High End Audio Bullshit!

[johnnyrichards]

Michael, words of wisdom. Are you current cell# and address the same from a year ago? PM or call me if you still have my# Thank you very much for patience

Not really wisdom. We should not be afraid to call BS. Mike is afraid to call BS. He sold out. His entire post is about respecting people advocating untenable positions. The "high end" crowd has to let that go.

[Squidspeak]

I will never understand why people spend so much time "disproving" and "debunking" this hot garbage in a dumpster fire.

Imagine the progress that can be made in terms of musical enjoyment if people focused on enjoying the music, and coming to their own conclusions on what matters and what does not based upon their own research into what may be right for them?

I have heard many systems that are designed with some serious belief in pure voodoo that sound excellent. Who am I to judge? Even if they let me completely re-design their system from source to speaker from what I thought was good....Would it truly be "better" or just a same but different?

The further DACs advance the less SSD vs. Spinning disc becomes an issue.So was it the discs all along? Likely not... Newell and Holland have published several papers on the specta distortion that occurs when complex waveforms are sent through cables as related to the property of the cables. No one seems to ever cite those because it makes it hard to argue. $5,000 cables are not the answer for sure, however. Want a SPDIF to live with for the rest of your life? Go to Guitarded Center and spend $10 on a HOSA 1m SPDIF cable. I told a dandy once it was a $1,000 digital cable and put it in his very expensive system. He thought it was more enjoyable over his $2,000 Nordost thingy. When he found out what it was, it was funny to watch his mind unravel and he suddenly heard how "bad" the HOSA was. Good connectors, good quality materials, good construction of it all, and shelidling are about all it takes to keep small signals in check. That does not cost much.

I think people who are legitimately interested in high end audio as a hobby and a channel to enjoy the music have more at their disposal than ever. This is not the 90's anymore. Brilliant Pebbles, and cable lifters no longer entice since a quick google search will give any N00B the right information about such things.

It is more of the same, over and over. Haters are going to hate, and with the complexity and variables involved in just about every aspect of the audio chain, it is easy to fall victim to the Sharpshooter Fallacy: Clustering information to support an inherent belief and drawing the target around it. While there is a lot of phooey out there...Poppycock and even tomfoolery, there if a lot of good, too. Many companies pushing the bar forward like Vivid has in driver design, and Bricasti has in clock precision and DAC filtering, especially on the DSD side of things.These projects are expensive. It shows in their products, but like anything else, it will eventually become the norm. Is the cost of the incremental improvement worth it? Perhaps to us it is not, but can companies like Vivid and Bricasti afford to absorb the R&D cost over the years it takes to yield this result because Joe Youtuber thinks it should be cheap? No. Just the programming and software development alone for Bricasti's M1 was over $250,000, and that was 10+ years ago. Making a small change to release a more affordable product like their M3 still brings heavy prototype and R&D costs.That all ends up in the pricetag.

We cannot forget to give credit where credit is due, too. More importantly we cannot forget to enjoy the music. That's the end result, no? In recent years I have come to realize a big part of getting the most enjoyment from this hobby is keeping an open mind, but not so wide open your brain falls out. Buyer beware, question everything, but if along the way you happen across something you love...Love it regardless of what every one else thinks if it brings enjoyment to your listening experience.

Happy listening fellas.

Michael, words of wisdom. Are you current cell# and address the same from a year ago? PM or call me if you still have my# Thank you very much for patience

[fpitas]

Another item that seems like pure BS are expensive power cables. Never mind the electricity coming out of the wall socket is dirty with voltage sags, spikes, and hash, going through kilometers of indifferent quality of wire, and magically one meter or so of an exotic power cable should clean up the power and remove voltage sags, etc.

Replacing the power cord is something anyone can do, as long as they bring money. None of that pesky sciency crap.

[AEIOU]

Another item that seems like pure BS are expensive power cables. Never mind the electricity coming out of the wall socket is dirty with voltage sags, spikes, and hash, going through kilometers of indifferent quality of wire, and magically one meter or so of an exotic power cable should clean up the power and remove voltage sags, etc.

Mind over matter, they believe it, so it must be true. Go over to Audio Asylum and you'll see piles of such nonsense.

[AEIOU]

I will never understand why people spend so much time "disproving" and "debunking" this hot garbage in a dumpster fire.

Imagine the progress that can be made in terms of musical enjoyment if people focused on enjoying the music, and coming to their own conclusions on what matters and what does not based upon their own research into what may be right for them?

I have heard many systems that are designed with some serious belief in pure voodoo that sound excellent. Who am I to judge? Even if they let me completely re-design their system from source to speaker from what I thought was good....Would it truly be "better" or just a same but different?

The further DACs advance the less SSD vs. Spinning disc becomes an issue.So was it the discs all along? Likely not... Newell and Holland have published several papers on the specta distortion that occurs when complex waveforms are sent through cables as related to the property of the cables. No one seems to ever cite those because it makes it hard to argue. $5,000 cables are not the answer for sure, however. Want a SPDIF to live with for the rest of your life? Go to Guitarded Center and spend $10 on a HOSA 1m SPDIF cable. I told a dandy once it was a $1,000 digital cable and put it in his very expensive system. He thought it was more enjoyable over his $2,000 Nordost thingy. When he found out what it was, it was funny to watch his mind unravel and he suddenly heard how "bad" the HOSA was. Good connectors, good quality materials, good construction of it all, and shelidling are about all it takes to keep small signals in check. That does not cost much.

