Devialet Silver Phantom audio speaker

[crank]

[quote="Shrunk";p="2495228"][quote="crank";p="2495029"]We've had this discussion before, about 6 years ago, I think this is the company I called, to talk about their $25 switch outlet covers, which I see are now $30. The high end audio market is so full of shit, it is almost impossible to tell if it's parody. Like the rightwingers come to think of it.[/quote]

Yes. And while Machina Dynamica is generally treated as a joke in the audio press, when it gets any attention at all, Nordost is generally discussed in serious and reverent tones. I suppose that's the difference between charging $30 for your snake oil, and $60,000.

And the same question remains: Does Nordost really believe the pricing for their cables is justified? Or are they laughing all the way to the bank?[/quote]
Considering how I'm never surprised by how delusional some folk are, or how devious and crooked others are, it makes it too hard to tell. Oh, for a bug in their board room, or, better yet, in their labs. One possibility is to look at their employees, the engineers, and see if any have published papers in respected journals, and even more interesting, is how often have they tried and failed? If they're legit, there should be a string of papers on their technology published by respected journals or magazines, if they haven't even tried, I'd say that's a tell, they're just con men.

[electricwhiteboy]

[quote="crank";p="2495221"]It isn't true that sound engineers always use headphones, maybe while mixing, but they often use monitors of some kind when they are recording.[/quote]

Not quite right.

You will see the artist with headphones on whilst playing or singing. This is to get a nice clean take with out the mic picking up the backing track. You will still get some bleed from the headphones, but this can be minimised.

The sound engineer and producer will be listening on monitors in the control room. Mixing, mastering and playback will always be done using studio monitors. Only after the mix was complete would you then try out headphones, car stereos etc, to see what the mix sounded like "in the real world."

"Headphones lie" is a mantra in the industry. The position of the cans over your ears and other factors can drastically alter the perception of the sound. For recording you need the only variable to be the changes you are making on the desk, or the position of the microphone. An acoustically treated room and high quality very transparent speakers are the order of the day.

[Macdoc]

And those studio monitors are near field like LS35a's or the current equivalent and small - no flapping shirts from these



http://www.wirerealm.com/guides/top-10- ... r-speakers

This is one of our clients....he bought some RAM today for his home studio but thats our 12 core MacPro lurking under the desk they just upgraded.



One thing you cannot get adequatelyfrom headphones is a 3d sound field compared to studio speakers tho the open back cans do a decent job of that...I just prefer the ambient sound attenuation from closed.

This is a very balanced article on the subject.
http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/r ... l/131.html

He makes the case for Headphones ( also for monitors as well _

But this sums my reasoning - from the article - and I am listening not mixing.

The case for headphones as monitors

There are many situations where headphones have the potential to offer a higher quality of sound than loudspeakers:

• They are not dependent on room acoustics, which can vary tremendously. As a sound reference that is consistent from venue to venue, headphones are a uniquely practical solution.

• Most practical high-quality loudspeakers use more than one driver for each channel and need a crossover network of some sort. The potential for sonic problems with this arrangement has always been a challenge for speaker designers. Headphones can bypass such problems entirely by using a single driver for each channel.

• There is no agreement as to the ideal polar radiation pattern for a loudspeaker. A variety of approaches are found in both consumer and professional settings, and they all interact with the listening room in different ways. With headphones this is not a consideration, let alone a problem.

• The very characteristic that makes the most difference in the way headphones sound—the lack of interaural crosstalk—makes them revealing of details in a recording to a degree that no conventional loudspeaker setup can match. This is one reason why many classical music engineers use them: if you need to catch things like that smudged entrance in the second violins or a fluffed note by the bassoonist, headphones will tell you about it much quicker than loudspeakers will.

• This same precision in rendering detail makes headphones superior for editing stereo program material. They reveal what is really going on at the splice point much more readily than loudspeakers—most of the time. (I’ll let Jerry Bruck tell you about the exceptions in just a bit.)

There are many practical advantages to using headphones as well:

• They are lightweight and portable.

