FORMAT WARS - The Elitists Strike Back (1997 Part Deux)

Corporal Forsythe

I made this thread as a compliment to Central Avenue's thread about 1997. It's about the Laserdisc/DVD war that ranged around that very same time. On Usenet, web forums, videophiles who spent tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on their home theater equipment just got the nasty news that the electronics industry is introducing a new format, DVD, that is in every way superior to LD -- and (*gasp*) it was going to be affordable to the average consumer. This did not sit well with this set of elitist snobs. LD is a shitty analog (not digital) format developed when the Beatles were still hot and was outdated before Culture Club showed up but had a long life only because it was marginally better than VHS. Its design was innovative at its inception but due to its composite nature, it was doomed to obsolescence from the very start. 

I'm going to post some of the better reactions to this news that left so many of them shaken and in denial. I find this stuff to be pretty fascinating and comical. I hope you do too. Also, any emphasis and anything between brackets is mine.

Note: the HLD-X9. Let me explain this thing. It's pretty much considered to be the greatest LD player ever made because it could produce the purdiest (most heavily filtered, spruced-up) LD image. Available in Japan only, it had to be imported to the west by enthusiasts. At its release, for importing and shipping such a device, $6000 was not unheard of but eventually it dropped down to around $3000 around 1999. The best signal this particular player could output was a composite (RCA) filtered up to an S-Video signal. This was when a cheap-branded DVD player such as Apex could be purchased for $200 with component (RGB) output. 

gandalfthe.grey (gandalfthe.grey@cwix.com) wrote:

: Any true videophile will be able to acknowledge that laserdisc still has its

: merits.  The video on laserdisc is still quite good.  However, an average

: DVD will outperform an average laserdisc in every category.  

Wrong! Most titles released by Fox,Paramount, PolyGram  and Buena Vista which

are not 16x9 enhanced, look better on LD with the right player (HLD-X9)

We ran a A/B test with the HLD-X9 and Sony DVP-S7000 (Y,R-Y,B-Y)

and the LaserDiscs looked better. [Oh okay well that settles it]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Reply to the above:]

I'm glad someone else is backing me up here.  After I spent a lot of time

earlier this year evaluating DVD players (e.g. DVP-S7000, DV-09, etc.) I

ended-up buying two HLD-X9 MUSE/HiVision/Laserdisc players for the better

picture (with standard laserdiscs).

>> Ah well, who demands top image quality ???  ;->

Surely not the VHS and/or casual renter people for whom the DVD market is

apparently intended and being targeted given recent ads I've seen in the

Silicon Valley newspapers, esp. with the [apparent] increasing release of

P&S (Pan and Scan) DVD offerings instead of letterbox/16:9. [UGH fucking

proles. UGH just UGH!]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I also am a true believer that many of the laserdisc verses DVD comments

that state LD is totally inferior are from people with LD players that

do not show the formats real capabilities.  I was initially using a

Philips CDV-488 as its picture was sharper and less grainy .... 

[bunch of dumb shit nobody cares about here]

...if you are comparing a LD player below the 703/703 and their Elites [$6000 HLD-X9] you

are not comparing LD at it's full potential to DVD [$200 Apex with RGB in 1997].

------------------------------------------

Justice4243

) I

ended-up buying two HLD-X9 MUSE/HiVision/Laserdisc players for the better

picture (with standard laserdiscs).

Good thing he had $12,000 just lying around, his place was starting to look cluttered. 

Justice4243

I just did the math and found out that could have been 60 DVD players.

Two laser disk players would be nice, I'm sure. But are you really going to be able to argue with someone who built a fort out of brand new DVD players?

Corporal Forsythe

[Note: I forgot to mention that the HLD-X9 requires a step-down converter so you don't set it on fire whenever you plug it into a North American power socket.]

Hah!  Oh come on now, "ancillary power suppply equipment" is simply a 120VAC

to 100VAC stepdown transformer in an attractive box; I could just as easily

have hooked-up one of my Variacs but it wouldn't look aesthetic sitting on the

floor and it could be hazardous to the children who are often guests here

(e.g. stubbed toes and/or an electric shock to curious, probing, prying little

fingers).  If I lived in Japan I wouldn't need the stepdown transformer. [I can

move to Japan like RIGHT NOW so THERE!]

