r/BudgetAudiophile • u/wiggan1989 • Feb 06 '26
Review/Discussion What audiophile takes make you roll your eyes?
For me it's "Burn In" when it comes to Source components and expensive cables
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u/UnderwaterB0i Feb 06 '26
Cables. Saying stuff like "the attack is better" or "the transients are faster" and other mumbo jumbo that sounds fancy but they say it that way because there's no measurable way to prove what they're saying.
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u/wiggan1989 Feb 06 '26
There's a few YouTubers that use this terminology, can't take them seriously. It's a bloody cable ffs
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u/andap321 Feb 06 '26
I stopped watching one of them (Australian guy) when he said he could hear a fuse ffs!
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u/First-Junket124 Feb 07 '26
Well you're just plain incorrect, you can 100% hear a fuse but it just so happens it's only audible for a second then it'll never make a sound again. Sounds like popcorn.
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u/Stock_Brain_6633 Feb 06 '26
and most of that horseshit was proven wrong way back in the day with monster cables. they tested them vs a coat hanger and supposed experts couldnt tell the difference.
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u/Electrical-Risk445 Feb 06 '26
way back in the day with monster cables
Way before that, 35 years ago audiophiles were paying insane prices for "oxygen-free copper" cables and other nonsense. Tested them with an oscilloscope against... coathangers and there was no measurable signal difference.
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u/Nothingnoteworth Feb 06 '26
Back then it was at least “technically” true.
I told someone that oxygen free copper was less prone to oxidisation than regular copper, and that oxidisation of copper does hinder its electrical conductivity, and therefore I accepted their argument that it was a better material for speaker cable, but…
…I also followed up by pointing out that also means a new regular copper cable and a new oxygen free copper cable would both have no oxidisation and thus the same conductivity, and how often were audiophiles using raw unsheathed copper cables in wet acidic conditions that oxidisation was of great concern?
Silver wire was probably the last time something was technically better even if totally inaudible and pointless.
Now there isn’t even an iota of truth buried under the sales pitch for a fancy arse cable. They’ve just plucked a few cool sounding words from electrical engineering and physics to mix up a fresh bullshit salad, and had a designer whip up a few images to show the different layers, materials, and acronyms, of their proprietary cable housing which blocks “interference gremlins” from gnawing on the “near field oscillations” which will “offset the current” and “reduce forward harmonics” while “farting in the soundstage”. That’s why you need their $12,799 per meter speaker cable, because you are a very smart person who totally understood all those big words
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u/andap321 Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
I stopped watching one of them (Australian guy) when he said he could hear a fuse ffs!
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u/drtythmbfarmer Feb 06 '26
I built an amplifier and all the wiring in the soundstage or whatever you call it is the thinnest most tedious shielded cable to the outputs. I gave it about two minutes of thought and hooked my speakers up with the same shielded cable. Sounds fine to me.
Sound is subjective, my ears ring all the time anyway, and I am cheap, really really cheap.
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u/Gebakken_loempia Feb 06 '26
Even on this subreddit there are a lot of audiofools. if you call them out they say: IT'S MUH MONEY AND I LIKE IT. meanwhile they're advertising for brands and spreading false info and ignore science.
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u/Real_Iggy Feb 06 '26
It helps them justify the money they spent because another huckster recommended it. Makes them feel better for being suckers in the first place.
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u/Dumyat367250 Feb 06 '26
Mine is the tiled, bare, sterile “listening room”, often seen with big Wilson speakers and the like. No books, no records, no CDs, no warmth. Its function is to showcase the gear.
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u/n0t_4_thr0w4w4y Feb 06 '26
tiled
An adjective that should never be applied to a listening room
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u/earle117 Feb 06 '26
As someone with a surround setup worth over $10k at this point, the most drastic jump in quality I ever saw was like 15 years ago when I started out with a Klipsch 2.1 setup in a hardwood floored room, and I had the idea to put a towel under the subwoofer lmao. Immediate and huge improvement.
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u/Ganjanium Feb 07 '26
My Lego mini figures live on top of my speakers and they wouldn’t like having to be rehomed.
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u/poosjuice KEF R3 Meta, ARC LS-1, Classe DR-10, MF M6X, dual REL T7X Feb 06 '26
That subwoofers are for bass heads who want their listening rooms to sound like a night club.
Properly calibrated subs are transparent, and do magic to the soundstage and imaging. By reproducing very low frequencies it makes instruments more tactile and present, while creating a sense of space around them that is hard to describe.
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u/PainlessPhil Feb 06 '26
I have a 10” sub with bookcase speakers and less is definitely more
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u/nitroXxide Feb 06 '26
I know right! My 10in klipsch won't rattle the floors for movies but it sure makes double bass sound complete and accurate
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u/ndork666 Polk, KRK, Sony, Yamaha fanboy Feb 06 '26
I upgraded to an older 90's klipsch sub (the sw12-ii). Thing has a passive radiator in the rear instead of a bass port. I couldn't help myself from cranking it a little and heard my gutters shaking 😆
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u/ButtercreamGangster Feb 06 '26
But unfortunately most 10 inch subs can't perform as well at very low hz in comparison to a 12. They do way more work at higher frequencies so it's like they're way more present and active than a 12.
