Playstation 1.... An audiophiles dream????

[boykster]

The beamer SUV would not last in a confrontation with a 1979 Chevy pickup towing the owner's home.

The Bimmer (at least spell it correctly) SUV would do it's best to AVOID the '79 Chev pullin the owners single-wide, trust me 

I wish it wasn't true, but the house I bought for $330k 6 years ago is now valued at near a million dollars.  That means that the upgrade homes I was hoping to move into in a few years are no longer $600k, they're 1.5mil or more.....that's just crazy.

[ChadTower]

Sell it and move to Texas.  Live off $750k earning 10%.

[shardian]

The beamer SUV would not last in a confrontation with a 1979 Chevy pickup towing the owner's home.

The Bimmer (at least spell it correctly) SUV

I don't get it.

[ChadTower]

Dude just snobbed over the spelling of a BMW nickname.   

[boykster]

The beamer SUV would not last in a confrontation with a 1979 Chevy pickup towing the owner's home.

The Bimmer (at least spell it correctly) SUV

I don't get it.

The "correct" slang term - if there is such a thing - Bimmer...not beamer, beemer, etc

http://www.bmwccbc.org/misc/tech-and-trivia/bimmer.html

Sell it and move to Texas.  Live off $750k earning 10%.

But then I'd have to live in Texas....no offense, but I'd MUCH rather live in the PNW....

[boykster]

Dude just snobbed over the spelling of a BMW nickname.   

Eh, I'm actually not a big BMW fan...they're nice cars, but I'd much rather drive a Lexus (I own 2)

and sure, I AM a car snob.....so sue me 

[ChadTower]

Well, the way I see it... you can live in the PNW and work full time to support it, or just sell off current assets and live purely off the generated interest while spending his time hanging out tweaking MAME cabs in Texas.

Wouldn't be much of a decision for me.

[boykster]

Well, the way I see it... you can live in the PNW and work full time to support it, or just sell off current assets and live purely off the generated interest while spending his time hanging out tweaking MAME cabs in Texas.

Wouldn't be much of a decision for me.

says the man that lives and works in the also uber-expensive New England area......

[ChadTower]

Yeah, but I live in a ~275k house that doesn't have anything like enough equity to pull that off.

If the house you're talking about was bought for 330k, presumably you've got 700k+ in equity, which is the math I'm basing the idea on.

[boykster]

Well, I'll trade working and living in the PNW for that right now...I love Seattle and frankly wouldn't want to live anywhere else right now.

Anywho, back to the OT...I don't even HAVE a cd player anymore, other than in computers and the dvd player which also plays CD's.  I went all digital file based with my collection a couple of years ago and couldn't be happier.  "true" audiophiles can argue all they want about blah blah, but I rip using flac compression (or 320kbps vbr mp3) and play it through a whole house audio system that I'm very happy with.

www.sonos.com

 

[pointdablame]

You use VBR boyk?  I thought I remembered you talking about hating VBR... must have been someone else.

 

[boykster]

You use VBR boyk?  I thought I remembered you talking about hating VBR... must have been someone else.

 

must be someone else...I've moved to flac for all my new rips, but IIRC my older rips were all 320kbps LAMEenc and i'm pretty sure I used VBR...fuzzy now though....

[pointdablame]

meh.. must have been someone else.  I use VBR myself, but I thought it was you who mentioned not using it.

 

[hyiu]

didn't see this post before....  to reply to some of the earlier posts...

I know some "audiophile" people... (or close to...)
I have audited some very nice setups that could easily cost more than $250K...

well.... first... most of them are not really very rich...
its not like that have a multi-million house.... or driving big new Mercedes...
they "build up" their "collection" over yrs and yrs of listening...

I was not interested in audio before... because unlike video...
audio is very personal... or "subjective" (is that the word ?? or objective ??)

