Stormfly

Mouser or DigiKey for parts.

Yep, my Ultimate Ear UE10 pros which I've had since 2005 certainly have revealed so much, MP3, satellite radio, just about anything streaming, ESPECIALLY video streams is painful like sitting down butt naked on a huge pine cone.  (don't ask!)

There's a lot of good stuff that was captured and mastered properly, not always the most popular stuff.  I just learn to keep my mouth shut because I mention it sounds like crap because of compression and 99% of the time I hear, "I know it's Amazon Prime"  or whatever.

I have to admit with heavy DSP it's pretty amazing the frequency response and resolution of a portable bt speaker.  Up to a POINT!  Most people crank them up so the automatic gain controls kick in to prevent amp over-driving into hard clipping and while it may not be harsh sounding as square waves going into drivers it's so compressed it might as well be that pine cone...

One thing that chaps my hind parts as much as going to bed on 6-8 forecast and waking up to partly cloudy is someone cranking up a TV with its tiny speaker rattling and a commercial comes on and it tries its best to get even louder!

4 minutes ago, CAPE said:

I've had a couple Denon CD players over the years. Pretty decent equipment for the money. My Monarchy DAC has piggy backed 20-bit Burr Brown chips. Really clean sound. Supposedly more analog-ish sounding.

Yep definitely smoother on recordings with low surface noise.

Wadia makes some nice gear.

Apple is doing loseless now, have not compared to TIDAL master but they should be similar.

Of course so many will play through bluetooth and rave over the improved sound!

I have some relic CD players from the 80s.  A Denon 3520 which uses a 20bit Burr Brown DAC and sounded great.  The drawer stopped working in the late 90s and I found the belt inside broken.  It's a round part and was given a tip by a tech to dissect a condom to fix it and it worked!  Hilarious.  It stopped working a few years later again.  My Technics SL-P1300 top load (DJ) deck still works to this day.  Most of the stuff I was getting was on ADAT and RDAT.  Still have a trunk full of RDAT tapes which were recorded at 48KHz.  One day I will go through those.  I remember recording an awesome nocturnal storm that woke me up at 4AM and using that gentle rolling thunder and rain in a soundtrack.  It was back in 1991.  Used a portable Sony TCD-D3 DAT which was a nice machine for its time.

1 hour ago, CAPE said:

Not sure I would characterize 16/44.1 source material as lowly. I was an audiophile until I found better things to spend money on, but still have a pretty high end system. I was all into the 24/192 capable formats when it came out, and spent big bucks on a first generation DVD audio player. There wasn't a whole lot to pick from to listen too, but I made myself believe it sounded far superior. It didn't. "Good" sound is very subjective, and the reality is that frequencies above 14-16 khz are of minimal to no importance to anyone over the age of about 20, especially if you have attended more than a few rock concerts. 44khz sampling allows for a reasonably good representation of frequencies up to 22khz according to Nyquist.

Well I was being sarcastic however when working in the studio one prefers higher sampling rate and bit depth as it does provide more to work with.  Whether one can hear it is another matter altogether.  I'm in my 50's and can still hear a flyback whine at 15.750 kHz albeit very faint.  I learned to take care of my ears at a very young age fortunately.  When in my teens I could easily hear the toggle of a 19kHz pilot tone.  Golden ears indeed.  On and around stage I ALWAYS was plugged.  Have custom molds so I can hear high frequencies albeit 27dB down from actual.  What a lot of people don't realize on stage exposed to 120dBA is not only really bad for hearing you cannot discern details of a bad amp or pedal, et-al.  As they say in live the show must go on and the faster a tech can fix it the better the show is.

As far as playback gear goes converters WILL make a difference but it's not just up to your ears, listening style but budget.  Definitely laws of diminishing returns.  Don't even get me started on the snake oil speaker wires/interconnects!

I've sampled a variety of 24/192 stuff from both SACD and DVD-A and the spectrum analyzer result was literally shocking.  Nothing past 21kHz!  Thinking something was wrong with the DAC I recorded me jingling my keys in front of a large condenser mic and could see usable output well past 40KHz.  But alas, if it's 24/192 it's got to sound better, right?

The fidelity of streaming is poor due to low bitrate and/or variable bit rate which depends on the connection quality/speed.  The encoding type also has impacts particularly on higher frequencies and transients.  Which incidentally on poor masters with crest factors in the single digits it doesn't rake as bad as a very high quality master with great dynamic range. 

Also confusing compression used to conserve space (whether lossy or lossless) and dynamic range compression (to make the overall sound louder) are two completely different things.

It's gotten bad enough that vinyl is making a comeback not because it sounds better (it doesn't especially on the vast majority of consumer equipment bought at big box retail stores) but due to the recordings at the time being mastered much better.  Adding insult to injury even "lowly" 16bit 44.1kHz "CD quality" recordings have 90dB of dynamic range far exceeding any consumer playback media (ex. cassette, 8 track, and LP).  And that's before NR even Dolby C or dbx!

1 hour ago, mappy said:

terrier/lab and terrier/shepherd 

the terrier/shepherd did all the dirty work lol

Wow, yes you have your work cut out for you for sure!