• Dynamic-element phones have no need for large, powerful, expensive amplifiers. Suitable headphone amps are already built into a lot of recording equipment, and separate headphone amps are usually small and cheap compared to speaker amplifiers.

• Closed-back headphones provide some isolation from your surroundings, making it possible to monitor where it would otherwise be difficult or impossible.

• Some headphones are capable of deep bass response normally found only in very large full-range loudspeakers or in subwoofers. If you record pipe organs for a living, you may find this useful.

• Did I mention that they are lightweight and portable?

Even the more expensive top quality headphones offer more “bang for the buck” than loudspeakers. For example, the Sennheiser HD 580 has a street price of about $250. This gets you dynamic element headphones that are considered to be near-equivalent to the most esoteric electrostatic models. Loudspeakers with equivalent sonic performance could easily cost five times as much, or more.

and I use 580s

[The_Metatron]

Well, I'm over fifty years old, and have been exposed to some damaging sound pressures over the years. The little hairs aren't all there any more, by a long shot.

Anything more sophisticated than a Bose Wave is pretty much a waste of resources for most people my age. You simply can't hear what you once could.

Except for a nice set of headphones. If I really want the details, I use headphones.

Even in that field of audio equipment, there is a steep curve of diminishing returns. I have a pair of nice Klipsch Reference One headphones, that sound very nice indeed:

.

But, they don't sound anywhere near ten times as good as a pair of these sub-$40 SE-MJ151 headphones from Pioneer:



I'm not very sure there's even an appreciable difference, except the Reference Ones have iPhone controls and the Pioneers do not.

[crank]

[quote="electricwhiteboy";p="2495253"][quote="crank";p="2495221"]It isn't true that sound engineers always use headphones, maybe while mixing, but they often use monitors of some kind when they are recording.[/quote]

Not quite right.

You will see the artist with headphones on whilst playing or singing. This is to get a nice clean take with out the mic picking up the backing track. You will still get some bleed from the headphones, but this can be minimised.

The sound engineer and producer will be listening on monitors in the control room. Mixing, mastering and playback will always be done using studio monitors. Only after the mix was complete would you then try out headphones, car stereos etc, to see what the mix sounded like "in the real world."

"Headphones lie" is a mantra in the industry. The position of the cans over your ears and other factors can drastically alter the perception of the sound. For recording you need the only variable to be the changes you are making on the desk, or the position of the microphone. An acoustically treated room and high quality very transparent speakers are the order of the day.[/quote]
This agrees with what I thought, but I'm not all that knowledgeable, just seen and heard of the producers/sound guys sitting in their soundproof room and they didn't wear headphones, and seen lots of speakers touted as chosen by sound engineers everywhere, or some such. I was giving the benefit of the doubt to Macdoc about somewhere in the chain they used headphones.

[crank]

[quote="Macdoc";p="2495289"]And those studio monitors are near field like LS35a's or the current equivalent and small - no flapping shirts from these



http://www.wirerealm.com/guides/top-10- ... r-speakers

This is one of our clients....he bought some RAM today for his home studio but thats our 12 core MacPro lurking under the desk they just upgraded.



One thing you cannot get adequatelyfrom headphones is a 3d sound field compared to studio speakers tho the open back cans do a decent job of that...I just prefer the ambient sound attenuation from closed.

This is a very balanced article on the subject.
http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/r ... l/131.html

He makes the case for Headphones ( also for monitors as well _

But this sums my reasoning - from the article - and I am listening not mixing.

The case for headphones as monitors

There are many situations where headphones have the potential to offer a higher quality of sound than loudspeakers:

• They are not dependent on room acoustics, which can vary tremendously. As a sound reference that is consistent from venue to venue, headphones are a uniquely practical solution.

• Most practical high-quality loudspeakers use more than one driver for each channel and need a crossover network of some sort. The potential for sonic problems with this arrangement has always been a challenge for speaker designers. Headphones can bypass such problems entirely by using a single driver for each channel.

• There is no agreement as to the ideal polar radiation pattern for a loudspeaker. A variety of approaches are found in both consumer and professional settings, and they all interact with the listening room in different ways. With headphones this is not a consideration, let alone a problem.

