The Official Neil Young Thread

[Birds in Hell]

http://www.dansdata.com/gz143.htm

haha, Pono sounds dumb

Pffft.

[Simple Torture]

Also: Do you think Neil's aware that people really don't use dedicated music players much anymore? Most people I know just have some music on their phone. People look at me like I'm a dinosaur because I still use a 160gb iPod. Pono can't really ever be more than a niche market. The nichiest of niches.

[Birds in Hell]

I still use a 160gb iPod.

Pono can't really ever be more than a niche market. The nichiest of niches.

Oh, sure.

I'd love to try picking a 320kbps MP3 apart from a lossless file (under the right conditions, of course). I'd like to imagine it wouldn't be that difficult.

[McParadigm]

http://www.dansdata.com/gz143.htm

haha, Pono sounds dumb

Pffft.

This part in particular is super-duper wrong:

High bit rate and sample depth are used in recording studios for the same reason photo editors use 48-bit colour and very high resolution instead of 24-bit colour and image dimensions the same as the final target. The larger format doesn't actually sound or look any better than the final - actually, works in the editing progress generally look and sound a lot worse than the final product, which is kind of the idea.

[Jorge]

Wait a minute, I don't think he's wrong at all. That's certainly the case in a lot of visual media. You're not going to get the best-looking version of your piece until it's spent hours rendering, not when you're previewing it through an editing panel.

[Jorge]

The responses are interesting: http://www.dansdata.com/gz145.htm

[McParadigm]

Wait a minute, I don't think he's wrong at all. That's certainly the case in a lot of visual media. You're not going to get the best-looking version of your piece until it's spent hours rendering, not when you're previewing it through an editing panel.

I'm speaking only of the audio side. Specifically, this:

works in the editing progress generally sound a lot worse than the final product

This is pretty literally the opposite of the truth.

[MadTIGERmaN]

I always thought Neil was pushing the Pono to get Apple to offer better MP3's...
That hes smart enough to realize hes never going to get enough people to buy it / music on it, to pay for what hes put into it.

Some of us have still never even gone to an ipod... CD's baby!

[Birds in Hell]

The responses are interesting: http://www.dansdata.com/gz145.htm

I'm not particularly impressed that this guy repeatedly conflates the more uncritical adherents of audiophilia (the guys who draw lines in green marker on their CDs, buy cables for thousands of dollars, etc.) with anyone who - in my opinion, quite reasonably - claims lossless audio is appreciably different from high-bitrate MP3s.

Astonishingly, there's no nutty audiophile product that someone doing an uncontrolled listening test doesn't swear works. Not one! Every one's a winner, baby!

Unless you do a blinded test. Whereupon, to a first approximation, none of these things work.

The standard audiophile conclusion from this evidence is that the whole idea of blinded audio testing must be ridiculously wrong, because it reaches completely unacceptable conclusions. For instance, a $10,000 pile of audiophile amplification is in blinded tests difficult if not impossible to tell from an inexpensive consumer receiver. And big expensive speakers do not necessarily sound better than smaller cheaper ones, unless you can see them.

And, moreover, audiophile products that are actually absolutely terrible, to the point of qualifying as an actual scam, can be regarded as sounding fantastic by the anti-science brigade. People hear what they expect, even if there's no difference at all.

Do $5000 audio cables sound indistinguishable from something you bought at Radio Shack? Yes, but we don't know this through blind testing alone. We know this because they're both a means to pass electricity and they both do it in the exact same way. Whether human ears can discern a difference or not isn't even a question as it can be empirically shown that there is no difference. This is appreciably different to comparisons of audio presented at different fidelity; there is a real and testable difference between a file encoded at 320kbps compared with one at CD quality (16/44.1) or higher.

Blind testing can, in my opinion, be a relatively poor (and - gasp! - unscientific) method of determining audio quality. It might be helpful and indicative but hardly determinative given the fallibility of our ears and perception. If I were to be played a random piece of music that I was unfamiliar with, I very much doubt I would be able to pick a 320kbps MP3 from a 16/44.1 lossless file (or one at higher resolution, for that matter). If, however, I was given a piece of music that I was already intimately familiar with, I'm positive I would be able to pick between the MP3 and the CD quality file without any problem. In any case, it's unarguable that a difference is actually there (again, in contrast to expensive audio cables and other audiophile snake oil).

[Norah]

Blind testing can, in my opinion, be a relatively poor (and - gasp! - unscientific) method of determining audio quality. It might be helpful and indicative but hardly determinative given the fallibility of our ears and perception. If I were to be played a random piece of music that I was unfamiliar with, I very much doubt I would be able to pick a 320kbps MP3 from a 16/44.1 lossless file (or one at higher resolution, for that matter). If, however, I was given a piece of music that I was already intimately familiar with, I'm positive I would be able to pick between the MP3 and the CD quality file without any problem. In any case, it's unarguable that a difference is actually there (again, in contrast to expensive audio cables and other audiophile snake oil).

Spenno gets it.

[Jorge]

Also of interest: http://www.anxiousmachine.com/blog/2013 ... ibo-philes

[super nintendo chalmers]

[Simple Torture]

I finally spun the new live record today; man alive, it sounds like he's right in my living room.

[Mojopin]

I still use a 160gb iPod

Me too. Still love it!

[Mojopin]

I finally spun the new live record today; man alive, it sounds like he's right in my living room.

Yeah, it's so good. Nice little Christmas gift...

[Birds in Hell]

I still use a 160gb iPod

Me too. Still love it!

Count me in this club too.

[Strat]

I still use a 160gb iPod

Me too. Still love it!

Count me in this club too.

This where we sign up for the gang bang?

In on the 160 gig Ipod old school

[liebzz]

I'd love to get a copy of Live at the Cellar Door. I have a bunch of his records in varying formats. I need to win a contest that results in me owning the whole catalog in some shape or form.

[super nintendo chalmers]

Got the Cellar Door LP for Christmas. Good lord it's great. It's almost like a much more intimate Massey.

[VinylGuy]

I got the Cellar Door lp too...I forgot it in my uncle´s house so i have to wait until the weekend to finally listen to it.