or was that a hoax? i can't tell anymore)

Some people buy small pyramids to elevate their cables off the floor, some people buy mats to put onto your CDs before putting the CD in a player (http://dagogo.com/millenniums-m-cd-mat-carbon-cd-damper-revi...), some people buy $1000+/meter digital interconnect cables (http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/transparent-referen...), some people buy $7200 power cords (http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/crystal-cable-absol...) and $350/m HDMI cables (http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/nordost-releases-fi...).

Self-styled audiophiles are, by and large, idiots with way too much money plagued by magical thinking. Developer bullshit has nothing on them.

View on HN

> some people buy mats to put onto your CDs before putting the CD in a player

An 80-minute, 700 MB CD-R fits 80 * 60 * 44100 * 2 * 2 / 2^20 ~= 807 MB of audio.

Why is that?

The 100MB difference is not just due to the audio TOC being of smaller size than the ISO9660 or UDF file system metadata. It's also because of differences in error correction. I don't have the spec on hand but I recall from when I was investigating this that CD-ROMs use more bits for error correction than audio CDs. That's why you can fit more audio data than "filesystem data" on a CD-R. Reading (ripping, digitally) an audio CD will likely result in different digital audio files every time, since the error correction is not that good, but good enough, for audio.

I read into this when I was wondering why my CD-DA extracted .wavs came out with a different checksum every time. Vibration is one of the factors that would make the same audio CD, read with the same CD player, produce different digital signals some of the time or even every time.

CD-ROMs however, which store digital data, need better correction - you definately don't want a bitflip in your .exe, while a minor amplitude diff — an uncorrected bitflip in the upper bits of a 16-bit PCM signal — is no biggie.

So… I'm not saying that the people using CD mats are informed (or have tested whether the mat makes a difference, or would even know how to go on about testing this, scientifically), but there's more to it than what I originally thought — which was "it's digital so it's never degraded". I wouldn't have known without checking the md5sum of my .wav, though.

On a decent drive, cdparanoia should successfully rip with no errors on a clean disc. I have done the md5sum test before.

Background here:

http://www.xiph.org/paranoia/faq.html#play

"Oh, and virtually no PC on earth has that kind of I/O throughput; a Sun Enterprise server might, but a PC does not. Most don't come within a factor of five, assuming perfect realtime behavior."

Some statements just don't age well ...

It's generally the lack of synchronization and positioning information compared to data CDs that gets you. In particular, on many older drives you can't reliably start the rip at the same place each time, so even if all the corrections and fixups work perfectly and you get a bit-exact rip (which isn't hard) you still won't get the same file twice.

> Vibration is one of the factors that would make the same audio CD, read with the same CD player, produce different digital signals some of the time or even every time.

Err, no.

That makes sense when you have an analog version of the audio picked up by an analog transducer (i.e. a vinyl record) but makes no sense with an isochronous stream of quantized samples.

I suppose a vibration could cause a small phase shift in when the sample physically appears under the LED, but but since the D->A conversion is clocked by a PLL it is irrelevant.

If you have extreme warping or shaking (e.g fling your discman onto the floor or stick your finger on the disk while it's spinning) then a sample might not appear at all, but that's something different than you are talking about.

I suppose it's theoretically possible that some extreme warping or vibration could cause a bit flip, but that's what the ECC is for.

There was a day when the clock going in to the D/A converter could be affected by the bitstream coming off the CD. Those days are long gone I'm sure. Everything is buffered in RAM, overclocked, and digitally processed before it hits the D/A.

From Wikipedia (Compact_disc lemma):

"[…] The change in height between pits and lands results in a difference in the way the light is reflected. By measuring the intensity change with a photodiode […]"

I'm no signals expert. Are you saying that there is no quantization in that intensity change measurement?

Regardless of quantization, maybe you're right on vibration not being a major source of errors (I know little about electronics and PLLs).

But then, what are the error sources that made the engineers put an extra 276 bytes of Reed-Solomon error correction per 2352-byte sector on a mode-1 data CD-ROM (vs none on an audio CD, which has just has the frame ECC and nothing extra). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-ROM#CD-ROM_format .

Uh, no. Bit-perfect ripping is trivial and routine, and tools like the AccurateRip DB (which has checksums for around three million different titles you can use to verify the checksums on your own rips) and the CUEtools database (which has recovery records you can use to correct bit errors on your own rips) prove it. I routinely get bit-accurate single-pass high-speed rips--no "paranoid" settings or re-reads--of discs dating back thirty years or more, and so do hundreds of thousands of other people. If you get different checksums on successive rips of the same CD, either the disc is damaged or the drive you're using is failing.

Oh sure, your rips may be perfect at the bit level, but how do you know that they're free of sub-bit quantization that isn't detectable by electronic circuits but can be heard by the human ear?

This sub-bit jitter and interference can travel along with a digital file and sneak right past your ordinary bit-level error detection and correction, no matter how lossless you make it. That's because these errors aren't visible in the bits. They occur at a deeper and more subtle level, in between the bits.

