The Limitations of Bluetooth Audio Distribution

When it comes to audio distribution, there are several technologies that can transmit sound from one device to another. However, when it comes to carrying stereo audio over long distances, Bluetooth is not always up to the task. In fact, many Bluetooth devices struggle to deliver high-quality audio due to compression and limitations in the transmission protocol.

The Early Days of Advanced Audio Distribution

In the early days of Bluetooth, advanced audio distribution programs like DP (Digital Audio Protocol) were developed to improve audio quality. However, these early versions still struggled with compression, which limited the fidelity of the audio signal. Later versions of Bluetooth, such as A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile), began to address these issues by reducing compression and allowing for higher-quality audio transmission.

Discovering the Perfect System

To get the most out of Bluetooth audio distribution, it's essential to start with a good source. This means investing in a high-quality digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and ensuring that your phone or other device is capable of producing clean, uncompressed audio signals. From there, you can experiment with different headphones or speakers to find the perfect combination for your listening needs.

Minimizing Variables

To get the most out of your Bluetooth audio system, it's crucial to minimize variables that can affect sound quality. This means starting with a reliable source and carefully evaluating each component in the system, from the DAC to the headphones or speakers. By doing so, you can identify any issues or limitations and make adjustments as needed.

The Importance of Listening

Listening is an essential part of getting the most out of your Bluetooth audio system. To truly appreciate the sound quality, you need to listen carefully and critically. This means paying attention to details like soundstage, imaging, and bass response, as well as the overall cohesion and balance of the audio signal.

The Role of Headphones

Headphones are a great place to start when evaluating Bluetooth audio systems, thanks to their controlled environment. By listening through headphones, you can eliminate external distractions and focus on the audio signal itself. This allows you to appreciate the nuances of sound quality and identify any issues or limitations in your system.

Audiophile Heaven: The Soundstage

For audiophiles, one of the most appealing aspects of high-quality Bluetooth audio systems is the soundstage. The soundstage refers to the spatial representation of instruments and sounds in the music, creating an immersive listening experience. When you're wearing high-quality headphones or speakers, you can feel like you're right there in the recording studio, with all the instruments and sounds coming together in perfect harmony.

The Power of Mastering

Mastering engineers play a critical role in shaping the sound quality of recordings. By carefully selecting and manipulating audio signals, mastering engineers can create an incredible listening experience that showcases the full range of musical expression. When you're using high-quality headphones or speakers, you can appreciate the mastery engineer's work and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Practicality Meets Passion

For many audiophiles, the joy of listening to music is not just about technical precision but also about emotional connection and personal preference. This means being practical about your audio system, recognizing when a particular setup or component is simply not working for you. By listening critically and making informed decisions, you can find the perfect Bluetooth audio system that meets your needs and enhances your musical experience.

The Rise of Affordable Audio Solutions

In recent years, there has been a surge in affordable audio solutions that are making it possible for more people to enjoy high-quality sound. From budget-friendly DACs to innovative headphones and speakers, there are many options available that can help you improve your Bluetooth audio system without breaking the bank.

The Role of Outboard Devices

Outboard devices like eye-fi can play a crucial role in enhancing your Bluetooth audio system. By adding these devices between your source and headphones or speakers, you can improve sound quality and reduce distortion. The eye-fi, for example, is a digital-to-analog converter that can help you unlock the full potential of your Bluetooth audio system.

The Future of Audio Technology

In the world of audio technology, there are always new innovations and advancements on the horizon. From DAX (Direct Stream Digital Audio eXtreme) to other cutting-edge technologies, the future holds plenty of exciting possibilities for audiophiles. In our next video, we'll be exploring some of these emerging technologies and discussing their potential impact on the world of music listening.

Questions for Patrick?