--------------------------------

[do try to keep a straight face reading this]

I won't adopt (I hesitate to use the word upgrade) DVD until they are

available in HDTV.  You'd think at some point both HDTV and NTSC would

be on the same disc.  If disc space is currently a problem for both

formats on the same disc, then the NEXT format, with more disc space,

would accommodate both formats.

BTW, what is the capacity of a DVD disc?

---------------------------------

[STAND BACK WE HAVE AN ECONOMIST HERE]

I quite disagree. Disney is going for big bucks here. With the Laser
they stand to make huge profit ($15 - $27 per disc(s) depending on the
version, if you take 101 Dalmations for example) while DVD is not
considered "that profitable".  Transfers or authoring have nothing to do
with it.

-------------------------------

Oh?  You seem to forget the HLD-X9 also plays better-than-1080i-HDTV MUSE/
HiVision Laserdiscs.

[I said stop laughing. STOP. I'M TRYING TO MAKE A QUALITY THREAD HERE]

[... thank you. I remember reading something about HiVision in regards to LD. I think that maybe one or two titles actually saw release, and as stated above, the best possible signal the mightly HLD-9X could output was S-Video which is 480i.]

Corporal Forsythe

Oh, and I'm pretty sure that there wasn't a single television on the market that was capable of playing HiVision at its full potential at the time of that post. 

Justice4243

I won't adopt (I hesitate to use the word upgrade) DVD until they are

available in HDTV.  You'd think at some point both HDTV and NTSC would

be on the same disc.  If disc space is currently a problem for both

formats on the same disc, then the NEXT format, with more disc space,

would accommodate both formats.

BTW, what is the capacity of a DVD disc?

Wut?

I quite disagree. Disney is going for big bucks here. With the Laser
they stand to make huge profit ($15 - $27 per disc(s) depending on the
version, if you take 101 Dalmations for example) while DVD is not
considered "that profitable".  Transfers or authoring have nothing to do
with it.

WHAT?!

Oh?  You seem to forget the HLD-X9 also plays better-than-1080i-HDTV MUSE/
HiVision Laserdiscs.

"It also comes with a rocket to that flies you to the moon!"

Imipolex G

The Beatles are still hot.

Uh, but...I remember one of my friends (or rather, his family) having a laserdisc player circa 1993. It seemed like some rare bizarre thing that only tech weirdos would have. (Sorry man)

Also, I'm curious as to how a laserdisc is, in fact, an analog format.

Corporal Forsythe

[Note: this is the same guy who made the HiVision argument above.]

I bought two so-called high-end DVD players (DVP-S7000) and one "medium"
(2108) just for kicks (even I need a good laugh now and then)

[HAY GUYS I BLOW MONEY ON TECHNOLOGY I DON'T LIKE TO WIN INTERNET ARGUMENTS]

to help dispel the myth amongst my friends and colleagues that "digital is better".  

[I'm curious as to what his opinion is today]

Seeing for themselves (on two calibrated setups, one 4:3 and the other HDTV) has
convinced them to defer any DVD purchases.

Porn, though, looks pretty good on DVD (since, I guess, everyone is too-used
to VHS-only porn).

Any suggestions for additional DVD porn titles?  The ones I presently have [FULL STOP STOP

EVERYTHING STOP STOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPP

INTERMISSION

and now for some completely different bullshit. 

-----------

Vinyl playback is the highest possible quality
format for your home right now.  When 24bit-
96 Khz DVD audio with non-compressed
digital comes out, there may be a new king,
but 16 bit CD is NOT as good as the very
best LPs on the very best playback gear.

----------------

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

----------------

And if the recent response to my latest posting in this regards is any
indication, there will soon be some 20+ more people enjoying HLD-X9 playback
of regular LDs.

[Imagine, if you will, an opinion so persuasive on the internet that it will have you go and blow $3-6000 RIGHT FUCKING NOW]

Corporal Forsythe

Imipölex G said:

The Beatles are still hot.

Uh, but...I remember one of my friends (or rather, his family) having a laserdisc player circa 1993. It seemed like some rare bizarre thing that only tech weirdos would have. (Sorry man)

Also, I'm curious as to how a laserdisc is, in fact, an analog format.

Imi: it's basically the same thing as a phonograph except with a laser stylus. If you were to damage the surface of an LD, it'd be like damaging the surface of an LP. I had a hard time believing that too but the wiki writeup on Laserdisc explains it pretty well. 

Imipolex G

Hm. I may have to read up on that.

