I just given a SONOS Connect:AMP for music in my medium size living room and would appreciate your opinion about using Klipsch RP-150M or Definitive Tech D7 speakers with this? Your feedback would be appreciated. Thank you
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I like DefTech gear, but this is a trade off. The Dev Tech are more sensitive allowing louder volume at lower levels, but the Klipsch have better low frequency response. The only negative between the two is that the Klipsch will require a bit more care in placement due to the horn.
I haven’t heard either speaker live, but Steve Guttenberg gave the Klipsch a good review.
Due to the broadcast horn and lower bass response of the Klipsch it would probably sound “larger” than the DefTech.
I haven’t heard either speaker live, but Steve Guttenberg gave the Klipsch a good review.
Due to the broadcast horn and lower bass response of the Klipsch it would probably sound “larger” than the DefTech.
Just wanted to add that you should check out the ELAC B6. Guru audiophiles far and wide have been raving about them and the price point is very attractive.
Thanks Jay, I will look into that.
So many great choices these days
So many great choices these days
The only way to know if a speaker is to your taste is to listen to it. Preferably in the target room with the target music. 100% sincere opinions of other people will still always be subjective and may be used for drawing up a short list. If in EU/UK add Dali Zensor 1 and 3 to the list. In the US, they are usually too expensive.
I agree, but where I live there are very limited options to listen to all the various contenders, my only realistic option is BestBuy.
Then the way to do this is give the store assistant a budget and listen to all in the store for around that price point in the store to see what sounds best to you. Then, if the store allows, take the top two choices home to decide which one to keep.
And what you can for sure also do, is carry your favourite music to the store.
I agree to a point. I have read and watched long form articles dedicated to the evils of electronic specs. While music can be plotted and charted to theoretical perfect reproduction standards, everyone has a personal taste and different hearing capabilities. However, I have firsthand knowledge of tricks to suck in customers, and I do not trust a salesman showcasing a product in a showroom environment.
Due to time constraints I prefer to shop online and because of that, I tend to watch reviews from trusted names in the industry who bring the equipment into their own audiophile reference rooms and form well experienced opinions.
Michael Fremer and Steve Guttenberg are two I follow along with Paul McGowan who doesn’t do reviews but is an equipment builder who is a pioneer in the Hifi world.
Good luck with Fremer. He lost all credibility with me many years ago with his touting of high end - read high priced - electronics that completely failed in meeting expectations created. I will grant him the ability to say the same thing in many flowery ways though. Fremer also believes that Hi Res is not snake oil and vinyl sounds better than digital even on an apples to apples basis. None of which now forms any part of my world view of home audio after over a decade of having succumbed to such nonsense.
Guttenberg is marginally better, he does not at least live in the stratosphere.
In general, I am convinced that these folk are touts pandering to the dictates of the audiophile kit makers.
YMMV.
Guttenberg is marginally better, he does not at least live in the stratosphere.
In general, I am convinced that these folk are touts pandering to the dictates of the audiophile kit makers.
YMMV.
Back to the OP - a quick review of the Best Buy website throws up two other brands that are worth a listen as well, to pick the couple of pairs based on in store listening, to listen to at home if possible before buying: Wharfedale Diamonds and Boston Audio A26.
Make sure that the amp that the store is using is in the same region for power delivery as the Connect Amp - 55 watts per channel, RMS. It is likely to be, that is the sweet spot for many, but making sure will help because then you will not find any amp power driven differences when you play the speakers at home with your Connect Amp. Note here that you will almost certainly have to play the Connect Amp at a higher level on its volume control slider than you may notice for the amp in the store. This is only because the Connect Amp follows a better architecture for its volume control that does not try to pull the trick of going loud early in the knob/slider movement to give the false impression of more power than an amp that does not do so.
