Like your taste in cars has got any relevance to anything in this post ... or interests anyone at all. not to mention I doubt you had ever driven anything remotely resembling a Ferrari.

I was challenged, I took the challenge, I got 5/5 correct and I was dismissed as a "lucky coin."  I have done other blind ID tests at Harman and did very well. But beyond that, I've been reviewing for 20 plus years. I have a track record that speaks for itself. The people here who think reviews in Stereophile are just spouted opinions don't read the magazine and so don't understand it.

When I write a review, I try to describe how something sounds, not whether or not I like it. Whether or not I like something is meaningless. What something sounds like is what's important. I try to describe it using commonly accepted terms: "bright" or "dark," or "muffled" or whatever. And we measure the gear after the review is written. So if I write that a speaker is bright and it's rolled off, or if I write the speaker has clean, extended bass down to 20Hz and it measures lumpy, with a 50Hz boost and a sharp drop below that, well I won't have much credibility for long. So I've been doing this for 20 plus years and for the most part, the sound I describe with great specificity is what the measurements show.

So I'm not planning on spending time "proving" my listening abilities to people who don't believe observational reviewing has any value in the first place. I know they will find ways to discredit the results should I "pass" their test. That's what's happened before and it won't change.

I suspect the majority of the skeptics here (most of whom sound incredibly bitter)

have never really heard a high quality audio rig.

The guy from Gizmodo certainly hadn't but he had bought into the  general themes  of this site and was fully expecting to sit down in front of a loud, garish, sonic nightmare. Instead he heard music and to a great degree, an absence of "hi-fi."  It wasn't at all what he was expecting and I think that most of the cynics here would be equally pleasantly surprised.

My favorite posts here are bitter ones about how much "misinformation" was in the Gizmodo story because the guy described a great listening experience. How pathetic to call a writer's enthusiastic response to a listening experience "misinformation."

One of the ironies here is that my understanding of the MP3's development is that it was based on A/B testing and that "useless" data (masked by other information) could be thrown away with no penalty paid until the file was small enough to be easily sent on the Internet or stored on less than huge storage media. So at each A/B, "no difference," but in the end, "huge difference." That's one of the dangers of over-reliance on A/B methodology in my opinion.

Quote from: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 23:15:38

Cry: you're believing a total liar. Krueger lied. No such encounter ever occurred.

Have you met Krueger, though? Is that much true?

Like your taste in cars has got any relevance to anything in this post ... or interests anyone at all.
not to mention I doubt you had ever driven anything remotely resembling a Ferrari.

But hey ,no worries , I get it, that's the theme song here all along isnt it?
People making self indulgent baseless assumptions, accusations, & rants, about people they never met & gear they have never seen.

You are beyond crabby but I really enjoy having pushed your buttons so you can throw your little hissy fit and prove that you are incapable of having a discussion without hurling insults and personal attacks. I hope you enjoyed showing that beneath the thin veneer of "objectivity" and "rationality" is a nasty, angry, emotional child.

In Roy's opinion, the record sounds closer to the master tape than does the CD and of course his opinion doesn't count because he's old and especially because it differs from yours. But I can also point you in the direction of younger engineers with the same opinion and again, you'll have another snippy answer, and then top your "rational" response with a nasty personal insult---like many of the posters here have done.

Yes, some people do like "euphonic" distortions but that has nothing to do with the fact that CDs aren't transparent to the source and have never been and most of the knowledgeable engineer I know don't claim it is (there I go again citing recording engineers).

You are what's wrong about this site. You are everything you claim not to be. Buh bye

I'm so glad, that the mods have resisted to close this thread, when it fell off a little earlier. What a priceless ending act for this story! Fremer & Atkinson show up to fight back and kick up their heels.

The only proper backup you have is from kids like rpp3po dude , wake up from your nightmare.

I have never said vinyl is "central" to any fidelity-oriented pursuit. It's just my preference and that of many others.

Hiss is not a good thing but neither does it destroy good sound. If you remember in the early days of CD engineers were so determined to remove hiss from analog recordings, they took way a good deal of the HF information too.

...higher resolution digital sounds better than 16 bit/44.1K sampled digital.

I'm not anti-digital and CD technology has improved greatly...but i still think it's second rate compared to good vinyl...that's my opinion.

The great recording engineer Robert Fine addressed the AES in the 1960s I believe and implored his fellow engineers to not accept a digital format unless and until it could sample 100K...I think he was correct.

Krueger was at the AES where I got the 5/5 identifications correct. That part is true....that's the only part.

Well fine thoughts expressed indeed .

But I still think the other side of the coin deserves some thread space ,so there I go:

I Still feel too many people are a bit light on the trigger regarding
Fremer's view , & audiophiles in general .. (Wait a minute .. Arent we some breed of Audiophiles as well ? )

Quote from: Axon on 2009-04-17 01:11:33

If I may state things boldly, it is we - the skeptics, audio engineers, and others on this board and elsewhere - who are becoming the true arbiters of good sound, ..

But the notion of skeptics with iPod earbuds is a straw man.

