being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

[contoursvt]

Last year he started talking about upgrading power cables and buying mit speaker cables. This year he is transferring his retail purchased cds to gold cdr disks because it sounds clearly better than the original. Scariest part is that he used to be a programmer. Sql and java. How can people lose their minds when audio is involved? Want to hear the worst of it? He is switching his hard drives to solid state so the vibration of platters doesnt cause jitter during the extraction phase. Sigh.......

[Wolf]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

Last year he started talking about upgrading power cables and buying mit speaker cables. This year he is transferring his retail purchased cds to gold cdr disks because it sounds clearly better than the original. Scariest part is that he used to be a programmer. Sql and java. How can people lose their minds when audio is involved? Want to hear the worst of it? He is switching his hard drives to solid state so the vibration of platters doesnt cause jitter during the extraction phase. Sigh.......

My take....
Yes cords do make a change, as does power filtration. Better? You decide.

Speaker cables- yep those do too. Better? You decide.

Gold disc copies of the same lesser-produced media? hogwash. Gold original manufactured discs from say Audio-Fidelity or Mobile-Fidelity? Yes- those sound LEAGUES better because they master them from the original sessions with less compression and better goals for the outcome ie- producers that know what they are doing.

SSD are way to expensive atm, and I doubt that would be a significant change.

Later,
Wolf

[johnnyrichards]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

My audiophile friend is somewhat more practical, except for certain things - like when he went from a pair of amps on each channel to a single stereo amp, reinstalled his binding post jumpers and complained about how bad they sounded, so he spent $400 on Transparent 3" jumpers. That is how he rolls. No pebbles, no magic clocks, just the oddball situations like cutting his amplifier power considerably and blaming 2" of gold plated copper (yes, they were nice jumpers) for his diminished enjoyment. We're talking serious amplifiers, too. He also spent $2000 on a 3' power cord. To each their own, I guess. I would rather spend $2600 on $600 worth of drivers and $2000 on Brazilian hookers then power cords, but as I said - to each their own. He has a pretty nice system, though.

[Whitneyville1]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

Johnny, my Richie Rich guy (who listens to his i-Phone 99% of the time...) has the mega-buck home real theater, he just changed out the regular theater seats (with shakers in them) for theater lover seats because the nicest movie theaters in town just did that. He told me he plans on installing a 4K video system in there ASAP (where he plans to get media he doesn't know, when I asked him that), and his wife told me they never use the thing anyway. She has maybe a 55" in the "den" she watches broadcast TV on with her daughter and people who aren't being drug around by her husband showing off his toys (she's nice, she'd give you a cold one, me a diet soft drink or iced tea and "blue stuff" and let us put our feet up, make some popcorn and feed us nuts and crackers and cheese). HE worries about Mr. Somebody in Hollywood that edited the soundtrack for the last movie having what brand of cables so HE can say HE has them too. Get it?

[billfitzmaurice]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

Want to become an audiophile? Cut a small hole in your pants pocket. Fill the pocket with marbles. Go for a walk. One by one the marbles will fall through the hole in the pocket. When you've lost all your marbles, congratulations, you are an audiophile.

[mike s]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

a few years ago there was a "yell test" which indicated that audible noise in a datacenter could slow i/o operations on a hard drive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4

[carlspeak]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

It's a terminal disease referred to in medical parlance as "Audiophilia Nervosa" :p

[Pete Schumacher]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

a few years ago there was a "yell test" which indicated that audible noise in a datacenter could slow i/o operations on a hard drive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4

That's why large data buffers should be part of every hard drive. With the microscopic tolerances of the read/write head and platter, it's not surprising at all that vibrations caused by sonic disturbances can be detected in the data stream. Using an SSD would eliminate that problem. However, data rates for streaming music are far slower than the data rates of any HDD. Having a small SSD to act as the playback queue buffer would at least alleviate the anxiety suffered by the audiophile, and that has real value for enjoying the music. Sometimes placebos do work.

[tc]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

OMG Mr. BFM....that made my day. Thank you sir!

Want to become an audiophile? Cut a small hole in your pants pocket. Fill the pocket with marbles. Go for a walk. One by one the marbles will fall through the hole in the pocket. When you've lost all your marbles, congratulations, you are an audiophile.

[hongrn]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

So many people don't realize the importance of the source. Start with a piece of well recorded music to test your system. I can almost guarantee you that the audible differences will be so negligible that spending big bucks on esoteric stuff is like putting marbles in your torn pocket. Well said Bill.

By the way, all my gold plated esoteric stuff comes from Monoprice...

[craigk]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

some times I am not sure which is the more problematic. the audiophile nervosa or the person that would like to try these things and can not afford to, but continues to post about the stupidity of the audiophile.

[Simon Moon]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

I consider myself an audiophile in the strict sense of the word, but I do not use any 'magical thinking' when considering improvements or evaluations of equipment.

My system is modest by audiophile standards, using a combination of DIY, new and vintage equipment. Yes, I spend time on occasion 'tweaking' my system in ways that follow science based methods.

No, I do not put ceramic lifters under my speaker wire to raise them off the floor. Yes, I put low resonance, high damping (DIY) isolation under my turntable to isolate it from mechanical vibrations.

No, I don't spend big $$ on power cables, use clocks, pebbles, etc. Yes, I spend $$ on changing the tubes in my inexpensive preamp.

Any change I make is based on things that could really make differences for empirically testable reasons.

[Face]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

some times I am not sure which is the more problematic. the audiophile nervosa or the person that would like to try these things and can not afford to, but continues to post about the stupidity of the audiophile.

They're both as helpful as cancer.

[Face]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

That's why large data buffers should be part of every hard drive. With the microscopic tolerances of the read/write head and platter, it's not surprising at all that vibrations caused by sonic disturbances can be detected in the data stream. Using an SSD would eliminate that problem. However, data rates for streaming music are far slower than the data rates of any HDD. Having a small SSD to act as the playback queue buffer would at least alleviate the anxiety suffered by the audiophile, and that has real value for enjoying the music. Sometimes placebos do work.

J. River allows RAM buffering. http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Aud...tions#Settings

[jinjuku]

Re: being an audiophile has given my friend brain rot :(

That's why large data buffers should be part of every hard drive. With the microscopic tolerances of the read/write head and platter, it's not surprising at all that vibrations caused by sonic disturbances can be detected in the data stream. Using an SSD would eliminate that problem. However, data rates for streaming music are far slower than the data rates of any HDD. Having a small SSD to act as the playback queue buffer would at least alleviate the anxiety suffered by the audiophile, and that has real value for enjoying the music. Sometimes placebos do work.

Thanks for pointing that out. As long as the cache isn't depleted, or the maximum transfer doesn't drop below the needed threshold and cause a re-fetch the audiophile will be fine.

I use an SSD on my 2.0 computer because it streams wireless from my server and the SSD makes no noise.

If you are purchasing a hyper expensive power cable then you have some other issues to sort out. Install a -60 /0/ +60 circuit for petes sake. Unfortunately people doing dumb stuff tend to hit it across the board.