- Audiophilia Nervosa:
Audiophilia nervosa describes the anxiety resulting from the never-ending quest to obtain the ultimate performance from one's stereo system by means of employing state-of-the-art components, cables, and the use of certain "tweaks."
Although the goal is supposedly to achieve maximum appreciation of the music, those afflicted with this condition are merely obsessed with their electronics.
Todd had spent well over $100,000 in speakers, monoblock amplifiers, fiber optic cables, Shakti stones, pre-amolifiers, and other equipment and tweaks. And yet he still wasn't convinced that Diana Krall's voice sounded "silky" enough.
For those unaware, I do sound for a living. For those aware, there is a point of diminishing returns in pursuit of audio quality that is hit long before you leave Best Buy. Not only have I experienced a double-blind A/B test between $80 Monster Cables and a pair of RCAs soldered to coat hangers, I've seen the data. If you think your stereo is good enough, congratulations! It is! If you think it isn't, the solution is to spend the lesser of (A) what makes you comfortable to spend (B) what your significant other is comfortable with you spending and then enjoy your rippin' stereo.
So why, given the tirade above, would I venture forth...
...with two good buddies...
...for the second time...
...and pay $15 admission each...
...for the purpose of evaluating bleeding-edge hi-fi gear?
SCHADENFREUDE, BITCH. Pure, unbridled mockery. Fuckin' best entertainment value in Orange County, I tell you what. Strap in 'cuz this shit's a hoot.
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In pursuit of statistically-insignificant search terms, The Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society has named their convention/trade show/circlejerk T.H.E. Show (which stands for "The Home Entertainment" thereby starting you off auspiciously with not only a nested acronym, but a teeth-grindingly vague masthead). It's worth noting that the "Audio Society" is not at all the same thing as the Audio Engineering Society, which I have been a member of, and which generally professes a belief in and endorsement of physics. But hey. You know what you're looking for. You're looking for sweaty 60-year-old fat men in Hawaiian shirts seriously contemplating the purchase of $13k speaker cables. Well come on down to Irvine, bitch, where there is no greater concentration of speakers that look like Daleks in North America. Let's begin!
Not shown in this picture is the five rows of chairs filled with sweaty men. They weren't stinky yet because we were still on the ground floor (the show takes about half the floors of the 14-floor Irvine Somethingorother Hotel and there aren't enough elevators to make that work, so a whole bunch of out-of-shape old dudes end up climbing 28 flights of stairs unexpectedly which makes the top floor pretty ripe). Also not shown is the audio source. It's almost always a computer running iTunes. RIGHT? I suppose it's running FLAC or WAV or some shit and of course there's a USB DAC worth eleven gajillion dollars (to someone) and in between there's an eleven hundred dollar audiophile USB cable which, by the way, was a door prize that I didn't win because I forgot because I was too busy making fun on the sly.
Because this shit has oodles of front to back layering, baby. It's a $1500 USB cable, by the way.
It's interesting because these guys spend a shit-ton on their cables:
which, often, are bigger around than a garden hose... but neck down to the exact same 12-gage spade lug connectors you would buy at Autozone if you cared enough to do more than just twist the ends together on your 30-cents-a-foot lamp cord. Yet they buy these... things and those amplifiers? The ones on the floor? Sitting there like the goddamn Rosetta Stone? They put out like 35W.
This is because in the land of audio purity, you have to find the buzziest, most distortion-friendly amplification source you can. So everybody runs tubes. Tubes that are a minuscule percentage as efficient as a modern Class D (or even Class A) amplifier. Which leads to the chicken-egg question of audiophilia:
Do they listen to nothing but smooth jazz because it's all their gear can take? Or do they buy the gear because all they listen to is smooth jazz?
Here's a picture of a dalek speaker.
