Hi-Fi, What Fi, can you tell the difference?

[Draconian Guppy]

Maybe a long read, maybe a boring read perhaps, alas maybe someone gets pointed towards the right way because of it?

 

 

 

As long as I can remember, i've liked listening to music, be it through speakers, boomboxes and portable gear amongst the whole different ways to enjoy your favorite tunes.

 

It all started back in 1990, I was around 7ish if I recall correctly, my mom got the Ice Ice Ice Ice Baby single as a cassette... We had a small boombox which I would  l listen to on hours long. Then around 1993 Santa brought me for christmas a yellow "splash proof" walkman cassette player;

 

 

 

I carried it around every time I could. Around  1995ish, I asked for scream/childhood cassette single (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scream/Childhood) (Oh how we argued with mum, she would say, he's a pervert  bla bla... I would answer, I don't care, I like his music... eternal discussion ).  What also "helped" was, my mom,  had several cassettes of her own, fleetwoodmac, gun n roses (she loved young axl), rolling stones and plenty other, which I would gladly listen to, though did like  that much (oh the ignorance, I now love GnR )

 Burglars got in the house one day while we were off for the weekend and gone was my cherished walkman. 

 

It wasn't till around 1998 when dad asked me what I wanted for christmas, I said  a stereo system and got an aiwa one:

 

 

Listening to music on that was amazing, have such a loud volume available at home was something nice to play around, pushing the speakers to the limits until you could smell sort of plastic burning and  I would turn the speakers down. It was around them, a friend taught me how to hook up my PC to my stereo system, oh this sorcery.

 

I had always been limited to my CD-Rips and "burning" CDs was expensive back in the day, so this allowed me to play all the music I owned, without having to carry around a thousand CD's!

 

Years passed, it was around 2000ish that portable bugs bit everyone at school and I begin to see everyone with sony cd walkmans, so the jealous/partially spoiled I guess, asked for a sony cd player (not that spoiled, it took a whole year of begging), enter portability!

 

It was then, how I figured out how retailers would scam shoppers, they would take out supplied accessories and sell them to you  crazy expensive, the player I got, was barebones only, not the one pictured above.

 

 

I now had all my music on the go! I carried around a small cd keeper, with around 3 CD's, while listening from the stock buds supplied (in the photo). It wasn't until a friend of mine introduced me to Sony "street" style headphones, that I figured out what I was missing out.

 

 

 

All this world of instruments had been out there that  I was not listening to. I managed to save up my allowance and buy them in around  5 months...

 

So this combination kept me happy for a while, I would listen to music, while coming and going anywhere, whether on car/bus/walking. With the advent of napster and other music services in 2000s, my default setup for home would be, PC -> stereo system and portability would be sony cd player (with a whole 10 seconds of skip-free music). I twas thanks to these services, that I also managed to start telling apart bitrate, back in the day 164kbps was OMG UBER HIGH quality and 64kbps was acceptable... It was this way I understood what VBR, CBR and ABR meant.

 

It was around 2003ish  we were walking around the mall with my girl and being a woman, she had to look in every store and the mall and  window shop, it was because of that, I saw this in a window of an electronics store:

 

 

A mini disc player! I immediately went in and asked a store helper about, he explained that mini-discs could be burned with the NORMAL cd-burner! How had the geek in me never known this! I felt oh so lame! The salesman kept on going how each mini disc could hold up to around 500 songs depending on the "song size". I had to have it, It would break my saving account (based of some informal jobs as a helper in a store + allowance). I went home and researched, online price would be around $150,  were I lived, it cost $400... But I had to have it... So I returned to the store and bought the player, ran back home, bought standard triple A batteries, burned the first mini-disc and listening began! I was overjoyed! I had around 300 of my songs for my portable listening! I spent the better part of that afternoon listening to music, then all of a sudden, I had not noticed, batteries were gone! In less than two hours this crazy player, ate through a pair of batteries. I decided to go out and buy another pair and had the same behavior, which I thought was weird, as a result I went back to the store and asked about the horrible battery life, the salesman said "oh you need a pair of rechargeable triple A battteries" (crazy expensive as well), but I wasn't going to let that get in the way, so I got the batteries, again ran back home, charged the batteries (NiCd ) and music was in my ears again, for a whole 3 hours... What was ######! I was used to getting WEEKS out of my cd-player and months out of my walkman! What THE HELL NIKE PHILLIPS... Being the geek that I was, I researched online, it was a widespread issue, unfortunately, the stores in our country did not allow for returns then (most still don't ) so here I was, stuck with a ###### battery life player...  It did the job, But I had to buy an extra pair of rechargeable triple a batteries (both pairs and charger cost me around $120 back then). This kept me happy for a good year or so, but as far as my digital life goes, this has to be the worst purchase ever in my life (well yet anyway... one never knows! )