Even if you prove mathematically that two files contain the exact same bits, you can't prove that the human ear won't hear any difference, can you?

We've discovered digital homeopathy.

Funniest reply I've read all day.

Flawless satire.

Something about it being on HN also makes you assume a post isn't a joke starting out so I read for a lot longer before I realized what was happening.

That's also between the bits. See?

Thank you so muuuuuuuch for the uncontrollably laugh i'm having now

The decoder/player doesn't know how to read between the bits.

Same file -> same playback.

If you hear the same sound file twice (or two identical files) and hear something different, you software is broken or you're imagining things.

Ah, well, the human ear is a much more finely tuned instrument than your decoders and players. Think of the feelings you get when you hear the ocean waves, the birds sing, a thunderclap!

Can you turn this into mere "bits"? Of course not!

That's why it is so important to protect against sub-bit quantization errors, and this can only be done with proper interconnects. Ordinary cables allow the bits to travel willy-nilly until they jam up against each other creating a brittle, edgy soundstage. Quality interconnects are tuned, aligned, and harmonically shielded to keep those precious bits - and the all-important spaces between them - in a smooth flow.

And then, we can hear all of the things that make us human.

I'm very glad you stuck with the bit (har har) and didn't resort to just telling him he missed the joke. Well done.

Whooosh.

For a second I was terrified at the thought that you're being serious.

That comment is just perfect.

Interesting. I'll have to check those projects out. I have the same problem as the GP -- I have a script that rips CDs, taking multiple reads until it gets two bit-for-bit identical copies. And just about every time at least one track is silently "corrupted."

(I put the scare quotes on because I haven't actually bothered to check if there is an audible difference. But it does confirm the GP's experience.)

> bit-accurate single-pass high-speed rips

"military-grade encryption"

> I read into this when I was wondering why my CD-DA extracted .wavs came out with a different checksum every time.

You sure there isn't something in the wavs like a creation date field that would always cause the checksum to be different? That would make way more sense than "vibration"....

I did check by diffing the RIFF headers. Here's some info on the metadata: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/422/projects/WaveFormat/ . There's little to no room for variance.

FYI the difference is almost certainly due to the seeks not being sample-accurate, so your rips are bit identical for each sample, but you are starting in very slightly different places. Either that or you have a really broken CD-ROM drive (which is also possible).

CD-audio "Red Book" data does have error correction (Cross-Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code). Whether you get a bit-perfect audio rip depends on how much error correction and retrying you do.

I remember experimenting with writing a CD ripping program in the 90s, using Windows APIs, and I found, like you, that I got different data each time. But modern rippers such as EAC does this stuff much better and will for the most part give you bit-perfect rips.

That mat does nothing. And if you read that linked page, you will see that he claims it drastically improves audio quality (bass, etc.), which is pure nonsense.

>Self-styled audiophiles are, by and large, idiots with way too much money plagued by magical thinking.

I agree on the "plagued by magical thinking" part, but not all these people are idiots. Some of them are quite intelligent, in fact. I think they just want to be "in the know", and are able to suspend their normal skepticism in order to belong.

One of the smartest and most productive programmers I ever met was taken in by this nonsense. He replaced all the metal bolts in his power supply with teflon because the metal bolts disrupt the magnetic field around the transformer and you can hear that, maaaan!

He did have a nice sounding system, for which he spent about $10k more than one that would have sounded the same.

I have to laugh at this, really

But I suspect the metal ones are better. More magnetic shielding

So, IF your audio system uses a linear power supply (and it should) AND it is badly filtered (it should have good filtering) you can hear the 60Hz/50Hz from the power network (assuming it's not creeping in your system through other means as well - most likely they are)

The most generous approach to audiophiles is to allow for a placebo effect. i.e. they get greater enjoyment from listening to what they believe is a perfect sound system, regardless of whether the gold-plated cables actually do anything.

I think that's exactly right.

James Randi has a speech (you can probably find it on Youtube) about how it is easier to fool smart people than average people. Smart people think they can't be fooled.

> not all these people are idiots. Some of them are quite intelligent

You can be very intelligent in one domain and be a complete idiot in every other domain. The result ends up being unless we're talking about that one domain, they're an idiot.

I would refer to that as knowledgeable and ignorant rather than intelligent and idiotic. It doesn't really make sense to say that Gary Kasparov is an idiot regarding the construction of log cabins. Rather, he is an intelligent person who is ignorant of the construction of log cabins.

> it doesn't really make sense to say that Gary Kasparov is an idiot regarding the construction of log cabins

It does if he starts voicing 'iditotic' opinions and beliefs as to the construction of log cabins.

> but not all these people are idiots

Not to be picky, but it bugs me to see when people talk about two different things and don't understand each other.

Intelligence is not a linear value that could be compared like "person1 intelligence > person2 intelligence". With both of these terms there are always skipped implication of the area of intelligence.

By "idiots" he meant "small amount of/incorrect knowledge in the area of audio quality and human hearing", and by "intelligent" you mean "big amount of knowledge and efficiency in the area of writing computer code".

