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Topic: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles (Read 493520 times) previous topic - next topic
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Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #200 –
Not to go off topic (or insult someone who has been dealing out the insults throughout this thread) but I read the "WE ARE THE BORK, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!" statement in my head using the robot voice that the character J.P. does in the movie Grandma's Boy.

I am not sure this thread is going anywhere since B0RK refuses to acknowledge some points, refuses to acknowledge common sense, and still has yet to show us anything backing up their claims.  Might as well go have this discussion with a brick wall.  At least they won't defend audiophools (yes, I said it!) who go against science and testing.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #202 –
Quote from: B0RK on
Quote from: shakey_snake on
[
All science begins as subjective observation and through the scientific method and control (in this case, bias control), objective conclusions are made.

B0RK, you are seriously making quite an ass of yourself.



Yet Another contender for dumbass of the year award.

Science , Fool , begins with Questions.

As you seem to know my science background all so well ...
& it is no match for your Scientific prowess ,
Please, Enlighten Me , with your scientific knowledge about the matters at hand Oh Almighty Snake.

Ill give you an easy one , just ask your buddies , Explain why Audiophiles are Evil.

your Punctuation , and Capitalization could use some Work .
 

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #203 –
Quote from: B0RK on
Science , Fool , begins with Questions.
Please formulate a meaningful question that is not somehow based on observation.


Quote from: B0RK on
Ill give you an easy one , just ask your buddies , Explain why Audiophiles are Evil.

"Audiophiles" are not evil, rather they are harmless. They are harmless because they are ignorant.
The problem is that when ignorance has enough money, it creates an industry that is apathetic to progressing, because that industry can get rich by simply exploiting ignorance.  Fortunately this situation isn't sustainable, not because the ignorant ever become learned, but because they die off.

[blockquote]e.g. If soccer ever takes off in my country, it won't be because black and white people quit playing football and baseball, it'll be because there's more Latinos.[/blockquote]
Basically, I'm waiting for you and people like you to die  so I can get better, cheaper speakers. That may sound rude, but it's a position you've chosen to put yourself in, not me.
elevatorladylevitateme

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #204 –
Quote from: shakey_snake on
"Audiophiles" are not evil, rather they are harmless. They are harmless because they are ignorant.
The problem is that when ignorance has enough money, it creates an industry that is apathetic to progressing, because that industry can get rich by simply exploiting ignorance.


Very true. I bet all of these products

http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html

are in his cube.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #205 –
The blind wine tasting analogy was an excellent one - if you remove the sighted element (price tag) then people's perceptions change. Wait a minute....
lossyWAV -q X -a 4 -s h -A --feedback 2 --limit 15848 --scale 0.5 | FLAC -5 -e -p -b 512 -P=4096 -S- (having set foobar to output 24-bit PCM; scaling by 0.5 gives the ANS headroom to work)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #206 –
Ok, this has gone from discussion to discussion laced with a touch of anger and some occasional logical fallacies on all sides to an out-right ad hominem fest.

Is this really the side of HA.org we want shown?
Creature of habit.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #207 –
Quote from: Soap on
Is this really the side of HA.org we want shown?
More to the point, I must compliment the ability of this forum to chase off its own testers. Clap. Clap. Clap.

I must apologize to David and Arny, because they did raise some good replies to my comments, but for some reason, my mind is just completely blown on all of this. After reading pages 3-6 my only coherent response is that you f*ckers owe me 20 minutes of my life back.

Maybe I'll feel better about all of this in a few days, but until then, I'm happily going to listen to some Merzbow. Very, very loudly.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #208 –
Quote from: B0RK on
Science , Fool , begins with Questions.


Questions invite explanations. And scientific method demands that those explanations include reliable and robust empirical data derived from experiments that can be investigated and replicated by others. The words 'reliable and robust' preclude "because I say so" proclamations, no matter how right or trustworthy such statements may appear.

Long-standing scientific theories can be overturned in the light of new hypothesis and experiment, but that's not what's happening in the audiophile world. There's no Michelson-Morley moment. Instead, faced with data that refutes concepts that audiophiles take as self-evident, they have invented a counter world view through logic-chopping.

Unfortunately, the state of understanding in the wider community is woefully poor, so many cannot spot the difference between good scientific method and glib argument, peppered with 'the science bit' to give the argument truthiness. This is no different from the beauty industry inventing new horrors of aging skin and then making up pseudo-scientific names for the beauty cream they use to help.

