Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

the other deep bass thing I ran across in the last few years was an installation where they drilled motors into the concrete floor of a building and used their frequency to create bass vibrations in the whole structure

another interesting article, more about the science of hearing than audiophile stuff

http://reverb.com/blog/psychoacoustics-a-practical-guide-to-how-our-mind-distorts-sound?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rn010915&_aid=newsletter

i get the sense that recording something at a greater bitrate than can be appreciated by the human ear makes sense for largely the same reasons that e.g. david fincher likes to shoot in 6K even though his films will never be screened in more than 4K ... because doing so allows you to preserve everything when mixing down and mastering. there's much less possibly of losing audible information via generation loss.

but actually buying /recordings/ at 24 bits, esp. at a premium cost, makes about as much sense as, i dunno, buying a 50" 8k TV. or so it seems to me.

the McGherkin effect: you perceive sounds differently with sweet baby gherkins stuffed in your ears

...hey, has anyone seen those crazybaby ads on youtube?
it's a levitating bluetooth speaker thing!
...i suspect the real audiophiles will sneer, but... the freaking thing levitates! even if it only sounds as good as other $200 bluetooth speakers, that is pretty cool.....

man when your speaker levitates you gotta ask yourself, "how good would this sound if all of that levitation money was put into the crossover!"

plus bluetooth signals sound richer in the lower mids when you hang a (WRINKLY NOT PRISTINE) sheet of 0.08mm robin's egg blue cellophane between the signal source and speaker

obv

goes without saying

Since this seems to be the place where ILM audiophiles hang out, I thought I'd ask this question here:

I bough myself a Fiio E07K DAC/headphone amplifier, and I wonder if anyone's had problems with getting the sound to it from the computer via USB? It's supposed to plug-n-play, i.e. once you plug it to the USB port, it will automatically work as DAC, and it works exactly like that on my work laptop, everything was fine with that. But with my tabletop computer, I can't get the signal to travel to it via the USB cable, so I have to plug the analog cable to the headphones plug in the computer.

I can't figure out what's wrong: the E07K shows normally on the device list, the driver software is up to date, everything seems to be correct. But when I go to the Windows sound mixer settings and try to change the sound device from the internal speakers to the E07K, I get an error message, even though the mixer shows E07K on the list of devices I can choose from. Also, while the E07K shows on the list of available audio devices, I can't change it to the default device; the option to make it the default device is there, but even if click, the it internal speakers still remain the default. I've tried everything, updating drivers, disabling the speakers so the E07K is the only sound device that's abled, but nothing helps. The laptop has Windows 7 and the tabletop has Windows 8.1, so I wonder if this problem is somehow related to 8.1?

See if it works on another computer.

As I mentioned in the post, it works just as it should on my work laptop.

Though I guess I should try to find someone who has Windows 8.1 (since my work computer has Windows 7) to see if it works on their computer...

try this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLSDQ_Zh0zI

oh god, drivers

I tried what the video did, but the Fiio driver was already up to date, so it was no use. I really don't understand what's wrong: the driver's been installed, my computer recognizes Fiio, it's listed in the Device Manager under audio inputs and outputs, and when I go to the sound mixer, it allows me choose between the speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio) and Fiio (SPDIF OUT), but when I choose the latter, I get an error message saying "No audio device is installed". It's mystifying.

1. See if the system has USB drivers that need updated, like for the motherboard or w/e
2. Try a USB hub
3. Try all the diff USB ports

Did you try input with just the 3.5mm jack? If it works via jack, it could indicate USB or bus drivers (c'mon Windows, get it together already!)

Maybe try un-installing device drivers, reboot, and start fresh.

Yeah, the 3.5mm jack works fine, and like I said, the DAC works perfectly on my laptop via its USB port... So the problem is must be in the tabletop computer. And I've tried plugging the Fiio to every USB port in the tabletop (it has both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports), that doesn't solve the problem.

I guess I could try to update the USB drivers, but I'm not sure where to start with that... Is there some centralized way to check if all the drivers are up to date?

Google has plenty of results for "Windows 8 driver Fiio Eo7K".

Couple people on a headphone forum I look at occasionally fixed issues with Windows 8 and a Fiio by calling up the command line prompt and typing:

sfc /scannow

It repairs problems on the boot drive. Though the problem they were having was Windows crashing when the Fiio was plugged in, not your problem. Still sounds like it was some sort of USB issue that was getting fixed.

Yeah, it'd be worth looking at the system event log to see if something is crashing

tl;dr buy a mac, right

just don't use computers, they're awful

can't argue

Record player are the best DAC of all

but then you get into the argument of what the best phono preamp is :)

a record player does a very poor job of converting digital signals into analog signals imo

*puts tim hecker cd on record player*
*drops needle*

no, seems to be working fine

LOL

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AudioQuest - Columbia Interconnects (Pr)
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hey actually can anyone instruct me into how to rip regular old decent-sounding 320 MP3s from hi-res 24-96 FLACs? Do I have to downsample the flacs first or can I just throw them in xAct and make MP3s from them?

use this:

Columbia employs AQ’s patented Dielectric-Bias System to dramatically lower the noise floor and smooth frequency response.

(also asfaik you can just throw them in itunes or w/e and they will make Mp3s out of them)

I've used Switch to convert FLACs

Maybe it's not so surprising after all. Columbia uses the same snake oil as Colorado, the same snake oil as Niagara and the same snake oil as Sky, and costs a fraction of their prices.

i was just concerned specifically about the hi-res aspect, like I know you can't just convert a 24-96 flac into a wav without some sort of downsampling process, wasn't sure if the same applies to MP3s.

What? Of course you can have a 24/96 wav. That's what they made the flac from

hey actually can anyone instruct me into how to rip regular old decent-sounding 320 MP3s from hi-res 24-96 FLACs?

I use All2MP3.

xld imo
My standard for audio conversion is to look at the guidelines for whatever the snootiest private torrent sites use

http://bgr.com/2015/02/19/sony-premium-sound-memory-card/

i also use all2mp3

Perfect for the potential Audiophile Snake Oil aspect, Mediamonkey allows you to set both the bitrate and the "Encoding Quality". I have found no documentation, but i presume the highest encoding quality regards the extent that the tracks are read, written and compared.

------------------------------------------------

On other things Snakeoil; Sony claims this SD card makes your audio sound better by minimizing excess electrical noise......... sheesh

the problem I found with Mediamonkey (MM in itself was really great) is it seems to play badly with itunes. Like unfortunately I have to have itunes on my machine bc of owning an iphone, this is literally the only reason itunes is still tolerated by me bc I play my music on a Rockboxed Sansa Clip with SD cards, I tag my files with xAct and do my lossless to lossy conversions with xAct... anyway just the fact that MM and iTunes were both active on the same machine led to some serious snafus for me and I probably won't fuck with MM again until I have done away with itunes altogether...

Good luck.

More props to Rockboxed Sansa Clip!

so fucking great! only pitfall is battery life of course.

might try the 200 dollar walkman that takes micro SD cards this year. Basically I don't foresee ever using a player that doesn't have expandable memory ever again, it's just too fucking satisfactory for me.

Ha, I thought the revive was about this bit of preciousness today:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/02/audiophiles_neil_young_s_pono_has_brought_unfair_scorn_for_lovers_of_high.html

#notallaudiophiles

question : how can a 40W amp blow speakers that are rated at 120W ?

i need to replace my floorstanders as the tweeters have blown.

arse.

(that said i got my bonus today, so, good timing as it means i can move to the next level of floorstanders .. )