In article , Glenn
Richards scribeth thus
Doki wrote:

I noticed today in John Lewis that they had no hifi or hifialike gear
for sale at all. Loads of digital radios, mp3 players and sets of little
speakers that ipods fit onto, but no mini systems or seperates at all.

That's been the case for some time. You want "proper" hi-fi then get
yourself to somewhere like Sevenoaks Hi-Fi. Or even Richer Sounds for
budget to mid-range stuff.

MP3 isn't inherently bad either when properly encoded. It seems to
achieve transparency somewhere between 192 and 224Kbit/sec bitrate - I
encode using LAME's VBR mode on the highest quality settings and the
bitrate averages at around 230.

320 odd here thanks .. if we have to have MP3 seeing that disk storage
is now so cheap

My office playback system: Creative USB soundcard with SPDIF Arcam
Black Box 50 Technics SU-VX600 Celestion 1 connected with Chord
Company Cobra 2 interconnects and Audio Innovations Silver Micro speaker
cable. (And no I don't want to go into a cable discussion here.) The
speakers are kinda plonked on the desk so I've set up EQ in Winamp to
get rid of the midband peak this produces.

Well workshop is a Sony ESS 577 vintage CD player for well CD's
Digital satellite receiver for Radio usually on Bayern Klassik at 320 K
MP2 Audiolab amp and Spendor BC1's with some cable I nicked from a
substation

But the office side is a around a terror byte of storage Digigram
soundcard, Audiolab amp and BBC LS35A's




Bedroom system: Turtle Beach Audiotron Yamaha DSP-AX620 Gale
4/2i/Centre 2 speakers, Paradigm PS-1000 sub.

Nah!, Missus wouldn't allow!..


Main system: Turtle Beach Audiotron Arcam AVR250 Mordaunt-Short
908/905C/2x 903S, B&W ASW-1000, Chord Rumour 4 speaker cable (front),
generic 105-strand OFC for rears (looks identical to Gale XL105,
79p/metre at Richer, but comes on a 100m reel for about £20 from CPC).


If it told you what that is I'd be fibbing...

So I'm not exactly playing MP3 music through crap kit! The other nice
thing with MP3 is that all CDs get ReplayGained after they've been
ripped, so no yanking the volume knob when I go from a 1980s recording
to a recent one.

I also did a little experiment a while back - I ripped and encoded a
track from a CD (no MP3gain applied) then burnt the uncompressed WAV and
the MP3 version back to a blank CD as audio tracks. I then tried an AB
comparison in various systems. The only one I could hear any difference
on was the Arcam/Mordaunt-Short setup in the front room, there appeared
to be a very slight loss of detail on the track burnt from the MP3
version. Although I wonder how much of this was psychological as I
"knew" that track 2 had been burnt from the MP3?


--
Tony Sayer

This is an interesting site re mp3, click on mp3 on the left then
limitations.

http://www.mp3-tech.org/

Gimme a good non-remastered cd anyday.............

Pete

"Glenn Richards" wrote in message
news
Doki wrote:

I noticed today in John Lewis that they had no hifi or hifialike gear for
sale at all. Loads of digital radios, mp3 players and sets of little
speakers that ipods fit onto, but no mini systems or seperates at all.

That's been the case for some time. You want "proper" hi-fi then get
yourself to somewhere like Sevenoaks Hi-Fi. Or even Richer Sounds for
budget to mid-range stuff.

Granted, but not that long ago, most people would have had some sort of
mini-system that approximated a hifi - decent sized bookshelf speakers and a
reasonable amount of power behind them. Putting aside the fact that they're
not *proper* hifis, they made a far better stab at it than a hell of a lot
of the current stuff. There was some hope of producing some reasonable bass
and some stereo seperation.

OTOH with a lot of the mass market kit at the moment, there's very little
hope of getting either of those.

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
. ..
"Doki" wrote in message


I noticed today in John Lewis that they had no hifi or
hifialike gear for sale at all.

How do you define "hifi"?

The word hifi is a shortening of "high fidelity" and high fidelity refers
to reproducing sound with accuracy.