Back in 1994 I had a Rottweiler, Dalmation, and Lab/Greyhound mix.  The rottie did all the hard work (numerous groundhog kills around the pond) and other two played tug-of-war with the carcasses.  I know exactly how it goes.  It's fun to talk about it at the end of the day and you know you'd never want a life without your dogs!

29 minutes ago, mappy said:

If anyone ever hears/sees me say we should get another puppy, yell at me NO. 

This morning the two pups (1.5yrs/7 months) found and killed a groundhog living under our shed. Just spent 10 minutes chasing them around the yard, while they played tug of war with the body, so I could get them to drop it and back inside. 

So out of shape. 

What kind of dogs?

I had Jack Russells so I can tell stories all day long about chases!

My border collie is a chaser but he is no killer.  He just wants to herd.

Christmas in July!

The colors that is...

3.25" hail is impressive.

4 hours ago, Mrs.J said:

Yea Mr J has wondered if this is the cause. So interesting that you say that. 

The big issue isn't just the volume but the amount of dynamic range compression that's applied to the musical track.  Annoying AF!  In a theater environment I'm fine with 120dB of dynamic range from a whisper to the crack of a gunshot but for the sake of Thor PLEASE lower the volume of the damn music!  Music should be audible in the BACKGROUND.  It's gotten so bad lately it's not funny.

Speaking of MUSIC, the loudness war is destroying the sound in modern mixes.  The best way to explain this in English is in this video here:

2 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Umm  

@MillvilleWx

 

I'll take G&M crabcakes for $1000, Alex.

Usually it's the watch that's issued in the dining room and the warnings come later in the evening for heavy wind and noises.

2 hours ago, BlizzardNole said:

I just don't get how this happens so consistently.  Other parts of my county have had numerous storms over the last week while I have to heavily water my garden this evening.  It's such a dull boring place for weather.  Lucky to see one or two thunderstorms in a whole summer.

But winter's coming, back to back nor'easters with howling, bone chilling winds and rain at thirty three freedom degrees!

21 minutes ago, Yeoman said:

Anyone's lights flickering yet?

Yes but it's not from the weather!

Sun is breaking out, temps starting to move up.  We can do this.  The ENH has moved north but we're still firmly in its grip as compared to being in the bullseye earlier.  Never liked bullseyes anyways, staring into those could mean an ass full of horns, not fun!

Our mature spruce line welcomes the cold air damming overlords.

5% TOR almost always winds up with a watch.

Actually seeing warning criteria in your yard, well might as well start looking for that five leaf clover!

3 hours ago, mappy said:

The Friday cold front couldn't come through at a more perfect time. We have a one day softball tourney Saturday and its going to be amazing for end of July. 

I'm looking forward to it, may have to pitch a tent near the trail, could be some nice sleeping weather which is rather rare here this time of the year!

3 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

I've learned to accept the SVR and Winter climo of the area.

I'm ok with it.  Funny thing is it all gets built up and *poof* gone just like that.  IME the most memorable events are the ones that catch you like a thief at night, no warning, unexpected.

Bring the wind anytime!  I'm constantly checking our trees and when a threat of damage from unexpected felling exists, it comes down.  Stove is always hungry in the winter, less money for the oil guys and toasty comfort to boot.  Of course my back cries uncle much sooner these days with the bigger logs but we have some plans to deal with that in the foreseeable future.

My mask covers the dark side of the moon!

Yes it never dies, just goes dormant.  But try to tell that to all the folks with sprinklers.

1 hour ago, H2O said:

We always have a dry stretch. Every summer. Like clockwork. Brown grass and trees dropping leaves

Cutting grass higher (ex. 4") goes a long way to prevent browning.  Too many folks are shaving their grass and when it dries up it looks horrible.  I have about 4 acres of grass that's smooth cut here and don't mind the drier periods as I can go a month between mowings.  I just cut this Sat and the last time I cut was Independence Day.  It's thick, predominately K31 fescue and a lot of crabgrass in between but it's green and we don't have erosion on the hilly parts so all is well.  We have two wells on the property with one doing 20+ gpm slightly acidic soft water so no worries with watering gardens and ornamental shrubs.

Getting hammered now!

Very frequent T&L and heavy rains.

Nice rolling thunder.  Funny, haven't seen one bolt but the flashes are quite bright through the skylights.  It's kind of freaky - usually when it flashes that bright the thunder is a split second later.  It's almost out of sync like watching a dubbed kung-fu flick!

Corn looks *perfect* here.  Matter of fact it's been that way for years.  Gone are the tassels at waist height in the late 80s.  That was truly something to complain about!

1 hour ago, wxtrix said:

 

not this shit again.

Gaiters fan?

Thundershower train running just to our north.  Close to getting fringed.  Heard some thunder a while ago.  Watered the flower and veggie gardens, figured that alone would be enough to get at least a tinkle, but nope.

I suspect the same pattern that's keeping our summer mild will keep winter mild too!  Texas will be freezing below zero while we have rain and 33...

Late July 55F dewpoints?  In the past we'd have to pay toll for such comfort in the form of severe weather or even a derecho.  The smoke wasn't too bad other than the milky orange appearance.  Nothing like the eastern Canada fires in 2002.  Those actually smoked up this way real good like the fire was in OUR woods!  It takes a lot to bother my lungs and that one was tiresome.