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It (almost) never sounds bad!

Rob_Gordon

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Dec 4, 2024
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Hey!

Ok, so this is something I experience, and I never seem to hear anyone else talk about it the way I feel it. So I just wondered if you guys every go/went through something like that.

In a way, unless the music is coming from a really poor device, I never spontaneously think "damn, that sounds bad". I have to pay attention to realize it doesn't sound great. But then, if I hear the music on a proper system, I spontaneously think "damn! that sounds good". I don't have to focus to realize it. You know?

When I use my bluetooth headphones in the street, sometimes my mind goes "damn that sounds good! did you really need to spend money on a better headphone for home?" and then I get home, put on my headphone and I'm like "oh ok, no, THAT sounds great".

It's like I only spontaneously experience the upgrade in quality.

And so it's like: every time I turn on my system, I'm (happily) surprised. Every single time. I'm always like a "woaw I didn't know that type of quality was possible!" type of a reaction. But I rarely catch myself thinking the other way around. You know what I'm saying?

Is it the same for you? Or, if you happen to be at a friend's who's not so much into audio, and one of your beloved tracks is played, you can't help yourself but think "arf... this is a poor reproduction"?

I wonder if it's not just the enthusiasm for the music itself that masks the flaws...
 
I've been listening to music for decades like most here have and I enjoy even a crappy sounding piece of gear if the music is good. I don't expect true high fidelity everywhere and I put that out of mind when listening away from home to my Bluetooth ear buds, elevator music and shopping center stuff too.
 
Hey!

Ok, so this is something I experience, and I never seem to hear anyone else talk about it the way I feel it. So I just wondered if you guys every go/went through something like that.

In a way, unless the music is coming from a really poor device, I never spontaneously think "damn, that sounds bad". I have to pay attention to realize it doesn't sound great. But then, if I hear the music on a proper system, I spontaneously think "damn! that sounds good". I don't have to focus to realize it. You know?

When I use my bluetooth headphones in the street, sometimes my mind goes "damn that sounds good! did you really need to spend money on a better headphone for home?" and then I get home, put on my headphone and I'm like "oh ok, no, THAT sounds great".

It's like I only spontaneously experience the upgrade in quality.

And so it's like: every time I turn on my system, I'm (happily) surprised. Every single time. I'm always like a "woaw I didn't know that type of quality was possible!" type of a reaction. But I rarely catch myself thinking the other way around. You know what I'm saying?

Is it the same for you? Or, if you happen to be at a friend's who's not so much into audio, and one of your beloved tracks is played, you can't help yourself but think "arf... this is a poor reproduction"?

I wonder if it's not just the enthusiasm for the music itself that masks the flaws...
I have a different experience. I cannot listen to music coming from a really poor device. It makes my head hurt. I prefer silence in that case.
 
I have a different experience. I cannot listen to music coming from a really poor device. It makes my head hurt. I prefer silence in that case.
Oh well, from a really poor device, of course! The bluetooth headphones I refer to in my example are the Sony WH-1000MX4. They're far from "really poor".
 
I have much more time to listen to music than to focus on it. Only when focusing solely on the music (with sufficiently loud volume) is it possible to hear the full character of a system.

The noise canceling Sony’s are fine on the subway when I am reading my work emails or looking to see if it is my stop. The Echo is fine in the kitchen when making the kids their lunches or the family dinner.

Still very much worth having the Revels by the TV and the Genelecs by the work desk. But even those systems at least 90% of the playtime is unfocused listening.

I did have a “wife hears the difference from the kitchen” moment this week. After playing Christmas music all week in the living room where the kids play, yesterday we took the family to Grammie’s house. Our house is Revel F206, MiniDSP 2x4 HD and a sub. Grammie’s is an older Echo. My son said “Grammie’s sound isn’t good” when we got the Christmas music going.
 
Sometimes when I hear rock or Electronic music through a high SPL pro/commercial system I think, wow that sounds great, I wish my home system had that kind of raw dynamics and fun, high energy sound.