I think people who are legitimately interested in high end audio as a hobby and a channel to enjoy the music have more at their disposal than ever. This is not the 90's anymore. Brilliant Pebbles, and cable lifters no longer entice since a quick google search will give any N00B the right information about such things.

It is more of the same, over and over. Haters are going to hate, and with the complexity and variables involved in just about every aspect of the audio chain, it is easy to fall victim to the Sharpshooter Fallacy: Clustering information to support an inherent belief and drawing the target around it. While there is a lot of phooey out there...Poppycock and even tomfoolery, there if a lot of good, too. Many companies pushing the bar forward like Vivid has in driver design, and Bricasti has in clock precision and DAC filtering, especially on the DSD side of things.These projects are expensive. It shows in their products, but like anything else, it will eventually become the norm. Is the cost of the incremental improvement worth it? Perhaps to us it is not, but can companies like Vivid and Bricasti afford to absorb the R&D cost over the years it takes to yield this result because Joe Youtuber thinks it should be cheap? No. Just the programming and software development alone for Bricasti's M1 was over $250,000, and that was 10+ years ago. Making a small change to release a more affordable product like their M3 still brings heavy prototype and R&D costs.That all ends up in the pricetag.

We cannot forget to give credit where credit is due, too. More importantly we cannot forget to enjoy the music. That's the end result, no? In recent years I have come to realize a big part of getting the most enjoyment from this hobby is keeping an open mind, but not so wide open your brain falls out. Buyer beware, question everything, but if along the way you happen across something you love...Love it regardless of what every one else thinks if it brings enjoyment to your listening experience.

Happy listening fellas.

And after all that, there are still those who insist that the Earth is flat!

[AEIOU]

I don't have any SS drives, so I know nothing about them.
Wolf

No moving parts! LOL. Not only that, but typically several times quicker/faster too. Also, a good choice for laptops since power consumption is lower.

[badman]

No... I mean what software did you use to organize them? I mean if I had decided to put it on a drive I would need to be able to type in vivaldi and get all the choices, or type in clarinet and get all the clarinet or type in renaissance and get all those choices. It would have to be as goo as the software that I get from PRIMEPHONIC where I can instantly listen to all the recordings on the Toy piano, for instance.

Tagging them is the way to do it. Foobar and other players can do everything you want but you might have to put the work into tagging and categorizing. FLAC can compress your files losslessly as well as hold tags, which give artist, year, genre, etc., and allow players to sort by any of those metadata pieces.

[wogg]

I built an MS Access based database that reads metafile data from Windows directories and builds the database by title, artist and album. It'll build playlists and spit out standard M3U playlist files if you like. If you've got Access on your system and you feel like trying unsupported software, let me know.

[Ron_E]

No... I mean what software did you use to organize them? I mean if I had decided to put it on a drive I would need to be able to type in vivaldi and get all the choices, or type in clarinet and get all the clarinet or type in renaissance and get all those choices. It would have to be as goo as the software that I get from PRIMEPHONIC where I can instantly listen to all the recordings on the Toy piano, for instance.

I just put each CD in a folder and use Windows Explorer to search for what I want. It works for me but won't give me the kind of search capability you describe.

Ron

[malboro2]

I use VLC Media Player for playback. https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html
I used Exact Audio Copy to rip the disks to Flac. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Ron

No... I mean what software did you use to organize them? I mean if I had decided to put it on a drive I would need to be able to type in vivaldi and get all the choices, or type in clarinet and get all the clarinet or type in renaissance and get all those choices. It would have to be as goo as the software that I get from PRIMEPHONIC where I can instantly listen to all the recordings on the Toy piano, for instance.

[fpitas]

Those that talk about noise in the digital domain need to back that up with a specific protocol that does not perform error detection and correction. Then we have a basis. With an appropriate protocol, there is no chance of the bits being wrong. Any "noise" introduced will simply reveal itself as gaps in playback when buffer underrun occurs on the receiving device. this will be clearly audible (or can be measured). It won't "sneak through" as any hiss, loss of detail, compression or some such.

Snake Oil is protocol independent.

[Ron_E]

It probably goes without saying, but with libraries that big and time intensive, backup of the drives is critical. I'm running my stuff off of a NAS, Raid 1, for drive redundancy.

Sigh, I really need to back that up onto another drive, and then un-plug it and stash it someplace safe and off-line.

I have copies on 3 different machines.

Ron

[chad1376]

It probably goes without saying, but with libraries that big and time intensive, backup of the drives is critical. I'm running my stuff off of a NAS, Raid 1, for drive redundancy.

Sigh, I really need to back that up onto another drive, and then un-plug it and stash it someplace safe and off-line.

[Ron_E]

Any idea how much time was involved? I have a similar sized library.

Steve

Looking at the date stamps on the folders I was able to rip 734 CD's between 9-14 and 9-31. It looks like it was taking 5 to 10 minutes a CD. There were times when I'd use 2 machines that were networked so while one was ripping a disk I could be starting another disk.

Ron

[skatz]

I converted my 1500+ CD's to lossless Flac files and find them to be as good as the original unless there was trouble reading the CD.

Ron

Any idea how much time was involved? I have a similar sized library.

Steve