One cool thing about the 2007 CES is that no matter how big TV screens get, how small portable devices become, or how compressed the bitstream is, there are those who only want the best sound for their music. Here are some nice setups that I wish I could afford to put in my house. The above device is a tube-driven (even the timing circuit!) CD player from PrimaLuna.
It’s nice to see that the art of making speakers hasn’t fallen by the wayside in the iPod era. There were Electrostatics from companies like Quad (#11) and King’s Audio (#6), traditional designs from firms like RBH (#7, with me) and Usher (#9), and more exotic offerings by companies such as German Physiks (#4) and MBL (#2).
On the component side you had things like a money-is-almost-no-object audio/video receiver from McIntosh (#1), massive turntables from ClearAudio (# 4 & 5), tube amplifiers, and even a battery-powered phono (No line noise) head amp from Sutherland Engineering (the one with the batteries in it, duh). A company called MSB unveiled a tweaked “audiophile” iPod interface (#2) called iLink that modifies the iPod to allow digital audio to be sent to the iLink and output via toslink optical, coaxial, or balanced AES/EBU format. Pioneer even had a demo (#8) showing high-end gear being driven by one of their Optical Digital Reference car units to demonstrate their new sound calibration technology.
In so many ways, I think the best geek goodie I’ve bought myself in recent years is the Pioneer SE DIR-800C Dolby-certified cordless headphones.
The original reason was to keep from waking my honey — who goes to bed earlier than I do — while I watch sci-fi or a monster movie in the living room.
What I discovered was that — unlike any other headphone technology I’ve tried — they brought the sound out of the center of my head and into a terrific surround experience. Gamers love ’em for the same reason.
Philips was OK’d by Dolby, as well, but apparently didn’t bring them to the States. Haven’t seen anyone else offering anything like this — so, little motivation for Pioneer to lower the price.
Nice pictures, but some captions as to what some of these products actually ARE would be nice on some of them.
Wow Pedro… You beat me to it.
There is simply no such thing as high quality iPod audio…
pedro, pedro, pedro…
How many times must I tell you, better to keep your trap shut and let people wonder if you’re a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
The iPod plays, among other things, uncompressed 16-bit, 44.1kHz audio. Bypassing the mid-fi circuitry used in the analog outputs and outputting the bitstream qualifies the iPod as an audiophile-grade source.
Your enthusiasm for knocking any-and-everything even remotely related to Apple leads you to making idiotic cracks like that. I said it before and I’ll say it again: you really need to get a grip.
What trauma in your past caused this obsessive bitterness? Did your mama choke on an apple when she was carrying you?
Anyway, I sorta doubt that you have a coherent idea of what constitutes high-end audio. I figure you for another one of the tin-eared sheeple who think Bose garbage is hi-fi.
2,
I know what you mean, but you’d be surprised how much space a caption takes up in a series of images. I do call out interesting products in each series of photos, and if you click on the thumbnail you can see the manufacturer’s logo in most of them.
iLink with RF link and iPod Upgrade – $1995 2 Grand? if I remember right there is a mod how to for by passing the analog circuit on the iPod that had to do with soldering another jack on it. For 2 Grand why don’t they just make there own MP3 player.
Don’t kid yourself. Recording studios are doing that to get new DRM tech into your audiophool system.
Oh, pedro… it’s so sad…
“Yeah, and I bet all the music inside your Ipod is uncompressed wave.”
Nope. Apple Lossless.
“Now educate me telling me that the ipod is the only digital player that supports raw pcm audio or aiff.”
Who the fuck said that? Not I. Methinks you’re hearing things again.
“So, by your definition, hi quality audio stops at CD resolution. What are audiophiles thinking buying into DVD-A & SACD. And here I was thinking that recording studios going to 96khz 24 bits and higher (192khz, and/or DSD which is a 1 bit @2.8Mhz) were doing it to make higher audio quality, silly me.”
