Audiophiles are Full of CRAP! A Cheap Audio Man Rant

hey my name is randy and i'm the cheap audio man if you're new here consider subscribing hit the like button and turn on notifications so you know when all my awesome videos and i use awesome in quotation awesome videos go up on the internet today we're talking about why audio files are full of crap so sit down grab a cup of coffee and let's talk let's talk about why audio files are full of crap [Music] today's sponsor comes from sith audio as usual and it is audiophile resealable plastic bags some people call them zip locks put your snacks in here pringles maybe some rich crackers a sandwich whole bunch of record player cartridges can put them all in here because it's certified to make everything inside it audiophile audio anything you fit in here magically makes it an audiophile component that's what we're going to talk today about today we're going to talk today about why i feel some okay i'm not going to pigeonhole everybody paint with super broad strokes why i feel some audiophiles are full of bull crap or steer crap or heifer crap any of the cows that have the crap reason number one i hear this and i hear this in the in the comments and the reason why i'm making this video is there are themes and i've heard it in the comments i've gotten emails about it people are very passionate about telling me why i'm wrong and telling other people why they're wrong here's the number one one thing that i think uh why audio files are full of crap number one i don't know if we're gonna do numbers that's not how the artist intended it so if your speakers and this is mostly due to speakers if your speakers don't measure a certain way if they if they're not flat measuring the argument there is that's not how the artist intended the music to sound like that's the argument really i would i would argue back were you at the recording did you hear what the music sounded like uh coming out of the studio monitors did you hear the band go yep that's it when they agree to the recording not only that i have heard anecdotal evidence that some bands approve the final master listening to it in a car or over mp3s and crappy headphones or even when one of their managers is holding a phone up like this and they're listening to it on the other end that's how they're approving their masters not through some crazy hi-fi stereo they're approving their masters through car stereo and i wonder how that car stereo measures i wonder if it's flat measuring if there's a bump here or there or if it's perfect if you weren't at the recording if you weren't sitting with the band when they approved the master maybe they didn't even approve the master uh bands for the most part i mean with it with the exception of like live performances or where there's a performance and it's in one space it's kind of one take and they're not really slicing things up outside of that nobody really knows what the music was intended to sound like outside of a concert and here even at a concert so you're at a concert right maybe it's a big concert maybe it's a stadium-sized concert okay and you have the the sound booth in the middle in front of the stage right and they're doing sound check and they're dialing in all the levels to get it to sound like that where at the sound booth because guess what there's speakers up front there's a sound system around it doesn't mean everyone's going to actually hear the same thing so even and i'm assuming that the reason why the sound booth guy is employed is because the band approves his approval so if he just yeah that's how okay the band probably says yeah that's how we want it to sound but it sounds like that in the sound booth or the sound area in the concert what if you're to the right to the left all the way up front all the way up back in the nosebleed section so even at a concert a live concert you might not be listening to it as the artist intended it because you're not exactly where they did the tweaking point being nobody really knows what it sounded like or what the artist's intention were nobody because they may have approved that master over a crappy car stereo we don't know that so if anybody ever says your speakers need to measure a certain way or you shouldn't have tone controls or you shouldn't have eq because that's not how the artist intended it it's dumb that's a dumb argument plus it's your music you can listen to it however you want to another thing that drives me crazy is your music is garbage because i actually do listen to a band called garbage i saw them in concert with the linus mars set it was lovely my music is garbage because it's compressed yeah so compression you may have heard of the loudness wars started back in the uh actually i think it's the 40s so motown records a lot of the times would run a hot record which means they'd bring up the levels people that would listen to music through juke boxes back then would have a tendency to prefer louder songs our friends at the beatles very good band they wanted to be commercially successful they started to record their music a little bit louder and then you know how it goes it just kept going and going and going until it it until it finally ended with my beloved metallica's death magnetic where it was so compressed sounded like garbage okay some people would say that all metallica our albums sound like garbage that's fine you do you i'm gonna do me to say that a recording or an artist isn't audiophile all right so let's just what does the audio file mean what does it mean what does it mean it's subjective right it's a moving target right why do some people get to label their stuff audio file while others do not is there an application process i know of only one certification process is the audiophile measurement standards and certification committee and the only reason i know about that one is because i started the website as a joke that's right askmac.org is a joke about all this okay this is one of my favorites personally that speaker is only going to sound good on a high-end system high-end and i got this argument when i listened to the kef ls50s and guess what i didn't like them okay i i get to do that some people don't like things i didn't like the kef ls50 the comments that i got and there was an overwhelming theme that only works with a high-end amplifier okay perfect well i had a 2500 amplifier on it is that not good enough well it needs to be this this so if and i actually heard this from a manufacturer because i gave anyway a manufacturer told me that i'm only going to be able to tell the differences if i'm on my high-end system and boy oh boy did i have a long heated conversation spirited spirited conversation with them what is high-end what is a high-end system what is a high-end amp and if the product only works best with a high-end component or high-end amp why isn't it certified with some components why don't you go to their web page and say it only works with or works best with works okay with and have a list hey if you're a manufacturer you're going to say this does this isn't going to perform well unless it's with a certain amp then maybe you should test it out with a bunch of amps and tell us which ones it works best with which ones it works okay with and which amps you wouldn't recommend but don't make us the consumer go out there and guess and go buy a whole bunch of stuff just to find out that oh well we didn't find the perfect pairing for your fico little speaker if i ever hear that you need to be on a high-end system come on down to cam studios let's talk about that face to face that system all in when i first got that's the that's the reason why the channel started is the kef ls50 and the moon by sim audio 240i okay that's the reason why this started and well you didn't have