The post in which Darko basically tells anyone who isn't a rich rube to ignore him and audiophilia in general

[Trouble Maker]

The airport is the same.

The Berlin airport is some kind of long-running gag carried forward from the Cold War.

I thought this was an interesting take on that.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/secrets-german-economy-steal/

 

[Trouble Maker]

Wow...looks like I'm a "Beginner Forever" ...

Exactly my thoughts while listening to that.
To go more in depth, I want to focus my efforts and money on the 50% of the 'cost' that will get me 90% of the reward. I'm always looking to be at the knee point of the economics of a situation if I can. If I can afford to live as a consumer at C, I'll be really happy with that.

But the problem is a lot of psychology comes into this, and the perception of where C is can be greatly skewed depending on the persons views and biases.

However I think from a systems standpoint it's pretty easy to say that if your system consist of a $2k speaker with hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of wires it's definitely not cost optimized.

 

[watchnerd]

Newark is worse, trust me.

Hmmmm....toss up.

Athens worse than both, though.

 

[KaiserSoze]

Small goose

I thought it was the past tense of duck.

 

[scott wurcer]

Hmmmm....toss up.

Athens worse than both, though.

Have you tried any of the airports in India?

 

[KaiserSoze]

He lends credibility to himself every time he states that the differences are tiny but he can hear them. I bet if he had a proper hearing test that would indicate he's lost part of his hearing as have many older peeps.

He doesn't lend credibility to himself when he says that there are audible differences in USB cables.

 

[Doodski]

He doesn't lend credibility to himself when he says that there are audible differences in USB cables.

That's true although the suckers eat it up.

 

[watchnerd]

Have you tried any of the airports in India?

Several, but I didn't know emerging market / developing nations were part of the game.

When comparing EU and USA airports, they're at least within a certain GDP/capita range.

 

[KaiserSoze]

Hmmmm....toss up.

Athens worse than both, though.

Hey, I might actually be able to win this. I flew into Leipzig-Halle on a business trip back in the early '90s, about three years after the reunification and before any improvements had been done to the airport. At that point in time the economy of that part of Germany, the part that was the GDR, was actually worse than it had been prior to reunification, due to the collapse that was brought on by the reunification, which didn't reverse until sometime around 2000. Today that airport is completely different. I can still easily remember looking out the window of the airplane as it was on "downwind", parallel to the runway, getting a good look at the terminal building sitting over on the opposite of the runway, and wondering what sort of experience I was going to have for the next few days. I was traveling alone. The strong sense I had was that very little in the way of improvements could have been done there since sometime prior to WWII. In fact, given that that airport was barely ten years old when Germany invaded Poland, it is likely true that virtually nothing in the way of improvements had been done to it since it was built in the late '20s. The surprise, though, was that every single German person I encountered on that short trip of maybe three days duration treated me like I was some kind of royalty. Everyone, and I mean literally everyone, went out of their way to help me with anything and everything, starting with helping me to figure out transportation from the airport to the hotel, which thankfully had just recently undergone a complete makeover.

 

[mansr]

44100 is also actually 882 & 735.

Indeed it is. I shouldn't post without thinking. However, 44100 is not divisible by 24, the cinema frame rate, whereas 48k is.

EDIT - Forgot color frame rate is not 60 Hz but 59.94 Hz

That doesn't matter. The sound is just played a tiny bit slower.

 

[MSTARK]

Z is more transparent about it than many Stereophile reviewers.

I highly doubt Michael Fremer paid $100K for his Continuum turntable crammed into his NYC apartment. Or likewise for Herb Reichert for the gear in his bohemian artist space.

He (M.F) lives in NJ. And not an apartment. Small discrepancy but who cares. Lol

 

[watchnerd]

He (M.F) lives in NJ. And not an apartment. Small discrepancy but who cares. Lol

I'm shocked, as all the interior shots I've seen looked like an apartment crammed to the rafters with LPs and gear.

 

[Doodski]

I'm shocked, as all the interior shots I've seen looked like an apartment crammed to the rafters with LPs and gear.

hehe.. Frank Zappa album front and center.

 

[CASE2112]

Meh.

Wifi.

Touche'

 

[CASE2112]

hehe.. Frank Zappa album front and center.

Me thinks it to be Hot Rats. A must have for any true Zappa fan, but you know it's bullshit...its probably empty.

 

[MSTARK]

I'm shocked, as all the interior shots I've seen looked like an apartment crammed to the rafters with LPs and gear.

Pretty much a serious hoarding complex.

 

[tmtomh]

I'm shocked, as all the interior shots I've seen looked like an apartment crammed to the rafters with LPs and gear.

I'm a firm believer that we can easily achieve very enjoyable, high fidelity (even if there are some intractable room modes and nonlinearities) playback in small spaces and acoustically sub-optimal spaces.

But that said, it always strikes me how cramped and/or acoustically awful many of these audiophile gurus' listening spaces are. Steve Guttenberg's room, from what I see in his videos, looks like an acoustic horror show, as does Herb Reichert's space. Fremer's space probably has some good albeit accidental diffusion going on, but as far as absorption and symmetry, it too seems like a trainwreck.

It just amazes me how anyone can take these guys seriously when they talk about how LPs cut from digital masters are garbage, how different digital cables sound different, or how different amplifiers have subtly different soundstages, when they're listening in spaces where the room itself is limiting, obscuring, and distorting all kinds of things that impact bass performance, treble extension, soundstage width, and so on.

Until last year I had a small listening space, perhaps 11 x 12 feet, with 7.5 foot ceilings and an asymmetrical room layout. I listened to music every day and really enjoyed it, and it sounded great. But then I moved into a new house where I have a larger listening space, about 16 x 21, with 8.5 foot ceilings, double drywall, a much more symmetrical layout, and modest ceiling treatments (two absorbers). With the exact same stereo equipment as I had before, I now get a wider soundstage, much better soundstage depth (both the perceived depth and the precision of instrument/vocal location within that perceived depth), and different frequency balance (better than before, but only after I experimented awhile with speaker placement). The soundstage clarity is sufficiently improved that I hear small details in recordings that I never heard before.

All of which is to say, these guys are IMHO far too confident that they're hearing all there is to hear, and therefore far too confident in the comparisons they make when they review and evaluate equipment.

It's ironic, because the usual canard that subjectivists trot out about measurements - "You shouldn't believe that what you can measure is all there is to the sound" - actually applies more to subjectivist approaches: they should not believe that what they hear in their spaces is all there is to the sound.

 

[Doodski]

t just amazes me how anyone can take these guys seriously when they talk about how LPs cut from digital masters are garbage, how different digital cables sound different, or how different amplifiers have subtly different soundstages, when they're listening in spaces where the room itself is limiting, obscuring, and distorting all kinds of things that impact bass performance, treble extension, soundstage width, and so on.

.. and how their ear's frequency response are at their ages.

 

[watchnerd]

I'm a firm believer that we can easily achieve very enjoyable, high fidelity (even if there are some intractable room modes and nonlinearities) playback in small spaces and acoustically sub-optimal spaces.

But that said, it always strikes me how cramped and/or acoustically awful many of these audiophile gurus' listening spaces are. Steve Guttenberg's room, from what I see in his videos, looks like an acoustic horror show, as does Herb Reichert's space. Fremer's space probably has some good albeit accidental diffusion going on, but as far as absorption and symmetry, it too seems like a trainwreck.

Darko's place looks tidy by comparison.

I think Steve lives in a pawn shop.

 

[raif71]

Darko's place looks tidy by comparison.

I think Steve lives in a pawn shop.

Maybe WAF plays a role here, Darko is married while Steve is single?