Stereophile, June 2015 AWSI JMR

I read, as I always do, JMR’s columns and his recent AWSI with great interest. I see the manifestation of this in school every day where “effort” is frowned upon by all too many and what has enveloped our society as a whole. We are all too willing to accept less.

Convenience can be a remarkable thing, but when it replaces “quality” we lose much in everything we do. To those of us who love music performed well and recorded in the best possible way with the greatest gear at one’s disposal, audiophiles shudder when the listening experience is reproduced to “just enough” information to get the gist of it, a mere shell or shadow of the original performance.

When low effort in school become the norm, standards lowered and social promotion rules the day, it mirrors what has happened to our music delivery systems accepted by the masses, it exposes our enjoyment of musical art to what is a cardboard copy of what was once beautiful. Why would these same people who enjoy MP3s complain if their 4K HD TVs were removed from their homes and replaced by the MP3 equivalent of an old Tube-Type standard definition TV? Is not most of the “information” still there? We know that most enjoy the startling, clear image and vivid colors.

Pono could and still might be the light at the end of the tunnel, but the incompetent main stream media who keep dismissing it as pure folly when they either don’t know how or what to listen for, or have the cheapest of ear-buds or headphones and can’t really hear the improvement. People who lack the ability to put in the effort to understand the mathematics involved should not be writing about such things and claiming to be experts, when they are dispensing misinformation that all too many will take as truth. This is all too often what has happened to journalism today in all too many fields.

Audiophiles are diligent, educated people who love music deeply, maybe more than the MP3 crowd as it does take an effort and some resources to do what we do with our music systems. But, it does not take crazy money to enjoy the best in music delivery even if one just invests in a decent DVD player, headphone amp and recommended set of headphones off InnerFidelity.com so as to not make a buying mistake. Even an ART Headphone4 amp at $65 will bring great pleasure from a DVD player, capable of playing back high resolution 2496 files.

My crazy cheap, affordable, Steinberg UR-22 usb computer interface ($150) can play back files up to 24/192 and sounds amazing playing back my computer files, easily better than my stock computer sound card. As Art Dudley once said about the original Rega P-1 turntable; “Affordable as anyone with a job”; something that can bring great enjoyment for little effort or money. This is even cheaper than that.

Unfortunately America has gotten lazy in all too many things in life and gotten to the point where we are willing to accept less when much better is so close at hand. Audio has just been added to that list since the turn of the century. We are all now about MP3, Texting, the Selfie, and reduced our schools to just a “Social Event”, and in our fee time we want little more than all it takes to fill the silence around us while we do something else.


I show my students the opening to the movie “The Paper Chase” to give them an idea of what college is like. The first year of Harvard Law, new top of their class college graduates embarking on a difficult journey through Professor Kingsfield’s Contract Law class, yet one has decided to come to class unprepared for the first day. Now, a year there is $85,000, so coming unprepared would not be such a good idea, yet it wasn’t back then either. I am quick to remind them there are no refunds, either. You don’t want to do the work that is on you. Yes, effort is a requirement in life…at every level. We each chose what we accept.

In trying to persuade those to not listen to MP3 and give something better a try; I am reminded of that old Abbott and Costello show where they were having a hard time selling vacuum cleaners door to door. Lou Costello was so frustrated that he decided get serious. On their next call he told the Lady of the house that if their vacuum cleaner did not pick up everything on her carpet he would eat it. He proceeded to dump dirt, coffee, sugar, salt, and pepper all over her carpet. He held the AC plug in his hand as she looked at him and handed him a spoon.

“Get eating” she said, “as I don’t have electricity!” The look on his face was priceless. That lady had no electricity and our MP3 adherents have no interest. There is not much difference when they have much less to overcome than the Lady with no AC coming into her home.

 

A challenge with getting interested in, and appreciating, high quality audio playback is that you need to be exposed to it first to be able to discover it. If a person is not aware of what good audio is like they aren't going to seek it out when looking for playback options. If you're not aware then you're going to seek the less expensive and the easier options. That's actually being rational. It isn't being lazy or unprepared. The irrational thing would be to spend a lot of money on headphones and a player right off the bat before you were able to appreciate what you were getting.

It's a chicken and egg situation. It isn't rational to spend big bucks on audio gear before you are able to appreciate the quality differences it offers. But you aren't going to discover what those quality differences are unless you first listen to good gear and good audio for a while. It takes time to discover and learn what good audio is like. It also takes faith because in order to get that experience you have to first buy the gear, and buy into a level of gear that is above a level of cost that most people would consider rational. Why spend $300 on headphones when the $25 ones accomplish the same thing? If you don't have experience with listening with good gear you aren't going to spend the money to get it. It isn't be lazy or uninformed. It's being rational about spending money frivolously.