IIRC there was some standard about being able to produce a frequency range
of 50Hz-20kHz. Here I mean any kind of stereo system with a pair of decent
sized speakers, or a pair of small speakers and a proper sub (ie, actually
producing non-direction frequencies).

Loads of digital radios,

Surely some of them are at least somewhat accurate in their reproduction.

mp3 players

Which can be used with highly accurate earphones and headphones to obtain
good, accurate sound.

and sets of little speakers that ipods fit onto,

Some of which are actually fairly accurate, or at least no less accurate
than some middle- or low-priced traditional home stereo sets.

but no mini systems

Some of those really sucked.

Granted. Anything mass market product category is going to contain some
dregs - somehow a lot of Vauxhall Corsas were sold, and people keep buying
LCD tellies...

or seperates at all.

Arguably separates have been in their decline ever since integrated
amplifiers and then receivers became more popular.

Has the mass market for hifi stuff completely died?

The market for high fidelity audio has changed. It is now dominated by
portable and personal use equipment.

Perhaps, but the home kit that remains seems to be trying to look flashy and
be small, and that seems to be about the sole requirement. Sound quality
barely appears to come into the equation.

The
emphasis seems to have turned entirely to subwoofers that
produce midbass at a very small range of frequencies
(bandpass box perhaps?) along with a load of little
speakers that sound absolutely horrible.

There are many examples of that technology that sound great. You have to
spend a little money for them and be careful what you buy. IOW, nothing
has really changed except the format.

There may well be. But, the mass market stuff sounds horrendous. There's a
Sony system which I've heard
(http://www.johnlewis.com/230444465/Product.aspx if you're wondering) and it
is terrible. The little speakers do appear to be tweeters, as they produce
no mid range at all, and any speech or mid range stuff is very obviously
coming from the sub when you listen to the system.

Some kit has
only tweeters for stereo seperation with a "sub"
producing the mid range.

Well, the speakers may be the size of tweeters, but it is possible that
some of them cover a lot more than just the treble.

It may well be possible, but not at any sort of sane mass market price.

It seems very strange to me given that development has
been driven by better quality in the past - ie moving
from LPs to CDs.

Many portable music players provide something that is effectively CD
quality, when they are playing files that are not lossy-compressed.

Indeed, but that's not how they're typically used.

On 21 Jun, 23:34, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Doki" wrote in message



I noticed today in John Lewis that they had no hifi or
hifialike gear for sale at all.

How do you define "hifi"?

The word hifi is a shortening of "high fidelity" and high fidelity refers to
reproducing sound with accuracy.

Loads of digital radios,

Surely some of them are at least somewhat accurate in their reproduction.

mp3 players

Which can be used with highly accurate earphones and headphones to obtain
good, accurate sound.

and sets of little speakers that ipods fit onto,

Some of which are actually fairly accurate, or at least no less accurate
than some middle- or low-priced traditional home stereo sets.

but no mini systems

Some of those really sucked.

or seperates at all.

Arguably separates have been in their decline ever since integrated
amplifiers and then receivers became more popular.

Has the mass market for hifi stuff completely died?

The market for high fidelity audio has changed. It is now dominated by
portable and personal use equipment.

The
emphasis seems to have turned entirely to subwoofers that
produce midbass at a very small range of frequencies
(bandpass box perhaps?) along with a load of little
speakers that sound absolutely horrible.

There are many examples of that technology that sound great. You have to
spend a little money for them and be careful what you buy. *IOW, nothing has
really changed except the format.

Some kit has
only tweeters for stereo seperation with a "sub"
producing the mid range.

Well, the speakers may be the size of tweeters, but it is possible that some
of them cover a lot more than just the treble.

Even the B&W zeppelin thing
sounded *very* poor to me.

I haven't had the opportunity to hear it.

It seems very strange to me given that development has
been driven by better quality in the past - ie moving
from LPs to CDs.

Many portable music players provide something that is effectively CD
quality, when they are playing files that are *not lossy-compressed.

*I suspect if you did a side by side
comparison with £500s worth of relatively mass market
gear from 15 years ago (probably an amp, CD player and a
pair of bookshelf speakers, or a mini system) compared to
current gear (ie, ipod dock and ipod), the old stuff
would sound better.