Do you have questions about Bluetooth audio distribution or audio technology in general? We'd love to hear them! Please leave your comments below, and we'll address them in a future video.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey there's no one from tested and I'm so excited to introduce you guys when some of you may already be familiar with Patrick Norton Patrick who has been a guest on our podcast many times also the host of tech thing and co-host of tech thing and also you might know him from version three in tekzilla the old days tech TV and tell me Patrick is actually going to be our new senior technology correspondent for things very excited about and I'm also terrified cuz you guys are up on your game well you have such high game on things like audio I have issues with audio issues with audio issues we want to talk about today so this first video we're going to do is actually talk about some high-end audio answer some questions I have and some of you out there may have about how to listen to high-end audio well okay it sounds like like you listen every day right yeah you got ears assuming your ears still function um you're hearing things all the time and it sounds really funny but you know I'll put on a hat pair of headphones and I'll listen to them and I'll cut you know I'll pass judgment on them because I'm reviewing them and in front of minds I call you have the golden years it's like I don't have golden ears I just spent a lot of time listening in a very kind of an organized fashion as ridiculous as that sounds alright cuz you know you go into an Apple store right that's by and you see speakers you know like the Zeppelin Wireless here above five between a $500 thousand dollars it's not something you're going to spend $100 on and you want to feel like you get the quality that you're paying for and for most people a lot of people they don't know what that quality means well what is it that you're what are you supposed to be listening for well it's kind of I sue back in my early 20s before the children and the full-time day job I would probably see easily like 200 bands in a year it is what I did and a lot of cases they were in tiny tiny rooms and the stage was like 12 inches high and I could reach out and like touch the base stack and I would be beaten down like redheaded stepchild for touching the man's instrument but but the idea is that music sounds very very distinctive and when everything started to go online and with mp3s especially the early days of mp3s or Society of likes equality audio 128 kilobits per second it's like cd-quality and the reality is is what the compression did and what it still does in a lot of streaming services is it squeezes the music down now it's miraculous right because just incredible art and science of psycho acoustics people have spent decades and zillions of dollars figuring out how your skull processes audio or more accurately what happens in your ears and between your ears in your brain and how your brain actually looks at things and that's how compression works they're like okay we can remove this bit and this stuff over here this the brain you'll notice this and that exactly all most people but it's funny right the you know it used to be really brutal like in the early days of mp3 like the cruelest thing you could do would take something like a Beach Boys song with those multi layer harmonies or choral music because I know a lot of you are really big on the you know 14th century choral music my wife is but it would it would SMERSH these four or five voices into like a single universe kind of like unikitty but much more violent um but the the end result was that you would have something that didn't really sound like the original source and as you know compression tools got better and compression got better and bandwidth became less of an issue compression became less problematic but there's still a lot of cases where you've taken perfectly good like CD audio files or you're downloading music or you have those downloads you have from when you were 14 and you could be doing a lot better and you should be before you start dropping hundreds of dollars on standalone you know audio devices and I gotta say one thing right now money is not necessarily a good listening experience money is not necessarily buying you a lot and in some cases expensive devices sound like crap yeah how do you discern that I mean you go you went to 200 concerts a year and you're listening it's you know the difference between this instrument that instrument from different distances different room environments for us locked about there who maybe don't want to destroy their ears or just want to test their own existing equipment there if you go to concerts there are wonderful quality ear for your plugs from likely Moda and other companies the emotive faders are amazing right because you can put them in your ears and they drop the level like 15 or 20 DB and the music still sounds like music it's not like taking the phone your plugs and being like muffling and muddling everything I hear the kick drum I think that was a cymbal right but as ridiculous as it sounds you know start with if you if you have like CDs start with CDs if you don't have CDs download like some decent audio online or if you have Spotify pay for Spotify screaming get like the 300k files do the high-quality files and start listening um you know Grado sr60 es are amazing for like 60 or 75 bucks yeah they're open back they have this there's this audiophile cons of stone stage they have incredible presence you know in man the only thing worse than like professional reviewers some of whom I absolutely adore as human beings is online reviews because like you know head Faiz an amazing place I love head VG's amazing is it due to built this incredible place where audio geeks can gather and talk about headphones and headphone amps and DAC switch digital analog converter we'll get to that in a second but you run into a lot of like well you know I just don't simply feel the presence to justify upgrading to and you're sitting there and you're like yeah yeah yeah swish it in your mouth take your breath off the glass spit it in the bucket and get over with cuz you're irritating me right because people I can't really do serious audio for less than $5,000 right and that's can I say on this yeah okay it's all is it same rules the podcast right because you know great OSR 60 es it's like as you know $75 headphone online sony MDR 75006 is i've seen some of