Is Hi-Fi dead

[TonyRPH]

Harji said:

Ha, digitised portable listening is crap, period, streaming is rubbish.
<snip>

That's a matter of opinion, and something that depends on too many variables to make a sweeping statement like that.

And of course it's also very subjective.

[RedLeicester]

TonyRPH said:

Harji said:

Ha, digitised portable listening is crap, period, streaming is rubbish.
<snip>

That's a matter of opinion, and something that depends on too many variables to make a sweeping statement like that.

And of course it's also very subjective.

And goodness only knows what Sinhesser headphones are.

[TonyRPH]

RedLeicester said:

And goodness only knows what Sinhesser headphones are.

They're the naughty model

[Harji]

woowahwoo said:

Harji said:

Ha, digitised portable listening is crap, period, streaming is rubbish. I recently listened to one of my old vinyl - David Sylvian "Secrets of the Beehive" LP. There are layers of sound that just need a decent system to bring it out, talking of which mine is about 12 years old not expensive at the time as it was mainly Richer Sounds returns.

Now consider those ipod/streaming devices/phone upgrades, I think vale or money a separate h-fi system just blows everything away. Yes I use my phone on occasion with Sinhesser head phones , but its just not the same.

NAD 524 CD layer
Cambridge Audio azur 640A amp
JBL Bookshelf speakers

Edited by Harji on Saturday 19th March 17:09

y

Edited by Harji on Saturday 19th March 17:10

You mention "digitised...crap", laud your vinyl, but then mention your CD player and neglect to list your turntable. What exactly are the "JBL Bookshelf" speakers?

Recently purchased a TEAC TN100 turntable (about six weeks ago), dug out my vinyl, cleaned the discs in a solution rotating them. The played Station to Station vinyl (original release 70's) then CD (remastered) , there are layers of sound on StoS vinyl that just aren't there on the CD.

Also, I have not bought any Vinyl since 1998 or owned a turntable from then till now, and only recently got them out of storage. Also I was an early adaptor of Napster P2P sharing and Spotify. I only use Spotify to search for new or interesting stuff now, otherwise for good quality sound , it's always Hi-fi CD or vinyl.

I also have some DVD-A discs, so I do have wide music source, have owned a Walkman, mini-discs and one MP3 player and ipod

Some CD's are utter st , some are good. Do I really have to explain bookshelf speakers? Anyway, my point is Hi-Fi separates still blow everything else away, even my 12 year old gear.

[theboss]

Harji said:

Recently purchased a TEAC TN100 turntable (about six weeks ago), dug out my vinyl, cleaned the discs in a solution rotating them. The played Station to Station vinyl (original release 70's) then CD (remastered) , there are layers of sound on StoS vinyl that just aren't there on the CD.

Also, I have not bought any Vinyl since 1998 or owned a turntable from then till now, and only recently got them out of storage. Also I was an early adaptor of Napster P2P sharing and Spotify. I only use Spotify to search for new or interesting stuff now, otherwise for good quality sound , it's always Hi-fi CD or vinyl.

I also have some DVD-A discs, so I do have wide music source, have owned a Walkman, mini-discs and one MP3 player and ipod

Some CD's are utter st , some are good. Do I really have to explain bookshelf speakers? Anyway, my point is Hi-Fi separates still blow everything else away, even my 12 year old gear.

Streaming sound quality is highly variable depending on the equipment and the audio files used - you're very much mistaken if you presume that anything 'streamed' or 'portable' is inherently inferior to mid-range separates from a decade or more ago - when you're talking about lossless audio files and high quality DACs it's generally to the contrary. I got rid of my last CD player for a Linn DS 7 years ago and it was a revolutionary upgrade in terms sound quality as well as accessibility of music.

As above I have just started listening to iPhone --> Chord Mojo (USB) --> Sennheiser IE800 which is about as detailed a sounding portable system as you can get. I generally only listen to ALAC files which are bit-perfect representations of my own CDs stored on the iPhone, or I stream the same quality lossless 16/44.1kHz files from internet based providers over 4G. The phone just acts as a perfect transport, in CD terms.

I'm fairly confident if I connected the above into your amp at line level, and played your favourite album in the highest bitrate available, you'd be in for a rude awakening!

[dmsims]

I think he's talking about online streaming

You are talking local streaming

and of course they are chalk and cheese

[theboss]

dmsims said:

I think he's talking about online streaming

You are talking local streaming

and of course they are chalk and cheese

What makes you say that? When I stream redbook from Qobuz or Tidal it sounds the same as it does streaming from a rip stored on a local NAS. Spotify at 320kbps isn't exactly shabby either.

The omly thing that is chalk and cheese is comparing say a 96kbps stream to lossless - but who would do that??

[TonyRPH]

dmsims said:

I think he's talking about online streaming

You are talking local streaming

and of course they are chalk and cheese

This guy performed a bunch of measurements on a test stream between himself in Canada and a friend in Sweden.

The stream suffered no degradation passing across 7366km of transatlantic cable, passing through several routers etc.

