Welcome fellow audiophile junkies. You're in the right place if you enjoy high performance audio systems and like to learn more about the hobby.
I have 35+ years experience with dealers, mfgs, and hearing thousands of rooms at various trade shows for decades. More importantly, I have direct experience with countless pieces of equipment and have learned very important tips, tricks and insights along the way.
If saving money and achieving higher performance with your audio system is important to you, you're going to want to subscribe and join this community. I encourage feedback and healthy debate on anything that will lead to further advancement of high fidelity. As applicable, I may include others who are credible on certain topics. I will also feature systems of my friends and various audiophile shows as time permits.
Also, I believe I mentioned "DSD recordings" when discussing Steve's background, but meant to say "Direct to Disk (DTD) recordings" as part of his experience and background.
Once an alignment between what we hear and what is measured has taken place,we can work with the measurements that matter.It's definitely a case of doing both in order to understand which measurements are most important I feel. It's key to producing true improvements because expectation bias may mean we'll "hear" an improvement whether there is one or not. That can also work the other way where one may have a preconceived idea that something on a measured graph is too small to make a difference, so in that case won't "hear" any difference and won't even be prepared to listen.Blind tests are often criticised, but it can be too easy to convince ourselves one way or another before listening has even began if we don't want one to exist,just so we may be proven "right". Stubbornness and refusal to concede to the "other side" is prevalent both in politics and audio,but a willingness to eat humble pie and admit that we may be wrong about some things is all part of the journey.
Most conversations I have with audiophiles who are measurement purists suggest that the ultimate draw is to ensure that what is on the recording is exactly the same thing that reaches your ear at the listening position - absolutely nothing subtracted or added. Question: Do you think modern measurements (taken as a set) are actually capable of doing this?
Measurements are the only way to know that what you are hearing is close to what's on the recording. However, they can't just be one foot away measurements in an anechoic chamber or from AP tests. They need to be at your listening position and in your ears with psychoacoustic factors addressed as well to take into account the room, ear pinna and other things we've learned from science. Then, people can easily see the correlation between measurements and what they hear.
I am a owner of Bricasti M20 M21 M28 products and they play awesome. Then I decided to add some Ansuz products to see what happens. Started with a Mainz8 D2 and A2 powercables. And I can tell you that Bricasti hides so much more highend sound than I imagined. Give those products some good power supply and the soundstage get so much better and the depth is amazing.... pure joy all day. You will never get tired of listen to it
@@AudiophileJunkie both sides are “audiophiles” but there are 2 basic camps. Just watch the RU-vid channels. There are channels that talk mostly about the measurement and set up. Then there are channels that just describe the music experience and how the equipment sounded. There are the hybrids like your channel and Erin’s that do bridge the gap. But that’s not the norm. The reason there are basically 2 camps is because they are driven by the 2 types of viewers. And you can probably categorize them by vinyl and streaming and you wouldn’t too far off.
That's what's great about reviews from ASR, and Erin Audio's corner. No BS audio jargon. Can't stand watching, or reading subjective reviews anymore. So predictable. Can tell you what they will say before the review guaranteed. Great soundstage, detail retrieval, silky mids, bass definition blah blah blah.... Can't believe anyone falls for that crap anymore.
Yeah they provide a valuable service, but it's still based mainly on engineering prowess "review" and a lot of focus on stats that are inaudible (IE -130db SNR DAC compared to -120db). Thus, it's important to CORRELATE those measurements to what's audible and important to you. Many measurements are more important than others after you learn the correlations.
I agree also that standard Audiophile jargon reviews are pretty useless unless you really know them, their room, and there preferences. They should be required to at least provide in room measurements to know what standard they are basing their comments on.
I hate when they demo these type of songs. I would never purchase a speaker based on these demos. That is why I always ask them to play particular music and or songs and when they refuse I have to assume it's because of their speakers. I used to sell Toshiba copy machines and the power of a demo is what makes the sale, you put that machine through real life extreme scenarios. If they don't have confidence in their speakers why should I purchase them?
C'mon everybody knows that the best way to fix bad speakers is to continue to drink until they don't sound like carp [sic]. Ok, seriously, you need both. Look at Erin's reviews. He provides both subjective opinions and objective data and shows the correlation. Bottom line... its what sound best to you, in your home. That said, I've got these CNC carved man made Sapphire Crystal cable lifters that will magically improve the sound of any system for sale... 🤦♂
Cool discussion. Specs and measurements are good for telling me if a piece of equipment is well designed, engineered and built. But it won’t tell me, or anyone, what it will sound like. I will make sure a piece of gear I am considering measures well to confirm quality and thoughtful design but then I forget about them and just focus on what it sounds like to me.
