Michael Fremer defends Hi-Res digital while chewing out Gizmodo

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by violetvinyl, Jan 25, 2015.

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  1. Matt A

    Matt A Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Auratones.
     
  2. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Eh? That makes no sense. Music was a big deal when played through Victrolas and over AM radio, and the quality certainly wasn't there. Music has become background noise due to lifestyle changes, longer and longer commutes, ever more electronics/games/channels/apps, and a host of other factors.

    "Stereo enthusiast" (i.e. assembling a system to sit and listen to intently) has joined ham radio, wood burning kits, and home leather making on the scrap heap of dead and gone fads. We're just too in our own little universe to know it…but then again I've seen a lot of comments on this forum about listening the most while driving.
     
  3. 56GoldTop

    56GoldTop Forum Resident

    Location:
    Nowhere, Ok
    No, we can't all agree on that because it's one of the biggest cop-outs I hear perpetually on this and other forums. Play me well recorded, mixed and mastered music pressed on some of these

    [​IMG]

    and played back on one of these

    [​IMG]

    or through a (no photo for this one) dogs @** and it's still gonna sound like dog $***. At the risk of sounding like Fremer, it's 2015 and we have the technology to actually do justice to music that is well recorded, mixed and mastered and yet we still have people (I won't say putz) not happy to say "each to their own" when it comes to vinyl, CD, high res or what have you; but, have people who frequently and obnoxiously insist that the whole world of music lovers are farghe out of their mind in thinking that anything could possibly be better than CD. Not even those who created the CD believe that! Then when karma smacks them upside the head in kind, they want to get offended??? Michael Fremer, Mr. Vinyl himself... shocker is supporting a digital format? If Mario/Gizmodo had even the faintest clue, that should have given them pause right there. He's actually got one foot in the digital camp (because of sonic quality) and you've got boneheads (ooops, I meant nice peoples with far less audio experience than he and a wealth of consumers, producers, engineers (who also make format decisions for reasons other than sonic quality, yet know it when they hear it)) proclaiming themselves to be the authorities, even to the point of telling you, others, me, what you, they and I can't hear. It's ludicrous... but, it happens everyday, folks. Come back tomorrow at noon for more of the same.
     
  4. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    I think, perhaps relatedly, this plays into the Gizmodo analysis (comment from the article on Analog Planet) and its criticism:

    The average age of the Gizmodo staff appears to be about 28 – great for relating to most of the readership, but not so great when experience & knowledge are needed.
     
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  5. ubiknik

    ubiknik Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL USA
  6. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    Touché! A classic post for the archives. I wished I'd posted it -- Nail. On. Head.
    Just wonder where people like my bud BillyBoy are in this? Must be playing with his puppy...
     
  7. Sourcreampudding

    Sourcreampudding Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    Michael Fremer is the Buffalo Bill of audiophiles. Watch out, or you'll get the hose again.
     
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  8. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    No, but in the case of the Victrola, newness and novelty was there. Ditto early days radio consoles.

    But not sound quality? Now you aren't making sense. Wouldn't sound quality have a direct bearing on level of interest? For example, like all over this forum, isn't sound quality precisely the factor that gets people excited over a new remaster? Isn't sound quality the very thing the host of this forum dedicates his working life to? No, the way something sounds, the way something impresses must be a vital factor in all of this to my mind, as was proved to me during a party where I invited a group of people in their early 20s to listen in the sweet spot in my home. "Wow, even where you sit makes a difference!" was one of the observations.

    Think I can measure that?

    And yet, at least in the country where I live, every bookstore of any size has a magazine section with high gloss, expensive IMO, magazines dedicated precisely to what you call "the scrap heap of dead and gone fads" as they have for the 15 years since I arrived here. There are high end audio shops all over the metro area near where I live. Listening rooms. Granted, these places are frequented by an older age demographic, but I think that has more to do with disposible income than with anything else -- thus the long consideration two twenty-somethings took to decide on the best phono cartridge they could afford at one of the shops I was in last week.

    Something tells me you are not very well informed.
     
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  9. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    In an earlier post in another thread about the Gizmodo article I called the Gizmodo reporter "an absolute ass of a hack". Fremer merely called him a putz. It's really surprising when a Fremer insult is more restrained than my own. I'm not the sort to throw around insults and hand grenades like Fremer. I'd rather leave that up to Fremer. That's not my style.

    The Gizmod article also demonstrates the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Gizmodo reporter has $80 Grados probably plugged in his uber gaming rig computer that probably has about 80 dB of idle noise due to the cooling fans and considers that more than adequate to serve as a reference setup to determine that high-res and the PonoPlayer is a bag of horse schiit. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here listening to $4000 worth of headphone gear and know that I don't have a setup worthy of opining much about high-res. I really really need a better DAC before I dive into that. Anyone want to donate me a Schiit Yggdrasil DAC when it's released? I really need one. Maybe a GoFundMe account for it? But even if I had the Yggdrasil DAC along with my current headphone gear I still wouldn't consider myself expert enough to opine on digital audio the way the Gizmodo putz did. Cause I'm at the other extreme of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I know how much experience I don't have. I have no business making such asinine opinions. Cause I ain't got the experience for that. And never will. I've got nice headphone gear, but I've never spent time with equally nice speaker gear. And I'm well aware that my experience in that is lacking. Unlike the Gizmodo putz.

    I need to give Fremer a big high-five if I ever meet him (which doesn't mean I agree with him, or that I consider analog better than high-res digital).
     
  10. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    This is probably incorrect. Kids seeking better sound have made Bose one of America's most successful privately held companies. The reason that Apple could justify paying $3 Billion for Beats is because there are millions of young kids out there who are willing to pay more for good sound from their headphones. We may not agree with them, but I think they would regard themselves as stereo enthusiasts.
     
