As someone who has spent time doing audio engineering, I have this to say: do not pay any attention to anything audiophiles have to say. Sure, sometimes they will tell you good information, but...
Exemplary
As someone who has spent time doing audio engineering, I have this to say: do not pay any attention to anything audiophiles have to say.
Sure, sometimes they will tell you good information, but the chances are that they are telling you what their highly subjective experience is.
What this guy is saying is mostly good information, but he concedes far too much to the audiophile community. The worst bit is this passage:
Admittedly, digital recordings are not 100% accurate. My tape measure can only measure to the nearest 1/16 inch, so I must round off the measurement when recording it in my notebook. Still, there is still much less chance for cumulative error, and finer-grained scales can decrease even those inaccuracies.
I mean, yeah, technically it's correct, but only in the most pedantic way; in the real world a digital recording is going to catch things that are far beyond the reach of human ears. Take CD audio for reference (which should be noted that most digial audio formats, lossless or not, tend to at least meet if not exceed); PCM recorded at 44.1Khz at a 16 bit resolution. The rate of the recording helps it capture frequencies more than double what most young people can hear, while the 16-bit resolution allows more than 65000 possible loudness levels, providing such a high amount of dynamic range that no human will be able to tell the the difference if it changes by just one level.
To put things simply, CD quality audio is scientifically proven to accurately reproduce audio within the range of human hearing. If you want to read more about this, look up the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theory.
It should also be mentioned that a lot of the terms that audiophiles mention, such as "warmth", "soundstage", "richness", and the like are not actually qualities of audio. They are not objectively measurable because what they are in reality are subjective features of mastering.
What the author of this piece gets bang-on is how he describes distortions and how engineers will deliberately introduce them into a recording to achieve an artistic effect. The comparison to photography is spot-on; note how photography can also be distorted until it becomes fairly abstract. The reason why so many audiophiles think that digital has no 'warmth' is because they likely listened to early digital masters, which did not have any extra effects applied to them to make them feel warm. But in reality, pretty much every modern album is going to be chocked full of effects that will give them the warmth that they're looking for. Though, once again, when audiophiles talk about "warmth" they are looking for their own subjective version of it; if it sounds different than the distortions of their favorite equipment, they are likely to dislike it.
I should also mention that I agree with just about everything else that the guy has to say. In particular, yes, there's absolutely value in having the physical experience. But no, the physical experience is not objectively better with vinyl; experience is subjective.
I cannot agree with this enough. I work in the video production field and the audiovisual experience is highly, highly, highly subjective. Everyone hears and sees differently. What looks or sounds...
As someone who has spent time doing audio engineering, I have this to say: do not pay any attention to anything audiophiles have to say.
[...] the chances are that they are telling you what their highly subjective experience is.
I cannot agree with this enough. I work in the video production field and the audiovisual experience is highly, highly, highly subjective. Everyone hears and sees differently. What looks or sounds right to me might sound off to you. Just because someone says they are a professional and tell you that something sounds better doesn't make it sound better to you.
In the same vein, how many times has one of us gone to a friend or relative's house and been appalled at the fact that their TV has motion smoothing and all sorts of other things turned on? Most of the time, they don't even notice the difference if you show them what it looks like turned off.
Back to audio though...in this day and age, an analog master doesn't even matter anymore, does it? Unless the entire production process is analog from recording to pressing, it defeats the purpose. An analog master of a digital recording is still just a digital recording, right?
There isn’t what I would consider to be a major difference, honestly. The more analog systems the audio goes through, the more harmonics are emphasized or diminished, and you might perceive that...
There isn’t what I would consider to be a major difference, honestly. The more analog systems the audio goes through, the more harmonics are emphasized or diminished, and you might perceive that as warmth.
I really think the author is clever for his use of the term “distortions” to describe the effect of mastering decisions. The final result will be full of them, and the way you eventually listen to them will introduce new distortions. Personally speaking, I generally want to hear music as the producer intended it to sound, so I make decisions about how to listen to it around reproducing those sounds as accurately as I can; I listen to lossless recordings and use wired headphones with a flat response curve. If I wanted to get the characteristics of warmth, I could run it through a digital audio processor, use a tube amp, or listen to it through an analogue media.