Make sure that the amp that the store is using is in the same region for power delivery as the Connect Amp - 55 watts per channel, RMS. It is likely to be, that is the sweet spot for many, but making sure will help because then you will not find any amp power driven differences when you play the speakers at home with your Connect Amp. Note here that you will almost certainly have to play the Connect Amp at a higher level on its volume control slider than you may notice for the amp in the store. This is only because the Connect Amp follows a better architecture for its volume control that does not try to pull the trick of going loud early in the knob/slider movement to give the false impression of more power than an amp that does not do so.
YMMV.
I also believe that vinyl CAN sound better than digital, but due to unlimited variations in production/asssmbly/playback of vinyl records and the very action of capturing those recordings on digital media alters it, apples to apples is pretty impossible.
I’m a digital guy these days. Do I still want and expect good audio quality during my listening experience? That is activity dependent.
I listen to music in the background during day to day activities and while choring around the house and yard. In these cases I don’t care about quality. I listen to music while entertaining guests behind conversation. In these cases I want good quality, but it doesn’t have to be class. I sometimes drink alcohol to the point of being dangerous on two legs, and in this case I want extreme audio quality, and have found that I can be detrimental to any media that needs physical handling and changing. My system satisfies my want for a high quality listening experience and my need to stay away from expensive audio equipment and media.
I also believe that vinyl CAN sound better than digital, but due to unlimited variations in production/asssmbly/playback of vinyl records
Leaving completely aside the fact that the second part of the quote means that a vinyl record cannot consistently and sustainably sound better than digital in practice in real world use, and assuming the benefit of an ideal laboratory use case in a clean room with a virgin groove being played with a state of the art turntable with a brand new cartridge that is perfectly installed - why can it sound better than digital? Or, in what circumstances?
It goes without saying that this should be in a blind test, where the listener is completely ignorant of whether what is playing is vinyl or digital.
While waiting for a response, just for fun, I entered this in Google search: does vinyl really sound better
The returned search page leads with a site saying yes, and gives the reason for this to based on the common, but comprehensive misunderstanding of digital sound - the famous jagged sound waves that are alleged to drive digital sound.
Hilarious.
if interested, the first returned result I refer to above: https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm
The returned search page leads with a site saying yes, and gives the reason for this to based on the common, but comprehensive misunderstanding of digital sound - the famous jagged sound waves that are alleged to drive digital sound.
Hilarious.
if interested, the first returned result I refer to above: https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm
Apologies to the OP for off topic though; hopefully your requirement from the thread have been met, till you ask more questions.
[quote=Kumar]
why can it sound better than digital? Or, in what circumstances?
It’s not about vinyl’s potential to sound better, it’s about digital’s inability to reach the potential quality of vinyl. You know this, but if we are not boring any other readers to death, the very action of capturing music digitally alters it and adds noise during the decodeing process. Once you Take live music and store it digitally, that live music is destroyed forever. Taking a string instrument or a human voice, turning that into a bit representation, compressing the resultant bits and dropping off what the codec designers deem unimportant changes it.
A true anologue recording is an exact duplication of the resonance image. An exact laboratory anologue vinyl impression is a true copy, not a reproduction or a digital representation. Even an uncompressed digital file has been altered by being converted to bits, and all digital equipment uses sampling and correction to reassemble the information. Everything including subsonic and supersonic sounds are present on an anologue recording.
Digital can sound amazing, and in many cases better than a vinyl record, but digital is never ever an exact representation of what the artist and mastering engineer intended if mastered anologue.
why can it sound better than digital? Or, in what circumstances?
It’s not about vinyl’s potential to sound better, it’s about digital’s inability to reach the potential quality of vinyl. You know this, but if we are not boring any other readers to death, the very action of capturing music digitally alters it and adds noise during the decodeing process. Once you Take live music and store it digitally, that live music is destroyed forever. Taking a string instrument or a human voice, turning that into a bit representation, compressing the resultant bits and dropping off what the codec designers deem unimportant changes it.
A true anologue recording is an exact duplication of the resonance image. An exact laboratory anologue vinyl impression is a true copy, not a reproduction or a digital representation. Even an uncompressed digital file has been altered by being converted to bits, and all digital equipment uses sampling and correction to reassemble the information. Everything including subsonic and supersonic sounds are present on an anologue recording.
