this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
30 points (100.0% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
54565 readers
467 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
💰 Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It is not about the price. You can buy great stuff for $500 altogether, and you can only splash $500 for one piece of a sound chain, which was not really necessary in the first place (often people buy super expensive headphones and then listen on a cheap Android phone some 128 kbps MP3s - amazing, really!). It is all about balance. Personally, I do not aim for hi-end sound equipment, but I have also heard enough of the spectrum that I know I will not be satisfied with low-end devices.
That's why I settled for mid-tier offerings, and I am happy with my setup, knowing fully well that if anything goes bad, at least I will be able to replace it without taking a loan. After all, if you want to go hi-end, then you better have the cash to stay hi-end when necessary, and I have plenty of other hobbies to splash too much on sound.
I agree - especially in the audio world, you hit diminishing returns very fast on audio equipment.
This is still not an ABX test though. Placebo effect is very real in audio, and unless you're using a dedicated ABX test it's easy to claim that you are just "better trained" than everyone else. Above all else, the most important factor for determining "audio quality" is just volume. Setting up a proper test with exact volume matching is vital, otherwise everyone always picks the track that sounds slightly louder.
If you do not even have high-end audio equipment but can tell the difference between a lossless and (transparent) lossy format, then it should not be difficult to perform an ABX test and confirm this. If you do not know what sort of ABX tests can be used for this task, it makes me wonder how you've come to this conclusion about your ears and your equipment in the past. The level of precision needed to definitively pick a lossless codec over a transparent lossy codec requires such extensive test setups in order to be statistically significant.
If anyone else reading wants to have some fun with a not-airtight ABX test, try your ears on these tests. It's easy to handwave something like this due to it living in-browser and using hand-picked songs, but it's still a fun experiment to try.
I tried it for fun and yeah with my gear i can't hear any difference really.