If you're going to be "picky", please be picky about something you understand. A "small amount of/incorrect knowledge" is ignorance, not a lack of intelligence. When you label someone an idiot you're not talking about his lack of knowledge. You're talking about his intelligence.

Now, if by "idiots" he means "ignorant people" then he's using the word incorrectly. But there's no actual indication that's what he meant. At some point you just have to assume people mean what they say.

And despite what people want to believe, the last fifty years of psychometrics research indicates there really is such a thing as "basic intelligence" (which they call "g"), and people with more of it do better on a wide range of intellectual tasks. So you really can say "person1 intelligence > person2 intelligence".

What you are referring as "basic intelligence" is actually a combination of neuroplasticity and general knowledge. Neuroplasticity is a speed at which brain can learn new things, but even then you can't say "person1 neuroplasticity > person2 neuroplasticity". That is because brain is composed of many parts that can have different plasticity. Also neuroplasticity (i.e. "intelligence") is not static and can even change over time depending on what parts of the brain are most active.

Yet again, none of what you've written here is actually true. I suggest you peruse the wiki page.

$130 USB cable, with 8 non-ironic/satirical reviews: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Carbon-75m-2-5-Cable/produc...

(Also, the reviews on this $15,000 speaker cable are amazing: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Terminated-Speaker-Cable-Di... )

Had anyone metioned DVD Rewinder? http://www.dvdrewinder.com/index.html Also demagnetizer is a cool device http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/rd3/rd3_01.html

> Self-styled audiophiles are, by and large, idiots with way too much money plagued by magical thinking.

Not just that. But the arrogance and fanboyism is rampant.

God forbid you ever consider buying a Bose or Beats product.

Well, Bose / Beats are clearly overpriced for what they deliver.

>God forbid you ever consider buying a Bose or Beats product.

This has little to do with the article. If you've got 100 bucks to spend on a pair of headphones, it's only fair to point out that with certain products you're not getting the best sound out of your money.

Those are low-budget audiophile products, ie they are still marketed mainly to boost the ego of purchasers.

There are three brands of headphones that pros use: Beyerdynamic (typically DT-100 or DT-770), Sennheiser (typically HD-5/650) and Sony (typically MDR-7506/9). Beyerdynamics have somewhat better isolation so they're more popular in music studios, Sonys are more comfortable when you have to wear them all day so they're more popular on film sets; I favor the 7506 and am on my 4th or 5th pair. Some people love Sennheisers but I personally don't care for the ergonomics.

They're not beautiful, lightweight, or fashionable, but they're a lot nicer to listen to - which is why one or other of them was almost certainly used at the recording stage. If it was good enough for the people who made the recording, it's good enough for you. Also, you'll save money compared to the 'quality' consumer brands.

What's different between the $80 7506 and $200 7509?

Slightly larger driver, slightly heavier, supposedly has a greatly-extended frequency range of 5Hz - 80 KHz vs 10hz - 20Khz in the 7506. Of course your typical D/A converter won't even render such low frequencies due to DC coupling, and if they were there you'd want to EQ them away pronto as they would eat all your headroom. While I continue to enjoy excellent high-frequency hearing even in my mid 40s (to my surprise), neither I nor anyone else needs a tweeter that goes to 80 KHz.

The MDR-7509 and its successors the 7910 and 7920 have a lower impedance than the 7506 (24 vs 63 ohms) so if you plug them into the same sound source the higher-numbered models will be a bit louder - and as we all know, 'louder = better' for most people. This plus the larger driver is somewhat helpful for DJs, who work in very loud environments, but that's a fast track to hearing damage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_MDR-V6

Why I like the 7506 so much: on film sets I give them to eople to listen in and they say 'is it on? I don't hear anything.' Then I turn the volume down or make a small noise next to the boom microphone and jaws drop. Plugged into a quality microphone like a Schoeps, which has a very flat frequency response, it's like there's nothing there. I always have two pairs now because if one gets damaged I can't deal with other brands at all.

thanks for the info; I'm considering upgrading my office headphones (I've got some random $20 over-the-ear pair right now). $80 is certainly reasonable, and I prefer transparent speakers in general.

From all the reviews I've seen, Bose noise-cancelling headphones are pretty much the best you can buy. Especially if you want earbuds (the QC20s). They're extremely expensive though. Do you (or anyone) have suggestions for alternatives?

I believe they're good as far as they go because Bose has the strongest patent portfolio in this area, but wearing any kind of noise canceling headphones immediately gives me the unpleasant sensation of having my eardrums sucked outwards. I'm not sure why; I think it's a side effect of the tiny latency inherent in the design. It's so unpleasant to me that I stopped paying attention to new products in that category so I'm a bad person to ask.

For the price of Bose noise-cancelling headphones you can get headphones from the three brands the parent mentioned (throw in AKG for good measure) that sound better in 'lab conditions'. But if your discerning feature is 'noise-cancelling', i.e. headphones that sound excellent in noisy environments like trains, coffeeshops or open work environments I believe Bose is the king and will be as long as their patents are enforced.

