• audio·phile: a person with love for, affinity towards or obsession with high-quality playback of sound and music. r/audiophile is a subreddit for the pursuit of quality audio reproduction of all forms, budgets, and sizes of speakers. Our primary goal is insightful discussion of home audio equipment, sources, music, and concepts.
Music
My wife plays harp, and she is rather good. Her harp sits in the corner of my listening room. It is fascinating to me that, even with untold thousands of dollars of audio equipment in that room, my system still sounds nowhere as pure as that frame of wood with nylon strings. Music really is amazing!
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Pass it here, friend
Is this where the rotation starts? Lovely
To my ears, an excellent audio system may sound good and be enjoyable but it is not a musical instrument. Audio systems can be enjoyable but they rarely fool you into thinking that you are listening to something that you are not.
I have to agree, we have a very high end system and we enjoy it. But if you ever hear something like a string quartet in person. It’s amazing just how loud it is. Even just reproducing a solo piano is very demanding.
The difference between live music and a recording is unfortunately so vast. Just like seeing a painting or sculpture up close vs on your TV no matter how HD the source is
I spend more on my musical instruments over my listening equipment for a reason.
I've always thought it was funny that people spend tens of thousands of dollars in pursuit of the most pure "studio quality" sound. But even the best possible studio quality sound through speakers is always going to just be a shadow clone of the real thing happening right in front of you.
It's why actually being at a concert sounds so different from the live recording. Your exact spot in the concert, with your ears, is completely unique. Everybody is hearing the same show but no two people are hearing it the exact same way. And if you record the show by placing microphones a few feet closer or farther away from each other, you can get pretty different responses. It's truly fascinating.
I think there is something to sound that is physically moving the airwaves around you too, rather than just going straight into your ears. Playing a power chord on my electric guitar, I can almost lean back physically into the sound. But playing back the recording on headphones, it lacks all of that warmth and power.
Eh, I hear you but I’ve been to plenty of big name concerts that didn’t sound as good a listening to a CD on a decent set of speakers. It’s almost a moot comparison though. They’re totally different experiences in many more ways than just sound.
Yep, a concert is an "experience." In most cases, recordings played through a good system sound much better.
Big concerts is not where toy need to go.
You'll have a local symphony orchestra, the way the frequencies and harmonics stack is off the charts. Nothing like it.
Why is investing in equipment that gets closer to the live experience funny?
Would it be better if the equipment is worse sounding and further away from the original source?
Everyone has their idea about the pursuit to achieve the highest possible fidelity (def: the reproduction of sound with little distortion, giving a result very similar to the original).
I guess I don’t quite understand the logic.
I guess funny is not the correct word. More so peculiar. It's like pursuing perfection knowing that perfection is totally impossible. Because the only way to achieve perfection is to have been in front of the amp or singer or band/etc as the song was being recorded. And even once you achieve the ideal setup, that lack of perfection will always leave some people constantly craving something.... More.
It's what makes the audiophile hobby so baffling to people outside of it. They don't understand how a regular set of airpods doesn't do the same thing that your DAC and IEMs do.
Also on the second point, that's exactly it. A poorly mixed album to me might be mixed great for someone else. We all have our preferred eq targets. And it's interesting to me how the preferences of audio engineers, or these little nuances lost to history like speaker placement have shaped so much of the sounds that we hold dear.
The same can be said for almost anything.
Do you enjoy looking at paintings? If so that's silly, why not go look at the real thing? A painting will always be a shadow of the real thing, and will never capture it perfectly. Why not take a photograph?
Ehhh - I think this is comparing apples and oranges. For example, two best album Grammy award winners, War on Drugs and Steely Dan, create music that’s not even possible without studio technology. The multitracking and layering of sound created by primarily analog instruments creates music that would take untold numbers of musicians to reproduce in a live setting, and even then it would different, and I think many people agree, lacking something from the album when reproduced over a high fidelity system. War on Drugs have to learn to play their own albums to tour, not like, learning the sheet music, they have to create a live version of what was recorded, or with different economics of the time, Steely Dan just stopped touring so they didn’t have to make live pastiche of their studio creations.