Corporal Forsythe

[Now for this guy, I have to give him his own post. He knows all the words, he knows the terms, but he knows jack shit about what any of it means. If this post was turned into a drinking game where you took a shot at every time this guy makes an ignorant statement, you'd be dead of alcohol poisoning by the second paragraph. ]

To be fair, and constructive, I think Thad's point is that a $2400, hand

imported LD player consistently outperforms *any* available DVD player, be it

a $299 DVD player or the top-of-the-line Sony or Pioneer DVD players at $2K+

each.  

[hand-imported. It has to be hand-imported. Key word there. Feet will not do.]

In addition, he suggests that the LD format is not poor like some

DVD-only advocates would suggest.  His contention that LDs be evaluated in a

reference player is quite valid. 

[Dammit, wax cylinders sound better than a 192khz 256kbps AAC and if I only had a HAND IMPORTED REFERENCE PLAYER  I could prove it!!]

 I wouldn't want those THX engineers to be

mastering soundtracks on a $10 pair of computer speakers, either. [what]

As for my own two cents, I believe that there are some great points for DVD,

as well as some major strikes against it.  I think everybody here knows what

the great points are.  So, I'll only outline the strikes, since the DVD

marketers aren't really all that interested in spreading this kind of

thinking:

1) DVDs aren't as robust as advertised.  I've seen a few rotted DVDs already

(which are easy to spot: they're completely unplayable!). 

[I have to interject to explain something here. Another problem with LD was some manufacturers of LD disks did a shitty job and created a product that, over time, "rotted" which is to say it became unplayable. This was especially a problem with anime LDs and you can imagine the problem whenever this occurred to an American anime fan who just spent $2-3000 on a TV series box set. Did I mention that a 2-episode anime LD normally ran $80-90 just by itself back in the 90's? Not adjusting for inflation here, either. Anyway, it was a problem unique to LDs, not DVDs.] 

 This isn't a great

surprise, as the format is new.  For any real quality, IMO, dual-layer is a

must - but this is what causes all of these problems. [ ha ha, no.]

2) DVDs offer lossy compression.  At the most logical level, this means that

they throw information away.  The algorithms they use hope that what they

throw away isn't important.  However, we know by instinct and by proof

(hello, Godel) that this hope is in vain.  There simply isn't enough

bandwidth. [HAY GUYS I NAMEDROPPED GODEL I KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I'M TALKING ABOUT HERE]  [he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about here.]

3) No real upgrade path announced for HDTV.  Why?  It stands to reason that,

with legislation practically forcing adoption of terrestrial HDTV, [space HDTV? 

We're working on that. Call back in 2036.]

 that some kind of player should already be in the upgrade path.  HDTV predates DVD by a

lot, so there's no excuse like how DVD designers didn't Could it be the Big

Bad Bandwidth problem again?  Or, is it Hollywood et al. balking at providing

us with high-quality archive-quality reproductions of their software?  Or,

are they simply running around like chickens with their heads cut off, a

situation which existed as recently as one year ago for DVD?  Wait, look no

further than rewritable DVD.  It's still going on over there.

[TL;DR: He's claiming that a format designed to be consumer accessible and adaptable is crap because he doesn't know or understand the basics of the DVD specification or how adaptable it was.]

4) A sort of addendum to 2): not all material can be encoded for the MPEG2 in

DVD with acceptable quality.  I have a friend in the digital mastering

industry, who claims that the real video pros he knows won't go near DVD. 

This backs up the real video pros I know personally.  Reason: DVD can't

guarantee that it'll reproduce all shots correctly.  [what] With hand tuning, these

shots can be fudged (e.g. filtering rapidly moving backgrounds, fog and

clouds, flashing panned scenes, etc. so that it can be encoded and fitted

into the bandwidth, etc.).  The results might look okay because the random

Gaussian noise is very low level, but you don't get to see what the shot was

really supposed to look like.  This wreaks havoc with the idea of archiving

with the medium.  [Who the fuck would ever suggest archiving anything on DVD?]

So, all in all: we should cheer that the DVD format offers more pleasing

video and audio quality than stupid VHS.  We should cheer that it offers

cheap movies.  We shouldn't cheer that laserdisc is on its way out.  We

should be movie-philes, not format-philes... [what]

Personally, I lament that laserdisc is probably the last attempt at faithfully

bringing us *all* of the video information in as high a quality as

possible.  We are now entering an era where we can only get what somebody else

*thinks* are the important bits of video information.