enough power what no no it's 2500 it's 50 watts of clean power it's got a huge transformer if it doesn't work it doesn't work if if it doesn't work tell me what put it on the side of the box put it in the owner's manual tell us what your fancy special snowflake speaker tell us what amps it works with so that we can have a more enjoyable experience by giving you our hard earned money here's a good one hi-fi high-end starts at x amount x some arbitrary number it just starts at three grand two grand it just starts there anything is 19.99 nope they're mid five two grand that's hi-fi who gets to determine this i actually saw a video and i couldn't make it through the entirety of the video i saw a video that literally and i'm giving you the reader's digest first the guy said oh yeah if if your dax less than five thousand dollars it's just garb it's not going to be good you you need at least a 5 000 deck really what if it goes on sale down to 3 500 okay what if some company was going through a dealer network and all of a sudden they decided guess what we're not going to go through a dealer network anymore we're going to cut our prices and sell it 40 less while increasing our own margin what happens then because that that product used to be five grand now maybe it's 3 500. is that not good anymore so thinking about hi-fi and components based on price is dumb there's no magic number there's no magic threshold that says okay maybe i'll concede to this that maybe the finish you can maybe say this is a high-end finish on a speaker if it costs i don't know two grand to make three grand to make a grand to put the finish on there whatever it is you can say that yeah this is a high-end speaker because it costs a grand to do this paint job whatever outside of that no you can't who who who that sounds like an owl is determining what threshold is high in and think about technology think about speaker modeling electronic crossover modeling enclosure modeling how to get different sounds i mean materials think about that so with all this technology and economies of scale all of a sudden it's it just that that's the worst argument that high-end audio starts at a certain amount of money don't let anybody tell you that high-end starts at a certain price that's crazy that's i i don't know i don't even know what i don't even have an analogy for that it's like saying if the your car has to con has to cost 50 grand for it to be good really i mean i'm sure there's cars out there that cost 30 grand they're good but i don't know okay as soon as i hit 50 grand we're in the club now you're in the good car club you're in the good hi-fi hi-fi equipment club who who's determining what this what this is is it the dealers the hi-fi dealers that go in and they carry the expensive real expensive stuff okay is it them is it them who's deciding okay kind of like the tail wagon of the dog and guess what if that goes on the used market or even a demo unit 50 that's what that component's worth 50 sometimes less than 50 on the used market open box you know maybe 75 85 okay they have margin in there basically double so if it's 2500 there the dealer's probably getting it for 12.50 double double that's a lot of margin i've worked in a few industries and that's a high margin and everybody everyone is talking about oh it's too bad that hi-fi hi-fi stores are going out of business well they shouldn't be they're making a ton of money compared to other industries i have zero ties to the the hi-fi stereo industry or audio industry in general and i know some people that even are on this platform you know i've did this i've been in the industry for this long that long guess what i never have doesn't matter i have ears i've you know i probably really started listening to music pretty hard when i was you know about eight so i have over like 37 years of listening experience oh it's through low end audio okay what if it was really good back then is it still low end what what about this what about the cd players that came out like in 1988 all right like a 3 000 cd player which most people would agree sounds like garbage now compared to a very low end ce player now okay so now all of a sudden that high-end audio file cd player is bested by it and i know that might not be a good example but it's dac technology okay so dak technology back then that's good now it's good and cheaper okay so is that an audiophile deck i don't know is it it's not as expensive if we're putting the threshold anyway i think you get my point so this topic brings out the worst in people at least i think it is i've got an emails i have gotten phone calls from somebody who and it was about the elac and this guy took like i think he felt like it was his duty to the rest of the world that he set me straight and let me know that all the stuff i was recommending was garbage literally garbage he would say that in some of the comments he was talking about the e-like unify uh reference no not the reference e-like unified 2.0 2.0 he calls me because i mistakenly had my phone number in the signature line of my email he calls me i answer we talk he's going on and on about how no it's got to be this it's got to be that it's got to be that and i said how much time have you spent a being the elac unified 2.0 to whatever your high-end speaker is that you bought at a dealer and you paid in a ginormous markup on how many times how long have you beat him oh well i haven't what was your impressions when you heard the speaker well i've never heard the speaker never heard the speaker huh so if you're out there type it away you got your fancy in your pantsy speakers in the other room fancy fancy audio stuff on the on the floor get your audio file monoblocks on the floor why can't we get them up but are they too heavy do we all make stands that fit them okay if you've never heard something don't bash on it it's called contempt prior to investigation and that's ignorance personified okay it's saying you don't like something when you've never actually touched it tasted it felt it hurt it spend any time with it just vilifying something that you don't know anything about that maybe you don't understand having ideas about something but not spending any time with it i think you know where i'm going don't crap all over something if you've never heard it because you're dumb if you do it's stupid that's like saying uh that's like never having a food like just saying uh you know what meat's stupid it tastes like garbage chicken's dumb or salad's dumb spinach is dumb honey mustard's dumb try it try it if you like it you like it if you don't you don't it's no big deal so if you want to support the channel which this problem this video probably makes a whole bunch of people want to support the channel if you want to support the channel you can sign up for patreon patreon.comcheapaudioman every sunday night we have patreon only zooms we also have a patron only facebook group you can also sign up for amazon music it's probably not audiophile grade music sign up for amazon music there's a link in the description you get a few free months you may even get a few free months of disney plus i get a couple of dollars you can also use some of my links that are in the description those are products that i like and i recommend if you use those links it doesn't cost you any more but i get a small commission so don't binge watch anything binge listen binge you can binge watch movies and stuff like that binge listen and fill your soul with happiness on your system and if it's audio if you wanted to be on live video guess what it's audiophile i'm randy i'm the cheap audio man [Music]

Channel: cheapaudioman

Views: 880,848

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Id: -niPXmlFSwU

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021