[Deep Funk]

128 kbps WMAs + CAL!S = nice
128 kbps WMAs + less forgiving headphones = less than nice

Also we do not posses the highest knowledge of the sound of music, yet listening to the sound of music at a higher level is a joyful pastime.

 

[revolink24]

I'm tired of the bashing of folks who don't care about sound quality that much. Their ears aren't "broken," they just don't care. To each their own. To 99% of the population, 128kbps is perfectly adequate.

 

[Deep Funk]

128 kbps is fine, I thought so until I discovered 320 kbps and WAV and FLAC. Still 128 kbps is fine if you're satisfied with the sound. To quote Chuck Brown, "It's all in your mind."

 

[Antony6555]

128 kbps is not ok by any measure. The treble distortion (low-treble emphasis) alone is unbearable. It's pretty much unlistenable to me. To simply ridicule pc authority seems silly though, as I hear a lot ridiculous things on head-fi too.

 

[cwell2112]

Quote:

Originally Posted by revolink24 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm tired of the bashing of folks who don't care about sound quality that much. Their ears aren't "broken," they just don't care. To each their own. To 99% of the population, 128kbps is perfectly adequate.

This is right on. It's not that people can't tell the difference, it's that they don't care.

And furthermore, once they have a pair of Bose headphones, they really don't care about the difference between those and something even better.

 

[vagarach]

128kbs AAC is quite good, MP3 is just ok on an mp3 player. I went on month long holiday once when mp3 players didn't have gigabytes of memory (this one had 256MB), so I crammed a few albums on at 96kbps, sometimes you just have to deal

.

I read the articles, and this lack of depth is par for the course I would say. Is it reasonable to compare an article in a magazine to head-fi, especially on something as esoteric as hifi audio?

These PC magazines can barely cover the details of new PC technology at the same level as visiting Engadget and the HardOCP forums would give you, so hey, of course the HD800 and K701 both get a score of 6/6, they'd have to fill half the magazine to get properly specific.

 

[Young Spade]

Meh, it's made for a different audience so you're going to get different results; although I do NOT think that makes up for the horrible reviews that are made here.

Things like this are IMO not properly informing the public of what they are missing. 128 being adequate? Phsss yea I bet it is to people who don't know any better; but WHY stop there? Why not instead SHOW people that higher bitrate songs sound better?

But hey not everyone cares about music as much as we do.

 

[gevorg]

CNET is a much bigger offender of "we have no idea" reviews.