[Derrick Swart]

Hey there all – sorry so long without commenting. A couple of small points: please let me admit that I stream from time to time with two subscription services. The reason is that it is cheap. Lets me listen to a huc ton of music to see if I like it. By and large, it ain’t bad. When we get some URDs out in the field where it will be easy to for you to compare physical media to the streams. Now I know there are servers out there with accujack and autosuck which I believe many of you may like. Now I know a bit about jitter and can clean up streams to where they get better but I still bet my accujack and autosuck on physical media.

Speaking about URDs, I know there aren’t any out there. Problem is we have so many parts shortages combined with AKM factory blazes that I have been fixing our existing stuff. Damn! It seems hard to get everything from lumber to microprocessors to gas to cheeseburgers. Everyone says its covid still causing this. Gotta have something to blame, I guess. Many suppliers too often look/sound like well executed holograms who can’t get around their offices without radar. I tire of the quacking of incompetent ducks.

Elegantly!

 

[FLTWS]

After Suddenly Spring or Quiet Spring was it?

Silent Spring - Rachel Carson

 

[golfbravobravo]

I suppose one question that I should have prefaced this all with is - blu ray. Is it going to stick around? Is it going to go away? I'm building a collection of CDs because I'm fairly confident CDs will last, but they are older than blu-ray - older than DVD - and found stability. Blu ray began as 1080p, now it's UHD/4k, there was the 3D adventure some years ago...how stable a format are they? How good are they aurally and visually vs streaming?

If you decide you would like to go for the Opportunity 203 PM me. We are changing our HT around and it may be redundant.........

Cheers

 

[RCBinTN]

I have a theory. (Actually, I have many-many, but one that's relevant here.)

I believe that many people who push hard for the +/- "science of hard numbers" are fundamentally unwilling to be accountable to themselves for making judgments and decisions. Relying entirely on numbers ... not only other people's data, but also other people's opinions about what numbers are meaningful and useful ... avoids self-accountability.

* example 1 - I listened to some gear, I liked it, I bought it. Later on, I realized I really didn't like it so much. Mr Id says: "Ouch! That hurts."

* example 2 - I read some reviews and opinions, and based on those I bought something, but I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. Mr Id says: "Ouch! That hurts."

* example 3 - I studied a bunch of quant reviews and graphs. Based on some mental scorecard synthesizing the numbers, I bought something, but I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. Mr Id says: "NOT MY FAULT!!! NOT MY FAULT!!!"

As granddad might have said, "Toughen up, snowflake."

For most of us, audio is not life & death, it's just a hobby. We can sell off gear that doesn't make us as happy as we expected, learn from the experience, and keep moving towards that elusive Happy Place of the end-game system that works for us. But we learn faster when we have self-awareness that the decision process is ALWAYS subjective, based on incomplete information, and that we personally own it, whether the outcome is great, okay, or not good.

[/end_Friday_free_mini-lecture]

To get back on topic .... I've been thinking, we haven't had anything on hovercraft for quite a while.

I have found this to be true in the audio hobby. The difficult part for me was knowing when to stop looking for new "better" gear all the time, and start enjoying the music

 

[Ableza]

My wife remembers the DDT truck would drive down the street and the kids would come out of the houses to be dusted down. (This was overseas)

I grew up with these in Missouri. We called it the fogger and would grab our bicycles to follow it around. Cheap high.

 

[liamo]

Greentea Peng records tuned to 432 saving the Gadget the bother. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/may/29/greentea-peng-i-have-no-interest-in-being-a-pop-star

 

[Plautus001]

Depends on the upscaler. Naively, just taking each of the pixels from 1080p and making them "bigger" to take up the space on 4K would look like crap.
Common wisdom says that Sony, Panny and OPPO have the best scalers. LG's is starting to be competitive.

Hisense and TCL lag.

'All things being equal..." when I sold TVs for @ 20 years the biggest difference between the best TVs (Sony Wega, later the top end LG, Pioneer, and Samsungs) was the built in video processing engine (scaler, etc.).

That being said, Oppos did look great and so did the Playstation 3 (1st gen was a great SACD player) and Playstion 4 for Blu-rays.

If you want an inexpensive device that looks great streaming, I really like the new Google Chromecast TV 2021 with remote - it even comes in white, blue, and pink

 

[Plautus001]

Mosquito farts, lab coats, and incomplete "science"

In this missive I address the worship of one false audio god, namely the assumption of the valid “science” of audio measurement circa 2021. What’s wrong with measuring audio equipment? Nothing actually as long as you understand that these measurements have little to do with how well this equipment will cater to the type of sound you like. Utterly useless. The only exception is if the measurements are really, really awful.

A number of measurement parameters have been defined such as distortion (IM and harmonic), linearity, and noise. You can add wow, flutter, and speed accuracy for analog sources. Current measurement tech for DACs cover a dynamic range of greater than 120db even up to 140db. The machines that measure this kind of dynamic range have car type price stickers. Back in the analog days 70 db dynamic range was pretty damn good. I remember being at a AES convention in the early 80s (when notoriously bad sounding digital in the form of CDs); they sold t-shirts emblazoned with “Digital Finishes What the Transistor Began”. Early digital, for all of its 90-100 db dynamic really sucked, and most of the engineers admitted it. Back then, it was widely known that measurements were not completely defined to a level that could reproducibly be definitive with human hearing. Fast forward to today, there has been no change.