Well, here's a picture of two dalek speakers with a dude walking in front of them. Google tells me they are MBL 101s and that they cost $70k a pair. I know this because I google image searched "high end omnidirectional audiophile loudspeaker". Try it. It's fucking hilarious. More Daleks than a Dr. Who convention. BUT HOW DO THEY SOUND?!??!??!? You ask. No, you don't, because you don't really care either. Well, here's the funny thing. They sound kind of tinny and kind of like shit. Probably because they are a violation of most known electroacoustic principles and they're powered by these shit little vacuum tube monoblock amps soldered together in some German dude's basement. And while last year these crazy fucking things were being driven by a Kronos Turntable ($80k - before you buy the tone arm - look it up)
This year:
Yup. Twelve thousand dollars worth of 1/4" reel-to-reel tape. You need to click that link, by the way. The web design is something else. But I digress - the awesome thing is that someone had a James Taylor song, in some form, and then recorded it on fucking tape to make it sound more magically better. Obviously, the portability, random access and general ease of use went way the fuck up, too. Let's head upstairs, shall we?
OH FUCK MAYBE NOT. I don't remember what these people were selling. We were in there long enough to notice they had wine, our retinas were being scarred, and that the whole place smelled like your uncle's armpit. Walking in was sort of like stumbling into a swingers' club before the clothes came off. With more lasers. It was super-sketchy. But that happens a lot.
You see, the act of visiting T.H.E.Show is effectively the act of bumbling through two hundred closed hotel doors to see how weird the occupants are and how bad they smell. The fact that the doors are held open with washcloths wrapped in duct tape (which heavily reminds you of the sock on the door knob from your dorm years), that the lights are all dim, and that the music all sounds like Sade but not quite as good does not put you in the frame of mind to critically evaluate some fuckin' $20k dalek powered by surplus soviet vacuum tubes. It puts you in a frame of mind to evaluate every room as a bizarre cross of Eyes Wide Shut and Honey Boo Boo. And then sometimes there are lasers. Lots of lasers.
I should also mention that it's not good enough to have incredibly expensive speaker cables between your incredibly expensive speakers and your incredibly expensive amplifiers and components. You also need incredibly expensive power cables. Behold, Voltron's tapeworm:
It's the Verastarr Grand Illusion Statement, beyotch. Yes. Leather. Most of them had carbon fiber. When we asked someone what, exactly, is a poor audiophile supposed to do about the fact that his outlets come from Home Depot? we were shown audiophile-grade wall plugs. They had white LEDs in them. They were awesome. We did not ask about price. And to be fair, I asked no questions at this entire show. It's like the porn-slappers in Vegas - if you let them touch you, you have to take a brochure. And all of these guys are sweaty, wear hawaiian shirts and have halitosis. They'll also say things like "that's not distortion, you just flattened the speaker" when you turn their Dave Brubeck up to 4. That's what friends are for. To turn Dave Brubeck up to 4 and ask questions that lead to great quotes like "because it has carbon nanoparticles that absorb the acoustic vibrations of the electrical energy." In case you wanted to know why you'd pay $12k for a power cable.
Awesome things I didn't take pictures of: the prolapsed anus speaker company.
The brochure is a trip. Fuckin' speakers weigh 600kg each and are recommended to be driven with 18 watts. They're also $240k a pair.
Hey, how 'bout a portable tube headphone amp?
We listened to these and looked at each other. They didn't just sound bad, they sounded bad. They're $1800 each, unless you want the gold one, in which case it's an extra $100. Bonus points because one of them was powered by a Sony walkman-thing, and another was powered by an I-shit-you-not Zune. They're made by a company called "Woo." Yes. "Woo."
Although to be honest, this year wasn't quite as spectacular as last year. A lot of the dalek speakers didn't show up. There were legitimate companies like Pioneer and Onkyo, who appear to have showed up because they've learned that millenial twitchfucks will pay way too much for a pocket preamp for their headphones but figured out too late that the only millenials at this show were the ones dragged by their parents (the manufacturers of prolapsed anus speakers). JBL Synthesis showed up, and basically laid waste to everyone; most audiophile companies serve the "I have more dollars than sense but a feverish desire to get my hands dirty with this shit" crowd while JBL Synthesis is the company you call when your client says "I want the most expensive sound system I can buy, also it has to sound good." I would say the Synthesis rig was probably the 2nd or 3rd best sound system I've ever heard, it cost $120k per side, and didn't look like much. But then, that's what you buy (or, in my case, spec) JBL Synthesis for - silencing dissent. The people who buy it don't want metal flake sphincters in their living room. And most disappointingly, there were at least five girls there. When you remove the daughters of three vendors, that leaves two women who came of their own volition... and I saw one that was actually hawt. She had a badge like the rest of us. I'm not sure what she was doing there.
