[Davesrose]

It really seems that buffer for audio playback is semantics at this point with general computing. Your average surround sound track is lossy (with disc and some streaming having optimized lossless). I reencode UHD movies for a Plex server: I've found your average 7.1 True-HD Atmos track will be around 3GB. Comparatively smaller than the video data, which can be 17GB or so depending on duration, compression, and HDR codecs. So buffering your average stereo track (be it lossy compression to no compression), that's a drop in the bucket compared to the processors being made now (which even mobile devices are loading 1GB+ in cache).

 

[bigshot]

Buffering shuffles the file into memory a bit at a time, always maintaining the part about to be played in memory, so there aren’t data underruns that cause skipping.

Streaming plays the file as it comes, but even there, there’s a bit of latency to make sure that there’s time for the next bit to be played seamlessly.

 

[Davesrose]

Streaming plays the file as it comes, but even there, there’s a bit of latency to make sure that there’s time for the next bit to be played seamlessly.

Yeah, even when I'm streaming Apple Music off my phone, I don't get any dropouts. Even if I'm driving in spots that could be low bars of 4G. Apple music advertises lossless and Atmos for different albums: not sure if it drops to lossy when you're on low band cell.

I haven't had any issues with buffering for audio in quite a few years. With video, there can be. Often times with streaming video, I might get an initial splash video that's pixelated. Or the first few seconds of a 4K movie the image might be pixelated (as the video is having to buffer to around 10-20MBps).

 

[dfiled]

if you have the time, take a look at this thread at pp 1321-24. Am I wrong to want to tear my hair out trying to have a rational discussion with these people?

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/focal-utopia-general-discussion.811273/page-1322

 

[bigshot]

We aren’t allowed to have rational discussions there.

 

[gregorio]

Am I wrong to want to tear my hair out trying to have a rational discussion with these people?

Effectively “Yes” you are wrong, for 2 reasons:

1. It’s futile “trying to have a rational discussion” with people who are not rational and even more so with people who are not rational and don’t realise they’re not rational! Obviously that’s a great shame (and often difficult to “bite your tongue”) as there probably are lurkers or others who are rational and might benefit from your rational posts/points.

2. It’s effectively against Head-Fi rules anywhere on this site except this subforum. For example, you’ve mentioned blind and ABX testing, that is against Head-Fi rules/TOS anywhere except in this subforum, because that is the most rational/definitive listening test for audible differences and is therefore exactly what Head-Fi strives to avoid as otherwise it would loose a very considerable amount of it’s advertising and sponsor revenue! All it needs is one person to take any sort of offence, report you and your posts will be deleted (and you’ll probably also be banned from the thread).

There are various ways of confirming cable differences (or lack of them) and they’ve all been done countless times over the course of the nearly half a century since audiophile cables were first introduced. In all that time, the audiophile industry has managed to provide exactly zero reliable evidence of any audible differences between cables (with some relatively obvious caveats) and never actually provides any objective measurements of their cables performance, unlike every other audio component, which by itself is quite “telling”!

G

 

[castleofargh]

if you have the time, take a look at this thread at pp 1321-24. Am I wrong to want to tear my hair out trying to have a rational discussion with these people?

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/focal-utopia-general-discussion.811273/page-1322

Well, it’s not all nonsense, I agree that it can be somewhat difficult to test cables that go into your headphone or IEM without the listener being able to feel a difference that should be unrelated to the test itself.
Once I saw the "copper is warmer" message, I closed the tab and died a little.

 

[yaluen]

specific heat of copper = 0.385 J/g K

specific heat of silver = 0.233 J/g K

copper is warmer than silver qed

 

[gregorio]

copper is warmer than silver qed

Not as warm as coffee though. Ergo, if you want to get rid of that digital harshness and have a warm sound, pour warm coffee over your audiophile DAC!

G

 

[yaluen]

So what you're saying is I should leave these audiophile rocks out in the sun a bit before putting them in my system? Gotcha!

 

[mbphotox]

I was kinda surprised to read about the stock cable of a 5'000$ headphone being so "audibly inferior", considering the manufacture of even the ultra-fanciest of silver cables cannot cost more than like 100 bucks.. Why would the manufacturer not provide you with the best possible cable?
The fact that they (at Focal) don't sell aftermarket cable upgrades is all the answer you need.
"Focal does not believe that cables can improve their headphones."


If anything, I'd be worried about impedance differences (output of amp vs input of headphones).. I doubt the cable plays a significant role, there?!



