Finding your groove: getting into vinyl with Audio-Technica
I’d like to think that I could’ve been friends with the late Hideo Matsushita, founder of Japanese Hi-Fi powerhouse Audio-Technica. If I could, I’d travel back in time to 1960’s Tokyo, where a young Matsushita curated “vinyl listening sessions” at the Bridgestone Museum of Arts, exposing visitors to the sounds and possibilities of high end audio and the warmth of vinyl records. I imagine sitting with him in a mod coffee shop, listening to the stories of what he witnessed in those sessions, the conversations he had with visitors, and what ultimately motivated him to head back to his small apartment above a ramen restaurant and start an audio company of his own. In the histories I’ve read regarding AT’s humble beginnings, Matsushita’s motives seem clear. Produce high end audio at affordable prices, bringing audio excellence into spaces and to customers that simply didn’t have access to it before. His first two products, the AT-1 and AT-3 phono cartridges did exactly that, and...
Dec 6, 2023
For me with current gear (Windows 10, FiiO E10k DAC, O2 amp, Fostex TH-X00), it’s hard to differentiate between 320 kbps and lossless. Highly dependent on content based on my experiences with tests such as https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality.
I‘ve not critically considered bit depth and sample rate. The 96khz/24 bit FLAC content I’ve listened to so far was well mastered and unfamiliar. I‘ll try the Spotify vs HD Tracks in A-B sighted testing though my chain is limited to 96khz/24 bit until my new DAC arrives. -------- Updated 5/5/2018 Replaced the E10K with a Topping D10 and added the MD Sennheiser 6XX. To my ears, the D10 seems to have more detail than the E10K. An hour long sighted A/B comparison of City of the Sun: To the Sun and All the Cities In Between, 96kHz/24 bit FLAC from HDTracks on Foobar compared with 44.1 kHz/16 bit @ 320 kbps streaming on Spotify. Still getting familiar with this material, so I focused on track 13: Everything. The guitar picking seemed slightly clearer at times within the decay and reverb. There also seemed to be a little more detail in the bass and percussion, tighter on attack in places. Both sources were enjoyable on the 6XX's and TH-X00's.