• The very characteristic that makes the most difference in the way headphones sound—the lack of interaural crosstalk—makes them revealing of details in a recording to a degree that no conventional loudspeaker setup can match. This is one reason why many classical music engineers use them: if you need to catch things like that smudged entrance in the second violins or a fluffed note by the bassoonist, headphones will tell you about it much quicker than loudspeakers will.

• This same precision in rendering detail makes headphones superior for editing stereo program material. They reveal what is really going on at the splice point much more readily than loudspeakers—most of the time. (I’ll let Jerry Bruck tell you about the exceptions in just a bit.)

There are many practical advantages to using headphones as well:

• They are lightweight and portable.

• Dynamic-element phones have no need for large, powerful, expensive amplifiers. Suitable headphone amps are already built into a lot of recording equipment, and separate headphone amps are usually small and cheap compared to speaker amplifiers.

• Closed-back headphones provide some isolation from your surroundings, making it possible to monitor where it would otherwise be difficult or impossible.

• Some headphones are capable of deep bass response normally found only in very large full-range loudspeakers or in subwoofers. If you record pipe organs for a living, you may find this useful.

• Did I mention that they are lightweight and portable?

Even the more expensive top quality headphones offer more “bang for the buck” than loudspeakers. For example, the Sennheiser HD 580 has a street price of about $250. This gets you dynamic element headphones that are considered to be near-equivalent to the most esoteric electrostatic models. Loudspeakers with equivalent sonic performance could easily cost five times as much, or more.

and I use 580s[/quote]
Ho hum. Do you even know what you're arguing? First it was 'I actually used to plug a sub in and Pioneer had a cool chair that provided subsonics for that purpose. ' presumably because headphones were not providing an aspect that added something to the experience and you supplied that with the subs, and you added " let's face it....the music is created with the guys with cans on their head in charge." electricwhiteboy backs up my claim that that isn't actually true, and now you're providing support for my disagreement with you. And it's something that is actually irrelevant to the argument. So I'll just repeat what I keep saying, that headphones have this rather serious limitation in providing a realistic reproduction of sound, a limitation you also used to get around with subs. That you no longer care about missing that is irrelevant, I can't help it that you somehow want to assert that it isn't anything important just because you no longer care about that aspect of the sound. It's quite clearly something important to many audiophiles, guys that listen only to premium recordings of classical music with extremely expensive systems, with the $$ spent on real quality, not the woo, and they will not be happy without their subs and the experience they provide. What relevance the apple 12-core has is beyond me. The added stuff on headphone promoted as the better way for engineers to work is not germane to the argument, take that up with electricwhiteboy.

[crank]

[quote="The_Metatron";p="2495299"]Well, I'm over fifty years old, and have been exposed to some damaging sound pressures over the years. The little hairs aren't all there any more, by a long shot.

Anything more sophisticated than a Bose Wave is pretty much a waste of resources for most people my age. You simply can't hear what you once could.

Except for a nice set of headphones. If I really want the details, I use headphones.

Even in that field of audio equipment, there is a steep curve of diminishing returns. I have a pair of nice Klipsch Reference One headphones, that sound very nice indeed:

.

But, they don't sound anywhere near ten times as good as a pair of these sub-$40 SE-MJ151 headphones from Pioneer:



I'm not very sure there's even an appreciable difference, except the Reference Ones have iPhone controls and the Pioneers do not.[/quote]
I'm well over 50, and not only have the normal hearing loss of decrepitude, but tinnitus, there's cicadas going at it in my head every waking moment. So you lose some of the high end, it isn't like you've lost all hearing acuity because of that. That's one of the benefits of being a bass freak, you don't lose that side of the spectrum, the hairs are too robust to break off like the ones for the high-end. One other bright spot is that it's likely they'll be able to fix this before too long, we can join the growing ranks of the cyborg class.

[The_Metatron]

That tinnitus sucks. I think I have it, but very mild. I don't find my internal noise to be any louder now than I remember in my youth.

Throw us a link to read about that cyborg-thing, eh?

[Macdoc]

. What relevance the apple 12-core has is beyond me. The added stuff on headphone promoted as the better way for engineers to work is not germane to the argument, take that up with electricwhiteboy.