the most expensive recording consoles in the world and the dude twiddling the knobs or gal twittering lo knobs are listening to what is essentially a $75 head of headphones they sound amazing so start cheap and one of the nice things about headphones especially a sealed headphones like you know Sennheiser momentum right here the sony MDR 75006 is is you get this very controlled environment where you know you've got you've got basically a known good headphone and then you can start experimenting with you know mp3 players or the output jack on your computer or your phone phones have gotten amazing the iphones have been pretty consistently good for years with the audio output a lot of the Android phones are really really good you don't need to buy the one that well it processes i HD audio 96 kilohertz 24-bit for superior audio performance you ain't got the ears to hear like 96k nobody has the ears to hear 96k there may be things where like resonance are created but the reality is most people if you're over like the age of 25 or over the age of like 15 or over the age of like 8 fact your audio in terms of hearing the high end peaks at around 8 years of age and then goes down yeah like my 8 year old he can pick up 19 kilohertz test tones huh yeah yeah well yeah oh and and there's entire like products structures built around irritating teenagers where it's like super high tones that they broadcast in front of the you know the mall entrance or ringtones that teachers can't hear but the kids can hear so they can you know they get their text messages and like sit down there and and snapchat and whatever so starving kids okay so yeah so you know a good place like so you know the transducers are the things that turns the electrical impulses into the stuff you hear right spend 75 bucks get a good set of headphones you don't have 75 bucks spend 20 bucks on go to monoprice you know they're I think it's the 1830s 8025 80 30s they have a $25 headphone that sounds entirely too good for the money you pay right put a link to that in the show notes with the actual right name on it but you know get a good set of headphones and then listen to everything hmm right listen hold up a library in your head yeah build up those 200 concerts except know the songs right like and pick at the first selection the classical music mix something with lots of layers in it and listen for the individual instruments yeah I mean at the very least like listen find the 10th your 10 favorite songs by them on CD or buy a lossless version you know buy a CD convert it into a flat file or if you're in the iTunes environment use the apple lossless compression and then listen to the snot out of those so listen to the out of those songs until you know them really intimately and something that's really funny like you know I put these you know the high five man a chief or hundreds and you like to pair three hundred our headphones they just continue discontinue these and replaces with the HD 400 right these are magnetic planar we'll talk about that another time but it's amazing if I put these on you well I did put these on your head sounded fantastic yeah and what happens is as you go from a super cheap like if you've been listening with ear buds that came with your phone everything's going to change and this is awesome and it's kind of like the difference you know when you're exercising the difference between like sitting in your chair versus walking for 15 ever 15 minutes every day is huge the difference between you know listening to music on your phone and then getting good files and getting like a $75 set of headphones is huge it's mind changing because what you start hearing is more of what the you know recording engineers and the artists put into the track there's a lot of music there that you may never actually listen or listen or hear because you've never had a decent source or a decent you know speaker or set of headphones now the audio file you know you take it from a CD right that's relatively cheap and get really good quality play from the C with different type of headphones even high quality ones there I have pull different things out is there a standard that you should listen for or just pick a preference like how do you know what's right through the right equipment well that's what's kind of funny is you start if you listen to a lot of stuff I mean it's funny I talk about live music but I can think of places man I can't think neighborhood versus there's place we used to go to to see say the Red Hot Chili Peppers in New York City like they played all the time worst sound system on the planet it was atrocious like like we went there to see the band and then it was kinda like oh they're playing at that place again because their system was blown out but in a lot of cases if you've heard you know music at a good concert it's a wonderful standard if you haven't start with a CD start with a good set of headphones and start listening a lot and then you'll sort of pick out passages what a lot of professional reviewers do like when they're listening to 10 sets of headphones or they listen to headphones all the time inter fatality a tile who is the guy hope is saying his name right who founded Headroom which is one of the the big headphone amp tech companies you know he's got like you know 10 or 15 30-second snippets he's taken from sort of his critical listening moments like for me there's particular Rage Against the Machine track where the the bass and the guitar are going off and there's this hard simple being hammered and I know exactly what that rides simple supposed to sound like and if it doesn't sound right then I know something's a little off it's funny like beets has made this amazing market for $300 headphones but the original beats headphones from an audio standpoint we're kind of atrocious because they're like let's push all the faders up on the bass and whatever the rest of it doesn't matter there's some new beats models that are that are much much better but what you find is that you know there's nothing wrong like the crossfade m100 which is a headphone from v-moda you know they they kind of they boost the high end of it they boost the low end of it which is fine it may not be the most accurate thing but it's incredibly pleasurable to listen yes I'm going to love having that bass right I love having the highest depending on the type of song jung sangsoo yeah and it's like you know if you were a bass head and you want something at thumps you're looking for a different