Another part of the issue is that if you gave 100 people a PonoPlayer and really good headphones to use for a year only a very small percentage of those people would end up discovering that the audio and the music listening experience actually is better. Most people won't notice or appreciate. It's not their thing. We're dealing with something that will have very low conversion rates. You can't expect success in trying to convert the masses to the audiophile fold.

I was fortunate in that I was somewhat irrational when I bought my first good headphones. I splurged and got the Sennheiser HD580 because they had a reputation of being good. I didn't have the experience yet to be able to identify by ear what that goodness was. But I bought them anyways. After owning them for a while and listening to them for a while I eventually discovered what that goodness was and how that goodness makes music listening better. That first step took faith. They were expensive headphones compared to other headphone options I could have chosen.

 

I would agree with you Han Sandwich.I revisited audio quality about 7yrs ago after 20 yrs of not caring about hardware just volume.
I purchased a pioneer a6 and pd6 with wharfedale anniversary 9.1 speakers.
It was great but I still didn't know what I was really doing or hearing.
I then went onto Shure se310 and se420 earbuds still not really discovering much.
I then got some hd650s and things changed.I could listen for detail and soundstage .
In headphones I now have Grado rs1,gs100oi,Ultrasone edition 8s and signature pros.
I swap between the headphones whether home or away.
Still spending 3/4 of my time listening to further amp and speaker combos that I have leap frogged along.
The point is each step has been a step forward and my listening attention and rewards improved by each move.
By improving the quality each time has lead to a better appreciation and understanding.Plus a more relaxing listen where greater volume isn't the goal or restriction.Reaching the hd650s and being headphones was the open doorway to sound quality which I was missing and immune to until then.
I would be curious to revisit the pioneer now to see what I missed.

 

We have reached the level of where "good enough" is good enough in all too many things. Maybe the $49 BluRay player IS good enough. Oh, man, that is just crazy talk.

I just wish people could try a pair of Grado 80s with the large ear cushions, and a portable CD player with a cd that was recorded and mastered well . May be a street corner trial would be in order?

 

Was the walkman good enough... or just good at being portable?
There is a level where you have to spend to open new doorways as the beginning of a new quality level.
But you have to have an initial interest in something simply beyond convenience plus the drive to learn more and understanding that you don't already know everything.

 

Who is JMR, and what is AWSI?

 

It takes more than a street corner trial to get people to actually hear and appreciate a difference in improved sound quality. It requires a longer term demo. You can impress people with MOAR BASS impersonating better audio quality given a short street corner demo. But learning to appreciate the benefits of a more neutral presentation and appreciate the benefits of hearing more detail and layers and space will take time. A month maybe? Or more? Takes time. If you listen to a good system for a month exclusively, and then go back to the old system the differences are more likely to be apparent.

Perhaps figure out a way to do long term loans of gear to noobs to get them exposed. Short demos aren't going to do it. A short demo of the HD580 way back 15 years ago wouldn't have worked for me. It took longer to learn to discover and appreciate it.

 

The Stereophile editorial As We See It.

 

Thanks. What happened to JA? Maybe I should subscribe again so I'm more in the know.

 

There is also the matter of the cultural environment. There was an age, let's just call it "the 60s" as shorthand (though that is not a precise era for the matter at hand), when sound systems in some form were in a large number of households and college rooms. They may have been mono or stereo consoles from Sears or "Monkey" Wards (perhaps including TVs--but certainly a record player and a radio), may have been a fold-into-a-box record player with a carrying handle and a detachable speaker or two, may have been something present at a party where the participants typically brought their personal stash of--one to several--45s to pile up on the multi-disc spindle. But, no matter, present and shared music was likely in some form. Also often present, even if the consequences were not understood, was an urge to "get better stuff".

If we were joined in some fashion, we were also singular...and a long, long way from the sensibility that we worked best if we were, at most, redundant nodes in a network.

The "egg" of chicken-and-egg was the enveloping environment. A person more likely than not had hardly experienced anything approaching high-end sound, quite likely had experienced only mediocre sound throughout their entire life, but sound was in the air. There was almost a "national" music. Radio may have been largely (if not obviously, among the entire population) fractured between "race music" and the white perceived "mainstream"--but still, "Take Five", "Summertime", "The Girl From Ipanema", "Love Me Tender", "Lemon Tree", "The Seventh Son", "Take The A Train", "Old Man River", "Mona Lisa", "The Midnight Special", "God Bless The Child", "All I Have To Do Is Dream", could hit all over the place. Motown was thresholding, The Hit Parade was thresholding, Girl Groups were thresholding, Folk Music was thresholding, The Beatles were thresholding, Bossa Nova was thresholding, and people wanted to hear it...and wanted to hear what would be coming along next.

