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Topic: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles (Read 499812 times) previous topic - next topic
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Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1275 –
Quote from: Stereoeditor on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: Stereoeditor on
But according to the article, if you take _one_ Valium pill of the appropriate dosage, despite the change in the body chemistry, there is no effect on the patient's state of mind - the desired outcome, which is the reduction in anxiety to which Arny Krueger has referred - that can be distinguished statistically from placebo. It is only when knowledge of the treatment is combined with the chemical change that the effect of the drug becomes statistically different from that of the placebo alone. I find that _very_ strange.


Given the state of denial of the connection between mind and body that you believe in John, I can understand how you are mystified.


Your comments might be taken more seriously, Mr. Krueger, if you refrained from putting words in others' mouths or restrained your attempts at reading minds. I have not said anything that pertains to the connection or lack of connection between mind and body, whether on this forum or anywhere else.



Readers, please note that the "words I put in (Atkinson's) mouth" were direct quotes of articles that appeared in his magazine under his name that he provided the links to. 

I think we've just seen John's ongoing dissembling taking a very weird turn. :-(

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1276 –
Quote from: honestguv on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Just another example of John's misunderstanding of science and belief.

Obviously he gets some things wrong, we all do, but is it mainly misunderstanding or understanding and misdirection? I have tended to pick up more of the latter although this is based on a relatively small number of postings and articles.



Your impression is spot on.    There is just enough lip service to science* and 'objectivism' in Stereophile so that one can pull out examples to make it seem 'fair and balanced'.  But it's not  Which is not all that surprising; it is a consumer magazine that caters to an audience that wants its subjective impression -- that high-end, high-priced gear really does sound better (and analog sounds better than digital) -- reinforced, and advertisers who would be aghast to be held to DBT standards.




(*Stereophile is particularly diligent in arguing for scientific excellence and rigor when a paper or experimental result debunking an audiophile tenet is on offer.)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1277 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: Stereoeditor on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: Stereoeditor on
But according to the article, if you take _one_ Valium pill of the appropriate dosage, despite the change in the body chemistry, there is no effect on the patient's state of mind - the desired outcome, which is the reduction in anxiety to which Arny Krueger has referred - that can be distinguished statistically from placebo. It is only when knowledge of the treatment is combined with the chemical change that the effect of the drug becomes statistically different from that of the placebo alone. I find that _very_ strange.


Given the state of denial of the connection between mind and body that you believe in John, I can understand how you are mystified.


Your comments might be taken more seriously, Mr. Krueger, if you refrained from putting words in others' mouths or restrained your attempts at reading minds. I have not said anything that pertains to the connection or lack of connection between mind and body, whether on this forum or anywhere else.


Readers, please note that the "words I put in [Atkinson's] mouth" were direct quotes of articles that appeared in his magazine under his name that he provided the links to.


You have lost me, Mr. Krueger. Yes, you posted a fairly long quote from a published essay of mine that included observations about sound quality you claimed violated HA's ToS#8. However, there was no violation because a) things that occur outside of HA are not obliged to conform to its Terms of Service, and b) I wasn't the one who posted these subjective observations to HA.

More importantly, your statement that I am in a "state of denial of the connection between mind and body" is not supported by the text of my essay, which is why I said you were putting words in my mouth. I was discussing Peter Craven's hypothesis, reflecting the thoughts of Barry Blesser on the perception of sound (published in the October 1988 JAES), was that with the greater information density of the sound that reaches the ears offered by higher sample rates and greater bit depths, the brain has to do less work constructing auditory objects. The basis for this hypothesis, that the ears and brain don't behave as simple microphones and that a large amount of processing is required to derive, for example, the perception of something as fundamental as a "stereo image," is hardly controversial - I refer you to any textbook on audio perception or even my own thoughts at http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/57.

Quote
I think we've just seen John's ongoing dissembling taking a very weird turn. :-(


"We"? Do you have a mouse in your pocket, Mr. Krueger? And a "weird turn"? All I was doing in my essay was offering anecdotal support for Peter's hypothesis, based on my own experience as a recording engineer. While you are welcome to reject those observations, of course, it is merely a dishonest tactic of what you have termed the "debating trade" to infer from them any statement of my beliefs concerning an unrelated subject. As with your observation that your technically close-to-mono recording has exaggerated stereo separation, you are letting your own beliefs and biases obscure your perception of reality. And you accuse _me_ of dissembling!

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1278 –
Quote from: Stereoeditor on
"We"? Do you have a mouse in your pocket, Mr. Krueger?Editor, Stereophile


No John. You butchered my post quite creatively and extensively, apparently in order to produce a fantasy that I shall not waste further time on except to deny that your post represents anything that could be considered to be intellectual honesty.