These guys that sell the pricey measurement gear will have you believe that low level (>80 db) is vital for good sound. Let me put that in perspective. If one attends a concert, -110db (or greater) levels are going to be at the level of mosquito farts. How about inaudible. Up above -80 or so db – that is where the measurements that we haven’t figured out yet are important.

Before you consider me to be hopelessly atavistic, I do feel that measurements can be important for example in production test to find faults in various products. Now if I want to be a poser, I could put on a lab-coat, strike a Napoleonic, hand in coat image, and brag about my newest, car priced Audio hand job analyzer, based on “science”. This analyzer is of course the ultimate arbiter of what you want for your system.

I tire of hearing about “science”. When I was a kid, big oil and petrochemicals owned the media. They ran public service ads on TV based on incomplete science or “science” – A slogan was “DDT is good for our kids” - More vegetables for them to eat. Yeah!

The moral is get what audio gear you like.

Well said, reading Baldr's words and listening to him speak is always an experience and an education... I teach first year college English and I'm not too proud to admit I had to look up "atavistic" and he definitely is not... although it would be cool to see him in a Napoleonic pose with a lab coat on - if it does get him 'cancelled' these days.

 

[Plautus001]

So was that THX or MQA?

But the stickers are so pretty.. lol

 

[johnjen]

Mosquito farts, lab coats, and incomplete "science"
snip
In this missive I address the worship of one false audio god, namely the assumption of the valid “science” of audio measurement circa 2021. What’s wrong with measuring audio equipment? Nothing actually as long as you understand that these measurements have little to do with how well this equipment will cater to the type of sound you like. Utterly useless. The only exception is if the measurements are really, really awful.

snip …Back then (the analog days), it was widely known that measurements were not completely defined to a level that could reproducibly be definitive with human hearing. Fast forward to today, there has been no change.

These guys that sell the pricey measurement gear will have you believe that low level (>80 db) is vital for good sound. Let me put that in perspective. If one attends a concert, -110db (or greater) levels are going to be at the level of mosquito farts. How about inaudible.

Up above -80 or so db – that is where the measurements that we haven’t figured out yet are important.
Emphasis Mine
snip

The moral is get what audio gear you like.

And it simply MUST be a mere coincidence that from -80dB and all the way up to 0dB IS where the music, we listen to, actually exists.
And equally so 'it simply MUST be a mere coincidence' that music is a continuously changing, dynamically complex signal, completely unlike any collection of test tones and step responses etc.

But I can empathize with the measurement crowd as it's a 'fun thing to do' and gives me a number or 2 to use as bragging rights, sorta.

And a real life example of how far a field measurements can be is my custom 71A Purp-Amp.
It probably measures rather poorly using that "collection of test tones and step responses etc.", and probably enough so that hard core objectivists would never even consider listening to it.
And so miss the entire point of the amp, which is to listen to music.
Which it does with aplomb and delightfully so, much to my utter satisfaction.

But then again the range of interests that audio brings to the table is VERY extensive, so the specific collection of aspects, that some value in their pursuit of audio, can vary immensely, including the collection of numbers attributed to any and all pieces of gear, and sometimes to the exclusion of the primary function of said audio gear.

To paraphrase Peter Sellers in Being There, 'I like to listen…'

JJ

 

[Ableza]

And it simply MUST be a mere coincidence that from -80dB and all the way up to 0dB IS where the music, we listen to, actually exists.
And equally so 'it simply MUST be a mere coincidence' that music is a continuously changing, dynamically complex signal, completely unlike any collection of test tones and step responses etc.

But I can empathize with the measurement crowd as it's a 'fun thing to do' and gives me a number or 2 to use as bragging rights, sorta.

And a real life example of how far a field measurements can be is my custom 71A Purp-Amp.
It probably measures rather poorly using that "collection of test tones and step responses etc.", and probably enough so that hard core objectivists would never even consider listening to it.
And so miss the entire point of the amp, which is to listen to music.
Which it does with aplomb and delightfully so, much to my utter satisfaction.

But then again the range of interests that audio brings to the table is VERY extensive, so the specific collection of aspects, that some value in their pursuit of audio, can vary immensely, including the collection of numbers attributed to any and all pieces of gear, and sometimes to the exclusion of the primary function of said audio gear.

To paraphrase Peter Sellers in Being There, 'I like to listen…'

JJ

That depends on where you place the zero. I normally put it at 20 micropascals, the threshold of hearing.

 

[judson_w]

Went to the record shop this weekend and found an opera I remembered enjoying in high school, so I bought it. No research as to whether this is a better performance of Aida or not, but just put it in to enjoy while working.

I can tell it has been awhile. I was not ready for how quiet it starts. Then again, having the housemate vacuuming outside my room and construction going on outside did not create good quiet environment for my HD600s. Now that vacuuming is done and my window is closed, I can better appreciate the recording.

Small update on this: I enjoyed it quite a bit even if just as background music. I will have to give it a proper focused listening at some point. Both through headphones and speakers it was enjoyable, though I think I might prefer it through speakers a little bit. Sounds larger without needing to be louder.

I will be exploring more opera options in the future I think (and everything else).

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

Selective/Incomplete Science:

How about non-science.

 

[Ableza]

How about non-science.

Yes, calling something "incomplete science" implies there is some scientific basis. In most such cases there is not.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

Yes, calling something "incomplete science" implies there is some scientific basis. In most such cases there is not.

Apart from that I smoked Lucky Strikes half my life.........