Why are you leaving out the most plausible explanation?

If so, wouldn't a more powerful system always sound better, given that one could just keep turning up the volume?

Personally, as an explanation, greater volume alone seems a little too simplistic for me.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 17:32:36

Besides the fact that high end audio stores have all but disappeared from my area, I've heard two sucessive generations of scary reports from the high end exhibitors areas of CES.

So your only evidence is a personal observation about stores in your area and some marketing gossip at trade shows? I'm sorry but personally, I'm not convinced. 

Nope, but I don't know if its worth the trouble to give you a longer answer and have you misunderstand what I say and dismiss it all, anyway. :-(
Hint, the info about CES came from two long term personal friends, one of whose name you would recognize and the other who has worked behind the scenes in the audio industry for maybe 20 years. They illustrated their comments with floor plans of exhibit areas and photographs.

Tell me, what's going on with high end audio stores in your area?

Yes, but there is a trivial limitation: your ears will hurt or even before that your neighbors will ring your doorbell.

It's not a question of personal preference but a well studied fact. Even your hearing's frequency response sensibility differs for diverging volume levels. Try for yourself, I have just uploaded two test samples.

I thought that part was obvious: in a comparison between vinyl and iPod, all kinds of things could be wrong with the version on the iPod: loudness war / badly remastered CD, lousy lossy encoding / transcoding, inappropriate EQ applied to the recording (or maybe iPod output), file with dubious provenance downloaded for free etc etc

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Tell me, what's going on with high end audio stores in your area?

Plenty, there's a brand new turntable store selling new and used albums and CDs, the high end stores are all doing fine and the only real loss has been in the number of new music retailers, which doesn't bother me since I believe current retail CD prices are unjustified.

Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-02 03:33:42

Nope, but I don't know if its worth the trouble to give you a longer answer and have you misunderstand what I say and dismiss it all, anyway. :-(
Hint, the info about CES came from two long term personal friends, one of whose name you would recognize and the other who has worked behind the scenes in the audio industry for maybe 20 years. They illustrated their comments with floor plans of exhibit areas and photographs.

First off, what is it in particular that I've misunderstood? Secondly, in what way have I been dismissive? All I've asked for was the "evidence", which, so far anyways, seems to me to be simply hearsay and conjecture. Look, I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse or pedantic, I'm simply trying to make the point that you seem to have made a claim without providing any proof of it. Personally, I'm left wondering why you're so defensive about this.

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Tell me, what's going on with high end audio stores in your area?

Plenty, there's a brand new turntable store selling new and used albums and CDs, the high end stores are all doing fine and the only real loss has been in the number of new music retailers, which doesn't bother me since I believe current retail CD prices are unjustified.

Quote from: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-01 04:11:02

Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.

I am obviously not familiar with your magazine's editorial history, but did Stereophile ever review cassette decks?

Did you ever, at any point, evaluate different brands and types of cassette tapes and make recommendations as to which was the best?

I would argue that if "high end" audio were really doing well and weren't seriously concerned about its future then there wouldn't be a need for this scorched earth campaign against lossy compression.

With respect, you're making bricks without straw, here. One can express and act on a preference without there having to be a conspiracy theory underlying that behavior.

Thanks for stepping into my trap. After criticizing my anecdote, you provided one of your own! ;-)

I see from your profile that you are from Canada - where in Canada?

You are mixing stuff up.

Most people here would agree that high end speakers really make a tremendous difference.

The only issue, that has been questioned, is wether an iPod sounds like crap vs. Fremer's gramophone (and the medium's inherent physical limitations).

Serious doubts apply. Volume mismatch, a crappy transcoded download, a multitude of reasons are sufficient to explain a difference.

That's a side effect of an unscientific approach to audio evaluation.

Quote from: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-01 14:26:25

Or to put it more bluntly, if it was medicine rather than audio, the practice would be illegal (in most parts of the developed world!).

Sigh ... this is simply not true, in fact right now, there are many 'medications' that have questionable medicinal value; for example, kids cough syrup. In fact, there is an entire world of alternative, unproven, holistic 'legal' remedies in the health fields of all the countries of the first world.

