Ouch. Sad to see Neil Young hawking this shit to rubes who don't know any better.

What's sad about this is that there's plenty of room to really improve things with standard CD resolution audio, particularly getting your DAC outside of your computer and on its own power supply. This tends to give better bass and a lower noise floor.

I still have strong memories of the Pentium-class Dell box I used in grad school. I had bottom-of-the-line Grado Labs headphones plugged into the SoundBlaster card, and it was just awful. Every time I scrolled a window, the sound card exploded in noise. I could "hear" the graphics card working. When I switched to the audio jack on the built-in CD player, it was fantastic, clean and beautiful.

These days, I've got a Teac USB amp (related empeg thread from a year ago). I ditched my boomy bookshelf speakers and hauled up to my office a pair of beautiful VMPS RM2's that I bought years ago and hadn't been using recently because my lovely wife found them to be a visual eyesore. Well, that tiny little Teac drives those monster VMPS speakers with aplomb. And my home office isn't all that large, so I don't really need to crank the audio....

Agreed. I also want to start using an external DAC, which is why this NAD D7050 has been on my wishlist for quite some time.

Someday, someday...

I was just having an interesting conversation with my girlfriend about audiophile snake oil.

Of course it started with discussion of too-expensive over-engineered connector cables. And then into expensive audiophile gear and also Neil Young's Pono player.

The interesting thing to me is that some kinds of audiophile gear do make a difference. How big of a difference depends on the exact piece of gear. And whether or not a listener can hear the difference depends on the listener. For instance, I can usually hear the difference between a 128k MP3 and a 256k MP3. Many people can't hear that difference, but since I can, it bugs me to listen to badly encoded songs. Video is similar. I can see the difference between a Blu-ray and a DVD, but many people (including my girlfriend) can't tell the difference and don't care.

The Pono player is like that, I'm sure. I'm sure that certain parts of its performance can be measurably proved to be superior to anything else in its class. And I'm sure that there are people out there who could tell the difference in a blind test. And I'm also sure that there will be people among that group who, when they can hear the difference, would be irritated to have to listen to products of inferior quality. And that's who Neil Young is making that player for. I say, more power to 'em. I bought the Empeg because of all the things that made it superior, things that most people wouldn't care about. So I certainly can't throw stones in the audio device glass house.

But here's what I found particularly interesting about our conversation: My girlfriend said that she believed that most of the people out there who are buying audiophile gear (whether it be the Pono player, an expensive amp, or whatever), are making the purchases not because they can hear the difference, but rather, because they want to be snooty and look down upon those who use inferior gear.

I argued that sure those people exist, but there are also actual audiophiles, people who, for products where there is a measurable difference, can hear the difference. Her response really got me thinking: She said that yes, those actual audiophiles exist. But there aren't enough of them to justify mass production of any piece of gear. The majority of the market is probably the clueless snobs. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have enough of a market for any mass-produced audiophile gear. The snobs are carrying the market for the true audiophiles.

Wow, I wonder if that's true? And if, from a market standpoint, it makes sense to encourage the snobs, just to keep the ball rolling? I'd hate to live in a world where every piece of A/V gear was built and marketed to the lowest common denominator.

Kinda like cars. How many people drive their SUVs off-road? Or hell, how many people have ever used those fancy pots and pans they have in their kitchen?

Snake oil.

The differences between DVD an BluRay are obvious and measurable (eg. 720x400 vs 1920x1080). Similarly, 128Kbit MP3 is the bare minimum for recognizable music, but not adequate to capture everything we might normally hear. Adding more bits makes a big difference, up to a point, assuming the amp/speakers are not the limiting factors.

These are things that have a basis in strong tech facts, not snake oil, and the differences they make are measurable by pretty much anyone with a bit of gear (or a large screen in the case of BR).

Cheers

This is the key bit of info that many forget about. There comes a point when adding more bits, or whatever, provides no perceivable* benefit.

*There might be a measurable benefit, but if a qualified user can't notice, then what is the point? Of course when one could argue about what is a "qualified user"

Low bitrate MP3 files have really awful artifacts. Most notably, they just cannot deal properly with cymbals. Also, I remember that many early codecs would filter out anything about 15kHz or thereabouts, because you might as well prioritize the lower frequency bits.