 

Around 2004ish one of my best friends returned from the USA and had a "broken" sony atrac minidisc player, he told me if I fixed it, I could have it (basically he was going to throw it away... but he was trying to point out he was doing me a favor... Ahh... friends, friends will be friends, that's what real friends do, give you ###### ) 

 

The problem the player had a stuck left button and would reboot for some reason, I researched online and it turns out the fix was easy via a factory reset and some glue inside the player, long story short, I manged to get the player working. It was then I figured out, how to put music in the player, you had to use Sony propriety software crappystage, I mean SonicStage, the issue was not the use of software, but rather that it converted every song, into its crappy, lossy ATRAC format, which degraded the music quality enormously, but it had one sole benefit, battery lasted around one week on a single triple A battery!    It was a love hate relationship with this player throught out a whole year, every time I wanted to add a new song, it was a 20 minute process and around two hours for several songs, that and  MD cassettes were not available in my country and were crazy expensive online as well .  I hated everything about this player, but the battery life was stellar.

 

Around this time, I was still using, nike phillips headphones, when the  "sweatproof" silicone around them began to fail and using them would cut my ears, but I still had the streetstyle sony headphones.

 

Circa 2006ish I can't remember why I started looking for an mp3 player, but quoting myself from:

 

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/514266-gadgets-recommendation/

 

 

 

on #2
Must not be a disposable toy, this meaning, The battery should be easily changed or have an easy manner of replacement ( again, I'm not in the US, so please refrain from saying "oh just send your ipod to an apple center it costs $100 to replace), Although I have considered an ipod video and some battery replacement kits, I just don't want an i-pod.
Specs I care about the most
* LONG battery life 
* Player build quality ( as I want it to last at least a 2-5 years)
* Min 10Gb or more for storage
Specs I don't care about
* brand ( although se above... lol)
* video playing capabilities ( after all I just want a mp3 player)

 

 I considered many brands, cowon, creative, toshiba in the end I settled for a creative zen vision:m, now, being in third world hell, getting this player would be quite an ordeal, I was a broke college student. A budy of mine told me about a courier service that would bring stuff from the USA and purchase it with their credit card. MSRP was around $220, it cost me around $320 including a generic charger. Ever since these days, I can remember someone said, don't buy apple, itunes is the devil... ( it is ! for me anyway! ) In a month or so I had the creative in my hands... I had a problem though, my streetstyle sony earphones were banged up and the included earbuds were trash and ordering a pair of headphones through the service mentioned above was too expensive at the moment, so I looked around locally and found these puppies:

 

 

Again, ripped off, they cost me around $50, while online price was $20...  They were amazing except for one thing, the weird volume control would add static while you were turning volume either up or down, again I researched later, a widespread issue which was solved in a newer model with  a digital controller. I used the hell out of these with my creative vision:m. I sweat a lot, around 2 years in, the pleather pads started peeling because of my sweat I guess and the head band had lost its original fitting and the closed cup headphones would no longer seal.

 

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/516575-looking-for-new-headphones/

 

I can't find my exact post if I did or how I found sennheiser, but I ended up getting these:

 

These evoked nostalgia to my old sony streetstyle: Sennheiser PMX200. It was here, were I really bitten by the head fi bug, through the (now I know, sucky) sennheiser, I began to hear a thousand and one details in my music, the clarity, soundstage, micro detail when compared to anything I had owned before! It was around this time I started dwelling deeper and deeper into VBR instead of CBR and eventually discovered FLAC, but I made sure most of my music was VBR whenever possible.

