Audiophile bulls**t & final thoughts about nine reviews

Hallo meine süßen Lieblinge!

During the last few weeks I´ve reviewed the following units: Kenwood DP-5090, Pioneer DV-610, Sony CDP-470, Pioneer BDP-140, iRiver IMP-550, Sony MZ-R 55, Sony MZ-R 37, Sony NW-A 1000 and the Sansa Clip+. You might have wondered where I was getting at with all these reviews; I usually have an overarching theme or reason for my articles, haven´t I? Well, I planned to feature all reviews in just one article, in the end stating my conclusions - of course, that would have enlarged that article into gross proportions. So I seperated the already written article into ten singular parts, the one you´re about to read contains my conclusion and opinion.

For as long as I can think I wanted to read a review where units from different classes are compared to each other. Why not comparing a portable player playing lossy music to an SACD player spinning high resolution media? I mean their goal is the same: playback with a-good-as-possible quality. But have you ever read a review where something like that happens? I have not and I assume peoples' misconceptions about compression, size, weight, number of parts and price have something to do with it. Ask yourself: why should a tiny, portable player be worse than a much bigger stationary player? Can less available space really be a reason for worse sound? I also wanted to know how well ancient players would hold up to more modern devices, a universal disc player for example. You only have to take a look at eBay where more than 20 year old CD players are able to reach high prices; something that also applies for units that were not even top-of-the-line back then. Yet recent universal players are derided as being far away from high fidelity sound by magazines and the public alike. People seem to believe that everything was better in the old days... a curious thing really when you think about it: assuming modern units contain more advanced parts why should they be worse? Common conceptions therefore are:

• old units have better built quality
• they contain much more parts - good for sound, isn´t it?
• ancient units are heavier - must sound better
• small units with their space restrictions must sound worse
• older technology sounds less 'digital'
• huge, conservative power supplies are vital for perfect sound
• lossy media cannot ever be competitive against high resolution material

I could extend this list to infinity but it wouldn´t make much sense in light of the contents of this article. I could for example mention the recent craze about NOS (Non OverSampling) D/A converters... there are so many things wrong with this approach that it´s very confusing that people even consider it as an option while ignoring 30 years of technical progress. Or tubes... no, I won´t start. I´d rather talk about audio magazines  seemingly confirming those conceptions about quality as stated above. You see, magazines only compare units from their respective classes, they also support the view that smaller gadgets must sound worse simply because of their size. But the biggest thing they are claiming is that High End audio sounds much better than 'normal', standard audio. For some years now I have the opinion that High End audio isn´t really better, only different. Expensive media players for example are more or less tweaked to sound a certain way, a sound pleasing to the common audiophile. Companies subsequently tweak their units towards sonic goals such as warmth, precision, punch, snap etc. Will those expensive toys sound like the original? Of course not. They will sound well with Rock or classical music and not so well with anything else - but that doesn´t matter since few audiophiles actually branch out of the musical genres they usually listen to. I have to admit though that heavy units look and feel better, you extend a considerable trust towards them by assuming that weight and complexity are good traits for players.

Let´s ignore my own and your prejudices and take a look at the actual thing. In this article you won´t have any of the prejudices or certain preferences with me because as I´ve stated many times before I don´t compare any unit to another one, I compare directly to the master used for the creation of the testing media itself. No one else does this and I believe my approach to be genuine and also to be the only methodology coming close the precision of DBTs without their disadvantages. Regarding my reviews I didn´t know what to expect or what I´d be ending up with. I thought it possible that all the conceptions above might be true while also accepting the opposite. Naturally, this article reflects my findings, with different hardware it could have turned out different. So you have to be aware that I don´t regard my conclusions as written in stone, they could change depending on experiences with other units. I also accept that you, dear reader, won´t agree on a comparison of high resolution to lossy material. But think about it: the advantages of high defintion might be swallowed by the imperfections from the device playing it back so that in the end lossy material coming from a superior unit might be the better representative.

Four stationary players: Pioneer DV-610, Sony CDP-470, Pioneer BDP-140, Kenwood DP-5090

For better comparison of all the reviewed units I have calculated the average of the points they earned, these are subsequently used for a ranking (this is a first for my blog). Be advised that those averaged numbers obscure the differences between the units, a unit like the MZ-R 37 for example might not have a sonic character suitable for you despite receiving a high number of points. For the described details and difference please have a look at the respective articles linked on the top of the page. The results were surprising on some occasions, on others however they were not:

1st place

Pioneer DV-610, SACD:

4.6 Points

2nd place

Pioneer BDP-140, CD/SACD:

4.4 Points

3rd place

Pioneer DV-610, CD:

