while I was never actually a big audiphile, I've always been interested in dipping into this stuff, unfortunately I haven't been able to find a community free of audio fools nonsense. I only had my own reasoning and whatever limited equipment I could personally purchase to try to find truths about what actually sounds good. Until recently when I found ASR of course. I've read as much as I can but I just wanna throw some opinions out there and ask that you give some brief thoughts, just like are they right or are they complete nonsense:
For #6, ok so I understand that since ears are different, so they will have different effects on the sound coming into the ear canal, and therefore the exact frequency response you need in an IEM for a totally transparent audio experience differs from person to person. But we will ignore this fact and pretend everyone just has the exact same ears where the harman target works perfectly. And "good" means it sounds transparent, like if you were to make a binaural recording of something, and play it through these IEMs, it sounds the same as physically being there.
- most modern DACs are transparent
- 320k CBR MP3 is transparent with most normal music content
- The latest Apple and Beats wireless headphones sound almost the same as a neutral "audiophile" wired system for normal music content
- A macbook pro with "advanced support for high-impedence headphones" sounds the same as any other dedicated headphone amp, including ones with balanced output
- https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/moondrop-chu-ii-iem-review.55179/ this $20 IEM sounds as good as any other
- It makes no sense for "sound stage" to be an inherent property of a headphone, even if that could be done. It should instead, be a digital effect you could control
- the effect of the room itself has on sound is much more complicated and expensive to resolve, than finding a good set of speakers.
- A $100 Fosi amplifier sounds as good as any other, assuming we are talking about speakers with matching power and impedance requirements.
- Other than compatibility and issues with resampling, there is no performance reason to go above 16bit 44.1khz for playback
- if I have 25db of background noise, and I'm listening at 85db that means I can only appreciate a ~60db dynamic range. So devices with 100db+ dynamic range aren't even close to possibly being fully utilized in any realistic listening setting. That is assuming the track itself uses 60db of dynamic range, which is not common for popular music?
For #6, ok so I understand that since ears are different, so they will have different effects on the sound coming into the ear canal, and therefore the exact frequency response you need in an IEM for a totally transparent audio experience differs from person to person. But we will ignore this fact and pretend everyone just has the exact same ears where the harman target works perfectly. And "good" means it sounds transparent, like if you were to make a binaural recording of something, and play it through these IEMs, it sounds the same as physically being there.
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