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Comment by z_open

4 days ago

As they say, most people listen to their music with equipment. Audiophiles listen to their equipment with music.

This is perfect, thank you this goes straight into my long-term memory bank.

On a tangent, whenever someone mentions LP sounding warmer or whatever I like to point out that I prefer wax cylinders (a.k.a. phonograph cylinders).

I might be something from the middle. Yes, I did spend a hefty 5000 euros to my headphone setup. And yes it sounds absolutely magical and every day I'm happy listening to music with it.

But I also have a large multi-terabyte music collection, I follow new music, go to concerts, go to parties, talk about music with my friends in signal group chats.

It's a hobby, and when you get a bit older and start having some savings, if you love music treating yourself with a better system is not that crazy.

  • When I got old enough to finally afford those toys I discovered I couldn't hear above 16khz anymore.

    • It is not only that. It's the spacing, how the bass sounds, separation of instruments. There's so many interesting headphones in the midrange to try out. Compare the Hifiman HE1000se to Heddphone 2 GT, or to Focal Clear MG and you'll understand.

      Also with HEDD you get a handcrafted device made in Berlin. And if you go with nicer cables, they are very beautifully done and feel great. There is no difference in sound of course. Some people like jewelry, I can get similar enjoyment from beautiful audio equipment and cables.

  • What’s the quality of this trove? As in bitrate or similar.

    • Depends. I'm more into finding certain masters. And some of the albums are DSD tape transfers. DSD if that was the original recording format, if it was mixed and PCM was needed, DXD flac.

      And so many CDs of course.

That’s true, but I consider myself a collector. Think of how a comic book collector operates.

If I have an option to get a 16bit version of a recording or a high-res version, I choose the highest quality version very time

Same with a physical copy. A limited edition, better quality vinyl LP is more attractive if you are going through the trouble of curating a collection.

I’ve been curating a music library of digital files since before the iPod was released and I will always go for the highest quality version out of principle. I can always downsample it to any thing that makes sense.

Why not to listen to the equipment from time to time? And why not to learn how class D sounds?