Epilogue!   The tips on my Etys broke 2 years ago, so I schlepped out the Livewires to see what I could make of them. After some poking around in Audacity, I realized that one of the channels of the Livewires was wired out of phase. So I cut one of the earphones off, resoldered it with the...

For your entertainment.   Shame about how rarely these simple tests seem to get run these days.

When I participated in the last HA 128kbps test, I was able to reliably distinguish all of the encodes, sometimes finding several different artifacts in the same file. But they all tended to be *quite* subtle. I listened at a fairly elevated volume and it was pretty likely I would not have...

NPR did a really good story about him a few years ago, on the anniversary of his death. Jaco Pastorius: 20 Years Later : NPR I would avoid Weather Report if you want to listen to Jaco. Too much noodling from other people. Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher) is a very accomplished fretless bass...

It's extremely good. There have always been very bombastic comparisons to classical music with Ae and similar music - I'm particularly reminded of some raving fan before a Squarepusher show comparing Jenkinson to Beethoven in absolute seriousness - but "known(1)" is almost getting into piano...

Quote: Originally Posted by leeperry well, we both haven't compared many releases anyway...that magnetic hard rock thingie is clipped to death on CD and LP, and not in that video game? Right - but for very specific reasons - the Rock Band release effectively mixes all the...

Um... you're not consuming enough mind-altering substances while listening? :P One would need to break down your collection in terms of genre, whether your LPs are vintage (pre-CD) or not, etc before making any sort of educated guess. But if you listen to digital recordings of LPs and find...

Quote: Originally Posted by eucariote Sure people propose new ideas that are not immediately accepted, require revisions of old ideas, or are eventually proven wrong. But after enough replications, tests to rule out alternative explanations, etc. issues really do get settled. And...

The results of the ABX test are not questionable, by either side. X out of 16 is X out of 16. That's a physical description of reality, like snapping a photograph or something. The interpretation of the those facts - and whether or not the facts reflect deeper insights about audibility and...

"Objective truth" does not exist in this discussion. There are observations, and then there are the truths which are derived from those observations. The former are accepted by everybody; the later are entirely in the eye of the beholder.

This is really a matter of two conflicting paradigms - and I mean paradigm in the correct meaning. One of the key features of such a conflict is that both paradigms, to each of their adherents, can adequately explain everything that we observe and measure. Thus, rational argument is useless...

Quote: Originally Posted by leeperry we're mostly talking about facts, not theory...and CD's -more often than not- get the loudness war treatment, when vinyls simply don't. That is quite demonstrably false. The existence of the Death Magnetic LPs - either edition - are a clear...

There's a vast difference between what works to win a logical argument like this, and what works to actually convince people to question their beliefs. For most people, the most effective way to challenge their beliefs about cables is to invite them to DBT their own claims - not to read the...

The implications of an Audio Critic-like approach are pretty simple.... Spend only what is absolutely necessary and justifiable on sources and converters. Don't run off to upgrade unless you can justify a needed (non-audio-quality-related) feature, or something that you can verify via ABX...

This whole thread is kinda predicated on a myth, actually. Death Magnetic on LP uses the same masters as the CD. Comparisons of sample-resolution waveform plots will readily identify that the regions of clipping on the CD are just as wide as the regions of clipping on the LP. The only way...

How many of you people who are getting headaches also get headaches with XM/Sirius? How many of you people who are getting headaches also get headaches with FM radio? How many of you also get headaches when listening to digitally sourced vinyl? How many of you people who are getting...

A warning: I've had problems with wiping nibs off after refilling them. The fibers tend to get stuck in the tines, widening the ink line of EF pens. It's not visible until you remove/clean the nib, at which point blockages in the tines are evident when held to the light. I've been doing more...

How much of a philistine am I for liking a $3 fountain pen? I didn't know the make of it until fairly recently. It's the "Preppy" made by Platinum, filled with Noodler's Legal Lapis (Pendemonium had a limited edition combo of Legal Lapis in an eyedropper bottle with the pen a while ago and my...

None of these plots identify clipping. You need to zoom in to the waveform itself rather than the peak info that these zoomed-out plots represent to see the degree of limiting/clipping that is going on. In some situations these plots may be indicative of substantial dynamic range....

Google for "requiem". And don't upgrade to iTunes 9.

Google for it. It'll be pretty clear why greenhorn didn't link when you do. Too much commentary on the source of these comments is not enough, I am afraid.

Quote: Originally Posted by Nerull Is there any correlation between sound quality and stylus width? Yes, but what do you mean by "width"? Quote: The vinyl width on 33/45's is 40um, if that makes any difference Where did you get that number? That's pretty low IIRC...

See for yourself. :F I just generated silence in Audacity, exported it to a 16/44 WAV with TPDF, reimported, amplified it 90.3db and plotted the spectrum. Total spectrum peak is -59db at Nyquist and is -66db for 0-3khz. This is as a PSD measurement. So, 149-156db. Or, if you prefer, arguing...

You're confusing spot noise with total noise when you make that "-120db is below the CD noise floor" comment. IIRC, with a 16k tap FFT, it's more like 10db above the noise floor - possibly more. The last time I evaluated the spot noise floor of 16/44 I came up with about -150db, but I forget the...

Peabody Institute - Ensembles: PSO Concert Recordings