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Topic: Neil Young’s new audio format (Read 131003 times) previous topic - next topic
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Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #150
"OK, first you need to put on this blindfold. Then we are going to play you a FLAC file, followed by a WAV file. Please tell us which one sounds better."
Exactly. Or, "Now for this one, you're going to want to listen for subtle differences in decay, more clarity, and an overall richer sound. You heard that? Great, moving on.."

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #151
I hadn't really noticed these digital sound wars much until the last week or two, but now they seem to be everywhere on mainstream media.  Have I become sensitised from reading HA posts, or are these guys really going all out just recently?

Makes me sad to see the incredible scamming of consumers going on.  There's lots of things you can do to improve your listening experience.  Moving from legacy 128kbps CBR MP3 to a modern codec is one thing, but 99% of people have neither the ears or the hardware to make it worth worrying about stuff like the difference between 320kbps AAC and FLAC, let alone 16/44.1, 24/96, and DSD.  Are the $5 track merchants really aiming just at people with $10,000 audio systems who've run out of upgrade ideas, or trying to rip off people with an iPhone and some nice headphones?

DSD is a brilliant example of big number fever.  64 times the sampling rate so it is much better.  Right?  Right?  Morons

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #152
Are the $5 track merchants really aiming just at people with $10,000 audio systems who've run out of upgrade ideas, or trying to rip off people with an iPhone and some nice headphones?
On the Blue Coast Records site, you can listen to the mp3s of every recording on there for free on your iPhone (or anything else). You can get lossless CD quality downloads at $1.50-$2 per track. There are free downloads of a couple of tracks in all formats so you can compare for free.

Despite the claims, unless you want to be fooled/ripped-off/whatever-you-call-it, there's no reason to be. You can check out the claimed advantages for yourself at no cost. You can listen to all the music on there at no cost in good enough quality for 99% of the population.


It's when you have to pay the $5 per track just to get the music/mastering because no cheaper/"lesser" option is available that I get annoyed.

I know humans are irrational, and I know $5 per track will find its audience, but the vast majority of people won't pay more if they can't hear a difference. The world is still listening to mp3s.

Cheers,
David.

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #153
It's a nice theory but 9 out of 10 people want what they're told to want (if they're told often enough and by enough women in bikinis .  This latest craze is fighting over who has the best answer to the wrong question, and in the process (the actual reason for all the noise) convincing people that they need these better-than-CD encodings or their lives just won't be worth living.  The world is still listening to MP3s, but that is where an answer is really needed.  Telling people who are dissatisfied with a poor quality MP3 that the answer is a massive sample rate and a huge download is pretty low.  I wonder if these people in their heart of hearts really believe it?

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #154
I wonder if these people in their heart of hearts really believe it?
Yes.

But while people are always looking for something new and different, if someone tries to sell them something they're not interested in, they'll just ignore it. They've already ignored DSD for 15 years. They made very sure that 3D TV wasn't a success.

Cheers,
David.

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #155
I wonder if these people in their heart of hearts really believe it?


Why not? You observe, you believe. Hearing occurs in the brain. The brain does not completely isolate hearing from other input.

When a sighted A/B and a blinded produce different results, it need not have anything to do with fraud. If people had understood that this is simply part of human nature, they wouldn't have reacted to a "can you blind test this?" with a "you accuse me of lying?".

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #156
I think the question was directed at the people selling such inflated files, not the buyers.

In which case the question is much more open, I think…

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #157
Could you elaborate?

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #158
I think the question was directed at the people selling such inflated files, not the buyers.

In which case the question is much more open, I think…


Outright lying, i.e believing they're selling snake oil, would require HA-type knowledge that I suspect most (if not all) store founders don't have. At worst, maybe some of them don't hear a difference, but believe that some of their "golden ears" customers might.

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #159
I think the question was directed at the people selling such inflated files, not the buyers.

In which case the question is much more open, I think…


I think that there is a widespread true and honest belief in the accuracy of sighted listening. That it is not the least bit accurate so many of the  places that it is relied on, is probably very counter-intuitive for very many people.

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #160
True, in most cases, the seller will genuinely believe the hype.

Quote
That it is not the least bit accurate so many of the places that it is relied on, is probably very counter-intuitive for very many people.
I guess it must be! I can’t remember my pre-objective days, thankfully.

Nor do I understand why some people are so resistant to testing their perceptions. Is it a mistaken belief that testing/quantifying something makes it soulless? (cf. digital vs analogue) Or insistence that they should not have to, and will not, prove themselves to others – which to me, indicates an underlying fear, whether denied or not, that what they think they hear doesn’t actually exist

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #161
Nor do I understand why some people are so resistant to testing their perceptions.


Acknowledging that your own perception may be terribly flawed, is a terrifying experience. It means acknowledging that you may not be perceiving the Truth, that your senses may be cheating you. It leaves you in an awful state of uncertainty that's very confusing and troubling. It makes you question other senses that you've always taken for granted. For a second there (or more), it makes you wonder if you're blind or deaf, or both.

I've experienced actual blindness for a while. It detaches you from reality while making you very vulnerable. No physically sane person wants to experience that; and certainly they refuse to acknowledge that they may be experiencing a purely psychological aspect of such blindness. Such experiences are unacceptable.