Because our clients are mixing music professionally and they don't need or want subs.....that's the relevance....you want to flap the curtains in an uncontrolled room and think it's "realistic" by all means buy the woo.

Pro audio clients use both headphones and studio monitors for mixing....I just asked a couple of the owners we deal with.
DId you actually read the article.?

BTW the chair was done for movie listening and was designed by the head of Pioneer in the 70s for his own use ....we brought a could in for fun.


It had nothing to do with accurate sound

[LucidFlight]

Heh... an Apple... with 12 cores....

[Macdoc]

and?
Many of our pro audio clients have or are moving to 12 core 5,1s for the value for money over the 6,1s. 90% of the power, 30% of the price, RAM is cheap and lots of drive bays. 24 processing threads via hyperthreading ...what would you know about it anyways???

[LucidFlight]

Apple core. Never mind. Clearly I'm not cut out for this high-end talk

And, yeah, I don't know anything. Thanks for the condescension, though

Sorry I tried to make a joke.

[Macdoc]

cute ....- definitely outside the box tho.

[LucidFlight]

[quote="Macdoc";p="2495393"]and?
Many of our pro audio clients have or are moving to 12 core 5,1s for the value for money over the 6,1s. 90% of the power, 30% of the price, RAM is cheap and lots of drive bays. 24 processing threads via hyperthreading ...what would you know about it anyways???[/quote]

By the way, what' s a core 5,1s? Is that like a core i5? And what's a 6,1s? I've heard of the i7, however. I'm just not familiar with these numbers, sorry. Apologies if this is off topic. Just curious.

[Scot Dutchy]

I'm well over 50, and not only have the normal hearing loss of decrepitude, but tinnitus, there's cicadas going at it in my head every waking moment. So you lose some of the high end, it isn't like you've lost all hearing acuity because of that. That's one of the benefits of being a bass freak, you don't lose that side of the spectrum, the hairs are too robust to break off like the ones for the high-end. One other bright spot is that it's likely they'll be able to fix this before too long, we can join the growing ranks of the cyborg class.

A fellow sufferer.

I am over 65 and 40% deaf. My tinnitus is horrendous and also 24/7. I have usually two sounds at about 8000 hertz and 120 decibels when it is really rough. Pleasure in music listening has been taken away from me for years. My tinnitus has nothing to do with hairs but the receptors in my brain which are firing away on their own. If this will ever get fixed is highly improbable.
Anyway one plus point I dont have to worry about exotic sound systems which I was into back in the 70's.

[Alan B]

Age related hearing loss ain't funny. I used to enjoy music (mostly classical) in my HiFi days. Now a soprano has THD added and the NHS hearing aids are not designed for music...
My left side has a notch in the sound curve which was due to shotgun and rifle use (I fired left-handed because of a left Master-Eye).

[crank]

[quote="Scot Dutchy";p="2495464"][quote="crank";p="2495464"]I'm well over 50, and not only have the normal hearing loss of decrepitude, but tinnitus, there's cicadas going at it in my head every waking moment. So you lose some of the high end, it isn't like you've lost all hearing acuity because of that. That's one of the benefits of being a bass freak, you don't lose that side of the spectrum, the hairs are too robust to break off like the ones for the high-end. One other bright spot is that it's likely they'll be able to fix this before too long, we can join the growing ranks of the cyborg class.[/quote]

A fellow sufferer.

I am over 65 and 40% deaf. My tinnitus is horrendous and also 24/7. I have usually two sounds at about 8000 hertz and 120 decibels when it is really rough. Pleasure in music listening has been taken away from me for years. My tinnitus has nothing to do with hairs but the receptors in my brain which are firing away on their own. If this will ever get fixed is highly improbable.
Anyway one plus point I dont have to worry about exotic sound systems which I was into back in the 70's.[/quote]
We've discussed this before, but not about the receptors in the brain vs the cochlea hairs, I was wondering about why you said you were not a candidate for some kind of artificial hearing tech. Are the two sounds pure tones? If so, could you try to counter them with an out-of-phase real sound?