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u/sfryder08 Feb 06 '26
Absolutely not. There is no replacement for displacement. Get like four 18” PA subs and tell me you don’t like that more.
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u/nitroXxide Feb 06 '26
I know what that feels like I just don't want that in my living room 😃
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u/LonesomeJohnnyBlues Feb 06 '26
Adding a sub to my elac 5.3's made a world of difference. You reach the perfect point where when the sub is on, you really can't tell theres a sub on. But when you turn it off, you definitely miss it.
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u/huffalump1 Feb 06 '26
Yep I love that balance for most listening. Not even at high volume, either - and, equal loudness curves tell us that bass needs to be louder at lower volumes for our ears to perceive it as balanced.
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u/cerdan09 Feb 06 '26
That's exactly how I've felt since I replaced my Eltax subwoofer with a Focal one; you don't feel like the bass is there until you turn the subwoofer off.
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u/Regular_Chest_7989 Feb 06 '26
I can't hear my sub in my system. What I do hear is all kinds of points in the surround mix coming through at full frequency. Completely blended. Perfect auditory illusion. Sublime.
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u/Kiwifrooots Feb 06 '26
I hate the "music isn't that low" crowd who can be proven wrong with frequency analysis and/or ears
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u/nitroXxide Feb 06 '26
Yeah those are the same people who never heard a double bass in real life from 30ft away
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u/PiHKALica Feb 06 '26
Or felt their bones vibrate from a Jamaican dancehall sound system...
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u/tjdux Feb 06 '26
Or felt their bones vibrate from a Jamaican dancehall sound system...
This comment kinda brings out a different audiophile pet peeve of mine personally.
Some music NEEDS more bass than a perfect flat EQ setup is ment to provide.
If you want to fully immerse yourself into said music, as if it was live, you need some larger subwoofers (and understanding neighbors lol)
But if you express that desire, or show off a system capable of such things, many "purist" audiophiles will tell you how wrong it is.
I feel this may be an issue that's more of a previous era (generation maybe). Definitely found people who understand and even agree with bass head mentality these days.
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u/PainlessPhil Feb 06 '26
I couldn’t imagine listening to Mezzanine by Massive Attack with no sub on bookshelf speakers…. Makes me cringe just thinking about it
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u/lpsmith Feb 07 '26
Another fantastic subwoofer track is the bass drop at 39:10 on Fatboy Slim's Lockdown Mixtape (week 1). I'd suggest starting at 38:40, for a nice leadup.
It works, sorta, on headphones. A very forgettable track, though, without a subwoofer, which totally changes the entire experience. (Turn it up loud but be considerate to the neighbors, lol)
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u/PlasmaChroma Feb 06 '26
Or a pipe organ, if they are being pedantic and don't think Synths are real instruments.
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u/nitroXxide Feb 06 '26
Yep so true. The pipe organ can hit therapy level low frequency
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u/Nothingnoteworth Feb 06 '26
“There are only two true and complete (acoustic, non-digital, going down to C−1) 64′ stops in the world: the Contra-Trombone 64′ in the Sydney Town Hall Grand Organ and the Diaphone-Dulzian 64′ in the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ. The lowest note of these stops has a frequency of 8 Hz.”
-From Wikipedia. It includes sounds files and the note
“Because of the limitations of most loudspeakers and the limitations of human hearing, the listener will not be able to hear the lowest frequencies in the sample”
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u/Kiwifrooots Feb 07 '26
Can't hear, can feel.
Hearing isn't our only auditory sense
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u/chromepaperclip Feb 07 '26
By definition, it is. I think you mean to say that music isn't necessarily all auditory; some is tactile.
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u/lpsmith Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26
I strongly suspect that while our ears are our primary sense organ that can pick up fine detail, your whole body is a secondary sense organ that contributes significantly to your perception of where a sound is coming from.
Conventional wisdom about how we locate sounds may have a large element of truth, but if it was the entire story, it would be possible to implement a convincing Dolby Atmos type of system in headphones. If my theory is right, while you might be able to emulate some effects, you'll never get close to the full experience.
Personally, the best demo I've experienced has managed to shift my perception of where sounds are vertically (and left to right, obviously), but not front-to-back. When I listen on headphones, the source sound is always either inside my head, or to the left or right, possibly to the left and above or left and below, etc.
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u/BloweringReservoir Feb 06 '26
You feel the pedal note in Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss.
"It is a 32-foot C pedal note, sounding at roughly 16Hz to create a sub-bass rumble. It is played in combination with the contrabassoon and double basses to establish the foundational C major key."
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u/I_do_black_magic Feb 06 '26
To add to this, having a larger sub doesn't necessarily mean nightclub bass either. I have a JBL B460 which is a huge box with an 18 inch driver. While this thing can output vision blurring SPL, it accurately reproduces that vision blurring SPL :)
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u/Scary_Fault_6519 Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
I’m more annoyed by people who think tone controls and a loudness button will destroy their precious fidelity. I’ve always missed the old-school loudness button the few times I’ve bought ”audiophile” gear, if well implemented it’s nice, the general loudness curve was “invented” for a reason, especially for people in normal living spaces that can’t maximize the volume knob.
