Why we need audiophiles

[woodyear99]

A very interesting read, the man audio setup probably rivals any pc/gaming hardware we got in terms of price.....

http://i.gizmodo.com/5213042/why-we-need-audiophiles

This is Michael Fremer. He's listening to "Avalon" by Roxy Music on his $350,000 stereo system. It sounds excellent. He's a bit crazy, but if you love music, you need him.

Fremer, if you have yet to decipher this, is an audiophile of the highest calibre. Literally millions of dollars of premium audio equipment have passed through his listening room under review for Stereophile magazine, and he's been obsessing about vinyl since he was four years old, memorizing the labels of his parents' 78s. A man who, when digital recording and reproduction methods began to surface culminating in the compact disc's takeover as the predominant music format, became a figurehead for the vinyl superiority movement, staunchly advocating its greater tonal resolution over a CD's 44.1 kHz max. (See this MTV clip for Fremer in action, circa 1993.)

In short, a species of human I had never known prior to hanging out with him in his New Jersey basement listening room last week, and a species, frankly, I was skeptical of in just about every possible way.

Upon getting picked up by Fremer at the train station near his home, my fears immediately began to feel all too real. It was but a minute or two into our car ride from the station that a rant on Walt Mossberg's inferior review of the Airport Express, Apple's music-streaming mini-router that Fremer and I both enjoy in our home systems, begins in earnest:

"If he's not going to tell people how it sounds, then what's the fng point? Don't step into my world, Walt!" Multiple emails of complaint to poor Walt are alluded to. I am definitely thinking "uh oh" at this point.

But then, settled into the lone leather chaise in Fremer's basement audio temple, nestled right in the sweetspot of his $65,000 Wilson MAXX3 speakers, I hear the needle drop on Air's "Run" from Talkie Walkie. It's a song I've never heard (kind of fell off Air after overusing Moon Safari considerably), but one that I'm now listening to all the time. Because, with all honesty, I have never heard anything like that song played on that stereo system at that moment. Ever.

The song ends, and after emerging from an opiate-like haze, I hear a hiss. And yes, while the record was playing, I heard a pop, a crackle or two. Isn't this as high-end an audiophile system as they come? Shouldn't the sound be of such purity so as to sustain life in lieu of water for days on end?

I mention this slight—very slight, but noticeable—hiss to Fremer, and it's probably a frequency that 50 plus years of rocking have eliminated from his spectrum. He doesn't even care. This is when I start to understand.

After hearing I'm a Bowie fan, Fremer drops into his near limitless stacks and spins a pressing of "Heroes" with part of the title track's chorus in German. I'm giggling with pleasure at the frankly obscene level of detail I hear (Ich! Ich werde König!), but of course, I'm hearing the pops and crackles that a 30+ year-old record is likely to have. Shouldn't a $350,000 stereo system be completely free of such impurities?

"It's like when you go to the symphony, and the old men are coughing—same thing," Fremer says. Necessary impurities. Reminders of being in the real world.

We play my solid 256kbps VBR MP3 of "Heroes" off my iPod; it sounds like shit. Free of pops and crackles, yes, but completely lifeless, flat in every way. This is the detail that matters: Audiophiles are basically synesthesiacs. They "see" music in three-dimensional visual space. You close your eyes in Fremer's chair, and you can perceive a detailed 3D matrix of sound, with each element occupying its own special space in the air. It's crazy and I've never experienced anything like it.

It is within this 3D space where the audiophile lives and operates, and spends all his money. Fremer himself is the first to admit that it would only take $3,000 to $5,000 to build a system that will be deeply satisfying to most music fans. On a scale of 1 to 100 completely of my own devising, let's put this system at around 85. Now, imagine that you've tasted 85, and you want to go higher; you want Bowie's cries of kissing by the wall to inhabit the most perfect point in your system's matrix, and Bryan Ferry's back-up fly girls on "Avalon" to flank him just beautifully. That, friends, is where you might end up paying hundreds of thousands.

Our little scale, unfortunately, is logarithmic, in that going from zero to 85 doesn't take a lot of effort or money, but going from 98.6 to 99.1 by swapping out a $2,600 AC power cable for a $4,000 one becomes a justifiable end. We did exactly that, and I strained to hear any difference at all (more impressions of our test will follow later in the week), but to Fremer, the difference was abundantly clear—not necessarily better with the more expensive cable, but different, a warmer, fuller sound, as Fremer described it.


The point is, people like Fremer can not only hear the difference, they crave it. I walked into his listening room expecting to discern absolutely zero difference in the comparison tests we had planned, swapping out speaker cables that cost as much as a meal at the best restaurant in New York for another set that cost as much as a year of undergrad at Harvard. I actually did hear a tiny difference. But to people like Fremer, that tiny difference becomes a mind-boggling disparity, and it's worth paying for if it means a few decimal points closer to perfection. Unfortunately, the logarithmic curve is asymptotic: There is no ceiling. Fremer will be the first to admit that this type of dragon chasing is not and should not be for everyone.