[crank]

[quote="The_Metatron";p="2495377"]That tinnitus sucks. I think I have it, but very mild. I don't find my internal noise to be any louder now than I remember in my youth.

Throw us a link to read about that cyborg-thing, eh?[/quote]
My assertion was from stuff I've come across over the years, about how they know enough about hearing that direct stimulus of the brain should be doable before too long, meaning bypassing the whole ear apparatus. It isn''t something I've looked into or heard about recently.

[crank]

[quote="Macdoc";p="2495389"]

. What relevance the apple 12-core has is beyond me. The added stuff on headphone promoted as the better way for engineers to work is not germane to the argument, take that up with electricwhiteboy.

Because our clients are mixing music professionally and they don't need or want subs.....that's the relevance....you want to flap the curtains in an uncontrolled room and think it's "realistic" by all means buy the woo.

Pro audio clients use both headphones and studio monitors for mixing....I just asked a couple of the owners we deal with.
DId you actually read the article.?

BTW the chair was done for movie listening and was designed by the head of Pioneer in the 70s for his own use ....we brought a could in for fun.


It had nothing to do with accurate sound[/quote]
So, you flipflop on the headphones in studios again, now they're not used, oh look, another flip in the very next paragraph!!!, monitors are used. YOU are the guy who brought up headphones, implying they aren't used by professional recording engineers, I only said I thought they are used, never that headphones weren't used. Plus, your clients are mixing, and I specifically mentioned I thought mixing was much more likely where headphones would be used. Are you arguing with me or yourself?


The 12-core BS was obviously irrelevant. A side question, irrelevant as it is, and that I recognize as irrelevant, do audio engineers generally want massive compute power? I don't know, I'm sure it would make some things faster, the demands of audio processing are miniscule compared to video processing. If they do, it seems like the processing software programmers would try to utilize the GPUs, which would likely make more difference than throwing cores at the job.

So, as I keep saying, you fail to grasp the argument since you keep insisting I'm saying that 'flapping the curtains' is more realistic, where did that daft BS come from? What I did say, am saying and you've done nothing to refute it, is that headphone experience is deficient in that they can't reproduce the low-frequency dynamics that are part of the sound, period. If the original source was flapping the curtains, then I would bet my sub could do a better job reproducing that than any headphone ever made or or were possible to make.

This is I think the third time I've restated the issue, you are quite persistent in misconstruing it, and consistently so. What good is this? Why the persistence? It's like having all 12 core working feverishly on bad data, the extra cores ain't buying you anything, GIGO. What's really horrible is my new sub didn't come in, I read it wrong, it's next monday before I can make my curtains flappier.

[Scot Dutchy]

[quote="crank";p="2495858"][quote="Scot Dutchy";p="2495464"][quote="crank";p="2495464"]I'm well over 50, and not only have the normal hearing loss of decrepitude, but tinnitus, there's cicadas going at it in my head every waking moment. So you lose some of the high end, it isn't like you've lost all hearing acuity because of that. That's one of the benefits of being a bass freak, you don't lose that side of the spectrum, the hairs are too robust to break off like the ones for the high-end. One other bright spot is that it's likely they'll be able to fix this before too long, we can join the growing ranks of the cyborg class.[/quote]

A fellow sufferer.

I am over 65 and 40% deaf. My tinnitus is horrendous and also 24/7. I have usually two sounds at about 8000 hertz and 120 decibels when it is really rough. Pleasure in music listening has been taken away from me for years. My tinnitus has nothing to do with hairs but the receptors in my brain which are firing away on their own. If this will ever get fixed is highly improbable.
Anyway one plus point I dont have to worry about exotic sound systems which I was into back in the 70's.[/quote]
We've discussed this before, but not about the receptors in the brain vs the cochlea hairs, I was wondering about why you said you were not a candidate for some kind of artificial hearing tech. Are the two sounds pure tones? If so, could you try to counter them with an out-of-phase real sound?[/quote]

There is nothing. Believe me. I was with a work group last year. All had tried various technical options from masking to playing around with other sounds. It is not that simple but also very little research is being done. Not much money to made in curing tinnitus.