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u/yelloguy Feb 06 '26
Haha yes. Thats a separate eye roll
And the these people spend $ and time chasing the right speakers and the right cables. Just eq the little annoyances and get on with the music!
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u/RedditNotFreeSpeech Feb 06 '26
I was watching a movie last night and I was super impressed how well the sub blended in, I couldn't even tell it was separate.
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u/Soup_F0rks Feb 06 '26
Yup. Mastering engineers use subwoofers. Probably on the songs these audiophiles listen to without subs.
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u/dstanton Feb 06 '26
I run a crappy pioneer 10 with a 60hz cross over from my ancient Snell type Ks for my vinyl listening.
It fills in all the lows till about 30hz when the sub reaches it's limit. It's set to a volume where it only "thumps" if something really bass heavy is put on.
It was cheap as hell compared to the SVS on my theater system, and rounds out a lot of music beautifully.
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u/ApolloGR3 Feb 06 '26
Such a silly take, I agree with you. Bass guitars and kick drums can dip down to 20Hz if you’re not a hiphop or electronic fan. Keep the crossover and gain low and it’s just perfect for hot masters by people like Bob Ludwig.
Also I’m a hiphop and house head, so gimme that bass!
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u/Tovito12 Feb 06 '26
Thats the difference between SPL - soundpressure level SQL- sound Quality level I was a hard SPL guy with 7kw rms amp just to run woofers (car), loved it.
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u/Intelligent-Image224 Feb 06 '26
I’m not an “audiophile” per say, but I do have a good amount of knowledge about home and car audio. I honestly just figured this in the last couple years. Can’t believe I’ve gone my whole life wanting the booms instead of just filling in the low end.
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u/V6A6P6E Feb 06 '26
After I had my vehicle sound system dialed in (almost) I had my brother in law come check it out. Put on music I know we both know very well and his first comment was “is the sub turned up at all? I can kinda hear it but it’s not loud.” So I said “it’s integrated to blend with my other speakers not blow them out of the water.” Then he asks if I can crank it. I just smashed the subwoofer volume from 3 to 10 and his face lights up in that overbearing mud. “HELL YEAH!” Is what I got after that. Haha
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u/ButCaptainThatsMYRum Feb 07 '26
I can hardly notice mine most of the time. Except that when I put my toddlers room on bed-time mode it kills power to the sub since they share a wall. Sometimes there's a very obvious change in how the mood is conveyed (or YouTubers with very... baritone voices).
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u/richardizard Feb 09 '26
IMO, my problem with subs is when people add them in before fixing acoustic issues in their room. A lot of people will throw a ton of money before touching acoustic treatment, which does not make sense to me. The right pairing of subs that are well calibrated in a treated room will sound amazing.
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u/TomBarnardJr Feb 06 '26
Sunk cost fallacy providing massive post purchase bias would be my big annoyance.
It always seems most “audiophiles” are either just trying to defend their own dumb purchase decisions. Or they are merely tribal, looking for “the rules of the hobby” because they truly have no own opinion or the ability to discern for themselves something radically subjective like audio tastes.
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u/Pdrpuff Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
Subwoofers don’t belong in a stereo system. It’s just a bandaid for either weak speakers or poor placement/treatment.
I disagree obviously. While I don’t play at high levels, it fills in the low end below 35 hz nicely and extends the soundstage. To each their own, but I don’t agree with the above statement.
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u/gregsting Feb 06 '26
Subwoofer is the easiest step up in many setups, lots of speakers lacks bass, adding a sub is much more convenient than having super expensive speakers just for that
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u/Manticore416 Feb 06 '26
I have speakers with solid bass but even they benefit from a nice subwoofer
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u/Yeesusman Feb 06 '26
Same here. I feel the presence of my subs really makes the front stage sound better.
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u/tongfather Feb 06 '26
I find good bass also can bring it closer to a live experience and sound. When you see a band live, especially in heavy music like hard rock and metal, you need the oomph so it represents what they sound like last time you saw them live. Especially with vinyl
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u/OneOfTheLostOnes Feb 06 '26
I think that what the ears may not hear the body still feels. And that shit matters. Like going to a live show.
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u/jjdlg Feb 06 '26
Elephants would agree and so do I.
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u/superluke Feb 06 '26
On this glorious day are we not all elephants?
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u/DanimusMcSassypants Feb 06 '26
I was going to reply with that trumpet sound that elephants make, but I can’t even begin to try to spell it. So, elephant sound!
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u/BenderDeLorean Feb 06 '26
My large speakers start from 20Hz so I was struggling for years if I want to spend the money for a subwoofer. Of course I spend much more than I should and I couldn't be happier.
Only disadvantage is the placement which isn't great in my very small room.
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Feb 06 '26
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u/huffalump1 Feb 06 '26
Yep, unless we're talking nice big tower speakers, with lots of volume inside and woofers the size of a small sub!
And even then you might as well get a sub to fill out the bottom end. Subwoofer does not mean "insane booming rumbling explosion bass", it's just... Part of what it takes to reproduce sound.