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  11. T'mershi Duween

    T'mershi Duween Forum Resident

    Location:
    Y'allywood
    The certainty with which you spew your uninformed misinformation is pretty stunning in it's hubris. Not only do you not know what you're talking about, you present your meager "insights" with pompous authority in an exceedingly tedious manner. Basically, you're only able to parrot the same old crap that gets repeated here by the other flatearthers who feel it's their noble mission to "educate" us poor delusional audiophiles.

    The fact that your camp basically consist of computer commandos with (apparently) lots, and lots of time on their hands and no real professional credentials speaks volumes.

    Audio professionals (mastering engineers, gear designers, etc.) have real world experience that we use to form our "opinions", you get yours vicariously through other amateur so-called "experts" on the internet.
     
  12. Claus

    Claus Senior Member

    Location:
    Germany
    Michael Fremer = an overrated editor!
     
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  13. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    16/44.1 *is* good enough according to the men in white coats rather than the men in long sleeves. But why do you think 24/96 is good enough? Surely only 128/1024 is adequate? Just because some cloth-earned philistine can't hear a difference doesn't mean it's not there! And curse those plutocrats who took the business decision to develop a 33 1/3 rpm 20-minutes/side format instead of waiting 100+ years to manufacture hardware at 1000rpm with enough room per side for an entire Wagner opera.
     
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  14. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Yes of course, the compact disc was developed by amateurs, and none of those ineptly brick walled CDs had anything to do with mastering engineers. It's all much clearer now :sigh:
     
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  15. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    16/44.1 was a business decision, there were other converters at the time with different sampling rates and bit depth. Before the Redbook standard, Telarc was using the Soundstream converters with their 50khz sampling rate. Very soon after Sony/Philips established the Redbook standard, Decca made their own [better sounding] 18 bit A/D's. As regards those lab-coats, if everything works perfectly with 16/44.1 then one can argue that the Redbook standard covers everything. Anybody with a scientific background [or experience with actual recording that would utilize the full range of bit depth and frequency response of the Redbook standard] will tell you that nothing works perfectly. Again, the issue [as far as I can tell] is not so much the high-frequency limit of our hearing as the way supersonic artifacts infest the audible range of frequencies.
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2015
  16. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    So Sony/Phillips made a business decision to develop their own system rather than license competing products that didn't yet work. That's shocking - what were they thinking???
     
  17. SteelyTom

    SteelyTom Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, Mass.
    It's genuinely curious that many people disagree with this.
     
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  18. SteelyTom

    SteelyTom Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, Mass.
    From a comment on the Fremer post:

    "I wonder why recording studios use such high bit rates if the lower bit rates Mario believes are perfectly fine will work instead. I guess they like to spend lots of money on analog to digital converters, high bit rate mixing boards and down sampling equipment. And more money to store the larger files and still more money to back them up. I guess every studio owner is a nutter, unless he (or she) records everything in Red Book. Hmmmm... How do those record companies even stay in business, constantly being ripped off by the greedy equipment vendors who keep selling them grossly over rated equipment?"

    What's the pro-redbook response to this?
     
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  19. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Because they are inaudible? Except when they manifest as distortion of lower, audible frequencies? It's why hi-rez can actually deliver worse fidelity than 16/44.1.
     
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  20. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Philips was planning on 14 bit encoding, Sony fought for 16 bit. Remember, these companies were vertically integrated, Sony making microphones, mixing boards, recorders, as well as the CDs themselves and CD players. Anyone who has worked with digital audio in the last five years knows that a 24 bit signal is easier to record—a lot more headroom means that low levels can be dynamically pulled up without losing quality. Trust me, a signal recorded at -40db on a DAT sounds like hell when it's normalized. As for the upper frequency artifacts, it took longer for them to become audible but they're still there. Recordings made on the Soundstream system were commercially viable enough to be the basis of Telarc's initial roll-out of digital recordings. And the transformerless nature of those recordings resulted in a phenomenal bass reproduction. Telarc records were demo favorites at Hi-Fi showrooms when they first appeared in the Late 70's. The Soundstream recorder, being designed as a 'High-End" recorder, was more complicated and expensive to build than Sony's early recorders, said recorders using components already on Sony's shelves. And back then, Sony had the most fiscal clout. Redbook is the result of commercial considerations. Many recording engineers at the time complained of the lack of bit depth, by the early 1990's 20 bit recording became available for the pro/am crowd, by 2000 it was ubiquitous. Now you can get a 24/96 handheld recorder for $80. It isn't really 24 bits deep but it still does a better job than any of the 20 odd DAT machines I've worked with. By the way, the Sony 1610 A/D converter, the standard for early CD, used an anti-aliasing filter consisting of ten op-amps in series. The audible artifacts of that moronic kludge are stamped on all early CDs, millions of 'em.
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2015
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  21. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    See my post above. Not that I'm pro-redbook, mind you, but the reasons why studios use hi-rez recording are obvious—it's simply easier to manipulate Hi-Rez recordings in the digital domain without losing sound quality. And until memory and storage got cheap, that simply was not possible. When I started editing in the digital domain, hard drives were $1,000 a Gig.
     
  22. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    It's the same reason banks store dollar and cent accounts with extra decimal precision, despite there being no thousandth of a penny.
     
  23. Coricama

    Coricama Classic Rocker

    Location:
    Marietta, GA
    He's right, but when he calls the author an "ignorant fool" in the second sentence of the response, he shouldn't be shocked it didn't make past the moderators.
     
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  24. thrivingonariff

    thrivingonariff Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    What is the highest sample rate that you would recommend?
     
  25. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Again, the reasons why studios use Hi-Rez recording are obvious, your arguments are equally obvious—you simply do not know what you are talking about.
     
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