- Joined
- May 4, 2018
- Messages
- 64
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- 489
My beefs with this speaker are:
Price: I would like it to be lower
Yeah, I hear you. Who wouldn’t want a lower price? That said, the 8c is expensive to produce. When you consider what you’re getting, it’s a fair price. In fact, many of our hi-fi customers switched to the 8c from much more expensive and complex setups. Surprisingly, not only did they simplify their systems, but in most cases, they also noticed an improvement in sound quality. Therefore, depending on your perspective, you could even argue it offers great value for money.
Its latency, that could be lower as well
Latency isn't an issue here. In low-latency mode, it's around 3 milliseconds, about the same time it takes sound to travel one meter through air. In linear-phase mode, it's about 30 ms, but that's expected if you want 4th order crossovers and flat phase response. The crossover filters cause some frequencies to be delayed relative to others. The phase-linearization filter simply delays all frequencies equally, so they align perfectly in time.
The internal DSP computation time is negligible. Most of the 3 ms delay comes from the ADC and DAC.
Lack of clear support for subwoofers (although in most cases it may not need these)
I get where this "beef" is coming from. The 8c does have a subwoofer output, but the setup interface still isn’t developed yet, as other features have taken priority. That said, I’m curious: what other speakers are you comparing it to that do offer a fully configurable subwoofer output? There are very few out there, if any.
Alright, you’ve heard it here first: this particular issue will be resolved in 2025.
The fog about its integration in a multi-channel audio system...
Sounds like we need to clear up the fog. What is unclear about it? Perhaps I can help lift the haze.
For most people, under blind conditions and with level matched: AAC, Ogg-Vorbis (used by Spotify) , mp3 at, and above 256 kb/s, are undistinguishable from lossless, for 99.9999999999% (made up number ) of the human population... You could be part of the 0.0000000001%, that can hear differences. You can test yourself here and see if you belong ... ...
I agree in principle. I’ve done plenty of ABX blind tests comparing Spotify's 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis to lossless. When focusing on specific half-second audio fragments, I could reliably tell the difference after some practice. But during normal listening, the difference is imperceptible to me.