Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles (Read 499625 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #650 –
Quote from: spoon on
Quote
It seems ironic to me that the online community had to cobble together their own limited resources to get the updated truth of codec quality since then, and that the print magazines continue to ignore these results.


Exactly, 1 billion iTunes tracks have been sold, so it is not like these files are rare - they are in wide circulation, a new format-medium and to have a blanket statement that all lossy codecs should be disregarded does not do justice to that % of the population.


I think it's harmful in three different ways:  1.  It is, as you pointed out above, incredibly dismissive and patronizing towards a huge swath of music lovers who have embraced this technology and are getting a lot of joy from it.  2.  It does a huge disservice to some who might benefit from a lossy library who are now either poisoned against the idea by Stereophile's editorial stance or who might go ahead and do it, but who screw themselves over in the process out of ignorance like the reader that Atkinson mentioned who ripped everything to 128kbps and ditched the CDs.  3.  It hurts software guys like you and the people who work on actually developing and improving the lossy codecs.  I hope you guys are doing all right because your software kicks ass and I've got 1,700 plus CDs worth of lossless and lossy to prove it.  However, my sense of justice and fair play bristle at the notion that guys who sell those insanely expensive cables that might not be superior to a coat hanger are benefiting mightily from exposure in these magazines while guys who make and sell a product that is actually useful for a fair price get shut out.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #651 –
Quote from: usernaim on
You may be thinking of Michael Gindi who was parodied in Sam Tellig's 1980s columns in Stereophile and then got a gig with The Absolute Sound and maybe Ultimate Audio and had an MBL fixation--that guy was definitely a psychiatrist.


I'm under the impression that Gindi invested serious cash in UA, and lost out big time when it crashed and burned after maybe 18 months of publication. It was super-glossy and by my standards pretty much content free. In short, it was Gindi and much of the high end's so-called journalism personified. ;-)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #652 –
Quote from: botface on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
One other factor. Some of the books I've read about hearing perception suggest that our memory for actual sound is on the order of 5-20 seconds. After that, all we remember about the music are abstractions like the tune, the beat, the words, etc.


Could this be the crux of the matter? Listening to music is an emotional experience. Listening for differences in a short extract is not. Differences evident in one "mode" may not be evident in the other


Listening to music is partially an emotional experience but it is not necessarily just an emotional experience.

One key point in the mass of knowlege that is currently known about listening to music is that music goes through a series of abstractions before it gets to the parts of the brain whose activity is representative and strongly influences what we call our emotional state.  At each step in the process, more information gets transformed into less information. At each step in the process the amount of evidence decreases. By the time you perceive the emotional reaction, megabits or perhaps gibabytes of information has been abstracted into a few bits of information.

One consequence of many-to-few transformations is that there are a large number of different large data sets that can possibly be abstracted and produce the same few bits of information.

A given emotional reaction or any of a group of similar emotional reactions can potentially be triggered by a large number of different playings of different pieces of music via different playback systems with different sonic characters.

Bottom line is that if your criteria for judging systems is just emotional reaction, very little can be determined from emotional reactions about what triggered it.

Another obvious conclusion is that if you aren't doing blind listening tests, there's this huge gestalt experience with zillions of influences that led to the emotional experience that you perceived.  Asserting that one small subtle change like say the miniscule electrical variations caused by changing an audio cable is so poorly supported by the available evidene as to be most likely a fantasy or an illusion.

Bottom line is that people like Fremer and Atkinson live in what many of us perceive to be a fantasy world where far-reaching and hihgly improbable conclusions come out of who knows where? It isn't reason or logic as many of us understand them to be. They can very nicely and persuasively argue that 2+2 = 5, but anybody with faith enoough in science in technology to believe that 2+2 = 4 should not be buying *any* of it.

Hence there are many recent and past statements around here that mystify me, given the overall veneer of science and reason.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #653 –
Although I do still not like the way you adress your "opponents" (it does never help any discussion, no blind testing needed to proof that) I must say that was a very great post Mr. Krueger. It sums up a lot of the interesting "problems" with psychoacoustics and subjective attributes. Especially the fact that the information reduction makes subjective tests basically underdetermined problems. Thanks for that.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #654 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
One consequence of many-to-few transformations is that there are a large number of different large data sets that can possibly be abstracted and produce the same few bits of information.