experience than people who want like an accurate reproduction of what the audio recording engineer was attempting to record and then a kiss is it's funny because you know much like soundtracks for movies the the entire audio environment has really been faked right there's there's no I mean there's there's cases where there's where they've actually taken like a really amazing pair of microphones and a two-track recorder and they've recorded like in a particularly amazing sounding Church or concert hall or something right and that you have literally as close to you know planting your butt in a seat for a private show which is great because there's nobody screaming around you don't have that guy that doesn't know the words howling behind your head but there's this that's about as pure as it gets but the most part it's faint yeah there's like when you look at something like boy like the Beach Boys or the Beatles would be like the extreme examples where it's like 32,000 different things going on in the studio but generally speaking like all the instruments are mic many of intruments are actually recorded separately like they record the dumb track with a click track with like 17 mics and that's mixed down you know from like you know down to these tracks and then the bass player comes in or the guitar player and the vocals and then they massage and manipulate it's really amazing when you hear some like some of the most amazing recordings and and the audio engineer and the producer are talking there's a show or they said oh and then we realize you know we just posted it right here and then we needed something else so we recorded like you know more cowbell and the cowbell comes up here in York oh all of a sudden it sounds amazing but that's this incredible process of creating the art which is not just you know the the woman or man singing and playing guitar playing drummer playing bass or playing oboe or whatever else is going on but the process of choosing mics placing mics recording mics getting it onto the board is an analogue as a digital doesn't really make a difference and then you know mastering it which is you know in most cases probably should be done by the person who recorded it but it is often done by somebody else and then it changes and then over time with older recordings they get remastered which is a whole rathole I'm not going to go down into right so that gives you a base a good foundation to further start get good sources for the audio when it's seedy high-quality bitrate download pay for the premium service at least to try them out yeah and then get a good pair of starter headphones you know if the ones you listed now what about moving them from not the speakers now one of the things like the room of the speaker things the matter you know where he's positioned yourself in front of the speaker that's a less control a few more variables absolutely it's it's funny so dose speakers really changed how my wife and I listen to music right because it became like we always have our phones or phones are always attached to us and we could stream from you know the media that was stored on one of our pcs or we could stream using Pandora and later Spotify but it became like this fundamental like hey we've got you know one in this room and then one in that room the end of one the other room the one of the other room we could you know move them together she could play stuff up here I could play stuff up there you know is a Sonos as good as a pair of dedicated audiophile speaker's attached to a high-end amplify her a decent AVR in a dedicated listening room probably not yeah but that's not how people listen to music yeah I mean Bob Marley sounds amazing over AM radio right you know Bach sounds amazing over AM radio it doesn't make it may not be the sort of ephemeral transporting experience right we want to minimize the variables for example a choice between setting music over Bluetooth or airplay for example right or line-in what are going to choose is there one that's gonna be so much better another or are we a point where it's all about equal as long as the source is good it's well one start with a good source - in theory I mean my personal order I probably like wired airplay blue tooth used to be down here but you know in the past couple of years it's been amazing I got to review an audio engine b1 which is like you know it's a 189 dollar bluetooth you know basically it takes bluetooth it's got a really nice digital analog converter inside of it and punches out stereo to your amplifier or your AVR and I was just kind of like this is going to suck this is going to hey this sounds really good this sounds really good and part of that is once you get past you know when you start getting to like bluetooth 4.0 and apdex you stop being like we're going to take the technology that was created to allow you to wirelessly connect a keyboard and pretend we're stuffing audio well we they didn't pretend they stuffed audio over it but yeah the new standards right yeah I mean it used to be choices because they would take bluetooth and they would take your audio and they would compress the snot out of your audio and stuff it through bluetooth and when you design a you know a personal area network transport protocol to connect keyboards to a device it's just not really up to the task of carrying you know audio much less stereo audio so you know the later versions of the the 82 PC I always wrote it down because I years I still can't remember it where did it go where to go where to go advanced audio distribution program to DP a2dp was the start of it not sucking and then they came up you know apdex came up with a version that would do where they basically didn't compress the snot out of your music you know that in theory and bluetooth for it can actually if your bluetooth receiver and your Bluetooth device are both capable of handling say mp3 or a lakh or whatever it is it will directly hand it to the device which can make a huge difference but a lot of Bluetooth speakers sound really amazing they made you know they're not going to give you you know stereo imaging they're not going to give you the sort of idea of a soundstage that you would get from two speakers that are eight or ten feet apart you're ten feet away from and you're sitting in that critical spot but part of this is a process of discovering you know headphones are a good place to start because it's a pretty controlled environment you know at the very least though like we were saying