Amp: Yamaha RX-V595aRDS (previously Philips CW100)
Speakers: Audiowell MP 120
Cables: OFC 2.5mm / argon audio classic mjin1 minijack
Comp: 32-bit 2.2ghz, 150gb hdd, 2gb ram, linux / 64-bit 2.3ghz, 120gb ssd hdd, 4gb ram, win10
Here's a story / essay, which became very long now. Hope you bear with me. I wanted a stereo again, have been using marshall MID ANC for ½ year, the sound quality is real nice, especially in bluetooth mode. But I had stereo munchies, as I haven't had a stereo for an entire year. So I went to 3 second hand stores. The first I bought was the "mini hifi" system ($10), though, I didn't bring the speakers with me from the store. Defines the word "plastic", basically weighs nothing. Next was the speakers, nice danish ones, cost me $40. The sound processed from the $10 stereo was sweet, especially as I could increase or decrease the volume to whatever, and it always sounded good! Real fat bass, to the point of things in my room started vibrating. This made me go "hmm", thinking that the sound wasn't very realistic, but it was good for dancing to! Then a month later I bought a dedicated amp ($50), and was gravely disapointed. Basically no bass at all, but I turned the bass up to full, and it sounded ok. The sound is a bit smoother, that's all. And it only has one good listening level, too low sounds too low, too high just sounds bad - I swear I almost get a headache then. But I can plug a lot into it, when I get the time and money...
Then I finally started using my newly bought win10 laptop ($370), after some bug-cleaning, as it was crashing under just about any circumstance before - if I went away from the comp a few mins it blackscreened! I figured for several months that it was just innert to a shitty new OS, so I did nothing about it, just accepted its crashes all its crashes, only using one program at a time, and only one browser tab. I also had an old laptop, eventhough the new one, was, well, new, it still only had a 120gb hdd, while the old one had a 150gb one. And I like flac, so after a few years of music buying, the hdd fills up. But still, win7 on the old used 70gb of space, after uninstalling everything imaginable. So I figured, why not install a small linux distribution? Found Lubuntu, at only 3gb size. I recently saw a modern day portable media player for $2000, which still only had a 120gb drive built in, so I'm winning ground.
Now to the surprise, the sound quality was much better. I heard it directly, minutes from having booted the OS, from one of the supplied media players. It was very audible. I still get baffled all the time when I think of the sound going through my stereo. I had no problems before switching between different sound systems, but now I just don't want to go back to anything else. It's like several $100's worth of sound quality.
And to the ones saying "this is impossible", imagine gigabytes and gigabytes of code, and the effectiveness, like 3d rendering, in games, for example. There's huge differences there. I had no thoughts of linux improving my stereo, I only wanted the extra storage space. But with this, I'm spellbound.
To objectively measure sound quality - is it even possible? Some like commercial radio poprock, and swear by that. Or christian hiphop? To them it's the best thing in the world, no matter what others say. Some only like live recordings, some will only listen live - the true experience, if anything. I've read several analyzations of differences in sound qualities across many factors, but at the end of the day, it's up to the enduser to decide. As Albert Einstein put it, "Not all that counts can be counted, and not all that can be counted counts". How do you explain analog "warmth" in logical terms? I can in a splitsecond hear when I put on a 96khz 24-bit record. It's much crisper, much alive, more detailed bass, everything. No matter what some people say, they can go back to 128kbps mp3s encoded in 1995, for all I care...
The picture quality is also much better. I sometimes think I'm on my new laptop with its full-HD rez, while the old one is just HD. Images are crisper, and the antialiasing is incredible.
Now to the downsides. It seems they haven't realized people use multitasking, or is it only my 32-bit machine? Downloading an album in flac on bandcamp, while surfing the net, is impossible; a simple webpage takes minutes to load, and this is with a 10mb connection. And both playing music and browsing is unthinkable as well, it just buffers, over and over again, when using Clementine and Firefox together.