"High Quality" playback would likely have been accidental at best, but still the urge was to put the money that could have been spared into playback equipment, when such a purchase was to be made...and not the urge to use no more than the minimum amount of money that would just let you hear something while commuting. People now may quite likely have better sounding equipment even at the minimum, but the overall mood seems to no longer be "get something better", it seems to presently be "get whatever everyone else is getting cause that's what people are doing".

Music and electronics today have formed a new system. Music is now more diffuse (with more sub-categories). The music playing devices are less shared experiences--and music playing may have no more weight than the GPS abilities of the same device (not to mention much less weight than the ability to text on the device). The whole national mood now seems to tend toward "cheapest", not toward "better". Things have become so diffuse there is no apparent center of gravity...and little if any observed common pull towards making music, or the technical sonics of music, something increasingly better.

Though this area is not quite a matter of national urgency, it seems to be one more manifestation of Yeats', "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold".

 

JA did the As We See It editorial for the May issue. Different people do it each month.

Here's an online listing of the As We See It editorials: http://www.stereophile.com/category/we-see-it

 

While I agree with you in many of your statements about social changes, I see audio as it pertains to MP3, hi-res, and ultimately Pono very differently.

Let's talk technical first. I do not believe we can compare audio with high-res video. From a purely spatial resolution perspective, visual angular resolution for 20/20 vision is about 1 arc-minute. Depending on how far we sit from the TV and the size of the TV, it's conceivable that DVD resolution is all the eye "needs" if we have a small screen and sit a number of feet away. In the same way, a small cell phone with a high resolution screen these days may have already reached the resolution needed for "Retina" display as Apple puts it. Even if the number of pixels doubles (say a 6" phone with 1080P display gets upgraded to 1500P), do we care anymore once the visual angular resolution is saturated? Even though we can still upgrade the screen to get better black level, contrast, saturation, color accuracy, pure spatial resolution has reached a state of diminished returns. My prediction is that once 4K hits mass acceptance in the homes, resolution increases will settle out and that will pretty well be "it" for video pixel resolution in the home. (More here.)

Now, audio... I believe we're already "there" in terms of "4K" digital audio with 16/44 - it's diminishing returns above CD resolution. Furthermore, IMO most people do not have a quiet enough room, nor pay enough attention to reasonable room treatments to squeeze out what high-res might be able to improve on. This I think includes many audiophiles simply because it's not practical unless there is a dedicated sound room and this can be expensive. Furthermore, forget the "old days" when a single income young professional could have bought a reasonably sized home, fed the family, and perhaps have room for the stereo gear. In big cities these days, many professional couples can barely buy a decent sized one-bedroom condo. This social factor is I think enough to drive them to headphones, never having the opportunity to really enjoy the beauty of a high-quality speaker system.

As for high-res, let's be practical. How much difference does one really expect between a high bitrate (say 256-320kbps) MP3 and lossless high-res? Does anyone really think that the technical benefits from 24-bits or >44kHz sampling rate themselves really contribute that much to the quality of the sound or the ability for the music to "touch the soul"? I know some people believe it does, but this opinion is really in contrast to much research in this field over decades.

And this ultimately is why I believe Pono and all the hype surrounding it will be (is) a failure. It's not that the mainstream press are uneducated or promoting misinformation. IMO, they are realistic. 24-bits, >44kHz, and a higher-quality DAC (say compared to the DAC in an iPod) makes next to no difference if the recording is dynamically compressed, Autotuned, recorded in a poor basement home studio, and inherently sounds like crap! Unless one is already an audiophile and seeks out excellent masterings like those done by our host here, have a listen to pop these days or even what passes as remasters of beloved classics. When young people are being offered sound quality the likes of Maroon 5, P!nk, Beyonce, Pitbull, Meghan Tranor, Lorde, etc... what benefits do you think high-res formats or a good DAC really offer? Even recordings that *should* have been good like the recent George Ezra ends up being DR6 on CD!

There is really ONE THING audiophiles need to promote which would benefit us all. Get the word out that we actually care about good sounding recordings. Neil Young went off the rails with Pono by not meaningfully doing anything about changing the way music is being recorded, mixed and mastered. The whole Pono initiative pointed at insignificant factors (like 24/192, 10% of the "data", bla bla bla) rather than the real problem (they couldn't even release decent hi-res remasters). Also get the audiophile magazines to actually "call out" the bad recordings and shameful remasters rather than ridiculous commentaries (like here) or pushing more expensive hardware.

