[SP Wild]

You're missing my point altogether. 
 
Teenagers love their music.  Not their gear.  They love their music as much as any of us here.

 

[Timmyw]

That's what I thought you said, among other things and with respect, I disagree. 
 
I think if they loved their music more than their gear they wouldn't be buying Beats. They'd be buying something that sounded good with the same or much less money. I think they've been hoodwinked by marketing. Well, not just teenagers to be sure.
 
I also don't think Tyll's incorrect in what he's been saying about that particular company. I reckon he's spot on the money. Now that they own so much of the market share they have a responsibility to start bringing better sound quality to the table too .
 
Sorry for the confusion.
 
Actually since I have started thinking about this a lot more questions have arisen in my mind and I am becoming confused.

 

[SP Wild]

So you believe that if Dr. Dre released a headphone with boosted treble and light bass...with the same marketing effort, they would equally be as successful?
 
Marketing can only go so far.  I think Dr. Dre caught on to the fact that zero bass power equals zero sales for the future generation of music lovers.
 
The fact that your typical hi-fi magazine keeps pushing the utimate budget quality stereo system consists of an unheard of (to the general public) amplifier and tiny bookshelf speakers...because full spectrum frequency response is secondary to "air".
 
If you want to sell hi-fi to the up and coming music lovers and then point them to non- full range systems - tiny bookhelves - for budget reasons...their conclusion may well be, hi-fi is not for me...but these Dr. Dres has something typical budget audiophile does not have...even if it is too much.
 
Right, I followed their advice - these audophiles...and the only thing that sounded good on them was "audiophile grade" snob music, but what about my music?  Yes my music had never been clearer before a great novelty - funnily enough I lost interest in music altogether.  Ultimately I moved to home theatre with a cheap ass sub and ahhh my music finally, at least had low-end leverage. 
 
Then I bought the HD650...which was the best headphone at the time...because Senheisser.  Then it dawned on me...I actually practised to be a musician at one time in my life...I never connected Hi-Fi to real music until the HD650 came along in my life.
 
These up and comers are coming full circle and in fact, their preference is starting to match the audiophile preferences of the days of vinyl, tubes and horns...just think about that and think about MP3.

 

[Timmyw]

Yeah I do.
 
Actually I think MP3 sounds pretty good at 320kbps. But that's a bit besides the point, I understand what you're saying.
 
I think marketing can do a lot. I also think that Beats in particular were targeted at a very specific demographic. Certainly I am often bemused by the fact that vinyl never really went away, not to mention tubes. But in a real way it's an interesting comparison there. 
 
Would they have been as successful if they targeted an older audience with elegant design and excellent sound quality? I don't think so. The population is growing most everywhere and the youngins like their stuff and there's more of them. I have talked to a lot of people that own Beats and Skull Candy stuff and I have thought it sounded terrible. I tried to convince them to listen to my stuff, and you know what they would say? It looks stupid.
 
My Nephew is a good case in point here, he actually has some Beats. He loves them. He's 16 years old. He's not a dunce and I got him to listen to my gear and he admitted to me that he thought mine sounded amazing and so much better but he wouldn't be caught dead wearing my stuff, and he preferred his headphones for how they looked. I passed it off then, but really I should have thought about it more at the time.
 
I think they have a very specific look and feel, everything from the packaging to the materials used in construction to the cable and colours. They also have a very specific sound that to be honest I had never really thought of till now and us talking about this, and I started reading that article over at Innerfidelity and the reason for the article to begin with.
 
Perhaps that's what tubes and vinyl are really all about the look and feel of the gear as opposed to the sound coming out of them. It's certainly true that if someone likes the look of a piece of audio gear the chances are they will like how it sounds. Especially to newbies.
 
I suppose the idea in this thread is whether Audiophiles love gear more than music, and in a round about way certainly my mind is made up. We love music more than anything. If we didn't we would be satisfied with rubbish gear
 
Not confused any more!

 

[SP Wild]

And to cap it off...the audiophile snobs still did not learn the lesson of the Dr. Dre experiment.
 
Look at the sort of stuff pushed as high sound quality hi-res, DSD (bullcrap)...you think the future generation of music lovers don't already have a preference...you think they listen to that crap (figuratively speaking...I enjoy a tiny bit of it).
 