I don't know what you've been prescribed John, but you need to discuss its side effects with whoever prescribed it! :-(

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1279 –
Quote from: Stereoeditor on
"We"? Do you have a mouse in your pocket, Mr. Krueger?

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
I don't know what you've been prescribed John, but you need to discuss its side effects with whoever prescribed it! :-(

When people start ad hominem, regardless of whoever is speaking on the side of truth, I think it is time to retire the thread.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1280 –
Quote from: sld on
When people start ad hominem, regardless of whoever is speaking on the side of truth, I think it is time to retire the thread.

It seems to me that people have been disparaging others throughout this thread, why should this particular instance be any different? Personally, I'm against any form of censorship and I'd like to hope that free and open discussion on this topic will continue. Indeed, if the discussion isn't either personally interesting or relevant, no one is forcing anyone else to follow it.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1281 –
Quote from: nlsteele on
They're people at the end of the day, and to paraphrase Hume, it's fine to be a philosopher when you're in your study, but when you put your slippers on and get ready for bed, you still have to live as a man.


I picked up a fascinating book today called 'Charlatan' by Pope Brock, which recounts the career of one 'Dr.' John R. Brinkley, a shameless fraud who in first half of the 1900's made piles of money transplanting goat testicles into gullible patients hoping to have their 'vitality' (read: erections) restored.

As part of setting the context, Burke describes how Brinkley operated in the 'golden age of quacks' *. Science and technology actually helped make this golden age possible because their real *successes* made people more credulous in the face of anything *claiming to be* science. THis is why half-science and pseudoscience is so sneaky, whether it's in medicine or audio, even today. 

Back in the days when electromagnetism was the 'new thing', arcane to the layman but having a valid scientific pedigree, quack treatments often claimed to involve electricity or magnetism.  Nowadays it's quantum mechanics.

Brock also makes the interesting argument that when respected scientists go badly off track -- and it's always curious when long, illustrious careers end in embrace of a dubious idea (e.g., Pauling's championship of vitamin C) -- these 'great blunderers' unwittingly perform a valuable service too -- by 'pointing the way for others to be right'.  I take this to mean that by raising the bad idea's professional profile, it leads to other scientists towards finding the 'right' answer, through trying (and failing) to prove it right, or by trying to prove it wrong.


(*and he floored me with the information that one hundred years earlier, with Jacksonian democracy all the rage, most states *removed* medical licensing requirements from their law books so that even the 'common man' could practice medicine.  The AMA was formed in direct response to that threat to professional medicine as well as public health; medical licensing soon became law again)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1282 –
Quote from: krabapple on
Back in the days when electromagnetism was the 'new thing', arcane to the layman but having a valid scientific pedigree, quack treatments often claimed to involve electricity or magnetism.  Nowadays it's quantum mechanics.


You're forgetting that even today you can buy magnetic bracelets on infomercials that will supposedly do crap like "freshen" your blood by "aligning" your iron molecules, and we even have electrical quack treatments too. Hell, you can get laser acupuncture (?!). I wish we were as far along as a species as I usually catch myself thinking we are.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1283 –
Quote from: greynol on
Quote from: krabapple on
well, for starters there's cable craziness; used to be just speaker cable and old fashioned RCA interconnects, but now we even have USB CABLE WOO:

Don't forget the $500 Denon ethernet cable.

Isn't there a commandment somewhere in the bible that says "thou shalt link Amazon.com whenever mentioning that Denon cable"?

Heathen!

That product, BTW came out just about when I was looking for an AVR, I hope someone bought one cable, cause they certainly lost the $500 I was considering spending on a Denon AVR.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1285 –
Regarding this side-discussion of "fringe" science, well, let's consider today's fringe stuff that's already been mentioned. Dark energy/matter, string theory, etc. Well, those things actually explain unexplained phenomena, as did General Relativity. There is a need for those explanations. And those theories aren't just pulled out of someone's ears. They predict things and are falsifiable. (Critics of string theory might disagree, but its predictions AFAIK are technologically challenged, not fundamentally impossible.) That's the common thread that links all scientific discoveries, that they explain previously unexplained stuff.

Do all these audiophile hypotheses really explain anything, let alone anything unexplained? Are they more likely than the existing scientific explanations? It seems to me that they play exactly the same game as Intelligent Design creationists, New Agers and homeopaths. "Science doesn't know everything." Yes, but it does know a LOT, and keeps discovering new things. Knowledge is progressive and cumulative. What we DO know via scientific inquiry, contradicts what these groups of people believe. If they wanna overturn science as we know it, go ahead, but they better have damn astoundingly good evidence.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1286 –
Quote from: Axon on
But such justifications do not really rely on objective or intrinsic qualities, such as the nature of the format itself. It really would be all in your head. And I think some people are frankly just not secure enough to state a preference that requires no justification, and instead use really poor or false ones. It is somewhat refreshing to hear some vinyl n00bs derive satisfaction not from any intrinsic sound quality, but from the artwork! Or even the ticks and pops themselves! It's superficial, but at the same time, it's uncommonly honest.

