[googleborg]

conspicuous consumption aye

 

[HiGHFLYiN9]

Quote:

 
So, in the end, are any of these purchases "justified?" I guess to the extent that they bring a certain "pleasure of ownership," why not. But, of course, that doesn't answer the question I posed at the beginning, which was: is there any point to paying top dollar for cutting headphone technology to listen to recordings that were made using 40-year-old recording technology?

Perhaps the owner finds the presentation of the $6000 headphone most agreeable, rather than most revealing. This would put it in the same vein as the other items listed.
 

 

[khaos974]

I kind of disagree with the statement of a $400 steak being indistinguishable from the $25 one.
 
First of all, it doesn't make sense, you are not only paying for the steak but for the service and the place, a high class restaurant doesn't provide the same atmosphere than your standard restaurant. Then our are also paying for the quality of the beef, a $25 could buy you very good beef, but not always some dry-aged for a month beef (which is tastier than normal beef, and I would be willing to bet on a difference even blind), and if you are talking about wagyu beef, the simple fact that it is visually (actually structurally) different from normal beef solves the problem of blind tasting quite nicely. Finally, in a $400 you'd probably find some exotic cooking methods (3 hours "sous vide"at 60°C and then seared for example) that are distinguishable from a standard rare steak even of both are sold as "rare".
 
Arguably, I think that by $80-100 we've reached the summon of steak as far as quality is concerned, anything above and you are paying for presentation, but an excellent $25 steak and an excellent $100 one should be distinguishable.

 

[Sil3nce]

How bout you guys start talking when you have owned a lamborghini or ferrari?
I've actually had a  lambo lp640 sitting in my dad's garage for 2 years.
Most people just look down on "status symbols" because they never had the advantage or the money to afford one. But it's a whole new world when you're actually part of it.

 

[Shike]

Quote:

How bout you guys start talking when you have owned a lamborghini or ferrari?
I've actually had a  lambo lp640 sitting in my dad's garage for 2 years.
Most people just look down on "status symbols" because they never had the advantage or the money to afford one. But it's a whole new world when you're actually part of it.

I think the point was lost on you.  Status symbols are great and all, but that's not the point that was being made.  Function over form is the topic, and law of diminishing returns (you have a Lambo, how often do you really use all of its potential?).
 
Why is it that car people get so snobby so fast whenever their precious is used as an example? (*facepalm*)
 
Also yay for sweeping generalizations!  Someone thinks status symbols are a waste of money and you go with the stereotypical "that's because you're too poor or weren't given one lulz".

 

[mralexosborn]

To answer the original question since it is pointless arguing with *insert choice word here*... 

...yes it will sound better on $6000 of equipment.
 
I am listening to "Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning" by Behold...the Arctopus right now. This is debatably one of the worst recordings I've ever heard, period. The reviews for this album even mentioned the terrible lack of fidelity.
It sounded like s*** on my $50 UE SuperFi 5vi's when I had them. It sounded bad enough that I felt I couldn't appreciate the music at all.
Now with my $300 SM3's it is great. The recording is still terrible but it just sounds so much better. The live songs are almost on the level of an audiophile experience because of how real the recording is.
 
I could say the same EXACT thing with the Beatles stereo remasters. 
 
Now not to be an arrogant prick (since being one is terrible for the reputation of this community), but you really shouldn't make such a daft statement without any basis. I mean you have barely gotten your feet wet in this hobby with the SRH440s. 

 

[haloxt]

 
Quote:

So my question is this: what sort of benefit do you really get from using your space-aged headphones to listen to audio recordings (i.e. the Beatles) which were recorded with bronze-age, 1960's technology?

 
Even truer to recording . As said before, a lot of modern music is ruined by high dynamic compression, so 95% of the music I listen to is before the year 2000. With higher fidelity gear, you can hear the recording flaws of bronze age recordings more clearly, but the music becomes clearer too. I have stumbled upon some really well recorded modern recordings which I consider better than most older recordings, but they are quite outnumbered by bad modern recordings and I would rather roll the dice with pre-2000 or pre-1990 albums.
 
When I want to listen to modern recordings I use $5 bass-enhanced (aka no treble) monoprice earbuds, the perfect marriage.

 

[Uncle Erik]

A little late to the conversation, but a lot of the older headphones and speakers are better than what's produced today. Yes, even the super-expensive ones.

Since the 1990s, there has been an explosion of bass-heavy music. Various forms of electronica and rap didn't exist 20 years ago. For better or worse, those depend on lots and lots of low frequencies. Because transducers weren't required to have a huge low-end response back then, they were usually a lot better balanced. Also, music education - with real acoustic instruments - used to be a lot more common. So most speakers and headphones were voiced for accuracy.

Given rap and electronica's rise in popularity, a strong bass response became a consumer priority. Bass sells and manufacturers know it. So a lot of gear is now voiced for strong bass response... at the expense of the rest of the sound spectrum. It's so pervasive that even accurate gear gets trashed for being "bass light" these days. It's a shift in consumer taste, not a deficiency on the part of the transducer. And lots of manufacturers now add in bass response that isn't present on the recording just to please the typical consumer.

Back in the mid-1980s when my Quads were built, they did a pretty damned good job of reproducing all music, even popular music. Jump ahead 20 years, and people don't like them because they lack subterranean bass.