4.0 Points

4th place

Sony NW-A 1000

3.8 Points

4th place

Sansa Clip+

3.8 Points

5th place

Sony MZ-R 55

3.6 Points

5rd place

Sony MZ-R 37

3.6 Points

6th place

Kenwood DP-5090

3.0 Points

7th place

iRiver IMP-550

2.6 Points

8th place

Sony CDP-470

1.2 Points

If you´re a believer in high end units you are probably crushed now, right? A multidisc player playing SACDs is the winner (it really sounds close to the reference) while another multidisc player follows closely. Both multidisc units are lightweight, not manufactured that well, have very few parts and cheap plastic drives. Their power supply doesn´t seem to have received much care at the design stage, they 'only' have those dreaded and efficient switching power supplies supposedly known for causing bad sound quality on PCs. Likewise, small portable players are not necessarily worse in sound quality - as proven by the two 4th places, the Sony NW-A 1000 and the Sansa Clip+. The NW-A 1000 is especially interesting since it has to use lossy material - who would´ve thought that mp3 would sound that well? Most disappointing were the results for the iRiver IMP-550, the Sony CDP-470 and the Kenwood DP-5090. The latter was surprising because it contains many parts (some of high quality), has a decent power supply, a well built CD drive and a good overall built quality. It also received favourable reviews from magazines when released in 1997. But its sonic signature favors 'shrill' and 'piercing' way too much, it´s not neutral and introduces very audible differences though all of these could be pleasing for a certain target audience. The Sony CDP-470 was supposed to have a good old school sound... it does indeed sound old school - but in a bad way. It´s a very digital and harsh sounding player, the numerous parts on the PCB and the reliable drive are not helping. The Sansa Clip+ is beloved everywhere but doesn´t hold up to its reputation, due to age related imperfections it shows enormous amounts of audible distortions. The best gadget for the price would be the Sansa Clip+; while it´s not perfectly balanced its dynamic and slightly more aggressive sound signature will appeal to many people.

What does these results tell us then? Not as much as I´d hoped but nonetheless they pose some interesting questions: when a cheap multidisc player sounds close to the reference how can a high end unit have superior sound? Answer: it can´t. It probably changes sound into something different with a more charming character, appealing more to the intended audience it was designed for. When a player using as few parts as possible can sound so well and refined why are many, high quality parts even necessary? Answer: they aren´t. Both Pioneer players achieve their goal of good audio quality with a layout that only seems to lack sophistication, yet in reality it works well. If lossy material (mp3 or MD) holds up so well against lossless or SACD, are those even necessary? Answer: Yes and No. High resolution is indeed able to extract the last little detail and crispness - the real question is if it´s audible for everyone which I´d answer with a 'No'. It certainly isn´t audible on every unit as proven by the BDP-140. Generally, sonic disadvantages of lossy audio are exaggerated as well as advantages of lossless or high resolution audio. Are portable personal players worse than their stationary counterparts? Answer: not necessarily. The NW-A 1000 or the Clip+ perform well while the two stationary players (DP-5090 and CDP-470) really fucked up. Are ancient players any better than more recent counterparts? Answer: No. The last place is occupied by the oldest player, also sounding 'old'. If you want to listen to an example of the supposedly digital and distorted sound of the CD go for that model. Can units playing back lossy material be superior to units playing back lossless quality? Answer: Yes. Three players, using mp3, AAC or MiniDisc are superior or equal to four others using lossless material. The codec therefore doesn´t decide about sound quality, the device itself does (provided that one uses well encoded material).

All of this should prompt you to think carefully about purchasing an ancient unit, it should also create skepticism regarding fantastic reviews of high end gadgets and their supposedly gorgeous sound quality. Many parts or heavy units don´t automatically guarantee perfect sound. You should also regard the recent craze about high resolution with serious doubts; it can have an advantage and better sound quality but the differences are so small that many people won´t ever hear them. The Pioneer BDP-140 comes extremely close to the sound of the Pioneer DV-610 (using SACD) with CDs only. So please, think twice before you buy something or trust someone, go out there yourself and don´t stop comparing and being skeptical.

Last update: 17.06.15

Another strange religion: Audiophilism

People listening to music can be divided into basically two groups: one group doesn´t care about sound quality, the other group cares a lot. The latter one is colloquially known as "Audiophiles". These Audiophiles must seem extremely strange to peoples who doesn´t concern themselves with sound quality; they collect expensive media that is rumoured to contain better sound, they collect expensive components that claim to be the ultimate in sound, they collect even more expensive gadgets with the aim to make these already expensive media and components better yet. These audiophiles listen only with their heart and ears, they value the emotional experience sound gives them over everything else. Among these audiophiles are even stranger group of people: the measurment-loving doubters. They never listen with their ears or their hearts, they only listen with measuring equipment. Both audiophile groups can be accused of not listening to the music at all since the two are looking out for the emotion or the kick their experience - may it be by ear or by instruments - gives them. If you, dear reader, are part of this group don´t feel embarrassed because I actually was exaggerating and I will continue to do so. As with most things in this world something like this really isn´t deterministic but full of grey areas. Though one can have the impression of two sides of the same coin when one dwelves a little deeper into their respective realms. Because when it comes to computer audio the first group of audiophiles can be found at computeraudiophile.com while the other group of audiophiles has its lair at hydrogenaudio.org.

