wow, quite a lot of BS, I did not expect that from someone who claims to be at the pinnacle of sound reproduction. But it surely explains why I have never heard a good sounding F1 system, ever.
All horn speakers sound like krap, & the fact they don't even bother 2 flare the horns on these means it's all just honking @ U in 'one note blast' fashion. They are a 'musical instrument', not 'transducers'. U feed them whatever source & they will do their thing 2 it, like if U stuck a speaker into a guitar sound hole LOL!! U can tell all of this just looking them = like Klipsch but bigger & more expensive =))
I think there are some points of his argumentation wich are right. But especially his thinkings about mp3 are just antiquated. I challenge him to hear any differences between a 320kbt/s Mp3 and a Cd, he won't hear any ones like everybody else. I hate this kind of mp3 Bashing...
There is a huge difference between an 256kBps Apple mp3 and a 320kBps Lame encode. A 24/96 is not better than a 16/44, what is actually needed is reference grade converters. A 25$ chip and a careful layout can do that nowadays. We still get devices with mediocre sound quality in the output. Mindblowing. But in the end, we need a better awareness of sound quality. I will not fight too hard.
7:39 I feel the need to correct the record here. This is complete bullshit, humans are only capable of hearing between 20-20,000Hz (a lot of people can't even hear past 16Khz), and the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem clearly demonstrates that any sound recorded with a sample rate double its emission frequency will be reproduced accurately within the range of human hearing. At 7:45, he laments how the minimum ACCEPTABLE sample rate is 96Khz. This makes no sense in the realm of playback (recording is an entirely different story and that's a whole separate tangent about gain headroom and the quality of A/D and D/A conversion and whatnot), there's no reason to capture information that we are incapable of perceiving, it just results in a larger file size and the greater potential for intermodulation distortion when the amplifier reads the nonlinearity in the signal but nevertheless reproduces it anyway and the speaker is forced to produce more acoustic information than what is even perceptible to us. As many others in these comments have already pointed out, for the most part, a properly-encoded 320kbps LAME MP3 file SHOULD be indistinguishable from a high-resolution or even CD-quality rip of the same track (there are of course exceptions depending on mastering technique and whatnot). Given the way he throws around these numbers, you can't help but get the feeling he's trying to capitalize on the same "higher number equals better" groupthink that bankrolled HDTracks and devices like the Ponoplayer. Also to 9:23 's point, this is SPECIFICALLY why every single club and venue on the fucking planet today has some kind of hardware or software-based limiter.
even he wouldnt notice a difference between a good 320kbps mp3 and a wav/cd/flac whatever. me and many other people made a lot of blintests with guys like him and no one - really no one - noticed the difference, even on a soundsystem of the price of a middle class car - like i have at home and built by myself. the rest he says is sad but most of it is true...
F1 is not only average but even obsolete, modern systems for example line arrays, are able to distribute the sound evenly over a wide area.That is done with those speaker-bananas you see hanging at big concerts.
All Horns Suk, but N E horn that isn't even flared is an absolute pathetic $cam, & even those that R but not symmetrical like a round funnel R a joke. Some of the round flared things can approach dome tweeter territory 4 instance, but still worse because of the distortions & peaky colorations caused by the constrained air 'slug' in front of the driver. Direct radiators R the way 2 go, & with lots of room behind 2 'breathe' =) If U need more volume, just stack them up in a line (no horns) = can go very loud & actually accurate instead of jaggy & annoying, etc.
This test was done with higly trained hifi guys... And i think Cd quality is more than just Tolerable? The problem is not samplerate but audioengineers wich do their job bad ...
I have ears for 39 years (because I'm 39) and all I can say is, Tony Andrews is absolutely right. Anybody can hear it. And I hear it since 2005, when I bought my first F1 speakers...
Isn't this about club music? Who in the world would hear the difference between an Audio CD and a Super Audio CD in a club? Except... noboby? I agree that sound quality should be taken more care of in a lot of clubs. But saying WAV-Files are not enough seems pretty far away from reality. Again, we're talking about clubs here.
speedybodie that is not true. There is ways to train your ears, and actually it is a big difference from wav to mp3. If you want to hear differences, go to Berghain!
M3TOXI I doubt that. Of course there are some audiophile specialists who may hear a difference, and yes, Berghain is equipped with a very good Funktion One PA. But we're still talking about clubs with 100 db/m and more. At this sound pressure there will be no noticeable difference between an 320 MP3 and lossless audio. If you turn the volume to a sound pressure of lets say 80 dB/m or less you should hear a difference. But this won't happen in a club. Don't get me wrong, there are surely people who can hear a difference but not the usual club guest. Pick a bunch of people in a club and put them in front of a good sound system at 95 dB/m and an average sound system at 105 dB/m. I would bet that 100% would prefer the latter. Sad but true.
