I consider myself an "audiophile" and have spent way too much money on nice equipment. That being said, once I started hanging out with people that call themselves audiophiles and have way more money that I do, I realized that most of these people can't even tell the difference in the sound quality and, frankly, there is no loss. One of the meetups I went to even had a contest for anyone that could tell which DAC was being used and another for anyone that could tell a FLAC apart from a 320kbps MP3. No one won the prize money. "Audiophiles" are, for the most part, full of shit, in my opinion and just need to justify spending ridiculous amounts of money on great looking audio equipment.

Mind you, I'm also probably full of shit because everyone tells me that I can get exactly the same computer for half the cost of what I paid for my MacBook Pro and I'm yet to find anything that comes close. At least with the Apple stuff, there are objective things I can point to that justify the more expensive costs. With audio equipment, there's a slow curve up and then it just drops off once you get past a certain point.

I don't buy into a lot of audiophile nonsense (and personally I don't think I can tell the difference between a 192kbps MP3 and uncompressed), however there is a clear and obvious quality issue with some Bluetooth devices, in addition to how terrible the pairing experience is.

The Pareto principle is alive and thriving in the audiophile community. Anything beyond midrange is pure wank IMO (although I'll happily listen to 160kbps MP3 so you can probably disregard what I say. :P But this does seem to be borne out by a lot of double-blind testing, as you mention.)

As for Apple products, you might get the same spec computer for half the cost but Apple has really nice build quality and integration (or at least did when I got my MacBook). It's the same spec but it's just nicer.

> I'll happily listen to 160kbps MP3 so you can probably disregard what I say.

I'm with you several hundred percent.

Didn't a serious of fairly rigorous tests way back conclude that nobody could tell the difference between a ~160kbps VBR MP3 and an uncompressed source (as long as a good MP3 encoder was used)? I think it was the Hydrogen Audio people behind it.

I think they decided ~192kbs was the point where there wasn't any statistically significant evidence that anyone could tell the difference.

And that's in ideal listening conditions when people are being asked specifically to listen out for differences. I think the margin for realistic listening situations is probably much wider.

> Didn't a serious of fairly rigorous tests way back conclude that nobody could tell the difference between a ~160kbps VBR MP3 and an uncompressed source (as long as a good MP3 encoder was used)?

No, the conclusion was that most people couldn't tell the difference above 192kbps, but to a trained ear many people could still tell the difference in 192 to 256, or 256 to 320.

It was 320 and above where there was basically nobody who could tell the difference unless they were using recording studio grade gear, which most people don't have.

Agreed 100%. I've owned so many different computers over the years that I'm 100% willing to pay what most consider to be an "Apple tax" when, in my mind, I'm paying a little bit extra for an overall better product. You're totally right... it's just nicer.

I agree with all of this, but the knock on bluetooth sound quality doesn't fall into this category of audiophile foolishness.

It's real & severe downsampling, and incredibly noticeable.

Bluetooth 5 should have the bandwidth to solve this problem.

While I get what you're saying, I only find this drop in quality on really cheap Bluetooth headphones/headsets. I have tried 2 "high-end" wireless headphones (1 of which are my AirPods that I own) and I find no downsampling or quality loss that's noticeable.

On airpods there’s so much background noise and lack of sound isolation the quality drop won’t make a difference.

If you can't hear the difference between 320kbps and lossless you're either not using equipment capable of the response and the frequencies where the cutoff for 320kbps and resulting compression artifacts are noticeable or you just aren't able to hear the artifacts, either because of unfamiliarity or bad hearing especially as you get older. I've done blind a/b tests with my equipment and over 20 samples proven that I can tell a difference with a high degree of statistical certainty between 320kbps and FLAC (try http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html) Lossless vs 192kbps or lower is just too obvious, I think most "audiophiles" like yourself should be able to tell the difference with a high-end set of headphones or speakers. 320kbps really only makes a difference for me for classical recordings as a violinist who can hear every detail with audio equipment thats pricier then what 99% of people are willing to pay for that extra 0.1% of audio fidelity. Alot of enthusiasts are also audio engineers who are very familiar with compression artifacts and audio mastering

I'm also a musician and can hear the difference between plenty of blind tests but I'm going to call bullshit on your claims. There have been several tests done like this and some of the most prominent musicians and engineers couldn't tell the difference. Neil Young and his engineer couldn't even tell the difference when bloggers trolled them with their own Pono format files. You may very well be one of the 0.00001% of people that can tell the difference but I highly doubt it.

Do you have references? As I pointed out in another comment, I would be interested in tests conducted on trained musicians with classical (or at least acoustic) music.

Congratulations!

Often, claims that 320kpbs is indistinguishable from lossless are based on tests conducted on regular people (as opposed to trained musicians) and with pop music (as opposed to classical recordings). I would like to see a test conducted on classical musicians with well-recorded classical music. I honestly don't know what the outcome would be, but it would be instructive.