But to people who say analog mediums like vinyl are better...doesn't that sort of disprove their arguments? It sounds like a lot of what those people consider "good" is artificial anyway? I've...
There isn’t what I would consider to be a major difference, honestly. The more analog systems the audio goes through, the more harmonics are emphasized or diminished, and you might perceive that as warmth.
But to people who say analog mediums like vinyl are better...doesn't that sort of disprove their arguments? It sounds like a lot of what those people consider "good" is artificial anyway?
I've tried doing the comparisons between lossless and high quality re-encoded versions and I can never tell the difference, even with my fancy monitors. But I'll be honest, I spend most of my time dealing with videos and only dealing with audio as it relates to that, so while I might have a better understanding that most, I'm still a bit out of my depth here.
That's why I've been making a point about objective and subjective audio qualities. If you are looking at objective and measurable qualities, there really isn't much of a contest. Digital audio...
That's why I've been making a point about objective and subjective audio qualities. If you are looking at objective and measurable qualities, there really isn't much of a contest. Digital audio outperforms every consumer analog format in every way.
That being said, the way we experience sound is completely subjective. You shouldn't be too mean to audiophiles because at the end of the day, everything they do to listen to their music makes it sound better to them. People have different tastes, and you're not going to get anywhere arguing that their tastes are bad. The act of putting the EP on the record player, lining up the needle, and setting themselves down to listen for 30 minutes straight isn't inconvenient for these people; it's something that brings them joy.
Lossless vs lossy encoding is a completely different bucket of worms, and I'd really rather not go into it. Personally, I keep most of my music in lossless formats because even if age has me no longer is able to tell the difference, I want to keep an 'archival' version that is 'complete' (and more importantly, will not have a layer of degradation if I choose to re-encode them later; this served me well when I switched to Apple because quicktime does not support FLAC).
I think you may be giving too much credit to audiophiles here. I find that audiophiles (especially online) will parrot someone else's subjective experience as if it were their own. Further, they...
As someone who has spent time doing audio engineering, I have this to say: do not pay any attention to anything audiophiles have to say.
Sure, sometimes they will tell you good information, but the chances are that they are telling you what their highly subjective experience is.
I think you may be giving too much credit to audiophiles here. I find that audiophiles (especially online) will parrot someone else's subjective experience as if it were their own. Further, they often repeat objectively false statements about acoustics, psychoacoustics, and sound reproduction. Also called "snake oil." I see the same thing in the cycling community, and in both cases, I think it's a way for a consumer to justify spending way too much money on something and later realizing they were taken for a ride.
I come at this with both an engineering hat and a musician's hat. I love listening to HiFi systems. But, perhaps ironically, I feel that the subjective (psychoacoustic) part of music and sound is exactly what to listen to audiophiles on. Ignore their taste preferences (since those preferences are often conflating "good" with "I like") and most anything about science (except for those guys at Audiholics), but they can teach someone how to become a critical listener and enjoy music though a fresh lens. This leads a new listener to hone in on their own tastes, find really well-mastered tracks, begin to identify well-mastered tracks, and hopefully begin ignoring the ramblings about cables, measurements, why hi-res audio invokes a response gives you passage to an extra dimension, etc...
This isn't quite accurate. Nyquist-Shannon allows us to accurately reproduce frequencies up to half of the sample rate. This is why 44.1Khz was chosen. It should store details up to 20Khz (the...
PCM recorded at 44.1Khz at a 16 bit resolution. The rate of the recording helps it capture frequencies more than double what most young people can hear
This isn't quite accurate. Nyquist-Shannon allows us to accurately reproduce frequencies up to half of the sample rate. This is why 44.1Khz was chosen. It should store details up to 20Khz (the upper limit of human hearing), with 2.05Khz of breathing room because low-pass filters aren't perfect.
I’m aware of that, but I wanted to keep things relatively simple to make things as easy to understand as possible. That’s also why I linked to the Wikipedia page.