 

I think it was around that time, someone here, pointed me to head-fi:

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/428520/new-re2-user

 

 

 

Hi... Not sure if this is the correct forum for this. But I found Head fi looking for IEM to replace my sennheiser PMX200. And red Clios Review on the RE2 and comparative thread as well, so decided to get the RE2.

Just recieved them yesterday, burned in for around, delivery was amazing, customer service was great! And man these puppies sound sooooo much better than my old sennheiser straight out from my creative zen vision:m... I'm seriously in AWE, i've been missing out all these years! Christ! The details i've been missing in music i've been missing

The one thing I do regret is not ordering the FIOS E5 Amp... I read so much good things about its synergy with the RE2... In a couple of months I'm certainly going with the RE1 amped!!!

Anyway... Maybe I'll post an amateurs point of view review... But I'm definitely hanging around head fi more 

Spread the love for Head direct and for Head Fi 

Edit: Not only that, but Mr. Fang marked the phones as a Gift!!! Thanks a lot! It helped ease the customs process soooooo much!!! 

 

 

I had discovered the world of hifi... How long had I been missing out on hearing music properly! As a result of that bug, I got these:

 

 

Head direct RE-2,  I was usually to the somewhat cold signature of the senheisser, that also had some pronounced bass, the RE2, an analytical IEM, was amazing, I was finally listening to music in a "Natural" way, without added bass to distort (like the beats by dre brand...)

 

Never head of head direct? I don't blame you, most head-fi gear comes from "unknown" asian brands... Now, the head directs sound signature was amazing to me, but they had/have one flaw, as a chinese company, sadly, they do live up to the bad chinese rep in terms of build quality ( not saying everything chinese is bad quality...), in around 3-4 months, the headphone plug just went, mind you, I babied them... Their customer service was stellar! It still cost me $25 to ship back (almost the cost of the original re2)... I got  a pair back and another 8 months went, and would you know it, they f'd up... (yes that's how I felt, ###### ass chinese build quality), that brought forward the following:

 

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/746070-decided-to-get-iem/

 

Based on feedback, I ended up getting the Etymotic MC5   ( http://www.head-fi.org/t/504336/etymotic-mc5-vs-re0-re2-an-amateurs-comparison ), as they had two year warranty (vs 1 from head direct) and had a similar sound signature to the RE2s.  Now, while similar sounding, the etymotic were simply more revealing in detail  in every aspect, also,  much more "colder" (eg. analytical).

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/534914/identify-my-weakest-link-in-my-gear-how-make-it-better

 

It was around this time, the smartphone boom 2009-10ish, for the iPhone 3Gs, that smartphones really began catching up to DAPs (digital audio players) in terms of sound quality. I had been eyeing a used iPhone 3Gs for a while, reading reviews/comparisons in the audiophile world and deemed it was good enough to be my portable solution for music. the 3Gs was okish in terms of sound quality it was around the same as my creative zen vision:m.  And then, along came a good deal for an iPhone 4, which had a very different sound signature, a bit warmer to anything I had ever owned.

 

After the iPhone 4 and continuing my search for analytical sound, I endedup purchasing a creative xFI  2 ( bit into marketing), not a bad purchase as the nike phillips, the xfi 2 was good, but the OS, build quality, was just down right nasty, (sadly, creative didn't manage to repeat the success of the vision branch and eventually exited DAP market) but audio quality was clearly better than that of my iphone 4. Not mention it's horribly slow resistive touch screen.

 

 

 

 

Around 2011ish The combination of the XFi2 and the etymotic MC 5, got me wandering how I could improve on that analytical sound, so I started looking for IEMs again http://www.head-fi.org/t/557760/ultimate-ears-triple-fi-10-pro-vs

I looked at several brands (unknown to me) like ultimate ears, Audio Technica, Phiaton, but the search ended up always getting me to etymotic 4PT.

 

 

 

I will say this, tri flange tips, take time getting used to, they basically rape your ears if you've never inserted anything that deep before (hmmmm this phrase...),  that said, the games from the Etymotic MC5 to the ER4Pt were less noticeable, as the sound signature was similar.  