Abstraction always has its costs, as this abstraction of the human brain. The brain does not work in the sense of discrete circuitry. Even if your auditory processing is able to reduce (abstraction is a higher order concept) a stream of information A of density 10M into an supervening "inner" stream A_1 of density 4K, this must neither mean that you can feed A_1 directly into a subject without a perceivable difference nor that you can feed any stream B of density 4K into a subject without perceivable difference. As long as the brain's reduction* does not work like a discrete machine in linear fashion, it is certainly possible, that "inner" stream A_1 will only be composed in a constellation where "outer" sensory is under 10M density fire.

* The reduction circuity itself may have exit ramps that are only used under special circumstances. For example, a very loud bang can startle your whole body up to the tips of your fingers "long" before you become aware of the bang's gestalt.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #655 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: botface on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
One other factor. Some of the books I've read about hearing perception suggest that our memory for actual sound is on the order of 5-20 seconds. After that, all we remember about the music are abstractions like the tune, the beat, the words, etc.


Could this be the crux of the matter? Listening to music is an emotional experience. Listening for differences in a short extract is not. Differences evident in one "mode" may not be evident in the other


Listening to music is partially an emotional experience but it is not necessarily just an emotional experience.

One key point in the mass of knowlege that is currently known about listening to music is that music goes through a series of abstractions before it gets to the parts of the brain whose activity is representative and strongly influences what we call our emotional state.  At each step in the process, more information gets transformed into less information. At each step in the process the amount of evidence decreases. By the time you perceive the emotional reaction, megabits or perhaps gibabytes of information has been abstracted into a few bits of information.

One consequence of many-to-few transformations is that there are a large number of different large data sets that can possibly be abstracted and produce the same few bits of information.

A given emotional reaction or any of a group of similar emotional reactions can potentially be triggered by a large number of different playings of different pieces of music via different playback systems with different sonic characters.

Bottom line is that if your criteria for judging systems is just emotional reaction, very little can be determined from emotional reactions about what triggered it.

Another obvious conclusion is that if you aren't doing blind listening tests, there's this huge gestalt experience with zillions of influences that led to the emotional experience that you perceived.  Asserting that one small subtle change like say the miniscule electrical variations caused by changing an audio cable is so poorly supported by the available evidene as to be most likely a fantasy or an illusion.

Bottom line is that people like Fremer and Atkinson live in what many of us perceive to be a fantasy world where far-reaching and hihgly improbable conclusions come out of who knows where? It isn't reason or logic as many of us understand them to be. They can very nicely and persuasively argue that 2+2 = 5, but anybody with faith enoough in science in technology to believe that 2+2 = 4 should not be buying *any* of it.

Hence there are many recent and past statements around here that mystify me, given the overall veneer of science and reason.

Thanks for the reply. I wouldn't argue with any of what you say. In truth I'm struggling to form a conclusion based on my own experience that is consistent with any viewpoint.

I have found that I can get the same emotional "hit" from a piece of music via equipment of widely differing quality levels: EG a car radio and a decent home system. So, emotional impact is not a suitable yardstick for judging quality. I've found that I am unable to distinguish between equipment that measures differently. So, measurements don't seem a reliable predictor of quality either. I've found that differences between equipment that are obvious when directly comparing them, have no impact at all on my enjoyment of music. So, "different" doesn't seem mean "better" or "worse" in a non-technical sense. I've found that equipment that sounds different on one occassion may sometimes be indistinguishable on another and vice versa. Presumably all that proves is that I'm not the sort of person you want in a listening test.

Admittedly none of these impressions come from DBT. Some are from general leisure listening but they are mainly from what I believe would be called Single Blind Testing. IE I was "blind" but the person switching sources, or whatever, was in the same room as me and was also noting what was actually playing during a given test for subsequent comparison with what I thought was playing (didn't have a PC back then).

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #656 –
Quote from: krabapple on
(It doesn't compare to J Vigne's meltdown over one of YOUR  posts on the STereophile forum last week!)