before like start with a good source and then get kind of a known quality and then you know the pathway from the studio to your your ears right minimize those variables yes I know get your known quantities out of the way the source your DAC you're out right right the connection between the player right and the speaker and then if it's the speaker or headphone so minimize those variables and then with that system in place then you can begin to learn to listen yeah I mean start with you know start with your phone start with your computer you know get to know what it sounds like on that and then get a chance to audition your files not somebody else's files on that and if you hear a difference and you go like the thing I want there's this epiphany moment you know if I put these headphones on your head and you go alright that's amazing right because there's so much information that is in the music that is often not you know it gets you know as information gets tossed away to compress you lose some of that right and it sounds ridiculous but you know the the sound stage right the sound stage was incredible well you know the reason these great O's are known for the sound stage is because you start getting the sense a lot of cases there are a whole lot of instruments and there's a whole lot of sound and there's the interaction between the sound and the room they were recording on and the microphones and the careful careful you know post-processing it's done by the the mastering engineer and there's this amazing auditory experience this incredible musical experience if nothing else it's nice to know that like hey I'm hearing all the bass you know I'm hearing all the high-end it doesn't matter if you're into dub or whether you're into you know your shoe user or you're into Punk okay a lot of punk recordings suck and really really good headphones and speakers make you realize how bad the recording was but it's still Punk so and be practical about it right yeah you're going to be auditioning like the idea auditioning the equipment auditioning the content in a way that you're actually listening to it yeah today I mean one of the nice things you know if you've got a place you know whether it's like the Magnolia section of the Best Buy you know go in there and listen to the headphones you know Sennheiser HD 800 it's like a 13 $1400 set of headphones but you know if you know okay I know my phone and those were supposed to be badass headphones does my phone music sound better maybe not so then you might think about a different source and that's when you start getting into sort of an outboard digital analog converter you know the eye-fi is pretty cool the stuff they do we talk about that when I did a sort of standalone Raspberry Pi audio player but it's kind of amazing what you can get for very very little money yeah yeah awesome well I hope you guys learned a little bit from that and obviously Patrick we have so much in your head and we want to pick apart and learn about that's just in the audio space we have plenty of opportunities for that in the future place your questions for Patrick in the comments we'll address them sometime in the future we're going to talk about more audio technologies talk about Dax talk about some of your specific headphones that you like in future of videos but until then we'll see you next time that's Patrick I'm norm see yahey there's no one from tested and I'm so excited to introduce you guys when some of you may already be familiar with Patrick Norton Patrick who has been a guest on our podcast many times also the host of tech thing and co-host of tech thing and also you might know him from version three in tekzilla the old days tech TV and tell me Patrick is actually going to be our new senior technology correspondent for things very excited about and I'm also terrified cuz you guys are up on your game well you have such high game on things like audio I have issues with audio issues with audio issues we want to talk about today so this first video we're going to do is actually talk about some high-end audio answer some questions I have and some of you out there may have about how to listen to high-end audio well okay it sounds like like you listen every day right yeah you got ears assuming your ears still function um you're hearing things all the time and it sounds really funny but you know I'll put on a hat pair of headphones and I'll listen to them and I'll cut you know I'll pass judgment on them because I'm reviewing them and in front of minds I call you have the golden years it's like I don't have golden ears I just spent a lot of time listening in a very kind of an organized fashion as ridiculous as that sounds alright cuz you know you go into an Apple store right that's by and you see speakers you know like the Zeppelin Wireless here above five between a $500 thousand dollars it's not something you're going to spend $100 on and you want to feel like you get the quality that you're paying for and for most people a lot of people they don't know what that quality means well what is it that you're what are you supposed to be listening for well it's kind of I sue back in my early 20s before the children and the full-time day job I would probably see easily like 200 bands in a year it is what I did and a lot of cases they were in tiny tiny rooms and the stage was like 12 inches high and I could reach out and like touch the base stack and I would be beaten down like redheaded stepchild for touching the man's instrument but but the idea is that music sounds very very distinctive and when everything started to go online and with mp3s especially the early days of mp3s or Society of likes equality audio 128 kilobits per second it's like cd-quality and the reality is is what the compression did and what it still does in a lot of streaming services is it squeezes the music down now it's miraculous right because just incredible art and science of psycho acoustics people have spent decades and zillions of dollars figuring out how your skull processes audio or more accurately what happens in your ears and between your ears in your brain and how your brain actually looks at things and that's how compression works they're like okay we can remove this bit and this stuff over here this the brain you'll notice this and that exactly all most people but it's funny right the you know it used to be really brutal like in the early days of mp3 like the cruelest thing you could do would take something like a Beach Boys song with those