Funktion One, the opposite of Bose who try to get everything through mid-range drivers and boost the shit out of bass and treble. Do Bose actually know what a tweeter is?
Function One, trying 2 run an 8" paper cone at 4,000-17,000 Hz so U can enjoy all the edgy blurry super-distorted fail-train that it's pathetic breakup pattern can give U, because 'compression drivers sound krap', but 'we don't do direct radiator line arrays' (because that would cost more than big plastic 'one note' funnels bolted on the front) HAHAHA =)) That is 'Function One' / 'Turbo$ound' LOL
dude this guy makes the finest most exquisit audio systems in the world, there's many people out there even average DJs, who can tell the difference between a 320 MP3 and a 16bit WAVE. In fact he said in an interview that CD quality is too low, you need at least 24bits and 96khz to get a tolerable sound.
"tell the difference between a 320 MP3 and a 16bit WAVE" nobody can tell that difference, unless there is a serious flaw in the mp3 encode. these people just believe they can hear the difference. put them in a double blind test and they will al crap out !
They're horn systems, & all horns sound like $hit, espeically 1's that R not even flared 2 spread out the frequency response pattern. All his systems R a sick 'one note distortion instrument' joke. They're not really speakers, but 'aural exciters'. They can't possibly B accurate because there is a fixed narrow range of distorted resonance due 2 the geometry. What a Fail-Train =))
I really like the artefacts in the sound when he's talking about mp3...
wow, quite a lot of BS, I did not expect that from someone who claims to be at the pinnacle of sound reproduction. But it surely explains why I have never heard a good sounding F1 system, ever.
F1 sucks, always have, always will...this twat hasn't got a fucking clue
All horn speakers sound like krap, & the fact they don't even bother 2 flare the horns on these means it's all just honking @ U in 'one note blast' fashion. They are a 'musical instrument', not 'transducers'. U feed them whatever source & they will do their thing 2 it, like if U stuck a speaker into a guitar sound hole LOL!! U can tell all of this just looking them = like Klipsch but bigger & more expensive =))
i just only hear a lot of excuses to explain why most of the time a funktion one set doesn't blows your mind
julian marino ramos that’s one interpretation. Keep playing those mp3s on that pioneer mixer
I bet there are a lot of hairdressers out there who could criticize his hair-do in the exact same fashion as he criticizes bad audio. To each his own.
I think there are some points of his argumentation wich are right. But especially his thinkings about mp3 are just antiquated. I challenge him to hear any differences between a 320kbt/s Mp3 and a Cd, he won't hear any ones like everybody else. I hate this kind of mp3 Bashing...
There is a huge difference between an 256kBps Apple mp3 and a 320kBps Lame encode. A 24/96 is not better than a 16/44, what is actually needed is reference grade converters. A 25$ chip and a careful layout can do that nowadays. We still get devices with mediocre sound quality in the output. Mindblowing.
But in the end, we need a better awareness of sound quality. I will not fight too hard.
Fantastic interview.
7:39 I feel the need to correct the record here. This is complete bullshit, humans are only capable of hearing between 20-20,000Hz (a lot of people can't even hear past 16Khz), and the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem clearly demonstrates that any sound recorded with a sample rate double its emission frequency will be reproduced accurately within the range of human hearing. At 7:45, he laments how the minimum ACCEPTABLE sample rate is 96Khz. This makes no sense in the realm of playback (recording is an entirely different story and that's a whole separate tangent about gain headroom and the quality of A/D and D/A conversion and whatnot), there's no reason to capture information that we are incapable of perceiving, it just results in a larger file size and the greater potential for intermodulation distortion when the amplifier reads the nonlinearity in the signal but nevertheless reproduces it anyway and the speaker is forced to produce more acoustic information than what is even perceptible to us. As many others in these comments have already pointed out, for the most part, a properly-encoded 320kbps LAME MP3 file SHOULD be indistinguishable from a high-resolution or even CD-quality rip of the same track (there are of course exceptions depending on mastering technique and whatnot). Given the way he throws around these numbers, you can't help but get the feeling he's trying to capitalize on the same "higher number equals better" groupthink that bankrolled HDTracks and devices like the Ponoplayer.
Also to 9:23 's point, this is SPECIFICALLY why every single club and venue on the fucking planet today has some kind of hardware or software-based limiter.
even he wouldnt notice a difference between a good 320kbps mp3 and a wav/cd/flac whatever. me and many other people made a lot of blintests with guys like him and no one - really no one - noticed the difference, even on a soundsystem of the price of a middle class car - like i have at home and built by myself.
the rest he says is sad but most of it is true...