This obsession with tiny differences explains Fremer's fevered defense of analog music sources over digital. Two anecdotes from the past are particularly illuminative:

The first is his memories of rushing to the record store in 1979 to pick up Ry Cooder's Bop ‘Til You Drop, the first mainstream rock release to be recorded using an all-digital process, which at the time was being lauded as the next big thing. But upon getting it home and dropping it into his high-end system, the results were not good:

"It made me feel horrible!" he remembers. Even though it was played on vinyl, Fremer could already detect some missing elements in the 3D audiophile space that just weren't there. "And it's not like I was a digiphobe at this point—I had no reason to be. I was as excited as anyone to hear this."

The second was the first public playing of a compact disc, to a room full of expectant audiophiles a few years later. While they breathlessly applauded the first track played from the then refrigerator-sized device, Fremer was horrified. He heard the same flatness and lack of detail in the 3D audio world he loved to inhabit. "I felt…weird. My hands were shaking. All I could think, then, was WE'RE FED!" A few days later, a new, custom-printed bumper sticker was slapped on Fremer's car: "COMPACT DISCS SUCK."

And thus began a long battle, and thankfully, it seems to have ended happily. Both with the advent of SACDs—which Fremer is a great fan of, proving that he's not hung up on nostalgia—and the greater acceptance and continued life of vinyl, Fremer is a happy man these days. "I'm on top of the world right now. I set out to save vinyl, and we did it."

Because the thing is, Fremer loves music first and foremost. The audiophile I had feared was one who cares far more about the overpriced gadgetry than the actual music. This is not who I ended up meeting. This man listens to music and makes sure it was recorded with the best fidelity, that the intents of the artist have been preserved. And thank God he does, because we certainly don't.

I listen to most of my music on downloaded, compressed, lossy MP3s, and so do you. But even if you can't hear the sound quality, we need someone like Fremer up on that wall, a preservationist of archival recordings and an ombudsman for new recording techniques, because one day you'll want to hear it, and it'll be there because of audiophiles.

These guardians in and outside of the recording industry ensure that, whether it's in a movie theater tomorrow or in your own home listening room on some far off future date, you'll be able always get back to a recording that expresses every frequency, every ounce of warmth and life, of the original performance. Because if you can hear, it, if you ever get to live in that 3D space, you'll be glad Fremer helped defend it.

[Spazosaurus]

Profanity edited out....

[Crixx_Creww]

while i cannot in any way condone 350 000 dollars on a mf stereo set !!!!
and i dont think the digital process is a bad one, the early days of mp3s were designed for downloads over 56k dialup so the compression was crazy sick and the file size was tiny
so we accepted 3meg mp3s 4 megs was like !!!!!!!
 but now, we dont have to suffer like that anymore, but still the 3 to 4 meg file size is LARGELY persistent, i think we can afford to go 10 standard and like 20 megs max now, and not just use mp3s. use mp4s and what other crazy loss less formats are out there. we have the space and bw for it now.
350 000 is  too much seriously.
infact, they said 5000 for a "base" system. Thats even more ludacrous actually.
I frequently laff at my sound friends who spend all this time and energy and money on those sound board do hickeys and expensive headfones and ridiculously priced jacks *shakes head*
sound card+ pc+ speakers+ head set
And you couldnt tell the difference between the two
so sad

[woodyear99]

while i cannot in any way condone 350 000 dollars on a mf stereo set !!!!
and i dont think the digital process is a bad one, the early days of mp3s were designed for downloads over 56k dialup so the compression was crazy sick and the file size was tiny
so we accepted 3meg mp3s 4 megs was like !!!!!!!
 but now, we dont have to suffer like that anymore, but still the 3 to 4 meg file size is LARGELY persistent, i think we can afford to go 10 standard and like 20 megs max now, and not just use mp3s. use mp4s and what other crazy loss less formats are out there. we have the space and bw for it now.
350 000 is  too much seriously.
infact, they said 5000 for a "base" system. Thats even more ludacrous actually.
I frequently laff at my sound friends who spend all this time and energy and money on those sound board do hickeys and expensive headfones and ridiculously priced jacks *shakes head*
sound card+ pc+ speakers+ head set
And you couldnt tell the difference between the two
so sad

Ah dunno boy these audiophiles love dey sound. I mean it is a ridiculous amount of money to spend but I would love to hear how that sounds. Actually I didn't even know equipment that expensive existed. Is true doh how come higher bitrate/larger mp3 files aren't floating around? I guess the current sizes are sufficient for the mainstream.

