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Originally Posted by Happy Camper /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Joking aside, it would be nice to read what professionals and skilled hobbyists discuss as reference and technically competent components. I would also like to read what musicians and recording technicians think of the musical accuracy of these pieces.
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I would be happy to have a go at answering but I doubt many here would agree and some are likely to become quite histerical.
I'm sorry to say but most professionals usually see the audiophile world as comprising mainly of fanatics with some form of OCD. It seems to us that many audiophiles spend huge sums of money on certain inconsequential areas of audio reproduction, while almost ignoring basic and incredibly important areas.
To use an analogy earlier in this thread when someone mentioned having to prove that a Ferrari could out perform a VW Beatle. The question here is how is the Ferrari being used. If it's just sitting in the driveway and occasionally being driven around a car park, then apart from appearance, there is not going to be an performance improvement over a VW Beatle. You need a curvy, empty stretch of road to really appreciate the performance difference. Likewise with speakers, DAC and Amps. I've seen tens of thousands spent on audiophile equipment, which has then been placed in a sitting room. Professionals know that all the replay equipment in the world (at any price) is only as good as the acoustic environment in which it's placed. If you have treated your room and it has a flat frequency response with any room modes dealt with, a controlled RT60 and well managed randomised reflections then you will really hear the quality of that expensive gear. I have yet to hear an audiophile system that could compete with the quality experienced in a good commercial recording studio, even though the audiophile has often spent more (sometimes considerably more) on the individual components. Unless you've spent considerable time and money on your acoustic environment, all you've got is a Ferrari in the driveway.
There are some areas in the audiophile world which we just smile and scratch our heads at. The ridiculous prices that some seem willing to pay for cables, particularly digital cables and power cables. Some of the cables (mic cables) we use are as much as 1,000 times more important to SQ than speaker cables and are infinitely more important than digital ICs or power cables and even with our monitoring environments we cannot hear a difference between $30 mic cable and an audiophile equivalent costing ten or a hundred times more. From our perspective audiophiles are being ripped off.
My intention is not to start a flame war, just to answer accurately. Just use the word audiophile and the initial reaction of most professionals is their eyes rolling.
G