Talk:Audio woo
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[edit] CD or not CD?
[edit] A popular subject
The blog post is going nuts. Part 2 was going to be the second half of this, but I have enough for a part 3 and 4 just on various Facebook comments. If we can polish this article up, it could be a very popular piece. It may need to be even longer, though - David Gerard (talk) 09:40, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
[edit] The most important part of the audio system
... is between the ears. 171.33.222.26 (talk) 18:12, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
[edit] Bunch of stuff
- "There exists an inverted class of audiophiles who claim that the sound of vinyl"
- How is this "inverted"? Nostalgia for vinyl despite its flaws is the same thing as nostalgia for tube amps despite their flaws.
- "an interesting school of thought given the analogue/digital audio debate"
- Huh? Vinyl vs digital is the analog/digital debate. What are you talking about?
- "However, the major stumbling blocks are the recording quality and later compression and manipulation of the original signal itself, the cost of better parts, and just how much any change actually increases quality. "
- What?
- "Explanations for why manufacturers ... perpetuate the myths of the subjective audio crowd are varied"
- Uh, greed?
- What's the gramophone picture here for?
- "to the point where scam artists have sold products claiming to make transistors function like tubes."
- How is that a scam?
- Different goals: for sound reproduction, a lot of this stuff is indeed bunk. For recording and live sound, however, a lot of it is perfectly valid. The non-linearities of tubes do produce a certain sound in a distorted guitar amplifier, and while it is *possible* to reproduce with transistors or DSP, it's easier to just slap a real tube in there. Likewise, microphone and guitar cables can have significant effects on the sound (piezoelectric/triboelectric noise as the mic cable moves around, high-frequency roll-off from high capacitance, etc) and are subject to much abuse, so more expensive cables can be genuinely better and more reliable. I think a lot of confusion comes just from people talking about "the tube sound of amplifiers" without specifying whether they are talking about a guitar amp (distortion is good) or a music reproduction amp (distortion is bad).
- Cables with gold-plated connectors: Good because they're resistant to corrosion, not because of the low resistivity of gold, which is irrelevant in series with the 100 ohm source impedance of whatever's driving the cable.
- "a cult developed around "treating" the playing surface of CDs with Armor-All (specifically) to improve the sound. "
- Does it fill in scratches? That could genuinely improve the sound. CD players are designed to interpolate small errors without most people noticing. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul98/articles/digitalbasics3.html http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/cd-recordable/2-17-Why-don-t-audio-CDs-use-error-correction.html
- Monoblocks are "generally considered overkill by sound engineers"? More like "underkill"? Cutting off the patient to save the leg?
- "reduce harmonic distortion (THD) was causing intermodulation distortion (IM) artifacts"
- No no no, THD and IMD are not different types of distortion. They're different ways of measuring the same distortion, by applying different signals. The exact same circuit will produce harmonic distortion if you put a sine wave into it, and intermodulation distortion if you put 2 sine waves (or music) into it.
- "and a 1:1 transformer can cut down on harmonics. Most amplifiers, though, will already use a transformer which naturally even out circuit harmonics"
- Hmm? Like, power line harmonics? Like you're filtering out the power line harmonics before full-wave rectifying it, which produces way more harmonics than were ever there in the first place? Maybe you mean something about isolation transformer and ground loops? Hmmph (talk) 03:26, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
[edit] Article contradicts itself
The "Sometimes right" section refers to low impedance headphones in the same context as the "Useful things" section refers to them as high impedance - I think it's the latter which is wrong 124.168.75.32 (talk) 09:38, 23 July 2014 (UTC) HuwG