Coping in an Age of Uncertainty

What's a "real audiophile"?

A real audiophile: (in Catholic order)

1. Believes Levinson, Pass, McIntosh, Von Schweikert, et al, are gods.
2. Curses the names of above gods when equipment blows up.
3. Buys cheaper on line (Sundays included) instead of worshiping at the store front.
4. Listens to his gear more often than he calls his mother or father.
5. Would kill any and all comers who would dare move the position of his speakers.
6. Would sleep with anybody (farm animals?) since he doesn't get laid much
7. Would steal his grandfather’s gold fillings to buy interconnects.
8. Shits on anyone who disagrees with his preferences of audio equipment.
9. (repeat #6)
10. Looks at pictures of some people’s multi-thousand dollar systems and drools.

In other words, he is just a regular guy.
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My solution was to get a DVD player that handles all higher definition formats. I spent 3500 (USD) (w/out my 12% discount) on the Denon DVD-5910. I get HDCD, SACD, HDAD, DVD-A, all with top of the line Burr-Brown DACs. Great price point for everything you get, plus it is supposed to have the best video quality on the market as well. Even when Blu-ray and HD-DVD come out, I can still use this for my old movies and to play the HD music formats until one of them gels out as the winner.

Sorry guys, I was away having a life and listening to music instead of quoting the audiophile mantra..."All hail vinyl". I was into high end vinyl before most of you were sh...ing yellow! I also have owned enough high end gear to warrant the term "seasoned audiophile". I am usually ahead of the curve, so forgive me for stepping on your nostalgia. In the next year or two you will begin to read about how more and more veteran audiophiles and reviewers are becoming aware of just how superior CD/SACD/DVD-a playback can be!! One caveat, if you determine playback quality based on the worst recordings ever transferred to Cd...you win! If you have the taste and the persistence to seek out great performances on CD...well, I geuss you know how I feel. Meatloaf etc...definately better on vinyl...Sessions on Argo however...well, a thing of beauty!! Gee, no hum, clicks, pops, warps, rumble, feedback, inner groove distortion ...need I go on??

I may have a cheap solution for some of you. I posted about this in the cpu forum earlier. It's a small program that can upsample ripped cd's to 24/96 pcm dvd video with a claim of resolution enhancement. Then you burn it as a dvd video, but play it back as audio only in a standard dvd player. When I first tried it, I thought it would be just another bogus program with exaggerated claims. But much to my suprise, it actually seems to work. I took several of the disks to my brothers place for a shootout. He's got a MA6900 with MGIIIa's and Sony's top DVD video/SACD player (999ES I think). Some of the disks were the same titles, ie my dvd disk upsampled with Diana Krall against his SACD of her. Sometimes the dvd's would sound slightly warmer or the sacd's would have better bass or treble extension, or visa versa, but the differences were minute. The shootout was basically a tie, which stunned all of us. Sometimes the upsampled dvd's are much better than the original cd's, other times by a smaller margin. But they almost always sound better. There were three of us listening and we all heard the same thing. And here's the kicker...even a cheap dvd player using the analog outs sound quite good....kinda like a poor man's high-end cd player. Any of my dvd players using these disks will out perform my McCormack SST-1 cd transport. If your dvd player outputs 24/96, then you can send it to a high quality dac for even better sound. The bad news is Phillips dvd players don't seem to like the disks, they cut out the sound every few seconds. However most other players have no problem with them, Sony, Panasonic, Onkyo, Harmon Kardon, to name a few. I don't even listen to cd's on my big rig anymore, they must be upsampled to dvd first. So if anybody has dvd burning capabilities on their computer, give it a try. I'll be interested to see if other people's experiences are the same. I'm new to Audiogon, so I hope my post isn't inappropriate. Just trying to spread the word about good sound for cheap money. Oh, and you can fit 2 hrs of 24/96 music on 1 disk. It's a free trial with a limit of 4 songs to a disk (no limit for full version). I recommend using RW's for the trial. DVD2one Audio Remaster is the name of it. Full version is about $60.
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