What Do You Listen through?

[Neurosect]

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[abasio]

Living in Japan and living in an apartment with paper walls buying expensive speakers is pointless.
So I have tried to focus on headphones and a more portable set up.
After years and years of trial and error I am very happy with what I have now:

I have JVC HA-FX800 wood cone earphones

With a Cowon music player

and recently I have had all my music in flac.

For ages I have said that I couldn't tell the difference between high rate mp3s and lossless formats but it wasn't until I got the JVC HA-FX800 until I really started hearing a difference. If there is really a difference or if I am just hearing more because I expect to hear more? Either way I feel I am getting more out of music than I did before, so it's all good

[kartoonz]

wow those JVC earphones are sick....

I am currently using sony xb90ex (these are sick with awesome bass) plugged into my ipod 5th gen, htc one x and laptop.

[Padmapani]

If there is really a difference or if I am just hearing more because I expect to hear more?

 

Either way I feel I am getting more out of music than I did before, so it's all good

 

i expect the latter. audio engineers cannot conclusively tell them apart on their hugely expensive pro setups in double blind experiments...

 

that's all that matters

[abasio]

It is probably because I am focusing more to see if I can hear more with Flac, then of course I do.

For some reason the cowon J3 does perfect gapless only with flac which is bizarre.

 

wow those JVC earphones are sick....
I am currently using sony xb90ex (these are sick with awesome bass) plugged into my ipod 5th gen, htc one x and laptop.

Yes they are, I like them a lot and after a few hundred hours of use they got even better, the sound feels so natural, I love it

[Martian Arts]

Mackie HR824s and Alesis M1 mk2 actives (on the left of the pic)

 

 

[Paul Eye]

FLAC / foobar2000 -> Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1 -> Pioneer DJM-250 -> SM Pro Audio Nano Patch Plus -> Behringer Truth B3030A. Good enough for my tiny apartment.

Oh yes, forgot to mention that the setup is upgraded. The AK1 hiccups with my new computer so there's an ESI Juli@ XTe taking care of that now.

And the Behringers had to go. Welcome Adam A7X. These things sound FANTASTIC

[Paul Eye]

For some reason the cowon J3 does perfect gapless only with flac which is bizarre.

FLAC (and all other lossless compression) is inherently gapless. See here

[Trunksan]

I'm lucky that I work in the professional sound and lighting industry so I get stuff super cheap.

 

At home:

Numark CDN36 Dual CD decks (very basic model but got it in perfect condition for 50 eur)

EDIT: this is a wrong pic. This is the CD24

 

 

I also have a technics BD22 vinyl deck. Again, very basic model but it's good for home listening (I think I got this for 20 eur and paid another 50 eur for a belt and cartridge)

 

 

 

American AUDIO Q-span Mixer, very basic but the WOW and 3d depth effects really improves the sound (again got it brand new for about 80 eur)

Edit: Agais this is not the corect pic. This is a replica of American Audio

 

Yahama RX-V 5.1 Amp (can't remember which model exactly, but this one I bought retail price)

It's got very good sound quality like all Home cinema amps but not much power, I have everything plugged in on it (2 PCS, TV/PS3) with HDMI or Digital cable and of course the mixer in analog.

 

Speakers

I have 5 professional speakers that I got for free through work:
2 x 150W Plastic KODA (rear)
2 X 180W Plastic Seer Audio (front)
1 x 200W custom made wooden speaker (this is my central speaker)
A crappy Yamaha active Sub that came with the amp.

I Keep saying that I want to get a decent sub but the problem is that at work most subs are 12" or 15" and the active 8" monitor subs that we have (Genelec or Audio Performance) cost a few thousand euros each and of course they won't give it to me for free.

 

Obviously since the amp is 5x100W, the speakers are heavily underused but since we are talking just about a living room, the amp constantly plays at -12db, I don't think I've ever touched the volume, I just control it from the PC or the mixer. So basically the speakers are tottaly wasted in such a small place and of course the sound is not very consistent (since the speakers are different).

The good thing is that whenever someone wants to throw a party I just grab a pro amp from work (something small like 2 x 250w @ 8 ohms) and we take my speakers and have blast!!!

 

 

Now it's time to show off, this is the stuff at work:

 

From front to back (this is about 1/5th of the speakers we have at the warehouse but it's probably the most impressive corner)

L-Acoustics KARA line array and SB18 Subs
Audio Performance (Switzerland) Line array - VERY high quality brand of speakers yet very undervalued, underappreciated and unpopular (everyone wants L-acoustics or Nexo)
Seer Audio Line array
Clair Brothers R2T - Clair Brothers are KINGS in the live sound department, by far the best speakers in the world for live musical instruments
Electro voice (don't rememeber which model)
Various Subwoosers
At the back you can also distinguish 3 LA8 amps.
The systems usually run with Lab Gruppen or Chevin Research amps and through Yamaha or Avid (digidesign) digital consoles.

The problem is that we are so busy with work that we rarely get the chance to play them for fun although recently we hang the KARA system from the 3rd floor of the building at a signle file (12 speakers) and put 6 SB28s underneath. We took order in playing songs (each employee played one song and then the next in circles), I played mostly classic metal stuff like Pantera and Metallica. It was good fun and luckily noone called the police. Although the system massively underperformed since we didn't have a good enough power supply.

[Veracohr]

For some reason the cowon J3 does perfect gapless only with flac which is bizarre.

 

That player is able to play FLAC directly, without expanding it and saving as WAV? I wish iTunes/iPod could do that.

[abasio]

FLAC (and all other lossless compression) is inherently gapless. See here

Amazing how little I know about some things. The sound quality of the cowon Z2 and J3 is very good for me, on the Z2 I've been using gone mad music player which while I love the interface, drops the sound a bit.

 

 

That player is able to play FLAC directly, without expanding it and saving as WAV? I wish iTunes/iPod could do that.

Yes. Both the cowon ones I own do as does my sansa clip zip which for it's price is an awesome little player.

[trancenonZENsedance]

FLAC (and all other lossless compression) is inherently gapless. See here

 

That the format is inherently gapless doesn't mean that every player will support gapless playback from one flac file to the next. In fact there appear to be many players which cannot do this. I'm not sure where the problem with it lies, though, as it should be a case for simple pre-caching at worst...