In fact, I think this argument only holds water for people who primarily listen to classical music, jazz, or very simple singer songwriter. Everything else made in a studio is with instruments sonically isolated from each other, often at temporally different times. Nothing about this is “live”. In fact, the recording microphone placement and mixing later is required to capture what was intended by the artistic choice. For example, when Steely Dan wrapped up the recording for the track Aja, having heard Stephan Gadd’s now famous drum solo live, their initial reaction was to make sure they also re-record the whole thing with Jeff Porcaro on drums because they weren’t sure if they liked it. It wasn’t until much later, during the mixing and mastering, that they found they liked it. This is one of the most famous drum solos and being there when it happened didn’t strike them in any sort of way, it wasn’t until the mixing and mastering happened that it’s true brilliance in the context of their vision for the song could shine.
And to get to your example, the point of the gear is so that the guitar sounds warm and powerful. It won’t sound that way on headphones really ever because of physics. The warmth and power comes from moving air. Listening to a well recorded guitar on a high fidelity system featuring large speakers, in a treated room will sound so very identical it should be challenging, if not impossible for most, to tell the difference.
I know I spend the money, because in my experience, it’s just better than a live concert. It sounds like they wanted it too, it’s not a hostage of the venue.
I've always loved singing in rock bands. Being in the pocket with the bass and guitars coming through speakers designed just for those instruments is pure magic. Add in live drums, and it doesn't get any better than that! I've had plenty of high-end gear, but nothing really compares to that live band experience
I once read that a researcher discovered that it takes 1,000 watts of amplifier power to reproduce a singe pin-drop accurately. I wish I could find the quote. It was pre-internet (gasp!). I think it accurate.
Amplifier power isn't about loud sound. It is about accurate reproduction. I agree that no system, even the half-million dollar systems at trade shows, can come close to the nuance of a single acoustic instrument.
Why would the amount of wattage have absolutely anything to do with the accuracy? That sounds ridiculous.
For example, take the OP's example of a harp. Record it. Play it back on your existing amp. Now take your amp and upgrade it with 4x the power. Then listen to the original again, sans any mic, speaker, or amplification. In each example, do this at the same decibel level. You will then answer your own question better than I can express within this thread.
You can't turn up the decibel level of a harp. If your existing amp can match the harps normal decibel level, you aren't going to get magical "accuracy" from increasing wattage. If it can't, then it can still be just as accurate, but not as loud. Wattage has nothing to do with accuracy.
Yes but clean and very strong stable power is needed to swing dynamically dramatically and still remain precise..to scale, modern big power = snappy accurate dynamics that strike the uncanny valley button just right
You'd have to blind test this if you want to avoid placebo effect
Wattage is not a measure of accuracy in reproduction. You can have a 1000 watts but it can still sound sh17ty like a PA amp.
Accuracy is measured by distortion - lower the better.
Additionally, everyone talks about distortion in by preamp and power amp, no one talks about distortion in speakers. And very few companies even provide any measurement of distortion in their speakers.
Having said that, there’s another point true though that the THD curve for most modern amps clearly shows relatively lower level of distortion well below their max rated power. In other words, for example, if an amp is rated for 125 watts, in all probability the THD will be lowest when it’s being driven between 25 and 100W.
IMHO, if the entire audio chain has each components introducing minimal distortion, it’ll sound pretty good, very close to live music - and people like us spend their lifetimes chasing the ultimate audiophile dream of having reproduction as close to real thing as possible.
Having said that, yes, nothing is going to sound as good as a real musical instrument right in front of you 😁
While wattage is not a direct measure of anything audible, it correlates with dynamics which are arguably a part of accuracy
Dynamic is a part of larger measure - distortion.
