Why are audiophiles such fucking clowns? Yes I can hear the different, no it doesn't matter. I mean grow the fuck up...

but what about them losing sound quality over time? Mine lost 64kbps per year

I knew a guy (amazing I know) who, every time we would speak about music (which I really wanted to avoid at all costs) he would announce himself as an audiophile, and he would ask me whether I considered myself one too.
I just sort of shrugged and said "I don't know"
then he would go back to talking about how To Pimp A Butterfly is his favorite record and that Joji is an underrated producer and all of the stuff that should be coming out of a 15 year old's mouth not a 21 year old.
Pretty terrifying ngl

blowing on the files after every dozen plays usually slows down bit loss.

Hilarious that a self-proclaimed audiophile mentioned Kendrick Lamar as a reference recording. I like TPAB, just not for critical listening when evaluating playback equipment or good recordings.

I think the fact of the matter was that he was conflating the terms used for someone who is concerned with the actual quality of the files he listens to, and someone who just likes music in general.

>mfw
Is this kbps loss thing true? If so how does it work?

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They're mostly literal boomers with non-meme autism actually.

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MP3s are analog

based
kek'd
kek'd twice as hard
kek'd a little bit

music fans listen to music, audiophiles listen to stereos.

i can't hear any difference past 320kbps no matter what gear i use

I bought a used Volkswagen once, not old but wasn't released last year either
the compressor gave up after one year and it costed $1000 just for the part
the interior's fan gave up shortly after and I had to replace the wiring with good quality ones I had laying around
the rear left door's window motor gave up as well and I couldn't open that window anymore
the intake manifold is made of plastic, and it's a thing which goes directly connected to a big block of hot metal
while I'm at it, the engine had to use this super thin and expensive synthetic oil or else it would feel rough and sometimes overheat
the pcv valve wasn't a little piece of metal worth $5 like in most cars, it was a plastic box that costed fucking $200, so I had to cut it in half with a saw, clean it with gasoline and patience and glue it back together
the interior's trim got thin and delicate FAST, and doing anything with it would mean breaking it
the headlights got yellowish and they were stupidly expensive so I had to sand them down
a coin fell through a little crate and shorted the radio, and mind you, it was connected directly to the power without any kind of fuse or protection, but it was so shitty I didn't mind, I just replaced it with an aftermarket one
but I loved it, German engineering man
I had to rationale my decision of spending so much in a polished turd with a great and cute package, until it was so terribly obvious that I had to accept that I made a mistake and sold it for less than half before I just had an engine and a transmission pushing forward a metallic structure with a plastic chair

but you have THE CHOICE of never buying over-expensive shit again, or upgrading to a mercedes
coping feels nice, sure, but sometimes it makes things exponentially worse in the long run

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kek, based

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before you make yourself look retarded let me clarify: i meant "upgrade to a mercedes" as in continue with the coping circle, not as in "get something better"

peace

16 to 21 year olds can't afford audiophile snake oil, what are you even talking about?

he's talking about the two rich kids in his highschool with Beats
this is accurate

Here/s the thing - modern music is mastered for specific listening environments. Most stuff these days is engineered for headphones/headbuds. The 50's and 60's, it was mixed for AM radio, in the 70's and 80's it was for car stereo speakers. You can push MP3s through $4k "reference' speakers all you want, it's still gonna be a mix for headphones. Or it's oontz oontz music that needs a PA and subs to sound good, but sounds like ass on headphones or shelf speakers. Or it's autotuned shit that had all the life sucked out of it with processing in the studio.
Well recorded music intended for high end systems just really doesn't exist anymore. It's too expensive, sounds wrong on earbuds, and loses all of it's best characteristics when it's compressed for digital streaming. Even FLACs - as good as they are, are still limited, and most of the signal is wasted on consumer level speakers anyway.

you may be an extreme exemple of what i've always try to explain to this kind of people or just people in general when they think that more expensive= better (mostly about headphones or car audio)
most decisions concerning audio are made purely based on taste as we are more limited than most people think
$100 headphones are certainly better than $10 earbuds, but i've try $10 earbuds that i really like

Picking the best master is infinitely more important than whether it's 320 or FLAC.