The Placebo Effect is brought up in a number of different places in this thread. Personally, I always wonder, is this effect as bad, or as serious, as it's being held up to be? If some individuals feel better spending money in order to believe they are hearing better, is this really a bad, or avoidable, thing? Isn't it simply true that some people will always require equipment to be expensive before they can be satisfied?

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 17:32:36

Besides the fact that high end audio stores have all but disappeared from my area, I've heard two sucessive generations of scary reports from the high end exhibitors areas of CES.

So your only evidence is a personal observation about stores in your area and some marketing gossip at trade shows? I'm sorry but personally, I'm not convinced. 

Quote from: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-01 04:11:02

Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.

I am obviously not familiar with your magazine's editorial history, but did Stereophile ever review cassette decks?  Did you ever, at any point, evaluate different brands and types of cassette tapes and make recommendations as to which was the best?

Quote from: Frumious B on 2009-05-02 12:34:21

Quote from: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-01 04:11:02

Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.

I am obviously not familiar with your magazine's editorial history, but did Stereophile ever review cassette decks?

Before I took over from J. Gordon Holt 23 years ago yesterday, yes, there were some reviews of cassette recorders: a Revox, a Tandberg, a couple of Nakamichis, the original Advent. Gordon contributed one more cassette recorder review, of the Arcam, after that date, and there might have been a couple of others, from other writers. But none for the past 20 years. The potential sound quality was not worth our attention, I felt.

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Did you ever, at any point, evaluate different brands and types of cassette tapes and make recommendations as to which was the best?

Not in Stereophile. I did commission such a test for Hi-Fi News nearly 30 years ago. There's no inconsistency here. I am not J. Gordon Holt and Hi-Fi News was then much more a mainstream magazine than it is today or Stereophile has been since I took it over. Cassettes were a convenience medium just like lossy compressed files are today.

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I would argue that if "high end" audio were really doing well and weren't seriously concerned about its future then there wouldn't be a need for this scorched earth campaign against lossy compression.

With respect, you're making bricks without straw, here. One can express and act on a preference without there having to be a conspiracy theory underlying that behavior.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Quote from: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-02 14:01:14

With respect, you're making bricks without straw, here. One can express and act on a preference without there having to be a conspiracy theory underlying that behavior.

It just seems to me that I see a lot of very visceral hatred for anything to do with lossy compression from folks who move around in that "high end" audio world, if not from you personally then most definitely from your rank and file subscribers.

If you Google around and wade through some of the swill that's out there then it's pretty eye opening.  Some of these cats are blaming lossy compression for everything short of 9/11.  It's my experience that people simply don't react that way to something unless they feel threatened by it.

Heck, they review turntables and vinyl  rekkids...which, purely on a measurement basis, are clearly inferior to CD players.  THat's why an analogous essay on TTs and LPs like the one on 'typical' mp3s,  would be most amusing....albeit  most unlikely.

If the 'expression' and 'act' is to publish essays consisting solely of measurements of mp3s as a basis for explaining why audiophiles could/SHOULD prefer CD to them, when perceptual encoding guarantees that mp3 will 'look' (but not necessarily *SOUND*) worse than lossless, then one is justified in suspecting that something other than mere education and entertainment is going on. If one affects scientific rigor via bench tests, and critiques attempts and arguments pro at DBT, but does not recognize, or consistently downplays, the role of non-audio factors in 'audio' preference -- which is to say, the broader fundamental issue of expectation biases, and the use of controls -- then one can reasonably conclude that something more than mere education and entertainment is going on.

There is an equally valid hypothesis, which is that at least some of these unnamed people you mention have tried lossy compression and didn't like what they heard.

Just because a test is performed under double-blind conditions doesn't mean it is not possible for it to be flawed.

people can identify these liquids by taste/smell in isolation without reference to any other - the test procedure must have been flawed despite being double-blind.

DBT proves nothing. It gives a statistical probability that the individual being tested perceives a difference between two choices. To criticize double-blind testing for providing potentially false negatives is quite nonsensical.