I had an in-ear Noise Cancelling Philips, that's around $20

And for heavy noise cancelling goals it was very good (like, being able to work with someone with a lawnmower or a drill next to you)

Granted, half of the noise isolation is passive, half active, still, very good

I use Klipsch x7i and they allow you to listen to audiobooks on a low volume setting in an underground train. Which, in Moscow, seems like a perfection.

The sound is very clear, but not balanced. Neither an expert nor a musician though.

tomc1985: hope you see this - your account has been hellbanned for over two years (about 850 days, with one comment visible 270 days ago - not sure how that happened).

Your comments over those years don't seem bad at all - sometimes perhaps a little confrontational but not aggressively so. Perhaps HN could allow users above a certain karma threshold vote on [dead] posts, with those scores going towards a "repeal fund" - make decent comments over a certain period and get temporarily un-banned.

Bose QC15s and QC20s are the best active noise-cancelling headphones out there... but the problem is, hey still have very mediocre sound, but they do the noise-cancelling part well. They are also massively overpriced.

Sennheiser HD280 Pros have extremely good passive isolation, and will beat QC15s at a fraction of the price, in both isolation and audio quality.

So yes, Bose still loses when you look at the big picture. Bose is very good at marketing, they are not very good at making quality audio.

These Yamaha headphones are excellent, http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/yamaha-rh3c-profess.... Durable, they collapse and sound great. I have another set of open phones with foam surrounds, the foam is not stable and collects gunk if used in a backpack. The Yamaha phones very respectable replacements for the MDR unit and stay clean while taking up little space.

There's a fair amount of pros that utilize Audeze and HiFiMan gear as well. Planar magnetics are popular.

Erik Larson is pretty vocal about his use of LCD-2s for mastering. Which... Honestly, I'm not generally a fan of his work, so it's not necessarily a ringing endorsement.

Also kind of surprised at your lack of mention of AKGs - they're another very popular brand for studio work.

Honestly I forgot about AKG. They're pretty good, although I don't see them a lot in commercial environments (~15 year window).

Almost every studio used to have nothing but AKG K240 phones for monitors in the room. I haven't worked professionally directly in the field for years (I work in live sound occasionally now, and do interact with recording engineers occasionally), but I still see them discussed regularly enough online to assume they are still common. I love the look of them, and always have. To me, they are the definition of "studio headphone". (They aren't what I use in my home studio, as there are better phones, if you're willing to spend more money, but they are a good headphone for a good price.)

I have to try the Beyer some time. Agreed on the Sennheiser ergonmics - and the price.

I can't stand the Sonys. They're specifically designed for tracking & editing - all that screech points up Bad Things Happening. But they fatigue my ears.

Laugh now, but I landed on the Koss KTXPRO1 ( which are $20 to $40 ) and have basically stopped looking :) Most comfortable thing I've ever used and they're actually pretty flat, except for a little bass bump and a smidgen of upper mid. I think I'm on my tenth pair. They're a bit too light weight - if you catch the cable on something they'll fly off your head.

And yeah - I bet the $500 vs $20 figures into my perception of things.

I can mix on 'em, at least to the rough stage.

That's nothing laugh-worthy. Audio equipment faces massive diminishing returns. If you're looking for midrange sound you might as well pay attention to the people recommending sub-$50 headphones as to the ones talking of $150. For instance, the $30 Panasonic HTF600s is better-sounding than the $160 ATH-M50x frequently recommended as an entry-level audiophile headset. As for studio-quality headphones, chinese Superlux/Takstar models are as good as the $200-300 range.

As a die hard fan of the M50x (and no qualifications whatsoever for judging headphones) I'll have to explore those Panasonics you mention. I haven't considered that company as a quality maker of audio gear since the portable CD player era. Did you do the test yourself, or are you going off of a review site? I typically rely on head-fi, but I'm always looking for a recommendation in this field.

There are a few more brands and models that pros use. The AKG K240 has been in use for decades, and I think they're quite charming. Audio Technica has made a lot of in-roads into mid-level pro studios in particular (i.e. not million dollar rooms, but still quite good studios that make good records regularly). I've also seen Shure SRH series headphones in professional contexts.

But, your statements about "pro" headphones are accurate. They aren't the nicest looking, but they are really good, and I always recommend a good pro set of headphones over the marketed crap from Beats, Bose, Monster, etc. $250 will buy a lot of headphone quality from one of the pro audio manufacturers.

Bose and beats* are by, every /objective/ measure, shitty products.

Subjectively, you might like them, but the faithfulness of audio reproduction is not a subjective matter. You can play a tone and measure how well that tone is actually played back.

You can then also objectively compare things that produce that playback quality at various price points and figure out if they're priced competitively.

There is plenty of fanboyism in high end audio, but that's not why they say Bose and Beats are shitty. It's because Bose and Beats ARE shitty.

*The Solo 2 Beats actually measure very well. They're even competitively priced... with other overpriced fashion statement headphones. They're still overpriced vs. headphones that are just meant to play music well.