Joseph

Corporal Forsythe

> > "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" has nearly perfect menu sequencing.
> > When you are returned to the prior menu, the next selection is highlighted.
> > Bad menuing is an implementation fault, not a format fault. BTW, how do you
> > like those fancy menus that your LDs have?

35mm film has no menus either.  If I wanted a click-and-drool interface 
made for idoits, I'd go buy a PC.  

DVD's menus are just plain insulting.

[Dead giveaway as an Apple user. At this time DVD playback was a very new thing on PCs that required MP2 hardware that Apple didn't bother with. Sour grapes, basically.]

Justice4243

"
[hand-imported. It has to be hand-imported. Key word there. Feet will not do.]"

I saw the same thing and was like "...as opposed to MACHINE imported?"

Corporal Forsythe

[Break out the Early Times for this one]

----------

>> The professional animators that I know,  prefer laserdisc to DVD.
>> Indeed, the most anti-DVD people I have ever heard have been animators.
>>

I'm in the process of becoming traditional animator.  Like others who have
access to one, I use my LD player also as a tool to study and analyze motion
and timing.  I can I'll tell you exactly why I(we) will not go near a DVD
player.

With the effects that are available when playing an CAV disc, the MPEG anim
format does not support them well or even at all.  When I heard that MPEG was
the format in the DVD spec, all was lost.  You just can't do a lot of things
with a delta based anime format.  

[A delta-based anime format.

A DELTA-BASED ANIME FORMAT.]

A CAV LD is just a disc full of stills being
"flipped" upto 30fps. [BRB store out of Early Times]  Here is what you can do on a CAV disc that cannot be done on a typical DVD player. [Out again BRB]

[you probably already know all these points are bullshit.]

*Smoothly step forward or backward frame by frame with the jogwheel. 
*Smoothly slo-mo forward and backward up to full framerate.
*Ping-pong in both directions at any speed.
*Whole frames are accessible.
*On more robust players, jumping frame to frame anywhere is near instant.

CAV LD is the perfect format for breaking down a film for study this side of
having the reel.

Regards,

Erikku <------------------

----------------------------------------

Dear Erikku, if you ever see this post, let us know how that animation job in Glorious Nippon has worked out for you. 

Justice4243

"delta based anime format."

...The fuck does this even mean?

Corporal Forsythe

I have no idea but I cannot wait to find a place or time to use that term

Imipolex G

Delta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet.

Imipolex G

...which sheds no light whatsoever on that comment.

lee4hmz

It's a rather dumb reference to the way MPEG-2 encodes video. There's three kinds of frames, and two of those are "predicted" (interpolated) from I-frames in a way that saves spaces, but keeps most of the picture intact. What Erikku up there was afraid of is that the player would be too dumb to play the P frames and B-frames without adding in the I-frames (which is not how MPEG-2 works), and you'd get a half-composed mess like the film melted or something. (Something like that can still happen if the "group of pictures" is corrupted -- you get Ps or Bs without a matching I -- but unless the disc is screwed up, that's unlikely to happen the way whiny anime pantsu said.)

Also, the other person that was bitching about MPEG-2 being a lossy format and how DVD has no soul because of it, blah blah blah, seems to have forgotten that NTSC itself is a lossy format. Unless you have the master negative in the basement, pendejo, I don't think you have a right to bitch about lossy compression!

Corporal Forsythe

At this time in the audio/video world, reviewer/critic credibility for such technology was literally purchased. Hardly anyone who could bring themselves to drop $6000 on a video player over a "grey" market (which means no warranty, support or especially a refund on this side of the ocean) was going to look at their purchase critically and objectively and say to themselves "was this really worth the price of a small car?" 

This also made them very defensive about their "investment" and prone to dream up the dumbest shit to justify a failed technology and harshly criticize a new one, which the magical HLD-9X allowed them to do at the time. I don't care if this new, cheaper, consumer-friendly technology can deliver its content over three newer, superior types of video connections at a fraction of the price, it's not better than my $6000 player. Do you have a $6000 player to compare it your piece of crap $200 Apex? No? The shut up, you don't know what you're talking about!

These posts that I found for this thread were all from a long argument on Usenet about how DVD was going to ultimately fail within 1 year and the consumers would return to LD in droves. Not even kidding. The "proof" offered for their hypothesis was that the average consumer would reject the harsh, digital nature of DVD (by using the worst encodes they could find to prove their point) and on their part used as a benchmark an LD player (again, the HLD-9x) that was well out of the range of the pocketbook, consideration, and part of the world of this same consumer base; who, by the way, for the most part have never even heard of Laserdisc in the first place.  