Is that still online on the SP forum?

I went looking for it a few days back and came up empty?

Got a well-focused link?

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #657 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
However, there are clearly some rooms somewhere where the human hearing threshold was measured at this low level - because we have the measurements! So it's not an impossibility. And here, the -100dB rule is broken.


Pedantic point: I don't know for sure that the published human thresholds were established in accordance with TOS 8.

Quote
Take the wheels of your goalposts  Either it's a rule that works, or it isn't. If it's a rule that works "most of the time, for all normal listening", say so.


I'm just wondering when you're going to address your TOS8 violation and prove that everything you said about the 100 dB rule is really true iwth a DBT. ;-)

I think that if you had to ABX it for real, you might see the issue in a slightly different light. ;-)  ;-)    ;-)

Quote
Quote
If memory serves JJ had a SOTA listening room at the old AT&T labs. Immensely expensive.  Its noise level level was something north of NC10, maybe NC15. 

According to http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/educati...se_Criteria.pdf  NC 15 sets the room tone at 3 KHz about 13 dB SPL. Good chance that noise will be masked, I'd say.


Giving a dB (SPL) value for a pure tone is straight forward. dB (SPL) values for noise are less so - deriving the actual spectrum level requires further data, not given in that link. It may be that what is shown is the spectrum level, but it doesn't say so. Don't assume - the vast majority of people never quote the spectrum level.

Here's an example of how misleading noise levels, quoted in dB, can be: People talk about hearing "through the noise" in dithered digital audio - e.g. "the noise is at -90dB but I can hear a tone at -100dB clearly" - true, but misleading. It implies the ear is magic, but it isn't at all. If you look at the spectrum level of the noise, rather than it's total RMS power, you'll see that it's far lower than the tone. The ear isn't magic, it's just hearing what any good spectrum analyser will show. The RMS numbers are simply misleading. In this case, the spectrum level of the noise is actually -133dB; no wonder a -100dB tone is audible!


Good thoughts. As always, noise measurement are only relelvant in the context of bandwidths.  If the noise level in a 20-20k band is -100 dB, then the noise level in a critical band will of course vary with the width of the critical band, depending on which critical band it is, and what the initial spectrum of the noise is.

I presume that the typical critical band is about 1/3 octave.  The relevant critical band in your example is the one around 3 KHz.  Estimating the width of a 1/3 octave band at 3150 Hz, I get a bandwidth of 680 Hz. Presuming uniform spectral density, the attenuation of this band is about 14 dB below the broadband noise.  So I'm thinking that the noise level in the critical band around 3 Khz is about -114 dB.  If the noise were pink, things might not be that much different because the band is near the middle of the band.

I also simulated this based on a 1/3 octave 4th order Butterworth filter @ 3150 Hz.  The attenuations I now have are:

Back of the envelope simulation, white noise:  14 dB
White noise simulation:  18 dB
Pink noise simulation : 15.6 dB

The first potential  flaw with my calculations that comes to mind is that I'm compaing a pink noise masker to a sine wave probe. I don't know offhand what the offset would be, but it might be pretty small.

Neverthelss, in every case I tried, I found your estimate of 133 dB to be high by quite a bit.

Wanna revisit your calculations with critical bands in mind, unless of course your 133 dB figure above involves all of the above, but you didn't give all the details?


Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #658 –
Quote from: bug80 on
Although I do still not like the way you adress your "opponents" (it does never help any discussion, no blind testing needed to proof that)


Your error here seems to be presuming that I address all of my "opponents" the same way. Others seem to have figured out that there's a huge history between me and these specific persons, and most of it has been pretty sucky.

A lot of people around here seem to be very unwilling to hold certain people responsible for the libelous things that they have said on HA by our guests. Others see them.

Over the past 30 years I've found that subjectivists tend to quickly descend into personal attacks, even among themselves. Once you abandon reason and reliable facts to a certain degree, there is really not a lot else.

Fact is, theres a goodly list of people from both sides that I've gone mano-a-mano over the past 30 years. Some were true gentlemen. and others weren't.