Are Beats shitty or just expensive? How little would I have to pay to get same quality?

I am finding it hard to believe that they are actually shitty, while I find it very easy to believe that they are way overpriced.

I have never listened to Beats headphones but I imagine they have a lot of base-boost (based on absolutely nothing), but that is not the same as shitty.

So, we have to define, in your opinion, what would make a pair of headphones shitty.

If you are going to reduce them to the basest level of what the purpose for a speaker or headphone is, to reproduce the input sound, then yes, they are shitty, because they are not good at that.

From a purely objective standpoint, you are going to have to judge them based on that. Why would you want the speakers or headphones to make a different sound than what the signal is?

If you want to move away from an objective measurement of what makes a headphone good or not to something that's purely subjective (i.e. 'I like how they sound'), it's impossible to answer that question.

The Solo2 are a pair of Beats headphones that actually measure really well - they're good at the base purpose of a transducer. But they're $250. You could buy a pair of Sony MDR-7506 that measure similarly (IIRC, a bit better, even) for $85.

>If you are going to reduce them to the basest level of what the purpose for a speaker or headphone is, to reproduce the input sound, then yes, they are shitty, because they are not good at that.

Though I don't personally like the cold, base heavy sound of Beats, I don't really get how you could know this, because most people have no idea what a piece of music should sound like. They know how they think it should sound, they know how they like it to sound, but very few know how it should sound. The only real exception to this is music with "real" instruments like pianos who's sound is familiar to enough people that their reproduction can be reliably determined. Even then, however, unless you know the piece well, it's unlikely most of us are in a good position to make a judgement about the speaker's quality.

So what factors are you using to determine if the sound is reproduces correctly?

So, uh, we can measure the frequency response made by headphones.

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/headphone-measurement-p...

http://www.headphone.com/pages/evaluating-headphones

This is a pretty scientific matter - when I say "the purpose is to reproduce the input sound", we can tell exactly what is supposed to be reproduced, and we can tell exactly how capable the speaker is of reproducing it.

Some exceptions have to be made due to how having headphones on your head causes the sound to change, but again, these are pretty much known quantities - to get the equivalent of a flat response from a speaker, you will see change X in bass response, change Y in treble response, etc for headphones.

It's not a question of esoteric "The artist and recording engineer meant for this to be played on Kef blades powered by a Cary tube pre-amp feeding into a Mcintosh amp setup using a rail to rail ladder DAC", but a "We know how frequency response should look when measuring equipment and if it doesn't look like that then the sound you are getting out of it is different than the source material"

> This is a pretty scientific matter - when I say "the purpose is to reproduce the input sound", we can tell exactly what is supposed to be reproduced, and we can tell exactly how capable the speaker is of reproducing it.

You are assuming the song was mixed by someone wearing headphones that perfectly reproduce the input sound. Suppose the person who mixed a song was using beats headphones or other headphones that audiophiles consider inferior but that they know the majority of people use to listen to music. Wouldn't that then mean Beats headphones actually provide the listener with the actual, intended experience?

So, headphone use in studios is not generally for creating the final mix. Monitor speakers are used nearly exclusively in professional studios as what you are mixing for. Headphones have multiple places in the production process where they are used, but they're not the final target.

There's a few reasons for this. The most pragmatic is that doing so will produce the track that sounds the best on the widest variety of setups - EQed or not. There's also not any single headphone out there that is used so predominately that it would make sense to cater to it in specific. The closest might be apple earbuds, but people using those probably aren't too concerned about sound quality anyway, so it doesn't make sense to mix with those in mind either.

From a theoretical standpoint, you're not necessarily wrong, but it's just not how things currently work, and there's not really any reason why it ever would work that way in a professional studio.

I make no claim as to what the people making music exclusively in their bedroom are doing, though.

Interesting. I guess the main concept I'm exploring is the idea that if you don't control for the sound quality that the person mixing it (or more importantly, the person approving the mix) then it's hard to make any claims about how the sound was "meant to be heard".

> You could buy a pair of Sony MDR-7506 that measure similarly (IIRC, a bit better, even) for $85.

Or Superlux HD668B which can be found for $30 last time I checked.

Or if you're willing to spend more, Beyerdynamic DT-770/880/990 family stuff.

Or if you want IEMs, you're not going to beat Hifiman RE-400 for any IEM under $300.

Given whenever I stand near someone on a train with them I can hear a fair amount of their music (not anywhere near as bad as Apple earbuds though), I assume they can't be that great - that or the listener has very bad hearing.

I have a set of Sennheiser HD 202 which don't have anywhere near the same leakage and cost £35. I haven't tried Beats so can't say much about audio quality, but in my experience high leakage usually means that the audio is poor too. It also means you will listen to music louder to compensate, which leads to more distortion.

> I am finding it hard to believe that they are actually shitty

In that case the marketing team have done a good job :-)

>Given whenever I stand near someone on a train with them I can hear a fair amount of their music (not anywhere near as bad as Apple earbuds though), I assume they can't be that great - that or the listener has very bad hearing.

