Exactly... Thanks...
For myself, and most music loving friends...we have all heard expensive systems we did not like, and inexpensive systems we liked very much...certainly synergy and room acoustics are long recognized factors...but unfortunately, all the best systems we have heard have been expensive...though I thoroughly enjoy my much less expensive secondary systems, and could be very happy if that's all I had...exploring better equipment or room acoustic should never get in the way of enjoying what you have...
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Levels of electronic design perfection had a cost corresponding to each level ...
Levels of acoustic controls had a cost too in money and in studies and experiments ...
Optimal acoustic satisfaction threshold exist at a very high cost in price and in time and acoustics understanding ...
Minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold experience exist also.... At a lower price but with the same time cost in consuming studies and experiments in acoustic ... If not by yourself homemade, it cost 100,000 bucks to give the job to a pro by the way ....Few costly panels is not acoustic control of a room ...
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Ridiculous claim...
An headphone who is unique even today and top flagship 40 years ago is now classed as low fi because i pay it 100 bucks ?😊
A top amplifier 35 years ago is trash today because i pay it 300 bucks ?😊
And marketting dogmas and electronic design and costly components can beat acoustics basic knowledege for some ? I dont think so...
Let me smile ...
Price is not the last word in sound ... Acoustics and synergy between components are and at any price ...
I think that if you are talking less than $20,000 total for your equipment (not room), you aren’t really in the audiophile category on these pages. And maybe even $20,000 is disappointing. Seems that the higher you can go, the more you earn the title Audiophile.
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I am "snob" about which i had myself created not about something i can buy, i am elitist because of the necessary embeddings controls knowledge, not about my wallet ...i am Proud of my ratio higher sound quality at the lowest possible price ...
Music drive me not the plugged costlier upgrades which most of the times are on the side of great acoustic change because consumers read audio manual as science which is not at all , no more than pharma drugs characteristics and ccompatibilities are medecine knowledge ......
I am proud to care and improve my health state by myself instead of the proposed chirurgy because they dont know better in my case ...
There is a club for each one, mine refuse me BEFORE i studied and experimented , and it is not the audiophile club it seems ...
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We will call prime meaningful sounds, natural sounds, music or speech...
Guess who by design must be sensible to ANY sound detection for reason of care and protection and for a best socialization of his offsprings ?
Female hearing is more sensible to high frequencies recognition for this reason ...
Then they listen music and are less prone to go for marketing gear fetichism a disease among audiophiles who ignore any acoustics basic embeddings and anything which is not gear bragging ... I exagerate to spell my point but that is my observation in all audio threads...And who call me "tin foil hat" because of a low cost tweak ? Grown men hypnotized by marketing and obsessive about price tag , oblivious of any mechanical,electrical and acoustical embeddings and about psycho-acoutics, obsessed by possible costly upgrades ... 😊
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By education and tradition but also by physical genetical and biochimical design woman are tailor made and conditioned to passionnately mind about children and their male possible consorts and men are designed and conditioned also to be occupied by objects which may help dominate and help the tribes survival ... We have all in each man a feminine part of the soul and vice versa in the case of woman for sure...This is a balance between these two genetic but also symbolic forms in each of us ...
But in general woman loving music are not focussed so much on gear variation as men with similar interest ...And in general man loving sound are not so much focussed also on music for its own sake as much as woman with the same inclination ..
Ideologies opposing these simple general facts are just that, ideologies...
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Let’s say, for a moment, that the universe inserts a rule where significant differences in quality happen at around 2x the price. A use this "rule" using audio as a basis, where 3db is a significant increase in perceived loudness. This 3db increase also requires 2x the power (or, number of speakers) to obtain this goal. Applying this ’rule", to get a significan increase in SQ from, say, a $300 speaker, we’ll need to be at $600. All is going well enough in this scenario until, we reach serious money. A $30k speaker now requires a $60k investment (and, bank loan?) to obtain.
You might find this rule "silly" and can think of (valid) examples of why this isn’t true. But, the point being, when you start throwing big dollars at an audio system, the upgrades can be quite expensive. And, yes, worth every penny.