That's what I think too. If fans of vinyl, tube amps and such just claimed a romantic or nostalgic attachment, it would be perfectly fine with me, and I would even sympathize. If the prices matched the technology, I might even get into those things.

There is no excuse for uber-expensive cables though. Or maybe some people have a romantic attachment to cables? I guess to each their own 

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1287 –
Quote from: andy o on
Do all these audiophile hypotheses really explain anything, let alone anything unexplained?


Most if not all audiophile hypothesis such as those found by the bundle in various high end ragazines and web sites, serve to explain the results of sighted evaluations.

Quote
Are they more likely than the existing scientific explanations?


Depends whose talking.

Quote
It seems to me that they play exactly the same game as Intelligent Design creationists, New Agers and homeopaths. "Science doesn't know everything."


Lately, over the Stereophile forum we've been encountering a different approach - "You guys don't know science".  That's the latest approach taken by the high end, debunking the kind of *phoney science* that one finds in the JAES and IEEE.

They've got a number of papers written by what appears to be a genuine PhD who believes that 44 KHz sampling can't reproduce samples that vary by less than the sampling interval which is about 22 uSec. Therefore, higher sampling rates are required for high fidelity.

Quote
Yes, but it does know a LOT, and keeps discovering new things. Knowledge is progressive and cumulative. What we DO know via scientific inquiry, contradicts what these groups of people believe.


Well, that's because we are believers in ummm, Scientism and various false scientists.

Quote
If they wanna overturn science as we know it, go ahead, but they better have damn astoundingly good evidence.


Eve  hear of  a person named May Belt?

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1288 –
Quote from: andy o on
There is no excuse for uber-expensive cables though.

Why not? The pleasure audiophiles derive from possessing uber-expensive cables would seem to be exactly the same as possessing other uber-expensive audiophile components like amplifiers, CD players, and the like which usually have the same audibly neutral performance as cheap products.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1289 –
Quote from: honestguv on
Quote from: andy o on
There is no excuse for uber-expensive cables though.

Why not? The pleasure audiophiles derive from possessing uber-expensive cables would seem to be exactly the same as possessing other uber-expensive audiophile components like amplifiers, CD players, and the like which usually have the same audibly neutral performance as cheap products.

Nah, I was just saying that it's easier for me to relate with a romantic, perhaps nostalgic attachment to vinyl and tube amps, but with cables that romanticism is harder to swallow. Aren't most audiophile cables being marketed as bleeding edge anyway? Not much nostalgia over futuristic stuff.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1290 –
Quote from: krabapple on
Brock also makes the interesting argument that when respected scientists go badly off track -- and it's always curious when long, illustrious careers end in embrace of a dubious idea (e.g., Pauling's championship of vitamin C) -- these 'great blunderers' unwittingly perform a valuable service too -- by 'pointing the way for others to be right'.  I take this to mean that by raising the bad idea's professional profile, it leads to other scientists towards finding the 'right' answer, through trying (and failing) to prove it right, or by trying to prove it wrong.


One other aside (while we're still OT), this is the optimistic case. What's unfortunate about science as it's primarily done these days is that only the "successful" experiments and research get published typically. That means that when you've got the quack who through some bad technique is able to find a result that others can't replicate, they can't publish those non-replications, and so everyone in the field can run around failing over and over to replicate a standing result in ignorance of all the others doing the same, but it does nothing to remove the result from the literature until there's either a preponderance of contradictory evidence or someone presents a theory/result that can replace the aberrant one. It can get ugly that way.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1291 –
Quote from: andy o on
Nah, I was just saying that it's easier for me to relate with a romantic, perhaps nostalgic attachment to vinyl and tube amps, but with cables that romanticism is harder to swallow. Aren't most audiophile cables being marketed as bleeding edge anyway? Not much nostalgia over futuristic stuff.


You're forgetting that the wealthy often run around basically miming whatever the poor have had to do at extraordinary prices and considering it high-fashion. Think of French Provencal cooking, dude ranch vacations, solo treks into the wild. It all seems based on the principal of choosing to do something making it a better act, and therefore of value equivalent to its price. Cables that cost $30K would be no different in this regard, sort of a look-how-much-I'm-willing-to-pay even though they might not even make a difference model of pleasure and self-satisfaction.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1292 –
Yeah, but I cannot relate to THAT!

I wish I could, though...

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1293 –
Quote from: andy o on
There is no excuse for uber-expensive cables though.