This makes the mistaken assumption that isolation and good sound are related, which -- as open headphones and speakers can attest -- is not true. The goal of a speaker or headphone is to reproduce music faithfully. Unless you are familiar with the music's origin or it has real instruments who's sounds you can easily identify, it's impossible for most people to tell if the music is reproduced "faithfully". So there are a couple of general rules that most "audiophiles" will consider when dealing with volume:

1. Music played at louder volumes generally sounds better than that at lower volumes. You can hear more of what you are intended to hear.

2. Music often goes up and down in volume, so you want to hear the broadest range of volume.

3. The best listening devices both allow high volumes without clipping and low volumes with clarity.

The point is, just because you can hear it, doesn't mean they are bad headphones.

It also doesn't mean they are good headphones or that the people aren't inconsiderate. It simply means that "sound leakage" isn't really a decent criteria unless it's something that important to you.

Leakage is sometimes intended so it's not necessarily an indicator of quality. See the HD800's. You'll hear them in any open-plan office, for sure. There's no attempt to keep the music from leaking, their only priority is sound quality (which is, at this price, a matter of taste and preference).

http://en-us.sennheiser.com/dynamic-headphones-high-end-arou...

Yeah, Dr. Dre is on record saying that he's not an audio engineer but he knows what makes hip-hop music sound good. So he never claimed they had "flat response" or anything.

Bose knows how to coax a bass note or two out of a small plastic box.

Bose knows marketing.

I've got excellent bookshelf speakers that were cheaper than the equivalent from Bose, but the reviews and tests showed them to be way better.

My (small!) speakers end up producing way too much bass for the room they're in, in fact, and I use Foobar 2000 with the "MathAudio Room EQ" plug-in to get a flatter speaker response from them. But their problem isn't that they can't produce bass notes.

Whoosh ... I think my comment went over some people's heads. A "one note bass" isn't a good thing, technically. I did not say that Bose is great at making speakers with excellent bass.

A little too subtle, I think. Sounded too much like you were using understatement.

As far I've tried NC headphones, nothing comes even close to what Bose offer with QC25, any other brand I've tried cancel out less noise than the bose. Sound quality might not be the best, but the intented environment is the limiting factor anyway, and they do a great job at dealing with environment noise.

In response to your and your parent’s blanket claims

> Bose and beats* are by, every /objective/ measure, shitty products.

> God forbid you ever consider buying a Bose or Beats product.

If you need faithful audio reproduction, start with the room. There are reasons for buying a portable Bluetooth-enabled speaker, and also reasons one may consider specifically Bose SoundLink. Sound quality, in this sense, is not among them.

The biggest problem "audiophiles" don't seem to get is that accurate reproduction is not the end goal of music. Enjoyment is. Audiophiles have convinced themselves to find enjoyment from accurate reproduction, and that's OK. But the majority of the world does not see it that way.

> God forbid you ever consider buying a Bose or Beats product.

Meh, they're okay, but there are better choices out there.

I've a pair of Sennheiser HD600 and it's one of those things that make you go "holy cow, all the hype is justified".

And no, I'm not one of those folks who think gold-plated cables make a difference. Right now I'm listening to MP3 Internet radio on a pair of cheap behind the neck street cans.

A friend has had a set of these for ages. We found a difference between two source setups. A particular Sony DVD player sounded incredible - each note seemed perceptible in a 3D space [1]. A CD player he had, didn't. [2] We tried with Yamaha amp, without, different configs of widgets. That DVD player with nothing added was the best. He gave it to his sister and I haven't heard anything like that since.

I nearly went off on a tangent and bought an amp etc, but I'm happy with my much cheaper HD380's - great price/performance :) But those 600's are awesome.

[1] I've since learned it's called soundstage

[2] How would the source influence soundstage? Sounds irrational to me. Hey, one sounded better than the other and I don't know why.

I have a pair of Sennheister 280 HD Pros - they've lasted me about 7 years, an excellent set of headphones. I used it to help critique music for lots of artists on their production, and I know lots of artists who use it as a cheap pair of mixing headphones.

Work bought me a pair of 380 HD Pros, and I'm impressed on how much of an upgrade they are over the 280s - I can only imagine how good the other Sennheisers are.

Open back vs closed back.

The 280s are closed back. Great for isolation, for not letting ambient sound interfere with the music. It also changes the way the transducers work, a little bit.

The 600s are open back. Obviously there's no isolation, but the transducers work more freely. It's a bit easier to distinguish tiny sounds from a huge background.

I've both the 600 and the 280. Great phones both, in different ways.

If there's psychological phenomena that make them enjoy it more, what's the issue?

And there are jobs created for engineers who design that equipment - simultaneously recycling more money in the economy and contributing to the statistics of STEM job prospects! Everybody wins!

And I get cheap hight definition AD and DA conversors to use in my projects!

I'm certainly not complaining.

Broken window fallacy.