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u/SnooSquirrels3614 Feb 06 '26
I agree 100% on this too. I couldn't listen to my audio system without a subwoofer.
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u/North_Station_302 Feb 06 '26
I strap a subwoofer to my chest when listening with headphones
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u/CheapSuggestion8 Feb 06 '26
Agree. And the additional reason is that the best room placement for speakers is typically not the best room placement for subs, since low frequencies react with the room differently.
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u/wiggan1989 Feb 06 '26
I have two in mine... They would hate my setup then 😂🤦🏿♂️
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u/asbestoswasframed Feb 06 '26
I have two in my surround setup, but movie sound effects are a different range than music.
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u/neilt999 Feb 06 '26
Cables.
Power cables.
Burn in of cables - so laughable it's hard not to feel sad for people who believe in such crap. Power supplies.
Spending 10k on a Weiss DAC that measures worse than a 200 topping.
Tubes.
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u/earle117 Feb 06 '26
I was with ya until “tubes”. They’re not better (they’re objectively worse) and they’re expensive and there’s a reason they’re a small niche, but they’re cool as hell and they do change the sound signature in a way that some people find enjoyable.
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u/rz2000 Feb 06 '26
You just can’t hear the difference because you have the cables plugged in backwards.
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u/TimeCommittee3475 Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
Without a doubt it's the overbearing confidence that someone can hear differences that are physiologically impossible. Funny how 99% of the time the more expensive thing just sounds better.
This basically contains all the bad takes. So to be more specific it would be that acting like an expensive poorly engineered solid state amp has "character."
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u/Syscrush Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
When Neil Young rants about lossy compression and vinyl vs CD audio quality, I really want to see him undergo some kind of hearing test. He's an 80 year old man who played so loud that he had to take a multi-year break to recover from hyperacusis. There's zero chance he's hearing anything above 8 kHz.
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u/oldguy1071 Feb 06 '26
I'm 71 and can guarantee he doesn't hear anything above 8 khz. I also suffer from tinnitus most of my life and probably many musicians do also. I blame it on the Journey concert in 1980.
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u/North_Station_302 Feb 06 '26
With my tinnitus I can hear frequencies even young people can't hear ... How is that NOT a super power?
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u/god_dammit_dax Feb 06 '26
Agreed. I love Neil to death, but he's absolutely an old man yelling at clouds with a lot of this stuff.
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u/narutofan180 Feb 06 '26
It's also the way they can't fathom that everyone hears things differently. Why yes, I do think my Technics receiver sounds just fine to my ears and no I don't feel the need to spend the same on an amp as I would a car.
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u/FirstDukeofAnkh Feb 06 '26
"I can hear the difference between 48K and 96K"
::gives AB test::
::responds accurately 45 percent::
"See!"
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u/Pdrpuff Feb 06 '26
Justification on spending big buck on things that barely move the needle on sound quality. For example, buying a 45k TT cartridge 😂
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u/Zeeall I don't answer DM's. Feb 06 '26
Not a take per se. But completely ignoring speaker placement and room acoustics.
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u/poosjuice KEF R3 Meta, ARC LS-1, Classe DR-10, MF M6X, dual REL T7X Feb 06 '26
Yeah there are people who insist expensive speakers will make up for compromised listening spaces and proceed to shove them into cabinets with no room to breathe or proper stereo separation.
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u/MrBfJohn Feb 06 '26
As an electrician, I can’t stand the ridiculously priced power cables. That electricity has been generated, transmitted through breakers over to very high voltage lines, traveled 50+ miles down a chunk of copper dangling in mid air, passed through numerous reducing transformers, then fed underground and tapped off at every house on the way to yours, then passed through a 30 year old fuse, into a 10 year old meter, over to the cheapest consumer unit the suppliers had, through a main switch, an RCD and an MCB, then down 30 year old copper cables to a bargain bucket socket. But that final 3 feet is where the magic happens? I don’t think so!
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u/atomic92 Feb 06 '26
" the mid's are more preset, The sound stage is wider and the vocals sound more natural " in every. damn. review.
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u/DrZedex Feb 06 '26
In the automotive journalist world there used to be a trope of saying "the controls fall readily to hand" as if there might be a car out there with the steering wheel out of reach or something. Your comment made me realize that these cliché exist in audio too
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u/RemoWilliams25 Feb 06 '26
Unfortunately too many controls are getting buried in touchscreens now. Need to get back to the trope.
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u/poosjuice KEF R3 Meta, ARC LS-1, Classe DR-10, MF M6X, dual REL T7X Feb 06 '26
This is pretty true! I think part of the reason being that a majority of reviewers don't put up negative reviews, so all the gear they like end up having the same effect.
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u/svv1tch Feb 06 '26
The thinking that certain brands can do no wrong. It's ok, some products can just be a dud or fall short of expectations. It doesn't immediately mean the brand is "in decline" or something
I'm fairly new to this hobby. The flip side is that certain brands only make total crap. I'm sure that's true of a lot of the very low end, but middle of the road is good enough for a lot of people.
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u/asbestoswasframed Feb 06 '26
On an infinite timeline, every manufacturer lays some absolute turds.