You excel at attempting to attribute assertions to people who never made them – I think they call it ‘putting words in people’s mouths.’
“My definition??” I said nothing like that. I personally find that well-done 2-channel 24/192 is adequate for most music, and that is what my LPs have been coded to. But it still ain’t analog.
“Audiophile grade source. Good one. Oh, and what’s Bose? Is that a mac subsidiary?”
Huh? You wanna run that one by me again? That was even less coherent than your usual rambling.
You surprised me by not sniping at McIntosh, for having that name…
“Silly me.” NOW you’re cookin’ with camel dung, d00d!
Pssst… pedro….
BTW, it’s “oxymoron,” not “oximoron.” And don’t say it was a typo, since the ‘i’ and ‘y’ keys are too far apart.
Spell check. Get it. Use it. Better yet, buy a dictionary.
#5 – It isn’t about what the iPod can do… It’s about what actually is done with the iPod. Very little of what’s played on an iPod is anything other than highly compressed audio.
And most self-proclaimed audiophiles are also tin-eared sheeple. Most audiophile products are snake-oil.
Alex… What is that overbuilt monstrosity you are standing next to? And where are mainstream consumer products? High end audio is like Paris fashions… we all look at it, but it isn’t practical.
“It isn’t about what the iPod can do… It’s about what actually is done with the iPod. Very little of what’s played on an iPod is anything other than highly compressed audio.”
A discussion of the player’s capabilities is, by definition, “about what it can do.” What people use it for is irrelevant. Most BMW owners can’t drive worth a shit and they use their cars for going to work and the grocery store – so therefore, by your “logic,” since few owners run the ‘Bahn at 140MPH, BMW performance is irrelevant.
And I find it interesting how you’ve somehow managed to use your superhuman powers to peer inside everyone’s iPods and see what bitrates and compression they listening to. You must tell me sometime how you manage it. Personally, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what others listen to or how compressed it is. Why do you? And what does that, I repeat, have to do with whether the iPod is or isn’t an audiophile-quality signal source?
“And most self-proclaimed audiophiles are also tin-eared sheeple. Most audiophile products are snake-oil.”
Most, eh? I take it you’ve met “most” audiophiles, right? Because there’s a minority contingent of unscientifically-minded people who indulge in junk-science gimmicks that do little or nothing to improve playback, you somehow extrapolate that to “most.”
Most audiophile products are designed, built and used by discriminating connoisseurs of music. Lew Johnson, Nelson Pass, Dan D’Agostino, Jeff Rowland, et al, design and build some of the highest quality, most sophisticated and innovative electronic products in existence, aerospace-quality and even above. Snake oil, my hairy yellow ass.
Oh, wait! I got it! They’re all wrong and you’re right! They just toss a couple 50-cent chips into a shoebox and sell it to us gullible fools for tens of thousands of dollars! Not you, though – you see right through their ploys!
What a fool I’ve been! Can you ever forgive me??
The power source for the Sutherland Ph3D Phono Preamp is a clever idea. It prevents ground loops and AC hum in a low-level amp. However, even though one can get 1200 hours of operation on all of those Duracell Ds, I’d think that a battery of NiMHs that are trickle charged when the amp if OFF and electrically and physically disconnected from the trickle charger via a relay when the amp is ON would have provided the same benefit without having the hassle of replacing batteries (although 1200 hours of operation is a LOT of listening).
“Snake oil, my hairy yellow ass.” Ouch, quote and disturbing visual of the day.
Anyone who thinks that ANY mp3 player is of audiophile quality is just NUTS (that includes you, ghoti).
Look, no mp3 player (yes, even your beloved iPod) is approaching anything near audiophile quality…and for these boneheads engineering these top of the line units is disgusting.
Oh, pedro, you’re such a hoot!
“You really think apple lossless will give you audiophile grade? so, there’s no decompression going on huh? and please, don’t embarrass yourself by saying that lossless equals pcm.”