Just had this discussion today:
In my personal opinion, the great "advantage" of vinyl and turntables lies in the many ways the sound can actually be affected by the user.
misalign the cartridge, add too little tracking force, belt too loose, needle full of dust, diamond run down.. vinyl groove plowed through..
slipping LP? use a clamp, change the mat, etc.
different cartridge? audible differences because they don't have linear frequency responses
constant skipping because people move around? isolate the table, use a sub-chassis construction, etc.
humming from ground issue? static build-up on records? so much to play around with!

Vinyl doesn't get anywhere close to the audio quality of a CD (if the master was identical), not even if all the above factors have been tuned to perfection.
But the tweaking and experimenting and playing around with stuff... that's what makes the medium so enjoyable and engaging.

When the CD came, and especially now with streaming, all those options were suddenly gone... sure, CDs could still skip and the laser could get covered in dust, but that's about it.. with a 50$ WiiM Streamer, you're basically set for the next 20 years.. why would you need anything else if it does everything better than any turntable ever could?!

I'm pretty convinced that all this snake oil bull has grown so much in the past 3 decades because people were desperate for things to "play around with" to "tweak their sound"... (not saying it wasn't there before, but I'd be willing to bet that at least 40 years ago, there was a lot more stuff that actually had some effect)

 

[bigshot]

But the tweaking and experimenting and playing around with stuff... that's what makes the medium so enjoyable and engaging.

That's something I realized too. There are people who are interested in high end home audio that have little or no interest in music. It isn't even about sound quality to them. It's about equipment... and by extension, shopping for equipment.

I don't understand why someone would spend tens of thousands of dollars on equipment, and then only spend a few hundred dollars on music to play on it. I have spent a great deal of money on my systems, but I've spent many, many times that amount on media.

I was once invited over to a fella's house who had those six foot tall planar speakers and top of the line everything. He went to demo it for me and asked what I wanted to hear on it. I looked at a shelf with about two dozen disks on it... Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums, no-name community orchestras playing classical chestnuts on direct to DSD disks, audiophile albums with an unknown singer and piano backing... nothing I really cared to hear. So I pulled out my iPod and a dock cable and he patched it into his preamp. We listened to lossy files of real music on his fancy system and it sounded great.

 

[gregorio]

If anything, I'd be worried about impedance differences (output of amp vs input of headphones).. I doubt the cable plays a significant role, there?!

Typically not, although there might be some esoteric IEMs, with some bizarre impedance curve where the cable could make an audible difference. Or rather, certain IEMs might require quite a specific gauge of cable that is not typical for IEM cables.

Why would the manufacturer not provide you with the best possible cable?

Knowing the basic facts of cables or simple logic like your assertion is NOT part of the equation. Audiophile cable manufacturers/marketers rely on audiophiles not considering this simple logic, not knowing the basic facts and believing of any pseudoscience they care to present.

even the ultra-fanciest of silver cables cannot cost more than like 100 bucks..

I’d be surprised if they were more than 50 bucks. Mostly, the cost price of expensive audiophile cables is probably less than 20 bucks.

G

 

[eq1849]

Effectively “Yes” you are wrong, for 2 reasons:

1. It’s futile “trying to have a rational discussion” with people who are not rational and even more so with people who are not rational and don’t realise they’re not rational! Obviously that’s a great shame (and often difficult to “bite your tongue”) as there probably are lurkers or others who are rational and might benefit from your rational posts/points.

2. It’s effectively against Head-Fi rules anywhere on this site except this subforum. For example, you’ve mentioned blind and ABX testing, that is against Head-Fi rules/TOS anywhere except in this subforum, because that is the most rational/definitive listening test for audible differences and is therefore exactly what Head-Fi strives to avoid as otherwise it would loose a very considerable amount of it’s advertising and sponsor revenue! All it needs is one person to take any sort of offence, report you and your posts will be deleted (and you’ll probably also be banned from the thread).

There are various ways of confirming cable differences (or lack of them) and they’ve all been done countless times over the course of the nearly half a century since audiophile cables were first introduced. In all that time, the audiophile industry has managed to provide exactly zero reliable evidence of any audible differences between cables (with some relatively obvious caveats) and never actually provides any objective measurements of their cables performance, unlike every other audio component, which by itself is quite “telling”!

G

2- I think the EEG studies looking directly at the brain's activity levels are far more convincing and objective than subjective blind listening tests. As I recall these EEG studies showed that listener's EEG readings are significantly increased with high resolution audio over CD, despite blind listening tests failing to show discrimination between the formats.

 

[bigshot]

There’s been no studies that show correlation between perceived sound quality and ultrasonic frequencies. You can step on a tack barefoot and get a brainwave reaction, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.