I admit it: i am an audiophile; someone who obsesses over quality sound and sound-systems. I will not touch 128kbps MP3s (unless i have absolutely no choice), I will only "obtain" CDs to test them out and see if i like them, as the quality of the rips is never quite high enough. And now I've added to the list, with an Akai turntable sitting on top of the amp on my desk. If you to answer the call of higher audio, post what you listen to (SACD, CD, DVD-A, Vinyl), and what you think is the best of your collection (hell, add what type of player you've got while you're at it).

As for me, my first new LP is the Limited Edition clear vinyl of the "Speed of Sound" single by Coldplay (which i purchased at Virgin Megastores in England during my trip there this past summer). Sadly, i have nothing else in my collection ( i have yet to go trolling through the basement to see if my parents hav any records that they'd be willing to part with).

I try to pay more attention to whether the music is actually good than to the sound quality. :p

Its gotta be a ballence of the 2 really (though i'm rarely dissapointed if i at least can get the original CD of something i like).

Audigy 2: 80$
Z-5500's 200$
Owning a 280$ sound system and not have any music at all: Retarded.

I'm not even going to go into my soundsystem or any of the DSPs running on it. Easily...easily very expensive...
plus the music.

192kbps rips minimum. 320kbps preferred unless it's something I only plan on using for headphones. Plus HI-DEF album art, obsessively organized by general-genre/Artist/Date-AlbumTitle. Not to mention all the classics I have in .wav format because I'm not in a million years going to compress them.

Not to mention 30 gigs of raw samples for music writing...plus numerous DVDs of even more samples.

Sound is currently at friends awaiting use for a party where I will be guarding them with my life.

typo

Not an audiophile, but I do insist on 192kbps+ and a half decent pair of 'phones.

I have nice enough speakers in my house that I couldn't really want to spend more for a better sound.

Audigy 2: $100 at the time
E-MU 1212m professional sound card that blows away any gaming card in sound quality: $155, used
Etymotic ER-6 Consumer Canalphones: $90 value, traded my $50 Sennheiser HD497s for them
Koss KSC75: $15 and they beat most headphones and speakers gamers own, sadly
Westone Labs UM2 Professional In Ear Monitors: $240 after a special internet special by Westone and a 20% off coupon code for Head-Fi forum members. Sadly, these are on backorder
Sennheiser HD600: $110 shipped, used! They retail for about $350! They had no cable and a broken driver connection. Sennheiser repaired it for free and gave me a new cable. They also replaced all the pads without me asking. <3
Millet Hybrid tube/solid state headphone amplifier with STEPS power supply: $150, self-built with a chassis made completely from scratch

I no longer call myself an audiophile, because audiophiles tend to believe in things like magical cables, fancy connectors and solder joints affecting sound quality, vibration effecting electric equipment, differences in opamp sound and OH so many other retarded things.

Also, digital audio is technically superior to vinyl.

Oh, and I use Ogg Vorbis, quality 6 when ripping my audio. I have done all my stuff in the past as quality 7, but it really is overkill. Vorbis has a much better quality to size ratio than any other lossless codec, save Musepack, which isn't exactly widespread.

Oh, and Obi, that sound system is not a big deal. Sorry to burst your bubble. PC speakers suck.

[QUOTE=Compos Mentis]Not to mention all the classics I have in .wav format because I'm not in a million years going to compress them.
[/QUOTE]

for the love of qod compress them losslessly at least... save yourself the HD space

A good lossy format like Vorbis or Musepack will easily compress anything to be practically lossless. That is, no audible loss in quality. The audiophile purist thing kind of pisses me off. Mostly because audiophiles think they can tell the difference between say, a 320 Kbps MP3 and uncompress or lossless. No, for the last time, you CAN'T. NOBODY CAN. END OF STORY.

emon... the master of all knowledge...

...HOLY CRAP MY EYE JUST ROLLED OUT OF MY ****ING HEAD!!!

Personally, i'm not a purist (I can't afford to be: most of my equipment has been inherited from either my parents, or, in the case of the turntable, my uncle. The only part of my entire setup that i bought was my Audigy ZS2, and my Polk Audio bookshelf speakers (R15)). I agree with the point on digital audio format though: the range of human hearing goes only so far, negating the point of the novelties such as the diamond tweeters in ultra-high-end systems... unless you're building it for your dog or something. I typically put my CDs in MP3 High-Quality VBR (saves space on even 320kbps, and everything can read it). Magical Cables don't exist, but I would like some better cables. The ones i've got now are crap, and came with my parents' Yamaha tuner.

Btw, any Canadian Massassians know where i can find new/gently used vinyls? (I want to eventually expand my collection, and don't want to travel to England every time i want a new LP).

Don't worry Emon, let him think he can hear the difference.

Z3e's, SBLive. I'm not too worried about audio, as long as I get a smooth bass and a decent delivery, I'm fairly happy with the sound. At least with speakers. Once I get some decent canalphones, well...things will change. Let's just say my PSP will start getting some use as the ultimate Nano

i plan to go lossless for the following reasons...

1. HD space isn't all that expensive
2. transcoding... (portable player)
3. i would have a perfect backup of the CD in case something happened to the original

Yes, those are good reasons. But for sound quality there really is no reason.

