Any hi fi buffs out there?

[David Johnson]

I currently play CDs on a Marantz KJ Signature amp and CD Player which I bought round about 1990 I think and still going strong. I have also bought in the last few months a Project Essential 2 turntable which, although pretty cheap, meets my limited needs for vinyl now that vinyl seems to be appearing in large quantities other than dance music for djs.

Now the weakness in the Johnson lineup is MP3 when I am out and about. MP3 on my Iphone 4 even to my cloth ears is shite.

Have any forumites come across demos of Hi Resolution (96Khz and 192Khz) mobile players?

If so, what was the make and is the sound a quantum leap better than MP3s or not? Or is this another technology designed primarily to part the consumer with his cash?

PS I note Mr. Neil Young is fronting Pono players which are due to ship next spring.

CHeers
D

[Sam Slater]

If I was to advise anyone on .mp3s then I'd say mp3s are as good as CDs if they're 256kbps vbr or 320kbps unless you're listening through some ?600 speakers and using shielded cables. You'll definately not be able to tell the difference on a phone.

If the music on your phone sounds shit it's not the .mp3s but the earphones. The ones that come with iphones are awful.

[David Johnson]

Thank you for taking the time to reply, Sam.

[Arginald Valleywater]

I currently run a Sony Amp, Marantz CD63 from many moons ago and Linn speakers. Sounds great on some recordings but the CD player is showing its age. Have an ancient Thorens turntable which I keep threatening to get reconditioned. Our local specialist tells me I'd need to spend at min of ?600 on a new CD to get any real benefit.

[sparky]

I second the comments made to be sure that it is not the quality of the mp3 files rather than the output of your Iphone that is the limiting factor.

I presume you have set your Iphone for a flat output i.e. not a mode e.g. pop, classical etc and experimented with adjusting the level of the output because at or near maximum it is likely to clip.

Remember MP3 is a compressed format. I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment technically about how close 256 or 320kbps mp3 produced and played back on high quality equipment can theoretically come to CD quality but remember a full CD is 700MB while even at 320kbps the MP3 version is much smaller ( <200MB? ). Having said that I've always understood that on reasonable quality equipment most people would be happy with 256 / 320kbps MP3 provided it has been well produced but anything less, while maybe OK on cheap equipment, for background music or where there is other noise e.g. travelling, is definitely inferior to CD quality.

[David Johnson]

Thank you for your comments. There is obviously a lot more to this from a technical point of view than what I knew.

I plan to do a bit of research and report back.

Ta.

[Sam Slater]

I'm not hi-fi buff, but I do listen to music and -try- to play guitar working with layering etc.

I have a Marantz PM6005 amplifier, Marantz CD5004 CD player and Rega P324 turntable with Goldring cartridge and Tannoy speakers. All connected with shielded Atlas cables. Not overly expensive stuff but does what I want and better than some all-in-one from Argos.

Anyway, I've hooked up my desktop via a dac and a coaxial output to play .mp3s on my PC through the amp and Tannoy speakers (I can then play Spotify through the system which is much better than the PC speakers). In all honesty, there are maybe a few songs out of over 100 CDs where I can tell the difference between the CD and .mp3 versions played through the same system. And I can still hear frequencies up to 19khz. There is no way I'd be able to tell through my PC speakers on any of the songs. Definitely not through a laptop or smartphone and I'd like anyone who says they can be put through some blind testing!

The trouble with phones and cheap earphones is that they are not shielded and the added noise picked up from outside interference will mask all but the most drastic compression issues from .mp3s. Anything above 256kbps vbr will be indistinguishable to a lossless file played through the same phone.

The biggest gain in sound quality I've got from listening to music on my phone is get some decent headphones. And I don't mean spending ?300 on those Beats shit cans. I spent about ?80 on some Audio Technica ath-es55s and used them this last 2 years.

whathifi.com have the AKG K451 headphones as the best under ?100 and they're only ?55 on amazon now. Bargain imho.