Recent content by wiggum

Has it been ABXed?

For streaming no, for archival purposes, yes.

No, Mercedes-Benz were the pioneers in ESC(Electronic Stability Control), so buying a Mercedes is not a bad value proposition though not now as every carmaker is required to offer it by law.

It means that the audio codecs Opus & AAC at a bitrate of 192kbps are essentially transparent to listeners. They are unable to distinguish it from lossless files, so any service offering lossless is of little practical value other than bragging that you are subscribed to such a service.

Opus/AAC at 192kbps laughs at you.

A $20 Bluetooth speaker produces better sound than any speaker on a smartphone. I have never used the smartphone speaker in the last 15 years as most of them have a sharp drop-off around 1kHz and find them very bright. :(

Detail retrieval isn't a term in ITU BS-2399. It is something used by recent audiophiles. It didn't exist even a decade ago I think and I have no idea what it means or its precise definition. Anyways, as a non-designer, here is what I found out by reading several technical articles. Distortion...

In that case, increase the bitrate to 192kbps and call it a day. At 192kbps, modern codecs like Opus, AAC, and Vorbis are tied and essentially transparent.

Why are you limited to AAC on iPhone? VLC player does support Opus. For streaming media, it doesn't matter much as there isn't any gain in transcoding.

From what I know, the manufacturers(TV, smartphone, etc.) pay per device to the licensing body. Here is the licensing cost. https://www.via-la.com/licensing/aac/license-fees/

How can you type so much wrong information? Like audiophiles who claim that Apple invented AAC. AAC is still covered by patents while the patents on MP3 expired in 2017.

You can do a simple test. Select some music where you have heard soundstage and pickup a open headphone. Listen to it at a corner of a room and middle of a room at the same volume level. Do you feel a difference? That would give you an idea.

Look at the above rtings link I posted above. I don't think crosstalk is negligible. If the crosstalk is above the threshold of hearing, then it is audible. While psyco-acoustics might come into play and we may not be cognizant of it, the ITD and ILD contributions of those crosstalk affect the...

Rtings actually measure these parameters. Look at their explanation here. https://www.rtings.com/headphones/learn/open-vs-closed-back. (Read the soundstage section).

From what I have read, the notch near 10kHz when listening to a pair of speakers at ear level and interaural time difference(ITD) helps our brain locate the source in a three-dimensional space. If the source is above the ear plane, the notch moves to the right like 11kHz or above. Many...