Sound quality question

[dav9271]

Hello dave here with another question, what is considered high quality sound ive read stuff that it has something to do with kpbs or something like that. and what should i be looking for if i want high quality audio.

 

[skit75]

On the content side, I like pcm wav files. Some people prefer FLAC. You want as little compression as possible or no compression at all. Uncompressed audio files are huge so you will want adequate storage capacity also. Once you have content you will want to improve your playback and listening devices as needed. A stereo headphone amplifier sound-card or external DAC with a nice pair of studio headphones. Some people like the noise canceling headphones. I prefer a quiet environment with an open ear design and a nice pinot noir =)

 

[ssddx]

by high quality are you only referring to file quality or are you referring to hardware quality as well?

file quality:

this depends on your ears and what you perceive as sufficient as well as what hardware you have. lower grade headphones/speakers may be unable to pick up distortions in sound like higher end headphones do.

before i had nice equipment file quality was not much of an issue to me. i used to have mainly 128kbps mp3s or stream music at 92kbps and be happy.

once i upgraded to a nice sound system and studio headphones all of my music needs to be at least 192kbps mp3 (preferably 256kbps) or AAC at minimum and i need to stream radio at only the higher quality streams or i can literally hear the distortion due to poor file quality.

hardware quality:

this also depends on your ears as well as your preferences on what is good or not.

generally what is considered the beginning of "good" quality starts at around $100-200 for headphones. as far as speakers are concerned... that depends on what type of speaker you get as pc speaker run a bit cheaper and $100-200 will get you something rather good but hifi speakers will sound better but require extra hardware to power them perhaps requiring a bit more budget.

source:

when you start using higher quality files and speakers/headphones you might look into what kind of source you have. this can be either a soundcard or dac/amp (external) when talking about computers.

a bad or poor quality source can make high end equipment sound not too good however just having a good source is not going to make low end equipment sound much better.

also some equipment such as high end headphones or hifi speakers require special equipment to power them

----

if you want anything more specific you need to let us know what you are thinking and be quite a bit more specific.

the question you asked is so broad that it is equivalent to asking how many clouds are needed for you to say its a cloudy day.

get back to us with specifics or what you wanted to buy or what your equipment is you have now and we can give you a better answer.

 

[dav9271]

by high quality are you only referring to file quality or are you referring to hardware quality as well?

file quality:

this depends on your ears and what you perceive as sufficient as well as what hardware you have. lower grade headphones/speakers may be unable to pick up distortions in sound like higher end headphones do.

before i had nice equipment file quality was not much of an issue to me. i used to have mainly 128kbps mp3s or stream music at 92kbps and be happy.

once i upgraded to a nice sound system and studio headphones all of my music needs to be at least 192kbps mp3 (preferably 256kbps) or AAC at minimum and i need to stream radio at only the higher quality streams or i can literally hear the distortion due to poor file quality.

hardware quality:

this also depends on your ears as well as your preferences on what is good or not.

generally what is considered the beginning of "good" quality starts at around $100-200 for headphones. as far as speakers are concerned... that depends on what type of speaker you get as pc speaker run a bit cheaper and $100-200 will get you something rather good but hifi speakers will sound better but require extra hardware to power them perhaps requiring a bit more budget.

source:

when you start using higher quality files and speakers/headphones you might look into what kind of source you have. this can be either a soundcard or dac/amp (external) when talking about computers.

a bad or poor quality source can make high end equipment sound not too good however just having a good source is not going to make low end equipment sound much better.

also some equipment such as high end headphones or hifi speakers require special equipment to power them

----

if you want anything more specific you need to let us know what you are thinking and be quite a bit more specific.

the question you asked is so broad that it is equivalent to asking how many clouds are needed for you to say its a cloudy day.

get back to us with specifics or what you wanted to buy or what your equipment is you have now and we can give you a better answer.

Thanks i just wanted some general information.