But, still, I got what I wanted; a dedicated media player, with twice the storage space, at no cost. And always looking for better sound quality, so linux sound processing was just icing on the cake.
To note is I searched on "linux" here, and the first post I look at, mentions better sound quality on linux vs pc! Since I'm not interesting in forum necromancy, i'll quote something.
"With power power requirements hence consumption lower electrical noise on Linux is lowered on USB bus 4) Lower power consumption could also lower interference to external components"
- https://forums.whathifi.com/threads/windows-vs-linux.109306/page-4
My sister's boyfriend has a stereo for $50000 last I heard, although that was awhile ago. I listened to it back then, and it was incredible. When I looked up the gear he uses, it's 3 large parts, not including speakers, just for playing CDs. And I didn't get anything of the specifics, but what I did understand then, is that it has a lot to do with electrical clarity, and noise? Ever listened to a live concert, before they started playing? The enhanced noise from the amplificers isn't fun to hear. And eventhough a CD is digital, it gets noise the second you get a little dent in it or some dust. I don't hear this myself from my ripped CDs, but others do. Of course, ripping back in the old days, you could hear a high dusty-like woof sound at places where it was really scratched. So there's more than meets the eye, or ears... It's all about clarity, the clearer the signal all the way through all components, the more true it is to the original.
I've dabbled a lot with HDR in photography, and most people say you only need 20 exposures or so if you're photgraphing something extreme as light coming through inside of churches, or that re-saving JPGs over and over again won't reduce the picture quality much. ********! I once processed 128 exposures into a single image, and after the 8 hours of processing the image quality was just out of this world. Something as simple as a single red colour on a wall of a building, all the time changes to be more true as you increase the dynamic range. Same goes for re-samping. When you work on an image, say it's 4132x2837, and you need to have it on a site in 800x600 pixels, if it was the same for a sound, audiogeeks would just vomit from all the aliasing artifacts. The most interesthing part is, the higher dynamic range you have, the lower filesize you get when saving as a PNG; there's less unpredictable noise, after all.
If you're a musican you know these things, but on HIFI forums they seem to be sadly lacking. Music artists, if anything, put all their knowledge, wisdom, techniques, time and hearing ability into making their next album, instead of bragging about their gear or set in stone wisdom. And the wisdom they have, they keep quiet about.
It's strange how picture quality is going up and up, but the sound a TV outputs is just pathetic. It seems the ones which are against expensive sound equipment, are the same ones collecting and looking at VHS tapes - no-one notices the difference from 0.5k to 8k, or a fatscreen compared to QLED anyway!
Since no-one in their right minds watches VHS anymore, why are we still listening to cd quality? Does anyone think 60fps looks bad? If VHS used the technology and science of the day, isn't it logical to think, that a just as old standard is also outdated?
Another comparison would be burgers. You could buy mincemeat, put in some spices, egg, cookie crumbs, make burgers out of it, and grill it outside by yourself - the equilant of a concert. Then you go to McDonalds, and... what can I say, we all know the difference, right? And the other burger chains are just the same, or marginally better or worse.
Skrev om min stereofilosofi för ett HIFI forum, kommer säkert få 1 kommentar från ett troll bara. Vet inte om Bella bryr sig, men jag höll på några timmar med att skriva det i alla fall... Så här har vi det...
Another one, soap. Some probably swear by their $1 soap they get from their local supermarket. It makes them clean, what else could you want (except the 100 additives)? Same as consumer level stereos and ms windows. Then you have those who use rubbing alcohol all over their body - the equilant of a dead, cold, electronical sound. Then there are the ones who buy those expensive, ecological, hand made, olive or hemp based soaps. It's a high amount of one ingredient, doesn't dry you out your skin and heals wounds and diseases - the equilant of recording in an analog studio. What more could you want?
Most probably swear by what they use, and would never change.
And if it works for them, why complain?