MP3 once you get to 200kb/sec or thereabouts is really, really good. I've made multiple attempts to distinguish them from uncompressed originals and I can't tell them apart. And this is with really good headphones, offboard DACs, etc. -- the same sorts of equipment that generally get me annoyed at places where the mastering engineers made mistakes.

I have a buddy who spends serious coin on his home stereo / theater. Many of his purchases are entirely defensible and logical (e.g., acoustic foam discretely tucked in corners to absorb reflections). Other stuff, less so. Notably, he's bought into the high bitrate fiasco, saying all these things about jitter and filtering and whatnot that he presumably will never be able to hear. So far as I can tell, all that really matters is that when you buy high-bitrate music, you're just getting bits that was mastered by people who care, versus, for contrast, the modern phenomenon of over-compression. (Factoid: I have two releases of Count Basie and Oscar Peterson's "Satch and Josh", one normal and one on XRCD. The differences are subtle but present, but largely boil down to better mastering. It's all still red book audio CD on the client end.)

The sad fact is that most users could do themselves the most good by simply buying decent speakers and setting up their room well. Now that virtually all home theater cabling is digital, you kinda wish that Monster would just wither away, but there they are with über HDMI cables. It's just so sad. Meanwhile, Home Depot sells really great 12ga speaker wire in bulk, and it's trivial to attach your own banana plugs or whatever else.

Returning to Pono and the phenomenon that Tony cites, the underlying pathology here is probably some variation on people needing to "perform their wealth", combined with a related pathology of "price signalling". The former is why you've got so many people sitting in traffic in their AMG Mercedes and BMW M cars. They don't buy those cars out of some rational need. It's all about exclusivity and projecting that, yeah baby, I've made it. The price signalling thing is something you see every time you look at a wine list in a restaurant. You've never heard of any of them, but some are much cheaper than others. Do you splurge for the more expensive bottle? How do you decide? Hey, why would you buy that cheap speaker cable when you can buy the Monster cable? It's worth it!

*sigh*

Agreed competely. I can tell an 128kb/sec from an 160. But I've also found that from 192 kbps and up, I can't tell the difference. Which is why I've ripped all my cd's back in the day at 192kbps. Storage space is cheap though nowaydays, which is why I currently rip at 320kbps. More a no harm, no foul attitude than anything else to be honest.

Yup. When I ripped all my CDs, I sprung for Apple Lossless, figuring that I could always transcode from that to whatever else, which is exactly what I did when Google Music came along.

Exactly. I may be wrong, but by "snake oil" I do not refer to some actual higher audio quality only interesting to/perceivable by some. that is actual quality, that is real.

I refer to non-existing higher quality that some clueless people believe in. There are speakers that cost tens of thousands of dollars that produce sound in any way measurably better then other speakers that cost on the hundreds, neither by using instrumentation, not by testing them by blindfolded expert listeners. Same happened with Monster cables, or "DAC with optic readers", as Audiphiles would call them (CD players).

I think I mentioned of an audiophile who claimed white walls would be best for listening to music, as they do not "emit" (what?!), while walls of any color (as if white is not one) do "emit" and therefore interfere with sound waves. Yes, if you're thinking in light terms, he even got it the other way round.

Or, I remember several threads here about digital cables supposedly producing "better sound".

These are all cases of snake oil: there's just nothing true to them.

Still one of my favorites - coat hangers!

-jk

I still love the audiophile store in my home town that sells tiny plastic stands designed to keep your speaker cables off the ground. I assume to reduce interference or something. They also sell $2000 interconnects and those floating magnetic turntables. I LOVE going into that place.

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/hot-stampers/?mbid=social_fb

Absolutely. Crazy.

Man, time to sell my unopened "Wish You Were Here"...

Ah, but was it an early pressing on fresh stampers?

Now if only there were some way to get virtually identical reproductions of a source signal, consistently, each and every time. Hi-fi and low cost. How could we do that?

I know, right? Precisely one of the things that made me call the whole thing just unbelievably crazy.

Well, it was pretty early in the morning when I bought it, so yes!

Wow, it's been 40 years. I should open it and play it. It's the first release, the one in the opaque plastic wrapper.