The problem is that the way you present the diminishing returns observation ( it is not really a law) you present it as a MERE objective computation... But this "law" is related not only to objective design improvement with time but also to the subjective status of the customer who must be ready and knowleadgeable enough to perceive the change and accept it... This border separating objective design improvement and the listener status imply at the frontier near this border a MINIMUM ACOUSTIC SATISFACTION THRESHOLD or M.A.S.T. related to each acoustic factors to be objectively improved and to be subjectively perceived as such...
The M.A.S.T. is different for each of us not only in subjective value but in his objective perception ... Acoustic factors for their determination and evaluation are related not only to our history in audio, in our audition personal learning and history, in our musical education , they are related to technical gear design imptovement but also to many embeddings controls in the mechanical, electrical and especially room acoustical dimensions and also to psycho-acoustics basic knowledge ...
Then to understand how work the diminishing return "law" we must be able to perceive the M.A.S.T. and learn how to CONTROL IT AT WILL and not only go with upgrades spree... ....Because half the times at least, upgrades are meaningless, void of any oriented acoustic improvement and induced by marketing...In the opposite learning how to know ourself and our auditory history by learning acoustics basic concepts ( no it is more than room acoustic here ) and experimenting with low cost mechanical , electrical and acoustical experiments and simple devices, will make us able to know how to stop upgrading without being frustrated by the soundfield qualities.... We will had learn how to reach the minimal acoustic satisfaction threshold but minimizing our money expanse ...
Each acoustic factors are related for each system room /ears/brain ...This relation is in some orders because each factors are directly or indirectly related, then we must learn what to do to improve the most important one and to which level because too much may be a defect... This is why the Diminishing returns relation between the subjective perception of an improvement and the objective design improvement cannot make sense without the minimal acoustic satisfaction threshold for each acoustic factors separetely and together in a balance way...
This is why my motto in audio is :
Never upgrade anything BEFORE embedding all components rightfully in the three working dimensions...
And psycho-acoustics science rule the gear component working first and last not the reverse...
Then opposing "music lover" to audiophile as the one ready and obsessed by sound quality to the point of throwing money without ever stopping , make no sense... This opposition is preposterous and meaningless... Learning is the rule not expanse... We must be music and acoustic lover not only gear focus lover...
Another forgotten important point is that there is no relation between the state of a system well embedded in his working dimensions before and after... No comparison at all ... Not knowing how to embed a system nor even knowing that a system must be embedded rightfully to be evaluated, most people had no other solution than buying costlier cables and costlier components to feel less frustrated...
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Thank for your appreciation...
I did not rebuild the headphone ... It was a very good design to begin with... I changed the inner shell chamber by extracting the thick grid that was there for protection not sound quality.... I put anti vibration product inside, 2 complementary one, sorbothane duro 70 and Fo.Q tape from japan ... I chose the right pads on five possible choices i bought at low cost in China because the volume of the shell chamber matter then the thickness of the pad matter a lot and i pick a perforated pad for better results ... I used the right equalization to be nearer the Harman curve ... I picked the right amplifier , after trying two others the second more cleaner among the three but the more powerful because this K340 are picky to drive ...I used a dac more on the analysing side deliberately because this headphone is very organic and need very clean source...i used also my homemade protecting EMI plate ( shungite+copper tape ) all along beside my components ... Etc...
Without all this my headphone is not at all the same... Now it beat anything i heard in headphones...
This is only simple experiments... It takes me 6 months to reach the end... It was fun and low cost...
Do you prefer to buy a 5,000 bucks headphone which i even doubt will beat my 100 bucks K340 on ALL acoustic counts because anyway by design he is one of its kind and prove that very old design can be irreplaceable even today ?
Learning is fun it takes only thinking and experimenting...But you are right it is costly in time and i am retired...
I call that optimization ...
It is trying that or throwing money on the gear ...
