Ok hi-fi nuts - £21 for a rubber band?!

[swee'pea99]

(PS I looked it up. It does exist. I haven't been paying attention. There's a first...)

 

[Profpointy]

On the CD vinyl thin, some 30+ years ago when CDs first came out they really weren't remotely as good to listen to as a half decent record player like a Rega, never mind a linn. I suspect those impressed by them were comparing a £200 CD player with their old radiogram autochanger rather than an equivalent cost record player.

I ended up buying a linn and the thing that impressed me the most was how amazing some old scratchy mono records I was going to dump sounded
These days, things have move on and CDs are a lot better.

These days, I have a studio quality soundcard in my PC, thus the DAC part is basically as good as the equipment used on the original recording. There is admittedly a slight, but perfectly audiable difference between studio quality (digital) recording and CD quality so it's possible that the best analogue records capture this, but I'm slighly doubtful. There's a bigger gap between CD and MP3, but having compared all three formats for the same music I was suprised how good even the audibly inferior MP3 actually sounded. I also understand that even quite cheap DACs are nowdays about as good as is theoretically possible. And any modern gramaphone record will have been recorded digitally before cutting the disc.

Anyhow, I do think digital is the way to go these days, but it did take a long while for it to really compete on quality once you get over the lack of scratches and hiss, which is arguably a secondary thing

 

[raleighnut]

CD player with a Valve output stage anyone,

 

[Profpointy]

CD player with a Valve output stage anyone,

View attachment 375870

The trouble is it does have a bling shiny apeal,despite being engineeing nonsense

 

[raleighnut]

On the CD vinyl thin, some 30+ years ago when CDs first came out they really weren't remotely as good to listen to as a half decent record player like a Rega, never mind a linn. I suspect those impressed by them were comparing a £200 CD player with their old radiogram autochanger rather than an equivalent cost record player.

I ended up buying a linn and the thing that impressed me the most was how amazing some old scratchy mono records I was going to dump sounded
These days, things have move on and CDs are a lot better.

These days, I have a studio quality soundcard in my PC, thus the DAC part is basically as good as the equipment used on the original recording. There is admittedly a slight, but perfectly audiable difference between studio quality (digital) recording and CD quality so it's possible that the best analogue records capture this, but I'm slighly doubtful. There's a bigger gap between CD and MP3, but having compared all three formats for the same music I was suprised how good even the audibly inferior MP3 actually sounded. I also understand that even quite cheap DACs are nowdays about as good as is theoretically possible. And any modern gramaphone record will have been recorded digitally before cutting the disc.

Anyhow, I do think digital is the way to go these days, but it did take a long while for it to really compete on quality once you get over the lack of scratches and hiss, which is arguably a secondary thing

Google DAC clock 'jitter'

 

[presta]

I can't help wondering if people who've paid that much money for a rubber band might be predisposed to fool themselves into hearing a difference, whether or not there really is one - after all, otherwise you might feel a bit of a twit mightn't you?

Connoisseurship is one of psychologist Prof Richard Wiseman's pet subjects. He's come to the conclusion that whether you're talking about food, wine, art, music, whatever, they're pretentious snobs who can't tell the difference they claim in double blind tests.

 

[Drago]

Google DAC clock 'jitter'

I did. Despite the theory, I don't think my ears are sufficiently attuned to detect differences in phase that measure in the hundreds of thousandths of a second.

 

[classic33]

Vinyl(Analogue) V CD(Electronic)

 

[Globalti]

This reminds me of the French wine industry - a panel of "experts" couldn't tell the difference between wines corked with cork and wines corked with plastic. Shock horror!

 

[raleighnut]

I did. Despite the theory, I don't think my ears are sufficiently attuned to detect differences in phase that measure in the hundreds of thousandths of a second.

It's not a theory, it's the reason an expensive CD player outperforms a cheap un.

 

[Drago]

I don't doubt they do, but for the reasons I stated I couldn't tell the difference.

 

[nickyboy]

Connoisseurship is one of psychologist Prof Richard Wiseman's pet subjects. He's come to the conclusion that whether you're talking about food, wine, art, music, whatever, they're pretentious snobs who can't tell the difference they claim in double blind tests.

Same also applies to Ultegra v 105, different carbon lay ups, stiffer wheels etc etc

 

[Profpointy]

A pal of mine used to work on a hi fi magazine; photographer than than editorial. They did a nice article where they looked at 3 musicians' ( classical, rock, and jazz) stereos. Basically they all had crap stereos but because they all had "a good ear" and were musical they concentrated on the music rather than the sound. They did upgrade each system (to something modest rather than exotica)and of course they could all hear the difference but it was revealing that real musicians seemed less bothered by hi fi than you'd think

 

[Drago]

Except Tom Scholz. He's an expert on acoustics and anal beyond belief, even going to the lengths of making his own equipment because the off the shelf was poop.


https://www.soundandvision.com/content/boston-analog-king-tom-scholz


I'm not sure I entirely agree, but he was a qualified expert and practical acoustic engineer before he became a recording artist, so his words carry some gravitas.

 

[Globalti]

Must admit that I did recently spend what seemed a large sum of money on a pair of fancy earbuds for my iPod and was actually blown away by the difference they made; I am hearing stuff in my music collection that I've never noticed before.