Well, yesssssss, ALAC, just like MLP and FLAC, outputs the exactly identical bitstream as the original PCM files, so if CD-quality qualifies as ‘audiophile’ then so do the other two. Lossless means lossless. Bit-for-bit identical. Zero difference, in any way. Still haven’t bought that dictionary, have you?
I would normally have gone on, but I have an appointment elsewhere and besides, this little clunker you tossed in proves beyond a doubt that you’re talking out your ass:
” And give me ogg over apple lossless anyday of the week, if we are talking lossless formats. If you were a sonyfan you would be saying atrac is the thing.”
Ogg Vorbis is not a lossless format. Neither is the everyday subspec of ATRAC. And how can you express a preference for any one lossless format over another, since they are audibly indistinguishable? ‘Nuff said.
Brian, you and pedro sharing that crack pipe now?
“Anyone who thinks that ANY mp3 player is of audiophile quality is just NUTS (that includes you, ghoti).
Look, no mp3 player (yes, even your beloved iPod) is approaching anything near audiophile quality…and for these boneheads engineering these top of the line units is disgusting.”
Don’t read too well, do you? A modded iPod which outputs a 2-channel 44.1kHz 16-bit PCM bitstream is functionally and audibly no different from any other device that does the same thing. And if a CD transport is audiophile-grade, then so is any other device that produces the exact same output.
But what do I know? I only been a musician since age 8, built my first studio when I was 12. All before you or pedro were born…
12,
I’ll get to that too, OFTLO. I’ve got material for weeks. I’ll also improve how I refer to the photos so you know which depicts the devices I am talking about. For example, I’m posing with an RBH speaker in the picture above.
As for audiophile gear, I would agree that some audiophile products are snake oil. The rest range in value from truly excellent to incredibly over-priced, but functional.
Who cares about all this iPod debate? The real issue here is tubes. I mean come on — are there still some out there that think tubes are better than solid state?
That warmth you hear? It’s called distortion.
Oh I know — it’s fun to replace them when they wear out. And they are soooo efficient.
How about getting in the 20th century folks. It is — after all — the 21st.
Mike T
#14
Sorry man… Didn’t realize you’d take it personally… Did you design the iPod?
I’d rather talk religion and politics than audio any day. Islamic radicals are more forgiving than the average self-proclaimed audiophile.
I am thinking about the iPod the way an Apple product manager thinks about the iPod – as a consumer grade commodity – a 21st Century Walkman. These are cheap consumer electronics meant for a mainstream low-end user. And I know what is on most iPods because there is about 400 metric tons of marketing data that tells me. I have no more magical power than anyone else.
Oh, wait! I got it! They’re all wrong and you’re right! They just toss a couple 50-cent chips into a shoebox and sell it to us gullible fools for tens of thousands of dollars! Not you, though – you see right through their ploys!
I should have been more clear. I talk to 100 guys a day who are convinvced that they should buy $500 power cables or $3000 spools of wire. That is snake oil.
However, I do work for these guys… and any list of innovators in this field surely includes my boss’s name… Not that anyone should concern themselves with that except to say that I’m not just a guy reading a web site and spouting opinions. My job is to evangelize this stuff, but its mostly just remarkably expensive stuff for guys who hit the lucky in life lottery and don’t have to settle for a mere $10K home theater package.
Now if you are too personally invested in your audio opinions… Then I’m done. I don’t care. Audio is subjective, period and what sounds good to a listener is what sounds good. I won’t drink the kool aid. It’s all just speakers and amps and media players. Some of it is made for me. Some of it is made for professional basketball players.
And Alex… I appreciate what you do… 🙂 Keep it up.
ghoti-
So you built a studio at age 12, so what? Your so-called ‘accomplishments’ mean nothing in this debate, other than to try to build up your argument (but, alas, you fall face first into crap).
You’re taking a device meant to COMPRESS music and reverse/modify the process in order to get a bit better sound quality?
