Are you an audiophile?

Without a doubt, yes. Many years of performing music have developed my hearing extensively, and I can tell a distinct difference between low-end and high-end sound. For the moment, my Hi-Fi setup is limited merely to headphones, although I may finally make the jump this summer and pick up a decent speaker rig (Likely a Pair of B&W DM601S3 or 602S3, haven't decided on a proper Amp/Receiver yet).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Being an audiophile doesn't mean that you hate low-quality recordings, Minion. My personal favorite CD was recorded in 1977. Is it as full and rich as some modern recordings I have of the songs? No. But the precision and style are still there.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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Nobody needs a pair of AKG K-1000 headphones. (Headspeakers?)

Need. There's an interesting term. Do any of us NEED Headphones or Speakers or any sort? They're certainly not essential to my survival.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Megalith

Let me tell you all a little secret.

Nobody actually stores lossless formats on drives, unless they are serving the releases.

Then how exactly ARE they stored? Because everyone I know (including myself) stores their lossless albums on drives.

How ya doing, buddy?

Do I insist on all my music being lossless? No. But with the exception of a few old CDs I've lost track of and can't find to re-rip, everything I OWN is in lossless or VBR and everything else I have is in 192CBR, LAME, or better. Personally, I only rip a disc to lossless when (A) It's very well mastered and (B) I absolutely love the tracks on it. Anything else I'm fine with VBR for my computer setup. But computers are lousy Hi-Fi sources anyway. Even if you get an EMU0404 or something it still won't compare to a good SACD player.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Dojomaster, there are MUCH better choices for far less. Heck, at $90-100, look at the Sennheiser HD-280. Very, very flat, detailed, cans. Some people don't like them for music listening compared to other cans in the price range (although I find them very nice), but for mixing they're stunning. Once again I reccomend looking around http://www.head-fi.com

Oh, and the Koss KSC-35 and KSC-75 (as well as the dicontinued PortaPro) are strunning phones for the price. As others have said, they're not the most detailed, but they're very enjoyable to listen to.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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As for sound quality..... really, anything over 160 is pointless. That's CD quality and unless you are trying to listen for a difference, you probably won't hear one (and even then most people won't hear one, only people with really sensitive, tuned ears will). At a certain point the human ear can't even hear it. This variable bitrate crap is a waste of space on the hard drive.

The "160Kbps is CD quality" is a myth. They used to say that about 128Kbps too. Fact of the matter is that CD Quality is 44,100 samples per second of 16-bit audio data in 2 channels. That's (Roughly) 1200Kbps. MP3, OGG, and all of the other popular non-lossless audio formats use compression formulas that throw out and lose data; thus, they are inherently NOT CD-quality. Lossless formats are essentially like taking a WAV file and putting it in a ZIP or RAR Archive - smaller file, but no data is lost, preserving full CD quality.

FELIPE NO

In other words, you base your life on other people's perceptions?

Threads don't turn you into an audiophile. Hearing really good music on really good equipment (or any variation on the "hearing sound better than I've ever heard before" theme) does.

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I couldnt care less what the bitrate is. the system youre playing stuff on is way more important. 128kbps sounds fine on a good stereo. plus most of my stuff is on CD/vinyl anyway.

An audio setup is only as good as the weakest link. And 128kbps is a pretty goddamn weak link.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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true but my point is it still sounds good.
its like comparing DVD to high def; obviously higher definition looks better but DVDs look fine.
I guess this means I cant be in audiophile club.

While I can see your point, in fact it's like comparing old grainy black-and-white picked-up-with-an-antenna TV to the latest HDTV images. 128kbps loses an insane amount of information. I mean, I could tell the difference between 128 and 160 (and higher) back on my Plantronics p90, and nowadays with my Senns (either pair) or a decent set of speakers..... yeah.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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OK, I have a few questions for audiophiles.
1st - Let's say you got a song from the internet, or downloading or whatever, but definitely NOT from ripping CD. You don't like the sound quality of it because it's 128 (or lower) and is CBR. What would you do? I'm asking in the case that you really love the song and do not want to toss it away. My question is you would not convert it to VBR or even lossless or FLAC, would you? WHat I'm guessing is since its quality is "not good", you cannot convert it to a higher standard to make it "good", right? Just like you cannot burn a 128 mp3 to CD and make it sounds like a real CD, isn't it? What would you do in case you're a hardcore audiophile and you just want everything high birate?

