fair

Responses from fair

Have we lost civility and respect on Audio forums?
I wish you a merry christmas and in the name of all a warm  welcome in audiogon ... 🎄 Thank you. Merry Christmas to you too!  
Have we lost civility and respect on Audio forums?
When a reliably observable phenomenon can't be explained within the boundaries of existing paradigm, what would a wise person do? Change the paradigm! Cables in audio is one example. People do hear the differences. Yet the cables electrical param... 
What is meant exactly by the description 'more musical'?
Dear @mahgister, @rauliruegas, we agree on about 75%, yet there is still a remaining topic of the gear that musicians, recording engineers, mixing engineers, and mastering engineers use. These music professionals pick the gear according to their ... 
What is meant exactly by the description 'more musical'?
Let's look at objective measurements of four audiophile-grade amplifiers mentioned in this thread as "musical" (some of them may be not exact model mentioned, yet shall be close enough in "amp family sound"): https://www.stereophile.com/content/p... 
Active ATC vs Spendor / Pass Labs
You shouldn't notice the large ATCs changing sound character between low, mid, and high loudness levels. They are designed and made to behave that way. Before buying, I'd recommend demoing much more of both of them, listening to music you usually... 
New sound immersion processes
I think the adoption of immersive audio formats is tightly linked to the effect of critical mass. Critical mass of records. Critical mass of gear. Indeed, listening to a well-mixed Dolby Atmos record through an audio system built to Dolby specs i... 
The best part about MQA bankruptcy..
According to this reasonably recent Netflix Tech Blog post, the highest they stream at is 11.8 Mbps: https://netflixtechblog.com/optimized-shot-based-encodes-for-4k-now-streaming-47b516b10bbb. For 192/24 uncompressed stereo audio streaming, we ha... 
USB yet again
On one hand, what shall matter is the final digital to analog conversion, inside a properly designed and manufactured DAC. All those intermediate digital-to-digital converters, theoretically, shall not affect SQ. On the other hand, I keep seeing ... 
Who says studio monitors are "cold and analytical"?
Studio monitors are tools of trade. Specialized ones. NS-10, for instance, has ludicrously good transient response, allowing mixing engineer to hear minute nuances in critical midrange, where vocals and instruments tend to crowd out each other in... 
Why is everyone so down on MQA?
  @dalims4 From the very same Web page: "... our encoders remove the audible ‘digital blur’ that builds up in studio production." "But a lossless file is just a digital container ..." So, they modify the digital master first, and then l... 
Thorsten Loesch vs Amir
My take: both Loesch and Amir are right about certain things and are wrong about others. Like all humans are. Let me highlight things I believe are of interest to audiophiles. (A) Loesch is wrong about equivalence of SINAD and THD. Amir is right ... 
Best digital format (non streaming)
Assuming context of a high-quality studio master. It depends on genres of music you are listening to. For "simple" music, e.g. "a girl and an acoustic guitar", majority of pop songs, 16/44.1 CD format is more than sufficient. To cover "complex"... 
Why is everyone so down on MQA?
@painter24 MQA was not really a solution for a problem that didn't exist; to my mind, it was a thinly veiled, cynical attempt to ring fence and monopolise the streaming market. It was never about giving the end user a superior listening experi... 
Why is everyone so down on MQA?
People are mostly down on MQA because: (A) Tidal encoded significant number of 44/16, that is, CD-quality files, with MQA. This was not a smart move, because compression inherent in MQA took its toll on a format that wasn’t highly resolving to st... 
Has anyone been able to define well or measure differences between vinyl and digital?
Some references I found informative. Level I Popular level. Summarizes pros and cons, remaining in old paradigm, e.g. in regard to dynamic range estimation.   Level II Somewhat technical level. Parts 1-5 provide good overview of LP tec...