I guess you’re the same type of dope I used to sell $1000 monster cables to and $2000 power centers because YOU could hear the difference.
You know something – I always laughed at dopes like you when you walked out the door and made my pocket fatter.
16,
There are venues from hotel rooms to ballrooms at CES all over VEgas. Some of the pictures from the show are at parties.
#21 – You’re right, Smartalix. Many high-end ‘accessories’ are pure buncombe and humbug, that’s never been in doubt. Then there’s the ones of dubious sonic merit that their tinfoil-hat creators actually believe in (and which, once in a great while, actually do something to the sound – not always something good, necessarily). And a few, certainly less than 10%, probably less than 5%, that are sonically beneficial, to a greater or lesser degree.
But the high-end is ultimately about the most accurate music playback, cost-no-object. Unfortunately, there will always be those sheeple who don’t get it – hey, kids, we already know that spending $60,000 on a Burmester 969/970 CD transport and processor pair doesn’t produce 100 times better sound than a $600 Denon. That isn’t the point. The point is not what is the most cost-effective, it’s about what is BEST, even if we won’t ever buy such an extravagant component, because there always has to be a benchmark to compare everything else to.
Hard to get that across to Gen X and Gen XI, the champions of “whatever, d00d” mediocrity and indifference to intangible concepts like ‘excellence.’
Lauren…
I am a snob, therefore I help set the standard for excellence and I am Gen X…
You weren’t defending a Burmester Whatever The Hell 6000… You were defending an iPod.
iPod are cheap consumer widgets used for compressed audio… And that’s fine, cause when you listen while cruising a bike trail, or walking in a mall, or hooking it up to the factory installed sound system of your 2003 Dodge Durango, it won’t make any difference at all anyway.
The problem with audiophiles is that they don’t know the difference between objective and subjective… What’s worse, they brag for days on end about their 25 thousand dollar home theater system, but I never once hear them actually talk about a movie, unless it is to point out how well the subwoofer handled an effect.
Do audiophiles even like the art that the gear in intended to play… or do they just get hard ons for spending a lot of money on electronics?
Yes to the former, no to the latter.
For the record, my personal philosophy on technology is that it is useless without the human element. The most fancy gadget is indistinguishable from a rock without a mind to appreciate its functionality. That includes software and content.
pedro, amigo – It’s fun watching your comments decline from silly to loony to bizarre.
“I bet you track on minidisc sprayed with C-37.”
Huh?
“And you are so right, mac has so much time working on high-end audio…oh wait, it never has!! or do you want to say ipod is not a consumer audio device?”
HUH? Wha? I’ll go smoke some shrooms and come back. Maybe I’ll be able to decipher what you’re attempting to say…
“I said it before, knowing that you compared apple lossless to uncompressed audio in the first place would have saved us a lot of time in this discussion. Enjoy your “audiophile” ipod.”
HUH? WHA? I compared wha to wha? What I did do is inform you that there is zero audible difference between PCM and any lossless format. Is that difficult to grasp? At the digital output, when the exact same bits come out in the exact same order, they are – TA-DA! exactly the same! But you are saying that since those bits are coming from an Apple product, that they somehow sound different. Ya.
Here’s pedro’s “new math”:
1110010000101110 ≠ 1110010000101110
Brilliant.
#25 – Brian:
“So you built a studio at age 12, so what? Your so-called ‘accomplishments’ mean nothing in this debate, other than to try to build up your argument (but, alas, you fall face first into crap).”
So what? ‘What’ is: I have many years of deep involvement with music which you don’t. I play genuine, live, acoustic music and I know intimately what it sounds like. You don’t. I am a recording engineer who also has many years of experience that you don’t have in knowing what it takes to capture and preserve that music. You are not. I am an audiophile. You, OTOH – are not. Which your next ill-advised statement makes clear:
“You’re taking a device meant to COMPRESS music and reverse/modify the process in order to get a bit better sound quality?”
