People have forgotten what "audio quality" is

cracauer@ · 2025-12-17T20:13:30+0000

Plenty of people build good speaker systems when they are doing home recording or other electronic music making activities. They usually don't get Hi-Fi gear but studio monitors instead.

Many of them also know that good monitors without room treatment are not very effective. Myself I have studio monitors but I rent, so I don't want to treat the room. Maybe when I have my own house again.

I mainly use headphones.

blackbird9 · 2025-12-17T20:36:26+0000

Of course you can go full-on if you've got the pennies and the inclination...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ43CgvRNyc

blackbird9 · 2025-12-17T20:39:26+0000

Micski said:
If it's any comfort, I have always listened to music on a legendary set of massive floor speakers with corresponding amps and lossless audio. It's fantastic. You might to change that "no-one" to "one".

I like the sound of "legendary massive floor speakers"

IMF's?

In england we had a company called TDL that made some very nice floorstanding transmission line speakers in the '80s, for example:-

View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4KHJzOCUC2I

I am a big fan of lowther speakers from manchester, I have an old pair of their mini monitors, sadly their new speakers are a bit ouf of my price range!

Lowther TP2 Floorstanding Loudspeaker

Enquire below for your personal quote. The new Lowther TP2 is a step closer to perfection from the original TP1. We have made some changes to the original TP1 design and improvements not only to the build quality, but to all the materials used in the construction of this fabulous corner horn...

www.kronosav.com

mer · 2025-12-17T20:43:31+0000

cracauer@ said:
Plenty of people build good speaker systems when they are doing home recording or other electronic music making activities. They usually don't get Hi-Fi gear but studio monitors instead.

Many of them also know that good monitors without room treatment are not very effective. Myself I have studio monitors but I rent, so I don't want to treat the room. Maybe when I have my own house again.

I mainly use headphones.

Where does one start? At the output or the input? Both are valid.
The output (speakers/headphones) really just "impedence match" to minimize loss at the output, but everything from the input needs to support the output.

And for the record, well designed massive floor speakers are incredible/wonderful/OMG the best thing since sliced bread. If the output media is optimized, then improvements in the upstream chain will be heard.

loveydovey · 2025-12-17T21:22:01+0000

mer said:
A little off topic of this "off topic" but this has been one of the most interesting threads I've participated in on these forums.
Stuff that mattered to me a long time ago, the science of accurately reproducing "frequencies", all the different ways you can get from source to "ear".

Also off-topic a bit. But have you ever wondered what about music and frequencies that makes the human brain enjoy music?

blackbird9 · 2025-12-17T21:35:26+0000

loveydovey said:
Also off-topic a bit. But have you ever wondered what about music and frequencies that makes the human brain enjoy music?

That is a very interesting area. There is definitely something about valves. I remember hearing led zep playing on an old valve radio in a fish shop once and it sounded incredible. Maybe they mixed it for that kind of gear, either way it sounded much better than on transistors. Just... alive. And there are some interesting effects like harmonizers. Timing in music is also of the essence. Psychoacoustics.

And then we have the phenomenon of 'frisson'.

Frisson - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's very interesting.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZFFwy5fwYI

blackbird9 · 2025-12-17T22:07:37+0000

recluce said:
I admit that audio/music and home theatre are more than a casual hobby to me and that my audio system cost more than some nice small cars (at least new, I bought some components used). It is a 14 channel system (9.1.4) and the main amplifier (there are four mono blocks in addition) does require 240V power (which is very unusual in North America). The system is made in the US and the speakers are made in Canada. I do have a Thorens turntable (TD-126 MK III, IIRC) which I barely ever user. Sure, digital has the loudness wars, but analog records have severe dynamic restrictions, bad stereo separation and high noise. Not even close on a high end system, except for "vinyl nostalgia".

So I am all digital, all lossless. Mostly I am going with CD and DSD (converted to 192kHz/24 bit) audio, all converted to flac audio and stored on my FreeBSD home server. Playback is over HDMI to the audio processor from a FreeBSD HTPC using bit perfect audio (so the computer has nothing to do but get the digital information unaltered to the processor). The same setup also handles passthrough of all surround formats (up to and including DTS:X and TrueHD/Atmos). Everything is OSS only, Pulseaudio is not necessary or beneficial in this context.

Btw, DSD is not inherintly superior to PCM, it all depends on PCM bitrates and sampling.

Very interesting. Out of interest, what audio processor did you use?