Audio/Video things that irritate you. (1 Viewer)

[BrianW]

UGH! My wife was watching a show on HGTV in which a professional organizer convinced a homeowner to convert his entire CD collection to MP3s so he could throw away his wall of CDs. He did it on her word that the MP3s sound "just like the CDs".

I couldn't watch. I had to leave the room. Poor guy.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

not really HT related, but audio. i HATE when a song on the radio is pitch shifted to sound higher. it almost always happens on the pop/top 40 stations (when i have no control of the dial). if it's a song ive heard a few times, i can always tell if it has been shifted higher, to sound more peppy or energetic i'm guessing. maybe it sells more ads. what's just as annoying, nobody i point it out to can tell the difference.

CJ

 

[Seth=L]

Are there really people out there that are that dull? I thought that was just in movies, now it has moved on to network television.

Sure MP3's or any computer stored music is going to save space in every aspect, but for most audiophiles, an unacceptable form of audio format. When considering the limitations of computer audio in general most of us know that you really don't get high end sound from a computer, maybe good sound, but not great. I don't think a true audiophile will trade his Linn CD player for a computer just to listen to music, I know I wouldn't.

 

[Seth=L]

Oh, I have noticed. That is one of many reasons I don't listen to FM, XM, or Sirus radio at all. XM claims they have CD quality music when they sound more like CD's. And what is with XM-HD, surround sound for music isn't a bad idea, but if it sounds the same as the standard XM compression or whatever that distortion is, then why even bother?

While I am on the roll here lets talk about HD. HDTV, that's great, HD speakers, WTF. Ever since the impact of HDTV, the High Definition crap gets thrown on everything; speakers, cars, stupid XM-HD (which should be called XM-5.1DISTORTION) and basically anything you can shake a stick at. I expect we will stop seeing "Digital" headphones and "HD" or "High Definition" headphones very soon. There is always the "hot word" that sell, sell, sells, and I loathe it.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Yeah, we've been getting ads in my area for "HD Radio", which I guess is a name they like better than (DAB) Digital Audio Broadcast. High definition? Please! FM radio is capable of 15 kHz and 70+ dB S/N, although the broadcasters don't exercise that capability ; I wouldn't even try to quote figures for this over-the-air streaming audio gunk.

 

[Seth=L]

They prey on the ignorant I tell ya.

 

[Yee-Ming]

"Digital component cables".

Anyone know what these are?

:rolleyes

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Yep, two HT terms that get thrown around alot simply because they're the "it" thing right now...'digital' and 'high definition'.

I too hate it when people try to make it seem as if plasma's are the only type of display that can accept HD, it's the Star Trek syndrom..."hey, it's a tv that hangs on the wall like a picture! It must be THE FUTURE!" :rolleyes

Lastly, I hate HT elitism and those individuals who sit high atop their HT mountain looking down on all of us peasants who don't have or can afford a rig like theirs! I mean, you may have a dedicated room built onto your house with all the best top shelf furniture, amps, speakers, projector and equipment, but don't make me feel like crap because I don't.

God that really pisses me off, probably more than anything else and it, sadly, is present on every HT-related board on the web, even here unfortunately.

 

[MarkHastings]

Oh man! I was just thinking about this thread. Have you seen the commercial for this new plasma TV (I forget the brand), but they actaully say something like "The Highest resolution HD Plasma TV on the market" So are they saying they have something BETTER than HD? Huh? Sounds a lot like trickery marketing.

 

[Seth=L]

All marketing is trickery, marketing is just a fancy word for it.

 

[DonRoeber]

The local radio station advertises that it broadcasts in High Definition Radio. I'm not sure WHAT that is.

 

[Seth=L]

Instead of being transmitted analog it transmitts the same station digitally. This is good for getting rid of static and lots of interference. Those who have appropriate tuners can utilize the digital stations versus the analog ones.

This is basically FM competing with XM. But I still hate radio in all ways.

 

[DonRoeber]

Oh, cool. Is that considered High Definition though, or just digitial? The radio sin my last two cars have had "digital" indicator lights for awhile now. All along I thought they were just making this up.

 

[MarkHastings]

Yeah, I'd also like to know what "High Definition" audio is as well. I assumed "Definition" only referred to only the visual aspect. Even though it can be related to A/V, it's rarely used to describe just audio.

High end audio is more about clarity than definition. "Definition" is mainly visual.

The definition of definition (I like that phrase )But again, I've never heard it used that way in accordance to sound.

So while that radio station may technically be correct, it still sounds like marketing trickery...unless, of course, someone can show that a digital radio signal can come in different bit rates. That would prove how one signal can have better 'definition' over another.

 

[Seth=L]

It is a hot word, just like digital on speakers. It makes no sense, but yet there it is.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Some of the local radio stations around here have similar ads. Everytime I hear one, I think "Oh, boy. Forty minutes worth of commercials every hour in glorious HD Radio!" :rolleyes

 

[Seth=L]

I will add something to what irritates me.

How about when my subwoofer blows up, does that count?

 

[MarkHastings]

Been there...well, not exactly, but one day my sub started fluttering like a helicopter. I saw the speaker going in and out like crazy! After opening it up, there was a sticker on one of the wires and the glue had melted and the sticker moved and fuzed to another wire - making a connection!!!

 

[cafink]

Where did you get that definition from? For what it's worth, Merriam-Webster's definition includes the audio-specific meaning "clarity especially of musical sound in reproduction."

Your quoted definition mentions "resolution." Auditory information, like visual information, can be described as a signal. And just as a digital recording of an image can sample the analog signal at varying intervals (with "high definition" corresponding to a high sampling rate), so too can a digital audio recording sample the audio signal, so that a "high defnition" digital audio recording is simply one with a high sampling rate.

Of course, the precise phrase "high definition" has come to have a fairly precise meaning in the realm of video (720p/1080i). As far as I know, it doesn't have so specific a meaning in the audio domain. As you correctly surmise, I'm sure it's being used chiefly as a meaningless marketing term in the context of radio commercials.

It doesn't directly have anything to do with bit rate, though for an uncompressed digital audio signal, the sampling rate and bit rate are of course proportional to one another.

 

[Mark Paquette]

i-tunes and the whole shift toward inferior sounding music that you really don't own. How about decent quality downloads that I can play on any device, anytime I want to, not just 1 brand of player.