Lighting talk given at PloneConf 2017 on improving your music listening experience

1. “Music to your ears”
Fred van Dijk

2. Confession
“ I’m a bit of an audiophile ”
An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about
high-fidelity sound reproduction. Audiophile values
may be applied at all stages of music reproduction

3. When I’m at Plone events / sprints
and talk to some of you about how
you listen to music…
It sometimes
makes me sad

4. We all need ‘flow’
Listening to (our favourite) music often
helps with that
when we work/contribute and
need to concentrate on whatever

5. We spend effort and time on
getting and keeping flow
• Remove distractions:
• Clutter, family members / coworkers
• Improve flow:
• good tools (laptop, monitor, desk, chair)
• good lighting
• good mood, exercise, yoga, food

6. And when it gets to
listening to music …
€ 10,-
huh?
what?

7. “I don’t hear a difference”
“I don’t care”
Don’t hear difference
!= not feeling
!= doesn’t matter
Do you
have the right
audio setup?
sublimal influence
1) 2)

8. YMMV*
Your Mileage May Vary - Everybody is different
I’m convinced that ‘upping’
your daily music setup
contributes to a better
experience, flow, coding,
writing and wellbeing

9. Pareto principle
Audio equipment: 20% of the money
gives you 80% of the result
( and the remaining 80% of a very expensive
audio system gives you < %20 of the result )

10. Listening to music, the chain

11. The weakest link rules
(Or why you might not hear any difference
when trying new headset, cable, music)
• Source audio file
• D/A converter
• Amplifier
• Cable
• Headphones

12. The music source
• Most of music is streaming now
• high quality streaming
• local files mp3, m4a, ogg vorbis
• (mp3’s from 10 years ago with 128kbit bitrate)
• I re-imported my personal cd library again last year to a
lossless file format

13. The D/A converter
• It’s a very important but underestimated
component
• Colours your music
• Most laptops, desktops and mobile phones have
crappy ones
• It’s often afterthought for manufacturers, money
is spend on ‘more important’ components
• Good mobile: d/a usb stick, often integrated
amplifier
• Interference
001101010101’s to analog current

14. Cables
• Don’t use 3-6 euro cables from the
supermarket. (or € from generic
electronic stores)
• Audible difference between €5 - €20
- €40 price range
• Build quality, electrical conductance,
isolation, copper, it’s physics.
• > 30-50 euro’s diminishing returns

15. Headphones
• Headphones can also color the sound
representation
• Personal taste
• in-ear, over ear, closed, build quality
• smaller speaker = less bass or you pay a lot
more (technology)
• Same rule of diminishing returns, but < € 50
gets difficult quality wise
• > €150 into the audiophile range

16. Speakers and amplifiers
• combination of amplifier/speaker
• personal taste
• depends on the room
• speakers with built-in amplifier
more balanced but no upgrade
path
• Stereo is good enough for music
(!= movies)

17. Lots of stuff gets integrated
nowadays
quality is improving, but

18. The cost
• € 100 usb D/A converter (switched to a € 200)
• € 160 headphone
• € 40 cable
• € 40 mobile phone adapter
2 hours of music a day, 40 work weeks/year, 2
years = 6400 hours. 340000/6400 = 6.3 cents/hour
for my current ‘mobile’ setup

19. Personal experience
• Ear-opener and start for me was an external D/A converter
• Details I had never heard before
• Source direct actually does something on your amplifier
• “Depth” in music
• Separate components lets you upgrade in small steps
• Get educated - learn - experiment

20. Wanna listen to my setup, talk?
Ask :-)
Thank you, enjoy your music !!!