You and pedro need to have your meds reviewed. Unless you live on Bizarro-world, you have never seen a player (hint, hint) that compresses anything. Compression, sonny, is part of the encoding process which outputs the music files which are then loaded into a player. The player DECOMPRESSES the files for playback.
And what the fuck are you talking about anyway? The iPod mod is to bypass the consumer-grade analog output and output the bitstream. And if that bitstream is from an uncompressed 16/44.1 stereo file, then – listen carefully – there is no compression. There is no decompression. No ‘process’ is ‘modified.’ The parts that compromise fidelity are simply bypassed. For MUCH better sound quality. Apparently that’s too complicated for you to grasp.
“I guess you’re the same type of dope I used to sell $1000 monster cables to and $2000 power centers because YOU could hear the difference.”
I have always loved egocentric jackasses who project their own deficiences on others in order to maintain their self-esteem. Just because YOU can’t hear a difference doesn’t mean there isn’t one – or that I, or the next guy, can’t hear it.
Speaker cable and interconnects do make a difference, and yes, I can hear those differences. That doesn’t mean that most of these $$$$ wires made with 99.99999999999998%-pure Unobtanium, mined on Jupiter actually do what they claim – they don’t. Snake oil. But the bozos who think that a length of 18-gauge lamp cord is as good as anything else are just as dumb as the suckers you describe. They’re the same ones who, 22+ years ago were arrogantly proclaiming that the icepick-in-the-ears “sound” from CDs was, as the slogan went, “perfect sound forever.”
“You know something – I always laughed at dopes like you when you walked out the door and made my pocket fatter.”
Whatever you say, chum.
#28 – OFTLO:
You’re not talking about audiophiles there, you’re describing equipment freaks, who are only a subset of those who self-identify as ‘audiophiles.’ These are the guys who listen to some of the most mediocre music imaginable – and rarely if ever listen to a cut from beginning to end. Now, me – I love machines, always have. I have a gift for interfacing with them – but I never lose sight of the purpose for which the machine is made. But we have to tolerate the others, in no small part because it’s their fanaticism that pays the freight for high-end R&D. All too often, they’re equipment freaks because they have the money to indulge in it. If Krell or conrad-johnson or Audio Research or you-name-it ever stopped selling to them, they would fold rather quickly, since, demographically speaking, music lovers tend to skew to much lower income levels than the gadget freaks. I’ve never known too many musicians or other dedicated music lovers who could be considered well-off, probably because people who pursue beauty have comparatively less time to pursue money…
So please don’t judge all audiophiles by the gadgeteers.
ghoti-
You’re right…we should all bow to your infinite musical knowledge and finely tuned ear…that you and you alone can hear the difference between a $200 cable and a $1000 cable.
YOU are the very person that these audio companies cater too…the elitist snob who thinks there’s an audible difference (hint: there’s not) between high end cable and elite cables…between high end speakers and elite. Fools and their money are soon parted, and you, sir, are a fool.
Good day to you.
33,
Good cable is demonstrably better than cheap cable, the problem is there is a very steep asymptote from that point on in price/performance.
34-
There is no denying that…however, above a certain point, there is just no audible difference. People who point to specs and try to use them as proof have no idea. The human ear runs out of range a hell of a lot sooner than what can be measured.
Monster cable has made a killing in playing off the ‘keeping up with the joneses’ mentality that pervades high end audio. Noel Lee has a huge mansion and more cars than he knows what to do with from playing into this ridiculous emotion.
35,
Where is that point, in your opinion? $50? $100? $15? How much per meter would you pay for quality speaker wire? RCA cables?
How much would you pay for a bottle of cola-flavored sugar water? A bottle of just plain water? How much better is a $5 bottle of water from Fiji and one from your tap (through a filter if you must)?
Elitism exists in every area of interest, from cooking to quoits. Don’t be too hard on high-end audio, at least it employs a lot of American technology workers.
What we all should do, however, is try to discuss the issue with a little less vitriol.