Is Audio nirvana real?

mapman
13,663 posts
09-03-2016 2:37pm
"You can get even simpler with tin cans and a string. Get with the program! 🎯"

Wasn’t it Einstein who was fond of saying, make it as simple as possible but not simpler?

"Actually I agree that smaller can be better. It all depends on the room and person. Headphones take the room out of the equation."

Exactly, headphones take the room out of the equation. That’s a pretty big, complex and expensive unknown to take out of the equation. The portable headphone system also takes the transformer out of the equation. And house AC power and it’s attendant woes. It takes power cords out of the equation. It also takes interconnects and fuses out of the equation. All of the things that, you know, produce distortion and noise.

"You aren’t driving any Magicos or Dynaudio speakers with the little 10 ouncer I Would assume. 😏"

The headphones are part of the 10 ounces, grasshopper. The Sony Ultralights, specifically. They come in at just under 1 ounce. Rare earth magnets even. Oh, and no crossovers. I abhor crossovers.

Its budget sensitive; if you spent all you can afford, you're much more likely to hear the good things in your system rather than the flaws.  You can decide to be satisfied, and so to focus on the music.

I'm listening to Sgt. Peppers for the thousandth time and hearing things I never heard before. On a pretty modest system by agon standards. Nirvana for me.

Ah, the Personal Music Delivery System.  Given the 'right' choices of player and earbuds one can achieve Nirvana....
...on an extremely personal level, all the nuance, tonality, attack, complexity, all those elements we love and strive to recreate.

But....it's not created that way.  Music is not created between one's ears.
Or performed that way...well, not yet, anyway...

Music has a visceral quality that 10oz. of Anything ain't gonna serve up.
Nothing legal, anyway...

I will keep my collection of obscure metal and wooden boxes of wire and trace elements.  Mine makes a joyful noise I can feel, and that's important to me.  I suspect that's important to others

asvjerry

But....it’s not created that way. Music is not created between one’s ears.
Or performed that way...well, not yet, anyway...

Music has a visceral quality that 10oz. of Anything ain’t gonna serve up.
Nothing legal, anyway...

+1 Asvjerry

You know i tried to make it work with headphones. When our fraternal twins were born, I was faced with crying in stereo. They also never slept at the same time and I helped breast feed (I held one :^) ...a couple of footballs (picture an American football shape)

I needed music and I could not wake the babies. But I found to achieve the level of compression and equilibrium I enjoy in my rooms, I needed to raise the volume to where I feared for my hearing. Maybe it was my state of being at the time. Entry in personal log. Creation of my personal panic room. The year 1994.

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Geoffkait’s personal portable nirvana and your comments reminded me of something I read many years ago. I think it is very fitting to post an excerpt of it here.

Interview with Peter Walker of Quad discussing the thread topic.


Interviewer : Is the path to that goal, then, with headphones perhaps?

PW: There is, I think, possibly a future in headphones if the material is recorded through an artificial pinna. (The shape of the outer ear.)

Interviewer: A dummy head?

PW: Yes. Then to do it properly I think you’ve got to use the pinna of an actual person there’s a lot of difference between the pinnas of people and according to Shroeder’s theories, if it was recorded on a dummy head with your own pinna, or with microphones in your own eardrums, then it can be very good. But if it’s somebody else’s pinna you lose these little decays from these little reflections. There’s a good article in America by Gardner. Even filling in a little gap in your ear with wax stops a lot of your up and down capabilities because you have lived with that shape for a long time.

TAA: You’d have to have a casting of your own ears, in other words, to make good "headphone" recordings.

PW: Well. it’s impossible to make records that way, because a variety of people have got to listen to them! There might be a future there, or there might be a future for sonic sort of close-up loudspeaker.

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Could it be that Geoffkait likes his sony lighweight headphones so much because their shape is close to his personal pinna ?

Should probably point out that all sound waves from speakers and live performances enter the ear and are processed as it were inside the head. The advantage of headphones of course compared to speakers is that the distortion and noise is significantly lower, you know, for the reasons I already outlined. Of course the will be those who swear that the sound should come from in front of you. It comes down to personal preference. The headphone set up has it’s advantages, including SQ, as I already outlined. And then there's cost. Shall we just sweep cost under the rug?