Kind of puts the mockers on Chords £1000+ Ethernet cables and all the other so called "special" cables to "improve" the sound.

So a local stream of a file will sound identical to an internet stream of the same file (given a decent enough internet connection).

No £1000 Ethernet cables or special router models required.

[theboss]

You don't even need that great an internet connection - FLAC at 16/44.1 is typically around 700kbps - as uncompressed PCM data its only 1.4Mbps. A stereo 24/192 stream is about 10Mbps uncompressed, approx half as FLAC/ALAC. I get 40+ Mbps to my phone when I'm at work so any "high quality" bitrate could be streamed and played simultaneously over a cellular link let alone fixed line broadband unless one is really out in the sticks.

I wasn't even thinking along the lines of signal loss / corruption over distance because it wouldn't even enter my mind that this may be a factor!

[dmsims]

Yes , yes I agree with you all but Spotify is 96K as standard on mobile

Even 320k sound ste to me

[toon10]

Just got my Fiio E11 and tested it on the iPhone 6S with B&W P5's. It sounds awsome with the right track. I'll run with this for a while but might upgrade to a Mojo at some point. I managed to totally drown out the loud bint in the office.

[DavidJG]

dmsims said:

Yes , yes I agree with you all but Spotify is 96K as standard on mobile

Even 320k sound ste to me

This is true. I've got a *very* high-end system at home, as I enjoy a lot of music. A few years ago I ran a comparison between standard CD and a rip down to 320k. To ensure fairness, I cut the 320k rip to MP3 CD, and played that through the exact same system as the original CD. 320k has greatly reduced detail in comparison to CD, to the point that I can clearly hear how much is lost in ripping down to 320k. When you then listen to the same recording on SACD or DVD-Audio, you realise how just flawed red book CD is in the first place.

If you've only ever heard a given recording on 320k MP3 (for example), you almost certainly won't realise how much has been lost in reducing down to such a low-res format.

Lossless encoding certainly reduces the problem - but generally doesn't provide anything better than red book CD, which is far from perfect - a 44.1kHz sample frequency will suffer from reduced quality at higher frequencies.

[Harji]

theboss said:

Harji said:

Recently purchased a TEAC TN100 turntable (about six weeks ago), dug out my vinyl, cleaned the discs in a solution rotating them. The played Station to Station vinyl (original release 70's) then CD (remastered) , there are layers of sound on StoS vinyl that just aren't there on the CD.

Also, I have not bought any Vinyl since 1998 or owned a turntable from then till now, and only recently got them out of storage. Also I was an early adaptor of Napster P2P sharing and Spotify. I only use Spotify to search for new or interesting stuff now, otherwise for good quality sound , it's always Hi-fi CD or vinyl.

I also have some DVD-A discs, so I do have wide music source, have owned a Walkman, mini-discs and one MP3 player and ipod

Some CD's are utter st , some are good. Do I really have to explain bookshelf speakers? Anyway, my point is Hi-Fi separates still blow everything else away, even my 12 year old gear.

Streaming sound quality is highly variable depending on the equipment and the audio files used - you're very much mistaken if you presume that anything 'streamed' or 'portable' is inherently inferior to mid-range separates from a decade or more ago - when you're talking about lossless audio files and high quality DACs it's generally to the contrary. I got rid of my last CD player for a Linn DS 7 years ago and it was a revolutionary upgrade in terms sound quality as well as accessibility of music.

As above I have just started listening to iPhone --> Chord Mojo (USB) --> Sennheiser IE800 which is about as detailed a sounding portable system as you can get. I generally only listen to ALAC files which are bit-perfect representations of my own CDs stored on the iPhone, or I stream the same quality lossless 16/44.1kHz files from internet based providers over 4G. The phone just acts as a perfect transport, in CD terms.

I'm fairly confident if I connected the above into your amp at line level, and played your favourite album in the highest bitrate available, you'd be in for a rude awakening!

Yes, but my point is how much is lost on 16/44 tht you may think is not lost, if you know what I mean, and it's master source as well. If my 1976 vinyl copy David Bowie's Station to Station was not at hand I would have thought that the CD Re-master was very good if a bit bass heavy. However, why am hearing sounds that masters like Fripp/Eno/Bowie/Alomar/Visconti layed down on vinyl but are not on the CD? I wouldn't even bother to stream this album.

I will get a CD copy of David Sylvian's "Secrets of the Beehive" sometime and compare that to the original vinyl I have especially the last two tracks. Maybe it's lazy remastering and mixing. Adele's new album is far too bass heavy, I'm not a fan anyway but my wife was listening to it, to me that is just lazy sound engineering.

[scovette]

I'd suggest your problem with recordings being too bass-heavy is more a case of what you're used to, as 70's/80's vinyl tended to have the lowest bass missing? And some bass vinyl simply can't reproduce. Nor can your JBL speakers.

No CD will ever sound like a vinyl record that you love - it won't have the warmth/harmonic distortion. But for those of us who didn't grow up on vinyl it just sounds different, not better.