1. MOTU 828mkII audio interface, with better converters than most of you will ever see. :p $1000 Canadian
2. M-Audio Studiophile BX5a's. Sadly, I sold my Emes Kobalt monitors in a tough situation. Stupid, stupid, stupid. $400
3. Audio Technica ATH-M40fs cans. $150

Everything hooked up with balanced connections for an ultra-low noise floor (about -90db). I love my rig. I wish I had my Kobalts back though.

All of my music is ripped from original CD's in 256 kbps AAC.

Ditto.

Even though terrible sound quality can really make things lame.

Besides that, I don't get orgasms of some uber FLACs with some uberkilohertzes ding dongs.

90% of my uncompressed audio gets used in production. Since it's much simpler mucking around with raw files than a compressed file not many programs support, it's much easier on me to leave them uncompressed.

Trust me, my uncompressed collection isn't very big (I can't afford that). It's the best decision for what my uses are :).

Gotta love the Analogue Myth, eh?

With vinyl, every time you play it back, what you're effectively doing is taking a diamond and scratching all along the track. That's how the thing works. It's not just recording the stuff that degrades the signal. Playback damages the disc.

Whereas with a digitally encoded signal, oh look! No signal degradation, playback doesn't damage the original data. Assuming a decent encoding (where, however much you like to believe otherwise, you can't hear the difference), there is no reason that vinyl is better than digital formats.

Unfortunatly I can't afford to be a wanke... err, audiophile.

That said, dad has a very nice system. It consists of:

1. Tannoy 15" 'Gold' Studio Monitors
2. Quad 400 series Preamp
3. 2 x Quad 405 Power Amps, bridged
4. Denon CD Player
5. Thorens TD125Mk2 Turntable

Quite a nice system. Even the speaker boxes themselves are impressive, being large, thick, sand filled boxes. Makes my Sony setup in here look a little...undernorished.

there are reasons but none of them have to do with the stuff you mention

Z-2300 soundstorm, 192-320 VBR preferred, 320 cbr for complex music

i will have nothing to do with 128kbps mp3's unless there is no other choice, and even then they automatically lose their appeal even if it's a great song.

these headphones
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Panasonic-Traditional-Headphones-RP-HT355-/sem/rpsm/oid/15099/catOid/-12938/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do
which despite the price are better than $100 senns, as far as i can tell.

but my computer stuff doesnt really compare to my car where i have spent well over $1000 (and most of it not on subwoofers like so many morons)

You just keep telling yourself that, tiger.

My current system goes as follows:

EMU-0404 -> HeadAmp Gilmore V2 -> Grado RS-1 or Sonic T-amp -> Athena BS-1's

I'm waiting on a pair of Westone UM2's as well. If they ever come in, the portable rig will look like this:

Rio Karma -> Xin Supermacro Amp -> Westone UM2's

I use FLAC when listening to my RS-1's, since I have a lossless backup of everything and because it is trivially easy to share them off of my FreeBSD server. I use OGG -q6 on my Karma and it sounds fine to me. I was hoping to upgrade my main rig with an external DAC and maybe a tube amp, but I can't justify spending any more money on it right now.

Keep the Gilmore. Gilmore can actually design an amp, they're quite linear. You know, like an amp should do. They're not supposed to color music. But then I've got a Millet Hybrid...

I was thinking of one of the Mapletree Ear amps, supposedly they pair really well with Grados. I really want a Benchmark DAC1, but that's quite expensive. However, having an external DAC would be a good step towards ridding myself of Windows for good.

I'm always willing to be enlightened. These reasons are...?

very difficult to explain

The immense bandwidth available on vinyl compared to digital media would be one reason.

Good-sounding playback isn't just about perfectly preserving the source signal. Sometimes, some forms of coloration can sound pretty sweet to the ear.

Lots of studios track guitars and bass to 2" tape instead of directly to digital mediums. Digital may have it's advantages, but tape just sounds better.

Yeah, I'm a tube-o-phile with a low budget and a little bit of savvy. I particularly like the stuff on http://www.bottlehead.com/ .

My current rig is: AudioSolutions PCDP (line out)>Cardas 12" mini-mini interconnect>HeadRoom Total Airhead>Alessandro MS-1.

I plan on building something pretty much entirely out of the Bottlehead designs there with a Marantz CC-52 as the source. I'm thinking Marantz>1 meter Nawa interconnect>Foreplay III>1 meter Nawa interconnect>Enhanced SEX>DIY Fostex folded baffle speakers/HD580 with Zu recable. Now mind you that's about 10% of my yearly income so this is going to take a while.

I just got my Westone UM2s today. They suck. With a dual-driver design and a $450 MSRP value, you'd think they could produce some decent treble. They can't. The low end isn't even that great. I got better bass with my unamped HD600s. Bah, Head-Fi is full of ****ing morons. I should have stuck with my original plan and bought those rebranded ER-4Ps on Amazon when they were $120.

Coloration sucks. Transparency ****ing rocks for playback. Use all the tubes, tapes or coloration of whatever kind when making the music, but it only ****s it up during playback.

I know how you feel but truly I have troubles listening to solid state gear as it is fatiguing.

That's what DSP is for, oh right. Unfortunately I don't think there's much on the consumer level that's that particularly good.