Sure, you need to take externalities into account. One can imagine an audiophile who would rather spend $100K on a sound system that sustains 3 jobs at a niche sound-system-design business, instead of angel-investing that money in a growth company that would eventually create 300 jobs. But what if the audiophile's daughter is then inspired to build another growth company when she grows up, because she was intrigued by how much her dad would geek out about the electronics in her sound system? Nothing is clear, it's incredibly hard to quantify probabilities about any of these things. As long as the audiophile isn't neglecting responsibilities or breaking windows to obtain his sound system... that is, as long as negative externalities are not a foregone conclusion... we should let him enjoy his passion.

Certainly, there are valid moral arguments to allow, even encourage, this state of affairs. I was just pointing out that the economical argument that was offered is a broken window fallacy. Refuting an argument in favor of X is not an argument against X.

Wouldn't most of the digital cable costs be due to analog interference in the machines they are connecting and them acting like antennas and not that the signal is corrupted on the way?

Unless it's an insulator (like fiber optic cables), you are hooking both a 50 foot antenna and a digital transmission line to your box; if you want just the digital transmission line, you have to insulate the hell out of the antenna part of it.

The first paragraph in the power cord "review" sounds like it is rapidly approaching Poe's Law

On the other side of their spectrum, I went "near" an audiophile shop test booth and I was sucked by clarity and density of the sound in the air (this was a drum solo track). Some audiophileness is good.

I'll head back to my 40$ crappy mp3 player now.

I actually think you'll find many "audiophiles" enamored of the Sansa Clip Plus and Zip, which fall into that price range. Probably the most highly thought of MP3 players after the iPod classic 5.5.

Now that Android supports USB DACs, you can just get portable DAC+Amp combos that you can stick in your pocket with your phone. No need for a dedicated device anymore.

$350/m HDMI cables... so, Monster?

Far from me the idea to defend them, but $350/m is about 3 times higher than Monster's most bullshitty bullshit cable. Even their "2000HD HyperSpeed HDMI cable" only had a $115/m MSRP in 5ft, falling to $32/m in 35ft: http://www.monsterproducts.com/Monster_Video_ISF_2000HD_Hype...

My great business idea was to produce a line of "organic" cables.

Our company would go to the remote places of the earth to hunt down copper dragons (as in DnD) and harvest their veins to make audio cables.

The "natural", "organic" copper has a warmth to the audio signals flowing through it that artificially produces cables just can't provide (they have harsher undertones).

Then we'd also have silver and gold cables, harvested from, you guessed it, silver and gold dragons.

These would truly be "monster" cables.

PETA's going to bust your ass.

dragoncopper, have the website default to some non-existent northern european language/font with a translation button (british flag). Burled wood with reds and yellows. will buy.

I plan to disrupt the audiophile business (and crush you in passing) with my homeopathic cables.

As we melt the gold we mix in a few atoms of "rare earth" elements (rare == expensive == so good "they" don't want you to have access) which is then diluted by adding more melted gold until only the imprint of the rare earth atom remains.

The gold will the be hand drawn by virgins (in truth these will be strong, hairy, 50-yo virgins with dreadful hygiene and B.O. though strong enough to pull, but we need not add all that confusing stuff, we'll just say "virgins"). The wire will be lovingly laid into hand-made insulation made from organic pinniped leather.

I see a variety of future applications both in the home (connect your cable modem to your WiFi access point) and business (data centers). To quote Rony Abovitz, we'll soon be "the size of Apple".

Invest now, while you still can!

Well, you might be surprised on Apple's Store page - esp. the accessories section. Or you like that?

When someone spends money on something in a silly way, do you consider them to be an idiot? Would you make the same statement about someone who spends 200$ on a bottle of scotch versus buying a 35$ bottle?

Let the 'idiots' spend their money driving an industry that is combining the creation of electronics with functional art. I'm not sad to see a $40,000 DAC. I don't have to buy it, and it's cool to know someone built something of silly 'value'.

For example, look at this thing: https://www.naimaudio.com/statement It's absolutely silly, and the cost is outrageous. I'm happy that they built it though. It was actually built as part of the acquisition that Focal made of Naim. It seems that they allowed the engineers at Naim to go nuts once the company was acquired.

I like seeing silly things that people build. It doesn't make me sad that someone spends thousands on ridiculous items that from an engineering perspective don't make a difference.

It's one thing when you plop down a ton of cash for something where you embrace the "silliness" or whatever makes it special (e.g. buying exotic cars with monstruous engines to drive them into traffic). It's another, however, believing something is objectively "better" because it cost more; e.g. spending money on Monster Cables thinking you can hear a difference.

In audio, you have people who love vinyl because they enjoy the distortion it makes, and that's perfectly fine; but you have others who somehow believe it sounds closer to the original, which is demonstrably ridiculous.

I completely get that as I personally prefer to collect Old Stock vacuum tubes for my listening purposes (http://imgur.com/a/INXVX). I just think folks should be left to their own devices to enjoy an avocation as they please.