multi layer harmonies or choral music because I know a lot of you are really big on the you know 14th century choral music my wife is but it would it would SMERSH these four or five voices into like a single universe kind of like unikitty but much more violent um but the the end result was that you would have something that didn't really sound like the original source and as you know compression tools got better and compression got better and bandwidth became less of an issue compression became less problematic but there's still a lot of cases where you've taken perfectly good like CD audio files or you're downloading music or you have those downloads you have from when you were 14 and you could be doing a lot better and you should be before you start dropping hundreds of dollars on standalone you know audio devices and I gotta say one thing right now money is not necessarily a good listening experience money is not necessarily buying you a lot and in some cases expensive devices sound like crap yeah how do you discern that I mean you go you went to 200 concerts a year and you're listening it's you know the difference between this instrument that instrument from different distances different room environments for us locked about there who maybe don't want to destroy their ears or just want to test their own existing equipment there if you go to concerts there are wonderful quality ear for your plugs from likely Moda and other companies the emotive faders are amazing right because you can put them in your ears and they drop the level like 15 or 20 DB and the music still sounds like music it's not like taking the phone your plugs and being like muffling and muddling everything I hear the kick drum I think that was a cymbal right but as ridiculous as it sounds you know start with if you if you have like CDs start with CDs if you don't have CDs download like some decent audio online or if you have Spotify pay for Spotify screaming get like the 300k files do the high-quality files and start listening um you know Grado sr60 es are amazing for like 60 or 75 bucks yeah they're open back they have this there's this audiophile cons of stone stage they have incredible presence you know in man the only thing worse than like professional reviewers some of whom I absolutely adore as human beings is online reviews because like you know head Faiz an amazing place I love head VG's amazing is it due to built this incredible place where audio geeks can gather and talk about headphones and headphone amps and DAC switch digital analog converter we'll get to that in a second but you run into a lot of like well you know I just don't simply feel the presence to justify upgrading to and you're sitting there and you're like yeah yeah yeah swish it in your mouth take your breath off the glass spit it in the bucket and get over with cuz you're irritating me right because people I can't really do serious audio for less than $5,000 right and that's can I say on this yeah okay it's all is it same rules the podcast right because you know great OSR 60 es it's like as you know $75 headphone online sony MDR 75006 is i've seen some of the most expensive recording consoles in the world and the dude twiddling the knobs or gal twittering lo knobs are listening to what is essentially a $75 head of headphones they sound amazing so start cheap and one of the nice things about headphones especially a sealed headphones like you know Sennheiser momentum right here the sony MDR 75006 is is you get this very controlled environment where you know you've got you've got basically a known good headphone and then you can start experimenting with you know mp3 players or the output jack on your computer or your phone phones have gotten amazing the iphones have been pretty consistently good for years with the audio output a lot of the Android phones are really really good you don't need to buy the one that well it processes i HD audio 96 kilohertz 24-bit for superior audio performance you ain't got the ears to hear like 96k nobody has the ears to hear 96k there may be things where like resonance are created but the reality is most people if you're over like the age of 25 or over the age of like 15 or over the age of like 8 fact your audio in terms of hearing the high end peaks at around 8 years of age and then goes down yeah like my 8 year old he can pick up 19 kilohertz test tones huh yeah yeah well yeah oh and and there's entire like products structures built around irritating teenagers where it's like super high tones that they broadcast in front of the you know the mall entrance or ringtones that teachers can't hear but the kids can hear so they can you know they get their text messages and like sit down there and and snapchat and whatever so starving kids okay so yeah so you know a good place like so you know the transducers are the things that turns the electrical impulses into the stuff you hear right spend 75 bucks get a good set of headphones you don't have 75 bucks spend 20 bucks on go to monoprice you know they're I think it's the 1830s 8025 80 30s they have a $25 headphone that sounds entirely too good for the money you pay right put a link to that in the show notes with the actual right name on it but you know get a good set of headphones and then listen to everything hmm right listen hold up a library in your head yeah build up those 200 concerts except know the songs right like and pick at the first selection the classical music mix something with lots of layers in it and listen for the individual instruments yeah I mean at the very least like listen find the 10th your 10 favorite songs by them on CD or buy a lossless version you know buy a CD convert it into a flat file or if you're in the iTunes environment use the apple lossless compression and then listen to the snot out of those so listen to the out of those songs until you know them really intimately and something that's really funny like you know I put these you know the high five man a chief or hundreds and you like to pair three hundred our headphones they just continue discontinue these and replaces with the HD 400 right these are magnetic planar we'll talk about that another time but it's amazing if I put these on you well I did put these on your head sounded fantastic yeah and what happens is as you go from a super cheap like if you've been listening with ear buds that came with your phone everything's going to change and this is awesome and it's kind of like the difference you know when you're exercising the