Nonetheless, it was a hoot. We jammed before close, hit my buddy's parents' house in Laguna and got plastered on scotch. If you ever find yourself around Newport Beach in June, and can put up with the smell of 5,000 rich republicans with no sense of scale when it comes to stereo systems, I wholeheartedly recommend you get your fill of
This post..... makes me so happy. Thanks for the write up.. and so weird that I was in Laguna like... a day before you. For a short time while at university, I worked for these guys. Don't get me wrong, they make a helluva nice sounding speaker, and I learned a bunch while working there... but they suffer from some serious crazy. Because, you know, if you're going to spend $250,000 on a pair of speakers, you have to spend at least as much on a pair of monoblocks, and like $30k on cables. They did all kinds of things to convince themselves their speakers are worth the price of admission. They'd build the cabinets out of weird things like Corian. They'd get high end drivers and then glue an extra magnet on the back. When we were finished building and testing the crossovers, we'd fill them in with "potting solution" which was some kind of hardening resin/epoxy (you know - to keep the spies out). I love some good audio... but my 1993 Pioneer and Infinity reference speakers using radioshack copper are JUST fine.
When in doubt, make it proprietary. I've used potting compound once in my life - we had some electronics on a controller on one of our electric cars that whined. But I've seen potting compounds several times in my life - by tiny electronics manufacturers who think they're the shit.
Jesus. The schadenfreude is real. $13,000 for speaker cables?! HA! I let out an uncontrollable, little-kid ewwwwww at this.Walking in was sort of like stumbling into a swingers' club before the clothes came off.
But... didn't you see the Celtic-themed engraved knobs on the $12k reel-to-reel player? Those have got to be... at least... what, $39 each? That's value, right there. And, man, I have been the recipient of several of your more epic writing adventures - I still have The Rise of the Machines from what, 10 years ago? - and I do love your writing. It's like McSweeney's and The Best Page In The Universe went and found Hunter S Thompson's stash and went marauding with a megaphone and a film crew in a suburban shopping mall. Love it.
To be honest, I only skimmed the crazy reel to reel page. I could have done an entire rant on how stupid it is, and it would be substantially closer to the truth than the Verge's rant on how awesome it is: Said the person who has never heard of wow and flutter, who has never had to align a tape deck, and certainly has never had to bake a session that's been busy flaking in climate-controlled storage for ten years... Most importantly, though, I seriously undershot the price. Their base model (for a rebuilt Tascam from the '90s) is $12k, but they go all the way up to $24k and sitting next to it in the picture is the $4k power supply. So. BMW 3 series? Or reel to reel tape deck? Keep in mind, if you want to play anything you have to buy shit from the guys that took over the Ampex factory. At $127 a reel. Because SOUND.Then there’s the dicey issue of playback. With turntables, all sorts of mechanical foibles — rumble, skips, speed stability, inner groove distortion, et cetera — can further degrade the signal. In contrast, R2R is an exercise in simplicity. The only moving part at the point of signal retrieval is the tape, which travels in a straight line across a stationary playback head. Efficiency equals fidelity.
Maybe the most amazing part of this post is the fact that somebody out there still has a Zune. Let alone the fact that it's somebody at an audio convention. Somebody could probably make a pretty good blog just going to things like this where it's all oh my god what the fuck is all this and writing about them.Bonus points because one of them was powered by a Sony walkman-thing, and another was powered by an I-shit-you-not Zune.