 

The iphone 4/ Creative xFi 2 served me well for a good 2 years until I learned about the samsung Galaxy s4 what came with a dedicated wolfson audio chip, so I sold my trusty iPhone 4 and bought a Galaxy s4.   Sound wise, the Galaxy sounded a little bit better, wider, more expansive i'd say and just about the same as my xFi 2 as well. (As a side note, touchwiz is ubergarbage and since samsung did not ever release source code for exynos, customs ROMS were not that stable for the exynos S4.)

 

I was quite happy with the S4/Xfi2 setup, except for the low powered amp in the s4, volume had to go high to drive my ER4PTs. For years, I read about Hi-Fi daps, IEMs and headphones on Head fi, didn't really think my setup could improve the sound from my awesomesource files in anyway.

 

Around 2013ish, I lost / misplaced my xFi2 and  in 2014 decided to upgrade my dreaded s4 to an LG G3 ( much in part because of touchwiz) A grave mistake with some good sauce involved! The g3 goes crazy when a 2 stage (and not 3 ) plug is used, sound is a lot better than my old s4 and xFi2, though severly low output volume leaves much to be desired, anyway, because of the whole 3.5mm issue, I decided it was a good excuse to finally try portable amps... You can read about that story here:

 

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1256310-portable-amp-for-phone/

http://www.head-fi.org/t/766261/portable-amp-for-lg-g3-usb-out-suggestion-and-a-couple-of-questions

http://www.head-fi.org/t/766487/looking-for-a-dap-to-replace-smartphone

 

 

Long story short, looking for portable headphone amp, compatible with my LG G3  I almost bought this https://www.jdslabs.com/products/70/c5-headphone-amplifier/ , but as a members recommendations over at head fi, kindly pointed out, amping would only improve the capabilities of my current source, in other words, if my source wasn't perfect, it would amplify those imperfections... This got me thinking on how I could better my source.

 

 

Long story short, I ended up purchasing an iBasso Dx90 

 

 

 

 

I got it second hand from a member over at head fi,  MSRP was around $400 and he was selling, like brand new for around $270ish which was a steal IMO. Now, the firmware was some issues, but that's a different story. As soon as I got it, I paired it with my trusty Etymotic E4PT and  INSERT HOLY MOTHER OF GOD meme! The difference from anything I had ever owned was outstanding! I was suprised by the clarity, depth, width and general sound signature, I did not think my ER4PTs could sound any better and they do!  All these years wasted due to lack of funds/wrong knowledge of DAPS, etc!  I would never go back to smartphones unless for emergencies (battery, forgot dap, etc). My ears were blown away, the difference was night and day! All these years I was thinking my smartphones were good enough, but the sad truth is, they were not even %50 of the sound signature this puppy had!

 

As a result of this player I had to figure out how to make my sound more expansive, as universal IEMs can be sort of limiting just because of how they are, this led to a search for over the ear headphones

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1257454-analytical-headphones/

 

This resulted in the OPPO PM-3, yes I know they also make smartphones, but in the good ol US of A, a company licensed their brand name and they make (supposedly) the best bluray players and headphones.  The sound signature vs my IEM (and yes no an apples to apples comparison) is a bit different in the sense of slightly "warm" vs the more analytical er4pt.  But the sense of air/space/depth, just cannot be had with my current e4PTs vs the PM-3.

 

 

 

So, after this long post, the TLDR version of this would be:

 

If you can tell the difference between  mp3 bitrates, eg. 64, 128, 192, 256, 320  VBR, ABR, CBR, etc. AND enjoy listening to music, do get proper equipment! You will be suprised in the world apart from how SOUND should sound and how poorly you've been listening to it as well (and if you can afford to obviously).

 

Now, my next steps are Custom IEMs, Open headphones and a better source.  The problem is, I'm not so sure #1. my ears will know the difference between my current setup and crazy expensive sources likes  http://www.astellnkern.com or even if the improvements  to be had are along worth $1000, in terms of source anyway.   In terms of headphones, I know sound can be improved with open back headphones (over my pm-3)  and CIEMS. We'll see how that goes/

 

 

Note: none of the images are mine, I found in search engine!

 

Edit: Come to think of it, neowin had been a big part of me going Hi-Fi.... hmmmm food for thought eh?