So, because it´s fun and because I hate the two groups of audiophiles I will treat them from now on as two sides of the same coin, as black and white if you will... yes, as opposing Teams. Team Black (subjectivists) is the group of measurment ignoring, fully ear-dependend audiophiles while Team White (objectivists) consists of members ignoring their ears and turning to measuring equipment instead. Oh, don´t be bashful boys, this is going to be fun! ;) Team Black for instance believes in strange things, things that are rumoured to improve their listening experience. They love anything that improves their expensive gadgets - and this love creates strange cravings. Some people buy things which are hard to believe even for people believing in E.T. (which I do by the way, Spielberg made many films about it, remember?). I´ll give an example: a chip that looks like a band-aid. This band-aid is plastered onto your component and it improves the sound! Easy, isn´t it? Well, if a band-aid can improve the sound of your stereo system why doesn´t anyone plaster a band-aid onto it? Reason: the company that offers this "band-aid" claims it contains an extra secret ingredient that will get rid off the magnetic field of the earth. Or something like that. And by removing the earths magnetic field your stereo will sound better. Are you already laughing? Tststs... shame on you because four chips cost roughly 300,- Euros. Basically 300,- fucking Euros for four band-aids. For all we know it could be a patch of insanely overpriced aluminum foil but with a price like that it´s unlikely that anyone will cut it up, don´t you think?

But that isn´t all, no Sir! Team Black also believes in the superiority of vinyl records (have a look at my other article), they believe in ridicilously overpriced RCA-cables to connect their stereo system, they believe that hot running, power abusing and distorting tubes are much better then more effective transistors (God forbid digital amps!) they sense jitter as the ultimate evil in digital audio and they will believe in anything as long as it is sounds plausible to them and looks good. Since they don´t concern themselves with measurments Team Black occasionally buys stuff that is horridly constructed, like the NuForce U-DAC2, a little D/A-converter that produces massive amounts of distortion and which also serves as a prime example of how electronic engineers can be utterly braindead idiots. But it looks nifty and beautiful! Distortions? Hey, it sounds so good with my super expensive headphones, it has a synergy effect and it adds some kind of glow that other things simply don´t. And doesn´t it look nifty and swell... oh, screw it!

NuForce U-DAC2 - a crappy little gadget designed by nincompoops.
Copyright by NuForce.

Team Black had no idea that this gadget produces distortions huge as the Mount Everest - but Team White measured it and found out how horrible it behaves and subsequently released this information. Team Black responded by saying: "We simply have better ears, we don´t care that it distorts because it sounds so good and distorts like tubes. Oh, and did we say that it also looks lovely?" The result was that Team Black ignored Team White for some time. The same happened when Team White found out that high end manufacturer Ayre produces a BluRay player called DX-5. It´s a beautiful looking, heavy product with a thick aluminum casing and wonderful sound. It costs $ 10.000. There´s a tiny little twist though: inside the DX-5 is nothing more than a BluRay player from Oppo for $ 500. The twentyfold increased price is - according to Ayre - justified because they exchanged many parts of the Oppo with parts of higher quality (which is true). They also completely re-designed the power supply and the output stages (also true). And while I give Ayre that they are a very small company turning out so few players compared to assembly line produced original Oppos this price still seems ridiculous. But that´s the thing with Ayre: they also produce the USB DAC QB-9 ($ 2500): even John Atkinson, editor in chief of Stereophile magazine (the bible for Team Black) and who actually seems to be a pretty reasonable and nice guy wrote that my cheap ASUS Xonar Essence ST sounds almost as good as the Ayre - yet it costs roughly $ 200.

The Ayre QB-9 (picture: copyright by Ayre)

You may already suspect what I´m trying to say: Team Black loves exclusive, expensive and awsome looking stereo components with a high price tag. The higher price tag suggests better quality and - key to success - not everyone can afford it which heightens the exclusivity of these components even more. Another thing is that when you pay as much for these things as Team Black does you actually want those gadgets to sound good which can lead to the very common placebo effect: imagined advantages in sound, simply because they want to believe them. Furthermore an exclusive Ayre USB converter simply has more charm compared to a $ 200 soundcard from a chinese computer parts manufacturer.

