R2R RIP or Resurrection?

May 11, 2025 at 2:13 AM Post #241 of 245
There are far more passion back in the early 50's in HiFi than it is today. We traded the resolving systems of yesteryears for convenience and portability (Bluetooth, Apple, Bose, run of the mill boomboxes, soundbars, etc.) I would take a 50's HiFi anyday over these mainstream audio systems anyday
Were you an adult in the 50s collecting a home media console? Because, as I understand, you did buy a whole console that was a furniture piece that had a turn table and in the cabinet, one speaker with also maybe a bass unit. You would then also have your one 19" TV unit. All these electronics running off of vacuum tubes that could break down. While these cabinet systems might more easily pass the significant other factor, I've never heard of them being more resolving than conventional stereo systems of 1980s on towards today. My main speaker system is a 7.1.4 Atmos setup, that I'll also switch to 2.1 for vinyl. I now listen to music that's been mastered in Atmos: so I can listen to its intended sound field with my full Atmos setup. My main speakers are also large tower speakers: so I get full dynamics-it's not like say listening to Bose 901 speakers. In which those speakers were designed to be stereo reflecting, with drivers that are only uniform mid sized.
 
May 11, 2025 at 2:41 AM Post #242 of 245
but I can tell what sounds right to me vs what doesn’t and correlating it to measurements is silly and never works IRL in my experience
QED.
I guess we agreed all along without knowing. Of course, some uncontrolled casual impressions where you allow every preconception, every non audio influence to alter your experience, will almost never agree with anything objective about sound itself or even your perception of sound without most of the biases. My diagnostic is that you don't understand how little of your sound preferences are about sound, that's all.
 
May 11, 2025 at 4:29 AM Post #243 of 245
I see you edited your post and added this:
As for me, I’m on the bottom of the DK, not on extreme right or left since I myself can’t design and manufacture audio gears but I can tell what sounds right to me vs what doesn’t and correlating it to measurements is silly and never works IRL in my experience
Huh, your (false) assertions were about mixing and mastering, “design and manufacture of audio gears” are a different subject. Here is the DK Effect representation from wiki commons:
Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_Effect_01.svg

How are you anywhere other than near the left edge of this graph? What level of mixing and mastering “Competence” do you think you’ve gained from never having studied it, never having done it commercially/professionally and never even been in a commercial mix or mastering studio? Maybe your problem here is the same as with this:
Some of your science is the literally the total opposite of what I experience IRL.
Right, so all you need is the application of some basic logic: IE. Either the science is wrong or “what you experience IRL” is wrong. If the science is wrong then international telecommunications doesn’t exist, the internet doesn’t exist, computers don’t exist and in fact no “digital” technology exists. So, either you’re claiming all this technology doesn’t exist OR “what you experience IRL” must be wrong. Which one are you going for? And before you answer, it’s hardly controversial that what we experience IRL is wrong, it’s pretty much the reason science was invented. We experience IRL that we live on a stationary surface and all the objects in the cosmos move around us, we experience time as a constant, we experience the stereo effect and numerous other examples of our experience/perception being different to the actual facts/science/reality.
The turntables, tone-arms, cartridges, headphones, tape players, amps, pre-amps, and components/design of passive crossovers were inferior to what came after 1960.
True and don’t forget that in “the early 1950’s” there was only mono, stereo was not even released to consumers until the late 1950’s (1957). Is mono really better than stereo and multi-channel?
I remember 1966 forward, and esp 1972 forward, and all the hobbyists, kits builders, Boston Audio Society. I do think it changes by the early 80's, more $ and less tweakers, Certainly boom boxes, walkmans, HT, headphones, and other things have splintered the audience.
Again, it’s just an audiophile marketing tactic from decades ago. Compare the cheap/convenient audio equipment of today (IEMs, DAPs, Bluetooth, etc.), with the best equipment of half a century or more ago. It’s an apples to oranges comparison but it still easily works out in modern technology’s favour in terms of audio fidelity. An apples to apples comparison is even more extreme, ever heard a portable AM Transistor Radio from the 1950’s?
there was an active, thriving listening counter-culture in audio as an alternative to the measure only modality of Hirsch-Houck Labs etc.
That “etc” at the end there is pretty massive though. It includes the ITU, IEEE, IEC, ISO, RIAA, AES, EBU, the list goes on and on and includes all the world’s universities, all the world’s telecom companies, all world’s commercial electronic circuitry, not to mention that digital audio itself is a measurement. It’s just that Hirsch-Houck Labs made their measurements easily accessible to consumers (by selling them to consumer publications). Your “thriving listening counter-culture in audio” is actually a tiny niche segment of the market, mislead by decades of audiophile marketing.
**..... and CDs arrived in 1982. "Perfect sound forever" 😖🤢. Convenience / glitter over sound / substance. The 'fix' was in .... ask Philips or Sony ....
No one here will argue that marketing is a reliable source of information/facts! However, digital audio did provide very significant advantages over the analogue formats it replaced, longevity being one of them. Not sure where you got “glitter over sound” or “substance” from though.

G
 
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May 11, 2025 at 7:27 AM Post #244 of 245
Some of your science is the literally the total opposite of what I experience IRL.
As accomplished as Gregorio is in the field of audio engineering, he hardly can credit much of the science to himself. Science is a cumulative achievement of thousands and thousands of scientists working all over the World. So, there is no "Gregorio's" science. There is just science Gregorio has learned and knows. One thing that science teaches us is that what we experience IRL is subjective and often not the same as the objective reality. Gregorio knows this and it is what he is trying to communicate with you.

Your subjective IRL experiences are "real" to you, because that's what you experience. However, there is a "more real" objective reality under your or anyone else's IRL experiences and that's what science tries to figure out. A lot of it science has already figured out, but not everything. Luckily the parts of objective reality that covers audio are well understood by science. We don't need to understand the fundamental fabric of reality from which space-time somehow emerges in order to make transparent (to human ears) DACs. :alien:
 
May 11, 2025 at 3:28 PM Post #245 of 245
# 1973: the first issue of The Abso!ute Sound. With that by Harry Pearson, with J. Gordon Holt still at the helm of Stereophile, and with the appearance / disappearance of "west coast" mags such as Sound Advice, there was an active, thriving listening counter-culture in audio as an alternative to the measure only modality of Hirsch-Houck Labs etc.
Well, no. I am sure they wanted to portray themselves as ”listening counter-culture” as opposed to a straw man of their own creation. That is what sells the purple prose audiophile magazines.
 

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