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #162
Oh, I can totally relate to the fear of losing a sense or any other familiar ability. But I was looking at all of this from a perspective of being willing to test one’s ideas and possibly learn new things. Psychologically, the factors you mentioned might factor into it in a lot of cases – as it can indeed be challenging to have long-held ideas challenged from a new perspective. So, I don’t want to seem like I was excluding/discrediting that element. My point was that I question/can’t relate to its relevance to things like audio. I mean I’d think folk would be happy to receive proof they needn’t spend £2000 on a cable, but then I’m not of a mystical mindset…

But this…
Quote
No physically sane person wants to experience that; and certainly they refuse to acknowledge that they may be experiencing a purely psychological aspect of such blindness.
…I have to disagree with, if we take it verbatim! However, assuming “physically sane person” is an odd term for someone who has normal senses and the value they place on them, of course none of us want to lose faculties. I guess the way your second clause implies no sane person would be open to the prospect of their perceptions being wrong, is not intended, just ambiguous wording  Plenty people here entertain and test that exact possibility every day, voluntarily.

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #163
True, in most cases, the seller will genuinely believe the hype.
[...]

Nor do I understand why some people are so resistant to testing their perceptions. Is it a mistaken belief that testing/quantifying something makes it soulless? (cf. digital vs analogue) Or insistence that they should not have to, and will not, prove themselves to others – which to me, indicates an underlying fear, whether denied or not, that what they think they hear doesn’t actually exist

Cognitive dissonance, methinks. In the case of the seller, when you "see the light", either you become a willful scam artist, or you lose your product's "edge". If you're a consumer, you better get wise before you spend all that $$$, after which it becomes harder to accept it might have been in vain. Either case, ignorance is bliss.

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #164
Boy, I'm confused: after all the latest deliberations on whether lithopsian's rather ambiguous statement was voiced from a seller's or a buyer's POV, would his decision to come out and elaborate on it (assuming he's willing to do so) still count or not?

edit: Thinking it through though, maybe it was more a rethorical question!? Definitely not a statement, as I'd said earlier on.
I wonder if these people in their heart of hearts really believe it?
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #165
Nor do I understand why some people are so resistant to testing their perceptions.


Well this thread just had a discussion about do-they-honestly-believe. People do get somewhat abrasive when falsely accused of lying, and I suppose people are not very well aware that reporting bias is not about dishonesty, it is simply an artifact of how the brain works (and I guess many would take "it is human nature" as a euphemism for "you are cheating" too). 

(Just a hunch.)

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #166
Within reason, I find reality challenges to be rather interesting. It baffles me that audiophiles and dealers of the sort under discussion here refuse to countenance them.

Whatever we do with equipment, cables, rooms, etc, isn't it whatever happens to sound after it enters our ears that is the most interesting part of the process?

Arguing this stuff once, I was caused to reflect that the one thing a lot of audiophiles are not actually very good at is ...listening!
The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #167
Arguing this stuff once, I was caused to reflect that the one thing a lot of audiophiles are not actually very good at is ...listening!

What they're actually good at is pretending (or fooling themselves) they see the emperor's new clothes.
We normal listeners who, like the child in the fairy tale, use our common sense are, in  their pitiful opinion, the ones unfit to see the garment whose weavers guarantee to be seen.

Whether these purveyors of audiophile gear, like the weavers in the fairy tale, do it deliberately or not, I guess we'll never know for sure.
But in this 'shut up and take my money' context audiophiles insist on putting themselves in, I guess that doesn't actually matter, does it?

I wonder if many a psychiatrist out there are seizing this golden opportunity to write excellent papers on this revamp of the old male conundrum of "mine is bigger than yours". 
Freud would've certainly had a blast, had he lived his prime well into the last three or four decades instead.
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #168
It's been great to read this thread and see that a lot of my thoughts on this "new" format are shared with those better versed in audio quality than myself. What I realised the other days is we are entering a "lottery age".

Lotteries have often been called "idiot taxes" - although there is a theoretical chance of reward the likelihood is so low that you are almost certainly wasting your money buying a ticket. Now there theoretically is a chance of these recordings/formats providing a better audio experience but as so few of us are likely to have the technical and biological hardware to appreciate it you are almost certainly wasting your time investing in it.

So what is the advantage for the non-ticket buyers? In the lottery you save a small amount of money; In the audio world you get cheap CDs. eBay has become my music store. ABX has shown me I know no better than a 192 AAC rip. The CD is my backup. I am free.



Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #171
Hmm, and there's now only one comment there admiring Leo Laporte's taste in music.
Dynamic – the artist formerly known as DickD

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #172
It's still there, and now there are three 'dislikes' there was only one when I posted...

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #173
It's a nice theory but 9 out of 10 people want what they're told to want (if they're told often enough and by enough women in bikinis .


While reading this thread an article on NPR started off "Some things just sound better on vinyl"

Don't know if the (woman) reporter was wearing a bikini.

Neil Young’s new audio format

Reply #174
I think it is about time we abandoned lossy for lossless because of the same old argument that we have so much damn space. It is a shame we do not focus on this instead of HRA.
FLAC -> JDS Labs ODAC/O2 -> Sennheiser HD 650 (equalized)