Me and a friend are big bourbon enthusiasts.  We like cask strength stuff, the older the better...think Four Roses Single Barrel Limited Edition, Smooth Ambler 60%, etc.   During the NCAA tournament, my friend set up a blind tasting test "tournament" where he would try different bourbons head...

I attended a performance of Brahms 2nd concerto today.  I happened to have absolutely perfect seats - first row balcony, dead center of the stage.   I shut my eyes and concentrated on evaluating the sound as I would through headphones.  I was quite surprised to hear not only depth, but height -...

I have gotten a ton of great music from this thread - thanks to all for posting.  In return, here is some music from one of my best friends.  She is a world class pianist (a professor of piano at a well known school) and I find all of these recordings superlative.  I asked and got her permission...

  I have owned and heard a lot of high end gear.  And probably more importantly, I have spent 10,000 hours+ sitting in front of Steinway pianos both solo and playing with other musicians.  I know what acoustic music sounds like, and my HD650 through this combo gets me as close as I have ever...

  Thank you for the quick response, I greatly appreciate it (and for designing these products).   I feel 24-bit sounds better than 16 with very high quality recordings, but I tend to believe that's just placebo.  But then again, I used to think 8 bit vs. 16bit was pure placebo until I...

Just got my Bifrost Multibit.  In audio setup, what format should I select for an output?  The dac is defaulting to 2ch 16-bit 48khz.

  A lot of this depends on the recording quality and mastering of the final track.  I can a/b 8 bit vs. 16 bit with over 95% confidence of the Neil Young sample or any type of well recorded classical, but I can't do it with the Gangnam style clip in the blind test, or most other hip hop. 16...

" A fact which many audiophiles appear completely unaware of is that pretty much all the main streaming service apply loudness normalisation. For about the last two years everything uploaded to YouTube is automatically loudness normalised to the equivalent of about 13.5LUFS and they've since...

Gee, I thought they were all the same and we were just using different numbers for fun.   

I have no idea what the technical difference between the two files is, or if the test is even valid.  All I know is that I can reliably pass it.  I cannot do the same for the Gangam Style test.

Rediscovering headphones after many years out of the game.  Used to have some serious gear (modded Melos, button Grado RS1, etc)  Focusrite 2i4 HD650 Schiit Asgard 2 Chick Corea "Spain" from the Trilogy album (specifically this recording) Been a pianist all my life.  Accompanied...

I was playing around tonight and came across this thread and the 8 bit vs. 16 bit test.  http://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_16vs8bit_NeilYoung.php I can pass this repeatedly with 95%+ confidence but I absolutely cannot articulate why, and it's driving me nuts.  If I listen to the whole...

Hi all,   I've been out of the game for several years - in fact, since the head-fi site redesign.  I used to be seriously into it with a modded Melos SHA Gold, Grado RS1's, etc, etc but for the last few years I've been okay with just my IEM's and DT770's 80 ohm for computer use.   That...

I saw the writing on the wall a while back and stopped frequenting headfi back when they were hell bent on filling up 1/3 of our horizontal space with advertising - on the LEFT FREAKING SIDE, which rendered all mobile browsing completely useless.   I came back today to do some more research...

Wow, it's been a while since I've been looking at IEM's. Now that I have a new touch pro 2 with a 3.5mm jack that actually sounds GREAT, I want to upgrade my super.fi pro 5's. Now back when I was into the headphone game, good customs started around $650. I've read some threads here with...