All I want is the best pair of headphones I can get for under $100 before the new Tool album comes out. That is all I want. I get attacked by audiophiles every time I ask.

this. the only thing stevehoffman forums gave us of worth is extensive reviews on every album remaster

sr80s

this or srh440s

>imagine thinking your hearing is still good after years of earbuds, headsets and too high volume in your life.

>You can push MP3s through $4k "reference' speakers all you want, it's still gonna be a mix for headphones.
One of the most retarded statements I've read on Yea Forums.

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Then explain why. I'll wait.

Mmm, that's some tasty snake oil right there.

pic related is what came to my mind when i read his post
however he's kinda right, as far as i know they try to mix tracks in a way that it can have some kind of balance to make it friendly to listen to in every kind of equipment, mostly if it's pop music as it's going to be played mostly in cars, Apple earbuds and big ass mono speakers at bars
however the original listening reference will always be studio monitors, and most people don't have those laying around

what the fuck is that

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That is superior fidelity friend

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what album is he listening to?

Steely Dan, of course.

>Well recorded music intended for high end systems just really doesn't exist anymor
mainstream music is recorded with a quality that has never been as good before, why do you think they do it in studios worth thousands if not millions?
>It's too expensive
the studio? yes
paying to use the studio? no, it's not if compared with the money the music will make
>sounds wrong on earbuds
earbuds sound wrong by themselves, but it depends more on the physical characteristics of the sound card
>and loses all of it's best characteristics when it's compressed for digital streaming
CDs and original WAV files are still used to distribute music, what do you mean? streaming companies compress music because it frees bandwith and disk space in the servers, because drives are expensive mate

>Even FLACs - as good as they are, are still limited
FLACs, other lossless formats, original waveform formats, raw audio signals or even good quality formats have limitations, sure, but they are not limited in the way human ears are
44100 samples per second and a frecuency range of 20-24k htz is out of the range a human can perceive differences in
if they use values higher than this is not because it sounds better, but because they have to have the signal fidelity as good as they can because otherwise it could lose valuable information and be distorted in the EDITING process, not because of the end devices it's destined for
>and most of the signal is wasted on consumer level speakers anyway
you gotta understand that they have to work with raw audio signals in order to not fuck the quality up by manipulating it
hell, the mixing and mastering process is made by guys in their 40-50s, they can't even hear past 18k hertz
but they are reached for and they ask for a shit ton of money because they don't need to hear them, their experience has made them understand by instinct what sounds good and what not, not only in a aesthetic sence but in a technical sense
over a certain range, you aren't paying for sound quality, you are paying for build quality and power

>picking the best master
You mean picking a good mastering engineer?

FLAC is simply a sound file format. Unless you're plugging into the desk in the studio, you're still just capturing a signal that was mastered with a specific curve and amount of compression. It's just a more "pure" version of a sound wave, that's been processed. Which is why the original master the FLAC is made from matters.

And, I don't think you understand what mastering is. It's mostly a cleanup of the mix, to prepare it for release. It's compression and EQ, to sound good on consumer grade gear. SOME recordings, usually jazz or classical, try to not step on the signal that much, but keep the signal from jumping too much so you don't blow a speaker, but in the majority of cases, an album is mastered with the RIAA curve, among other considerations. A mastering engineer doesn't need to hear above 18khz, because they're not making artistic decisions, they're making technical adjustments. And those adjustments are captured in FLAC, and if they're compressing and EQing for headphones, you have a FLAC capture of a headphone mastering.

>And those adjustments are captured in FLAC
No, broadcast wave format.

lol

It doesn't matter. If you've been listening music for around 10 years or more, your earbuds have already taken too much damage. They'll not be able to process music in more than 128kbps whether it's flac or 320

Oh, so when someone encodes a FLAC, it removes the mastering process? Really? Do you even understand what the discussion is?

