I'm one of those audiophiles who go on about speaker settings and placement, cables and DACs to play all my vinyl and high bitrate music, and force people listen to 'my incredible setup'.
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@IsItBroke @mansr @CppGuy @fesshole
Of course it technically makes a difference. But as your hearing ends at 20khz, assuming you have a ton of ringing on the cable (say 9 meaningful reflections), that *still* wouldn't do anything until a cable length of a full kilometer. Which you really shouldn't have between your amp and your speakers, for obvious reasons.
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@LevelUp @fesshole Obviously with test tracks that clearly indicate the channels you'll easily notice. With actual music, even when there is a clear difference between the channels, you typically have no way of knowing which way it was meant to be. It won't sound wrong with the channels flipped unless you know what to expect.
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@PipGowenlock @LevelUp @fesshole Yes, very clear channel separation, but flipping it doesn't make it sound wrong if you've only heard it that way.
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I'm one of those audiophiles who go on about speaker settings and placement, cables and DACs to play all my vinyl and high bitrate music, and force people listen to 'my incredible setup'. Turns out I've had my left/right speakers the wrong way round. For 7 years.
@fesshole I had a class on signal processing with a world class researcher in signal transfer at uni.
Anyhow, he bluntly stated that all the audiophiles who buy expensive wires are wasting their money because there's no friggin way you can tell the difference.
The auditorium was in a rage fueled uproar. Half the folks were "audiophiles", and couldn't afford to have their life choices, and thus intelligence, questioned, it seemed.
Those of us who weren't audiophiles were quite entertained.
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@fesshole Can't be much of an "audiophile", can ya?
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@fesshole Are there any audiophiles, literally any at all, who actually like music?
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@flipper “speaker cables are literally either on the left for left speakers” is absolutely made up and you know it.
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I'm one of those audiophiles who go on about speaker settings and placement, cables and DACs to play all my vinyl and high bitrate music, and force people listen to 'my incredible setup'. Turns out I've had my left/right speakers the wrong way round. For 7 years.
@fesshole I was hoping this was going to end with "all my music is MP3s from LimeWire"
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@IsItBroke @mansr @CppGuy @fesshole
Of course it technically makes a difference. But as your hearing ends at 20khz, assuming you have a ton of ringing on the cable (say 9 meaningful reflections), that *still* wouldn't do anything until a cable length of a full kilometer. Which you really shouldn't have between your amp and your speakers, for obvious reasons.
@dascandy @IsItBroke @mansr @CppGuy @fesshole Yes, and that 20Hz to 20kHz is mostly theoretical anyway. Most people hear nothing above 15kHz and instruments rarely go above 10kHz even if you take harmonics into account. Lower frequencies are also mostly noise rather than anything worthwhile musically which is why many analog mixing desks have a button on each channel enabling a 80Hz low cut filter for convenience.
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@IsItBroke
Can I ask a question? What do audio engineers do about age-related hearing drop-out? Almost everyone starts losing high frequencies in their early thirties. What happens then? Does it matter at all?@beng @IsItBroke I am an amateur sound tech and my hearing is going. It SUCKS. Getting levels right is not a big problem because someone will tell you, hey you’re too loud turn it down a bit. Getting EQ (fancy tone control) right is way more difficult. I normally ask the musicians if they are happy, they are also deaf from too loud stages but won’t admit it. EQ is a bit of a crap shoot if you can’t hear. My hearing drops of at +-10kHz
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@dascandy @IsItBroke @mansr @CppGuy @fesshole Yes, and that 20Hz to 20kHz is mostly theoretical anyway. Most people hear nothing above 15kHz and instruments rarely go above 10kHz even if you take harmonics into account. Lower frequencies are also mostly noise rather than anything worthwhile musically which is why many analog mixing desks have a button on each channel enabling a 80Hz low cut filter for convenience.
@grumpyoldtechie @IsItBroke @mansr @CppGuy @fesshole
> Lower frequencies are also mostly noise rather than anything worthwhile musically which is why many analog mixing desks have a button on each channel enabling a 80Hz low cut filter for convenience.yeah... I built a custom subwoofer for home theater use, and found out that while for movies it's pretty nice (it goes down to ~16hz without distortion and ~10hz with some reduced amplitude) for most television and youtube content it's atrocious. Many mastering programs apparently don't do that high pass filtering, so there's a huge mess in the low frequencies that they just somehow never notice.
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@grumpyoldtechie @IsItBroke @mansr @CppGuy @fesshole
> Lower frequencies are also mostly noise rather than anything worthwhile musically which is why many analog mixing desks have a button on each channel enabling a 80Hz low cut filter for convenience.yeah... I built a custom subwoofer for home theater use, and found out that while for movies it's pretty nice (it goes down to ~16hz without distortion and ~10hz with some reduced amplitude) for most television and youtube content it's atrocious. Many mastering programs apparently don't do that high pass filtering, so there's a huge mess in the low frequencies that they just somehow never notice.
@dascandy @grumpyoldtechie @IsItBroke @CppGuy @fesshole For action films with explosions and such you really want those low frequencies, and then you need a proper surround mix with LFE channel. A stereo mix will probably roll off the low end to spare the TV's built-in speakers.
Music rarely goes below 50 Hz, and even when the note being played is nominally low (a piano starts at 27.5 Hz), the fundamental is often very weak and what we hear is actually mostly harmonics.
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@dascandy @grumpyoldtechie @IsItBroke @CppGuy @fesshole For action films with explosions and such you really want those low frequencies, and then you need a proper surround mix with LFE channel. A stereo mix will probably roll off the low end to spare the TV's built-in speakers.
Music rarely goes below 50 Hz, and even when the note being played is nominally low (a piano starts at 27.5 Hz), the fundamental is often very weak and what we hear is actually mostly harmonics.
@mansr @dascandy @grumpyoldtechie @CppGuy @fesshole
I’m told by a friend who mixes music in a big studio that to get proper kick-drum & bass-guitar separation they eq. the bass to attenuate most of the fundamental to make way for the kick as we “fill in” the bass from the harmonics. -
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