Neil Young wanted to "save an art form"? I would suggest fixing the recording of the art form instead of regurgitating his own grandiose delusional hype. And maybe if magazines like Stereophile would "call a spade a spade", that would help improve audiophile respectability.

 

The PonoPlayer does offer better playback than typical portable gear. It's better in audiophile ways that for some people will be subtle to hear, and for others will be obvious to hear. Depends on listening experience and listening style. That's the nature of a lot of audiophile style gear. You need to listen to it for a while to get in tune with it, to learn its sound, to discover what it is doing with different music and different recordings. That's why extended auditions for possibly a month or so may be needed rather than snap 30-second comparisons to find out what sounds better. And in some cases that month will be a learning process to discover what better actually sounds like. Unfortunately the mainstream reporters are unwilling to give audio gear an extended audition like that. So we get what we got with the mainstream panning it and the audiophile reviewers discovering that it actually is better.

The PonoPlayer got a very favorable follow-up review by John Atkinson in the June issue of Stereophile: PonoPlayer Balanced Mode follow-up
That's the way you do a review of audio gear and audio quality.

Audiophile quality sound isn't necessarily an easy sell.

 

Someone once said that boredom moves the world. So solving problems as one poster above pleads for is a temporary fix. Some of the best recordings were made in the 1950s both in classical and jazz. There were even some stellar pop recordings. Good recording practice is a solved problem. So how were they replaced with all those lousy recordings that came later??

You probably are not aware that many of Leonardo da Vinci's paintings were modified later by other painters. I don't mean restoration, but rather repainting parts of the picture to change it. So who thought they were a better painter than Leonardo?

It is wrong to think that people are doing all these things from ignorance. There might be some of that but by and large recordings are made to fit the way people listen to them. On the mobile devices most people have, they are not going to appreciate large dynamic range recordings with appropriate soundstaging. The kind of compressed recordings now prevalent do meet most people's requirements. The ones that are dissatisfied are moving into vinyl and high res downloads or lossless streaming. You can only teach those who want to learn. What is sad is how often even the potential recruits are discouraged by the high end audio biz.

 

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The problem (for only me) is that 99% of people would never accept anything less that HD TV now, even if it was not, or that they care about 4K. They would never accept anything less than HDTV, but are so willing to accept 128K mp3s as the defacto standard for audio playback in 2015. It may be that the real problem is that to them 2496 is not that much better than mp3 audio as is 480P DVD playback for movies is to standard TV. They would not enjoy watching a VHS movie anymore. It may also be that since mp3s have the same low noise floor of even redbook quality that it meets the requirement of very quiet audio with no background artifacts. Most are not interested in the exact position of the musicians in the mix, if recorded well enough to even reproduce that, or if the sound has a slight haze or graininess to it. That does not bother them as much as a less than perfect video display. The mathematics of it all is way beyond any of them, even discussing bit rate draws odd facial expressions when they can't comprehend that it is now about 1s and 0s. Better audio quality is harder for them to discern that a great video display. Most have probably spent more on their video display than their entire audio system anyway.

 

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I can tell you that back in the day I was more than happy to take my Sony DiscMan on the road with my Grado 80s and always loved the sound of that when not at home. My one Sony DiscMan has both a line out and a headphone out, so I could run it through a real audio system if need be. It did not have the resolution of a stand-alone player, but was way better than any mp3 player, or mp3s played through it.

 

I do believe that most music is being recorded better than it has ever been. And certainly labels like Linn, BlueCoastRecords, AIX, SoundKeeperRecordings, ISOMIC, and other are even moving the bar higher. I have found some super affordable 2496 recordings off of eClassical.com that are excellent downloads that I can burn to my DVD-Rs and enjoy on any of my players.

 

I think the problem is that most people are visually oriented psychologically rather than auditorially. It may be a matter of brain wiring. Or it may be that a century of movies, videos, and television, and modern urban life have reproprammed people from their natural state, where hearing was more critical. Perhaps detailed rich video has just proven more entertaining to most people, and the audio to go with it only needs to be good enough. I don't know, but I've noticed that audio being most important to me, and able to hold my undivided attention without any other activity or stimulation, makes me an odd duck these days.