You can't add quality that's not there. Period. End of story. You have to get the file in a higher bitrate somehow. Either search the internet forever or, you know, you could actually BUY the song. Most music that I like I end up buying. And the stuff that's not worth buying I quite often delete to make room for better stuff, which I usually end up buying. It's a long cycle.

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2nd - Putting hardware aside, will sound effect plug-in from soundcard program or music player affect your judgement between ... say 128 and 192? With the EAX program come with the Creative Audigy deluxe that I own and winamp's equalizer, I can pimp a 96 sounds nearly as good as a 160 or around that. I can't tell the difference between 128 and 300 if I leave all my setting on.

All those settings ever do is equalize stuff, which I hate. I have an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum (I bought the 2ZS for gaming and had an opportunity to purchase the front panel later for $10 and decided what the hell), and all of its various crystalization options only lower the end audio quality to my ears. Also, with an Audigy series card, get foobar2000 and have it upsample the output to 48000Hz. Most programs output at 44100Hz, which the Audigy 2 then internally upscales, but its internal algorithm sucks.

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3rd - The one above leads me to this one. Do you leave your sound effect setting the same with every song you listen to? For the home system, some people prefer real equalizer to make sound the way they like. But, will audiophiles (who have equalizer) come and change the setting as songs go? I think it must be a pain.

I don't equalize anything. Nor do most of the "audiophiles" I know. But I do know some that change it depending on the song.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek

What I want to know is when did being an audiophile have so much to do with the manner in which you encode your audio? There is a lot more to being an audiophile than being able to tell the difference between an uncompressed WAV file and an Mp3.

A fantastic point. Audio is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain (million dollar cable freaks excluded from this argument). People go nuts worrying about how they encode their (usually horribly mastered) CDs and then play them through iBuds. Talk about screwed up priorities.

I've found the SR-60 to actually be one of the more forgiving high-end pairs of headphones I've owned. My HD-580 can put out better audio quality than even my AV-710+Pimeta can channel to them, but they're tolerable with lower grade stuff (you know it when you hear it, however). My HD-280 are flat and analytical, which leads to them being incredibly harsh on low-quality recordings. My SR-60 are great cans, and in my opinion scale up lower quality recordings better than the other two. They're the pair I listen to the least, but they're good for that use.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

The Aria's a heck of an amp, but good luck tracking one down. I managed to hear one at a Head-Fi meet that happened in Chicago when I was there, and it's stunning, but due to its limited nature, finding one isn't always a simple matter.

I was speaking idiomatically.

They do? I was unaware of that if it's the case. All the better then.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Ignoring for a moment how bad that is for your ears, I find that differences in quality (of equipment at least, haven't done extended testing of this with source files) is much more evident at moderately loud volumes.

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Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek

From a technical perspective, digital is far superior to analog, (if "analog" in this context is refers to vinyl records). The available dynamic range is greater,

This strikes me as intuitively wrong, but even if it's not, 99% of digital masterings/recordings have the dynamic range so compressed that it's horribly wrong in practice anyway.

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It may sound good, yes, but it isn't realistic.

And the reason I spend so much on audio isn't for a 'realistic' reproduction, it's for one that sounds good. And I don't even use vinyl. Imagine that.

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There is no reason to believe a properly recorded, mixed, and mastered CD will sound worse or somehow contain less musical information than a record.

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44,100 samples per second at 16 bits per sample is more than enough.

"More than enough"? Look, it's simple math: A continuous (i.e. analog) scale has an infintely greater amount of precision than even the most precise discrete (i.e. digital) scale. Period. If you want to claim that you can't hear a difference, that's an argument you could make. But to claim that there is no difference in information, or, worse, that there's no reason to believe that there's more information, is absolutely wrong.

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Eventually, the sampled digital waveform will have to be sent to a DAC in order to be converted into an analog electrical signal, otherwise there would be no way to play it through speakers or headphones.

Actually, there are now 100% digital amplifiers that literally amp the digital signal without a DAC. See the Panasonic XR-57 for one example.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?