Clearly he does not, see

Please tell me you told him to kill himself

>FLAC is simply a sound file format.
yes it is
???
>Unless you're plugging into the desk in the studio, you're still just capturing a signal that was mastered with a specific curve and amount of compression. It's just a more "pure" version of a sound wave, that's been processed. Which is why the original master the FLAC is made from matters.
yes you are right
my point is that it doesn't matter, you can't notice the difference
any difference you may perceive is because the unfiltered frequencies that may have creeped in are coloring and influencing the upper and lower ranges
however most of them are actually cut off in the editing process as a standard procedure
pic related is everything you should corncern about
And, I don't think you understand what mastering is. It's mostly a cleanup of the mix, to prepare it for release. It's compression and EQ, to sound good on consumer grade gear. SOME recordings, usually jazz or classical, try to not step on the signal that much, but keep the signal from jumping too much so you don't blow a speaker, but in the majority of cases, an album is mastered with the RIAA curve, among other considerations. A mastering engineer doesn't need to hear above 18khz, because they're not making artistic decisions, they're making technical adjustments.
i didn't say the opposite, you missunderstood me
by "sounds good" i literally mean that it sounds good, not that the music is good
in a "aesthetic sense" it means giving it the right balance so the music have clarity, and in a "technical sense" as in applying good practices -just what you said actually but with dumber words-
however, you shouldn't confuse a master engineer with a machine, their most important tool are their ears, and because of that there's always going to be decisions which can't be made in a strictly technical way, but rather they are left at the criteria of the engineer

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>And those adjustments are captured in FLAC
???
everything is stored in wav or just raw, or what do you mean?
>and if they're compressing and EQing for headphones, you have a FLAC capture of a headphone mastering.
ok this one is retarded
i don't know if you know a guy who's a master engineer and he uses this kind of practices, but the thing is that no one masters for headphones nor any other kind of equipment, at least generally and in this year and age
in order to master for headphones you have to do the mastering process using headphones
when they are mastering for cars, they do the mastering in a car? i don't think so
and before you come up with something like mastering techniques for different end equipment you have to understand that there's no point in mastering for a specific type of listening device, music nowadays is not mostly listened to or discovered by listening to the radio like it was decades ago
it's going to be first discovered by the public in a variety of things: laptop speakers or different type of headphones, earphones or earbuds (like in a youtube ad), the radio (as in a car or one of those shitty radio players), the TV as in music channels, or even a shitty phone's speaker
do you think they make a master file for EACH ONE of those? no, because it doesn't make sense
they do it with their monitoring speakers that they had used ALL THEIR LIFE, because they know exactly how they sound like, so they can catch little details they wouldn't be able to if they used a different set of speakers or even something like headphones
simply put, the original reference sound in a mastering studio is always going to be the engineer's old speakers (old but they are $4000 at least, and they have to be since they need them to last a long time)
i don't know what FLAC has to do with any of this
take a CD's raw audio or even a WAV file and convert it to FLAC, you are gonna half its weight without loss, yes, but you can't notice the fucking difference

so it's ok to use FLAC if you are a dog with a pair of $4000 headphones, but in general, during the editing phase the not audible frecuencies are cut off, the dynamic range gets compressed (why the fuck would you want a track that goes from 10db to 100 db anyways? you would have to keep turning your volume knob constantly), the sample rate and bit depth (the amount of information per sample [i'm clarifying this because you seem to be clueless]) of the recording (made with a 5k usd mic and a 5k preamp) has an accuracy no fucking human wouldn't perceive a diference in or really give a shit, and the mixing and mastering phases don't add any extra content, at least not armonic content, they just boost and lower some frequencies which could collide with others
and an mp3 compression with a bit rate of 320kbs per second is super fucking accurate for what we care, and keeping the extra information in the audio doesn't have any practical use, you don't have to nor even can hear the fucking 10k htz sound the ecco of a cricket made in the studio while recording

in conclusion you are retarded

you might as well get a BMW if youre buying a used german car. the volkswagen has just as many problems as a bimmer, if not more. except the bmw actually handles and drives much better

volkswagen and other vag products afaik have pretty solid engines and (manual) transmissions, however everything else seems to be crap, from their highest-grade luxury cars to the very most base-models
it seems from what other people say that they just have too many electrical problems, probably because everything is over-engineered while trying to reduce production costs in detriment of build-quality

i just got a corolla

lolol i hear that. i have an old bmw, i love it but the cooling system is made of paper mache and literally falls apart if i look at in wrong.