This is only the tip of the iceberg, their rationalizations on this evolution in technology get even more ridiculous when DVD starts proving its success with the consumers. It's like watching a bunch of video game console warriors figuratively duke it out over the internet except instead of kids defending the honor of Nintendo or Sony, we get these are middle aged  family men doing the exact same thing. Think back to arguments in the school lunchroom about "Mode 7" and "Blast Processing" except on a larger scale and budget. I can't help but find it fascinating. 

lee4hmz

Wow, that sounds like the same justifications the OS/2 people were using in 1991 or so to "prove" that Windows 3.x was a flash in the pan, and that everyone would be using The Promised OS soon enough. Some of them were quite ready to go down with the ship, even after it was clear Windows 95, even with all its flaws, was going to beat both Windows 3.1 and OS/2 Warp.

Justice4243

It's certainly rather interesting to see this sort of psychological reaction at work.

Hopefully these guys had a high disposable income, otherwise it seems they spent a lot of money just to keep their fantasy alive.

lee4hmz

Yeah, technology in general was just plain expensive before, oh, 1995. The impression I got from reading old PC Mags is that you pretty much had to be rich or a corporation to really buy an Intel PC in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Good ones were easily 4 digits, and just imagine what those prices would be like adjusted for inflation! This is why the Commodore 64 held out for so long...

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The user and all related content has been deleted.

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Corporal Forsythe

As for the video quality possible:

As stated before, LD is a composite format at its core and there's no getting around that. The laser pickup hits the composite "track" on the LD and there's your video. Later players got around this taking the video and trying to chop it up and filter it in the player to spit out an S-video signal (which was inferior to pure S-video) and that's the best it could ever hope to do. A TV could do this to at its source but that's regardless of the fact that you can only spit-shine a hopelessly outdated signal source too. 

That's not to say they didn't try at the enthusiast level. If you thought a ridiculous amount of money was trading hands due to overpriced hardware, there was the black magic market to make your movie playback even movier. Shit like:

• Laserdisc balancing rings. Rings you put on a laserdisc to "balance" it better during its spin to somehow improve the video signal. 
• Green felt markers (and later red felt markers) applied to a disc to magically improve the signal.
• Every sort of in-line whatever-the-fuck black-box Orgone-powered (well not all Orgone. Some used Argone, Eargone, and the elusive Fargone) devices that did something (nothing) to a video signal that only videophiles could detect.
• Slabs of wood costing from $200 to $5000 that you set your player on to improve image quality.
• Cables and wiring that cost ridic.... wait, they're still pulling this scam.

Imipolex G

Orgone! I knew it.

Justice4243

I noticed on the list Lumine posted that many of the LD advantages where followed by caveats. 

Justice4243

"Cables and wiring that cost ridic.... wait, they're still pulling this scam."

Working at a retail store and knowing how much these things are worth at cost will make you question your ethics as far as selling cables to people. We're talking 1,000% or more net profit of many of these cables.

Corporal Forsythe

Justice42 said:

I noticed on the list Lumine posted that many of the LD advantages where followed by caveats. 

Just about all of which were "concerns" voiced by audiophiles and videophiles, two groups that happily consume and regurgitate utter bullshit at such a rate that if the rest of the world was aware, it would solve our biofuel needs permanently.

Justice42 said:

"Cables and wiring that cost ridic.... wait, they're still pulling this scam."

Working at a retail store and knowing how much these things are worth at cost will make you question your ethics as far as selling cables to people. We're talking 1,000% or more net profit of many of these cables.

Oh definitely. It's a shame, especially those brands that claim the superior sound/video quality of their digital cables. It's gold CDs all over again (where, when CDs were a relatively new thing, "gold" CDs were pressed for popular albums and acts touting the superior sound quality of the process -- that is, to say, the 1's and 0's on a gold CD sound better than the 1's and 0's on a regular CD.)

Radio Shack, sadly, has gone this route too -- probably as a measure to save itself. 10 years ago an RCA y-adapter set me back about $1.50, the other day looking for the same thing was $8. I lost a DVI -> VGA adapter that came with my old desktop and the replacement Radio Shack had on hand was something like $25, with monoprice having the same thing for $2. 

lee4hmz

Radio Shack used to be one of my favorite stores...now they're not much better than Best Buy (and Best Buy itself has fallen pretty far as well). Micro Center is a far better electronics store, believe it or not, but there's not many of those outside Columbus (we're lucky to have one in Virginia at all).