 
 
Ha! Imagine....2 pac...now in 24/96 hi resolution...you never heard tupac before now....that is going to raise a LOT of eyebrows, from people we never expected outside of audiophilia snobbery.
 
Hear your Old SKool (AKA Classic) hits like never before, now in full 24/96.  Heck...I threw ridiculous amounts of money in Hi-fi...this I would buy, of course.
 
OK, Dr Dre...s certain demopraphic...what is the other youth segments - it doesn't matter...they ALL want their bass and they want it now...regardless of youth demographic...technology made available bass to everyone.  Except for audiophilia...you wants bass...you need to sell your kidney.
 
Then Audeze comes along...and no matter how much you pay for speaker bass - it will never be more accurate than a headphone.

 

[Timmyw]

I guess there can be a lot of snobbery in Audio. I do see a lot of it at Head-Fi that's for certain, a lot of it unjustified.
 
I reckon it's true also that there is still a lot of snake oil floating around for people to waste their money on. 
 
It can certainly be taken too far.
 
I think music is recorded pretty badly these days. I mean there are definitely exceptions I'm not saying it all is. But a lot of it was just way too loud for instance, and not recorded with a lot of headroom. I kind of miss the old way of doing things a bit. If that was coupled with today's tech it would be wonderful, I'd pay for that too.

 

[SP Wild]

If music is recorded terribly now it is because the Hi-Fi industry lost the plot eons ago.
 
Hey, but the latest research shows things are normalising...they don't want compression in their music I think I saw a research.
 
Hey, 2 years ago the top 40 was unbereable with the novelty of "Facebook" party music...but I believe the Top 40 is starting to settle down now as Facebook loses its novelty.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Or maybe Head-Fi is doing something the Hi-Fi industry was supposed to.

 

[audioops]

  I have been thinking about this for a while. I am a bit conflicted.......

You're my hero for this post.

 

[Chris J]

Really?

Kind of ironic, isn't it?

 

[Sil3nce]

Who listens to music?
We inhale it

 

[icebear]

Let's pop some DSD

.

 

[Timmyw]

I'm off to inhale some DSD.
 
Ciao for now

 

[ralphp@optonline]

  Let's pop some DSD

.

 
 

  I'm off to inhale some DSD.
 
Ciao for now

 
DSD is just the new high end audio way of writing BS, as in whenever you see DSD being used just substitute BS for a much clearer understanding.

 

[Timmyw]

/Shrug. I have never heard it so I will save my judgement till then. I can't imagine it would make any difference whatsoever. I heard all sorts of things about it and I thought the attraction was that you had to record differently for the format. Turns out most of the stuff is recorded in PCM anyway and just converted.
 
I figure whatever makes you happy ^_^

 

[ralphp@optonline]

  /Shrug. I have never heard it so I will save my judgement till then. I can't imagine it would make any difference whatsoever. I heard all sorts of things about it and I thought the attraction was that you had to record differently for the format. Turns out most of the stuff is recorded in PCM anyway and just converted.
 
I figure whatever makes you happy ^_^

As you said "Turns out most of the stuff is recorded in PCM anyway and just converted." which makes DSD equal to BS.
 
Of course things are slightly different in two cases:
 
1) The original recording was made directly to DSD
 
or
 
2) The original recording was analog and the analog master was converted to DSD
 
Other then the these two very rare cases DSD=BS
 
Here's a link to a recent article from The Absolute Sound which explains much better than I can exactly why I'm saying DSD=BS. Notice that NOWHERE in the article does the author mention why DSD is in any way superior to PCM nor does he mention that only digital recordings made directly to DSD (and not to PCM) and analog recordings converted directly to DSD (not converted first to PCM and then the PCM files converted to DSD - which is way more common) will benefit from DSD (if there really is any benefit over high resolution PCM). And finally he also fails to mention whether or not any of the various sites listed as sources of DSD downloads can verify whether or not their DSD recordings are "pure" DSD as opposed to converted PCM files. Remember DSD=BS which equals money wasted.
 
http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/the-abcs-of-dsd-downloads/?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email-211