I have a pair of powered Klipsch bookshelf speakers, and while I don’t have any complaints about them, I’m thinking about getting an amplifier and switching to passive speakers, just for a more “purely analog” setup. The speakers I have right now have modern features like a remote and bluetooth, and I don’t think I’ll miss the remote and I never use bluetooth.
What do you use? I’m not an audiophile by any means, so I’ll probably see what affordable, used amp and speakers I can find at a record store or thrift shop, but I’d love to hear your recommendations, too.
TLDR: Just get whatever sounds good to you; if you already have working speakers, there’s no need to replace them unless they’re really old / grody.
I’ve got JBL powered studio monitors and a powered subwoofer with a low-frequency cutoff passthrough.
The DAC/Amplifier provides the analog signal from an optical input.
I’m kinda “half” an audiophile, I can definitely tell good speakers apart from bad ones and with room speakers/“monitors” it’s a lot easier to get good sound than with headphones (cone and magnet sizes).
As for vinyls, I listen to them digitized and they’re around ~192 KHz in dynamic range (compared to 48 KHz for CD), and most speakers seem to be capable of high dynamic range (post 2020 production) for pretty cheap.
To help ya out, not being an ass, just educating:
Vinyls isnt a thing. Its “records” or “vinyl” as the plural.
A CD is 44.1 kHz 16 bit. 48kHz is used for DVD and movies, usually.
The kHz is the sampling rate and has little to do with dynamic range. That would be more related to bit depth. 16 bit vs 24 bit. A 24 bit wav is the highest quality you can possibly have (iirc). Now, can anyone tell the difference, almost never.
Second, records do not have higher dynamic range as a medium, because of the noise floor. Just because you digitally Rip at 192kHz doesn’t mean squat (and the ADC matters hugely as well. Use an apogee ADC and see how good it sounds compared to a cheapo)
NOW ignore everything I said. The reason SOME records have higher dynamic range than a CD is because digital mastering pushed brickwall limiting on all of us (because of stupid record companies that wanted to sell more so make it fatiguingly loud). You can’t brickwall a record.
I can personally attest that any CD (or file) I have, if I also have the record, the record sounds better 8 out of 10 times (IGNORING SURFACE NOISE!!). The record will almost always sound WAY punchier and dynamic and lively. This has nothing to do with the medium. It is the mastering engineer who specifically masters for vinyl that makes that difference.
IF we had better engineers that were brave and didnt have corporate influence, we would have amazing dynamic range digital that doesn’t brickwall Clip at +0.2 dbfs. But we dont.
Sorry for the rant friend!
Oh no, I totally enjoyed the rant! There’s nothing better than meeting someone on the Internet who is passionate about a subject, or has significant expertise who can clear up misconceptions or misinformation.
And yes I agree on the range levelling / squashing, and I think it’s for radio purposes so it sounds good coming out of horrible mall speakers or low-end car stereos / smartphones. Mass market appeal, as you said.
The surface noise is obviously a problem for vinyl, but in the specific few that a friend had shown me (Nine Inch Nails), I thought it was just part of their aesthetic, because a lot of Reznor’s stuff is “grainy” on purpose.
On mastering: I’m not even sure what the “new medium” would be for super high end audio, I’ve resorted to FLAC at Quality=11 because .wav/.raw is ridiculously large for no good reason, and internet connections are so fast nowadays (125 MB/s+) that even buying physical Blu-Ray disks is tenous given you can digitally grab the album in under a minute, versus driving to the record store.
Yep very true!
I work in audio recording and mixing so I only use wav files 24 bit 96 kHz. They’re only used because plugins tend to react better with them. Plus, higher sample rate gets you less latency at the expense if CPU if recording overdubs.
It all gets down sampled in the end but I always have the master recordings.