[Draconian Guppy]

Adding images of the Xfi 2, Etymotic 4pt,  ibasso dx90 and oppo pm-3 in a second post as i've hit the limit in the first.

 

Etymotic MC5

 

 

Etymotic 4pt

 

Creative x fi2,

 

 

Oppo Pm -3

 

 

iBasso dx90

 

[Kierax2016]

Memories there!, I recall growing up having one of those exact Aiwa hifi's! 

 

I run a Technics SH-DV250 5.1 which is connected to my 2015 Mac Mini, using VOX to play FLAC/AAC format. 

[Draconian Guppy]

Memories there!, I recall growing up having one of those exact Aiwa hifi's! 

 

I run a Technics SH-DV250 5.1 which is connected to my 2015 Mac Mini, using VOX to play FLAC/AAC format. 

I know! Trying to remember exact model was a bitch!

 

I google for hours on "aiwa 1998 speaker system"

 

I'm still trying to remember that AVLS on the original walkman meant

[Kierax2016]

Automatic Volume Levelling System. 

 

 

I remember portable CD players too, making you pay out the nose for anti-skip memory, repeat buttons.  We are spoiled now with it all inbuilt into even the most basic phones on the market really. 

[Draconian Guppy]

Automatic Volume Levelling System. 

 

 

I remember portable CD players too, making you pay out the nose for anti-skip memory, repeat buttons.  We are spoiled now with it all inbuilt into even the most basic phones on the market really. 

Ah lol, don't remember what that sounded like

 

And yeah I recall non-skip normal cd players would cost $20 bucks, whereas non skip around $40ish

[Kierax2016]

Back then they printed many things on devices ( remember the turbo buttons on some computers   ) thing is often they mean't little or nothing.  

 

 

 

 

[Arachno 1D]

Wat no boom box?

[Anibal P]

Wat no boom box?

 

I had one very similar to this one back in 87/88

[Kierax2016]

I bet that one cost a few bucks when it was new, every neat feature available on there!

[The Evil Overlord]

I used to have the AIWA NSX 360-K until the cd player died, (For a while I ran my TEAC P4500 via aux,) (but then I got my Technics SA EH-790 in my bedroom, great alarm clock)

Although it doesn't compare to my Living room rig

[Draconian Guppy]

I used to have the AIWA NSX 360-K until the cd player died, (For a while I ran my TEAC P4500 via aux,) (but then I got my Technics SA EH-790 in my bedroom, great alarm clock)

Although it doesn't compare to my Living room rig

Aiwas were "famous" around here, for having 10X features compared to other brands and being cheaper!

[Aergan]

Aiwas were "famous" around here, for having 10X features compared to other brands and being cheaper!

 

They even ventured with SEGA for a spell:

 

http://segaretro.org/CSD-G1M

[+E.Worm Jimmy]

They even ventured with SEGA for a spell:

 

http://segaretro.org/CSD-G1M

 

No way! Why wasn't I told?

[Aergan]

No way! Why wasn't I told?

 

Japan only I'm afraid. Also despite being pretty cool and unique for the time it's a pretty terrible product.

[Draconian Guppy]

As a follow up and to further contribute to this thread.

 

After I really  started listening to music, I learned to identify "real" music, from over-produced-digitally enhanced tracks and basically, everyone sins, amongst some severely over produced band are along the lines of Linkin park, you'd think their rock-ish tracks would have some degree of instrument separation, but basically they sound like everything is coming from the same spot 0 sound stage. Foo Fighters is a big sinner as well. As a genre, anything EDC is pretty much flat in presentation (though I do enjoy EDC very much). "Indies" also "fault" in being overly produced and end up sounding "dull"

 

Also, you really learned to enjoy "acoustic" played songs, when it's just the artist, live with a couple of back up instruments, IMO, this is were instrument separation and soundstage really shine. That's not to say there aren't good produced studio albums/songs a couple that come to mind: Audioslave - Audioslave,   Adele - 21 (though admitedly loud, the depth in vocals, instruments is awesomesauce) 

[+jnelsoninjax]

Very interesting post, I do have fond memories of the walkman and discman! But to answer the underlying question, no I can not tell the difference in sound quality, but that may have something to do with only having one ear to hear out of, so I basically can not hear in stereo, just Mono, now my roommate considers himself an audiophile and he takes all his music (mp3) and converts them to wav and runs them through a process of trimming the silence from the beginning and ending, and then normilizes the audio (which I can tell the difference) and rencodes the wav to a VBR mp3. He claims that he can tell the difference between something encoded and 128, or 320, or FLAC, but to me they all sound the same!