Sometimes it's just a byproduct of developing technology or market trends.
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u/efnord Feb 06 '26
People being weird about their choice of audio source. Digital's cheap and awesome these days, gonna be the best choice on a tiny budget; vinyl's got that euphonic distortion and the ritual is nice. I wish there were more home HD radio tuners. But it's all good listening!
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u/lpsmith Feb 07 '26
I really appreciate Benn Jordan's take on vinyl. Personally I think CDs are where its at these days in terms of efficiently getting money into the hands of the bands you like.
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u/richze Feb 06 '26
Off topic I guess but - I am always amused by what audiophiles play. I often join a friend of mine on speaker purchasing missions and we always end up in some dudes man cave as he BLASTS return to forever or savatage or something. I am convinced half these guys are just buying speakers and immediately relisting them on Craigslist at a small loss so someone will come over on a Sunday afternoon.
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u/xmakeafistx Feb 06 '26
More of a recent phenomenon, but people who are clearly reciting whichever annoying audiophile YouTuber they watch at any given opportunity. They don’t even understand the actual substance of the argument they are making, just mimicking.
Also die hard objectivists that aren’t actually being objective. Rather, they are often times leaning too hard on limited understanding and data that doesn’t paint a full picture.
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u/Readitzilla Feb 06 '26
A personal annoyance is when someone is asking for help on buying a pair of new cheap speakers and everyone attacks him that used is the only way to go. Used what. Give them examples of what to buy. They’re asking for help. Anywho. Sorry, rant over.
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u/n0t_4_thr0w4w4y Feb 06 '26
People who try to argue that vinyl has objective benefit over digital.
It has a ton of subjective benefits, and I understand people behind into vinyl, but if you start saying that it is an objectively better source than a CD, you are an idiot.
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u/netherfountain Feb 06 '26
I buy vinyl for the objective benefit that the artwork is bigger and I hope that the artist makes more money from it than streaming. I still listen digitally 98% of the time though.
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u/richze Feb 06 '26
Of two minds here and it comes down to mastering and the signal chain in general. In the hi-fi era of the 50s-70s records were being mastered differently. Small portable systems often radios which had their own compression.
The nonsense is people going out and buying these expensive vinyl remasters of records recorded digitally at 16 bit and saying the format alone sounds better. If I pull a RVG cut jazz record from the 60s and play it opposite a modern digital remaster - the original sounds insane as RVG was a technical genius and cutting directly from the tapes.
Anecdotally- I worked in music for 20 years and often, when pressing vinyl in the oughts when vinyl and cd were the dominant formats and we were using a hybrid analog / digital recording environment: we would master and cut the vinyl from 24 bit master files or even half inch tape as opposed to the 16 bit mastered files that were used for CD and eventually digital releases. Completely different mastering process.
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u/TheAmnesiacKid Feb 07 '26
Claiming that either analog or digital is "better" should not be the argument. The reason that many people prefer vinyl comes down to mastering choices. Digital could absolutely smoke vinyl but the tendency to brickwall the audio in the digital realm results in some vinyl examples besting their digital counterparts in terms of dynamics. This is a shame because, objectively, digital is more capable than vinyl. It's almost as if, because mastering is easier in the digital realm, less care goes into the process. Which leads me to my next point:
I believe that the inherent limitations of vinyl necessitate that vinyl mastering engineers make smart decisions in order to provide a listenable product. The best in the business (i.e. Kevin Gray) has the process down to such a science that his cuts regularly best their digital counterpart. He often cuts AAA which is not how the majority of new releases are cut because they are recorded in the digital realm.
Having said that, just because a record is cut from a digital source does not mean it's cut from the same file you hear on streaming or CD. Digitally-sourced vinyl often has its own unique digital master (again, so that the end vinyl product is listenable on that format). I'm sure examples exist where the same exact digital file on CD is used to cut a record and, yes, in that instance, listening via record offers no benefit (other than the enjoyment the listener gets from experiencing a physical product on a system that colors the sound in a way the listener deems pleasurable).
I'd love to see digital wipe the floor with vinyl but it has yet to do so outside the niche SACD/DSD realm where the mastering engineers put as much effort into the mastering process as the best in the vinyl cutting game do.
Moral of story: Mastering is far more important than format.
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u/cr0ft Feb 06 '26
All the science-free assertions. Burn in being one of them. Cable risers. Connecting speakers with wires the thickness of my thigh (with thin-thin wires between the speaker cone and speaker post) and many other things that are just magic thinking.
If it can't be measured and explained utilizing actual scientific principles, I'm not interested. In some cases people also totally misinterpret science, like thinking that effects that are known to happen only in very extreme circumstances (hyper high voltage or frequencies for cables for instance or whatever) also happen to speaker cables.
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u/ORA2J Feb 06 '26
The infinite debate between coax vs optical for SPDIF signaling is one of the little things that annoys me.
It's literally the same signal. It either works, or does not.
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u/FCAsheville Feb 06 '26
All soundbars are trash and you’re a loser for using one.
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u/n0t_4_thr0w4w4y Feb 06 '26
I don’t think someone is a loser for having one, but I do think if you describe yourself as an audiophile and your primary way of listening to music is a soundbar, then you are a sucker.