Larry Greenhill once told me that as a psychiatrist, he's never seen as many disturbed people in one segment of the population as he had seen in audio's high end.  BTW, I'm probably in his "disturbed persons" category, but I wouldn't be surprised if he also included himself. He's a pretty self-aware guy. ;-)

Quote
I must say that was a very great post Mr. Krueger. It sums up a lot of the interesting "problems" with psychoacoustics and subjective attributes. Especially the fact that the information reduction makes subjective tests basically underdetermined problems. Thanks for that.


Well thanks for that.

I got an email this morning from Atkinson that suggests to me that we'll be back to normal around here pretty quickly. I think that we should keep out of other peoples non-technical stuff as much as we can, and get on with what we do well.

You do understand of course that you started your post out with one of those personal attacks you seem to think you abhor, right?  And of course you are aware of the forum's private messaging feature that allows you to express yourself to me in private without making public examples out of both of us?

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #659 –
-133 dB is the spectrum level of -90dB RMS white noise. Spectrum level is dB / Hz.

Spectrum level of white noise with a given RMS energy in dB, and a given bandwidth in Hz, is

sl = 10*log10 ((10^(energy/10))/bandwidth)

...or at least that's what I was taught. I can't find that many references on-line. (Google finds one from the US Navy!).


It's not an indication of what you can hear, just how much noise falls into 1 unit bandwidth (1Hz) - as you've said and calculated, auditory filers aren't nearly so selective.

I haven't done the calculation myself. The easy way (very similar to what you did) is via the ERB - but I'm not convinced this is accurate near absolute threshold - the internal noise comes into play.


I haven't read it for a decade, but IIRC the old Robinson and Dadson threshold data was determined through single blind experiments.

I'm assuming (!) that the newer ISO measures were determined in double blind tests, not least because such testing has been computerised for decades (and mechanically automated even before that).

It doesn't use ABX, but I haven't seen any research using ABX to determine psychoacoustic thresholds. There probably is some, but it's not the most common method (if anything, ABC with the target being the odd-one-out - and a suitable target level which changes based on the previous one or two responses, is the "standard". There are standard stats - quite different from ABX though - typically the 70.7% point on the (Assumed) psychometric curve).

You may worry that TOS 8 says "...Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (ABX or ABC/HR)..." rather than "...Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (such as ABX or ABC/HR)...", but I don't think anyone else has ever said that alternative methods of DBT are invalid here - just that those two are usually the most appropriate for codec testing and development - which is the main point of this forum (and what TOS8 refers to).


If you note (and this is interesting, in passing) people are often allowed to break TOS8 here where a DBT is impractical for normal users e.g. when talking about headphones. There's a lot less traffic about such subjects on HA than codecs - for many reasons, but partly I think because people here like the kind of definitive answers which you can get from a successful DBT - definitive answers about, say, headphones are harder to come by (though I realise certain website try very hard).

Cheers,
David.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #660 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
I got an email this morning from Atkinson that suggests to me that we'll be back to normal around here pretty quickly.


Good grief, Mr. Krueger! Why do you persist in spreading fabrications like this. Your willingness to let your imagination run wild does you no favors. I am afraid. Please stick to technical discussions, not imagined personal issues.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
 

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #661 –
Well, Mr. Atkinson, I wouldn't deny that. Most of us know already anyway...  Here's the original text from the email, that you have sent this morning:

Quote
Subject: My sweetheart!

Dear Arny,

I am excited as hell that tomorrow we finally go that step together. I will only have 4 close friends attending our wedding ceremony and still hope that you decide against bringing your whole pack (especially not that old grump Carl). The planner just gave me a call, everything is setup and fine. Meet you tomorrow in San Francisco!

Love, 1000 kisses,

John

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #662 –
Quote from: rpp3po on
Well, Mr. Atkinson, I wouldn't deny that. Most of us know already anyway...  Here's the original text from the email, that you have sent this morning:

Quote
Subject: My sweetheart!

Dear Arny,

I am excited as hell that tomorrow we finally go that step together. I will only have 4 close friends attending our wedding ceremony and still hope that you decide against bringing your whole pack. The planner just gave me a call, everything is setup and fine. Meet you tomorrow in San Francisco!

