Hi-Tech or Lo-Tech?

[MDV]

As am I:

I listen to HD25-1s and RS-140s in the house, and the atrios are right up there with them. The E4s not so much, because I dont like their sound (it has a very honest, uncoloured, un-weighted low end thats no fun, and the highs tail off a little, I think around 16k or so), but they are if anything better in clarity and sound seperation.

Dont be judging the little headphones too harshly. They can be great. (That said, £50 in ears are never going to compete with £50 cans, but you get to a certain point and they start to get very, very good).

Actually, I just saw that your going to see ackerc--ke, so I assume youre familiar with Nile? The guy that engineers and produces Nile swears by his future sonics (the top end, custom moulded, no-expense-spared driver model, mind you), saying that they blow Senn HD650s out of the water.

[nfe]

Well there you go.

Maybe I need to be having a look at some. I've never got on with in ears in the comfort stakes either but I do were canal earplugs for gigs and playing and get on with them fine, so maybe I need to have a look at some.

[MDV]

Have fun with that - there are a lot of good canalphones out there.

Maybe check out Headfi forums - I lurk there once in a while: its basically a bragging-rights forum with a hint of music appreciation (the slogan "Welcome to headfi, sorry about your wallet" gives the game away a tad!) but there is a lot of good knowledge there.

Dont be completely fooled by higher prices though! (for example, my favourite in ears, the FS atrios, are quite a lot cheaper than my shures, and I can see why the shures command a high price looking objectively, at soundstage, clarity, sound seperation, accuracy in transients and what not, but I dont actually like the sound nearly as much, and the atrios rival them in the objective senses as well: another example would be Senn CX300s blowing sonys and philips more than 2ce the price away).

As always, trust your ears.

Speaking of ears - try some Ultimate Ears Superfi 10s and tell me what you think (I want to know, I've had my eye on them for a bit, but cant really justify it).

[_tom_]

I think indy likes his Etymotic in ear monitors as well (think thats what he uses?) but if I remember right they broke on him :(

I have some Koss Sparkplugs which are pretty poor. Really dull muddy sound. The first pair I had of them were better quality but this 2nd set I got (after the first ones died) are much duller. They're ok with an ipod or something though so long as you tweak the EQ to have some more treble.

[MDV]

I've never heard ety's. Its on my to-listen-list. Heard good and bad things about them, so none of them are high on the list.

Only heard bad about the Koss stuff, I'm afraid. They dont seem to be a very good make for IEMs.

[indysmith]

Speaking of ears - try some Ultimate Ears Superfi 10s and tell me what you think (I want to know, I've had my eye on them for a bit, but cant really justify it).

I had them. rubbish sound for listening - they really were 'monitors' if you know what i mean. everything sounded flat and lifeless. Then they broke.

Good isolation though.

[MDV]

Speaking of ears - try some Ultimate Ears Superfi 10s and tell me what you think (I want to know, I've had my eye on them for a bit, but cant really justify it).

I had them. rubbish sound for listening - they really were 'monitors' if you know what i mean. everything sounded flat and lifeless. Then they broke.

Good isolation though.

Ah! Thanks Indy (it hasnt really put me off at all, btw: I can make more  use of more monitors than 'hifi'!)

[JJretroTONEGOD]

when you consider that 99% of all music is still made to be 16 bit 44.1khz, then why do we even need DVD's for playing back music? I store tracks on DVD's though as a back up, and in case I need to remix it, I also think mp3's are low tech, because they sound terrible compared to WAV files, no matter how high the kbps rate is. From a mastering point of view mp3s are a disaster as it makes people make stupidly loud mixes, which is degrading the sound's detail and dynamic range. To go forwards we need to go backwards, to the pre mp3 generation.

[indysmith]

when you consider that 99% of all music is still made to be 16 bit 44.1khz, then why do we even need DVD's for playing back music?

Because that's just plain not true; just because you buy CDs in 16bit 44.1khz doesn't mean that that's how it was recorded. Most music recorded digitally nowadays will be recorded at 24bit 96khz or more, depending on the specs or the gear in the studio.

[JJretroTONEGOD]

when you consider that 99% of all music is still made to be 16 bit 44.1khz, then why do we even need DVD's for playing back music?

Because that's just plain not true; just because you buy CDs in 16bit 44.1khz doesn't mean that that's how it was recorded. Most music recorded digitally nowadays will be recorded at 24bit 96khz or more, depending on the specs or the gear in the studio.

I see what you are saying here...yes one ponders...

[plastercaster]

I'm wondering if, as the technology grows and prices comes down, Bluray will overtake CD?

If CD can store 74 minutes of 16 bit 44 khz music, and has an 800mb capacity (?), then Blu-ray, at 50 gb, could store 8 CDs at studio quality 24 bit 192 khz. In the future, you could even get blu ray storing 90 minutes of 32 bit at 1.2 mhz, once studio recording caught up.

This would be too High fidelity to tell the difference from vinyl, and also wouldn't compress every time the disc was spun.

