Where we go from here

Given that DPReview has come back to life, and the last post to any thread other than this one ranges from two days (Medium Format Talk) to 18 days (Nikon FX SLR Talk) in the two categories I've been watching, an answer to "Where we go from here" is becoming quite clear. DPRevived ought abandon photography and change its focus (pun intended) as well as URL to audio. 😀

Thanks a lot! A nice looking setup. Love that record player. Does all that wood underneath or attached to it play a significant role? Also a great closeup - thanks for thinking about my need to see some macro shots to 'get' things. 😂

There's a lot of dust on my things as well, so I can confirm that's a problem in Austria in general (and not in the least related to the fact that I'm not cleaning everything enough... 😅)

I don't have a lot of interesting audio gear to show, but the main things are my instruments for sure:

My electric guitar:

On the road again? by simple.joy, on Flickr

Don't fret! Go where inspiration leads you. by simple.joy, on Flickr

Not a star on my guitar... by simple.joy, on Flickr

My acoustic guitar (I got when I was 5 years old):

Immerse your soul in music... by simple.joy, on Flickr

Geared towards music by simple.joy, on Flickr

And my piano:

Keys to happiness. Keys to despair. by simple.joy, on Flickr

The ability to 'share' supersedes hardcore moderation rigidity. This is more welcoming than a strict business mindset. A minor diversion won't necessarily carry on forever...

Hi,

Unless we add in audio in a restricted form. As in communication audio where we need to keep it in the 300 to 3000 Hz range. :P

Stan

Maybe some of the people who have stayed here are not as drawn to brand-specific discussions as the people who are at DPR. Maybe there is more interest here in image-related threads, non-branded technical or scientific discussions, creative topics, and interesting off topic things (like audio and complaint😄).

The weekly recurring photo centric thread my friends and I brought over here from DPR has thrived and multiplied here, with twice the traffic, and more diverse discussions.

The brand related threads are definitely less busy here. This probably sounds like a terrible heresy but I wonder what it would look like if the brand sections were combined into one section for "gear" and the thread name explained which brand the question or topic was related to? Or recombined in new ways like format instead of brand? There are other ways to aggregate threads besides brands though I'm sure that is the most common method.

The feature I like best here is the Threads view which lets me find topics I'd never have seen with them buried beneath a brand I don't use.

!

Your wish is my command. I wasted some time trying to take some snaps of my "audio equipment" for you (I never thought it would be so difficult, and I am not satisfied with the results).

And, because I know that you like to see things larger than life:

[/quote]

Thanks a lot! A nice looking setup. Love that record player. Does all that wood underneath or attached to it play a significant role? Also a great closeup - thanks for thinking about my need to see some macro shots to 'get' things. 😂

There's a lot of dust on my things as well, so I can confirm that's a problem in Austria in general (and not in the least related to the fact that I'm not cleaning everything enough... 😅)

I don't have a lot of interesting audio gear to show, but the main things are my instruments for sure:

My electric guitar:

On the road again? by simple.joy, on Flickr

Don't fret! Go where inspiration leads you. by simple.joy, on Flickr

Not a star on my guitar... by simple.joy, on Flickr

My acoustic guitar (I got when I was 5 years old):

Immerse your soul in music... by simple.joy, on Flickr

Geared towards music by simple.joy, on Flickr

And my piano:

Keys to happiness. Keys to despair. by simple.joy, on Flickr
[/quote]

I used MY Accordion to create the album cover for a European music publisher. Yes, I do play the squeezebox- my neighbors, perhaps would probably prefer that I play the bagpipes. My playing keeps the mice and insects out of our house!

[

](/a/6TQYD24qFUP346Z2AeKLdpP6p0mHUzFkxnlQTmMYS5iHKIueikSCQUgICMrwKH22/13738/?shva=1) house!

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(/a/O8zu89ERYsO5VoEK7dtnubdsVD5q70wHaif3iGEirJuhF8ufwKxIp56cr2l53ywd/13737/?shva=1)

Hey…I saw another turntable. Here’s the one in my man cave….

On DPreview, I'd estimate that over half of respondents don't read anything except the original post.

I gave up on threaded view because performance is poor now that they're on a lower rung of AWS.

As for the original question, this site will become whatever posters make it. If DPreview gets worse because of new ownership, will this site still be here?

While it might be true that some have hightailed it back to DPR, I'm not sure we should be concerned or be in a hurry to reorganize or reorienting this forum. No one as of yet knows how it will sort out and if under this new management or if DPR can turn a profit any better than before. In reality I find this forum vastly different than DPR and in a good way. After being on DPR for 23 years, I find it has turned into (to paraphrase a former U. S. Vice President), "nattering nabobs of nerdism and over fervent gear obsession" with the majority of the content rehashing such trivial topics as "Fujifilms are idiots for not trash the XTrans CFA for a Bayer CFA in the X series." There is one such thread as we spend about this topic as we speak. This and similar topics areas are as periodic as the Sunday coming once a week or the earth rotating about every 24 hours.