"...the high frequencies sound like screwed up crisp packets and feel like a chainsaw..." - Tony Andrews himself.
the Acoustic part really got me
Would love to get him, tim de paravicini, and David mancuso in a room to build THE party to end all parties
F1 is not only average but even obsolete, modern systems for example line arrays, are able to distribute the sound evenly over a wide area.That is done with those speaker-bananas you see hanging at big concerts.
All Horns Suk, but N E horn that isn't even flared is an absolute pathetic $cam, & even those that R but not symmetrical like a round funnel R a joke. Some of the round flared things can approach dome tweeter territory 4 instance, but still worse because of the distortions & peaky colorations caused by the constrained air 'slug' in front of the driver. Direct radiators R the way 2 go, & with lots of room behind 2 'breathe' =) If U need more volume, just stack them up in a line (no horns) = can go very loud & actually accurate instead of jaggy & annoying, etc.
Awesome!
legend
This test was done with higly trained hifi guys...
And i think Cd quality is more than just Tolerable? The problem is not samplerate but audioengineers wich do their job bad
...
will Funktion one ever create studio-style speakers? (or home audio)
I hope not
i'dd like to know 2 !!
true that CD quality is good enough for almost every occasion. But still, a 320MP3 and a WAVE is a big difference.
@@Deathrape2001 not good to name call...
put a flat speaker into a room and it is not flat any more. put not flat designed speaker into a room and... it still isn't flat. where's advantage?
I have ears for 39 years (because I'm 39) and all I can say is, Tony Andrews is absolutely right.
Anybody can hear it.
And I hear it since 2005, when I bought my first F1 speakers...
Great ponytail.
Fascinating. Tony actually cares.
Song ID on 2:45 ?
good man!
Isn't this about club music? Who in the world would hear the difference between an Audio CD and a Super Audio CD in a club? Except... noboby? I agree that sound quality should be taken more care of in a lot of clubs. But saying WAV-Files are not enough seems pretty far away from reality. Again, we're talking about clubs here.
speedybodie that is not true. There is ways to train your ears, and actually it is a big difference from wav to mp3. If you want to hear differences, go to Berghain!
M3TOXI I doubt that. Of course there are some audiophile specialists who may hear a difference, and yes, Berghain is equipped with a very good Funktion One PA. But we're still talking about clubs with 100 db/m and more. At this sound pressure there will be no noticeable difference between an 320 MP3 and lossless audio. If you turn the volume to a sound pressure of lets say 80 dB/m or less you should hear a difference. But this won't happen in a club.
Don't get me wrong, there are surely people who can hear a difference but not the usual club guest. Pick a bunch of people in a club and put them in front of a good sound system at 95 dB/m and an average sound system at 105 dB/m. I would bet that 100% would prefer the latter. Sad but true.
+speedybodie Mp3 compresion has to be reealy bad if you want to hear the difference on a F1 system...
Paper is more organic than metal... hmmmmmmmmmmm.
holy fuck!! bigups to the living legend of sound.
Funktion One, the opposite of Bose who try to get everything through mid-range drivers and boost the shit out of bass and treble. Do Bose actually know what a tweeter is?
Function One, trying 2 run an 8" paper cone at 4,000-17,000 Hz so U can enjoy all the edgy blurry super-distorted fail-train that it's pathetic breakup pattern can give U, because 'compression drivers sound krap', but 'we don't do direct radiator line arrays' (because that would cost more than big plastic 'one note' funnels bolted on the front) HAHAHA =)) That is 'Function One' / 'Turbo$ound' LOL
dude this guy makes the finest most exquisit audio systems in the world, there's many people out there even average DJs, who can tell the difference between a 320 MP3 and a 16bit WAVE. In fact he said in an interview that CD quality is too low, you need at least 24bits and 96khz to get a tolerable sound.
"tell the difference between a 320 MP3 and a 16bit WAVE" nobody can tell that difference, unless there is a serious flaw in the mp3 encode. these people just believe they can hear the difference. put them in a double blind test and they will al crap out !
They're horn systems, & all horns sound like $hit, espeically 1's that R not even flared 2 spread out the frequency response pattern. All his systems R a sick 'one note distortion instrument' joke. They're not really speakers, but 'aural exciters'. They can't possibly B accurate because there is a fixed narrow range of distorted resonance due 2 the geometry. What a Fail-Train =))
Funktion One sound systems are about as "exquisite" as your spelling of the word.
Na, the worst thing is F1
CRAP!
What a top man he's so right on so many levels well done that man
you're clearly deaf
also...he's a twat