BAASnotes.com – Bay Area Audiophile Society

Lindemann System Impresses Bay Area Audiophiles

Jonathan Josephs, head of importer One World Audio, wowed local audiophiles yesterday with an impressive array of mostly-Lindemann components.

Front-and-center in the performance were the small-but-mighty BL-10 monitors (pictured). They not only sounded great, but also measured well using the Goldline MP-30 Real-Time Analyzer that was on hand.

Vinyl-loving members were also impressed by the vintage Luxman turntable and Zesto phono stage being demmed.

Later in the day, newly-minted BAAS member Baron Lum was informed that he won the event’s house prize – a new $990-list Lindemann USB-DAC 24/192. (Unbiased post-event drawing shown.) Talk about “membership has its privileges”!

Many thanks to Jonathan and One World Audio….

Bob

Psychoacoustics – The Next Frontier for Audiophiles?

Earlier this month, the NYT published an interesting article about the way that the brain hears.

If we can understand the way the brain hears, we can design better, more realistic, solutions to listen to music.

Such is the work of companies like Audyssey, whose work is cited in the article.

I’m not a big fan of surround setups, but I have heard some very interesting sound from 3-channel Meridian setups.

I am a big fan of DSP, though. And as more of our listening becomes computer-based, DSP effects will become easier to implement in home environments.

Those coming to Saturday’s event will get a glimpse of this….

Bob

Audiophile Light Bulb?

The listed freq response is about the same as I hear in some “high end” systems.

So it might be the way to go… (LOL)

[Thanks, Aaron]

Bob

The Limited Bandwidth of Consciousness

The writings of Tor Nørretranders argue, among other things, that the data bandwidth of conscious thought is so small that the world becomes an exceedingly crude model within our minds. That may well be, but the most interesting things for audiophiles lies in the comparison of the mind’s bandwidth to that of our auditory sensory system (AKA, “our ears”).

Note:  For the purpose of simplicity, I will omit so-called “Golden Ears” from this discussion. These massively-capable systems clearly represent outliers that would not add anything to our present discussion.

In the illustration above, we see that our surroundings regularly bombard us with information content of 1-100Gbps – the bandwidth of some of the world’s fastest internet connections. For example, the bandwidth of the internet backbone itself is “only” 10^9 bps.

Our ears, however, are limited to 1 Mbps. This equates to a slow internet connection (by modern standards). So our auditory system operates at just about 24/88 (24 bits at 88kbps)! Interesting.

The other fascinating, if perhaps unsurprising, possibility here is that a person might be able to free up to 10x more bandwidth for listening simply by shutting down other senses.

So close your eyes, don’t eat and enjoy 24/192 at its full bandwidth!

Bob