But some of us are seekers...
Speakers: Audiowell MP 120
Cables: OFC 2.5mm / argon audio classic mjin1 minijack
Comp: 32-bit 2.2ghz, 150gb hdd, 2gb ram, linux / 64-bit 2.3ghz, 120gb ssd hdd, 4gb ram, win10
Here's a story / essay, which became very long now. Hope you bear with me. I wanted a stereo again, have been using marshall MID ANC for ½ year, the sound quality is real nice, especially in bluetooth mode. But I had stereo munchies, as I haven't had a stereo for an entire year. So I went to 3 second hand stores. The first I bought was the "mini hifi" system ($10), though, I didn't bring the speakers with me from the store. Defines the word "plastic", basically weighs nothing. Next was the speakers, nice danish ones, cost me $40. The sound processed from the $10 stereo was sweet, especially as I could increase or decrease the volume to whatever, and it always sounded good! Real fat bass, to the point of things in my room started vibrating. This made me go "hmm", thinking that the sound wasn't very realistic, but it was good for dancing to! Then a month later I bought a dedicated amp ($50), and was gravely disapointed. Basically no bass at all, but I turned the bass up to full, and it sounded ok. The sound is a bit smoother, that's all. And it only has one good listening level, too low sounds too low, too high just sounds bad - I swear I almost get a headache then. But I can plug a lot into it, when I get the time and money...
Then I finally started using my newly bought win10 laptop ($370), after some bug-cleaning, as it was crashing under just about any circumstance before - if I went away from the comp a few mins it blackscreened! I figured for several months that it was just innert to a shitty new OS, so I did nothing about it, just accepted its crashes all its crashes, only using one program at a time, and only one browser tab. I also had an old laptop, eventhough the new one, was, well, new, it still only had a 120gb hdd, while the old one had a 150gb one. And I like flac, so after a few years of music buying, the hdd fills up. But still, win7 on the old used 70gb of space, after uninstalling everything imaginable. So I figured, why not install a small linux distribution? Found Lubuntu, at only 3gb size. I recently saw a modern day portable media player for $2000, which still only had a 120gb drive built in, so I'm winning ground.
Now to the surprise, the sound quality was much better. I heard it directly, minutes from having booted the OS, from one of the supplied media players. It was very audible. I still get baffled all the time when I think of the sound going through my stereo. I had no problems before switching between different sound systems, but now I just don't want to go back to anything else. It's like several $100's worth of sound quality.
And to the ones saying "this is impossible", imagine gigabytes and gigabytes of code, and the effectiveness, like 3d rendering, in games, for example. There's huge differences there. I had no thoughts of linux improving my stereo, I only wanted the extra storage space. But with this, I'm spellbound.
To objectively measure sound quality - is it even possible? Some like commercial radio poprock, and swear by that. Or christian hiphop? To them it's the best thing in the world, no matter what others say. Some only like live recordings, some will only listen live - the true experience, if anything. I've read several analyzations of differences in sound qualities across many factors, but at the end of the day, it's up to the enduser to decide. As Albert Einstein put it, "Not all that counts can be counted, and not all that can be counted counts". How do you explain analog "warmth" in logical terms? I can in a splitsecond hear when I put on a 96khz 24-bit record. It's much crisper, much alive, more detailed bass, everything. No matter what some people say, they can go back to 128kbps mp3s encoded in 1995, for all I care...
The picture quality is also much better. I sometimes think I'm on my new laptop with its full-HD rez, while the old one is just HD. Images are crisper, and the antialiasing is incredible.
Now to the downsides. It seems they haven't realized people use multitasking, or is it only my 32-bit machine? Downloading an album in flac on bandcamp, while surfing the net, is impossible; a simple webpage takes minutes to load, and this is with a 10mb connection. And both playing music and browsing is unthinkable as well, it just buffers, over and over again, when using Clementine and Firefox together.