[Draconian Guppy]

Very interesting post, I do have fond memories of the walkman and discman! But to answer the underlying question, no I can not tell the difference in sound quality, but that may have something to do with only having one ear to hear out of, so I basically can not hear in stereo, just Mono, now my roommate considers himself an audiophile and he takes all his music (mp3) and converts them to wav and runs them through a process of trimming the silence from the beginning and ending, and then normilizes the audio (which I can tell the difference) and rencodes the wav to a VBR mp3. He claims that he can tell the difference between something encoded and 128, or 320, or FLAC, but to me they all sound the same!

crazy? from .mp3, to wav, to .mp3!? that's one crazy and lossless process! But cool story nonetheless !

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

Wat no boom box?

 

I remember seeing something like that back in late 1988 or early 1989, but it was bigger and had way more switches, I wish I would've found out who made it!

[The_Decryptor]

crazy? from .mp3, to wav, to .mp3!? that's one crazy and lossless process! But cool story nonetheless !

Odd definition of lossless, he's taking a low quality audio format, editing it and then re-encoding it.

[+Fahim S.]

ATRAC3 was awesome.  Smaller file sizes and in my opinion a fuller soiund than the equivalent bit rate MP3.  Obviously transcoding from a compressed format to a different compressed format just completely destroyed music.

I miss my MiniDisc.  

if I remember rightly (casting my mind back the best part of 20 years), I had this player, and this full size hifi unit.

I still have a couple of very good live drum & bass MiniDiscs somewhere!

 

[Draconian Guppy]

Odd definition of lossless, he's taking a low quality audio format, editing it and then re-encoding it.

Agreed, but by definition, taking a lossy codec, passing it to a less  lossy codec then to the lossy codec again...  Why not simply re-encode to a higher bitrate from source file, the difference is negligble given that the source IS lossy to begin with. His roomate is using -VBR which does that just by definition! SO i dunno!

[+jnelsoninjax]

He uses All2lame (GUI for LAME), Lame.exe with the switches --noreplaygain -V0 -q 0 when encoding back to mp3, the way he described it to me is that VBR only encodes in the frequencies that the normal human ear can hear. Again this is what he says, I honestly can not tell the difference, because as stated before, I pretty much only hear mono.

[Draconian Guppy]

He uses All2lame (GUI for LAME), Lame.exe with the switches --noreplaygain -V0 -q 0 when encoding back to mp3, the way he described it to me is that VBR only encodes in the frequencies that the normal human ear can hear. Again this is what he says, I honestly can not tell the difference, because as stated before, I pretty much only hear mono.

ah... I see, he's the type that needs unicorn blood every blue moon when the pegasus flys by

Still, mp3 to wav to mp3 is um redundant if you ask me, but lets leave it at that    

 

"VBR allows a higher bitrate (and therefore more storage space) to be allocated to the more complex segments of media files while less space is allocated to less complex segments."

"The bits available are used more flexibly to encode the sound or video data more accurately, with fewer bits used in less demanding passages and more bits used in difficult-to-encode passages."

nothing about only specific frequencies.

 

Double edit: I was curious about your "mono", here's a sort of solution perhaps?

http://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/hearing-stereo-with-one-ear-2/

Edited October 12, 2015 by Draconian Guppy

[+jnelsoninjax]

 

ah... I see, he's the type that needs unicorn blood every blue moon when the pegasus flys by

Still, mp3 to wav to mp3 is um redundant if you ask me, but lets leave it at that    

 

nothing about only specific frequencies.

 

Double edit: I was curious about your "mono", here's a sort of solution perhaps?

http://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/hearing-stereo-with-one-ear-2/

That is really a neat idea, I would have never considered it! I might go ahead and order the 1-BUD (http://www.scansound.com/single-stereo-earphone-with-angled-plug.html) just so i can here Stereo!