I mean for video... you see a picture... there's no argue whether that line on screen is straight or not... the edge is sharp or blurry... the color is bright or not....
most people will see and understand and agree to a somewhat similar "standard"...

but hearing is very personal... I like a soft vocal songs... while you like rock pounding music.... its is very different.... and you will end up having a different choice... I hear the soft mellow sound, and said wow... while you will think... "what's such a big deal with that ??..."

as for Howard's comment on a cd player is a cd player and will sound the same....
that's plain ignorant and WRONG.... 
I used to think that too... CD is digital... and digital is 0 and 1... what difference does it make for a $50 cd player, and a $10,000 cd player ??

well... actually.... quite a few things....
and 1 important aspect of it is vibration...
remember.... when the cd player reads all the 0s & 1s.... if a small % of those are read wrong... the cd player will still play.... might sounded a little different... but will not skip or jump....

first thing that makes the difference is the transport....
for our normal cd players.... the cd is clamped on the center... and it spins and data is read.... as it is spinning... if the motor is not completely flat... if the spinning motion is not steady.... the cd will "wobble"... and the outer edge of the cd will wobble the most, causing data to be read wrong.... (when you have bad dvd, or cheap machines that the last 15 minutes of the dvd is not playable... its usually because of the wobble effect... that usually happens on burned media...)

a good transport will have a full-disc-clamp.... where when it spins, the whole cd is clamped, and not just the center is clamped, and therefore the whole spinning motion is more smooth and steady and esp. outter edge data reading is less error prone....

next thing is signal.... there are simply interference when there is electic current... (EMF)...  the stereo in your car.... when you step on the gas... or the engine revving... do you hear the speaker have the feedback "whinning" noise ??

Same thing.... place a very cheap red white audio cable (99 cents 6 ft one) to connect to the cd player and the amp, and then right on the cable, hook up a power tool cable (like a power saw / drill) that draws current.... and when you're using the tool.... do you hear a small "weeeee" sound (which is a electrical current feedback) ?? (or when you have cables overlapping each other... sometimes that happens too...)

well..... same thing inside a cd player.... a good one will sort of filter and regulate the power source, and have a design that will block other interference.... and the signal will be cleaner....

and depends on how fussy you are, these things can keep going.... and there are DAC, amp, cables, speakers, room placement,..... and the list goes on and on..... while you might not hear a difference, it does not really mean there is no difference...

and I can tell you, I CAN hear differences between some cd players... (and they do sound different...) not that all cheap ones are bad.... but some of the good ones does give more details / cleaner / different sound stage... (does it worth the extra $$ ??) that depends since everyone has a difference financial condition...

and for the record, I do own a 40 pound cd player that cost more than $1k, and do own an audio system that my friends and I all think it sounds decent...
 

[RandyT]

There are bigger issues as to why CD players will not all sound the same.  The pre-amp quality, power supply noise immunity and things like that are very important, but the real differentiator in quality is the part that converts all those 0's and 1's from the digital domain to analog. 

Even if two different CD players could accurately read every 0 and 1 from the disc, they would probably sound different.  The D to A conversion is done as inexpensively as possible on cheap players.  However, the more expensive units will have additional circuitry to "shape" the sound in a way that can be more pleasing...or not, depending on the listener's tastes.

About the only thing digital music has done "across the board" is improve the sound quality on very low end machines like clock radios, boomboxes, etc.  Less noise in the source, means less noise that gets amplified by those cheap and noisy amplifiers.

As for not spending more than $1000 on a system, I'd say that was quite unrealistic....It's not hard to burn well over half of that on a decent AV receiver.  That doesn't leave much for speakers, which are the human "connection" to the rest of the system.  It wouldn't make any sense at all to pair cheap speakers with an expensive receiver because one will always limit the other.  So  plan on spending at least the same amount on those, not counting your sub and the amp you might need just for it.  The costs just go up from there.

But there is one thing that I will agree with....a lot of  self- proclaimed "audiophiles", when blindfolded,  wouldn't be able to tell the difference between $2500 systems and $25000 ones.  They might be able to tell you which they preferred, but it wouldn't always be the more costly ones.  I'm sure there are those who can, but they would be in the small minority.

RandyT