Discussion Of What Is "High End"

[19lexicon78]

high-end,
38 cm/s 1/4 reel-tape.
time to mass-produce those.
let's say, 20 euro an album

[gregorio]

Originally Posted by Happy Camper

OK G,

We are all nerve ragged with some of the current events in our community. Glad to have you here and straighten up or else.

Any master should be the best that studio and equipment can provide. If we want to hear all our music loud, we'd use the volume knob.

I've bought progressively worse quality formats in my time. Vinyl is still the reference format for sound quality. Since, we've had tape, compact disc, DVD, digital file. The technology should have given us better quality. Especially since each format required us to pay full fare for the same material.

The attitude of the recording industry has put it on the verge of extinction. The quality of format has lagged behind technologies. If the industry provided us with what's capable there would still be a market. Sell us sterile, compressed, saturated, talentless crap and when the audiophile calls it out, we're the crazy uncles.

Please give this crackpot some understanding.

I don't think you're a crackpot at all, you make some very good points. Your first point about loudness: Perhaps not many in the audiophile world realise but this problem with loudness (over compression and limiting) is one that was originally raised by recording studios and engineers themselves almost 20 years ago. At the end of the day a recording studio is at the mercy of the client (usually a band and/or a record company). You can explain to the client about loudness but the response is usually 'yes but I want it louder than band x'.

Regarding formats; technically, CD quality 16bit/44.1k is perfectly adequate. 24bit is a waste of time and space for the consumer. Unfortunately, the actual quality of recording is often sub-standard. Over the last 15 years or so, the market has fragmented and the internet and computer file exchange has affected record companies income, a lower income means lower investment in new products. For this reason a lot of recordings are now made partially or wholly in project studios and are sometimes only marginally better than demo quality. The top class studios are still putting out world class recordings but these big commercial studios have been hit hard over the last decade and there are far fewer than there once were. Of course genre does play a part in recording quality, if the product is aimed at teenagers the quality tends to be much lower than say an orchestral recording.

G

[Happy Camper]

Thank you G. Your posts about digital recording is very informative in the computer forum. Keep up the good work and thank you for your input.

I think you are an audiophile too but your profession has put a bad taste in your mouth when saying it. Now Patrick on the other hand......

[nickfrye]

High end is expensive. But most expensive things are expensive for some reasons..

[naves]

"High End" there shouldn't be such expression...because you know what...there is always space for something better, for an improvement...

[Kawai_man]

I enjoy buying high end at low end prices

[tomelex]

i would say high end is a performance issue.

to me, units that give the best performance are high end.

we learn as we go in this hobby. and as we mature our ears go decidedly non high end.

the problem, of course, is do we use measurements, blind listening tests, sighted listening tests, visual artistry, or just what gets the most advertising?

perhaps a combination of the above, as others have suggested, as separate sub headings would be appropriate.

cheers!

[olblueyez]

Who cares if you stuff is considered high-end?

[komi]

Well, "High End" to me is something with REALLY good specs !

..also, is pricey - usualy overpriced:

Steinway Lyngdorf

$148,000 Speakers

Burmester Audiosysteme

$50,000 CD Player

... is just way OFF ...


Am gonna stick on low end - quality and prices LoL

[nlaudio]

That stuff is just toys for the very wealthy. Once you buy a Ferrari and a '71 Barracuda, then what?

There has been a lot of pressure on manufacturers to make something MORE expensive, if you can believe that.

[nlaudio]

Actually, some of the best recordings are done by near-hobbyists. Like the Mapleshade and Chesky stuff. It's very cheap and easy to make good recordings -- at least ones that are uncompressed with adequate headroom. Unfortunately, except in classical the music quality and the recording quality tend to be inversely correlated.

[Frihed89]

High-end. It's relative to reality. Sample the total cost of head-fiers systems. The distribution is probably log-normal with a long high-end tail and the median is less than the mean. Take the top 10% of the normalized distribution. That's a shot at high-end.

But in the end, it's about how much people enjoy music. A fundamental tenant of economic theory is that it is impossible to compare the utility of non-identical individuals and therefore irrelevant to economics and comparisons of people's enjoyment of the music that comes out of low-medium-high-end systems.

[mrarroyo]

^ Dawg on! that is one fancy way of indicating we really do not know nor should we try to put a value on it. Great post.

[Donald North]

THIS is high end:


There is easily $500k of Audio Note Japan amplification in this photo and we haven't even seen the source components or speakers or headphones

[harmonix]

Originally Posted by Donald North

THIS is high end:


There is easily $500k of Audio Note Japan amplification in this photo and we haven't even seen the source components or speakers or headphones

Holy smoke that's alot of audio note equipment there.