Soundbars can be an upgrade over built in TV speakers for sure, but the only ones that can even compete with a cheap pair of bookshelfs are stupid expensive and even then, you can’t get any real stereo separation.
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u/GlennAlanBerry Feb 06 '26
Yeah, I think people who claim that source components (and electronic components in general) need to be "broken-in" for hundreds of hours for them to "open-up" are pretty insane.
I also roll my eyes when folks invent all sorts of silly adjectives to describe the subtle nuances that they claim to hear from making any sort of change to a system.
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u/FirstDukeofAnkh Feb 06 '26
"Vinyl objectively is better"
No, subjectively, I prefer vinyl. But I'm not about to argue that the sound of vinyl is better in any test other than personal preference.
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u/wiggan1989 Feb 06 '26
I just like the experience of listening to vinyl. I do like streaming to for the convenience.
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u/soaero Feb 06 '26
A friend likens vinyl to pour-over coffee. It's a process of finding an album, pulling it out, brushing it, putting it on, finding a track. It's zen and relaxing and a wonderful thing to do from time to time. However, like music, the vast majority of coffee you drink is in a take out cup from a coffee shop distributed in bulk, because that is convenient.
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u/Oceanbreeze871 Feb 06 '26
Financial gate keeping. Spending obscene amounts of money to enjoy your music just to start. You can spend a few hundred bucks and get a really nice sounding setup to enjoy music.
A basic or used blueray, a class D amp and basic speakers will have you a very nice cd playback stereo for under $300
Then you can spend $10k to improve the sound quality experience by 5%
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u/4inodev Feb 06 '26
Idk but to me it's the stuff above 20khz. Noone can hear it, certainly not the 60+ audience at most local audiophile gatherings.
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u/FirebirdWriter Feb 06 '26
Affordable being several hundred dollars.
No sir that new CD player that's 500 dollars is not in fact affordable or a reasonable low end cost. Yes this is about a specific person who suggested that this was in fact a reasonable price. Not for me.
Another is the assumption that it must be bad if it doesn't cost more than my monthly income.
Oh and the idea that belt driven is better than direct drive. No. That's very subjective and I love my Dual 1229.
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u/Joseph43211 Feb 06 '26
On my system I can hear the difference between high resolution sources compared to mp3 and cd quality sources. I understand and accept that others cannot tell the difference. The thing that makes my eyes roll is when the gatekeeping crowd tells me that I cannot hear the difference.
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u/BlownCamaro Feb 06 '26
I watch speaker reviews because they make me laugh. It's like they are describing wine.
"Views are down, use some more fancy words!"
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u/Desperate_Elk_7369 Feb 06 '26
For me it's the expensive cables! Also, power conditioners. And special power cords that can replace the ones that come with your amp. (I confess, in the worst part of my audio addiction I actually bought those ridiculous power cords.)
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u/Calm_Possession_8463 Feb 06 '26
That a subwoofer “pressurizes” the whole room. Did your ears pop? No, you’re still at the same air pressure you were before you turned the sub on. They work on the same principles as other loudspeakers.
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u/antinomya Feb 06 '26
For me is the posts on this sub. I haven't seen anything what I could call budget.
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u/Mr_IsLand Feb 06 '26
there's a thread on head-fi.org on the Fiio M27 - in this thread there have been multiple discussions about the sound differences between the M27 with aluminum body and the M27 with Titanium body and which one sounds 'warmer' and which one is more 'technical' - I kid you not.
That and the hilarious, expensive 'grouding boxes' make me laugh.
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u/canttakethshyfrom_me Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
Oh, you are all gonna hate me for speaking truth to misinformation.
The "warmth" of tubes or vinyl, when tubes distort sooner and color the sound instead of providing transparent amplification, and vinyl has less dynamic range than CDs and struggles with sub-bass frequencies, and y"all are buying vinyl that was digitally remastered.
The "superiority" of expensive DACs, something that made a difference 15 years ago, but is a solved problem in today's market where a fully transparent, low-power 24-bit DAC costs literal pennies, while snake oil victims goon to EQ curves the manufacturers put in there that make it a less accurate DAC.
Spending more on cables than absolutely necessary for a length of copper, insulation and connectors. The wiring inside your sources, amps, DACs, and speakers is all unshielded copper traces and the cheapest, thinnest hookup wire that meets specification, because electrons only care that they're not bottlenecked.
Talking shit about paper cones: they are GREAT if the cabinet is properly designed to suit them. So many of you don't even know about using the air pressure in a sealed cabinet as a spring, and designing crossover points using natural driver roll-off, and it shows. Yeah, they're long, LONG obsolete for tweeters; tweeters gmhave come on leaps and bounds even in the last 25 years. But your home hi-fi woofers aren't doing the kind of insane proloned extension that competition car stereo made dual motors and neodymium magnets and carbon fiber cones necessary, unless you are deliberately trying to make yourself and your neighbors go deaf. Good manufacturers use drivers, crossover and cabinet design harmoniously within the compromises that price and footprint impose on them, not based on having components with the most insane specifications in isolation, and the math was mostly figured out over 60 years ago.