The DAC on most consumer devices is not audiophile quality. Having had a mac book and a standalone USB DAC, there's really no comparison.

I don't really have a problem with DACs on PCs, but the amount of noise present on most motherboards is terrible. (I can usually tell when my machine is compiling).

A few years ago I bought some USB DACs and separate headphone amplifiers and it made a world of difference, even to my relatively ancient ears.

At least the iPhone's DACs are absolutely audiophile quality, especially because the idea that "an audiophile quality DAC costs 20x what you see in smartphones" is patently ridiculous. There's no evidence at all that any good as in not flawed DAC will sound the same on nearly any, if not any system.

At the very least, the audio quality degradation of most bluetooth devices has a worse impact than even your average middle tier Android phone's dac.

I'm being completely serious.

Typically a DAC has two components, the digital to analog part and an analog amplifier. So while the D2A won't typically be different, the audio amplification can vastly be different depending upon what you're trying to drive.

Unfortunately you can't remove the audio amplification and replace it with another, unless you're willing to do surgery on your macbook, say.

The best option is to buy a DAC with an amp that drives what you want it to. I have one that drives headphones that works like a charm, and I can hear not just the instruments clearer, but the location of the instruments recorded in stereo space better.

I lucked out when I decided to upgrade my main system to a Ryzen 7. Not really considering audio, I had decided on an Asrock X370 Taichi board mainly because it was known to work with ECC RAM (and it indeed does according to dmesg), and was quite pleasantly surprised when I plugged my headphones into it for a listen. It sounded every bit as good as what I get from a Focusrite Saffire on another system, and even better, the headphone amp has much more power, making it much better for live, uncompressed classical choral recordings than the Focusrite. I can play them at concert volume and not get clipping in the loudest passages. No complaints from me about the DAC or amplifier stage on this motherboard. On the other hand, I haven't tried any recording with it, and for stereo recording my first thought would still be to reach for the Focusrite or my portable recorder and mic preamp, since I'd need 48V phantom power anyway.

That has also been my experience.

I bought an external audio interface to connect a condenser microphone and was shocked at how much better it sounded compared with the audio output at the back of my desktop (Realtek 24 bit...).

I noticed that audio interfaces tend to have a lot of big condensers on the inside. The kind which don't fit in a laptop, and especially in a phone. Now I'm not an electronics expert to comment on this, but I would guess that the big condensers are not in there just for the fun of it. Note that I'm talking about professional audio interfaces (the kind used by music producers, in the $100-$400 range), not audiophile ones (kilo$, buzz words)

The interior of most PCs (and phones) are very noisy from an RF standpoint. I get hiss on my USB headphones (!!!) from just out poorly shielded the case on my computer is.

That said, Apple had traditionally put very well isolated low noise DACs in their products. I'm not sure if that is still the case.

Isn't the story that they don't put any DACs in their products anymore? Or, more accurately, that the DACs have moved to the output devices (headphones, speakers).

Are you 100% sure it's not the USB DAC on your headphones?

If you've inspected it, sure. If not, I would glare at it for a bit.

An audiophile quality DAC costs 20x what you see in smartphones.

You also need an amp for audiophile quality headphones.

Do you know any audiophiles who use phones to listen to music?

I don’t know any audiophiles period. Hence the lack of knowledge on the subject.

I have a couple different sets of speakers and know that my larger ones sound better than the smaller ones (more “tinny” sound), but figured the core difference isn’t the quality of analog output on the source. Rather it’s the larger amplifier and larger size for bass generation.

For Bluetooth the problem is different. While most people will probably not consciously notice the poor audio quality after long hours of listening they will experience fatigue. This is less likely with lossless audio.

I have a 2015 rMBP and its audio sounds as good as through my CEntrance DACport Slim. Maybe my headphones aren't audiophile quality (Grado SR80i, Sony MDR-7506)?

It's possible. I haven't used the CEntrance DACport Slim, but it looks promising. After looking it up I would set the DAC to the high gain setting and drop the volume lower.

And the Grado's look like a good set of headphones.

I would try listening to The King's Singers, which is an A Capella voice group that sings classical music. I can pick out individual voices in space from recordings that were recorded in the late 1980's. A good DAC won't smear them in space, and you can "lock on" to a voice and hear the tonal quality of it individually as if they were standing in front of you.

Please don't be uncivil on HN regardless of how bad someone else's comment was.

It would be a good idea to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make sure you follow them when posting here. Your previous comment broke them as well.

My Aiepoda replaces a pair of $20 Sony over the ear headphones. They mostly sound better, the only difference being that the Sonys has bigger drivers and could do a better job on the low end.

I never spend more than $60 on headphones (ignoring my noise cancelling Bose).

Quality isn’t an issue. For something so small they sound quite good. For something so convenient they sound fantastic.