Personally, I listen to 192 kb/s on my iPod, it's the only way I can fit all my music on. I have found that some tracks I used to love never get heard because they're poor quality, for example hells bells: The rest of the album is 192, but having just this one (not sure how) at 128 means those glorious tolls sound like rain-sticks, spoiling the whole lot.

MP3 has emerged through convenience. in 10 years when we're all on 1gb/sec internet and a nano-sized mp3 player can have a terabyte hard drive, The default format will have gained quality accordingly.

[MDV]

I'm wondering if, as the technology grows and prices comes down, Bluray will overtake CD?

If CD can store 74 minutes of 16 bit 44 khz music, and has an 800mb capacity (?), then Blu-ray, at 50 gb, could store 8 CDs at studio quality 24 bit 192 khz. In the future, you could even get blu ray storing 90 minutes of 32 bit at 1.2 mhz, once studio recording caught up.

This would be too High fidelity to tell the difference from vinyl, and also wouldn't compress every time the disc was spun.

Personally, I listen to 192 khz on my iPod, it's the only way I can fit all my music on. I have found that some tracks I used to love never get heard because they're poor quality, for example hells bells: The rest of the album is 192, but having just this one (not sure how) at 128 means those glorious tolls sound like rain-sticks, spoiling the whole lot.

MP3 has emerged through convenience. in 10 years when we're all on 1gb/sec internet and a nano-sized mp3 player can have a terabyte hard drive, The default format will have gained quality accordingly.

I dont agree.

I hope youre right, but thats not how this is playing out and I dont see a reason for it to change.

Talk to most people, without sounding like too much of a tw@t, but by that I basically mean people that you arent going to find on a forum for handmade guitar pickups, if you see what I mean, and they think that MP3 is fine; they can maybe hear a difference but they dont care. What they want from new products is to get more songs on it, for it to be smaller, for it to be prettier, for it to have more peripheral functions, for the interface to be smoother/flashier and so on and so forth. I mean, most people are listening to ipods on stock earbuds: they obviously arent too concerned about quality.

So in the future we're going to have very much what we have now: most people, and therefore the driving force of the market, not really too concerned about sound quality that want big capacity to have lots of stuff on it, but wont use most of the space, in a small unit that looks cool and sounds ok, and a few that will use that space to store a lower number of higher quality formats.

I see no reason for this trend to change, and no indication that it is changing, unfortunately.

[dave_mc]

^ agreed. heck, i can hear the difference, and depending on what you want it for, the ability to store more songs, even at a lower rate, is useful. I used to listen to my minidisc player (on stock earphones  :lol:  :oops: ) walking over to university. with the sound of the traffic etc., it didn't matter that the quality was lower. i don't really have a problem with the "ease of use" criteria for situations like that- the ability to store more is more useful than a slightly higher quality.

as i said before, it's the people who can't hear a difference when they're sitting in their living room and swear blind that it sounds as good... that's what's ruining the market, not the people buying it for convenience (which is fair enough, if you ask me). :)

[JJretroTONEGOD]

I'm wondering if, as the technology grows and prices comes down, Bluray will overtake CD?

If CD can store 74 minutes of 16 bit 44 khz music, and has an 800mb capacity (?), then Blu-ray, at 50 gb, could store 8 CDs at studio quality 24 bit 192 khz. In the future, you could even get blu ray storing 90 minutes of 32 bit at 1.2 mhz, once studio recording caught up.

This would be too High fidelity to tell the difference from vinyl, and also wouldn't compress every time the disc was spun.

Personally, I listen to 192 khz on my iPod, it's the only way I can fit all my music on. I have found that some tracks I used to love never get heard because they're poor quality, for example hells bells: The rest of the album is 192, but having just this one (not sure how) at 128 means those glorious tolls sound like rain-sticks, spoiling the whole lot.

MP3 has emerged through convenience. in 10 years when we're all on 1gb/sec internet and a nano-sized mp3 player can have a terabyte hard drive, The default format will have gained quality accordingly.

I dont agree.

I hope youre right, but thats not how this is playing out and I dont see a reason for it to change.

Talk to most people, without sounding like too much of a tw@t, but by that I basically mean people that you arent going to find on a forum for handmade guitar pickups, if you see what I mean, and they think that MP3 is fine; they can maybe hear a difference but they dont care. What they want from new products is to get more songs on it, for it to be smaller, for it to be prettier, for it to have more peripheral functions, for the interface to be smoother/flashier and so on and so forth. I mean, most people are listening to ipods on stock earbuds: they obviously arent too concerned about quality.

So in the future we're going to have very much what we have now: most people, and therefore the driving force of the market, not really too concerned about sound quality that want big capacity to have lots of stuff on it, but wont use most of the space, in a small unit that looks cool and sounds ok, and a few that will use that space to store a lower number of higher quality formats.

I see no reason for this trend to change, and no indication that it is changing, unfortunately.

very good point there! totally agree with you. I would add to that is Blue Ray ever going to take off? I have my doubts.

[MDV]

Cheers guys