Why am I not hearing difference in SQ with different files, with my new setup?

[Marvin the Martian]

I hope that's an oxygen-free lamp cord, ZenChick!

[dfkt]

What kind of nonsense is that? There's nothing "audiophile" about proper speaker placement at all. Ever heard about room acoustics? You think recording studios drop some speakers willy-nilly in some corners? It's only logical that speakers don't sound their best when their bass reflex tube is blocked, the tweeters are placed way below your ear line, they're too close to the walls (or too far away, depending on the design), etc. It's the first and most basic thing you do - you set them up properly. Doesn't matter when you buy some $49.95 Logitech or Creative garbage, but probably when you buy some KRKs you want them to actually sound as good as possible.

[Marvin the Martian]

It was a lot of work to re-organize my room around, but definitely worth it to get my speakers out of the corners of the room.....so there is something to the speaker placement, to be sure.

[ZenChick]

I'm not discounting speaker placement. But I do leave the protractors, laser guides, and tape measures in their drawers.

[ZenChick]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

I hope that's an oxygen-free lamp cord, ZenChick!

Hey, cables need to breathe too, ya know!

[dfkt]

Nobody brought any of that nonsense up in this thread before... so far it was a serious thread?

[ZenChick]

Serious, yes; to the point of obsession.

The point I was trying to make is, if the sound quality sounds good to you, then sit back and enjoy it. Quit fussing over it. If your music files and equipment are so sonically transparent that you can't tell the difference between different high-quality formats, then consider yourself fortunate.

*slowly backs away from the thread now*

[Orange]

Originally Posted by ZenChick

I'm not discounting speaker placement. But I do leave the protractors, laser guides, and tape measures in their drawers.

no offense, but if I spent that much $$$ I WOULD bust out the protractors, laser guides and the tape measures...at a minimum lol. And its really not about being OCD about it, most of us find it fun and rewarding. Thats why we're in this hobby in the first place.

Its just like hanging a picture up straight on the wall to me. =)


Anyhow, im not an audiophile but i'll take that as a compliment anyways!

[Enigmatic]

Originally Posted by Orange

no offense, but if I spent that much $$$ I WOULD bust out the protractors, laser guides and the tape measures...at a minimum lol.

I actually used a tape measure. As for the wire controversy, I would like to think that just about every member already knew a long time ago that there is a lot of nonsense associated with wires. Anyway, getting back on topic, here is a useful guide on loudspeaker placement: http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/fea...-speakers.html.

[freddie]

http://www.tnt-audio.com/casse/waspe.html

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by ZenChick

Ahhhhh, one of the things that distinguishes an Audiophile from the rest of us: An Audiophile will fuss and fret over exact angles, distances, materials, air temperature, and a million other details; spend insane amounts of money on cables and stuff that reformulates the electron; and will yet never, ever be satisfied. Meanwhile, the rest of us plop a couple of speakers where they'll fit; wire them to the system with lamp cord; then just sit back and enjoy the music.



*runs away before someone goes after her with a Monster cable*

In spite of your joking, room acoustics are actually one of the most important parts of a speaker setup. Easily more important then the quality of the encoded files, sampling rates, DACs, or any of things most people are concerned about.

[Syndrome]

Originally Posted by saratoga

In spite of your joking, room acoustics are actually one of the most important parts of a speaker setup. Easily more important then the quality of the encoded files, sampling rates, DACs, or any of things most people are concerned about.

Nonsense poopy pants, its all about the cyrogen treated cables.

[aki]

Haven't followed this discussion for a while might be a bit old now but may I reply to some stuff

Originally Posted by dfkt

That's kind of stupid, WAV downloads. FLAC (or any other lossless codec) would not only save a huge amount of bandwidth on both ends, it would also be possible to embed tags/comments and album art.

But I guess they offer WAV for direct use with CDJ players, which don't support anything better than CDDA and MP3. And they probably don't expect people being able to unpack FLACs to WAV.

Yeah I would love to get rid of all WAVs I have to use now instead of Flac, because my denon players only support mp3/wav as well, even for USB mode. Juno supports converting to FLAC prior to downloading, and has custom naming and embeds the album art for you, if you want. But I have to convert them back to wav after downloading. Really hope the next gen players support FLAC as it is a pain in the a** to tag wavs.
And as most of these sites are designed for DJ's which pretty much only think 'louder is better' and redlining these mixers all the way, they don't offer merely FLAC, which would be the best option for us and the downloadshops, now they have to store 1411+320+192 KB per second of music, and have to process wavs to flac for the people who want that.

about the room acoustics, I think I solved it now, here is a picture of my new setup:

Planning to upgrade to Focal CMS 50 + CMS Sub 30 hz @ -3dB response ftw !

[Thib]

Originally Posted by dfkt

That's kind of stupid, WAV downloads. FLAC (or any other lossless codec) would not only save a huge amount of bandwidth on both ends, it would also be possible to embed tags/comments and album art.

But I guess they offer WAV for direct use with CDJ players, which don't support anything better than CDDA and MP3. And they probably don't expect people being able to unpack FLACs to WAV.

By principle I'll never buy anything degraded, so JunoDownload is a must because you can even download in Flac directly and the covers are big. There is also beatport and Qobuz in France where I buy lossless music.
That being said I don't even know if I can hear the difference, my Harman Kardon have way too much highs, sometimes it seems better but I couldn't say for sure.
With the Sennheiser IE8 however the difference seems to be bigger, I don't think very compressed files are appropriate for good/ very good in-ears or headphones.
Space is also not a problem my collection is only 35go of Flac so far, it's all the songs I love. The only problem that remains is the higher price for lossless online music. I often run auCDtect Taskmanager (audiochecker) after I download, but it also happens that I say "that can't be mp3" and I don't do it.

[JSV]

Originally Posted by ZenChick

I'm not discounting speaker placement. But I do leave the protractors, laser guides, and tape measures in their drawers.

The line has to be drawn somewhere:

Where does the limit stands between esoteric audiophily and no-nonsense audiophily?

I do believe that the weakest link in a stereo system are the speakers, and related to this, the speaker placement and room acoustics. Am I not right about this?

Assuming everything else (source, amp, preamp, cabling) is of decent, average quality, the only thing that matters are the speakers setup, wrong?

[Enigmatic]

Originally Posted by JSV

I do believe that the weakest link in a stereo system are the speakers, and related to this, the speaker placement and room acoustics.

And the location of the listening position. But, yes, transducers are often one of the weakest links. And because many audiophiles do not realize or refuse to admit that amplifiers, CD players, and wires are often of good-enough quality, a case can be made that the weakest link is the listener.