Yep this is the audiophile community. The same kind of people who buy Monster cables
this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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you will never in a million years convince me that vinyl sounds better than digital. how this argument even gets off the ground is beyond me.
Records do tend to sound better to a listeners ears because of a bunch of psychoacoustic effects that make live instruments sound better than recordings though.
The sound of something like fast car is a classic example of applying those effects to a recording in the studio.
As a medium I will die on the hill that vinyl is better than digital for a bunch of reasons other than objective or subjective quality, but when you start measuring quality what you’re even trying to figure out gets muddy real quickly.
As a medium I will die on the hill that vinyl is better than digital for a bunch of reasons other than objective or subjective quality
That's where you completely lose me.
A medium can do more than just convey information. Minidisc, for example, is a better medium than cd.
gibberish
Minidisc natively supports a solution to the problem of copying that existed with cassettes and reel to reel before it, something that cd didn’t address. Minidisc supports recording in stereo as well using a pair of headphones which have separate grounds, a rare feature on cd players or even high end audio equipment.
Minidisc was portable and much more resistant to skipping or read error than cd. Minidiscs themselves were more durable and outlasted cds in every type of storage condition I’ve encountered.
Minidisc had inline controls.
Minidisc is a better medium than cd and all the reasons I listed have nothing to do with any subjective or objective judgement of quality.
its 2025, man. I don't think people still use minidic or CDs.
ongoing cd revival as reported on by rolling stone magazine - almost every record store I’ve been to lately has a growing and often new releases selection of cds.
website about new releases on minidisc as of 3 years ago - I can also attest that the players, parts and media have become insanely expensive lately because there’s a lot of interest in collecting and using them.
The point of course was not that those things are popular now (although they absolutely are!), but that some purportedly objective or subjective measure of quality isn’t the be-all end-all of formats.
Even when some measure of quality is brought up, it needs examination so that the importance of whatever numbers or prose recorded as justification for it can be considered reasonably.
My go-to example for this specifically with vinyl records and cds is channel separation. It refers to how “left” and “right” the left and right signals on a stereo recording actually are. You measure it by running a signal you know the loudness of into one channel and measuring how much of it you get in the other channel. For a record this means a track whose groove only has modulation on one side and for a cd it means a track whose information is only encoding one side. Lower numbers of decibels are better, perfect is zero.
Cds have much better channel separation than records. It’s obvious why, records make a sound by vibrating a coil or magnet next to its counterpart and vibration on the right coil or magnet will be picked up in a small amount by the left equivalent. How much? -20 to -30 db worth or so. Cds easily boast channel separation in the -50 to -60 db range.
Seems like an open and shut case, cds are better! Well… not really. You see the channel separation between two cochlea about six inches apart anchored to the same arch of bone is barely -20db.
So your own ears, wearing ideal headphones, couldn’t perceive the difference. Sure theres a measurement that says cd is better there, but it doesn’t actually matter.
The point of tee-ing myself up like that is not to shit on some format or laud another but to illustrate that measurement of quality has to be actually interrogated before its importance can be established.
Vinyl does sound different though, and some audiophiles are so far gone that they think their own preferences are objectively better.
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Yes it comes with less memory than my modern smartphone, but at least the gold-plated oxygen free copper provides a purer sound.
Audiophile cope in the comments is hilarious. A $30 pair of IEMs plugged into a 7 year old flagship phone is high enough quality that most people won't want anything crazier the rest of their life. A $150 pair of over ear headphones plugged into a cheap DAC from AliExpress is good enough to achieve full fidelity for anyone.
I can't wait until one of you nerds tries to tell me you can tell the difference between a flac and a 256kbps AAC file too.
some ppl have way too much money
Yeah Sonys always had a luxury brand lineup. Back in the day their uhh vaio? Computers were hailed as MacBook killers.
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You'd think you could get one for like 20$. i wanted a cheap one that would just do music for... some reason idfk, but the lowest end ones are more expensive than cheap phones.
