Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Didn't your stereo used to sound better when you were young? That's because we used to have clean power. Now, no matter what kind of high-end system you have, it sounds worse than it used to. Because as soon as they privatize the utilities, the utility companies are more concerned with making a dollar than with providing you unsullied electricity. For my sound system I've installed a small hydroelectric generator that runs off a precisely regulated flow of water (yes, it's the water that comes off the mains, but it's been treated with audio-enhancing ingredients that remove the treble-damping ions that are known to cause issues in this type of system). This gives me the security of knowing that my hi-fi is running off the purest, sweetest, most audio-friendly electricity available with current technology.

Although I hear there are further advances being made in Eastern Europe that will render my system utterly obsolete within a year. It will be garbage. You couldn't pay me to listen to it anymore.

Great article xpost!

James from HiFi Wigwam is not a man much given to mysticism – he’s funny and self-deprecating and tells me that the best upgrade you can buy for your equipment is “a couple of bottles of wine”

the truth will out.

"No seriously," James sad, "You balance your preamp on top of two bottles of $3,000 Napa Cabernet."

fits in nicely with recent revive :

Songs sounding better when drunk?????

Can anyone recommend a good short online guide/book/video/etc that summarizes the ins and outs of audiophilia - more for a lay consumer than someone concerned with the minutia of electrical physics, or someone with enough disposable income to actually buy a full hi-fi system at once.

Like, the ins and outs of the psychological delusion known as audiophilia? Bc that's just this thread.

EDB - the Entry Level forums at Stereophile are very helpful, I like Stephen Meijas's old columns are helpful

Thanks! xpost: the idea is precisely knowing where to draw the line between "sounds good" and "batshit crazy."

this is a good blog and project if you have the time and interest.

the headphones people at head-fi are uh, thorough, although you might end up with a headphone-buying problem

haha the controversial NwAVGuy!

there is a dude on the head-fi forums who has had people ship him all kind of headphones for a week so he can actually run frequency response tests, which he posts

it's bizarrely quantitative and objective for an audiophile forum, but hey, beats arguing over what metals are in your headphone cables

m@tt tyvm for the mention of NwAVGuy, I was unaware of that saga and it's great reading

it's bizarrely quantitative and objective for an audiophile forum

that's pretty standard, stereophile always runs those graphs and shit with reviews

NwAVGuy was a hero until he was disappeared by J3rry R4skin's agents

https://twitter.com/modernistwitch/status/637284879311482881

a perfect storm of terrible 'research' and cackhanded pr bullshit

dumb & offensive & pseudoscience but not really audiophile

yeah I couldn't think of an equivalent thread on I Make Music

enjoying their trademark of the snappy catchphrase "Pickup Switch Upgrade"

guys that's an april fool

dumb and offensive but probably not honest pseudoscience

Why Do You Need More Pickup Tones?

When you have MORE pickup tones, it gives you Total Control over what You will sound like. Even more important, you also have more control over what others hear what you sound like.

Why should you settle for 3 or 5 pickup tones? You can't get Total Control when you're saddled with an antique 3-way or 5-way switch that hasn't changed in 100 years. It's like settling for a job that pays you "three" hundred or "five" hundred a week. Wouldn't you rather have more? Like a job that pays you "six" hundred, "thirty five" hundred or "sixty eight" hundred a week?

What if your vehicle's radio only had three or five stations. Wouldn't you really want a radio with more stations?

Would you subscribe to a cable T.V. provider if they just offered you just three or five channels?

Would you buy a cell phone if you were limited to calling only three or five people?

Why are you settling for just three or five pickup tones?

Now You can Upgrade your electric guitar or bass and join the Pickup Tone Nation.

We are the original AweSome upgrades for your electric guitar and bass. When you compare the incredible performance of our upgrade products with all the copycat wannabes, you can see that only our products will give you ALL the possible pickup tones, are LESS EXPENSIVE and work with a wide range of electric guitar and bass instruments. Review the below "Feature Comparison" chart to convince yourself that our upgrades are the Best that you can get, give you the Most pickup tones, and Cost a lot Less.

I crave the radio stations that are between two other stations - just a mix of garbled crosstalk.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/sennheiser-unveils-40000-marble-clad-valve-amp-orpheus-headphones/

for that price, couldn't i just get bionic ears or something?

iirc bionic ears aren't very good yet

Just out of curiosity has anyone heard electrostatic phones or speakers? Audiophile dudes seem to like them a lot, figured it was just a gimmicky gadgety thing.

had to google, those are the flat ones huh? I think I demoed my MMF-5 turntable on a pair of those, but I have no point of reference for comparison.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/sennheiser-unveils-40000-marble-clad-valve-amp-orpheus-headphones/

for that price, couldn't i just get bionic ears or something?

― rushomancy, Thursday, November 5, 2015 6:22 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this thread never fails to deliver the LOLs. thank you.

xpost I demoed a pair of electrostatic panel speakers a few years ago (MartinLogan floorstanders), they were a little screechy and kind of pricey.

*upgrades CD player* "oh my speakers sound terrible"
*upgrades speakers* "oh my amp sounds terrible"
*upgrades amp* "oh my headphones sound terrible"
*upgrades headphones* "oh wait it was my ears that were terrible"

Oh and I can't wait to listen to L.A.M.F. on those new Orpheuses.

Just out of curiosity has anyone heard electrostatic phones or speakers? Audiophile dudes seem to like them a lot, figured it was just a gimmicky gadgety thing.