Of course, every non-ideal aspect of a loudspeaker is distortion in one way or another. It is however not a very practical way of breaking down things
Was it Bob Carver and a scissors snip?
This is from an old amplifier advertisement:
Found in this thread:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/carver-m-1-5t-review-vintage-amp.30983/page-7
That right. Bob appropriated the research with his own spin for marketing purposes. I forgot about that. He marketed the idea after the reasearch. It was in the early 1980's. Pre-internet.
lol what kind of boomer Facebook quote is that? It’s nonsensical
I had the same epiphany a couple of days ago. I came upon an old Ohana ukuleke that I had set aside years when I was really busy. Well, I am not working anymore.
Tuning it, feeling the vibration in the body when I plucked the strings, and hearing the tones ring out had an immediacy that no system can match. I ordered some new Aquila Nylgut strings with alacrity.
The problem is not the equipment but the source. Records tend to be horribly compressed because at low volumes (the way people normally listens) you need compression to hear the low volume detail. Music recordings should be delivered at full dynamic range (24 bits of resolution is enough) and let us have amplifiers that compress more at low volumes to reveal low level details. But…
A trend comes and goes over the decades of music reproduction of having the speakers become an instrument itself by keeping the housing thin and made of wood. Part of the thinking is that it releases the vibrations quicker and are more dispersed.
Harps are unbelievably tough to reproduce (I used to play when I was young).
There was ONE system I have ever heard that was able to reproduce the actual sound, and that was a set of Maggies (McIntosh gear driving them, but I don't think that was as important). I have always suspected it was something about having the area of the transducer panel similar in size to the soundboard of the harp itself - with the right recording, it was sitting in the room.
Difference lies in recording and speaker dispersion.
I mean, that's the whole thing, right? It's all about reproducing what we would hear if we were in the studio or at a live performance. All of the equipment we use is aimed at precisely that, because music is created by people not by equipment. The ultimate goal is for the equipment to fade away and the music to take over.
And even with your wife's live performances (which, yes, sounds heavenly), they're being done in your listening room which I assume is somewhat optimized for sound. Put her in another room and it wouldn't sound as great. Hence trying to recreate that perfect listening environment no matter the space.
Well, but you don't own dipoles, do you? I don't know about replicating a harp but they do get the "not sounding like a box" part down. Magnepans are real. They are different.
Most audiophiles spend a lot of money trying to solve a problem that might be about a basic design limitation.
If "not sounding like a box" is job one for any well-designed speaker, dipoles avoid the problem by not being a box.
Quite the head start. If that's the hurdle one's already past it. Of course, panels a third into the room disgruntles many, so oh well.
You just need a set of $1000 cables and that will fix everything - guaranteed!
As a musician (piano), I was always able to rate my system based on how closely it sounded to me playing the actual instrument.
It's been many many years, but I've finally put together a system that when played at live volume levels, with my eyes closed I cannot reliably tell the difference between someone playing the real thing and a recording of me playing the piano.
This is all in the same room so the acoustics aren't very different from the speakers or the piano.
Harp like other plucked string instruments is very tricky to record faithfully. If my wife played the harp, I'd be asking her to play it all the time instead of listening to the stereo LOL.
For my gf it's the flute. Live sound is so..Lively and dynamic. The problem is when you try to fix it in time aka recording.
Never been a fan of opera - never seen an opera either.
However, one day many years ago at the local market, somebody who was obviously a classically trained opera singer but nobody famous, just stood up on a platform and launched into something that sounded to my pleb ears as operatic (it was in Italian or something, anyway.)
Ho-lee fuck. The difference from anything I'd heard on a sound system was astounding. So much texture and connection. It was spellbinding.
To me, recorded music played though a good system sounds much better than most live music, typically played through crappy sounding amps and PA system. Yeah, actual live music, music without "reenforcement" is fantastic.