Digital can sound amazing, and in many cases better than a vinyl record, but digital is never ever an exact representation of what the artist and mastering engineer intended if mastered anologue.
I forgot to address the question specifically. In the case where the masters were recorded on anoloque especially direct to lacquer, a digital file, even uncompressed, will not sound as good using the same playback amplification and loud speakers.
Digital was invented to circumvent the many limitations of vinyl and it does that successfully. And may I suggest more reading into the science of digital audio, and not articles on it by the Fremers of this world. Much of what you say about digital audio including this little bit as one example: " take live music, and store it digitally, that live music is destroyed forever" is just flat out wrong.
Well that’s like, your opinion man..
Think of vinyl as an image of a house on a lake.
If that’s the case, a digital file is a box of puzzle pieces, and a compressed digital file is that same box with lots and lots of pieces missing.
Even when assembled by the worlds best and fastest puzzle assemblers, the end result resembles the image but looks like an assembled puzzle.
I studied digital capture and playback to at least better than average knowledge, I know how it works amd I understand decoding. I also have ears and have experience with technology. I played albums because that was the only format. I’ve seen them all come and go, and I’ve adopted most of them for their brief lifespans.
My opinion is based on science. Vinyl has the potential to sound better than digital.
Here is a possible way forward, if you want to pursue it.
Take a look at the link I posted - https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm
If you agree with what the article explains about the stepped waves in digital audio, and with the rest of it that flows from this thinking, then there is way to discuss this further. The article is flat out wrong and I believe Sony has been successfully sued for claiming similar in their advertising. And there is a basis then to discuss further.
But if you agree that the article is completely wrong, but still hold to the rest of your views of digital audio even so, it is best to end this discussion here.
Take a look at the link I posted - https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm
If you agree with what the article explains about the stepped waves in digital audio, and with the rest of it that flows from this thinking, then there is way to discuss this further. The article is flat out wrong and I believe Sony has been successfully sued for claiming similar in their advertising. And there is a basis then to discuss further.
But if you agree that the article is completely wrong, but still hold to the rest of your views of digital audio even so, it is best to end this discussion here.
Take a look at the link I posted - https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm
But if you agree that the article is completely wrong, but still hold to the rest of your views of digital audio even so, it is best to end this discussion here.
I read that when you first posted and I’ve read others like it and no, I do not agree with it at all. I’ve explained twice why I have my opinion.
My opinion is based on science.
That is your opinion, in turn. It is wrong.
Here's the thing: even when I was convinced that Digital audio sounded better than Vinyl in the real world, I continued to believe that digital involved sampling and analog did not; so in principle digital would always be able to be improved as more and more samples are taken, even if the improvement was no longer audible. A large part of this thinking was caused by the misleading jaggy waves used to represent digital audio. And the now understood to be nonsense that the soul of music is lost between the bytes and bits of digital audio.
But I asked questions leading from this some years ago, on the predecessor to this site, the Sonos Forum that is now gone. Looking back, some were stupid questions. But with some patient responses and some not, I figured out the truth that within specified frequency ranges, a finite sample can represent the analog sound wave with 100% accuracy and fidelity. Further sampling is of no value.
To get from A to B in this journey it is necessary to be able to not come with a full cup of learning. If that isn't possible, there is no point starting, the cup has to be empty to accept new understanding.
Yes, it is time to stop wasting time on this.
Apologies to the OP again; do ask if you need any more information/help.
Bottom line: Trust your ears, above all. They will have to live with what you buy.
Bottom line: Trust your ears, above all. They will have to live with what you buy.
