for me, it’s someone who has superior knowledge and experience with audio. It is someone of whom I can ask advice and from whom I can learn. Like with everything, there are different degrees.
More Consensus That Streaming Is An Inferior Format & Not High End?
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for me, it’s someone who has superior knowledge and experience with audio. It is someone of whom I can ask advice and from whom I can learn. Like with everything, there are different degrees.
Most Audiophiles think high end Audio is very simple game but the truth is High End is not easy and not all audiophiles are equal in this game.
Expert Audiophiles do not spread wrong information and you can learn from expert audiophiles.
I told i do not read stereophile/TAS/6moon and ...
Please check the Stereophile Review of TAD CR1 by John Atkinson. John atkinson wrote TAD CR1 is forward and this is 100% wrong .
It seems John Atkinson does not know TAD needs match power amplifier to shine, John Atkinson does not know TAD is sensitive to AC quality , John Atkinson does not know For proper audio review he should change his system .
Peter
The problem is many audiophiles think they know and very few think they should learn .
I have learned from Jim Smith
I have learned from Romy the Cat
I have leaned from Kevin (Living Voice)
I have learned from Roy Gregory
I have learned from David (ddk)
Very true Amir. I have met and learned from three of those five. I now realize I know less than I thought I knew did five years ago. It is a humbling hobby. Those I have met who know the most, have comprehensive knowledge. They know everything from the proper gauge of the grounding wire from panel to rod all the way to which tools and record to use for setting up a cartridge and why. You can ask them about their opinions and they have confidence to answer you clearly. And their knowledge comes from direct experience over years.
Gotcha makes sense. I believe I know quite a few expert audiophiles. Probably too many to be honest.
Sorry but are you saying you don't read these mags because you don't agree with an article in them? For example the article on TAD CR1.
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well if you put it that way, they are very rare and unusual.
True enough That goes both ways In any event I have not represented it as fact. You did note my IMO. i have made my case in other posts I am still awaiting an explanation of how what is a fixed and dated format for the most part ca be better than the improved version capable of incorporating all the progress of digital. Perhaps you could take a stab at it.
I have spend over 20,000 hours in high end audio since 2000 and now I am not more than a student in this hobby.
I always thanks those expert audiophiles and never forget what I learned from them.
I always regard expert audiophiles .
One-word answer: Noise.
Blackmorec has written a number of expansive posts on this thread about the extensive measures that he thinks are necessary to reduce noise in streaming, anyone interested can look them up.
As for the "dated" format of Redbook CD, my diverse experiences have convinced me that most audiophiles probably do not realize just how much musical information there is on a physical CD, down to the tiniest nuances of sound and musicians' performance. The amount of information encoded is stunning, just stunning.
The progress of digital on the recording side of course has carried over onto the Redbook CD as well, which appears to be a much better container format than a recording and processing format. But then we are talking mostly about the distribution of carefully made and mastered classical and jazz recordings on CD; unfortunately the industry standards when it comes to making and mastering pop/rock recordings are often not very high.
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and all you ever tell me to do is 'play pink floyd dark side of the moon, Marvin (or Alexa)'.
Seriously, if I want to hear lift music, I'll get in a lift ...
for me, an expert audiophile reviewer is who can hear well, communicate effectively, and is consistent about his descriptions and sonic priorities. some of those attributes about music i do need to agree with, as far as the emotional musical connection part. but tastes can be different than mine as long as he is consistent, so i understand how that relates to my tastes and make sense of his views. his tastes and viewpoints might evolve as mine have, but he would need to be clear about that so i can adjust my view of his reviews.
it's not necessary for me to like the same sound.
OTOH if his gear is not essentially neutral and somewhat full range (my personal viewpoint on that), then that might limit his usefulness to me for some types of reviews.