Not saying much... Great write up though. Wish I had heard about it earlier, totally sounds worth $15.Fuckin' best entertainment value in Orange County
I assume in this world it's all single ended triodes using Western Electric (vintage not reissue) 300B tubes? Maybe there are a few oddball others mixed in (but still Western Electric, never Chinese). My home hifi uses tubes. I don't pretend I couldn't go buy a modern receiver for half the price and sound as good with zero headaches for a decade or two. But I enjoy it for what it is. It to me is the hifi equivalent of driving a classic car. The portable tube headphone amp is just dumb.So everybody runs tubes
I honestly have no idea. Probably not entirely, at these prices.
And those prices are for the reissue tubes, I think, rather than the ones made in the 1940s. But in a place where people buy $13k speaker cable, the same 6L6 used by a college kid in his guitar amp isn't going to cut it. In the tube world, pentodes and push-pull outputs fall lower on the hierarchy than triodes and single ended. Is it a valid argument? No idea. I think my stereo sounds great. While I'm a little curious to listen to some of the esoteric stuff, I'm happy with what I have, even with a pentode in the preamp (gasp).
About the MBLs: why do you think the concept is stupid? I haven't heard them, but it surprises me a bit that you considered them bad, that's probably the first time I've heard someone dissing them. But my point is, omnidirective speakers sound like a decent concept (although ideally for a better room), and the ones I've heard, some entry-level Duevels, sounded pretty great - not too detailed, lacking bass, but with an amazing soundstage better than anything I've heard at that price.
Because speakers of any kind are never in the middle of a room. The "amazing soundstage" comes from splashing the HF all over the wall behind them and drenching you in early reflections and diffusion - effectively, you're adding a little bit of reverb, except it isn't a controlled reverb it's "whatever your room sounds like". The Beolab 5s, at least, shoot for a 180 degree soundfield rather than 360.
But they're not splashing just high frequency everywhere, they're omnidirectional at all frequencies, it's not like the rest of the spectrum doesn't get reflected at all. Yes, obviously speakers with narrower constant directivity will sound more detailed and less affected by room interaction overall, but this is a legitimate concept coming from the idea that many natural sources of sound are omnidirectional as well. It's not bullshit, it's just a different type of compromise for stereo reproduction. After hearing the Duevels I'd love to have a pair of decent omnis as secondary speakers (together with some Geddes-like speakers or Synergy horns) if I had the space.
Sorry. Nearly all speakers are omnidirectional at low frequencies. Directionality below 400 Hz or so is really tricky and unrewarding, and with a wavelength of four feet or more low frequency ends up close-coupling most indoor spaces anyway. Directionality is desirable at high frequencies because what we encounter as lobing at low frequencies we experience as phasing at high... and the fewer point reflections you have to deal with, the less likely your soundfield is to be annihilated by bullshit bouncing off the back wall. There's nothing "legitimate" about the concept - it's better sound through marketing, primarily due to B&O's desire to make non-speaker-looking speakers. The audiophile tweakers just took it well past the point of nonsense, same as the ridiculous cables, same as the green magic markers, same as all the rest. You can want this nonsense, but you can't tell me not to call nonsense nonsense.
I'm not as uneducated about speakers as you think I am. Even though early reflections are undesirable, constant directivity over most of the spectrum (down to at least 700 Hz) is more important for how natural the speakers sound than the angle at which they are designed to radiate (if the directivity varies), although narrow constant directivity speakers obviously behave better in small/untreated rooms. Any speakers with beaming treble will sound sound like shit unless your room is acoustically dead, in which case anything you put in there will sound like shit. You always get reflections, the point is to a) reduce the very early ones without killing the later ones b) make the reflections have similar frequency response as the direct sound, because in that case your brain will identify them as natural sources of sound in your room, making the stereo image sound real. This is the point of modern speakers with controlled directivity, speakers with beaming treble have been here for decades. Omnidirectional speakers do b) naturally and can get reasonably close to a) if you have a big room with decent treatment.
