As has been stated many times before, if one media player sounds "better" than another, it's not actually better (unless you're comparing it against something that resamples all output to 11,250 kHz at 4-bits per sample, but that doesn't count).

However, nobody will tell you that everybody has the same preferences - that's why we have so many audio formats, so many audio players, so many web browsers, and so on. If one person *likes* the sound of music run through a high-pass filter at 15 kHz, I'm not going to tell them it's wrong, it's their choice. However, the issue is that whenever somebody comes across something they like better 99% of the time they assume it *is* the be-all end-all solution to everything wrong with the universe.

I could go on with this for long enough to fill most of a book, but the point is that we should embrace people's opinions, no matter how weird or ill-informed they are as long as they don't harm anyone else.

The way I see it, all these people who post here saying "winamp soundz beter than fooobar" are in one of two categories:
1) People who are ill-informed in some way.
2) People who genuinely think Winamp or whatever sounds better. These people could, if given some kind of somewhat scientific test based on what they'd based their opinion on, would beyond a somewhat reasonable doubt identify one player as sounding better on at least some material.

The problem is that all the people who say that sort of thing are automatically assumed to be in the first category - and in the case of the ones who replace every "s" with a "z" and every "e" with a "3", probably are. But not all of them are. So maybe we should try and figure out what it is that's causing the difference. Foobar has enough equalizers and such that chances are it's possible to configure it to replicate whatever it is about whatever other player that that person thinks is better.

In any case, what I think we should have is a thread where people can post regarding settings that, for whatever reason, no matter how silly or otherwise odd, sound better to them. Chances are, someone else will like those settings too. Or maybe the really out-there settings will spawn an interesting effect to be used in music that someone makes. I occasionally will sit for hours listening to a bunch of music played back at twice it's intended speed - that doesn't make me an idiot, it just means I'm entertained by it. Whatever it is, I'm sure I'm treading in dangerous territory here (and believe me, I have no problem whatsoever if an admin wants to close this thread before anything bad happens - that's what they're there for).

That having been said, I want people to post in this thread any settings, whether they be for the DSP chain, or for flashing lights they think psychically links them to the music, or whatever. *AS LONG AS THEY REMAIN OPEN-MINDED* I don't want people being flamed for their opinions or anything like that. I just want to see interesting settings that have an effect, positive or otherwise, even if they are imagined. Something that increases someone's enjoyment of their music can't be bad, can it? By that I mean two things: that if you think someone's stupid for liking something, don't insult them; and that any unusual preference is sure to be shared by someone else.

So post away, and if you have any doubt as to whether your post follows the forum rules, don't post it.


EDIT: this thread has been moved from foobar forum.

"Sounds better" is generally assumed to mean "sounds closest to the orginal recording". If you take it in the subjective sense then theres no need to discuss it as better would be entirely determined by each user's preference.

The problem is that 2 players should not sound any different. The output should be as close to the reference decoder as possible. If there is an audible difference there is a bug in the decoder.
So claming that something sounds better makes no sense at all therefor the strong reaction.
They are asked to prove it. And if they can it is a bug that must be corrected or post-processing that can't be used to judge quality.

pass an impulse through winamp and then load up the result in the convolver

then it WILL sound just like winamp.

Show-off!

Then again, all players should have the same h(t).

*Sigh*...

No, we shouldn't.

This is a forum about audio (and media) technology. It is a forum with a scientific or engineering slant. We are interested in objectivity, not subjectivity.

As I've already stated many times, if people want to discuss their "warm fuzzy feeling" they should go to a newsgroup like rec.audio.opinion, or a forum like head-fi (or any of the myriad others for that matter) to post. These are places that are interested in people's "weird or ill-informed" opinions. What makes HA different and important is that, as a community, it isn't interested in this -- and no matter how many people whine about it or state that we should be more "open", this is one thing about HA that is not going to change.

From the point of view that HA has been founded from, "embracing" "weird or ill-informed" opinions is always harmful. Simply by allowing (or rather encouraging) people to post this kind of stuff unrestrained in a thread, we give the completely wrong impression about this community.

If people want to discuss the effects of placebo (that it really can make something sound better, subjectively, to someone), that's fine. If they want to open up for discussion whether or not some set of commandline options or player configuration options have a positive effect on quality or not, that's OK too. The point here though is that there must be a concession in these discussions that arbitrariness and "audiophile speak" are not going to be accepted as being authoritative like they may be in more traditional audiophile circles.

I know this post was intended for the foobar2000 forum but, as far as I am aware, Peter agrees 100% with the HA policies on these matters, so what I've said above should hold just as much there as it does here.