I’m aware of that, but I wanted to keep things relatively simple to make things as easy to understand as possible. That’s also why I linked to the Wikipedia page.
To be clear, I am not saying that these terms and what they represent are not real. Just because they are subjective doesn’t make them illusory. But because they are subjective you shouldn’t pay...
To be clear, I am not saying that these terms and what they represent are not real. Just because they are subjective doesn’t make them illusory. But because they are subjective you shouldn’t pay much attention to what people have to say about them; you should experience them for yourself.
There is one thing that I was considering adding on to my comment while writing it but eventually decided not to is the fact that these subjective measures tend to rely on being able to reproduce the full range of sound with reasonable accuracy, so to a degree you really do want to have some good listening equipment. But of course, the definition of what “good listening equipment” is hotly debated in the audiophile community!
I could talk about this subject for a while, but I’ll keep things simple for now; generally speaking, the most important part of your listening experience will be the headphones you choose. And when you limit the discussion to just headphones, audiophiles actually become much more reasonable. It’s actually been something of a trend for them to produce frequency response graphs for headphones alongside reviews so you can see for yourself how a set will perform.
As someone who has spent time doing audio engineering, I have this to say: do not pay any attention to anything audiophiles have to say.
Sure, sometimes they will tell you good information, but the chances are that they are telling you what their highly subjective experience is.
What this guy is saying is mostly good information, but he concedes far too much to the audiophile community. The worst bit is this passage:
I mean, yeah, technically it's correct, but only in the most pedantic way; in the real world a digital recording is going to catch things that are far beyond the reach of human ears. Take CD audio for reference (which should be noted that most digial audio formats, lossless or not, tend to at least meet if not exceed); PCM recorded at 44.1Khz at a 16 bit resolution. The rate of the recording helps it capture frequencies more than double what most young people can hear, while the 16-bit resolution allows more than 65000 possible loudness levels, providing such a high amount of dynamic range that no human will be able to tell the the difference if it changes by just one level.
To put things simply, CD quality audio is scientifically proven to accurately reproduce audio within the range of human hearing. If you want to read more about this, look up the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theory.
It should also be mentioned that a lot of the terms that audiophiles mention, such as "warmth", "soundstage", "richness", and the like are not actually qualities of audio. They are not objectively measurable because what they are in reality are subjective features of mastering.
What the author of this piece gets bang-on is how he describes distortions and how engineers will deliberately introduce them into a recording to achieve an artistic effect. The comparison to photography is spot-on; note how photography can also be distorted until it becomes fairly abstract. The reason why so many audiophiles think that digital has no 'warmth' is because they likely listened to early digital masters, which did not have any extra effects applied to them to make them feel warm. But in reality, pretty much every modern album is going to be chocked full of effects that will give them the warmth that they're looking for. Though, once again, when audiophiles talk about "warmth" they are looking for their own subjective version of it; if it sounds different than the distortions of their favorite equipment, they are likely to dislike it.
I should also mention that I agree with just about everything else that the guy has to say. In particular, yes, there's absolutely value in having the physical experience. But no, the physical experience is not objectively better with vinyl; experience is subjective.
I cannot agree with this enough. I work in the video production field and the audiovisual experience is highly, highly, highly subjective. Everyone hears and sees differently. What looks or sounds right to me might sound off to you. Just because someone says they are a professional and tell you that something sounds better doesn't make it sound better to you.
In the same vein, how many times has one of us gone to a friend or relative's house and been appalled at the fact that their TV has motion smoothing and all sorts of other things turned on? Most of the time, they don't even notice the difference if you show them what it looks like turned off.
Back to audio though...in this day and age, an analog master doesn't even matter anymore, does it? Unless the entire production process is analog from recording to pressing, it defeats the purpose. An analog master of a digital recording is still just a digital recording, right?
There isn’t what I would consider to be a major difference, honestly. The more analog systems the audio goes through, the more harmonics are emphasized or diminished, and you might perceive that as warmth.