[Crixx_Creww]

no its not that its sufficient, its cause it was a trend that was never bucked
also true that the general population of mp3 downloading noobs have no idea what the difference in bitrate and compression would do to the quality of files.
I mean, an mp3 downloads in seconds now and thats the fad, download an mp3 in 10 seconds!!! zomg!! sounds like ish but zomg!! 10 seconds!! i wouldnt mind downloading a song in 2 minutes if it was such vibrantly superior quality and with the advent of blu ray burners, and most of us listen to music on pcs and laptops or mp3 players with billion dollar booty sized hds, then i dont see the reason to stick to small mp3s.

Infact, iam pledging from today to only look for epic quality mp3s or 4s or whatever format digital audio noobs listen too while sipping on some chardonnay and laffing at poor people.

[woodyear99]

ROFL yeah I think there are groups online that do music in lossless formats....

We doin HD Video so is about time we do HD audio yes....though many mp3 players would become useless with those formats hehe

[Philosophical45]

well alot of the mp3's that are ripped via scene release usually are ripped using Lame 1.32 @  VBR. They are first ripped to raw wave format then trans coded. The files spread around from the 0day dump, to the personal FTP clients, then to all the mainstream p2p clients; torrents, limewire etc. Only way you're gonna find high quality rips for the majority of the music you listen to is 1) you find a group that rips them in a lossless codec 2) you buy them from a source that sells in a lossless codec 3) you buy the albums your self and rip them in a lossless codec. I'm not saying it's impossible, but unless you have find a strict source, quality cannot be promised even if it seems to be under a high quality codec because sometimes these files are tampered after they are ripped and falsely encoded to a presumably higher bitrate fooling downloaders.

[woodyear99]

The Difference Between $100 and $100,000 Speakers

http://i.gizmodo.com/5214792/giz-explains-the-difference-between-100--and-100000-speakers

A speaker system can cost as little as $35. Or as much as $350,000. As a normal person, you probably have just one question about speakers that cost as much a Ferrari: What. The. Hell.

How Speakers Work
Especially when you consider just how simple the overall mechanism behind a standard speaker is: It moves air. Essentially, what happens in a speaker—loudspeaker, to be technical—is that the alternating current from an amplifier runs to the speaker and through the voice coil (which is just, wait for it, a coil of wire) turning the coil into an electromagnet. That, in turns, creates a magnetic field between it and the permanent magnet in the driver. As the current alternates between positive and negative, the magnets are attracted and repulsed, moving the cone back and forth. Voila, it emits the soothing sounds of Bach or Korn. (Driver diagram from Wikipedia's unusually exceptional loudspeaker article.)

But that's probably not quite what you think of when you hear "speaker." You're probably thinking of a box with a circle thing and maybe a hole in it. That's actually a loudspeaker system, and it actually has more than one kind of speaker inside of it, called drivers. That's because the driver tuned to deliver high frequencies—a tweeter—ain't so good at delivering bass, which is why you need a woofer or subwoofer (low and lower). And then you've got mid-range speakers—for mid-range sounds—in higher-end systems. Your average GENERIC SPEAKER COMPANY set skips this middleman. So generally two or more drivers are stuffed in a box or cabinet, called an enclosure.

Lovely, but that doesn't explain what separates these $107,000 YG Acoustics Anat Reference II speakers from the $50 Logitech Z-2300s on my desk—which are even THX certified. So, we enlisted some help: Cnet's Audiophiliac Steve Guttenberg, who lives and breathes speakers ranging from the sensible to the ludicrous, and Paul DiComo and Matt Lyons, speaker guys who came from Polk and are now at Definitive Audio.

If you read our profile of Audiophile Maximo Michael Fremer "Why We Need Audiophiles," it probably won't surprise that when initially asked simply, "What the difference between ten dollar speakers and ten thousand dollar speakers?" the Definitive guys' initial answer was, "Well, it ought to be that they sound better." Even Steve told us, "You can't apply a Consumer Reports kind of index to something that's as subjective as audio quality."

No, but seriously.

The Goal of a Loudspeaker
A speaker's ultimate goal is "to sound like reality"—the elusive dragon that every audiophile chases—so on a broad, not-very-useful level, how close it comes to matching that reality is the difference between good and bad, expensive and cheap speakers. To be slightly more technical, the "spec" is clarity: The lower the distortion of the original sound it recreates, the better the speaker. In fact, basically every other spec, every confusing number you read on the side of a box is actually totally meaningless, according to both Steve and the Definitive guys. Steve singles out watts as "one of the more useless specifications ever created." If you have to look for a number when buying speakers, Steve said one that's "kind of useful" is sensitivity/efficiency, which would be something like 90dB @ 1 watt, which relates how loud a speaker will play at a given power level.