Dare ye question thy holy writ of Transparent?  You sir, are truly "lost" as your screen name suggests!  I will now pray for you, lest your ears catch fire. Here take my hand, let us pray:

"Oh Lord of Cable Marketing, please hear our prayer and heal the wounded conscience of our dear brother andy o and his descent into madness and folly.  Strike fear into his heart with your mighty sword of advertising.  Comfort his family who no doubt spends many restlessness nights distraught over their loved one's doubt and skepticism and inevitable combustion within the pits of 99.9% Great Performance Hell.  Cast away all intelligence and reason from his mind so that he may become a pure vessel, a conduit between the ATM Machine and You.  Hear our prayer O Lord and blesseth andy o.  Amen."

Sorry, but I couldn't resist citing this funny post by 'nathamn' in another forum.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1294 –
Quote from: nlsteele on
One other aside (while we're still OT), this is the optimistic case. What's unfortunate about science as it's primarily done these days is that only the "successful" experiments and research get published typically. That means that when you've got the quack who through some bad technique is able to find a result that others can't replicate, they can't publish those non-replications, and so everyone in the field can run around failing over and over to replicate a standing result in ignorance of all the others doing the same,



Hence the occasional calls for a 'journal of negative results', which could prevent lots of redundant fails

But even so: in a field I'm familiar with, in the early part of the 20th C, a famous scientist promoted a wrong model that kept everyone else searching for proof for thirty years, until it was finally overthrown.  But it wasn't a total waste, some interesting biology was learned in that otherwise 'fruitless' search.

Quote
but it does nothing to remove the result from the literature until there's either a preponderance of contradictory evidence or someone presents a theory/result that can replace the aberrant one. It can get ugly that way.



However, something's that's really earthshattering, and reported by seemingly reputable labs usually gets taken apart pretty vigorously and rapidly.  Example: cold fusion.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1295 –
Quote from: honestguv on
Why not? The pleasure audiophiles derive from possessing uber-expensive cables would seem to be exactly the same as possessing other uber-expensive audiophile components like amplifiers, CD players, and the like which usually have the same audibly neutral performance as cheap products.



There is no sense in purchasing some expensive components, the reason for the insufficient spatial accuracy caused by the procedure itself.
The spatial distribution of the sound sources and its early reflections in the recording room mainly determine our spatial perception of a sound event. All conventional loudspeaker reproduction procedures cannot reproduce this complex spatial and temporal structures, the reduction onto a few transmission channels inevitably cause a significant loss of spatial information.

The only way out would be the holophony approach, as would be possible by the wave field synthesis principle. ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_field_synthesis )

So long would be too expensive components a pure waste of money.


H.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1296 –
about stereogay and ha

a. the 1st problem is, that this people write about things they don't know, so basically they are selling some fictional images/stories. There is of course nothing wrong with fiction, until you don't call that rokumentary (or worse: documentary)

b. the 2nd problem is that this kind of stuff is even debated on HA (i really would never guess that something so low-fi can happen to this nice board)

c. ok, so if whales are that smart, why can't they build an oil rig? (instead of just swimming around in those jittery waters)

d. and if somebody mentions a personal attack i did on his persona, i'am just gonna cry, for real.... (even if it's just a whale)

uhm i'am smart, look at all this analogies

edit: i need to add a shiny picture of some random equipment now, i forgot that

this player is great (you just have to love this eq free, retro design), only jitter is still a problem (and h.264 still looks better on vinil of course).
p.s. lamps are missing on this picture, you have to purchase those separately (500eur per piece, the more, the warmer the sound is)

edit2: hmm, maybe i could write for stereogay in the future, not that hard at all, 1 minute per article is a good bet.
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Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1297 –
e. the third problem is that a moderator resurrects a dead thread while apparently being drunk or stoned. 
Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1298 –
taking the liberty to post when i find some time (and no, i'am way to busy for drug experiments...)
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Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #1299 –
Audiophiles have the same motivation like wine "connoisseurs" who pay 300$ for a bottle of wine, or art collectors who buy a 100,000$ painting: they explain their spending with taste and knowledge about the issue, but in reality pursue the warm, fuzzy and exciting feeling of exclusivity.

If audiophiles were truly only interested in the pure quality of sound, they would stop using reproductions which are necessarily flawed and altered during the whole chain of the recording process, from the moment the sound hits the mike's membrane. Instead, they would seek live presentation of music exclusively, because what they hear when they play a recording is just the result of many people's influences on the sound, engineered to appeal to the biggest market share. A Roxy Music LP on a 300k system (in the article) is like eating a hamburger on 1000 year old chinese porcelain - it's the hamburger which will satisfy.

You don't agree? Live concerts, or playing music yourself (the ultimate music experience!) is not what this is about, but the perfect reproduction of whatever there is on the medium? Then one has to ask why profane ABX testing is so unheard of (pun intended) in audiophile circles...