something's been bothering me about so called "music lovers"

[redshifter]

my brother in law is a musician (drummer) and a music lover. i noticed last time i visited he had a really cheap portable cdp and the STOCK HEADPHONES that came with them. i tried to turn him on to the sony ex70's at least, but i'm not sure i got through to him. how can you claim to be a music lover and yet mangle your music with crap headphones?? it's like claiming to love pizza but only eating domino's.

at my work we develop music software (windows media player). the whole lab is stocked with *gasp* sony cd60 and LABTEC phones. how are these guys supposed to know if their codecs are even working if they're using such crappy equipment?

i guess this makes me a headphone snob, but i just don't understand why people who should (need to) care about quality just don't.

/rant

[Redwoood]

it's like claiming to love pizza but only eating domino's

Hehe, I like that.

I guess it has to do with how much time, effort and money you are willing to spend on this musical experience. Or maybe it's just 'good enough'.
Maybe his priorities are just different (speakers?) or maybe he doesn't know better. If you gave him a decent pair of headphones and he would still prefer the crappy ones - well, that's his decision and I am not the one to question it.

at my work we develop music software (windows media player). the whole lab is stocked with *gasp* sony cd60 and LABTEC phones. how are these guys supposed to know if their codecs are even working if they're using such crappy equipment?

There you go. Now it all makes sense. Instead of spending some of its billions on good headphones Microsoft hires another graphics designer and another six marketing guys.
No wonder the codecs sound bad but we have thousands of skins to choose from....


Sorry, couldn't resist the 'bash Microsoft' temptation.
I personally use W2k and think it's a good OS, but it has some issues that really piss me off sometimes...

Bye


Redwoood

[redshifter]

Sorry, couldn't resist the 'bash Microsoft' temptation.

i'd join you but bill has implanted the chip in my head and is monitoring right now. happy thoughts. think happy thoughts.

No wonder the codecs sound bad but we have thousands of skins to choose from....

i have to agree. the decision has been made to focus on features and not audio quality. .wma isn't really any worse than .mp3, and they take up less space, but i just don't like lossy compression schemes.

i hope i'm not giving away a million dollar idea here, but how many of you folks would be interested in audiophile grade software crossfeed and dsp solutions? a bit of software you could download for your mp3 player that simulates a good cross feed circuit (and i'm not talking about SRS WOW), and allows some of the sound tweaks that we love. like skins we could build our own dsp skins for specific headphones & players. tube amp simulator for your mp3 player anyone??

[Neruda]

how can you claim to be a music lover and yet mangle your music with crap headphones?? it's like claiming to love pizza but only eating domino's.

no, I don't think that's true. There are toasters out there that cost $400...just because you have a $20 toaster does that mean you're mangling your toast? some people just don't care, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. I loved music just as much before I got my Grados or AKG's as I do now; nowadays I just know that I'm hearing more than I once was. Whether or not the difference is worth the money is up to you to decide.

Besides, I don't know many musicians that can afford expensive headphones

[redshifter]

reproducing accurate sound is very different from toasting bread.

he can afford the best, he's also a software developer.

it just seems to me he's missing so much. and $33 for some ex70 cans isn't going to break the bank. dang, he could afford the cd3000 if wanted too. i know i'm nuts for caring, but i can't help it. perhaps it's better he doesn't care. if he did he would be one of us.


one of us.... one of us.... one of us...

[mbriant]

the whole lab is stocked with *gasp* sony cd60 and LABTEC phones.

Unfortunately for us, this makes sense. They're creating a mass market product, so they use similar quality phones as the masses would use.

Because of our involvement with Head-Fi, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we, and our interest level in headphones and audio reproduction, are the small minority.

Appreciating music and concerning oneself about the quality of the reproduction of music can be exclusive of one another.

When the first underground FM station started in Toronto in the late 60's, I did most of my portable listening on a mono, Sony radio with a 3" speaker.....and loved every horribly reproduced note of it.