I prefer to motivate creativity here than claiming that costly upgrade are the only one solution as most think anyway erroneously ... The minimal acoustic satisfaction threshold dont ask for 100,000 bucks of gear ...
Please understand that i spoke this way to motivate people and push them to study a bit before making useless half the time big expanse...
@mahgister While I applaud your attitude and your ability to dive deep into the world of tinkering to achieve results where the end product is greater than the sum of it’s parts, there’s one big fly in the ointment with many of your posts. The word ability. Pretty sure I’m not the only life long music lover who has never acquired the knowledge or experience to do what you do. And once again, I applaud you for being able to walk down that road. For those like me who have no option but to open our wallets when we want to get a better result..........
Now if you want me to crib and pour a foundation, frame a house, wire and plumb it, or maybe you need some beautiful furniture, then I’m your man. But rebuild a vintage set of headphones? I just don’t speak that language.
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Everybody knows that my 700 bucks system cannot rival many more expansive one we can see in the virtual system pages as a real or potential better audiophile experience 😁...
This is a common place indisputable fact ...I dont brag about any system myself including mine , i invite people to STUDY AND EXPERIMENT instead or before upgrading ...
What many people ignore is that we can have an audiophile experience at low cost ANYWAY, provide we know or learn how to create synergy and know or learn how to control mechanical, electrical and acoustical embeddings of any audio system ...
Claiming otherwise is reinforcing the false belief that the relation between good sound and a better sound is depending on the gear mainly and more depending especially only on the gear price...
This is double falsehood : Synergy and the acoustics/psycho-acoustics knowledge and not only room acoustic here, is the basis of audiophile experience not merely the gear design , and more than that there is no linear relation between audiophile experience value and gear price ...
Now if someone read my post as meaning that i deny the audio quality value of high end designed component compared to low cost solutions , he misread my post COMPLETELY... I say that acoustic and other basic knowledge are more valuable than gear price and as much as important to create and reach the MINIMAL ACOUSTIC SATISFACTION THRESHOLD ...When we cross this threshold music became so immersive we forgot upgrades, most of us at least , save the obsessive compulsive consumers who anyway focus on gear price scale upgrade not on knowledge or acoustic experiments... ...
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The AKG K340 was uncontested flagship headphone put against the best Stax at the times and today...
Cost used for me : 100 bucks...
They contain two new technology never used together again... Kennerton representative said to me when i ask the question , that to recreate these with today standards it will cost too much in research...They are not interested to recreate an hybrid...None of my 9 other headphones beat the K340 because all gave an unnatural sound even the two low cost Stax i owned...I throw them out of my music system...It takes me 6 months of experiments to modify the K340 and optimize them...They are old(45 years old ) they needed it... Their soundfield is natural timbre and speaker-like and they gave me the original recording acoustic to hear...Not bad for 100 bucks...
My amplifier is a Sansui alpha: cost used 300 bucks...It is the top of Sansui history in amplification ...
It is so good i returned my upgrade purchase of a Berning tube amplifier after one hour of listening ...The synergy of the Sansui with the K340 was too good... No comparison...I dont criticize the Berning amp here, i underline the necessary synergy...
Is the Sansui alpha no more high end amplifier ? Yes it is not a low fi product even for today...
Synergy matter sorry in a high end system not only the design ...
Add to that my contemporary dac , a low cost one WITH NO APPARENT lacks in any way.... Cost 200 bucks...Hidizs AP 80 pro...
I consider my audio system high end....total cost near 700 bucks... 😁
i will add my nearfield modified active speakers in their acoustic small room paid 100 bucks 12 years ago, M-Audio AV 40.. I use them for music ONLY after 6 modifications/optimization... Not BEFORE...They reach 50 hertz now instead of the 85 hertz in the specs sheet... I add 17 tubes bundle of straws of different volume and lenght to the porthole... ( many speakers are Hemholtz resonator ) I increase the directivity of the tweeter with a cylinder for my near field listening... And i mechanically decrease the crosstalk level... It is NO MORE the speakers they were in their original box... I put them in a special acoustic corner with diffuser, absorption and reflective surface ratio...
