

My computer audio setup is better than yours - astrojams
http://kerr.io/just-blew-my-mind-with-this-amazing-audio-upgrade/

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neya

      >I was always under the impression that I had an audiophile worthy setup especially considering that I’ve spent upwards of $300 on headphones like Beats by Dre or Skull Candy.
    

This actually tells you how much of an 'Audiophile' he is. A true Audiophile
will actually see through the marketing crap out of these brands like Beats by
Dr.Dre et al, because they aren't really Audiophile grade. Skull Candy is
never really Audiophile grade. It's one of the shittiest manufacturer of
headphones, which have cheap chinese-designed and chinese-manufactured drivers
that distort at high volumes.

Most of these guys who claim themselves as Audiophiles are usually victims of
Psychological marketing - I tell you to close your eyes and listen to the
sounds you've never heard before and after you hear them by willfully paying
much attention to detail than you ever used to, I tell you it's because of the
headphones you're wearing right now and it's Audiophile-grade. Bang! My $500
headphone sold! (Bose is very good at this)

A note to my fellow HN'ers - When reading articles like these, please take
them with a grain of salt. In the world of audio, brands aren't important at
all, it's the product that matters. It's logical to say that product A by
Brand A is better than product B by Brand B, rather than simply assuming all
products by Brand A are great.

As a headphone collector (I own 40+ models), I can tell you that the popular
$450 Sennheiser HD650 Headphones he references are over-priced and you can get
a better (excellent, actually) headphones for less than half the price, from a
not-so-popular brand. The Pioneer SE-A-1000 (Google it out).

But, it is important to note that the world of Audio is incredibly subjective
and what one person likes may be the worst choice for another. Always _listen_
to something before buying them.

Usually the differences in Sound Quality between a $1500 headphone and a $500
headphone are marginally low (unlike what the author claims) and are not worth
the price difference, unless you are making a living out of Audio monitoring,
etc.

>you’ll hear things you’ve never heard before. It's like these new details
were added to the music and it just blows you away.

Stay away from such ambiguous claims. a)It's highly subjective, b)It's the
after-effect of Psychological marketing.

>I listen to Apple Lossless music files and watch a lot of movies on my
notebook and I wanted superb audio.

From the excerpt that the author provides, it is clearly evident that he is
just getting started (it's not a bad thing at all). But what is not right here
is _misleading_ people into believing something that is not true, especially
when you are just getting started yourself.

[Edit] The author is trying to flaunt that he listens to _only_ lossless
music, but fails to tell you how even Lossless music can suck at times. As
daeken and greyfade point out, It depends on the input content while the audio
was recorded. Simply by listening to lossless music you won't discover 'sounds
you've never heard before' as the author claims. You need to listen to good
versions of these lossless audio files.

Ok, enough bashing...as for a simple in-expensive set-up, yet incredibly clear
Audio, here's a combo for all you fellow HN'ers -

The Sony MDR V6 (Legendry Monitoring headphones, actually) + a Fiio E11
headphone amplifier.

It's inexpensive and it's amazing for its price. Try it out and let me know.

Thanks for reading.

~~~
daeken
> A 1500kbps FLAC will definitely sound multitude levels better than an
> 800kbps FLAC. The same is the case for any other lossless container. The
> bitrate matters.

This is completely, objectively false. The bitrate of a lossless file depends
100% on the compressibility of the file. By definition, if you take a piece of
data and pass it into a lossless encoder (FLAC, ALAC, ZIP, ...) and then pass
that to the respective decoder, you get out the original piece of data; that's
what lossless _means_.

The only time quality comes into play is when considering the input quality,
not the compression.

~~~
neya
Thanks, updated

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some1else
An interesting thing to note: Some audiophiles enjoy features that stray from
perfect reproduction of music. Music can feel/sound better on a sound-system
that introduces slight overdrive, saturation, warmth. Audiophiles will go for
tube amps and vinyls, because they subjectively sound better.

However, it is possible to get a more accurate reproduction of sound at a
lower price with an external audio interface, a pair of studio monitors and a
sub. Here's a bargain list:

    
    
      2 x Yamaha HS50M Speaker (2 x $200)
      1 x Yamaha HS10W Sub ($400)
      1 x MOTU MicroBook II Audio Interface ($250)
      4 x TRS/XLR Cable (4 x $20)
    

So to hear every detail in a track costs about $1200, less than the Sennheiser
headphones on their own. A computer audio setup for $3000 could be way better.

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ThJ
Musician and audio engineer here...

Skull Candy? Hahahaha! Get a pair of Audio Technica, Grado or AKG K-series
headphones and get back to me. After seeing all the snake oil that is sold as
audiophile equipment, I immediately stopped trusting that group of people.

If you want a pair of speakers that reproduce what the engineer heard in the
studio, get a pair of near-field monitors. They're much cheaper than
audiophile speakers. If you want to go over the top, get acoustic tiles for
your listening room or just use some heavy curtains and wall carpets. If
you're still not happy, get a room correction system and a measuring
microphone. As a bonus, this will correct your speakers too.

Some engineer will now tell me that I should not use electronic room
correction. I don't care. My mixes sound more balanced when I use it, even
after I turn off the correction.

------
mtr
$400 for a set of cables???

------
induscreep
This guy should come to the audiophile subreddit…will probably get torn apart
for his hardware choices (esp. the expensive cable)

~~~
CognitiveLens
Great advice - to anyone who feels that audiophiles tend to be unwelcoming,
/r/audiophile is a great great place, with lots of knowledgeable people eager
to share (although there are also plenty of people who don't really know what
they're talking about so it might take a little while to separate the signal
from the noise). There is almost never a point at which you need to pay more
than $100 for audio interconnects of almost any kind - for headphone cables,
even that would be a pretty big stretch. I'm also wary of any company that
even offers to sell 6 foot copper cables for more than $100 (such as the ALO
ones mentioned in the article).

Best advice in the article is avoid Beats audio and SkullCandy, and get an
external DAC.

~~~
induscreep
for Beats there's always /r/audiojerk lol