 

I've been in audio since 1977 and don't have any problems with MP3s. I think if you put the right stuff in-between the files and your ears they sound just fine. I don't like 'em out of an iphone into earbuds, but drop a decent, little portable amp (one of the good CMOYs $50 do just fine) and some good cans into the mix and suddenly, I'm happy. It's the oldest audio argument on the Web and I thought we'd pretty much settlef the matter that good encoding makes them damn listenable. So pono owner jumped on me because I suggested adding a portable amp to an ipod could make it just as nice sounding as a Pono. Fine, man, when you've owned 14 headphone amps over the last two decades like me, come back and tell me again I'm wrong.

I think what's also changed over the generations is that music isn't an important as it was. Back when I was growing there was less to do, so we listened to more music. Now kids are into video games (non-existent when I was growing up) watching endless videos on Youtube (I freaking wish it existed when I was growing up) and social media (again, who could have imagined it?). So music has been pushed back a few stops. Is it any wonder that they're not obsessing over better and better sound when they have so much more to choose from?

And, frankly, an iPod and decent earbuds, listening to *GASP* MP3s, is probably far better audio than we had back then. I listened to AM radios, cheap little Craig portable reel to reels and then early tape Walkmans with their crappy sound and loved it. I'd say the average iphone and $30 earbuds probably puts those 60s, 70s music sources that WE listened to as kids to shame! For fun, I bought a lower end Sports Walkman the other day. Absolutely horrible! Any MP3 player would make it sound like an Edison phonograph.

Stereophile is and always was aimed at hi-fi fanatic snobbism. I enjoyed it for that. I am guilty of that, too. I can play the audiophile snob along with the best of them. There are also clothes snobs, car snobs, food snobs, wine snobs. Let's admit it. But to say someone who doesn't spend their time cultivating a taste for $50 wines, or $1,000 suits, or $100,000 cars is being lazy and uncultured, is not a valid argument in my book. And this is aimed at Stereophile, not Jim.

 

Jim, I experienced what you're relating here in the early 70s when I was in junior high.

All of a sudden I noticed many teachers passing kids, mostly minorities, to the next grade who didn't perform to the exacting standards they had previously set. I was one of those kids. We were encouraged to attend shop classes, PE, basket weaving, anything that didn't involve critical thinking and higher math. We all thought it was cool and that our teachers were cool and really cared for us. Little did I know that they were setting us up for future failure. Luckily I had two uncles (college grads) who set me straight and encouraged me to hit the books.

I was fortunate, but many of my childhood friends weren't. Many quit school, got involved in drugs, gangs, and some went to prison. All because of what you call "settling for less". Mind you, these were kids from conservative nuclear families. So, as you say, settling for less does have consequences, even beyond the audio world.

In closing, I'll say I was very fortunate as well with audio and music appreciation. My uncles and some high school buddies who were into stereo components and great Lps shaped my love for music and good equipment. I didn't need a class for that, although I did take several piano and guitar classes.

Btw The Paper Chase is one of my favorite films.

 

I think that next year in school I am going to start a club, (admin likes clubs) about digital audio and the art of recording and see how many I get to sign up. I already have the powerpoint presentations and all the recording gear one could need. I'll have the summer to work out the details and you can be sure we will have some competitions about who can pick out redbook vs high rez, vs mp3s. That should be enlightening for them.

 

Jim- were canned green beans and tv dinners good enough for your generation?

Your generalizations about everyone younger than you simply hold no water. At all. You keep coming back to this and you are going to be wrong every time.

"Hi-fi" has always been a niche hobby and it always will be. So will craft coffee and chocolate etc (both from young generations!).

 

"Jim- were canned green beans and tv dinners good enough for your generation?"

This was also an early manifestation of convenience over quality -- which reduced the quality to get the convenience, which is his point I think. It takes effort without such convenient shortcuts to prepare a really good, satisfying meal.

 

Who/What do you teach?

I taught Science, and found the subject of waves was pertinent to Gen. Science (non-college prep) students. Take a long rope, tie a knot every meter, go outdoors & have the students figure out the wavelength of their fav FM stations. Good subject to learn metrics, when did nanoparticles and gigahertz become "colloquialisms?" Set up a BIG subwoofer, gather the students within eyeshot, & play Also sprach Zarathustra. Who sees the wave before they hear it? Get out an old garage door spring, a student on each end & challenge them to generatve waves with various amplitudes. What's the wavelength range of human sight, hearing? What do you experience as the ranges are diminished? . . . . What could use see IF you could perceive UV, like pigeons? What will you miss hearing in the future from all that shaking BASS?

 

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9th grade math. Compressional waves are a good beginning to understanding sound, which is more in the field of science, but our ones and zeros are more for us and our friends in our Computer Lab, but they never touch audio, just software apps.