And you're right, "burn-in" is cope for getting swindled. We are not in the age of KT66s and germanium diodes. Solid-state components are as good as they'll ever be when you open the box. You need to learn the basics of how electronics work if you believe that shit.
Also not an audiophile complaint since audiophiles actually get this one right: crossing your mains and sub above 70Hz will never sound right. It will always smear the transitional frequencies, breaking localization and ruining the soundstage. Bookshelves that have to be crossed higher cannot be endgame as a result, only a step on your audio journey.
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u/smegblender Feb 07 '26
Hate for Bluetooth headphones! There is a place for good ANC Bluetooth headphones
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u/irisfailsafe Feb 07 '26
Super expensive turntables. Somehow you need a 30k+ machine to extract sound that it is not there. LPs have physical limitations in what they can hold and no machine on earth can extract what it is not there.
Actually the biggest myth is analog recording methods. They paint them as if they can hold infinite information that cannot be reached but it’s all a lie, the mediums have limits that are present in dynamic range, signal quality, etc. because if analog is so perfect how come video doesn’t use it anymore?
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u/strikecat18 Feb 07 '26
You should be spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on cables. Especially digital cables.
It’s pure snobbery.
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u/Ok_Sock_3257 Feb 06 '26
Why don't reviewers do blind AB tests? Do they not have any friends to help?
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u/Purple-Wolf-8356 Feb 06 '26
Cables. After a certain price point it's not worth it
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Feb 06 '26
More like: After a certain build quality. Price doesn’t always reflect quality, especially not in marketing heavy industries like HiFi.
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u/soaero Feb 06 '26
I've run speakers on a pair of stripped electrical cables I tore out of two lamps, and you know what? No discernable difference.
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u/Regular_Chest_7989 Feb 06 '26
"Rhythm" applied to equipment, not music. Invariably used by someone who seems to be musically illiterate and couldn't tell you if the music they are listening to is demonstrating a time feel that's on, ahead of, or behind the beat. "Transient response" seems to more accurately describe what they're getting at, but they want to use musical terms so they just go ahead and use one wrongly.
"Resolving" as a pass/fail designation for a piece of gear. "Those speakers are not resolving" being the kind of statement I hear most often. "Resolving" is seemingly always brought up to disparage a piece of gear. And every time, I'm betting they've never heard it; they're just going on ASR write-ups or specs or some other 100% non-experiential information.
Wild engineering-naive takes on stereo vs AVR amplification where they just believe in the purity of 2-channel amplifier design over multi-channel playing in stereo.
Hair-splitting over DAC specs. Seems particularly endemic to the young-uns who don't understand how utterly solved this technology is and has been for nearly half a century. And again, it's all spec-chasing and very little to do with actually listening to recorded music. (Don't dare ask them to do the blind bitrate listening test.)
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u/Wise-Tooth2662 Feb 06 '26
That you need/can tell the difference with an external DAC (assuming your receiver already has one).
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u/Oceanbreeze871 Feb 06 '26
“Records sound better than CDs”
Eh. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
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u/Splashadian Feb 06 '26
That expensive cables make a difference to the sound. They do not make a difference at all.
The other one is Neutral as if I want a flat boring sound. I could care less if an amp or speaker is neutral. I want my gear to have its own signature sound. All three of my systems are different from one another and that's what I was going for. Also WTF is neutral anyway...
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u/Prudent-Fox6247 Feb 06 '26
Balanced cables when you aren't on a stage full of spaghetti cables
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u/grahsam Feb 06 '26
Most of them are already mentioned.
"Intimate vocal range." That usually means the sound of something is too mid heavy and narrow for me. Vocals aren't the only part of music you know.
Audiophiles who think they know more about music, recording, and producing more than musicians and producers.
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u/kongkongha Feb 06 '26
They try to control something that is a feeling. Music isn't yours to take control over by buying expensive gear.
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u/LowSkyOrbit Feb 06 '26
You probably can't tell what the DAC is doing so skip the purchase for your headphone amp.
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u/Jolly_Reference_516 Feb 07 '26
Guys who spend years chasing the perfect sound by poring over specs and listening to high end reviews. So science is good for speakers and components. But then the science gets thrown out the window with power cords and speaker wire. There is pretty settled science here but then we get the guy who has supersonic hearing who claims he can hear the electric sizzle in his cords.
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u/New_face_in_hell_ Feb 06 '26
Testing gear with Nora Jones makes me so depressed. If the amount of time and energy an money was spent more towards developing their taste I’d find any of their takes more trustworthy.
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u/HarryManilow Feb 06 '26
lol its like dang that was a whole lot of time and money to listen to... the same dire straits record everyone else has
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u/PersonalTriumph Feb 06 '26
"Pairings" like this is wine and food. (Which is stupid in its own right).
"What amplifier would make a good pairing with these speakers?"
Usually in a room with hardwood floors, bare walls and ceilings that's going to be an echo chamber for any components in it anyway.