Love, 1000 kisses,

John



Has Hydrogen Audio turned into Bizarro World? You and I might have major disagreements over audio matters, "Rpp3po," but why would you encourage Mr. Krueger in this manner? I shouldn't have to say that I did not write the text you quote as being by me.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #663 –
Quote from: rpp3po on
Well, Mr. Atkinson, I wouldn't deny that. Most of us know already anyway...  Here's the original text from the email, that you have sent this morning:

Quote
Subject: My sweetheart!

Dear Arny,

I am excited as hell that tomorrow we finally go that step together. I will only have 4 close friends attending our wedding ceremony and still hope that you decide against bringing your whole pack (especially not that old grump Carl). The planner just gave me a call, everything is setup and fine. Meet you tomorrow in San Francisco!

Love, 1000 kisses,

John



ROTF!

I'd abstract your little letter into the suggestion that John and I should "Get a room". Of course that happened at HE2005, and the rest is history. I thought it was mostly a nice party. ;-)

It has also been observed to me by several that know us both,  that if John and I ever actually got together, a lot of good might evolve. 

That scares me, ;-)
but I can't positively say that it wouldn't happen that way if it did happen.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #664 –
Friends, is it only me thinking whatever it is that's going on here, it's personal, long in the tooth, and has got nothing to do with audio ?!..

The childish TOS references by the people who abuse the TOS more then anyone else, to scientific-ish poetry proving bugger all,
to zero desire to even consider anyone else's angle, lets assume for a second it can fly,
but when you read through this thread, you notice you can narrow it down to a few old players bringing their years old fight from elsewhere to a new untrashed (yet) bar.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #665 –
I don't know if I would agree. To be honest, the thread provided me with two weeks of both really great fun and also some insight. Beginning with the attempted assimilation by the B0RK collective and our retaliation over to Atkinson and Fremer joining and starting their old dance with Krueger - wasn't that quite a joy?

And it didn't "damage" HA in any way in my opinion, because it all pretty much stayed contained inside this thread. The rest of HA still followed business as usual with the (mostly) level-headed and technical discussion, which it is known for.

Edit: Added link.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #666 –
The site title does read:"the audio technology enthusiast's source"
I did flip through the threads posts, a few posts were intereting.

I have learnt a few things, still not what I wanted to learn, technologically anway.
what B0RK collective assimilation attempt? what page is that on? link?

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #667 –
Quote from: botface on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
One other factor. Some of the books I've read about hearing perception suggest that our memory for actual sound is on the order of 5-20 seconds. After that, all we remember about the music are abstractions like the tune, the beat, the words, etc.

Could this be the crux of the matter? Listening to music is an emotional experience. Listening for differences in a short extract is not. Differences evident in one "mode" may not be evident in the other



But I don't have the same emotional experience every time I listen to the same recording, on the same playback system.  Do you?

If not, it suggests that differentiating sounds by the 'emotional experience' it evokes, is not going to be reliable.

And too, one is free to do an ABX using long 'samples'.  It's been done.  In fact, fortthe JAs of the world, I *recommend* that they first fully satisfy themselves that they have differentiated the 'emotional experience' between A and B, by whatever means they like -- including living with the gear, as JA did during his Damascene episode --  before they try ABX.

As for 'what to do' if that ABX showed that there was, in fact, no likely *audible* difference, JA seems to believe this would have no effect on his feelings toward the gear he grew to dislike.  Maybe , maybe not.  At least he would know it was not the sound of the gear, that was the problem.  AND REPORT THAT....right?




Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #668 –
Quote from: Bjorn on
I have learnt a few things, still not what I wanted to learn, technologically anway.
what B0RK collective assimilation attempt? what page is that on? link?


It might be a tiring read and far from entertaining when you read it all from the beginning. Consumed as little niblets over two weeks I may have experienced it differently. B0RK took part in the discussion pretty loudly from the beginning. He supported many of Fremer's positions but was far from being as eloquent and often quite offensive. So somewhen I started trying to counter him with humor, what peaked when he thought that my evil hippie joke had been meant dead seriously.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #669 –
Other than unsubstantiated noise and trolling, B0RK contributed nothing to this discussion.  He demonstrated absolutely no technical acumen and was completely unwilling to demonstrate that he even understood the words his used (eg: jittery truth about CDs).