You realize that your statement, effectively, is that omnidirectional speakers can sound as good as directional speakers if you negate all the effects of their omnidirectionality? Yeah - backscatter and such is no problem if you have adequate absorption. It's also no problem if you have no backscatter. And even with two perfect radiators in freespace, the cancellation between two identical sources is bad for fidelity. From an acoustical standpoint, everything beyond closed-basket headphones is a compromise; early reflections of any kind have a negative impact on fidelity and clarity but sometimes you luck out. So. You can buy a conventional loudspeaker and stand in front of it and enjoy it... or you can buy an omnidirectional loudspeaker and hope that it doesn't sound too bad. Ultimately it will never reproduce the sound to your ears as well as a conventional loudspeaker. Wanna hear it with more reverb? More comb filtering? Less definition? Sure. Bounce that shit off the wall. This is why, for a brief shining moment, the industry was trying to convince everyone into dipole rear surrounds: for 5.1, splashing the surround channels around make them sound more "enveloping" because they make things harder to localize. Of course, you were supposed to turn the dipole off when listening to surround music because of all the detail you lost. But then that extra two channels in the bitstream finally annoyed everyone enough into doing 7.1 so now 7.1 systems are even more common than 5.1 and if you want diffuse, you just send the same signal (ish) to both surrounds. It's not that you're uneducated. It's that you've been lied to.
You realize that your statement, effectively, is that omnidirectional speakers can sound as good as directional speakers if you negate all the effects of their omnidirectionality? But I didn't say that. I actually said that in an acoustically dead room everything sounds shit. Just like in a completely empty room everything sounds like shit. You need to place differently radiating speakers differently and use different room treatment (not just absorbtion, but also difusion) for the best sound, how isn't that obvious? Yes, narrower constant directivity speakers will almost always sound better, but omnis will in many cases sound better than any traditional non-CD speakers. Well this is just silly. A closed acoustical system of such small size affected by the shape and size of everyones head and ear is almost impossible to do right, and the imaging of large headphones has many compromises, only different ones than speakers do. Maybe in-ear monitors playing binaural recordings could be closer, at least in the second aspect. But you seem to be saying that something like putting speakers in an anechoic chamber to completely remove any interactions would be the ideal system, and that's be wrong. So on one end we have your experience and on the other end we have my experience and research of people like Siegfried Linkwitz or Floyd Toole, one of the few sane people in the industry. What do you expect me to say?
From an acoustical standpoint, everything beyond closed-basket headphones is a compromise
It's not that you're uneducated. It's that you've been lied to.
Have you ever listened to decent monitors in an acoustically dead room? The monitors sound great. The room sounds like ass but you're not listening to the room, you're listening to music. Music, when mixed, is mixed in a room with minimal acoustic coloration. Blackbird studio C minimal? No. But minimal. The argument you're trying to make is "different speakers need different treatments" but with omnidirectional speakers, the treatment is tantamount while with directional speakers, the treatment is bonus. After all, they don't splash crap all over the walls on purpose. All of your arguments come down to that - "in many cases sound better" is happy hand-wavey subjective observation that has nothing to do with acoustics. Headphones close-couple. Everything with a volume under a cubic inch is close-coupled below 8,000 Hz. Size and shape has fuckall to do with it; anything below mouse farts energizes the entire volume. I am saying that from an acoustic standpoint - as in, from a repeatable, testable, empirical standpoint - speakers in an anechoic chamber will reproduce audio better than speakers not in an anechoic chamber. That's why speakers are tested in anechoic chambers. That's why speakers are measured in anechoic chambers. You're right - speakers are not enjoyed in anechoic chambers but the fact remains: a speaker that deliberately sprays the back wall should specify how far in both directions it should be from the walls, what those walls should be made out of, and where you should be standing (in two dimensions) in order to properly enjoy the speakers. A directional loudspeaker you need only listen to. Amar Bose was hella more famous than Linkwitz or Toole. He made a lot more money. He was also a fucking idiot who built everything out of 2 1/4" paper cones. That doesn't make paper cones genius. Go ahead and appeal to authority - I'll appeal to every other designer that didn't make trashcans. Look - there was a time I patched my stereo system through a Quadraverb II. It made things nice'n'roomy. Right now I've got an Eclipse DSP in my car that allows me to play bullshit stadium/club/church/whatever games with my music. But I'm not fooling myself about what I'm doing - I'm coloring the shit out of the sound. Works sometimes. Not so much other times. Pretty goddamn geeky. Also, a substantially more controlled, more purist, more repeatable and more defensible method of adding "early reflections" in order to improve the sound.