Yeah that's true for most specs and measurements made in a vacuum, but we also have measurements now that tell us exactly what's going on at our listening position and even our ears. Those can be used to tell you more about what you're going to hear versus the engineering side of things we traditionally use measurements for... as you correctly pointed out.
GM☕️ 50/50 ..specs to match performance parameters for speakers and amps. Human hearing yup,with age (and sonic abuse) will change (usual degrading over time) …so do YOU like the way it sounds and performs for you..that’s the big question. Great video. Have a great weekend..and I’ll we see your fashionable self in Toronto this October?
I rarely agree whole-cloth with audiophile videos... this is the exception. YES measurements matter, they are guide posts that let us eliminate the stinkers. YES listening matters, you do have to like what you hear. The big problem in the "hobby" (it's more like an obsession) right now is that highly predatory marketing from corporations that exist only to part us from our money have distorted all reality and have us wasting our time on junk that either does nothing or at least can't do what is claimed. We need to get reattached to reality, we need to want truth and provable claims ... Just think how much better your system could be if you didn't wast $5,000 on RCA cables and put that money into better speakers, instead!
Stephe from Skunkie Designs discussed this regulation last week and was really pleased. She has reviewed several budget Chinese tube amps and has been critical of most of them as they are advertised 10 watts but are only capable of 2 or 3 watts. She views it as a consumer protection measure rather than an audiophile thing.
It takes a lot of variables out of the equation compared to other measurements. You still have variables such as hearing loss and whatever your brain does to process the sound waves different from a mic, but it's 100x better than what anechoic chamber measurements tell you about what you may hear.
If you get the Bacch and get the impulse response for each ear at your listening position, it really helps with knowing exactly what reflections may be bad and where to find them to put treatments.
That's generally good advice, but many speakers are technically "bad" especially when you measure them in-room. They can be fixed in many respects though now and more importantly fixed for the problems at your ears... Not in an anechoic chamber.
Look up whisperwave cloud ceiling treatments. The box in my other RU-vid short says Pinta Acoustics, but that search term is earlier to get to the shop. You'll need to at least buy the anchors too and separately buy ceiling hooks and either wire (that they sell) or I used rubber cable management style gaskets to hang them. You could also use zip ties once the anchor and hook are setup.
A Japanese dealer bought the Airbow grounding box. He felt that its sound quality was more luxurious and smooth than many Swiss Lenon and domestic brand floor-standing speakers. There are more than a dozen eBay. As a brand, Airbow can optimize the performance of its products and experience improved sound quality if it focuses on the careful selection of details and materials in the field of audio. The main function of the audio ground box is to provide a good grounding environment for the audio system, reduce electromagnetic interference, and thus improve the purity and dynamic range of the sound quality. A well-designed ground box can effectively isolate external noise, enhance the detail expression of music, and make the sound more natural and delicate. This feeling of "nobleness" and "smoothness" is often reflected in the subtle levels of music, the separation of instruments, and the overall openness of the sound field. If Airbow's ground box can show excellent performance in these aspects, then it uses the following features or technologies: - Highly conductive and low-impedance materials, which can conduct current more efficiently and reduce signal loss. - Precision internal structure design, multi-stage filtering, special shielding technology, etc., to more thoroughly eliminate interference. - Ensure the purity and directness of the grounding path to reduce the noise caused by the grounding loop. - Use damping materials or special designs to reduce vibration and further improve the purity of the sound. The effect of the floor box is mainly reflected in the background being quieter and darker, and the separation of instruments and vocals is better. The expressiveness of details is stronger, especially the details of weak sounds, the low-frequency dive is deeper and clearer, the guitar plucking feeling and the violin string pulling feeling are very vivid and more dynamic!
You ask a good question. Another way to ask is why would they make a non-black edition given we are only talking $1,000 bucks. Just make the black (best) ed.
In the long form video, he answers the question. It's strictly because the difference in price can be a material difference for certain budgets and markets, so they will keep both options available.
Hi Jason,I hope everything is good with you. A couple of your members have contacted me saying they we're hoping to see some more of that Zoom call we had about 6 months ago. If you like to pick things up where we left off, I'm still here and happy to expand on our collaboration.🎧🙂👍
Yeah... We should probably just do another one with current topics. I recently tried a live zoom and it worked pretty good. I like it because I don't even have to do uploading or even minor editing 🤠 I forget the time difference though. Email me your availability.
Hi, Please help. I am between either Mofi Source Point 888 and Revival Atalante 5 spears to be used in my space which is about 20 sq metres. This room opens up into another room that is about 15.69 sq metres. Will use either of these two models for Prog rock, jazz and some reggae music. Which in your opinion is the better of these two models. Thanks in advance.
Not familiar with the Revival...you can't go wrong though with the Sourcepoints at the price. They should be fine in your room as you can see in Andrew's room.
