Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

Yeah, I know what you're saying - the last few years of reissues could definitely get a bad rep, like some of the first wave of CD's that just sound off when you hear them now

what's the "Matador email"?

regarding the Yo La Tengo 'Painful" reissue, just a bit upthread

thanks - really interesting, pretty amazing for them to be so up front about it.

a couple of quid for a crappy 80s/90s cd being replaced by a newly remastered edition for £10 vs this excess.

no contest.

i.e. i have bought original cd 80s/90s/00s edition and then the remaster has been issued, and the sound quality has rarely been an issue.

no financial excess required for either edition, nor the equipment to actually hear the difference.

i will never ever understand the love of the scratchy groove.

big art work. fun turn tables. cheap stevie wonder records that sound amazing. cheap fleetwood mac records that sound amazing. cheap steely dan records that, etc.

studio productions until the mid 80s, dance music after that, probably rap after that...

cds are totally the hot bargain rn though imo

yeah. early 2000s were amazing for vinyl

and maybe/probably it was better before then. I just wouldn't know.

i get the love.
i have a few old heavy duty 60s albums that sound fantastic.
but the format is just too fragile and susceptible to too many variables as described in the recent article (and £££), that its just not worth the hassle.
give me a well mastered cd, and lack of artwork anyday.

lol when I got to the Emotional Rescue part of that article I was o_O. brothers in arms is also perfect. picturing those jerks listening to the synth riff of Walk of Life 15 times in a row and then scribbling 'silky bottom end' on a post-it.

― you can buy your hair if it won't grow (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, March 5, 2015 2:18 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can't stop giggling about this

xp I think cd wallets is where I lost all respect for cds. I wish that I respected cds.

i kind of wish i had the openness of soul to hear what these guys hear

really tho i wish i had the money they spend on these rigs

sadly, the money probably comes along with the ear hubris

ha - yeah i think it's more mid-life crisis than openness of soul but I admire your generosity of spirit towards the hot stamper stans

Hot Stamper Stan's a pr good record store name

Hot Stan

ha - yeah i think it's more mid-life crisis than openness of soul but I admire your generosity of spirit towards the hot stamper stans

― Brio2, Thursday, March 5, 2015 4:54 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well i'm not about to descend to using a /sarc tag

this latest topic is super interesting to me since I work for a housewares company that makes a lot of stuff in plastic, obv, and every part of it makes total sense to me. I mean I don't know what the actual sound quality effect is, but you definitely are supposed to scrap and regrind the first umpteen pieces of a several thousand piece run. That's why our smaller orders of like 1000 pcs have worse quality than our 3000 or 6000 pc orders.

And the small vendors who don't physically have space to stage the work in process properly and have to cut corners on cycle time to keep up... this is like old home week.

http://design-milk.com/stone-ohyeahstudio-nokoanna/

hot stamp, i love you so

lololol

Currently bidding on a original press mono of the first Doors album, fingers crossed it's a hot stamper. On the real though fighting the urge to really go down the mono press rabbit hole on 60s classic albums

in the classic 60s arena, for me the only mono vs stereo battle that mono has lost has been Beatles For Sale. Not by a wide margin, but I do like the stereo better for that.

Never heard of "hot stampers" until that Wired article, the whole thing is just an obvious con.

BUT "Lawry has accumulated about 150 hot stampers since then. Adjusted for inflation, that’s the equivalent of buying a new Mercedes E-Class." - tbh, I'd get much much more out of 150 albums I love than any car ever

imo if you spend any amount of time in a car daily it's not bad for it to be nice

also you can listen to music in it

Earlier this year, Jay Z dropped $56 million to purchase the Swedish technology company Aspiro, owner of two music services for aspirational listeners who appreciate the finer things in life, like lossless file streaming. Whereas shoddy services like Spotify and Rdio are always losing sound from the holes in their hobo file bindles, Aspiro’s high-end providers—WiMP and the newer TIDAL—lovingly fold their audio and ad-free music videos into the velvet purse of 16-bit FLAC files, expertly inserted into the discerning ears and eyes of audiophiles by digital butlers.

http://www.avclub.com/article/jay-zs-streaming-service-isnt-everybody-ie-poors-217109

I just love the illustrative language here.

I tried Tidal, it's ok, nothing special

this is kind of amazing writing:

Spotify and Rdio are always losing sound from the holes in their hobo file bindles

have to say whenever i have tried spotify i have found it very 'shoddy'.
umm .. not.
(and no, i am not a fan, but thats cos of other reasons).
baffles me that someone would put in so much $$$ into such a groove given the dominance of the big players that have clearly wrapped this market up.
tis like the murdoc refunding of myspace to try and take on facebook.
doomed from the start.

i know a couple of people who complained about spotify sound quality, but who had not chosen the high-quality streaming in their preferences

"Excited to contact Sean Scoggin of Stereo Dave's Audio Alternative, I called him to discuss what his modifications were to the Pioneer SW-8MK2 and discovered that they use a proprietary method to influence and speed up the electron flow of the subwoofer's amplifier. Modifying the driver allows the subwoofer to move faster and have better freedom in its excursions for accuracy and speed in its ability to track the low frequencies it is replicating. All the modifications successfully work to quicken the subwoofer and increase its bandwidth/frequency range, making the subwoofer sound faster, more powerful, and deeper while still maintaining bass texture and detail.

i'm not really knowledgable in science...but that sounds like bullshit to me

he sped up the electron flow without making the music out of sync? what a magician

people are generally worried about 'speeding up electrons' when they want to lower a shunt capacitance that will reduce the signal at high frequencies by shorting it to ground. i'm not sure why you'd want to lower capacitance for a subwoofer amplifier. one is generally more commonly concerned with increasing any series capacitance so that you don't have a very high series resistance at low frequencies. so I think it's probably bullshit.

this may or may not be snake oil...but I want one.
https://www.marshallheadphones.com/mh_at_en/london-phone

I already can't tell the difference between my Galaxy s6 DAC/amp and a nice desktop dac/amp connected to my laptop

You can get a ridiculous DAC (120dB SNR, etc.) for under a dollar in volume at this point.

amusing audiophile article inc snake oil content) by ilx's old mate Petridis here: http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/music/8618/are-the-audiophiles-hearing-something-were-not/

Worried that something he calls “dirty” electricity will affect the sound his system produces, Jason has had his home rewired – his hi-fi is on a separate mains ring to the rest of the house, running off the “purest electricity possible”. “It’s quite a lonely road in some ways,” he says. “Because when you’re listening, you’re in your room, it’s just about you and the music.”

what the shit

hope that goes through a power conditioner, the utility can't be relied upon to provide clean electricity

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