I notice bad sound a lot, particularly in commercial systems where speakers are in silly places or just low quality. I also enjoy consumer stuff like Sonos when at a friend’s house and it surprises me with me decent bass and SPL.

My biggest guilty pleasure is the sound from my wired Apple earbuds.
 
Hey!

Ok, so this is something I experience, and I never seem to hear anyone else talk about it the way I feel it. So I just wondered if you guys every go/went through something like that.

In a way, unless the music is coming from a really poor device, I never spontaneously think "damn, that sounds bad". I have to pay attention to realize it doesn't sound great. But then, if I hear the music on a proper system, I spontaneously think "damn! that sounds good". I don't have to focus to realize it. You know?

When I use my bluetooth headphones in the street, sometimes my mind goes "damn that sounds good! did you really need to spend money on a better headphone for home?" and then I get home, put on my headphone and I'm like "oh ok, no, THAT sounds great".

It's like I only spontaneously experience the upgrade in quality.

And so it's like: every time I turn on my system, I'm (happily) surprised. Every single time. I'm always like a "woaw I didn't know that type of quality was possible!" type of a reaction. But I rarely catch myself thinking the other way around. You know what I'm saying?

Is it the same for you? Or, if you happen to be at a friend's who's not so much into audio, and one of your beloved tracks is played, you can't help yourself but think "arf... this is a poor reproduction"?

I wonder if it's not just the enthusiasm for the music itself that masks the flaws...
In fact, at this year's High End trade fair in Munich, I thought exactly that in many of the demo rooms, "that sounds bad." And this despite electronics and speakers in the 5-6 digit range.
I entered the room, heard a familiar song and knew it would be a waste of time to stay any longer. In some rooms I heard a song on my list, but it wasn't any better.

But of course there were also many really good systems where I was sorry I couldn't stay much longer.
 
I grew-up with AM radio, TVs with cheap 4-inch (mono) speakers, and crappy car radios/stereos.

Good sound is much more "accessible" today and the "average" setup is much better. Exceptions are the speakers built-into flat-screens, laptops, tablets, and phones. Built-in TV sound took a step backwards when flat-screens took over from bigger cabinets.
 
When younger and technology was less capable, I could not listen to lossy encoded music in other than mono. It literally made me nauseous. Sometimes I had to ask the host to change the source, make it mono or turn it off. Sometimes I had to leave.

Unlike what some claim, we don't all hear the same.

Just FYI from about 15 years ago why Lossy Encoding sounds bad
 
To the OP - what about when you play music through a phone's internal speaker? Does that sound bad?

I mean I get what you are saying - my Bose Revolve sounds pretty damn good in the kitchen. My Sony earphones from the early 90's sounded very good (from memory) - in fact I enjoyed so many great albums on my AIWA walkman. But I have to turn off music when played through the iPhone speaker because it just doesn't sound right.
 
When younger and technology was less capable, I could not listen to lossy encoded music in other than mono. It literally made me nauseous. Sometimes I had to ask the host to change the source, make it mono or turn it off. Sometimes I had to leave.

Unlike what some claim, we don't all hear the same.

Just FYI from about 15 years ago why Lossy Encoding sounds bad


I'm sorry for your experience but I also find it extremely bizarre. It also seems to have led you to lump all lossy encodes together...a mistake.

software MP3 encoders have been available since the mid 1990s. By 15 years ago (~2010), there certainly were various quality levels of lossy encoding available.

So, that website, even if it's 15 years old, is a great example of why arguments against lossy were/are usually bad.

It takes a low encoding rate and makes the garbage, yet common, argument that predicted audible lossless vs lossy differences are definitively demonstrated by a difference graph. That ignores the entire concepts of psychoacoustic modelling and masking, which are what lossy encoding depends on. Which is why listening tests, not graphs, are what matter in that realm. He also focuses on instances of clipping as if clipping is always audible. Which it is not. Finally he focuses on bandwidth limitation, which certainly can be audible (though we are a population increasingly deaf above 16 kHz) but is entirely a consequence of the chosen encoding quality level.