15 years ago we knew that really good headphones at a given price point
would vastly outperform speakers at the same price. The only thing that has
changed is that we have more options for really good headphones and
earphones.

How do you define "accurate"? Accurate to what? Unless you were there
when the recording was made and have an incredible memory of audio,
then the judgement of what is accurate or not is ********.Yes you may
have an idea of how it should sound..For example.A piano played in one
venue will have a different sound when played in another.An
individuals judgement of what might be accurate is purely a subjective
one.However,what sound better is another matter.There is no doubt that
MP3 has driven peoples expectations of hifi downward.There's little
point in buying superb replay equipment if you supply it low quality
source material.

In article
,
borosteve wrote:


How do you define "accurate"? Accurate to what? Unless you were there
when the recording was made and have an incredible memory of audio, then
the judgement of what is accurate or not is ********.

Actually, you can often define and measure accuracy. You just compare the
input with the output.

e.g. when assessing an amplifier, compare the patterns of the input and
output signal waveforms. Then define a measure of accuracy in terms of
something like the fractional rms deviation between the two when scaled for
minimu difference.

Yes you may have an idea of how it should sound..

When considering equipment to *reproduce* from a given input, you don't
necessarily have to have any idea 'how it should sound'. That is already
implicit in the information patterns provided by the recording or
broadcast.

But you can have problems when you have no 'original' with which to do a
comparison of any kind. Also, with accurate reproduction of an information
pattern that you do not like. The problem being that - as you indicated -
if you don't know how it "should sound" you can't be sure that what you
hear isn't what was intended, even if it sounds foul to you (or me!). :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Change 'noise' to 'jcgl' if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

"borosteve" wrote in message
...
On 21 Jun, 23:34, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Doki" wrote in message



I noticed today in John Lewis that they had no hifi or
hifialike gear for sale at all.

How do you define "hifi"?

The word hifi is a shortening of "high fidelity" and high fidelity
refers to
reproducing sound with accuracy.

Loads of digital radios,

Surely some of them are at least somewhat accurate in their
reproduction.

mp3 players

Which can be used with highly accurate earphones and headphones to
obtain
good, accurate sound.

and sets of little speakers that ipods fit onto,

Some of which are actually fairly accurate, or at least no less
accurate
than some middle- or low-priced traditional home stereo sets.

but no mini systems

Some of those really sucked.

or seperates at all.

Arguably separates have been in their decline ever since integrated
amplifiers and then receivers became more popular.

Has the mass market for hifi stuff completely died?

The market for high fidelity audio has changed. It is now dominated by
portable and personal use equipment.

The
emphasis seems to have turned entirely to subwoofers that
produce midbass at a very small range of frequencies
(bandpass box perhaps?) along with a load of little
speakers that sound absolutely horrible.

There are many examples of that technology that sound great. You have
to
spend a little money for them and be careful what you buy. IOW,
nothing has
really changed except the format.

Some kit has
only tweeters for stereo seperation with a "sub"
producing the mid range.

Well, the speakers may be the size of tweeters, but it is possible
that some
of them cover a lot more than just the treble.

Even the B&W zeppelin thing
sounded *very* poor to me.

I haven't had the opportunity to hear it.

It seems very strange to me given that development has
been driven by better quality in the past - ie moving
from LPs to CDs.

Many portable music players provide something that is effectively CD
quality, when they are playing files that are not lossy-compressed.

I suspect if you did a side by side
comparison with £500s worth of relatively mass market
gear from 15 years ago (probably an amp, CD player and a
pair of bookshelf speakers, or a mini system) compared to
current gear (ie, ipod dock and ipod), the old stuff
would sound better.

15 years ago we knew that really good headphones at a given price
point
would vastly outperform speakers at the same price. The only thing
that has
changed is that we have more options for really good headphones and
earphones.

How do you define "accurate"? Accurate to what? Unless you were there
when the recording was made and have an incredible memory of audio,
then the judgement of what is accurate or not is ********.Yes you may
have an idea of how it should sound..For example.A piano played in one
venue will have a different sound when played in another.An
individuals judgement of what might be accurate is purely a subjective
one.However,what sound better is another matter.There is no doubt that
MP3 has driven peoples expectations of hifi downward.There's little
point in buying superb replay equipment if you supply it low quality
source material.