IMO the look and feel of the forum needs a little spiffing up with the addition of a threaded view to keep topics better organized and maybe a few other modifications. However, as far as content and tone, I find it much refreshing to what DPR had evolved into.

The brief music reproduction diversion above was entertaining . Such sidetracks should be allowed, possibly under the headline of "well informed chatter" and to start it suitable exceerpts from ancients posts could be lodged there.

As to unifying all equipment makers under one heading; this will need user dicipline in namingh their threads- One might demand that "any post under the equipment heading should specify maker and device in its heading or the post will be moved to the chaotic section for the less well labelled"

p.

Compression of many modern digital recordings is what is killing the enjoyment of digital music for many of us audiophiles. A great site to check the DR of digital recordings, and LP's for that matter can be found here called Loudness Wars:
dr.loudness-war.info/
There is a data base of measured DR of many recordings. Just type in your favourite CD and then look at the CD number to see if it corresponds with what you have are want to check the DR. Decent DR starts at about 12, 15 is great and above a5 is excellent. My son, a musician and I can easily tell the higher DR recordings as they are generally cleaner, and generally sound so much better. Some of the recordings done in say the eighties may have been repressed but they have also been compressed and can sound quite terrible due to this. I now look to the above site to see which have the better DR and then search for that particular CD number. They show a maximum DR, a minimum DR and an average for the album.

One of the major benefits touted back in the day for CD was their better DR, but they have started compressing them so much that that advantage has been lost and now the LP's have better DR as they are in many cases as they are pressed for audiophiles where digital music is for headphone music from iPhones or cars where DR is not required. I just do not understand why they are compressing digital music so much, there is no saving in file size it seems either. They are killing off the benefits of digital sound.

Some of the great recordings done by Telarc, Chesky, Sheffield Lab etc have terrific DR and sound glorious. I have some pressings from Sheffield Lab (Direct Cut to Disc pioneers in the day) that have DR of 20/21 and the dynamics and clarity etc is simply amazing. You do end up cranking up the volume a little due to the large DR, but when it hits the peaks, it is spectacular. Having an amp capable of 340Watts RMS with a massive power supply into my 4ohm speakers does help! Doing back to back comparisons of some CD's that have been re-pressed or "remastered" show that even the remastered versions are compressed to the point that some are almost unlistenable (for me at least) compared to a much better DR original. Even those original CDs that were taken from analogue tapes of LP's from the 60's through to the 80's many of which have excellent DR, but when they are repressed, many have been compressed to oblivion.

I have an SACD of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, recorded in 1959 that has an average DR of 15 and it sounds stunning, a recording done then has no right to sound so damned good!

Before I realised that there was a compression thing going on, I purchased a CD of 10CC's "How Dare You" about 7 or so years back and it was so compressed I couldn't listen to it at any appreciable volume, thinking to myself that the album wasn't as good as I thought it was, or just poorly recorded back in the day and back then we didn't have the decent equipment to hear the difference. That CD had a dreadful average DR of just 8!!! I had then discovered the DR issue and purchased the original pressing of the CD second hand and it was like night and day. The original pressing has an average DR of 12 and a comparatively great sound!

The same goes for Focus and their album "Focus III". About 20 years ago, I purchased an "up to date copy" of a CD again not realising the DR issue and mostly listened to it on my computer system and in the car etc, but I found it awful on my home system. It had an average DR of 6 and a max of just 10!! Again, recently, I searched for an original CD pressing and found the original had an average DR of 12 and max of 15 and sounded so much better. Same for Led Zeppelin IV - original pressing had an average DR of 12 and max of 14 and sounds very good, some subsequent CD's have an average of 10 and max of 11 and sounds quite bad. I could go on with a number of albums that I have had to repurchase just so as to get a decent DR version and have not been let down with the better DR versions.

When looking at the Loudness Wars site, anything in red or orange is basically unlistenable on decent equipment, IMO. Obviously, there is much more to a great sounding album other than DR, but poor DR is one aspect that seems to make it basically unlistenable and is a starting point, IMO.

I have recorded all my CD's and downloaded music onto an SSD and play them though a dedicated computer with a digital output into the Digital to Analogue converter of my Marantz SACD player SA 14S1 Special Edition and then into the amplifier. Music selection is controlled through Music Bee on the computer and is displayed on my TV screen so I can select songs or albums at will. All my recordings have been put through the DR measuring program and so I now have the DR range of all my albums listed in a file for reference. This is how Loudness Wars get their data, from people who have measured the DR and then sent the data to the site for listing. All the information is also passed on for CD date, CD number etc. People have even done it for LP's and other forms of recorded music. There are many listings for LP's!

That depends so much on circumstances like equipment used and the type of person and their likes etc. I would also wonder how this test was conducted to come at this conclusion. The Loudness Wars site was set up specifically due to the poor sound of compressed music and as a source to find higher DR recordings. I can assure you, compressed loud music sounds much worse to me and those I have demonstrated this to.

Great post Lance! Great to see that some people 'get' it!
Kind of Blue is a killer CD.