Apple's AAC, which is what that website focuses on, was actually very good for its time, in listening tests. And he focused on 128kbps, which is really a minimal quality setting.
There was no reason 15 years ago to broad brush condemn "lossy encoding" based on this analysis.
 
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It seems to me that things sound good when they are played at a higher volume (without audible distortion)--hence the importance of level matching when one compares systems. I've always believed that the mark of a high quality system is one that sounds good when played at relatively low volume levels. Perhaps I am oversimplifying, but to me, anyway, the rest is gibberish.
 
Yes, it's called the threshold of audibility.
Basically, as soon as a minimum is reached, the sound will be similar: solid state amps and preamps (or even tubes if used not too loudly), digital sources.
In analog, only tuners and vinyls remain which restore the signal very easily while spending relatively little.
For transducers it is more complicated, there will very rarely be big gaps but certain frequencies will be more or less favored or the dynamics reduced. But let's not forget that our ears have a very physiological listening curve, which also depends (a little) on the language we speak.
I've had quite a few headphones including Stax (no bass, and low listening level), Koss (portapro and a phase 2+2 that I still have) and currently a Sennheiser 203 (with a Philips and a Pro-Ject, each bought for about $15 on sale). The sound of the more expensive headphones is different but for me not better. But maybe because I've played music myself, I listen or hear differently.
When I was in hifi clubs, there was the ABX (mainly for electronics, always with dispatchers) and the wall of speakers where you couldn't clearly see which ones were playing, small bookshelves played as well if not better than large floorstanders or even sound systems.
The most expensive was almost never really better.
 
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I've always believed that the mark of a high quality system is one that sounds good when played at relatively low volume levels.
I agree with this statement 100%. Over the past few months I converted my 7.1 system to all Revel F206 speakers and a Rythmik sub. I noticed two striking differences: (1) it sounds superb whether listening at very soft levels or what I consider to be full volume and anywhere inbetween (2) when I listen at what is my maximum - around 70-75 dB - the system does not sound "loud" it just sounds good.

I now only listen to music with the 7.1 system. I do use Airpods Pro2 when exercising, mostly to listen to a podcast or watch a TV show. I cannot listen to music with earbuds or anything else other than the main system. I prefer to wait until I can use the main system and otherwise forgo listening to music, it is too painful. They all sound mediocre in comparison.
 
For me, bad can come out of a bad recording or a bad equipment.
If the music is fatiguing, too forward, I get nervous quickly.
If it is a lack of clarity, I am less sensitive.
 
If i have something negative on my mind that take time to solve nothing sounds good that happens not so much.:facepalm: Besides that if i or see people tapping their feet the music/gear sounds good (enough). I got a mancave with DSP an quality gear. In the acousticly horrible living room just a Bose Wave II they sound obviously different but both i tape my feet an have a good time.
 
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I agree with OP, mostly, or at least for sources that don't have some specific harsh thing going making it very disturbing. I wouldn't be very happy only listening to a system like that though...

One thing I personally find really fascinating is the ability to 'hear' things that are not actually being reproduced by the system in question. Especially when it's a familiar song. The playback using the poor system works as a sort of trigger and baseline for memories of the same music to be used by the brain to augment what's playing. Pretty amazing.

Typically, I can separate what is the actual sound and what is the processed pseudo-sound-impression I'm in the end enjoying.

Overtones of bass drums and other instruments can certainly trigger something similar in a more general sense. Cool stuff.
 
Typically, I can separate what is the actual sound and what is the processed pseudo-sound-impression I'm in the end enjoying.
I understand what you are saying. It is like seeing a picture of a scenic location. You can see a tiny picture, or a large picture, or an immersive 3d world recreated around you.

The last one is really where hi-fi works its magic. When the sounds sound real, it is magical. When they don't, your brain still recreates them. It is not magical though.
 
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