The sad bit is that with the right sample rate mp3 can sound quite
acceptable. From something I say earlier this week - may even have been
in this thread - the crossover point is a sample rate somewhere between
192 and 224Kb/s. Browse many of the download sites that do give sample
rates and you will find that some (notably classical) do 192 most of the
time, some at 224 or 256 and the odd one as high as 320, but go looking
at pop/rock and you will find some at 160 but most at 128 and that is
where the real quality dumbing-down has occurred.


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

"Woody" wrote in message


How do you define "accurate"?

Like a dictionary?

Accurate to what?

The reference.

Unless you were there when the recording was made and have an
incredible memory of audio, then the judgement of what is
accurate or not is ********.

Good point.

Yes you may have an idea of
how it should sound..For example.A piano played in one
venue will have a different sound when played in another.

It will sound different if you move it around. A recording of it will sound
different if you move the mics around.

An individuals judgement of what might be accurate is purely
a subjective one.

Judgements can be better than that if there is a ready reference.

However,what sound better is another
matter.There is no doubt that MP3 has driven peoples
expectations of hifi downward.There's little point in
buying superb replay equipment if you supply it low
quality source material.

However, just because its a MP3 does not mean that it has to sound bad or be
audibly inaccurate. Low bitrate MP3s can sound bad and be inaccurate.
Someplace above 128 kbps, MP3 recordings can be very accurate and defy
detection by skilled listeners.

The sad bit is that with the right sample rate mp3 can
sound quite acceptable. From something I say earlier this
week - may even have been in this thread - the crossover
point is a sample rate somewhere between 192 and 224Kb/s.

About that, yes.

Browse many of the download sites that do give sample
rates and you will find that some (notably classical) do
192 most of the time, some at 224 or 256 and the odd one
as high as 320, but go looking at pop/rock and you will
find some at 160 but most at 128 and that is where the
real quality dumbing-down has occurred.

There are a lot of MP3s that have done time well below 128 kbps.

"Doki" wrote in message
...
I noticed today in John Lewis that they had no hifi or hifialike gear for
sale at all. Loads of digital radios, mp3 players and sets of little
speakers that ipods fit onto, but no mini systems or seperates at all.

Has the mass market for hifi stuff completely died? The emphasis seems to
have turned entirely to subwoofers that produce midbass at a very small
range of frequencies (bandpass box perhaps?) along with a load of little
speakers that sound absolutely horrible. Some kit has only tweeters for
stereo seperation with a "sub" producing the mid range. Even the B&W
zeppelin thing sounded *very* poor to me.

It seems very strange to me given that development has been driven by
better quality in the past - ie moving from LPs to CDs. I suspect if you
did a side by side comparison with £500s worth of relatively mass market
gear from 15 years ago (probably an amp, CD player and a pair of bookshelf
speakers, or a mini system) compared to current gear (ie, ipod dock and
ipod), the old stuff would sound better.


What would you have seen 40 years ago? I know that when I was a teenager I
traded my Hornby 00 guage train set for a portable record player (possibly
one of the worst deals I ever made looking at prices today). It had the
obligatory piezo pickup, a triode pentode amp and a 4" speaker mounted
right below the arm. All my friends thought it super cool but it was crap.
My MK I iPod nano has sound 1000% better even on relatively low bit rates
and it is a lot more convenient to carry around. The main market for audio
products, cashed up teens and 20s, by and large don't care about the sound
quality. Even when they spend thousands on car audio, the only important
things are the volume the bass output and "Real cool looking gear".

High quality sound has only ever appealed to a minority of people, most are
happy with a mini system (popular with the wife as it doesn't take up too
much room) or a pre-packaged surround sound outfit if they want "High end
audio". Remember Alan Sugar's all in one Amstrad system, looked like a stack
of separate components, but it was one box and sounded like crap. Popular
with the punters because you didn't have to fiddle with all those wires.

'Tis as it ever was.

Keith