Good lord, at least the Pono sounds measurably better than a low-bitrate MP3. I can't believe after this long people still buy the "vinyl sounds better" BS.

Did we ever get confirmation that the new Sony Walkman would end up costing the insane amount of money we were hearing about? I recall that at CES they were saying it would cost something like $1200. Makes the Pono sound like a steal.

I can understand those prices for collectors (I have an uncle who paid like $1500 for a basketball card he really wanted), but since they focused on the sound quality, yeah... I guess as long as they are happy.

For a while, anyway. Of course, actually playing the record is a destructive process as the needle scrapes along through the grooves, removing minute bits of vinyl with each playing. How long before the sound degrades enough so that the record is no longer a "hot stamp" recording?

tanstaafl.

At that point they can just swap to one of the other half dozen different pressings of the album they own.

I thought you could get laser-scanning turntables these days?

Laser turntables? Yes! http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2011/11/lasers-get-groovy.cfm

Unfortunately...

For what it's worth, I have a lot of old jazz (vintage 1930's) in my collection. The digital remasters that came from 78rpm suck. Every once in a while, they manage to dig up the metal stamping parts, which yield radically better fidelity. Still, it wasn't until the 1950's that recordings had anything resembling modern high fidelity. To my ear, some of the jazz greats of the 1930's recording music in the 1950's, with master tapes redigitized in the 2000's and issued on CD, are as good as it gets.

A laser-scanning turntable introduces ADC - DAC in the chain, which I am sure vinyl loving Audiophiles will wholeheartedly despise. Or maybe not, what do I know.


P.S.: I suspected, but did not actually know, of the existence of Laser-turntables. Which are ironic in themselves, I think. Aren't they?

Wait, people are still using laser turntables at atmospheric pressure? Haven't they heard of Brownian motion? Vacuum-chamber turntables are where it's at.

Peter

Turning records always has a vibration component, so I use a special flatbed scanner, which is connected to an analog computer to reproduce the sound. I'll have to try this setup in a vacuum chamber, the advantages are obvious!

According to the laser turntable folks, it's all analog.

http://www.elpj.com/about/laser-sound-quality.php

I was curious to see how they would argue such a thing, and of course I got the nonsense I asked for:

Closeness to master tape is a recurring concept in the whole remarkable page. I wonder what they came up with to address the fact master tape is digital?

On the other hand, because they use light, laser turntables are more subject to quantum mechanics and arguably that will introduce some alteration to sound quality. I'd only recommend using laser turntables when travelling close to speed of light in the same direction of the laser beam, to compensate for that.

So you're saying vacuum tubes are best?

I'm trying to think of other product types beyond hifi audio where snake oil is so prevalent. What immediately comes to mind:

- Kitchen appliances. Is there really an improvement in your food from a $1000 oven to a $5000 oven? Once you've added a circulation fan, is there really anything else to do? I guess you can make it look prettier. That said, the high-end SubZero combo fridges have entirely separate compressors for the fridge and the freezer, which seems like a good thing.

- Vitamins. They don't do much of anything and apparently many brands don't even contain the listed ingredients. But I'll bet you can pay more if they're "organic".

I'm trying to think of others and not really getting anywhere. The closest I can come is the fashion / clothing universe, but some people seem to find real value in wearing "brands" even when they may be otherwise identical to unbranded clothing.

Car air filters. K&N in particular keep bees & boulders out, but don't do any significant filtering. They even come with magic oil (might be snake).




Ah, but those compressors are the same production stuff any fridge gets, and Sub Zero have other issues, like on my pair (separate fridge and freeze), the backs rusted out because of a poor design that allowed the coolant piping to freeze outside. I haven't found that to be a problem on any of the big brands.



Isn't that the area that the term 'snake oil' got it's genesis?

More snake oil:

- Bottled water. Holy cow. You melted a glacier for this?

- Vodka. Really. It's just pure ethanol diluted with water, unless the distillery was cheap, which means you also get methanol and other poisonous loveliness.

I believe "snake oil" had its genesis in "patent medicines" which had all sorts of quackery (and/or opiates or cocaine) about them. The modern derivatives of that world, such as Italian amari, are at least quite tasty.

How about, "Gamers" accessories. Eg. keyboards, network cards, heat spreaders, case fans, etc.