Imipolex G

Yeah, I have a coworker who regularly makes trips over to Columbus to visit the Micro Center.

Once upon a time, I considered becoming an audiophile. But I realized it wasn't worth it.

Justice4243

Once in a while, I travel to here: 
http://www.pchcables.com/ as it's sorta local (About a ~40 minute drive from my house).

We got a 25' HDMI cable and 25' Digital Optical audio cable complete with mico-converter for our computers for under $25.

It's like I died and went to Cable Heaven when I walk in.

Corporal Forsythe

Imipölex G said:

Once upon a time, I considered becoming an audiophile. But I realized it wasn't worth it.

Going from the current meaning of "audiophile", you're correct, but don't let their stupidity dissuade you from becoming an audio enthusiast. Justice and I were talking about it in the main thread, you can go about building an incredibly nice-sounding and looking audio system for (literally) pennies if you just look around and keep in mind that  $300-per-foot oxygen-free double-shielded polar-aligned blessed-with-holy-water speaker wire will not give you one iota of measurable quality over a frayed lamp cord you found in a trash can.

lee4hmz

Or, for that matter, Romex from the hardware store. :lol:

Justice4243

A nice surround system is good thing to have for movies, but I agree with Forsythe that it doesn't really require going insane with money to accomplish. 

I don't have a ton of experience from building it out of GoodWill, but I have a a system that's going on 10 years old and, honestly, it doesn't seem anything has changed enough to warrant upgrading. If anything, good Speaker placement is what has the biggest impact on my sound experience now.

This might be different if I was listening to music much instead of watching movies, but it all sounds good and I think I could blow a hole in my house with the subwoofer I got with it.

It only does five speakers,  but considering it seems most movies STILL only do outputs for five speakers, I'm wondering if the current thinking is "Do people even NEED more directions to here stuff from?"

Justice4243

I have this thing: 
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/423242-REG/Yamaha_HTR5930SL_HTR_5930_5_1_Channel_Digital_Home.html

Apparently it's still worth like $200 used, if E-bay is a good metric.

That seems pretty insane given how old this thing is.

Imipolex G

Well, it just seemed to me that I wasn't going to get any significant improvement in music enjoyment from buying SUPER HIGH END EXPENSIVE EQUIPMENT. Even if the sound quality improved a little, it wouldn't be worth it...

Just my opinion.

Justice4243

When I worked in Best Buy, a co-worker was suggesting I basically buy the largest, most expensive speakers, and best receiver. 

But that would have possibly costs five times more than what I got, and doubt I would have got five times the enjoyment out of it.

Imipolex G

Yeah. That.

Corporal Forsythe

Imipölex G said:

Well, it just seemed to me that I wasn't going to get any significant improvement in music enjoyment from buying SUPER HIGH END EXPENSIVE EQUIPMENT. Even if the sound quality improved a little, it wouldn't be worth it...

Just my opinion.

That's not an opinion, you're correct. There's a point where you'd need a sound engineer who knew what the hell he was doing with the right equipment to objectively confirm that $5,000 wooden volume dial replacement (not making this up, either) makes an audible difference and you're not tripping the placebo effect.  

And that's if we're discussing flat-rate faithful reproduction of, say, an orchestra at a concert hall. That could be measured, and like Justice said above it has more to do with staging and adjusting your equipment than it ever will with throwing money at it. The nice thing is equipment such as amps and speakers really haven't changed too much in the past 40 years so if all you want is nice clean sound; then Ebay, Craigslist, and Goodwill are your friend. 

Imipolex G

I have a cheap pair of headphones, don't even know where they came from, but they seem to work well enough.

Obā-san

Once I get over $120 or so I can't really tell the quality difference between headphones, provided they have nice even response.

Corporal Forsythe

Imipölex G said:

I have a cheap pair of headphones, don't even know where they came from, but they seem to work well enough.

Frictional_Minnesota said:

Once I get over $120 or so I can't really tell the quality difference between headphones, provided they have nice even response.

Well there you go, both of you have it figured out.  If you're pleased with how whatever you currently have sounds, then there's no need to fix what's not broken. So much the better that you did so economically and not at half the price of a typical middle-class home.