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Mark, read my post again. Why are you quoting statements I never made? |
I interpreted what I read. I wasn't necessarily replying strictly to your post, BTW, but to this myth that many seem to subscribe to around here that the only thing that distinguishes a good high-end piece from a good mass-market piece is the special "colorations" of the high-end stuff that is apparently missing from the more neutral, truthful (and by implication) less *distorted* cheapie sound cards some champion. I just disagree. You *did* imply that it was only the high-end stuff that was "colored" which you were contrasting against lower-cost sound cards, which (although unsaid) must therefore be "coloration-free". You also said this: Quote:
I understand if someone prefers these types of "smoothness, liquidity, ease, soundstaging, etc, etc" but my Lynx 2B card, when fed properly, sounds incredible even though it's obviously not going to be everyone's cup of audiophile sound. |
"Smoothness" results from having a clean, grain and grit-free signal, that's not a "coloration". Music is not supposed to sound etched, hashy, outlined, or abrasive. All of those nasties are what is being *added* to the signal by the inferior piece of gear, it's the good one that's stripping it away. Soundtaging capability is also not a "coloration", either. Again, it's the superior performer that is able to reveal the soundstaging inherent in the original recording, a noisy piece of gear collapses the soundstage into a 2-D plane, and removes the "air" around instruments. "Liquidity" could refer to the speed with which the superior component is able to relay the signal, again the result of beter design.
Some people might not like the audiophile jargon, might not be fully aware of their meanings, but these are well-understood concepts. You have to be able to use language to describe sound, limited as that is ("writing about music is like dancing about architecture") and to a newb it may all sound like self-deluding audiophile gobbeldy-gook, but once the terminology is understood, its not so strange.
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Colorations are deviations from what the perfect neutral ideal should be. |
Exactly, and any deviation from neutrality, which is almost always assessed through scientific measurement, could be construed as "distortion". If a component is "colored" that means it should measureably deviate from perfection and neutrality. If it's measureable, then it must be "distortion". It's semantics and we obviously disagree about what is implied by the word "coloration".
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Regardless, you seem to be of the opinion that people who spend a lot of money have better hearing, |
SunByrne, heh, now I know how Jon L felt about being mis-interpreted.
Never said that, either. In fact I'm always spouting off the exact opposite around here. I do believe that "audiophiles" (and by my definition this has nothing to do with amount of money spent, but with amount of love for audio), which every member of this forum is, whether they embrace that word or not, are in a much better position to judge a component's worth than some guy off the street. Why? because they hang out at places like this, research research, research, and LISTEN to more gear in a year than the average guy does in his life. If all you've ever drank is Coke, you'll have no idea how Pepsi tastes. Let alone what water, whiskey, or wine tastes like either. You may *think* your sound card is KING of the world, but in comparison to what? What is your point of reference? Its the dreaded "audiophile" who has compared it against all manner of higher-priced, higher-quality gear, he has built a frame of reference, and so can now put his original sound card in perspective. It's the audiophile who has surveyed the market, and has some sense of what can or can't be done with that type of component.
Having "golden ears" is part biology, but a much larger part, *experience*. Virtually anyone (unless they have hearing loss) can develop golden ears simply by buying and trying dozens of different components, it's a skill that can be developed over time. The guy off the street can't be bothered but the audiophile *lives* for that stuff.
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Furthermore, the notion that all that extra expense in high-end audiophile gear intrinsically makes the products better is nonsense. |
God, if I had a nickel for every time I had to refute that one...
Did you read where I wrote this:
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Are there anomolies in high-end gear? Are there colorations? Of course, there's a range of sounds, every design is different, every cricuit is different, and uses different components, so they will obviously have a different sound. If there was only one way to design a speaker, there would be only one speaker for the whole world. But when you raise the asking price, you can raise build quality to continue to add performance. That doesn't mean all designers are equally good at it, obviously, or that there aren't high-priced duds out there and low-priced units that perform at an insane level... |
So, what I always say when these types of arguments errupt is this-- having tried so many different components so far in my "audiophile career", what I have observed is this: if you were to plot the performance level of all the audio gear in the world on the X-axis of a chart, and correlated that to the price of that gear, you would observe a *general* trend-line with the more expensive gear performing better than the less. There would be all kinds of dots above and below this general trend line cluster.
I'm always on the lookout for those anomolies (as are most people here on this site) so I can get insane performance for low dollars, and my system reflects exactly that. While my gear may be *a little* on the exotic side to some on this site (but *hardly* the most elaborate or expensive set-up around AT ALL), in terms of the real "high-end" market, what I have would look barely "hi-fi" to many people.
Heh, so it seems we are all wasting words attacking straw men arguments none of us made.
Later.