What surprises me is how easily people have accepted crap audio on their phones in a trade-off to have a portable swiss-army knife computer in their hands all day. POTS had/has great sound quality in comparison. Calls are clear and you rarely get disconnected. Conference calls anymore just wear me out. I spend most of my listing power just trying to figure out what someone just said on their $600 phone.

Maybe someday it will get better but I haven't seen any improvement in years. IMO just the opposite.

As a side historical note, I am not sure Italian amari have anything to do with "patent medicine". Certainly they predate "patent medicine" (and the modern idea of "patent") of at least 4 centuries, possibly more. They originated in the form we know at least back in the early middle age, being traditionally produced by monks in monasteries lost in the Apennines or in the Alps.

They are usually based on herbs of different kinds, made according to quite complicated, time-consuming recipes which were kept relatively secret, changed and improved over and over in time. They are supposedly deriving from even earlier traditions (Romans, Greeks, many others) the monks preserved through the "dark age" and modified over centuries.

While properties of these drinks are often based on superstition, or just traditional believes, and certainly not scientifically proven, occasionally their (therapeutic, or of other kind) properties are real, not snake oil.

I am not sure how much big popular brands ("Averna", "Lucano", and others), available all over the world, are actually faithful to some of the thousands of traditional regional recipes (certainly they claim to be), but I would guess they were to some extent changed for mass production in the 50s and 60s, possibly to taste OK to the vast public (some of the handmade amari I tasted are way, way too strong, or way too bitter, I would say).

However, the word "amaro" equally refers to the "industrial" version of it, and the traditional small local products.

Interestingly, some monks still make them, to this day, and occasionally sell locally. You will find them, albeit not too frequently, on sale at stands in small village markets, or in stores that specialize in original, traditional, local products. Of course they tend to be pricey.




Snake oil: I'd say wine industry is just full of it?

Agreed. My usage of voice telephone calls has significantly decreased since all systems went to VOIP systems with terrible compression and awful latency. I have been recently powerfully reminded of how bad voice phone calls are these days because I'm on a job hunt and I've been doing lots of phone interviews. Wow it's awful.

The worst part I think is the latency. The timing of a voice conversation is a very important thing, and if they're hearing me say something three seconds late, we always end up talking over each other. God I hate that.

Fortunately, most of the time, the multipurpose computer in my pants gives me communication methods that make the voice call unnecessary.

Yes, that's so annoying. Every call EU-USA, in my recent experience, is like that.

I have no problems with VoIP compression -- it's actually better (more bits) than the compression with POTS (56Kbps in Can/USA, 64kbps in EU). And mostly the same for GSM (mobile) voice.

But latency. Oh, latency. Killer.

Woot has a "Must Have" today.

http://www.woot.com/offers/philips-golit...5383974#tracked


Oh yea, gota have....

- Has a similar effect on well-being as a sunny blue sky
- Light is a Natural energizer that fits a healthy lifestyle
The pure blue light of goLITE BLU increases energy levels naturally. The effect is similar to that of a sunny day, but without the UV rays associated with sunlight.

Well, light boxes have been known as a treatment for SAD (seasonal affective disorder). I used them when I lived in a more northerly area. I can say they did help me. Was that a placebo effect? I don't know. But you did need to use them regularly and according to the instructions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy

I have to say that the cellular network audio quality here has been worsening significantly over the years. Signal tends to be weak, so conversations are way too frequently disappointing (broken, with "statics", dropped). In addition to latency, of course.

I wonder how much of this is partly caused by Smartphones being generally weaker in reception due to their embedded antennas? Do you think this makes sense?

At the end of last year, I was doing twice weekly conference calls at 4am on a cell phone with folks from a country that has a very strong accent, who were also on cell phones.

I would be tired all day after those 2 hour calls. It was mentally exhausting trying to understand everything.

... so, I was thinking, rather than Jewelry, Apple should probably enter the audiophile market.

"Tests show that as you may not know, if you push the play button on your CD player while wearing a > $17,000 Apple Watch, its gold chassis will prevent statics from entering the audio chain and your CDs will sound perceptibly better."

This is possibly the most pointless article I've ever read on Wired.

Seriously, why?

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/120000-speakers-like-parking-symphony-den/?mbid=social_fb