Simply clueless!

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #670 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: krabapple on
(It doesn't compare to J Vigne's meltdown over one of YOUR  posts on the STereophile forum last week!)


Is that still online on the SP forum?

I went looking for it a few days back and came up empty?

Got a well-focused link?



http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showthr...page=0&vc=1

and it was actually a reply to jj, not Axon, sorry!

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #671 –
Quote from: Bjorn on
Friends, is it only me thinking whatever it is that's going on here, it's personal, long in the tooth, and has got nothing to do with audio ?!..

The childish TOS references by the people who abuse the TOS more then anyone else, to scientific-ish poetry proving bugger all,
to zero desire to even consider anyone else's angle, lets assume for a second it can fly,
but when you read through this thread, you notice you can narrow it down to a few old players bringing their years old fight from elsewhere to a new untrashed (yet) bar.


hmm, I hope you aren't dissing my haiku. 

And really, if this is *all* you think that's going on in this thread, maybe you aren't reading enough of it....or maybe you shouldn't read it at all. 

Personally, I'm finding it easy to skip the parts that seem to be more noise than signal.  But then, I'm an 'old player' who's been on HA a lot longer than since 27 April 09. 



Quote from: Bjorn on
The site title does read:"the audio technology enthusiast's source"
I did flip through the threads posts, a few posts were intereting.

I have learnt a few things, still not what I wanted to learn, technologically anway.
what B0RK collective assimilation attempt? what page is that on? link?



Ah, so you checked out a  few posts of a 15+ page thread, and decided to weigh in with a chastisement.

Well done.  May I direct you to the Stereophile forum?

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #672 –
He is right though. There are a few rather nasty bits in this thread.

I can't see why Krueger and Atkinson even pay any attention to each other. Maybe it's because Krueger seems to really be enjoying himself, even boasting (a few pages back) about the ability to harrass Atkinson that he has honed over many years; and Atkinson's equally impressive ability to be baited by him.

It seems certain that no forum post (no matter how epic) will cause either of them to suddenly adopt the other's way of thinking.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #673 –
Quote from: greynol on
I think the reason why so many of us are focusing on the lossy vs. lossless debate and are giving Mr. Atkinson no quarter is due to his article, MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD.  It demonstrates little more than utter ignorance of lossy formats, how they're developed and how they're tested.


I really think that most people who have participated in this thread, like krabapple, have managed to focus on the most important issue, and that is Mr. Atkinson's apparent ignorance of lossy codecs in general. And on to this supposed "demonstration" that Mr. Atkinson will be presenting in Colorado:

I think Stereophile's refusal to incorporate any scientific methods into their hardware reviews is understandable to some degree, as their main purpose is to sell the products they advertise, and ultimately the advertisements themselves. But for Mr. Atkinson to further portray these technologies in a negative light seems to me like a slap in the face of all those who have worked hard advancing these codecs, and have done more to enhance people's enjoyment of music than Mr. Atkinson probably ever will. And for what? To instill a false sense of pride and self-affirmation in some his readers who, after biting the bullet and dropping $150,000 on a turntable, can't help but wonder whether they might have been a little ripped off? (you think!?)

Regarding the stereophile article in question (MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD) and his method for the future demonstration he described earlier, it is obvious that Mr. Atkinson does not understand how lossy codecs work. And not only that, it seems to me like he plans to further his influence on his readers at the expense of the validity of these codecs and the people who have worked so hard on tuning them. And on top of that, he'll probably be listening to AAC files on his iPod on the way there ...

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #674 –
Quote from: krabapple on
http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showthr...page=0&vc=1

and it was actually a reply to jj, not Axon, sorry!


Thank you.

This whole thread seems to be pretty priceless, not that I see much need for something like it around here. Preaching to choir and all that.

BTW given the @$$-chewing I got for saying here that there are no golden ears, I quote JJ over on SP saying:

"Then, the claims of "I have better hearing", well, all I can say is that such hearing never seems to reproduce under controlled conditions."

;-)