An audiophile is a person enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction.
Audiophile values may be applied at all stages of music reproduction: the initial audio recording, the production process, and the playback, which is usually in a home setting.
"Audiophile" recordings include those using conventional formats but with special attention to audio quality, as well as recordings in high-resolution formats such as Super Audio CD or DVD-Audio. Recently, there has been interest in lossless file formats such as WAV, FLAC, WMA Lossless, and Apple Lossless.
A key goal of audiophiles is to capture the experience of a live musical performance in a room with good acoustics, and reproduce it at home. It is widely agreed that this is very difficult and that even the best-regarded recording and playback systems rarely, if ever, achieve it.
The term High-end audio refers to playback equipment used by audiophiles, which may be bought at specialist shops and websites. High-end components include turntables, digital-to-analog converters, equalization devices, preamplifiers and amplifiers (both solid-state and vacuum tube), horn and electrostatic speakers, power conditioners, subwoofers, headphones, and acoustic room treatment.
Audio playback components
An audio system typically consists of one or more source components, one or more amplification components, and (for stereo) two or more loudspeakers.
Signal cables (analog audio, speaker, digital audio etc.) are used to link these components. There are also a variety of accessories, including equipment racks, power conditioners, devices to reduce or control vibration, record cleaners, anti-static devices, phonograph needle cleaners, reverberation reducing devices such as speaker pads and stands, sound absorbent foam, and soundproofing.
The interaction between the loudspeakers and the room (room acoustics) plays an important part in sound quality. Sound vibrations are reflected from walls, floor and ceiling, and are affected by the contents of the room. Room dimensions can create standing waves at particular (usually low) frequencies. There are devices and materials for room treatment that affect sound quality. Soft materials, such as draperies and carpets, can absorb higher frequencies, whereas hard walls and floors can cause excess reverberation.
Sound sources
Audiophiles play music from a wide variety of sources including phonograph records, compact discs (CDs), and digital audio file formats that are uncompressed as well as ones that are compressed using lossless data compression such as FLAC, Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless and Apple Lossless (ALAC). Since the early 1990s, CDs have become the most common source of high-quality music. Nevertheless, turntables, tonearms, and magnetic cartridges are still used, despite the difficulties of keeping records free from dust and the delicate set-up associated with turntables.
The 44.1 kHz sampling rate of the CD format, in theory, restricts CD information losses to above the theoretical upper-frequency limit of human hearing – 20 kHz, see Nyquist limit. Despite this, newer formats such as DVD-Audio and Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD), have sampling rates of 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz or even higher.
CD audio signals are encoded in 16-bit values. Some higher-definition consumer formats such as HDCD-encoded CDs contain 20-bit and even 24-bit audio streams. With more bits more dynamic range is possible; 20 bit dynamic range is theoretically 120 dB—the limit of most consumer electronic playback equipment.
MP3 encoding, widely used in portable audio devices, is an example of lossy compression.
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
Conversion Conversion Emoticon Emoticon