difference between like sitting in your chair versus walking for 15 ever 15 minutes every day is huge the difference between you know listening to music on your phone and then getting good files and getting like a $75 set of headphones is huge it's mind changing because what you start hearing is more of what the you know recording engineers and the artists put into the track there's a lot of music there that you may never actually listen or listen or hear because you've never had a decent source or a decent you know speaker or set of headphones now the audio file you know you take it from a CD right that's relatively cheap and get really good quality play from the C with different type of headphones even high quality ones there I have pull different things out is there a standard that you should listen for or just pick a preference like how do you know what's right through the right equipment well that's what's kind of funny is you start if you listen to a lot of stuff I mean it's funny I talk about live music but I can think of places man I can't think neighborhood versus there's place we used to go to to see say the Red Hot Chili Peppers in New York City like they played all the time worst sound system on the planet it was atrocious like like we went there to see the band and then it was kinda like oh they're playing at that place again because their system was blown out but in a lot of cases if you've heard you know music at a good concert it's a wonderful standard if you haven't start with a CD start with a good set of headphones and start listening a lot and then you'll sort of pick out passages what a lot of professional reviewers do like when they're listening to 10 sets of headphones or they listen to headphones all the time inter fatality a tile who is the guy hope is saying his name right who founded Headroom which is one of the the big headphone amp tech companies you know he's got like you know 10 or 15 30-second snippets he's taken from sort of his critical listening moments like for me there's particular Rage Against the Machine track where the the bass and the guitar are going off and there's this hard simple being hammered and I know exactly what that rides simple supposed to sound like and if it doesn't sound right then I know something's a little off it's funny like beets has made this amazing market for $300 headphones but the original beats headphones from an audio standpoint we're kind of atrocious because they're like let's push all the faders up on the bass and whatever the rest of it doesn't matter there's some new beats models that are that are much much better but what you find is that you know there's nothing wrong like the crossfade m100 which is a headphone from v-moda you know they they kind of they boost the high end of it they boost the low end of it which is fine it may not be the most accurate thing but it's incredibly pleasurable to listen yes I'm going to love having that bass right I love having the highest depending on the type of song jung sangsoo yeah and it's like you know if you were a bass head and you want something at thumps you're looking for a different experience than people who want like an accurate reproduction of what the audio recording engineer was attempting to record and then a kiss is it's funny because you know much like soundtracks for movies the the entire audio environment has really been faked right there's there's no I mean there's there's cases where there's where they've actually taken like a really amazing pair of microphones and a two-track recorder and they've recorded like in a particularly amazing sounding Church or concert hall or something right and that you have literally as close to you know planting your butt in a seat for a private show which is great because there's nobody screaming around you don't have that guy that doesn't know the words howling behind your head but there's this that's about as pure as it gets but the most part it's faint yeah there's like when you look at something like boy like the Beach Boys or the Beatles would be like the extreme examples where it's like 32,000 different things going on in the studio but generally speaking like all the instruments are mic many of intruments are actually recorded separately like they record the dumb track with a click track with like 17 mics and that's mixed down you know from like you know down to these tracks and then the bass player comes in or the guitar player and the vocals and then they massage and manipulate it's really amazing when you hear some like some of the most amazing recordings and and the audio engineer and the producer are talking there's a show or they said oh and then we realize you know we just posted it right here and then we needed something else so we recorded like you know more cowbell and the cowbell comes up here in York oh all of a sudden it sounds amazing but that's this incredible process of creating the art which is not just you know the the woman or man singing and playing guitar playing drummer playing bass or playing oboe or whatever else is going on but the process of choosing mics placing mics recording mics getting it onto the board is an analogue as a digital doesn't really make a difference and then you know mastering it which is you know in most cases probably should be done by the person who recorded it but it is often done by somebody else and then it changes and then over time with older recordings they get remastered which is a whole rathole I'm not going to go down into right so that gives you a base a good foundation to further start get good sources for the audio when it's seedy high-quality bitrate download pay for the premium service at least to try them out yeah and then get a good pair of starter headphones you know if the ones you listed now what about moving them from not the speakers now one of the things like the room of the speaker things the matter you know where he's positioned yourself in front of the speaker that's a less control a few more variables absolutely it's it's funny so dose speakers really changed how my wife and I listen to music right because it became like we always have our phones or phones are always attached to us and we could stream from you know the media that was stored on one of our pcs or we could stream using Pandora and later Spotify but it became like this fundamental like hey we've got you know one in this room and then one in that room the end of one the other room the one of the other room we could you know move