19349 things audiophiles like to complain about

2. Bose

3. the mastering on Rush's Vapor Trails LP

4. Everything.

5."it sounds like your tweeter is blown"

6. Trailing your interconnects too close to yr mains leads ("nice 50/60Hz hum, dude.").
7. Imperfect speaker positioning ("I guess stereo isn't really important to you, huh?").
8. Being able to hear the gaps between the samples on digital media ("too granular, man.")

9. Inferiority of CDs to vinyl
10. Inferiority of MP3s to CDs

what the hell does #6 even mean?

"Brrr, get away from me with your trashy 192 kbps MP3s -- their hideous sound quality would irreparably damage my cochleas."

xp

xp: ground hum from having your power lines too close to your cables

12. Bush administration's conduct in Iraq
13. Sharp rise in gas bills, are the energy companies involved in price fixing?
14. Still lacking that Bang & Olufsen shiny to complete the Panini Hi-Fi sticker album, but being too proud to send off for it.

15. Avram Grant's poor substitutions in key moments of Chelsea games.

16. Being mistaken for Paedophiles or Europhiles.

17. Being victimised due to the criminal activities of people called Aidy O'Phile.

18. Cute girl in Richer Sounds has a boyfriend

19. Change in train timetables mean having to get up 15mins earlier to get to work on time

4 things the modestly furnished (poor) amateur audiophile complains about

1. when the radio reception only works when you physically touch the arial
2. records only play when you put 20 cents on top of the needle
3. cds skip if you walk past the cd player
4. mpwhats?

20. Bill Inglot.
21. Should've been remastered by Steve Hoffman instead.

22. Domestic reissue not as good as the Japanese gold disc from '94.

23. 476th Zeppelin remaster not as faithful to Jimmy Page's guitar tone as remasters 11, 83 and 212.

24. girl wearing grados on train not feeling urge to bond over headphone brand

25. people listening to laptop speakers and ipod earbuds

(i agree w/ this one)

i used to bag on all this shit. then i got a nice stereo this year, and i've gone totes douchebag on the audiophile tip. shit sounds mad good.

26. Rega discontinued glass platter on the P2 in favor of inferior MDF platter

27. HDCD never took off

4 things the modestly furnished (poor) amateur audiophile complains about

1. when the radio reception only works when you physically touch the arial
2. records only play when you put 20 cents on top of the needle
3. cds skip if you walk past the cd player
4. mpwhats?

5. damn volume control on receiver has no good medium-soft volume positions, with a gap between very soft and medium.
6. mechanics of dual cassette player can be maddening as I spend 20 minutes trying and failing to rewind to the beginning of Hounds of Love.

28. How shit Technics 1200s are

29. Rhodium-plated connectors just aren't what they used to be.

30. Who do I have to blow around here to get some cellulose dielectric cables?

i used to bag on all this shit. then i got a nice stereo this year, and i've gone totes douchebag on the audiophile tip. shit sounds mad good.

I think audiophiles are right up to a certain degree (if you like music, you shouldn't listen to it on a shitty equipment), but after that the differences become so small that it's not a question of appreciating the music anymore, rather than technical wankery. I like to liste to music on a good system, but I can also live with small imperfections, if correcting them will cost more than 200 new records.

i got a very nice system after saving up for awhile. i don't think i spent more than about $1100 on the whole thing. it sounds amazing and i am quite content with it. there's a lot of nice stuff now that's not so expensive...i couldn't imagine paying like $5K for a CD player or anything like that.

28. How shit Technics 1200s are

-- sexyDancer, Friday, March 21, 2008 7:45 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

31. Inferiority of direct driven turntables to belt driven ones, in general.
32. "Wish you had this with the prior matrix number, as that one has the hot stamper a-side."