An audiophile must learn acoustic and how to embed gear... This had nothing to do with price tag....
My goal is and was the best system in the world for peanuts price...
I will bragg then about basic knowledge and creativity not about my wallet... 😊
Beware: Right out of the box with no optimization , no modification , no acoustic control, i dont like my system and it is not high end...Now it is....
Acoustics knowledge rule the gear not the reverse...
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Audiophile means that someone love sound, why?
Because he had learn how to learn hearing better ...
Is it elitist ?
It is as being not deaf is BETTER state in a general way compared to a deaf people...
We can listen very well classical music on a phone, music is not sound, but sound can be music , then any musician, even those who dare not to play the audiophile game know the difference between different violins quality levels, Stradivarius, Guarneri and 500 bucks instruments ...
We live an era with no education at all given ,( because it was deemed not necessary for a slave worker especially a voting one , save if he pay a lot more than he can to afford it , guess why ?) where we brag about staying ignorant , and where we had learn how to despise any "elite" on any form even biological ...
Sorry, elite exist in all aspects of life and for all activities and studies; woman are elite by design and man too, not by choices save for conditioned fools...... The rest is studying and practising...
There is no point in being a non elite baker .... Will you pay for his bread ?
“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be forbidden to think so as not to offend fools” Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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I am flabbergasted by the association of being audiophile, as a possible positive quality, is reduced to the highest gear price tag by most it seems...
Acoustics rule the gear not the reverse...
Being audiophile is not purchasing gear, it is LEARNING how to embed it acoustically because music experience matter , it matter over the specific attributed "sound" of an unplugged amplifier by virtue of his branded name and design and price ...
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Audiophile is an illness.
You are not completely wrong...
But as with many illness, the cure is knowledge...
Improving our hearing consciousness by acoustics basic concepts and experiments...
For example most peoople are oblivious and unconscious of the destructive crosstalk efects in speakers listening... How to test it mechanically in near listening is a very important simple experiment... the price of your speakers will not do anything better here than less pricey one...
Acoustics rule...
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My actual modified active speakers ( 200 bucks of actual value ) are amazing but i optimized them, they were well reviewed but it was not enough for me at all right out of the box...
i disliked them for 12 years and never used them for music...😊😁
But having no other choices after selling my big house i used acoustics basic science to embed and modify them ... They are so good now i dont need a subwoofer even...
Upgrading them will be difficult around 1000 bucks...
And i dont want more anyway so good they became...
Then between 12 bucks and these there is a margin...
Cost matter less than basic knowledge...
While people are idealistically saying cost doesn’t matter, it is hard to be an audiophile with a $12 pair of Amazon Basics computer speakers.
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There is two kind of audiophiles...
The one who focus on gear measures ( objectivist) and those (subjectivist) who "taste" different brand names and dream about the highest price tag... The two group focus on gear components as tastes or as tools...In the first group, the objectivist hate to be called "audiophiles" and be confused with the subjectivists... 😁
The other kind or second group as myself who focus on the best ratio highest sound quality / lowest price and the various ways of embeddings controls mechanically, electrically and acoustically and look for the optimization of any component even using , what the objectivist will call in a despising way as "tweaks" or illusions or deceptive placebos, and the subjectivists will call in a despising way too cheap stop-gaps...
Acoustics experiments matter more for me than the price level qualified as high end, mid-fi, or low fi INDEPENDANTLY of any acoustic embedding optimization ...
The serious audiophile is able to solve the sound problem at low cost and begin to listen music without being bothered by sound anymore as i am ...
The superficial audiophile never solve the sound problem as an acoustic problem to be faced , not only a problem about components synergy , but call his constant unsatisfaction a desire for "perfection" and enter in a race to the pit of expansive purchases, he called them "upgrades", without learning nor music genres and styles nor acoustics... Using his limited well recorded few albums collection as test ...
i Invested way more in music than in my very good system who cost me 700 bucks , modified headphones+ modified speakers... And trust me it is more than good... i dont need more...
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