[Audio Empire]

On Mon, 10 May 2010 12:01:48 -0700, jwvm wrote
(in article ):

On May 10, 11:50=A0am, wrote:

snip

=A0 =A0"The change in sound quality is as much cultural as technological.=
For
=A0 =A0decades, starting around the 1950s, high-end stereos were a status
=A0 =A0symbol. A high-quality system was something to show off, much like=
a
=A0 =A0new flat-screen TV today.

With advances in technology, better quality performance is available
at much lower prices. An implicitly negative comment was made about
portable music players but in actuality, they actually provide
excellent sound quality, at least with decent headphones and vastly
better than cassette players. For portable music in the 1950s, there
was the wonderful AM transistor radio which was truly low fidelity.


=A0 =A0But Michael Fremer, a professed audiophile who runs musicangle.com=
,
=A0 =A0which reviews albums, said that today, "a stereo has become an obj=
ect
=A0 =A0of scorn.""

I am not sure why he thinks that modern stereos are scorned but they
are no longer status symbols since they are low-cost commodity
products.

Good ones aren't. Good speakers, especially, are quite expensive. For
instance, there is little decent in the way of speakers below about the $1K
level (actually I only know of one really decent speaker below $1K and that's
the Magnepan MMG at $599.

The description of lossy compression causing crackling artifacts is
surprising. Perhaps Fremer needs to use better software. The only
crackling that I can recall is an artifact from LPs. Indeed dynamic
range compression is a real problem unlike modest use of data
compression.

I certainly hear artifacts in lossy compression, but I wouldn't exactly
characterize them as a crackling noise, I would say that it's more like a
buzzing bee-like distortion that rides the waveform. It's only audible during
low level passages and during transitions between loud and soft passages (and
vice versa) and then only on headphones and very loud speaker listening. As
background music and in the car, lossy compression artifacts are lost in the
ambient noise.