These are DAPs, and they are ment for the audiophiles. They are not the average mp3 player. You will need also proper headphones for those.
Are they worth it? Yes, if you have money for burning.
Are they worth it? Yes, if you have money for burning.
Ain't no way it's worth it, audiophile gear is 99% placebo. It's kinda like wine, when you're past a certain price point (that's not actually that large compared to the really expensive stuff) it's all the same.
Even if you can allegedly tell the difference (I doubt it, any device playing a digital file is as good as another) there's no way it's worth at least $1,500.
any device playing a digital file is as good as another
Not really. The Digital to Analog Converter (the thing that turns 1's and 0's into voltage that eventually goes into a speaker) makes a difference. I'm not saying the sony thing is worth it, but the output from the line out is gonna be much clearer than the line out of $5 temu mmp3 player
Marginally, if anything. Quality electronics are nowadays available for cheap, it's not the 90s anymore.
any device playing a digital file is as good as another
?
The audio device absolutely does matter, and it’s noticeably better with each increment up to a high price point.
The problem with audiophilia is that hearing perfect audio is not going to make your life meaningfully better after a certain point. It’s chasing perfection for no real reason. Every hobby has this potential though.
My thing with audiophiles is more like at a certain point, the room you're sitting in would have a larger impact on the acoustics than whatever real or perceived marginal gains from audiophile-grade devices. It's pretty consumerism-brained to think that you can buy ever more expensive products to get what you want. Audiophiles need to bite the bullet and renovate a room to be more acoustic friendly and move all their audiophile shit to that room for the optimal listening experience.
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Computers can play all formats but, I can hear the noise coming from my headphones when i plug them to my motherboard or to my screen.
Also good luck putting good headphones or speakers without an amplifier.
You can get an external sound card for $50-100 and get rid off all that noise and use those good headphones
If you pay more than $300 for headphones (for non-professional use) you are being taken advantage of
Digital sound processing is a solved problem and the cheapest amps run the same hardware the hifi brands sell, the QA is just worse
If you pay more than $300 for headphones (for non-professional use) you are being taken advantage of
Apple Airpod Max costing $500+ lmao
It's $100 for good audio, $400 for brand
Apple headphones have always been a scam for their price point. Sony or Sennheiser will get you significantly better sound quality at a much lower price usually.
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I can hear the noise coming from my headphones when i plug them to my motherboard or to my screen.
Must be a really shit board, I haven't heard any noise from a default sound card on a motherboard for more than a decade now.
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Good luck plugging Sennheiser HD 600 to an average mp3 player or your smartphone. I don't defend audiophile, because they cost extremely more for what they offer. But they are a step up.
Also you can find DAP starting from $100, so i don't know how these scale with the price. I just recently found them out and shared the info.
If you walk around outside with HD 600's on your head you deserve to be robbed tbh
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daps used to be free. what happened? you used to receive free daps on entering any club. not anymore.
They're really not worth it. A $15 USB-C dongle and a smartphone will put out audio quality better than almost any audiophile's headphones can discern.
Also you can get DAPs for like $50-$100 that will be the same type of deal: indiscernable.
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You will need also proper headphones for those.
buying my $3600 cell phone that can't make phone calls and then making the foolish mistake of plugging in some $5 earbuds which immediately makes it explode because i didn't use proper headphones
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What's the average mp3 player these days? I use an old FiiO but they've discontinued the budget edition that I have and I don't know where I'll turn if anything happens to this one.
Edit - FiiO does offer a new version of what they call a "budget DAP", the JM21, for $199, but even if it seems better than the others on the market that's maybe three times as much as their old one cost me. Dammit. Well, my current one had better last.
Buy a decade old smartphone with a headphone jack and just use it for music?
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they're getting mad at you but you're right.
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Certified Lover Boy? Certified Audiophile
Striking a (literal) chord and it's probably A-minooorrr
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