― Capitalism Is A Death Cult And Science Is A Whore (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Thursday, November 5, 2015 1:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my friend has some, they are pretty awesome actually. they have a very odd quality (but good) but they don't seem "directional" like the music is just sort of all around you? I think the downside of the electrostatic is that they don't really produce good bass but I think a lot of units have a subwoofer in the box on the bottom

but yeah they sound fucking great

also i think they are pretty "power hungry" so you need a really good amp i mean by definition not something to drop into an entry level system i think

*upgrades CD player* "oh my speakers sound terrible"
*upgrades speakers* "oh my amp sounds terrible"
*upgrades amp* "oh my headphones sound terrible"
*upgrades headphones* "oh wait it was my ears that were terrible"

+ .. return to start.

i.e. the unspoken audiophile mantra.

I dunno. I bought a stereo that's nice and I like it and I haven't really been too obsessed. I keep thinking about a common sense audiophile thread because there's so much good stuff that's so cheap now it's unreal but this thread is made for making fun of like crazy record player shelves made out of titanium and shit like that

I would read a common sense audiophile thread abt good cheap shit like the Dragonfly - I can't remember which thread most of the discussion of that is on...

The output jack on my dragonfly broke after ~ a month and I've been too lazy to send it in. One weird thing is that the USB plug is really long; it won't fit snugly in any USB port but I guess it works. I couldn't make out much of a difference in fidelity but I didn't do blind tests or anything

I think upper miSisippi shakedown has praised the dragonfly here in the past.

My post makes it sound like I'm dissing the dragonfly but it's more like "not enough data"

i fell for the dragonfly groove for a while.
but then i became concerned about a massive extension to my USB connection that would eventually become annoying.
i mean the thing is extending out of the audio out, and so will eventually be something you have to wiggle to get a decent connection on a la old school walkman/headphone connections - or was that just me ?
subsequently, after a lot of ummm'ing and arrrr'ing i fixed up the NAS/Sonos groove for my archive needs, which has no extended connectors hanging off my laptop.
but is basically the same thing i.e. a nice external DAC for your mp3 collection that can feed into your amp.
the results of which sound fantastic.

xpost : !!! and relevant !!

Yeah mark, the wiggling thing was my issue too, thought it was the USB connect at first but figured out it was the 1/8 inch output jack. Just a defect, though, they'll fix it if I send it to em.

I'm definitely going to spring for a standalone DAC like you describe. Probably going to buy a desktop computer or media center thing for my tunes too, I really only listen to music at home or in the car so portability not really an issue

After a decade and a half of audiophile tinkering, it was almost a relief to just sell it all in 2012 and get something simple in its stead. Now it's just a Marantz CD/tuner/streamer/amp, a pair of Q-Acoustics monitors and a mid-range Pro-Ject turntable. And it's just *fine*. Most of the time I AirPlay Spotify off my old iPhone to the Marantz anyway - the CDs and vinyl only come out occasionally.

That's still way audiophile compared to like 99% of ppl!

Maybe - but it was the first time I'd bought anything from Richer Sounds* since I got my first separates system in 1993! It felt good to go home ;)

(* - UK audio/home cinema chain, characterised by small-footprint stores, gear-stacked-high and very good deals; nothing high-end)

RS have got some semi-hi-end stuff in the window of the store near me. Pair of Tannoy speakers at £800. Serious buffs would call that mid-range or even entry level I guess but it's more than I've ever spent on speakers.

No reason why we can't use this thread for sensible audiophile talk as well as crazy snake oil.

Sold my hi-fi stand, put the speaker stands in the loft, and have now put the hi-fi at one end of the room on top of a wooden Ikea shelf thing. No, I can't sit in the sweetspot anymore, but it still sounds lovely in terms of 'music in the room'.

The classic Quad electrostatics sound really great, espeically the ESL-63s. They aren't cheap though, need loads of room as they need to be at least a metre away from walls for the best sound, and if you like low bass they are not the speakers for you.

if you can live with those caveats everything else about them is wonderful.

Sold my hi-fi stand, put the speaker stands in the loft, and have now put the hi-fi at one end of the room on top of a wooden Ikea shelf thing. No, I can't sit in the sweetspot anymore, but it still sounds lovely in terms of 'music in the room'.

ahh .. the joys of parenting.
was wondering what you were going to do with your set up once the little hands and feet got into action.
fear not, you will get the sweet spot back in about 10 years time.

Yeah, actually, RS do have some premium stuff now. Back in the '90s, it was nothing over £300; I think they broke that ceiling when they started selling Arcam gear (which they weren't allowed to discount, IIRC) and the whole Big Telly boom.

I've never been happier with vinyl playback than with this Pro-Ject; I suspect it's glossing over some of the harsher details the Michell/NVA used to dig out, but that's ok. I picked up a 1976 CBS Masterworks LP *for free* (the weekend market opposite my wife's place had four crates of mostly terrible LPs sitting out, all gratis - it was like the Clayderman motherlode) of Bernstein conducting Tchaikovsky, and it was lovely and almost pristine. Paul Williams and 10CC records for a quid round the corner too ("we have a lot of good stock in at the moment, which is why the overspill bargain crate is so good"; cheers, but I'm probably not going to look at your "good stuff").

I still buy CDs occasionally. I could never switch entirely to MP3/FLAC unless I had some kind of dedicated storage. AirPlay from iTunes is too flaky (I start doing anything else substantial with my wifi and it breaks up) and even the Marantz itself has a tendency to just drop off the network.