"Nexus 6" wrote in message
news:Afdlb.1784$d87.1273@okepread05
Arny Krueger wrote:

"Nexus 6"

Speaking of MP3's, I'm more than a little disturbed by how
good they can sound, even with all of that information
missing.

No matter what Atkinsin and the other golden-eared science-haters and
abusers say, psychoacoustics works.

Sort of.

MP3's still have a lot of weaknesses, even when using good
encoders at high bitrates.

Agreed, which justifies my comment, immediately below:

Ironically my latest audio acquisition of note was a portable device
that is best known as a MP3 player, but in my case it's 100% loaded
with .wav files.

All of mine reside on my computer, though many have been
converted to CD.

I've been enjoying the new Windows version of iTunes - it's the best MP3
file organizer and player I've seen yet. The price is as they say *right*.

****ing freaky ****, if you ask me. I know you
didn't, but I don't give a damn. MP3's are especially scary
in that SACD and DVD-A are failing miserably, and will
probably disappear from the market unless a vanishing breed
of audiophiles can keep it alive.


High end audio was always mostly a boomer thing. Younger folks, with
a few exceptions, are into mobile audio and HT.

I disagree. High end started too early to really be only a
boomer thing.

If anything it started too late to be only a boomer thing. I'm very much an
early boomer, and I was in my late 20s when most say that high end audio as
we know it now was fledged.

I think it started as a music lover thing,
where, as Stewart's sig line says, art and engineering met.

Love of music did have quite a bit to do with the origins of the predecessor
of high end audio which was component stereo. Now component stereo was
something that prewar babies appreciated and supported, but it wasn't high
end audio. The development of a high end market requires the pre-existence
of a mainstream market. The mainstream market that spawned high end audio
was component audio which played a kind of high end role with respect to
brown goods audio which dated back into the 1930s.

It has evolved into something like a boomer pursuit, but not
completely, as evidenced by the many non-boomers I used to
sell gear to.

The exceptions don't disprove the rule. There were really a number of phases
and high end audio as we know it was a later phase.

Time marches on and most boomers are getting old enough that their
hearing is going the way of the Mohicans. With a few exceptions that
means that audio will mean less and less to them.

I disagree.

We've watched this trend evolve in our audio club which had a few pre-boomer
members.

High end is a habit, and a fun one. Boomers will keep at it
because they enjoy it.

IME the numbers who actively enjoy it, as in continue to invest, rapidly
decreases around retirement age.

Combo SACD-DVD-A players from first tier manufacturers are now out
with SRPs that have slipped below $200. All that is needed is for
Apex to come out with a mini model for $39.95... Stick a fork in
'em, they're close to being done.

Software is still really fare behind, and it is always the
final determinant in the format wars. Besides, so many
consumers have been trained to view CD as the ultimate in
sound quality, with other formats being a close second. To
them, the "super formats" seem like a waste of time and money.

One other factor is that nobody wants to buy the same music a third time,
especially when its been getting given away for free via file sharing.

snip

This means that CD will/has become the defacto archival standard,
a frightening prospect.

The only thing that CD has ever seriously frightened is the vinyl
bigots.

I haven't owned a turntable in close to ten years, so I
don't fall under the rubric of "vinyl bigot," whatever the
hell that is, and I still think CD is not, and never has
been, "perfect sound."

The CD medium has been sonically transparent in principle all along, its
even sonic overkill, The players caught up with the potential of the medium
pretty fast. There has always been a problem with the quality of the
production, which has actually been getting worse with the evolution of
"supercompression" of dynamic range. Strangely, supercompressed music is
showing up in SACD and DVD remasterings of legacy performances. You'll see
one of the worst indictments of how the music industry is failing to
properly exploit new media in this report, given to the AES in July, just
past:

http://world.std.com/~griesngr/intermod.ppt