Isn't psychoacoustics a thing? Wikipedia says yes. I'll believe you if you say "no", of course, but I'd be a little surprised to learn "in many cases sound better" wasn't a thing that had been studied empirically."in many cases sound better" is happy hand-wavey subjective observation that has nothing to do with acoustics.
To be honest, I don't know about any research directly comparing omnis, constant directivity speakers with 2pi/imited dispersion and non-CD speakers. But yes, modern research in psychoacoustics says that constant directivity is one of the most important factors in the sound being percieved as real and natural, and some of the (well-known and rational) researchers mention omnis as one of the solutions, although they obviously mention that they're not very suitable for small untreated rooms. But to claim that omnis go against everything we know about sound reproduction is uneducated and together with assuming various types of bias just because I don't agree with him borderline delusional.
Psychoacoustics is very much a thing, it's just not this thing. - turning the delay fill down 10dB so that you don't "hear" it at all but instead perceive the main cluster as louder? Psychoacoustics. - Hearing under 12ms difference from ear-to-ear as stereo localization, 12-18ms as comb filtering and 18-up ms as delay? Psychoacoustics. - Perceiving louder volume as better sound? Psychoacoustics. - Hearing Sheperd tones as an endlessly ascending scale? Psychoacoustics. Psychoacoustics is the ear-brain transfer function. It is important. Hearing is not only integrative, it's lossy. There's a lot of processing involved in hearing. The cochlea is actually a digital vibration array; encoding discrete integers as a continuous spectrum is all psychoacoustics. Psychoacoustics is also cultural and gender-based; the Japanese tend towards "bright" speakers because theirs is a language of vowels so they don't hear consonants as well, thus they emphasize the high end more than Americans or Europeans, for example. But this isn't psychoacoustics. This is a combination of: - The Ikea Effect, whereby consumers place a higher value on objects they partially created - In-group Bias, whereby members of the audiophile community favor products created within the audiophile community - Choice-supportive bias, wherein those thousand dollar cables must sound good, after all you paid for them - Anchoring, whereby those thousand dollar cables are a bargain because you could have paid $10,000 - cognitive dissonance. When this first appeared on the Internet, hundreds of people at the show commented on the video that it sounded awesome, there must be something wrong with the recording, what the fuck, etc. Fact of the matter is, if you're there jamming to Eddie and Crew for however many hundreds of dollars you paid, you aren't going to wrap your head around the fact that it sounds like a Merzbow cover. Just remember. That's not distortion. It's the speaker flattening.
Yes, I have, and I found the sound unnatural like I said. I actually do most of my listening on in a near-field ambiophonics configuration because it makes sense in my acoustically bad room and it sounds great, I'm planning to build a pair of Synergy horns for the same reason, but I recognize that it is a compromise.
Like you said, measuring and listening are two different things. Acoustically dead rooms may make sense in a studio, but the overwhelming majority of people do not prefer them at home, this has been repeatedly proven (but you reminded me of this, which was afaik written by Toole, and may apply to you ). The quality of stereo reproduction is not just about hearing the most details but also about the illusion of space and that is better achieved with controlled room interaction.
What you're saying about headphones, again, is silly, and simplifies the reality extremely. I have built a few headphone prototypes and getting them sound right is much more difficult than building decent speakers, which, to a certain point, has been solved.
I have no idea what you're trying to say about me mentioning Linkwitz and Toole. Are you arguing that agreeing with you, a completely unknown person on the internet, whose experience is completely different than mine, makes more sense than agreeing with people whose life-long research (that everyone can read about) says something that is mostly consistent with my own experience? I don't see how Bose is relevant here, are you saying that what Toole and Linkwitz designed sounds like shit as well, or do you think they're a part of the audiophile woo community?