So if someone wants accurate sound, they usually have to turn to transducers from years past or choose from a narrow band of accurately-voiced products. Sennheiser keeps the excellent HD-600 around and, for whatever reason, bucked contemporary consumer tastes by voicing the HD-800 pretty accurately. The LCD2 is pretty flat, too, and there's only a slight midbass hump in the JH-13. The rest of the super-expensive headphones aren't much to my liking.

As for the quality of older recordings, many of them are excellent. We just didn't have excellent sources back then - even a $29 DVD player is leagues ahead of most turntables and stylii from 50 years ago. We did have good amps and transducers back then (the Quad ESL-57 is quite the classic, as well as the already mentioned Klipschorns).

In a way, we are very fortunate today. Sources are pretty much a solved problem. Even my $100 Blu-Ray player sounds damned good. You can get a used receiver for $20-$50 that's pretty linear and has lots of power. And there are bargains in both headphones and speakers. If you don't want to impress people with exotic bits, you can set up a damned good headphone and speaker rig for under $1,000.

To get back to the OP's question, a $6,000 setup can sound spectacular, even with older material. But you have to buy the right parts. $6,000 on a bunch of colored or bass-heavy gear won't sound good. But if you choose carefully, you can have an awesome setup.

 

[9pintube]

Uncle Erik, That is so well "worded" and for many of us older guys who have been into music and It's equipment for most of our lives get your very factual response to this subject, ..excellent!!! .......PS. Your quads are still used for voicing new speakers because of their "truth to the Actual recording" And still noted for the best mid-range ever......as you probably already know....... I just read that The Big Big buck "Magico Brand" dude still uses a pair of  Quads 57's to help voice his 28 grand and up speakers, Now if that doesn't say something, I don't know what does.........

 

[dsf3g]

 
Quote:

 
Now not to be an arrogant prick (since being one is terrible for the reputation of this community), but you really shouldn't make such a daft statement without any basis. I mean you have barely gotten your feet wet in this hobby with the SRH440s. 

Um, dude, I wasn't making a statement. I was asking a question. I honestly want to hear people's opinions on this, especially if they are well informed regarding the history of recording technology.

 

[JadeEast]

"So my question is this: what sort of benefit do you really get from using your space-aged headphones to listen to audio recordings (i.e. the Beatles) which were recorded with bronze-age, 1960's technology?"
 
Here is a bit of the uncomfortable truth. We as audiophiles listen to recordings, not music. We can only hear music (playback) through a recorded medium. The Beatles are an excellent example of this as they were famous for the use of production and recording techniques to create their songs. Much of their music only existed as a recording, there was not a single performance that happened, it was constructed out of parts. While people talk about listening to the music, it's the recording that we truly listening to.
 
Even if the recording was originally recorded on a wax cylinder we would want to hear the original recording as close to it's original state as possible. This is where using a "superior" technology can help. A superior technology should let us hear more clearly what the original recording contains. (This is a pretty broad statement and one could argue that up-sampling or digital signal processing can improve the original recording. I'm sure that with a bit of googling one could find endless arguments about these things.)
 
My main point is that audiophiles listen to recordings of music and the more accurate a playback system is the truer presentation the original recording will be. I'll leave price out of the argument as I don't believe that there is necessarily a direct correlation between price and accuracy in the case of audio.
 
 
 

 

[ardgedee]

Another way to think about it, I guess, is that for the past sixty years recording technology hasn't improved in its ability to reproduce dynamic, full-frequency-range stereo. So the principal question of whether listening the fidelity of old recordings merits using contemporary high end equipment can be answered with "absolutely, totally yes". 
 
If you're recording live to two track -- and people still do -- most of the subsequent technological improvements are irrelevant or, at best, nice to have rather than necessary. Even problems of the analog world, like tape hiss, can be dealt with by running the tape faster, although that of course makes recording more expensive.
 
Since the fifties has come the ability to provide greater flexibility to the recording process, with the genesis of high-quality signal effects, multitracking, editing and mixing tools, and so on, leading to genres of music that would have been impossible back in the day. The most prominent change is that good-quality recording technology has become cheap and accessible, but it still requires practice, learning, and talent to equal the accomplishments of the best engineers.

 

[KneelJung]

Quote:

"So my question is this: what sort of benefit do you really get from using your space-aged headphones to listen to audio recordings (i.e. the Beatles) which were recorded with bronze-age, 1960's technology?"
 
Here is a bit of the uncomfortable truth. We as audiophiles listen to recordings, not music. We can only hear music (playback) through a recorded medium. The Beatles are an excellent example of this as they were famous for the use of production and recording techniques to create their songs. Much of their music only existed as a recording, there was not a single performance that happened, it was constructed out of parts. While people talk about listening to the music, it's the recording that we truly listening to. 

That sort of begs the question is music an intellectual experienhce or a visceral one?
 
I collect recordings but I listen to music. I  definitely appreciate quality production, but if the music has no soul it's sort of like putting perfume on a pig. Likewise if the music doesnt resonate with me it doesnt really matter how well it's recorded. Did you see, It Might Get Loud? The opening scene with Jack White was awesome. I think that's sort of the conversation going on here.

 

[JadeEast]

Quote:

That sort of begs the question is music an intellectual experienhce or a visceral one?
 

There is no reason that it has to be an either or proposition.
A bird needs two wings to fly.

 

[KneelJung]

Quote:

Quote:

That sort of begs the question is music an intellectual experienhce or a visceral one?
 

There is no reason that it has to be an either or proposition.
A bird needs two wings to fly.

Fair enough Jade, a very valid point. I suppose music does need to resonate on both levels, and certainly good gear helps to promote both, I was just sayin...