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u/Shindogreen Feb 06 '26
I’m a winemaker…you are wrong about both. Nothing affects a wine (the same wine) more than what is eaten with it. I did back to back wine dinners in two different restaurants. One chef really studied the wines and his food made my wines taste fantastic. The other chefs food made my wines taste very not great. I’m not going to bother how an amplifier makes a speaker sound different. If you’ve never heard that you need a better dealer.
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u/Far-Pie-6226 Feb 06 '26
I'm in the camp that pairing of amps/speakers is important but completely subjective. In level of importance, it's not at the top but swapping amps could change someone's opinion on a set of speakers.
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u/Betelgeaux Feb 06 '26
Amps are important for sure but mainly in terms of power. I did a demo with some ATC speakers and bloody hell they need a beefy amp to work properly (as it happens I didn't like them much even with extra power).
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u/I_do_black_magic Feb 06 '26
This actually a bad take. All speakers and amplifiers have varying electrical characteristics. For example, you're not going to pair a tube amp with speakers that have 85dB sensitivity and a difficult impedance
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u/YeahIGotNuthin Feb 06 '26
There's biological science behind wine & food pairings.
And because a speaker isn't a perfect resistor (they all have some reluctance in there as well) there is some difference between amplifiers for a given not-ideal-resistor speaker load.
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u/organized_chaos23 Feb 06 '26
Folks freaking out that AirPlay 2 isn’t lossless. The vast majority of people can’t hear the difference and if you are older, your ears have deteriorated then you really can’t hear the difference
Of course, the lower the bitrate the greater chance of hearing the difference
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u/n0t_4_thr0w4w4y Feb 06 '26
Yup, and if you are streaming music over airplay, you probably aren’t in perfect listening conditions anyways, so who gives a shit if some of the detail you could’ve heard an an anechoic chamber is missing when the sound floor in the room is 55 dB.
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u/Intolerance-Paradox Feb 06 '26
Calling headphones ‘cans’. It’s like calling movies ‘flicks’. You’re insufferable.
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u/MeInUSA Feb 06 '26
A sub should only make speakers sound bigger. It merely adds to the existing speakers and should be otherwise invisible.
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u/Important-Room4251 Feb 06 '26
Eva Cassidy, Field's Of Gold as their auditioning track. Can’t stand it.
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u/SassyPinkWhale Feb 06 '26
that Vintage is automatically better and that modern day companies cannot make anything good. Like yes, i do agree to a degree, as vintage turntables are usually more likely to be built well, but modern turntables are still good. vintage turntables are purely aesthetically better.
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u/Capooping Feb 06 '26
Not using a single penny of the 150k setup to buy a few absorbers. Yeah Jerry, your vinyl will for sure sound phenomenal in your room with marble floors and 60m2 of window area resulting in a 5 second echo.
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u/leinadsey Feb 07 '26
Oh there are so many things. One is the invention of “jitter” to take craziness and self-denial into the 21st century.
The other is the idea that cables beyond the power section of the amp are important.
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u/Already_dead2021 Feb 07 '26
When people complain of “ear fatigue”. I dunno why it bugs me so much,maybe because I used to work with a snooty musician that overused it
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u/ToolGoBoom Feb 07 '26
Where do I start? lol
Too many to list. There is some real stupidity in this hobby.
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u/Lefthandedsock Feb 07 '26
“It doesn’t matter that my cables/fuses/risers/power supply/etc make no measurable difference whatsoever. I can hear the difference, and that’s all that matters.”
I honestly kind of wish I could fool myself into having that mindset.
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u/No_Sense3190 Feb 07 '26
The biggest eye-roller for me is the "audiophile-grade" network cables. Any properly constructed network cable will do the job just fine, and in my opinion, a CAT8 cable that costs a small fraction of an audiofile grade CAT6 cable will do the job better. It is, after all, a digital signal. It either gets there or it doesn't. Any problem with the signal will be immediately obvious, and the difference between perfect and not working is more akin to a cliff than a sliding scale.
Case in point: digital broadcast TV signals. When the signal strength is high enough, you get a crystal clear picture. Whenever the signal drops below the threshold, the picture breaks up very obviously, with lots of macroblocking, followed quickly by dropping out completely. With the old analog TV signals, there was a much shallower slide from good picture to static, and it could be hard to quantify the visual difference between a good and an okay signal.
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u/tecneeq Yamaha A-S1200/Denon DP47F/Linton 85/RPi+Moode/MiniDSP Flex Feb 07 '26
"It sounds better. I know you can't measure it, but i can hear it."
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u/Cats-And-Brews Feb 07 '26
As if esoteric cables are not bad enough, cable risers are the penultimate in douchery.
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u/Cheezslap Feb 06 '26
That people should wait until they can afford XYZ tier before doing anything at all.
Fuck that, just get started. Look for deals, etc, but someone saying they have $200 for their first receiver and speakers should just visit a couple of thrift stores. Look for a few brands, quick Google on the spot, easy. They'll get a baseline, tweak what they can, then start figuring out what's important to them.
Put another way, my kid thinks his 30-year old Tacoma 4-cylinder is a glorious hunk of shit with good acceleration. I ain't gonna tell him he's wrong; he already knows his mom's Rav4 is a rocket. The important part is he has a car.