Any audiophiles here?
Moderator
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 109,435
Likes: 1,651
From: SJC
Originally Posted by chuhsi,Feb 26 2009, 07:06 PM
anyone want to buy my krell audio cd player and radio receiver? 
Registered User
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 1,153
Likes: 0
From: College Station, TX
i assume everyone in this thread is probably an audiophile heh?
well im not, but would love to be lol.
i was hopeing if you guys could help me out with a couple things
what would you say is the best External Soundcard thats compatible with leopard OSX for under $150 USD?
and im also looking for some very nice computer speakers with a subwoofer..for under 100 USD
any help?
im going to keep looking online. but i was hopeing some familiar people would be able to help
well im not, but would love to be lol.
i was hopeing if you guys could help me out with a couple things
what would you say is the best External Soundcard thats compatible with leopard OSX for under $150 USD?
and im also looking for some very nice computer speakers with a subwoofer..for under 100 USD
any help?
im going to keep looking online. but i was hopeing some familiar people would be able to help
Registered User
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 257
Likes: 0
From: Yorktown, VA
currently running:
Paradigm Studio 40 v.4's
Paradigm Studio CC-590 v.4
Paradigm Studio ADP-590's
eD A5-350 sub
Onkyo TX-SR805 <-- going to upgrade eventually
LOVE my Paradigm's, got an amazing deal on them due to a dealer going out of business and I couldn't be happier. Highly recommend them to anyone who is shopping in that price range. Some nudes
:
there's not really a "Blu Ray" of audio CD's, but I believe SACD would be what a lot will go for. However SACD's overall are limited to a lot of classical and orchestra style music (although there are some albums out there like the Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc. available). Not so bad for me because I enjoy that type of music but you won't be hearing that waste of space Lil' Wayne on it any time soon.
Paradigm Studio 40 v.4's
Paradigm Studio CC-590 v.4
Paradigm Studio ADP-590's
eD A5-350 sub
Onkyo TX-SR805 <-- going to upgrade eventually
LOVE my Paradigm's, got an amazing deal on them due to a dealer going out of business and I couldn't be happier. Highly recommend them to anyone who is shopping in that price range. Some nudes
:
Do you audiophiles buy certain kind of cds? Is there some sort of blueray of audio cds? I would buy good headphones like the denons mentioned, but if i had to get new music i wouldn't.
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 3,315
Likes: 0
From: Mandeville, La
Originally Posted by pdj,Feb 26 2009, 08:25 PM
Do you audiophiles buy certain kind of cds? Is there some sort of blueray of audio cds? I would buy good headphones like the denons mentioned, but if i had to get new music i wouldn't.
The problem is that high quality equipment (such as the Denon AH-D5000's I'm buying) tends to make bad audio sound even worse. So if you put crap in, you're gonna get crap out. However, if you put good quality audio in (about 192 kbps or higher) it will be sweet sweet music to your ears.
My suggestion is this: If your audio is about 128 kbps or higher, most of it will sound okay. The higher the bit rate the better. You're in REALLY good shape if most of your stuff is 192kbps or higher. I would keep what you have, but from now on I would only purchase lossless audio when you want to buy new songs.
However, if you are the type of person that doesn't want to take the time/money to replace their crappy audio (lower bit rates), you're probably not the type that will appreciate what high quality equipment will do. So if you are this type of person, then you will only be throwing $450 down the drain by purchasing the AH-D5000's... and your crappy music will sound even more like crap.
Does this need any more clarification?
Registered User
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 295
Likes: 0
^I tend to download a lot of music via limewire. After reading your response, I went on itunes and checked what kbps some of my newer tracks had, and they were no less then 128kbps. Can you please explain (or give me a good link to check out) the relationship between the amount of audio data on a cd and the kbps? I love music and listen to all types of it, I would just like to listen the music I have in better quality/clarity. Some of the things that I want to achieve might not be cheap, but I want to know how to achieve them for future reference. Thanks for your help 
Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 1,918
Likes: 0
From: San Diego
flac baby, its all about the flac. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Audio_Codec
Ive always had a preference for the sound of SACD over DVD-A, i think the only advantage of DVD-A are the multiple channels, something i dont really care about. not that it matters, i have about 4 SACD's vs. around 250 LP's.
Ive always had a preference for the sound of SACD over DVD-A, i think the only advantage of DVD-A are the multiple channels, something i dont really care about. not that it matters, i have about 4 SACD's vs. around 250 LP's.
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 3,642
Likes: 0
From: Tulsa, OK
Originally Posted by S2krazy2,Feb 27 2009, 03:40 AM
Older track on iTunes are 128kbps. Their new standard is Lossless at 192 kbps, and those are the tracks that I recommend purchasing. The problem with limewire is that bootleggers typically don't care what quality the tracks are.
When "ripping" your own CD's, I suggest ripping them at the highest bit rate possible if you are not worried about file size. The correlation between kbps and the amount of data on a CD is this:
The higher the bit rate of a song, the larger the file will be on disk. A song that is encoded at 256 kbps will take up roughly twice the amount of space on disk as the same song encoded at 128kbps. So when you start putting high quality audio tracks on a CD the available space fills up quickly. When you have VERY high quality audio (such as a lossless studio remaster with multi channel audio, like the "Dark Side of the Moon" album I just got) you wont fit more than one or two tracks on a typical CD. So that is where SACD and DVD-A come in. A DVD-A disk can store almost 7 times the amount of data as a regular CD. Some SACD's can store over 11 times as much data as a regular CD. The more space there is available on the disk, the more high quality audio can be stored on that disk.
I suggest reading these:
SACD
DVD-A
Audio Compression
Lossless Data Compression
When "ripping" your own CD's, I suggest ripping them at the highest bit rate possible if you are not worried about file size. The correlation between kbps and the amount of data on a CD is this:
The higher the bit rate of a song, the larger the file will be on disk. A song that is encoded at 256 kbps will take up roughly twice the amount of space on disk as the same song encoded at 128kbps. So when you start putting high quality audio tracks on a CD the available space fills up quickly. When you have VERY high quality audio (such as a lossless studio remaster with multi channel audio, like the "Dark Side of the Moon" album I just got) you wont fit more than one or two tracks on a typical CD. So that is where SACD and DVD-A come in. A DVD-A disk can store almost 7 times the amount of data as a regular CD. Some SACD's can store over 11 times as much data as a regular CD. The more space there is available on the disk, the more high quality audio can be stored on that disk.
I suggest reading these:
SACD
DVD-A
Audio Compression
Lossless Data Compression
Here is a comparison of a track that I have in my library that I imported from CD in both 256 kbps VBR mp3 and Apple lossless.
256 kbps VBR mp3: 7.1 MB
Apple Lossless (says it's 995 kbps): 29.3 MB