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Exactly. That’s why CD (and vinyl) are stable investments where there is a gigantic amount of recordings available (in the many millions), whereas there is, relatively speaking, an infinitesimal number of high resolution recordings available. Take the much ballyhooed SACD discs. 20 odd years after its launch, you have maybe a few thousand SACDs released, many probably out of print now. Most eminently forgettable. High resolution streaming? Again, I’d be surprised if the numbers are much larger. Take the vast recorded repertoire of world music across the seven continents. How much of world music from Africa, India, South America, Australia etc. is in high resolution? I’m guessing 0.00001%, and that’s an overestimate. If you are a true music lover, and not an audiophile, you shouldn’t care two hoots about high res. And rightly so.
Audiophiles love to croon over a small handful of high res recordings. As Art Dudley acerbically put it in one of his reviews, if he heard one more Krall album played at an audio show, his skin would begin to Krall! Speak to the man (or woman) in the street. They’re music lovers, happy with their MP3 streaming via Spotify. To them, CD is high res! And they don‘t want it or don’t really care. If you are primarily listening to music in the car, or while jogging or at the gym, as 99% of the planet does, do you care about high res? Of course you don’t.
For what’s it’s worth, as someone who owns over 1000 SACDs, and has listened to many thousand high res recordings on Roon/Qobuz on an absolutely state of the art hi fi, if there’s a real difference between CD rendered on a top class transport like the CEC TL0 and an SACD or 24-bit 192 kHZ streaming album, I have yet to hear it. Individual differences in recordings vastly vastly dwarf any perceived differences in format. A simple example: Telarc released the complete Mozart symphonies conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, which were recorded in a castle in Prague using a very simple 2 or 3-channel microphone with tube electronics, mostly by the great Jack Renner and by the equally great Tony Faulkner. For my money, the sheer beauty of these 16-bit recordings sound vastly better than many of the ghastly multimiked studio recordings that get released on SACD.
There is absolutely ZERO correlation between bit depth and recording quality in my 35+ years experience. Many of the greatest recordings in my 10,000+ record collection are humble 16-bit recordings done well by great recording engineers (or vinyl albums, many in glorious mono). Some of the worst recordings are poorly recorded high res streaming albums that sound ridiculously compressed to my ears. My spouse, no audiophile, but has far better hearing, says streaming often sounds terribly compressed. As logic would indicate. The files to get to you from thousands of miles away. You think Netflix 4K streaming is of the same quality as a 4K Blu ray in your house on a top quality Oppo into a front projector? Ha!
But, leaving all that aside, I’m thrilled to have streaming available, allowing me to sample composers and music I haven’t heard. Just listening to a sublime chamber album by Ferdinand Ries, a pupil of Beethoven. Recorded in — you guessed right — humble 16-bit. Sounds great to my ears.
Do yourself a favor. Stop fretting over bit depth. Or recording frequency. Enjoy music in any format. Life’s too short. We live on this planet for a nanosecond compared to the eternity of time. Ok, back to enjoying Ries…sipping some lovely Petit Verdot wine from a winery in Sonoma.
1- The subject of Expert audiophile vs non-expert audiophile is far from the taste subject.
I can describe it in a new topic if you want
2- if you look for good CD you can buy it from Japan and sometimes the old/used CD's on ebay/discog are better than new CD's
I can describe it in a new topic if you want
2- if you look for good CD you can buy it from Japan and sometimes the old/used CD's on ebay/discog are better than new CD's
Comparing an Audiophile to an Expert is not what this thread is about.
We have been over this debate before. The circular arguments lead nowhere and is a waste of everyone's time.
G.o.W. made a good post. Re-read that before responding.
Tom
We have been over this debate before. The circular arguments lead nowhere and is a waste of everyone's time.
G.o.W. made a good post. Re-read that before responding.
Tom
Let me put it bluntly.
if CD or SACD was the only digital option, I would go back to back to vinyl.
2 What ever quality optical reader you can q afford a major streaming service can afford a better one.
For me this issue dead. T.O.D. 3:38 a.m, E.S.T.
if CD or SACD was the only digital option, I would go back to back to vinyl.
2 What ever quality optical reader you can q afford a major streaming service can afford a better one.
For me this issue dead. T.O.D. 3:38 a.m, E.S.T.
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