33. All that @#$%ing crimping.

24. girl wearing grados on train not feeling urge to bond over headphone brand

-- deej, Friday, March 21, 2008 6:50 PM

:( too true

34. Worrying about room size.
35. Having to have things like furniture and curtains in the room which absorb/deflect the signal

36. subwoofers

37. Spouses

38. Severe lack of FLAC encoded ringtones.

39. Component lighting not color coordinating

31. Inferiority of direct driven turntables to belt driven ones, in general.

40. Inferiority of belt driven turntables to direct driven ones, in general.

41. Reviving year old threads to post a lame challops.

Oh but man I was just searching ILM for turntable advice when I came upon this and realized that, when I was experiencing speed instability with my turntable, most audiophiles I questioned completely disparaged belts.

I guess they weren't audiophiles using turntables by Linn, Rega, Michell, Nottingham, Wilson Benesch, Thorens, Kuzma, Oracle, Pro-Ject, Simon Yorke, etc, etc... Perhaps you spoke to the ILM audiophile with a Rockport Sirius III ;)

"A friend—a mastering and recording engineer with an exceptionally good studio system that includes Aerial 10Ts—came over with Sting's Nothing Like the Sun. He swore that he knew every lick and musical note on "Englishman in New York," and wanted to hear what $75,000 got you. "

$75,000 worth of turd polishing perhaps

^^^ why do audiophiles always have terrible musical taste?

Belt and Direct drive both have their strengths and weaknesses. Snobiness against the kinds of companies big enough to invest in direct drive technology usually makes boutique-centric audiophiles overlook the flaws in belt-driven systems, specifically greater wow and flutter.

I can't really enjoy solo piano on my belt-drive turntable, because of the slight speed fluctuations (it is not an especially nice turntable though).

Quoted wow and flutter figures for my Michell - <0.04%. But, yeah, point taken.

a good turntable is a good turntable regardless of the technology.
that being said - the noise transfer from motor through platter to stylus (direct drive) is generally considered more of an issue than wow and flutter (belt drive).

True. Depends what you're listening to of course, you're unlikely to notice with house and techno for example, but music with a large dynamic range, such as classical recordings are going to show this weakness the most.

"I can't really enjoy solo piano on my belt-drive turntable, because of the slight speed fluctuations (it is not an especially nice turntable though)."

you need a new turntable.

just saying that as someone who is listening to wonderful solo piano right now on my belt-drive turntable.

You're probably right. It's a Technics belt-drive deal that goes for like $140 now and it's 10 years old. However, I find that quiet piano music, where a note might be held for 4 or 5 seconds, is really demanding as far as constant speed, if it warbles a little something in my brain really homes in on that.

I've said it before and I will say it again...
http://www.sumikoaudio.net/project/products/debut.htm

yeah i mean i don't have any discernable issues in pitch or flutter with my rega at all.

8. Being able to hear the gaps between the samples on digital media ("too granular, man.")

My personal favorite tinfoil hat shit.

Also LOLing like crazy at the Sting anecdote...

its not always that audiophiles have bad tastes (although there is truth in the stereotype). it is more the culmination of a long process of improving reproduction. once some people have great hardware they try and find great software for it. great from this perspective means incredibly well recorded (and mastered for a good stereo instead of car speakers or an iPod), regardless of the actual merit of WHAT is being recorded.

yeah i mean i don't have any discernable issues in pitch or flutter with my rega at all.

well, lol--discernable--i've been known to get into psychotic A/B-ing my rega against cds of the same record, obsessively thinking i'm hearing pitch variations between the two. then i realize it's ridiculous, and stop.

Yeah, I must add that I am psychotic about pitch fluctuations.

Pitch variations could also be cause by the record hole being slightly off center. If the variations get worse as you get closer to the end of the record, that's probably what you're hearing.

I was going to make some bad joke about how one must sacrifice virgins seasonally to ensure perfect pitch stability. Then I was going to make an even worse joke about how all this virgin sacrifice would cause problems as there would be no audiohpiles left to enjoy this perfect pitch. Then I thought better of it and didn't post either joke to this message board.

I attended a HiFI conference a few years ago only to hear Diana Krall on every other stand. I kept a Merzbow cd in my pocket but didn't have the balls to ask for a 'test'.

Why does audiophiles never wants to rock?

I was thinking this too.. is it cos they're always looking for details?

i think it's because it's hard to deal w/ the beer stains on the Dockers.

