The only people still buying dedicated audio players are audiofools
this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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chapotraphouse
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nah they're good. Sometimes I want something very light that doesn't make my pockets sag
lol, who buys this shit. this makes me wonder how much my ancient 50gb ipod would go for these days.
Probably quite a bit since there's ways to make them like 1TB now.
pseudoscientific slop of any kind will make big bucks to the right audience. "oh the decibel conflagration gradient is 0.005% lower in the soprano DVD spectrum, creating a harmonizing dissonating pulmonary association that'll be $5000 please" and if even one chump buys it they get a 2000% return on investment.
Yep this is the audiophile community. The same kind of people who buy Monster cables
you will never in a million years convince me that vinyl sounds better than digital. how this argument even gets off the ground is beyond me.
Vinyl does sound different though, and some audiophiles are so far gone that they think their own preferences are objectively better.
Records do tend to sound better to a listeners ears because of a bunch of psychoacoustic effects that make live instruments sound better than recordings though.
The sound of something like fast car is a classic example of applying those effects to a recording in the studio.
As a medium I will die on the hill that vinyl is better than digital for a bunch of reasons other than objective or subjective quality, but when you start measuring quality what you’re even trying to figure out gets muddy real quickly.
As a medium I will die on the hill that vinyl is better than digital for a bunch of reasons other than objective or subjective quality
That's where you completely lose me.
A medium can do more than just convey information. Minidisc, for example, is a better medium than cd.
gibberish
Minidisc natively supports a solution to the problem of copying that existed with cassettes and reel to reel before it, something that cd didn’t address. Minidisc supports recording in stereo as well using a pair of headphones which have separate grounds, a rare feature on cd players or even high end audio equipment.
Minidisc was portable and much more resistant to skipping or read error than cd. Minidiscs themselves were more durable and outlasted cds in every type of storage condition I’ve encountered.
Minidisc had inline controls.
Minidisc is a better medium than cd and all the reasons I listed have nothing to do with any subjective or objective judgement of quality.
its 2025, man. I don't think people still use minidic or CDs.
ongoing cd revival as reported on by rolling stone magazine - almost every record store I’ve been to lately has a growing and often new releases selection of cds.
website about new releases on minidisc as of 3 years ago - I can also attest that the players, parts and media have become insanely expensive lately because there’s a lot of interest in collecting and using them.
The point of course was not that those things are popular now (although they absolutely are!), but that some purportedly objective or subjective measure of quality isn’t the be-all end-all of formats.
Even when some measure of quality is brought up, it needs examination so that the importance of whatever numbers or prose recorded as justification for it can be considered reasonably.
My go-to example for this specifically with vinyl records and cds is channel separation. It refers to how “left” and “right” the left and right signals on a stereo recording actually are. You measure it by running a signal you know the loudness of into one channel and measuring how much of it you get in the other channel. For a record this means a track whose groove only has modulation on one side and for a cd it means a track whose information is only encoding one side. Lower numbers of decibels are better, perfect is zero.
Cds have much better channel separation than records. It’s obvious why, records make a sound by vibrating a coil or magnet next to its counterpart and vibration on the right coil or magnet will be picked up in a small amount by the left equivalent. How much? -20 to -30 db worth or so. Cds easily boast channel separation in the -50 to -60 db range.
Seems like an open and shut case, cds are better! Well… not really. You see the channel separation between two cochlea about six inches apart anchored to the same arch of bone is barely -20db.
So your own ears, wearing ideal headphones, couldn’t perceive the difference. Sure theres a measurement that says cd is better there, but it doesn’t actually matter.
The point of tee-ing myself up like that is not to shit on some format or laud another but to illustrate that measurement of quality has to be actually interrogated before its importance can be established.
If you think that's bad, ask them about 256k MP3 vs. FLAC lossless
well, i've always thought the difference is completely imperceptible from lossless after about 96 kbps per channel. that said, if you're using certain types of components that read certain codecs like truehd, there can be a very perceivable difference between a truehd track and a compressed E-AC3 track.
320 is fine enough for even concert levels. You only need anything else if you're doing serious mastering, and even then...
Yes it comes with less memory than my modern smartphone, but at least the gold-plated oxygen free copper provides a purer sound.
Audiophile cope in the comments is hilarious. A $30 pair of IEMs plugged into a 7 year old flagship phone is high enough quality that most people won't want anything crazier the rest of their life. A $150 pair of over ear headphones plugged into a cheap DAC from AliExpress is good enough to achieve full fidelity for anyone.
I can't wait until one of you nerds tries to tell me you can tell the difference between a flac and a 256kbps AAC file too.
some ppl have way too much money
Yeah Sonys always had a luxury brand lineup. Back in the day their uhh vaio? Computers were hailed as MacBook killers.
VAIOs were fucking awesome laptops
You'd think you could get one for like 20$. i wanted a cheap one that would just do music for... some reason idfk, but the lowest end ones are more expensive than cheap phones.
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