But, still, I got what I wanted; a dedicated media player, with twice the storage space, at no cost. And always looking for better sound quality, so linux sound processing was just icing on the cake.
To note is I searched on "linux" here, and the first post I look at, mentions better sound quality on linux vs pc! Since I'm not interesting in forum necromancy, i'll quote something.
"With power power requirements hence consumption lower electrical noise on Linux is lowered on USB bus 4) Lower power consumption could also lower interference to external components"
- https://forums.whathifi.com/threads/windows-vs-linux.109306/page-4
My sister's boyfriend has a stereo for $50000 last I heard, although that was awhile ago. I listened to it back then, and it was incredible. When I looked up the gear he uses, it's 3 large parts, not including speakers, just for playing CDs. And I didn't get anything of the specifics, but what I did understand then, is that it has a lot to do with electrical clarity, and noise? Ever listened to a live concert, before they started playing? The enhanced noise from the amplificers isn't fun to hear. And eventhough a CD is digital, it gets noise the second you get a little dent in it or some dust. I don't hear this myself from my ripped CDs, but others do. Of course, ripping back in the old days, you could hear a high dusty-like woof sound at places where it was really scratched. So there's more than meets the eye, or ears... It's all about clarity, the clearer the signal all the way through all components, the more true it is to the original.
I've dabbled a lot with HDR in photography, and most people say you only need 20 exposures or so if you're photgraphing something extreme as light coming through inside of churches, or that re-saving JPGs over and over again won't reduce the picture quality much. ********! I once processed 128 exposures into a single image, and after the 8 hours of processing the image quality was just out of this world. Something as simple as a single red colour on a wall of a building, all the time changes to be more true as you increase the dynamic range. Same goes for re-samping. When you work on an image, say it's 4132x2837, and you need to have it on a site in 800x600 pixels, if it was the same for a sound, audiogeeks would just vomit from all the aliasing artifacts. The most interesthing part is, the higher dynamic range you have, the lower filesize you get when saving as a PNG; there's less unpredictable noise, after all.
If you're a musican you know these things, but on HIFI forums they seem to be sadly lacking. Music artists, if anything, put all their knowledge, wisdom, techniques, time and hearing ability into making their next album, instead of bragging about their gear or set in stone wisdom. And the wisdom they have, they keep quiet about.
It's strange how picture quality is going up and up, but the sound a TV outputs is just pathetic. It seems the ones which are against expensive sound equipment, are the same ones collecting and looking at VHS tapes - no-one notices the difference from 0.5k to 8k, or a fatscreen compared to QLED anyway!
Since no-one in their right minds watches VHS anymore, why are we still listening to cd quality? Does anyone think 60fps looks bad? If VHS used the technology and science of the day, isn't it logical to think, that a just as old standard is also outdated?
Another comparison would be burgers. You could buy mincemeat, put in some spices, egg, cookie crumbs, make burgers out of it, and grill it outside by yourself - the equilant of a concert. Then you go to McDonalds, and... what can I say, we all know the difference, right? And the other burger chains are just the same, or marginally better or worse.
Skrev om min stereofilosofi för ett HIFI forum, kommer säkert få 1 kommentar från ett troll bara. Vet inte om Bella bryr sig, men jag höll på några timmar med att skriva det i alla fall... Så här har vi det...
Another one, soap. Some probably swear by their $1 soap they get from their local supermarket. It makes them clean, what else could you want (except the 100 additives)? Same as consumer level stereos and ms windows. Then you have those who use rubbing alcohol all over their body - the equilant of a dead, cold, electronical sound. Then there are the ones who buy those expensive, ecological, hand made, olive or hemp based soaps. It's a high amount of one ingredient, doesn't dry you out your skin and heals wounds and diseases - the equilant of recording in an analog studio. What more could you want?
Most probably swear by what they use, and would never change.
And if it works for them, why complain?
But some of us are seekers...