them together she could play stuff up here I could play stuff up there you know is a Sonos as good as a pair of dedicated audiophile speaker's attached to a high-end amplify her a decent AVR in a dedicated listening room probably not yeah but that's not how people listen to music yeah I mean Bob Marley sounds amazing over AM radio right you know Bach sounds amazing over AM radio it doesn't make it may not be the sort of ephemeral transporting experience right we want to minimize the variables for example a choice between setting music over Bluetooth or airplay for example right or line-in what are going to choose is there one that's gonna be so much better another or are we a point where it's all about equal as long as the source is good it's well one start with a good source - in theory I mean my personal order I probably like wired airplay blue tooth used to be down here but you know in the past couple of years it's been amazing I got to review an audio engine b1 which is like you know it's a 189 dollar bluetooth you know basically it takes bluetooth it's got a really nice digital analog converter inside of it and punches out stereo to your amplifier or your AVR and I was just kind of like this is going to suck this is going to hey this sounds really good this sounds really good and part of that is once you get past you know when you start getting to like bluetooth 4.0 and apdex you stop being like we're going to take the technology that was created to allow you to wirelessly connect a keyboard and pretend we're stuffing audio well we they didn't pretend they stuffed audio over it but yeah the new standards right yeah I mean it used to be choices because they would take bluetooth and they would take your audio and they would compress the snot out of your audio and stuff it through bluetooth and when you design a you know a personal area network transport protocol to connect keyboards to a device it's just not really up to the task of carrying you know audio much less stereo audio so you know the later versions of the the 82 PC I always wrote it down because I years I still can't remember it where did it go where to go where to go advanced audio distribution program to DP a2dp was the start of it not sucking and then they came up you know apdex came up with a version that would do where they basically didn't compress the snot out of your music you know that in theory and bluetooth for it can actually if your bluetooth receiver and your Bluetooth device are both capable of handling say mp3 or a lakh or whatever it is it will directly hand it to the device which can make a huge difference but a lot of Bluetooth speakers sound really amazing they made you know they're not going to give you you know stereo imaging they're not going to give you the sort of idea of a soundstage that you would get from two speakers that are eight or ten feet apart you're ten feet away from and you're sitting in that critical spot but part of this is a process of discovering you know headphones are a good place to start because it's a pretty controlled environment you know at the very least though like we were saying before like start with a good source and then get kind of a known quality and then you know the pathway from the studio to your your ears right minimize those variables yes I know get your known quantities out of the way the source your DAC you're out right right the connection between the player right and the speaker and then if it's the speaker or headphone so minimize those variables and then with that system in place then you can begin to learn to listen yeah I mean start with you know start with your phone start with your computer you know get to know what it sounds like on that and then get a chance to audition your files not somebody else's files on that and if you hear a difference and you go like the thing I want there's this epiphany moment you know if I put these headphones on your head and you go alright that's amazing right because there's so much information that is in the music that is often not you know it gets you know as information gets tossed away to compress you lose some of that right and it sounds ridiculous but you know the the sound stage right the sound stage was incredible well you know the reason these great O's are known for the sound stage is because you start getting the sense a lot of cases there are a whole lot of instruments and there's a whole lot of sound and there's the interaction between the sound and the room they were recording on and the microphones and the careful careful you know post-processing it's done by the the mastering engineer and there's this amazing auditory experience this incredible musical experience if nothing else it's nice to know that like hey I'm hearing all the bass you know I'm hearing all the high-end it doesn't matter if you're into dub or whether you're into you know your shoe user or you're into Punk okay a lot of punk recordings suck and really really good headphones and speakers make you realize how bad the recording was but it's still Punk so and be practical about it right yeah you're going to be auditioning like the idea auditioning the equipment auditioning the content in a way that you're actually listening to it yeah today I mean one of the nice things you know if you've got a place you know whether it's like the Magnolia section of the Best Buy you know go in there and listen to the headphones you know Sennheiser HD 800 it's like a 13 $1400 set of headphones but you know if you know okay I know my phone and those were supposed to be badass headphones does my phone music sound better maybe not so then you might think about a different source and that's when you start getting into sort of an outboard digital analog converter you know the eye-fi is pretty cool the stuff they do we talk about that when I did a sort of standalone Raspberry Pi audio player but it's kind of amazing what you can get for very very little money yeah yeah awesome well I hope you guys learned a little bit from that and obviously Patrick we have so much in your head and we want to pick apart and learn about that's just in the audio space we have plenty of opportunities for that in the future place your questions for Patrick in the comments we'll address them sometime in the future we're going to talk about more audio technologies talk about Dax talk about some of your specific headphones that you like in future of videos but until then we'll see you next time that's Patrick I'm norm see ya\n"