Once some people have trained themselves to listen to the recording itself instead of the music they sometimes forget to go back.

You have to learn the first skill to compare systems. But once you finish comparing them, you have to go back to the music.

Conferences and instore demos are not necessarily indicitive of personal tastes, though. Some CDs, like one of Diana Krall's albums, are considered "reference" works, meaning that they are well-done enough to reveal system differences when listened to on different systems.

When I was working on the retail side of the industry I had my three or four discs that I knew back-to-front that I took to every demo I received. None of them are perfect sonically but I knew them very, very well, which is really just as important as recording quality.

other big reference discs: "Aja" by Steely Dan, "Breakfast in America" by Supertramp

There is even a whole other level of reference dics which usually consist of really, really medicore small group acoustic music (folk/jazz/whatever) that gets recorded by small boutique labels that basically service the "audiophile scene" with ultra-high-quality recordings that never get mentioned or even heard outside of the readership of Stereophile. Really weird to listen to those records because they are captivating yet empty.

When I bought the B&W 685 speakers a few months ago it was Laughing Stock and the new Patrick Wolf album that convinced me it was worth it.

see:
What album would be good to test out my new stereo setup? and POX: Music to celebrate your HiFi/HeadFi investment

listening to classic jazz records is just fucking the best on a nice stereo and turntable

even better is listening to classic jazz records recorded in mono on a system that can truly accomodate it (mono cart, preamp w/mono mode, etc.) wish i could afford.

yeah i don't have mono albility....i'm assuming any 50s records were originally mono?? some records have little blurbs on the back cover about how they can be played in mono or stereo, don't know if there was some sort of hybrid thing going on for awhile

eyo m@tt, do you have a l33t local hookup for this stuff? how did you put it all together

Could be worse than bad musical tastes -- the original hi-fi stereo systems were usually demoed with sound effects records. Ping pong balls, trains, etc.

"yeah i don't have mono albility....i'm assuming any 50s records were originally mono?? some records have little blurbs on the back cover about how they can be played in mono or stereo, don't know if there was some sort of hybrid thing going on for awhile"

answer is long and I honestly don't quite have the expertise to provide it. it really did depend on the studio and the engineer. RVG was recording in stereo in the 50s, sometimes summing that to mono for the release or sometimes recording in mono and stereo simultaneously, with the mono tape creating the mono record, etc.

this is sort of where i stopped my journey for great sound because it is too much for me to go release-by-release trying to figure out which edition is the "correct" one...

sound effects records are awesome

huh, yeah don't know much about that...in general, when i've bought orig pressings on stuff that came out on riverside or blue note or etc etc...shit sounds great usually, never been disappointed.

just got a bunch of pristine mono promo miles davis records on columbia and, um, they are scary good sounding.

my old beast of a marantz amp at home has a button to switch from mono/stereo.

so you don't need a mono cartridge if you have that? i bet that old marantz sounds sweet.

Classical started to swing stereo in the mid 50s and was overwhelmingly stereo by the end of the decade. London, Mercury, RCA were the real asskickers in the early days. Some of those orchestral recordings have never been surpassed as far as capturing a delicious sound-picture.

vintage solo violin and cello is where its at for the troo audiophile warriors out there.

if you've got a thousand bucks to spare you can shell out for the mercury starker 3-lp box. one of the gold standards:

http://www.popsike.com/pix/20050604/4736087884.jpg

(kinda fitting, cuz he definitely looks like he could start a hardcore cult)

That's a v good recording (would love to hear it on vinyl sometime).

ha, thought the guy's name was BACH STARKER at first, which would be a pretty hardcore name.

mono cartridge still fits the groove better I believe.

time to start playing the lotto.

Interesting, never heard of using a mono cartridge until this read-- what's the thinking behind that? If you need to change cartridges to listen to mono LPs, that had better be a big improvement!

