I don't remember how the anechoic chambers where I have been working were, but they were nowhere near as good as this MicroSoft anechoic chamber (Finnish universities don't have unlimited money like M$ has). One problem was the rubber insulators the chamber stood on had gotten stiff over decades...

I haven't seen any added taxes, but maybe it is different for me because I buy from European sellers (inside EU tax region). Yeah, Finnish metal scene is considered great (most metal bands per capita by far), but I am not into that kind of music myself.

I looked into the Brownian motion noise and found the equation used by L.J.Sivian, S.D.White (1933) & G.G.Harris (1968). Calculating the Sound Pressure Level on bandwidth 20-20000 Hz I got 32 𝜇Pa (4 dB SPL). Calculating the noise level on the most sensitive band of human hearing (1000-6000 Hz)...

Thanks! I am surprised to read Brownian motion = 1.4 micropascals. I'll look into that for "fact checking" and self-education. I would have guessed it is several orders of magnitude lower pressure! If this is true then -30 dB SPL kind of is impossible given the situation. In a narrow bandwidth...

I have started using Discogs (European sellers). Some of these sellers there have reasonable shipping costs, especially if they offer many CDs at the same shipping costs. Also, I try to use domestic (Finnish) sites, but of course Finland is a small market and my music taste is not typical to...

Sorry about my laziness to try and find your explanation (for all the AI stuff and what not), but why wouldn't -30 dB SPL and 0.63... micropascals exist? Am I losing my mind?

I haven't used Amazon US for many many years because the shipping costs to Europe are ridiculous. I have zero experience on these "on demand discs." For example F. R. David - Reflections. All I see is used from $50 (+shipping $60!! :jecklinsmile: ) and new from $79.

You're welcome! I'm glad you liked reading it! I of course don't know what differences you hear comparing CD and hi-res, but it is good to keep in mind that our hearing does tricks to us sometimes. It is easy to hear what you want to hear. To really be certain of hearing something it is...

I don't enjoy all of them. Most of them, I believe, contain music I don't enjoy. Also there are CDs containing music I would enjoy if it wasn't for bad sound quality due to bad recording/mixing/mastering/etc. Nobody has ever denied my right to listen to the music format I want. I just wish the...

Believing and thinking hi-res is audibly superior to CD quality is probably "cool" and giving up such beliefs probably makes life dull. This is probably one reason why many hi-res fans don't let go their beliefs even when given a lot of reasons to do so. Digital audio is somewhat dull. Audible...

Oh. Upsampling? Well, my CD-player can upsample to 192 kHz, so I guess I can listen to all my CDs in hi-res! :dt880smile:

I may have had similar attitude when I was young, but I am wiser now (I hope) and I have noticed being content is more important. I am happy to say CD is good enough to make me content. I don't need to look for anything better, thank God!

Theoretically the "best" digital PCM audio format is ∞ Hz / ∞ bit. That is the best, believe me. Obviously we can never have that, because even one second of music at such resolution means infinite amount of data. We have to be content with finite sampling rates and finite bit depth, but how...

Do you find ALL of your music in hi-res? I struggle to find my favourite music even on CD! I suppose only a minuscule fraction of the music I like is available in hi-res. What is the point of listening to music you don't care about, hi-res or not? Anyway, the limitations of CD have NEVER been an...

Many audiophiles get fooled by snake-oil sellers. For me the illusion is off thou...

Sure, since bit depth has nothing to do with bandwidth.

We can say hi-res is better for dogs, cats and bats, but I do NOTHING with that advantage, because I am a 53 years old human and even CD offers frequencies beyond my hearing...

Fortunately human ears are somewhat less demanding than the sampling theorem.

Hi-res can be closer to original analog audio signal if there are stuff above about 20 kHz in the analog signal (not so clear there is anything else than noise). Even then it doesn't matter, because people don't hear above 20 kHz (apart maybe some extremely rare cases). CDs sound bad when the...

The highest sampling frequency that would make sense in consumer PCM digital audio is about 60 kHz. Even 96 kHz sampling frequency is overkill and 192 kHz is just ridiculous unless you are a bat. As I have suggested before, 58.8 kHz/12 bit consumer audio with shaped dither would make sense as an...

Yes, of course I read, but I don't just believe everything I read. I am critical of what I read. Proper DACs do not have staircases. If the picture is from the actual output, the DAC doesn't function as it should.

It is hard to change the facts since they are facts (2+2 doesn't become equal to 5 just because your beliefs say so), but luckily people can change their beliefs to be more "compatible" with the facts.

That can't be from the output of a DAC. It must be from an internal signal point of a DAC before reconstruction filtering. Nobody claims such signal doesn't have staircases (of course it does, because it isn't properly bandlimited!), but that's not the output of a proper DAC. The next picture...

Yeah, because you haven't seen Jurassic Park before you have seen it in 20K! :jecklinsmile: I am someone who thinks 2K is enough for movies at home unless your screen is very large (simulating movie theaters).

Sound quality is a fraction of my enjoyment of music. Reconstruncting "better" doesn't make any bad music better for me. Since I can't hear beyond 15 kHz or so at my age, 44100 Hz sampling is more than I need, but I can hear the difference between 22050 Hz and 44100 Hz sampling. The former...