To close the loop for someone else that may wander into the thread and read the incomplete discussion on digital audio, here is a useful link if interested in pursuing the subject:
http://productionadvice.co.uk/no-stair-steps-in-digital-audio/
Among other things, the article explains why, via quotes from it:
1.It all starts with the myth: “Digital can never sound as good as analogue”
2.This statement simply isn’t true, but it doesn’t stop people repeating it like some kind of mantra. The reasons they give usually hang on the fact that digital audio samples the audio – “freezing” it at regular moments in time – and claiming that it can therefore never sound as smooth and continuous as the original analogue signal.You can see it for yourself, they say. Zoom in far enough on a digital waveform and eventually you can see the blocky, grainy, digital “stair-steps” – so it stands to reason that you can hear them, if your hearing and equipment is good enough, right ? For stair steps, substitute individual bits of jigsaw puzzles if the picture analogy is preferred instead. Italics added for my suffix to the quoted.
3. There are no stair-steps.The same flawed reasoning is used to explain why we need ever-higher bit-depths and sample rates – since digital audio contains these audible “pixels”, the smaller they are, the better it will sound, supposedly.
4. Audio doesn’t stop at 20 kHz, so why do we stop sampling it there ? Higher sample rates will give us a more accurate representation of the original signal, so it must sound better, right ? Wrong.
5.The “stair-steps” you see in your DAW when you zoom up on a digital waveform only exist inside the computer. (The spoon only exists inside the Matrix !) When digital audio is played back in the Real World, the reconstruction filter doesn’t reproduce those stair-steps – and the audio becomes truly analogue again. So if the recording, processing and playback systems are working correctly, you will hear a perfect representation of the original analogue audio – up to the frequency specified by the sample rate, and with a noise-floor determined by the bit-depth.
End of quotes.
In its early days in the nineties, digital audio reproduction was imperfect, but that was down to poor implementation of the tools and because some surrounding and necessary tech was not available/not perfected. Now, it can be as good as the recording engineer desires it to be.
The article concludes with an embedded video by the well regarded Chris Montgomery of xiph.org, that demonstrates the topics discussed in the article.
http://productionadvice.co.uk/no-stair-steps-in-digital-audio/
Among other things, the article explains why, via quotes from it:
1.It all starts with the myth: “Digital can never sound as good as analogue”
2.This statement simply isn’t true, but it doesn’t stop people repeating it like some kind of mantra. The reasons they give usually hang on the fact that digital audio samples the audio – “freezing” it at regular moments in time – and claiming that it can therefore never sound as smooth and continuous as the original analogue signal.You can see it for yourself, they say. Zoom in far enough on a digital waveform and eventually you can see the blocky, grainy, digital “stair-steps” – so it stands to reason that you can hear them, if your hearing and equipment is good enough, right ? For stair steps, substitute individual bits of jigsaw puzzles if the picture analogy is preferred instead. Italics added for my suffix to the quoted.
3. There are no stair-steps.The same flawed reasoning is used to explain why we need ever-higher bit-depths and sample rates – since digital audio contains these audible “pixels”, the smaller they are, the better it will sound, supposedly.
4. Audio doesn’t stop at 20 kHz, so why do we stop sampling it there ? Higher sample rates will give us a more accurate representation of the original signal, so it must sound better, right ? Wrong.
5.The “stair-steps” you see in your DAW when you zoom up on a digital waveform only exist inside the computer. (The spoon only exists inside the Matrix !) When digital audio is played back in the Real World, the reconstruction filter doesn’t reproduce those stair-steps – and the audio becomes truly analogue again. So if the recording, processing and playback systems are working correctly, you will hear a perfect representation of the original analogue audio – up to the frequency specified by the sample rate, and with a noise-floor determined by the bit-depth.
End of quotes.
In its early days in the nineties, digital audio reproduction was imperfect, but that was down to poor implementation of the tools and because some surrounding and necessary tech was not available/not perfected. Now, it can be as good as the recording engineer desires it to be.
The article concludes with an embedded video by the well regarded Chris Montgomery of xiph.org, that demonstrates the topics discussed in the article.
You seem to be stuck on the wave form and digital’s theoretical ability to mimic analogue recordings. The cold facts behind it is that digital recording is an incomplete picture. There are pieces missing.
Anyone who wants some dry reading.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_analog_and_digital_recording
Anyone who wants some dry reading.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_analog_and_digital_recording
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