The Pro-Jects have always looked nice, but my wife uses the turntable as well, and having to take off the platter to adjust the speed is a non-starter to put it mildly. I know you can pay more for one with a speed adjustment.

from what i understand the groove is cut differently so the stylus can be made differently to pick up more signal.

a lot of high-end turntable manufacturers make 'tables that can accept multiple tonearms. each tonearm, of course, can have a different cartridge. so all you have to do is pull the right 'arm for the right record.

of course, the above costs loadsa $$$ which is why i'm gonna play sweet million. sweet million is sweeter than sweet. which is sweet.

xpost
yeah it is a bit of a hassle. they sell a box for $150 that does the speed switching for you but at that point might as well look at a $500 'table. I haven't heard Thorens in a while but they have a cool looking 'table called the Mini. Looks like it retails for somewhere between $300-400 and it is easy to change speed. http://www.thorens.com/turntables/drives/thorens-mini.html

We better get back to numbering if we want to ever make it to 19349... just sayin.

On our old Ambassador stereogram (and I'm not whether this was before or after my brother replaced the turntable in it - some sort of Garrard kit), you could actually flip the needle over in the cartridge shell and choose from "mono 78" and "stereo 33/45".

There is even a whole other level of reference dics which usually consist of really, really medicore small group acoustic music (folk/jazz/whatever) that gets recorded by small boutique labels that basically service the "audiophile scene" with ultra-high-quality recordings that never get mentioned or even heard outside of the readership of Stereophile.

Yes, I have a couple of Chesky samplers! Perhaps that's unfair on Chesky - they did have some name artists on their roster.

I think I was an audiophile at a good time; there was still plenty of dynamics in mid-'90s pop/rock, digital recording had matured to the point where there was plenty of headroom on the tracking/mixing side and there was also the burgeoning all-analogue movement for the valve'n'vinyl purists. I used to take stuff like PJ Harvey, Tricky, Talk Talk, Sharkboy, Richard Davies, Takemitsu, Penderecki and Autechre to auditions. Stuff I bought just out of audiophilic curiosity (Holly Cole, etc) didn't really get an airing.

I still think it is a great time. Turntable technology has really moved forward this decade. The fact that you can get something manual, without built-in preamp (both good things for sound though not convenience) at such reasonable prices is really exciting. Add to that all of the vinyl reissues (though some suck - 180g is way oversold)... and yeah, I think this is a great decade for listening to (old) music.

41: Bang & Olufsen
42: R1cher S0unds rebadging bog-standard generic hi-fi with defunct boutique names, allegedly.
43: The inferiority of steel as speaker-stand filler as opposed to difficult-to-obtain lead shot.

There is even a whole other level of reference dics which usually consist of really, really medicore small group acoustic music (folk/jazz/whatever) that gets recorded by small boutique labels that basically service the "audiophile scene" with ultra-high-quality recordings that never get mentioned or even heard outside of the readership of Stereophile. Really weird to listen to those records because they are captivating yet empty.

― Shh! It's NOT Me!, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 4:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is so weird. why don't these dudes just listen to classical music?!!

they do. but also this above stuff.

I still think it is a great time. Turntable technology has really moved forward this decade.

Hmm, that's not an area I'd considered as progressing particularly. It's great that you can get a entry-level Pro-Ject Debut III for basically what you'd have paid for a fairly naff direct-drive Dual or Ariston from Richer Sounds 15 years ago but, for a little bit more, you could've got a Rega Planar 2 or Systemdek IIX900 (with Rega arm) back then. The Linn, Roksan and Michell designs that were so coveted when I was interested in this stuff are still basically the same, they just cost a whole lot more now.

I guess I meant that yr mid-to-late '00s popular music perhaps doesn't lend itself to high-end reproduction; overcompression, EQing for iPod, etc. The mid-'90s seemed like a good time for sound quality on the most widely-available consumer format - CD. I'm sure there are lots of great SACD, 5.1 and heavyweight-vinyl reissues around now, but the content on yr ordinary common-or-garden stereo CD was a little more hi-fi back then.

but the content on yr ordinary common-or-garden stereo CD was a little more hi-fi back then.

a LOT more.

I think in general there are more "good buys" in audiophile stuff now, where you can get nice speakers and amps from 350-450 price range

44. that music was better (or more HiFi!) way back when!