How can people from Team Black be spotted? Most of the time they are older, heterosexual white males with an affinity for conservative values. They love some crappy recording on vinyl from the `50s that contains a classical recording with a famous conductor from yesteryear and that - to them - will always sound better than any recent, digital recording. They also love some early recordings from rock groups that went on to heaven 40 years ago (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones... oh wait, they are still alive). These recordings remind them of the glorious times when they started to date their wife on the backseat of their car... or something like that. Oh yes, the wife, it´s important! In forums you can always spot them when they describe some improvement they made to their stereo with this sentence: "The difference was so huge that my wife came running from the kitchen, wanting to know what I did." See? Told ya, conservative, heterosexual and patriarchic guys.

While we´re at it... how can Team White members be spotted? Well, you won´t find them in the open because they mostly spend their time in their basements, writing in forums, jacking off to some cheap porn, eating loads of pizza, playing WOW and measuring the hell out of their soundchip that came with their mainboard. Because they don´t move that much they are severely overweight and since they also don´t take hygiene seriously they are greasy. Members of Team White are also younger then Team Black and they don´t have that much money - simply because they are still young and live with their parents (hence the basement). Because they are fat, greasy and have a small dick they have serious problems with self confidence. So they have to make everything work in order to boost their ego.

They do this by challenging Team Black. They say for instance: "Did you measure the chips you attached to the casing of your SACD player? Did you do a Double Blind Listening Test (DBT) to confirm what you´re hearing?" Thing with Team White is that they always sense a placebo anywhere and for them therefore a DBT is God (the measurments are Jesus). Anyway, Team Black tries to do a DBT and fails with the result so that Team White was correct from the beginning: "We knew it, the chip does nothing. You are idiots, you believe in snakeoil." The two most loved expressions of Team White are "snakeoil" and "DBT", they use it whenever a member of Team Black mentions anything connected to Audio. They do this for only one thing: they want to avoid that anyone would notice that they in secret envy Team Black for the ability to purchase expensive audio stuff. So, because they don´t have any money they often state that the equipment they own is the truth or that you won´t need anything else (or something more expensive, God forbid!). That´s why they measure the hell out of their soundchip on their mainboard or their crappy portable mp3-player. When they are not doing this they do DBTs and compare several lossy codecs at 128 kBit/s, they just want to know which one of them is the most transparent (-> doesn´t show any audible difference to the source it was made off). Naturally, LAME mp3 always comes out first simply because it´s their project (it actually is better). And now that 128 kBit/s is transparent they go on and test 96 kBit/s for transparency. Not that it matters anymore now that AAC has replaced MP3, internet connections are faster then ever and space to store it has become so cheap that it´s ridiculous. Talk about futility... but they won´t hear it. They also don´t want to hear that Double Blind Listening Tests are a start but not the ultimate solution. I will talk in a later article a bit more about this... but that much beforehand: Universities are actually turning away from DBTs, simply because they are too unreliable.

Team White - being objective (or so) - will always claim that vinyl is inferior to CD (it is), that cable sound doesn´t exist (not true), that CD players or amplifiers all sound the same (also not true) and that an expensive gadget mostly is overpriced snakeoil (true). Since they are ugly looking, don´t have any money and dwell in basements (yes, your typical nerd) they don´t value appearances and therefore are going for ugly and cheap audio solutions that measure well. To the casual listener both sides appear to be at war with each other. Just go over to hydrogenaudio.org and read how much Team White hates Team Black, it´s mind boggling. Respect? You won´t find it there. Several years ago hydrogenaudio actually was a place where one could learn something. Over time though they forgot that the world has turned and therefore they are standing still. They also won´t move out of their realm to make peace with Team Black whereas Team Black sometimes attempts to do so (and fails because they are ridiculed by principle). However, both sides are on the opposite sides of the coin. One side cannot live with the other but they cannot live without it either. Both sides need each other to make new discoveries, to challenge each other, to create something new. Only then we will have progress. Right now however both sides are just shades of one big religion, wars are fought over the various belief systems. And history has told us that religious wars were never successful and ultimately pointless. Just look at fundamentalists of any kind, aren´t they stupid, little people full of bigotry? Audiophilism is able to do the same, you can find fundamentalists on both sides - utterly disappointing because I always thought that in case of our hobbies we should strive to better ourselves - not destroy each other. Guys and Gals, relax!

Where do I stand? Well, it should be obvious now. Since I hate both sides I´m actually sort of in the middle. I believe in cable sound (yep, even USB), differences between amplifiers, high resolution audio, measurments, objective approaches while I don´t believe in objectivism or subjectivism as the only options available to me. I´m sitting on the side of the audiophile coin and let me tell you, this side is sharp as a razor. Both sides hate me because I won´t conform to anything they value with the result that I´m always sitting between chairs. A completely shitty situation, I used to post at hydrogenaudio as well as at computeraudiophile... but in the end it was a worthless attempt because no side would move one millimeter from their standpoint. Religion is crap!