Three Characteristics
But when pressed, there are a few qualities Paul and Matt from Definitive singled out in amazing speakers—what they call the big three:
• More dynamic range, or simply the ability to play louder without sounding like trash as you crank the volume. With good speakers, you want to keep cranking it up, like accelerating a fast car.
• Better bass. That doesn't mean louder, "but better." It's more melodic, and not muddy—you can actually hear individual notes, an upright acoustic bass being plucked.
• "A very natural timbre." Timbre is the "tone color" or how natural the sound is—if you played the voice of someone you know on a speaker with excellent timbre, it would sound exactly like them. Or if two different instruments play the same note, you'd be able to tell them apart very easily and cleanly.

Beyond that, what audiophiles are looking for—which Mahoney alludes to in the audiophile profile—is a speaker's ability to create an image, the picture. That is, its ability to create a sense of three-dimensional sound. The defining problem of designing speakers, say the guys from Definitive, is that "physics is dogmatic." So every speaker is built around a set of compromises.

Size
To put that in some concrete—rather than seemingly religious—terms, you can't have a small speaker that sounds good. So one defining quality of six-figure speakers is that they are large. They have bigger woofers and tweeters. More surface area means better sound. There are also simply more drivers—every driver you add is like when you add another string to a guitar, to create a better-nuanced sound. So, for instance, a $300 speaker from a "quality manufacturer" you'll get a 5 1/4-inch woofer and a 1-inch tweeter. A $3000 pair of speakers might have two 5 1/4 mid-range drivers and then a 10-inch woofer.

Build Quality
Build quality is the other thing. A "dead box," or an enclosure that doesn't create any sounds of its own—since that's distortion—is key and something that costs a lot of money. You just want sound from the drivers themselves. The quality of the woofer and tweeter themselves, obviously, comes into play—their ability to handle more power, since that's what translates into volume.

At the extreme end, Steve says, they can just handle more power without breaking—as the copper wire inside heats up, it can deform or melt, and the driver gets messed up. Pricey speakers don't do that. In terms of exotic materials or construction, Steve mentioned ribbon tweeters, which are only in the highest-end speaker systems—they're "literally a piece of aluminum foil that's suspended between magnets that vibrates back and forth" producing excellent clarity. Better speakers also have intricate dividing networks to make sure the right signals go to the right place—they get more complicated as the price goes up.

Dollar Figures
So how much do you have to spend to get a good system in the eyes (ears?) of an audiophile? Definitive recommends $1000 for a home-theater component setup. (In other words, don't buy a home theater in a box.) You can also get a pretty decent pair of "neutral, natural sounding" speakers for $300—they "won't knock your ass" and won't be great as some things, but they'll be alright. There's no magic one-size-fits-all speaker system, however. It depends on the room and the situation. (If your couch is against a wall, skip the 7.1 surround, says Steve.) Heavier speakers tend to sound better than lighter ones, though that's not an absolute.

But what's the upper limit? Well, there isn't any. Paul from Definitive said he heard these $65,000 Krell Modulari Duo last month and "was mezmerized." It's like wine to oenophiles, Paul said. As Steve puts it most simply: "To people who are into it, it's worth it."

[Nephilim]

what bit rate y'all normally down?

i aint really into the technical side but i get board so fast wrt music that if it wasn't for last.fm constantly feeding me some bands i woulda die.

i chooses FLAC where i can finds it.

[RustyPlumber]

audiophile setup ftw

slowly getting there

[TriniXaeno]

got me some sennheiser headphones the other day for my cardio work outs. Got Damn best headphones ever used.

Didn't cost an arm and a leg either, it was from their value line. Bright green and designed for running/cross training. (translation, fits snug in your ear regardless if you're jumping around or sprinting)

Grateful for whoever audiophile was behind that one.

[RustyPlumber]

^yeah,sennhesier's are really good,had their HD201 and HD 205 headphones,best headphones i ever heard for that price range!

[TriniXaeno]

Same here, but when it comes to sports, you don't really have a choice but to go in ear.

As far as that goes, these are the best in-ear I've used in terms of comfort and secure fit as well.

[woodyear99]

got me some sennheiser headphones the other day for my cardio work outs. Got Damn best headphones ever used.

Didn't cost an arm and a leg either, it was from their value line. Bright green and designed for running/cross training. (translation, fits snug in your ear regardless if you're jumping around or sprinting)

Grateful for whoever audiophile was behind that one.

Interesting I was looking at these on Amazon the other day and was concerned as someone said the pressure is a lil too much when wearing these..

[RustyPlumber]

I own a Sennheiser HD-201 as well. However the bass and overall sound qulaity from my JBL Reference 410 headphones beats back that in quality, loudness and bass output.

well obviously the JBL would sound better,your comparing a headphones that cost $24 usd to a pair that cost $130USD

[RustyPlumber]

^seems like all the time for me,lol.

[woodyear99]

I find their pricing reasonable, well for items I buy anyway...always check other sites before purchasing though.