I really think the author is clever for his use of the term “distortions” to describe the effect of mastering decisions. The final result will be full of them, and the way you eventually listen to them will introduce new distortions. Personally speaking, I generally want to hear music as the producer intended it to sound, so I make decisions about how to listen to it around reproducing those sounds as accurately as I can; I listen to lossless recordings and use wired headphones with a flat response curve. If I wanted to get the characteristics of warmth, I could run it through a digital audio processor, use a tube amp, or listen to it through an analogue media.
But to people who say analog mediums like vinyl are better...doesn't that sort of disprove their arguments? It sounds like a lot of what those people consider "good" is artificial anyway?
I've tried doing the comparisons between lossless and high quality re-encoded versions and I can never tell the difference, even with my fancy monitors. But I'll be honest, I spend most of my time dealing with videos and only dealing with audio as it relates to that, so while I might have a better understanding that most, I'm still a bit out of my depth here.
That's why I've been making a point about objective and subjective audio qualities. If you are looking at objective and measurable qualities, there really isn't much of a contest. Digital audio outperforms every consumer analog format in every way.
That being said, the way we experience sound is completely subjective. You shouldn't be too mean to audiophiles because at the end of the day, everything they do to listen to their music makes it sound better to them. People have different tastes, and you're not going to get anywhere arguing that their tastes are bad. The act of putting the EP on the record player, lining up the needle, and setting themselves down to listen for 30 minutes straight isn't inconvenient for these people; it's something that brings them joy.
Lossless vs lossy encoding is a completely different bucket of worms, and I'd really rather not go into it. Personally, I keep most of my music in lossless formats because even if age has me no longer is able to tell the difference, I want to keep an 'archival' version that is 'complete' (and more importantly, will not have a layer of degradation if I choose to re-encode them later; this served me well when I switched to Apple because quicktime does not support FLAC).
I think you may be giving too much credit to audiophiles here. I find that audiophiles (especially online) will parrot someone else's subjective experience as if it were their own. Further, they often repeat objectively false statements about acoustics, psychoacoustics, and sound reproduction. Also called "snake oil." I see the same thing in the cycling community, and in both cases, I think it's a way for a consumer to justify spending way too much money on something and later realizing they were taken for a ride.
I come at this with both an engineering hat and a musician's hat. I love listening to HiFi systems. But, perhaps ironically, I feel that the subjective (psychoacoustic) part of music and sound is exactly what to listen to audiophiles on. Ignore their taste preferences (since those preferences are often conflating "good" with "I like") and most anything about science (except for those guys at Audiholics), but they can teach someone how to become a critical listener and enjoy music though a fresh lens. This leads a new listener to hone in on their own tastes, find really well-mastered tracks, begin to identify well-mastered tracks, and hopefully begin ignoring the ramblings about cables, measurements, why hi-res audio invokes a response gives you passage to an extra dimension, etc...
This isn't quite accurate. Nyquist-Shannon allows us to accurately reproduce frequencies up to half of the sample rate. This is why 44.1Khz was chosen. It should store details up to 20Khz (the upper limit of human hearing), with 2.05Khz of breathing room because low-pass filters aren't perfect.
I’m aware of that, but I wanted to keep things relatively simple to make things as easy to understand as possible. That’s also why I linked to the Wikipedia page.
To be clear, I am not saying that these terms and what they represent are not real. Just because they are subjective doesn’t make them illusory. But because they are subjective you shouldn’t pay much attention to what people have to say about them; you should experience them for yourself.
There is one thing that I was considering adding on to my comment while writing it but eventually decided not to is the fact that these subjective measures tend to rely on being able to reproduce the full range of sound with reasonable accuracy, so to a degree you really do want to have some good listening equipment. But of course, the definition of what “good listening equipment” is hotly debated in the audiophile community!
I could talk about this subject for a while, but I’ll keep things simple for now; generally speaking, the most important part of your listening experience will be the headphones you choose. And when you limit the discussion to just headphones, audiophiles actually become much more reasonable. It’s actually been something of a trend for them to produce frequency response graphs for headphones alongside reviews so you can see for yourself how a set will perform.