I have nothing but utter respect & gratitude to all the amazing people here & elsewhere that push great audio forward, with Engineers way high in the ranks, but I wouldn't bundle Engineers & innovators with skeptics , if you know what I mean.

So I fear in the global scheme of things ,Skeptics with iPod earbuds (Hey sounds like a good title for a punk band  ) are a tad thicker then a straw ..

Lossy Audio has mutated from it's specialty niche economy playback format into the defacto standard & changed the music world ,& probably MUSIC forever, & not for the better.

I feel that people like Fremer ,try in their own way & methods, to preach this sermon,
I am hopeful it will turn around, maybe the HD trend will help.

Quote from: Axon on 2009-04-17 01:11:33

it is we - the skeptics, audio engineers, and others on this board and elsewhere - who are becoming the true arbiters of good sound, by helping ensure it is most available at lowest cost.Bingo.

While you may feel that is true , & we are talking lossy audio here ..
that's a half truth to say the least.

At least regarding lossy audio.
If Lossy audio had an effect on cost (aside from 'Free' Music)
is it made what should have been considered standard, respectable audio gear by (way back) yesterday's standard ,wear a HIGH END PRODUCT sticker, killing the part of the industry we consumers need the most , the mid priced gear , by having shot it's right to exist with a generation of music lovers growing up with a veiled reference of what true sound is, essentially causing the prices for decent gear to go UP, not down.

Quote from: Ron Jones on 2009-04-17 02:38:22

The idea of having a $300,000+ hi-fi playback system that revolves around a record player is, to me, completely counter-intuitive.

For those who missed this era , here's some background.

Fremer, Like Some of us , has been through the big promise of Digital & the move to CDs.
I have been through it too.
The PROMISE.
The bunch of pure lies that surrounded the CD launch.
The arguments with friends about the first heard cd versions in comparison with the LPs & even tapes of the material still echo in my head.

Oh & Let's not forget the Greatest Audio Marketing Line / Joke Of All Time ,
that never wears off in trigerring my blood pressureon so many of our cds:

"The music on this Compact Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording. Because of its high resolution, however, the Compact Disc can reveal limitations of the source tape."

If you have been there , you know what I mean ,& it worked.
Lol at some stage everyone was getting rid of their Records like the plague.

Fremer won't forgive.
Many of us that lost their record collection because of it & rebought their record Collection on CDs, only to find out the jittery truth afterwards, still feel the pain, now more then ever.

When the 'New' Change Came ,& people were told:
"You know , we have done some research, turns out CDs are just not as good as we assumed,  Here's a SACD for ya , now give me your credit card"
they were shown the door instead.

So I sure get it.
for All these people, like Fremer, only NOW, true HD recordings can compete, but maybe too little too late.

If attacking me gives you a thrill, well knock yourselves out. I really couldn't give a shit.

I'm having too much fun doing what I do to get bogged down here....and I hear from too many people who have found what I write useful for them in their own quest for better sound and an improved musical experience to worry about what's said here....so buh bye! Now talk amongst yourselves...

So really, I'm not sure exactly what "standard" is being applied here except for the straightjacket of A/B/X testing. If spending your time doing A/B/X testing is what you like to do, knock yourself out.

I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct. The average of all test takers was inconclusive. According to Dr. Stanley Lipschitz, I was a "lucky coin" and my result was tossed.

Now, here's the funny part: among the amps were some steely sounding solid state products including a Crown DC 300 and a very warm sounding VTL tube amp. It was quite easy to hear the difference between those. For one thing, they surely won't measure the same!

What he heard though, absolutely sent him reeling. That's what's in the story. All I did was sit him down and play some tunes. He did the rest. He wanted to hear the high bit rate MP3 version of something I'd played on vinyl and we hooked his iPod player to my system and he heard just how degraded it was by comparison.....

QUOTE (2Bdecided @ Apr 16 2009, 13:41) *
The photographs of that particular listening room are not impressive unless they misrepresent the reality - from what it looks like, I'd want the speakers much further away from the walls, and from everything else. The kind of early reflections I'd expect in that room would seriously damage the magical 3-d sound stage that's claimed to exist.

Cheers,
David.

...There's something incredibly condescending about your post...that you'd think that someone with 30 years of doing this wouldn't know how to deal with a first reflection. I mean really....

In the case of that turntable, they obviously don't sell tens of thousands, nor does Ferrari every year. However, it is fabricated from cast magnesium alloy, which is both expensive and difficult to do and it was computer-modeled and designed by serious people, not hobbyists. The R&D cost was quite high. It uses components drawn from the American medical industry that are quite expensive. They do sell all they can make and they have sold far more than the expected to in the first few years. The mark up on exotic audio doesn't come close to watches, for example, but the usual distribution chain has a number of components, each of which gets a 40 to 50 point mark up. It's unfortunate but it's the only way it can work right now...value is in the eyes and ears of the beholder. And in the case of that turntable, made in Australia, in America, for example, they have a technician on call for service anywhere it's needed. The tech's full time job is instrumentation repairs for the military. He's a highly qualified tech. That costs money too. I find this site really

every field and/or hobby, there are enthusiasts...for cars, wine, watches, whatever. The greater the enthusiasm, the better in those fields. No one tries to "prove" all cars drive alike or "measure the same," yet when it comes to audio, there's this rear guard, as exemplified on this site, that spends it's time mocking enthusiasts, and reducing everything to a very low common denominator.

being "just as good." I see little value to that. It's taken us to a dead end. I predicted the CD would kill listening to music and I think I was correct. Most people don't listen anymore. We used to sit and listen to music as an activity. Now it's background or heard while doing other things. Why is that? I'd rather have that explored.