Trying to defend something through completely subjective argument is silly, I've a hard time discussing 'objectively better' technology with audiophole folks, but if someone said 'I like this more' I really can't hope to debunk that through any sort of mathematical characterization of performance.

>I just think folks should be left to their own devices to enjoy an avocation as they please.

Only if they shut up and never tell other people that should be listening at 24/192. However, the people being complained about here spout nonsense like that all of the time.

Wait! Who's telling who what?

I think you find you have it backwards. I don't hear anyone here telling you that you should be listening at 24/192. Go look at all the comments and count them up. All I hear is people saying that you should be listening at 16/44, because it sounds exactly the same, or even sounds better, and if you think otherwise you're obviously an idiot, stupid, audiophool who spends $5000 on a power cable.

I sure know who I think should shut up. It's all those arm-chair-experts who don't even own any decent hifi gear. Why would they? It's all crap and my second hand ipod headphones beat it all hands down anyway. Right?

The guy that wrote this article didn't write it because snobs were being reasonable...

I would make the argument that if some of the silliness was stated for what it was, gullible rich people would spend their money on something equally frivolous that did more to drive innovation

If you enjoy music (who doesnt) and are bending toward learning electronics I highly recommend projects like Twisted Pear kits and build yourself a DAC. http://www.twistedpearaudio.com/landing.aspx

The other fun stuff is building your own Speaker kits, hook all this up with a Pi Music Box and you have yourself a kind of home made Sonos. http://www.woutervanwijk.nl/pimusicbox/

You are mixing two things. There is a difference between Intel charging you >$1K for a CPU that is 5% faster (in games) than overclocked $300 one versus scammer selling magical power cables (made by gypsy virgins in Romanian monastery on top of the highest mountain, in full moon) to some rich retards.

$40,000 DAC? someone really went ahead and fabbed their own silicon (~$1mil for low volume run)? or did they maybe picked up $100 (at most) part, put it in a shiny box and started looking for suckers?

Do you even realize what $40K gets you? we are talking military grade Agile^^key'hole/RohdeShwartz multi gigahertz arbitrary waveform generators here, not some pityfull audio stuff.

Here are some examples of multi thousand dollar scams: http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/REFERENCES/wadia%20WT%20... http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/REFERENCES/Goldmund/gold... http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/REFERENCES/THETA%20Unive...

Audiophoolery is on the same level as creationism, it only works on uneducated simple minds with no metacognition.

It costs a good deal to make a discrete R2R ladder dac instead of buying a chip from TI (http://www.msbtech.com/products/dac4.php), however I've now seen some cool DIY projects that are doing even this on the cheap: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/vendors-bazaar/259488-referen...

>Agile^^key'hole/RohdeShwartz multi gigahertz arbitrary waveform generators here

I don't even know what that is. But that's what I'm calling my next breakcore track.

HP was known for building generally good test equipment, including arbitrary waveform generators. Op is humorously referring to the fact that the test and measurement division was spun off first as Agilent, then Keysight (seriously?), and probably something else by tomorrow (marketing is furiously brainstorming new meaningless names. They only need to merge with Danaheer and rename themselves Flukeronix for the circle of life to be complete.

This article makes points better than I did with my post: http://www.johngineer.com/blog/?p=1741

That's rather a wide-ranging bit of character assisination. Some of us just enjoy listing to music on decent equipment (If you can buy it at your local big box store, it's probably not sufficiently "decent") properly setup (which doesn't mean expensively - just basic proper speaker placement and the like).

> Some of us just enjoy list[en]ing to music on decent equipment

The best definition of audiophile I've heard is somebody who listens to equipment, rather than music.

Of course your favourite Pink Floyd sounds better on a decent stereo rather than a clock-radio, but if somebody is forever chasing the proper "colour" for their speakers, or swapping amps for the perfect tone... they might be an audiophile.

edit: s/you might be/they might be/

You're using "audiophile" as if it only represents say , the 5% most wacky partipants in the hobby.

>The best definition of audiophile I've heard is somebody who listens to equipment, rather than music.

Audiophiles are an easy target. There are a lot that do stupid shit like buy $5000 power cables, expensive risers to lift cables off the ground, etc. A lot are pretentious, even if they're not insane or dumb.

But that's a rather inflammatory, and in my opinion, unfair position to take. I would probably be considered an audiophile - I have put quite a bit of money into audio equipment. But I love music. I listen to it basically constantly. It's one of my primary sources of entertainment - and I don't just mean 'I have music on when I do other shit.'

Each week I spend probably 20 hours doing nothing but relaxing with a bit to drink and some music on. Not reading, not surfing the net, not doing anything but closing my eyes and enjoying the sound. I'm listening to the music.

At times, yes, when I have been testing out new equipment before deciding if I want to buy it I go through and I do blind ABX tests with level matching. In this case, yes, I am listening to equipment. But this is a very minor portion of my total listening time.

I know you're probably not being totally serious with the post, but I do think it's a bit unfair towards those of us that love music, but also have invested time and money into getting a setup that sounds better for increased enjoyment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com