[artmusic247]

I understand where you're coming from redshifter but being a "music lover" is being some that loves music. Being an audiophile is being into accurate sound reproduction and sometimes the music comes second. If the recording doesn't have the most prestine sound to make their system sound the best it could why bother. I for one believe that the music is more important. I would rather listen to Stravinsky on my car AM radio than to boring commercial s**t on a $20,000 system any day. I think some people get so caught up in gear that they forget what the purpose of that gear is.
Remember, good music will touch your soul, good equipment will only touch your wallet.

[Neruda]

Originally posted by redshifter
reproducing accurate sound is very different from toasting bread.

Is it? sometimes I'm not so sure!

Sometimes I wonder about what we'd be like if were all sitting around talking about different electric razors. It's not too hard to imagine...

[coolvij]

electric razors!? I don't HAVE facial hair yet!


Heheh....let's stick with cans, k?

[redshifter]

i still say the quality of sound reproduction determines to some extent the enjoyment of the music. i had this same argument over on audioreview.com about home theater. someone said i wasn't a real movie lover because i wouldn't watch 2001: a space odyssey on a crappy pan & scan vhs version. film and music are all about esthetics, and that even applies to grainy films like pi or grainy music like "master of puppets" or punk, but especially to classical or bands like yes or frank zappa. i have also noticed on better headphones you can hear more lyrics and instruments.

case in point here in the media lab. the current version of media player does not have error correction for ripping cds. i just ripped a couple of cds and noticed on my ex70 headphones there are a lot of sample errors (pops). you can't here these errors on labtec or cd60 cans. the old version had error correction. this is a serious bug (to me), as it degrades the sound quality of wma. i will of course have to reproduce it.

[Onix]

Originally posted by coolvij
electric razors!? I don't HAVE facial hair yet!


Heheh....let's stick with cans, k?

How old are you anyway? I thougth Neruda was the youngest here.

[Neruda]

nah, he's 13. so is eric343, actually. I'm 16...

[coolvij]

I thought eric343 was 14...he is in the next grade up....not that it matters....

[templeboy]

A close friend of mine is an international award winning violin maker. He has extremely acute sense of hearing and deep knowledge about classical music. Must be so since his craftmanship earns him 5-digit for each violin he makes and there is still 4 months waiting period. Whenever not sure about some charateristics of a particular gear, I ask him to come and make final judgement.

On the other hand, his own gears are a set of incredibly crappy Fisher acquired from Sears on sale! In addition, every time I drop by his place, the set is always making extrememly bright sound for him. His logic? No matter how much you spend, it can't beat the real thing. Why bother?

Since musicians and instrument makers have access much more frequently to the real thing (he goes to concerts 2-3 times a week for free) than us ordinary dudes, I'm convinced by this logic.

[mbriant]

His logic? No matter how much you spend, it can't beat the real thing. Why bother?

I've been an audiophile since I was a kid, buying the best equipment I could afford at the time ( which admittedly, back then, wasn't very good) and taking extreme care with every LP I purchased.

At that time, I had a musician friend ( albiet, a guitar player...not a violin maker) who was quite talented and played in a band but who listened to records on a cheap portable, mono record player and who's album collection was strewn on the floor in a disorderly pile, not even put away in their respective album covers.

The fact that someone who was so talented musically but who didn't seem to care at all about music reproduction, really bothered and dumbfounded me.

I realize now that while my passion was listening to recorded music, his passion was only for playing music. It was simply a matter of priorities for both of us.

Personally, still being an audiophile myself, I think your friend's logic is flawed. No, we can't perfectly reproduce live music, but some systems can come quite close to sounding real while other systems don't come anywhere near sounding real. By your friend's "why bother" logic, he might as well listen to music from his computer's 3" internal speaker if he's giving up on audio reproduction because it "can't beat the real thing".

IMO, there's still merit in striving for perfection, even if it isn't 100% attainable.

I can still enjoy music for it's own sake and played through practically anything, but given a choice, I prefer to strive for "near realism".