(also, I'd argue that Bose is kinda genious because he was obviously in it to make money, not to push audiophile standards, and boy did he succeed. And there's nothing inherently bad about using paper as a base material for cones, there's a reason it's still used in most pro drivers.)
Here's our fundamental disagreement: You're arguing, objectively, that I am objectively wrong... based on subjective information. I'm counter-arguing (you started this) that you are objectively wrong... based on objective information. When I present you with objective arguments, you respond with subjective points. When I point out that your arguments are subjective, you double down on the subjectivity as if it were objective. Look - I will never convince you that spraying the back wall in the interest of "better sound" is a bad idea. You have subjectively decided that it's brilliant, and are immune to objective argument. What I'm saying about headphones isn't silly, it's fluid mechanics. Yes - measuring and listening are two different things. Measuring is objective. Listening is subjective. I NEVER said people like listening in acoustically dead rooms - I said that the music sounds great in acoustically dead rooms. The rooms sound fucking spooky. Then you throw some link from diyaudio.com at me after I already threw Linkwitz back in your face. I'll repeat: the preponderance of speakers ever made are directional. The ones that aren't are weird-ass audiophile bullshit. That's not in my opinion. That's physics. But that's an objective statement against a subjective opinion. I will never convince you that MBLs sound like shit. I don't want to. You are welcome to believe they sound like angels farting and it's no skin off my nose. SUBJECTIVELY? They sounded about as good as EVID 6's which, in my subjective opinion, are about the worst outdoor speaker I've ever had the misfortune of listening to. And I put about 90 Toa H-4s in omnidirectional arrays in the Seattle Tacoma International Airport.
You can't seriously think that "it sounds like shit" and "it splashes high frequency all over the back wall" are objective arguments about sound quality while discounting anything I say as subjective without actually responding, that's bizzare. Judging by your reasoning about room interactions and some hypotetical closed headphones that don't exist, you obviously know nothing about much research in psychoacoustics (have you at least read about constant directivity?), or the reality of home speaker design.
(and I'm saying that as someone who despises audiophile bullshit, doesn't own omni speakers or any expensive hifi really and is not planning to buy any)
Man, this sounds like going to the International Society of Bassists convention, or like spending too much time on the TalkBass forums edit: one of my favourite responses - https://www.talkbass.com/threads/resting-bass-on-side.399371/#post-5205729
I haven't spent a ton of time on talkbass in the last 6 months, but their DB side is pretty good, and generally more mature than the electric side. Of course there are also a bunch of cranky old men on there too, so...
Stop lol...stop lol you're killing me hahaha this was a fun read! I sometimes claim to be an audiophile. Usually becaus I enjoy songs from nearly every genre I can think of off hand. But, Wal-Mart headphones make me feel like I'm in another world of music and it's as easy as $15. ...granted I do have 2 cheap subs a decent amp for when I want to feel my music as I drive lol
I always figured you'd hear this issuing out from every speaker at an event like this: shudders Recommend me a good 2.1 system, daddy-o.
No, no. More pussilanimous. By far the ballsiest thing we heard all day was this: My buddy has some speakers from Zu. They were factory seconds sold on eBay. Zu was playing Rush... but it was OLD fuckin' rush. Two years ago we managed to find a bored DJ who had snuck in and was spinning Sasha. It was kind of amazing. It also proved that on those tracks with, like, actual bass and shit? The audiophile stuff shreds itself to pieces and lies there tattered on the floor. Gimme a price and a physical envelope for your speakers and I'll see what I can do.
I remember the day that Tommy Boy records called because they had blown the third set of woofers in the high end pair of speakers they bought from us. The lead engineer (who I actually liked quite a bit) was a bit frustrated.The audiophile stuff shreds itself to pieces and lies there tattered on the floor.