Harji said:

However, why am hearing sounds that masters like Fripp/Eno/Bowie/Alomar/Visconti layed down on vinyl but are not on the CD?

Crappy mastering. Or good mastering if they've decided to take advantage of the real-world larger dynamic range of CD, i.e. they've made instruments sound quiet that were meant to be quiet, as opposed to raising their levels so they could be heard on the playback systems commonly present in people's homes 30 years ago.

Also, as your CD player was designed 20 years old even the DAC in your phone will be better.

Edited by scovette on Tuesday 22 March 17:41

[Crackie]

DavidJG said:

When you then listen to the same recording on SACD or DVD-Audio, you realise how just flawed red book CD is in the first place.

red book CD, which is far from perfect - a 44.1kHz sample frequency will suffer from reduced quality at higher frequencies.

Why do you think Red book will suffer from reduced quality at higher frequencies. ?

Please have a look at the this thread http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=1&a... . Some of the links should be of interest and may change your thoughts on the subject. I'm not doubting that you've heard clear differences between Red book and SACD or DVD-Audio; the differences are invariably down to differences between how each format is mastered. You're not comparing apples with apples.

Have a look in particular at the Hydrogen audio article. Several hundred listeners were asked whether or not they could detect a 16bit 44.1Khz Red Book 'bottleneck' inserted into a high res, high end system. The conclusion is that several hundred listeners were not able to identify any audible improvement beyond 16/44.1. Conversely I've never seen any competently conducted test where listeners could consistently identify anything higher than 16/44.1 ; there may be some evidence out there but I've not seen any.

The advantages of using high bit depths and/or 96/192/384/768Khz sampling frequencies are well known during the recording/mixing/mastering process but the research I've seen shows that appears to be no audible difference for playback.

Edited by Crackie on Thursday 24th March 20:49

[mackie1]

Newer remasters do tend to be more compressed and lose a lot in the process. Loudness wars and targeting lowest common denominator equipment. It's a real shame.

[Harji]

scovette said:

I'd suggest your problem with recordings being too bass-heavy is more a case of what you're used to, as 70's/80's vinyl tended to have the lowest bass missing? And some bass vinyl simply can't reproduce. Nor can your JBL speakers.

No CD will ever sound like a vinyl record that you love - it won't have the warmth/harmonic distortion. But for those of us who didn't grow up on vinyl it just sounds different, not better.

Harji said:

However, why am hearing sounds that masters like Fripp/Eno/Bowie/Alomar/Visconti layed down on vinyl but are not on the CD?

Crappy mastering. Or good mastering if they've decided to take advantage of the real-world larger dynamic range of CD, i.e. they've made instruments sound quiet that were meant to be quiet, as opposed to raising their levels so they could be heard on the playback systems commonly present in people's homes 30 years ago.

Also, as your CD player was designed 20 years old even the DAC in your phone will be better.

Edited by scovette on Tuesday 22 March 17:41

It won't and doesn't.

Also the Station to Station vinyl , the sounds I'm talking about are subtle and can be heard,now if they are meant to be their they are supposed to be heard and not buried.

Look, for many years I was CD, it's only since Bowie's death I dusted off my vinyl and hence I heard what I have been missing on the CD's. Which now makes me query every purchase, particularly bands of old, should I get a CD remaster of go for the original/re-issue vinyl ? Whichever is the better I will go for, but then I get a text from my brother the other night asking for the Orbital CD's he gave me a while ago as the new remasters are "crap" according to him, played through his Cyrus system.

Anyway, going back to the original point, hi-fi separates bring out the best (or worst) and is still way better way of listening to music.

[selym]

Harji said:

scovette said:

Also, as your CD player was designed 20 years old even the DAC in your phone will be better.

Edited by scovette on Tuesday 22 March 17:41

It won't and doesn't.

You'd be surprised; I am using a Rega Planet which sounds pretty good to my ears, until I added a cheap TEAC DAC that is. It offers better separation which has improved what i thought was a decent CD player.

[scovette]

Harji said:

It won't and doesn't.

Then get a better phone? Or a DAC for yours? It should produce a bit-perfect output, unlike your CD player which will have read errors (and the clock at the wrong end?)

Harji said:

Anyway, going back to the original point, hi-fi separates bring out the best (or worst) and is still way better way of listening to music.

How can you justify such a wide-ranging statement? I'm sorry, but to say that separates can't be matched by a streamer and active speakers is close-minded. And then there's kit which is the antihesis of traditional hi-fi separates, e.g. digital Lygndorfs with their room eq. Add a computer/streamer and twin subs and it'll make music in a way a CD/record player + amp + a pair of speakers can't match in a normal living-room.

[Harji]

selym said:

Harji said:

scovette said:

Also, as your CD player was designed 20 years old even the DAC in your phone will be better.

Edited by scovette on Tuesday 22 March 17:41

It won't and doesn't.

You'd be surprised; I am using a Rega Planet which sounds pretty good to my ears, until I added a cheap TEAC DAC that is. It offers better separation which has improved what i thought was a decent CD player.

I understand, but I was referring to the phone, (HTC M9 for the record).