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Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

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Edvard:
A friend who's father ran a farm said "big stuff" purchased for a farm is bought with one of two criteria in mind: (a) costly but built to last - or - (b) inexpensive but easy and cheap to fix.

I found that to be a good guide when making a major purchase decision. 8)
-40hz (April 08, 2014, 09:10 AM)
--- End quote ---

Amen.  :Thmbsup:

katykaty:
Legend has it that someone once asked Bernard Edwards of Chic what strings he used for his bass.

He turned to Nile Rodgers and asked "What kind of strings come on a MusicMan bass?"

If you're a genius, you'll make anything sound great :)

40hz:
Legend has it that someone once asked Bernard Edwards of Chic what strings he used for his bass.

He turned to Nile Rodgers and asked "What kind of strings come on a MusicMan bass?"

If you're a genius, you'll make anything sound great :)
-katykaty (April 17, 2014, 11:58 AM)
--- End quote ---

FWIW they're Ernie Ball "Slinkys" medium light gauge, with a .45 on top and a .100 on the bottom. (In case anybody cares. ;) )

They're very nice strings - and far from the most expensive set out there. The same goes for the Music Man Stingray bass. :-*  Superb and surprisingly affordable.

And when it comes to bass, 90% of it is in your hands rather than your "plank" anyway - as I was taught so many years ago - and Scott Devine demonstrates and teaches below:

Joe Hone:
I get more satisfaction lurking in forums and reading the debate between vintage/modern, high end/low end, etc. than just about any subject. Except for the comments on retractionwatch.com, which is high entertainment indeed.

I work in audio production, spend many hours each week producing voice for radio along with the usual tracking and mixing music. I also got to do the music thing for a few years and for a bonafide will just say that I'm relatively unknown, but the Grand Old Opry is on my resume. So I'll just speak from my own experience of thousands of hours critically playing music, buying studio and playback gear, listening to audio, etc.

From my own experience doing shoot-outs where nobody except a controller who is not the person in charge of switching the gear on and off (unmarked switching is used so there is no bias from any participant) knows which piece is which, studio engineers and audiophiles tend to agree on the best sounding 2 or 3 units, but often those units are not the most expensive gear but fall in the more mid-priced range. And often hyped gear (meaning popular sentiment has it being "the best one can buy") performs more poorly than others. In contrast, in shoot-outs where the gear is known, most engineers and audiophiles swear the gear they brought to the event sounds best, which often is the hyped gear or the gear that is the current flavor of the month on blogs and in forums. I have been in both situations, and yes, I do swear my own gear sounds better! But because of the double blind testing experience, I recognize that my own bias will blind my ears when given the chance. One interesting fact is that audio ("audiophile") manufacturers tend to shy away from participating in these tests, but studio gear manufacturers like to set them up. Take from that what you will.

The testing done on the violins mentioned in the original post was great fun to read given that some of the most highly rated violin soloists in the world participated, and I read a blog of one who had spent several hours playing on a Stradivarius before the event and was certain he would be able to tell it from the others. After 4 hours of intensive playing all instruments, he chose a modern violin as the Stradivarius. That seems about right from my experience in shoot-outs, and from hanging around the instrument making industry. I spoke with one of the more respected luthiers alive at the NAMM show a while back and he told me we are in the golden age of guitar making given a lot of convergent factors. I don't know any reason why that wouldn't be true for violins as well.

As for mp3, I don't claim to have golden ears, but I have experienced noticeable audio degradation when I listen in the studio to audio in mp3 where I produced it and know what it should sound like. Not only highs and lows sounding less full or rich, but transients and digital artifacts present where there were none before. In fact, I thought one mix was fatally defective given the artifacts accompanying voice and cymbals, not realizing that I was accidentally listening to mp3 mixes and not the final full resolution mix.

In sum, I'm not surprised by the conclusions of the violin shoot-out at all. And I'm amused by the discussion on audio forums that "science cannot replicate sound" and other such theories from the true believers who refuse to participate in double blind testing.

Shades:
When I lived in the Netherlands most electronics stores had a listening room where you could hear the audio equipment you had an interest in play with different speakers as well. And my budget allowed for a Sony 5.1 amp and Wharfedale speakers in 1996. Somehow, I like an amp best when it plays 'Twist in my sobriety' from T. Tikaram well.

And I used it with gusto till 2005 when I went to Paraguay. After my father passed away a few years back I wanted to ship that equipment over to Paraguay. However, I learned that all my stuff I had stored there for shipment was sold by either my brother or my father. Crap happens.

But here in Paraguay there are hardly any stores that do have listening rooms. There isn't even a lot of choice in brands and each brand only carries a very limited set of models.

With katschaka (or how else you write it) and raggeaton music over here it only needs to be loud and have a big bass speaker. After listening 30 minutes to that crap (the first is way worse than the latter) I need to listen to rock/metal for a month just to get my sanity back. To my mind that music is the reason why beer is sold in liter bottles down here.
[/rant]

Anyway, my point is that I always have bought my audio equipment only after actually hearing it play my favorite kind of music. I didn't even care to buy the showroom model if that sounded  better than the one in the box.

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