From "Tips For Getting Great Sound From Omen Bookshelf" Woah. Why? What's happening? This strikes me as particularly wine-like.Place your new Omens Bookshelf speakers on the shelf or tabletop, connect your loudspeaker cables, turn on your amplifier and push play. Easy. Also know that Omen Bookshelf loudspeaker are sensitive to the cold so if you have received, moved or stored it in cold temperatures it will take a week or so to again sound their best.
That could actually be pretty awesome. (Writeup of the linked show, because the video is long.)It also proved that on those tracks with, like, actual bass and shit? The audiophile stuff shreds itself to pieces and lies there tattered on the floor.
For god's sake, Steely Dan is the soundtrack to a flaccid penis, I refuse to pursue this rabbit hole further down. I like Take Five though. Those Zu's are really pretty, but even the preloved prices are telling me I'm already in over my head. Roughly a grand and (I'm assuming physical envelope means describe my living room), 20x15, wood floors, 9ft ceiling, two windows, white walls, and couches that need an update.
1) 110V? Or are you asking me about receiver/amp setup, cause just assume I'm starting from scratch. 2) I used to play in a noise band that had 3 8x12s, two 1000W JBLs and my 2x12 Jazz Chorus, so it's not so much "where's my upper limit" but "I think i can hear it now". Aesthetically I like Rigs of Doom so try me.
1) Was asking about an amp. Okay. If Stereo is your happy place, Outlaw RR2150 2) Fuck 2.1. Make it real. Big fuckin' KLHs Keep your eye out. The fact that they were sold at Costco makes most audiophile idiots ignore them, but the fact that Henry Kloss knew his shit and didn't waste a lot of money helps. Keep your eye out on Craigslist.
My man. The receiver will be me biting the bullet a bit, so I may get a holdover for the time being, but now I have goals.
I once had a stereo-file type buddy tell me "as a general rule of thumb, spend as much on speakers as you spend on your amp." I'm not sure how true it is... but it didn't sound like bad advice. That outlaw looks sexy. The KLHs.... I've seen/heard mixed reviews for them. But if you're "endorsing" them - they can't be all bad. I do love me some craigslist hi-fi shopping... funny enough, recently my amp has started to.... not stop sometimes. I'l power it off, and ten minutes, walk by and it's on again. The poor girl is 23 years old and has been beat up for a long time... it might be time.receivers will just... stop sometimes.
So reality check: I do my serious listening on a set of Genelec 1029/7060. I bought them all new, I bought them at cost, and that was like $2500 more than ten years ago. I do my casual listening on three Infinity bookshelf speakers and a pair of ancient Altec Lansing surrounds. I think the Infinitys were like $150 each. You know what? They're as good as the room. I endorse KLH because (1) they were never expensive (2) they were probably the last company to let go of the adage "there's no substitute for cubic inches." KLH are big. KLH are cheap. Big and cheap has much better low end response than small and cheap. This whole "2.1" bullshit is because nobody makes big, cheap speakers anymore. If money were no object, I'd probably go Martin Logan. They can be had not too expensively on the used market. Honestly, if money were no object I'd have Genelec 1039s but those you pretty much start with the speaker and build the room around it. Barring that, a pair of Klipsch corner horns would be pretty dope, too... but I do far more watching than listening and that means I need a center channel and an unmatched center channel (which every center channel you've ever seen is one of) fucking sucks which means I physically cannot listen to 5.1 with corner horns because a corner horn that isn't in a corner isn't a corner horn. I'm firmly of the opinion that 90% of speakers out there are pretty much better than most people need. As far as receivers: There's no shortage of cheap, effective stuff in the land of Class D. My typical advice is to go to the store and buy the one with the remote that makes the most sense. I used to endorse Harman Kardon until I had one die on me after 13 months. I used to endorse Denon/Marantz until I, along with everyone else, ended up unable to listen to surround out of a Chromecast for some stupid reason (Apple TV and PS3 are fine). The HK, prior to death, would just start ramping up the volume, 1dB per second, until it blew up speakers. It was one of the least friendly failure modes I've ever encountered.