More importantly, when I put on a record, casually, people sit and listen. They close their eyes and drift into it. When I put on a CD, within a few minutes they fidget or they pick something up and look at it or they get up....why is that?

Thanks for posting a compendium of stupidity.

Why people bother with compressed audio when storage is cheap

and broadband is fast, is a mystery.

I'm having too much fun doing what I do to get bogged down here....and I hear from too many people who have found what I write useful for them in their own quest for better sound and an improved musical experience to worry about what's said here....so buh bye! Now talk amongst yourselves...

I wasn't around in any meaningful capacity during the advent of the CD, though I don't doubt engineers probably sought ways to eradicate noise as best they could to exhibit the CD's (near) total lack of noise. Thankfully, the methods we use for noise reduction today are much more intelligent and far less damaging to high frequency information (when used appropriately), but I digress.

Quote from: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 00:50:07

...higher resolution digital sounds better than 16 bit/44.1K sampled digital.

I feel this is skirting TOS #8 (others may feel you're breaking #8 with this statement).

Quote from: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 00:50:07

I'm not anti-digital and CD technology has improved greatly...but i still think it's second rate compared to good vinyl...that's my opinion.

A fair opinion.

Quote from: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 00:50:07

The great recording engineer Robert Fine addressed the AES in the 1960s I believe and implored his fellow engineers to not accept a digital format unless and until it could sample 100K...I think he was correct.

Do you mean sample at 100 kHz or be able to retain audio information up 100 kHz? Do you recall what the reasoning was? (and is that still relevant today?)

Quote from: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 00:50:07

Krueger was at the AES where I got the 5/5 identifications correct. That part is true....that's the only part.

Well, given the nature of these conflicting stories, I can only assume that neither accounts are truly accurate...not that my "position" has any bearing on anything, of course.

High resolution digital is a huge improvement. Why people bother with compressed audio when storage is cheap and broadband is fast, is a mystery. It's some kind of dorky electronic 'conservationist' fetish I guess, like listening to vinyl---which for some reason that I understand quite well, is the only format to show any growth last year, particularly among young people...

However, too many people here simply can't read: I have thousands of CDs that I listen to. I have every iPod ever invented. Yet no matter what I say, I am stereotyped as someone who "hates digital," or who "doesn't listen to digital," or whatever, by people who are happier to attack me for something I am not. Whatever.

One of the most hilarious aspects of all of this (aside from the romper room mentality that's pervasive here among so-called rationalists) is that unlike video where there is a standard (the ATSC video standard to which all monitors are supposed to be adjusted), there is no audio standard. Every mixing room uses different speakers. Every engineer has his or her particular favorite speaker used for mixing. Every recording sounds different because just about every recording is mixed on a different system and there is no standard.

So a video producer will be using a monitor that's been calibrated to the ATSC standard and hopefully one that can perform up to that standard. All monitors can be tested against that common standard. There's no such thing in audio. Mixing and mastering rooms use whatever speakers the mixers and mastering guys prefer. Results vary. So really, I'm not sure exactly what "standard" is being applied here except for the straightjacket of A/B/X testing. If spending your time doing A/B/X testing is what you like to do, knock yourself out.

As I recall it, in the *early* days of CD, digital NR was virtually nonexistant.

A 'fair' opinion? Nope, just sincere.

Unless Fremer has good evidence that Redbook *can't* transparently reproduce the output of *vinyl* playback, he's just blowing smoke.

Quote from: krabapple on 2009-04-25 05:10:29

Unless Fremer has good evidence that Redbook *can't* transparently reproduce the output of *vinyl* playback, he's just blowing smoke.

I asked him for such evidence mere moments before he had his change of heart about posting here. I asked B0RK for essentially the same evidence pages ago. Got nada. Surprising? Nah

...John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

The report on the debate at http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/ includes a link to an MP3 of the debate between Mr. Krueger and myself,

The people here who think reviews in Stereophile are just spouted opinions don't read the magazine and so don't understand it.

Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. - J. Gordon Holt, Founder, Stereophile

When I write a review, I try to describe how something sounds, not whether or not I like it. Whether or not I like something is meaningless.

The point of a review is to give people an indication if something might be a product they would be interested in owning.

Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space. That was found difficult to achieve, and it was abandoned when most music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like. Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes.

Does anyone else find it ironic that for people who are so against lossy codecs that they are offering a mp3 for download on their site? I expected an old fashioned Shorten file.