"Skin loses plumpiocity as we age, and tests show [five women tested, 60% agreed - written in very small letters] our new super Re-Plumpenizing facial balm with Mega-Oxyhydrolipporide 5 [translation - even more fat and sugar in water, then whisked to make it airy. We tried it four times before, but the stuff either looked like sperm or a raspberry pavlova] reverses this key sign of aging [that you never heard of until this advert]"

The audiophile version of this is:

"Skin effect alters the resistance of a cable with frequency [when dealing with frequencies in excess of 1GHz, but we'll skip that little factoid for now]. Our special selection process [page 28 of the cable company catalog] chooses cables less likely to exhibit skin effect problems [the nice looking red one half way down the page] and utilizes six layers of PTFC shielding [that's what the catalog says, at least] to depolarize the outer region of the cable [I think Geordi said that in that episode of Star Trek TNG with the big space manta ray] and reverse the polarity of the neutron flow [I loved Tom Baker as Dr Who, didn't you?]. The result is 'smoother highs, increased inter-transient silence, more pellucidity in the midrange and enhanced temporal accuracy in the upper-lower mid-bass', according to the noted reviewer Grunthos the Flatulent [who had 1,000 words to make up about a cable]."


Quote
Ill give you an easy one , just ask your buddies , Explain why Audiophiles are Evil.


Hmm, let's see. An industry that tries to get gullible people to spend absurd and unnecessary amounts of money on things that they can buy for peanuts, by gift-wrapping the things in psychobabble. A press that keeps the gullible people gullible by refusing to entertain any notion other than FIGJAM. A community so enraptured by that press and that industry that to even whisper that some of its articles of faith are built on shaky foundations is met with demands that you be burned at the stake for such heresy. Yes, I think 'Evil' gets close to summing that all up.

Of course, evil is when they get you to drink the Kool-Aid. Trouble is, I think you'd drink it, if you thought it would lead to those limpid pools of pellucidity.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #209 –
Don't both sides just come down to faith? Objectivists believe they know what to measure, that they can measure it and that they know the effect it has (if any). Subjectivists believe that's not true and there must be other things involved that haven't been identified or measured yet.

One side trying to convince the other appears fruitless to me

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #210 –
Quote from: botface on
Don't both sides just come down to faith? Objectivists believe they know what to measure, that they can measure it and that they know the effect it has (if any). Subjectivists believe that's not true and there must be other things involved that haven't been identified or measured yet.

One side trying to convince the other appears fruitless to me


You got it all wrong. 

The objective guys know what they hear (or more often than not - don't) as they have proved it through ABX tests.

The subjective guys know what they hear, period.




Thorbjorn

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #211 –
Quote from: botface on
Don't both sides just come down to faith? Objectivists believe they know what to measure, that they can measure it and that they know the effect it has (if any). Subjectivists believe that's not true and there must be other things involved that haven't been identified or measured yet.

One side trying to convince the other appears fruitless to me

I would hope that objectivists believe that we will never know the final answer, and when we stop looking for it we have become subjectivists.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #212 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Relatively small amounts of jitter can be measured with a good expanded sweep oscillioscpe.
I've seen people do that - but did they back in the early 1980s?

Quote
It is generally agreed by most scientific researchers that any artifact or spurious response that is > 100 dB below FS can be safely ignored.
My back of an envelope calculation suggests that a 227ps timing error gives a -100dB FS artefact (distortion) for a worst case signal. For typical music, the artefact (distortion) will be far lower.

In the standard tests, with a somewhat easier than worse case signal, -100dB artefacts arise from ~ 500ps of jitter.

As you indirectly said, it's SPDIF which added timing errors above this magnitude - normal single box "good" CD players should be fine.


There is a well known warning that correlated distortion can be more audible than uncorrelated noise. You can call it a general myth in audio, but it's also born out by psychoacoustics, e.g. co-modulation masking release. It means that the masking that you might expect to happen, doesn't: things that should be inaudible, become audible. I don't think it reaches down 100dB though  (I know full well that it doesn't!).

Cheers,
David.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #213 –
Quote from: Axon on
After reading pages 3-6 my only coherent response is that you f*ckers owe me 20 minutes of my life back.
LOL! You poor chap

Quote
Maybe I'll feel better about all of this in a few days, but until then, I'm happily going to listen to some Merzbow. Very, very loudly.
Oh heck, that bad?  Run it through lossyWAV first at quality --bad - it's specially designed to enhance noise music!  (cheaper than special cables, too).

Cheers,
David.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #214 –
Quote from: pdq on
I would hope that objectivists believe that we will never know the final answer, and when we stop looking for it we have become subjectivists.


Depends what you call the final answer.

In the case of things like amplifiers and music players we have already heard the consequences music reproduced electrically, as good as it is going to get.

Today's provisional answer is that the rest of the final answer is someplace else, besides amps and music players.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #215 –
Quote from: hybris on
The objective guys know what they hear (or more often than not - don't) as they have proved it through ABX tests.

The subjective guys know what they hear, period.


Yow about this: the subjective guys believe they know what they hear, PERIOD!

Soap, you are right about some HA members (including myself) not showing our best faces in this thread.  That is what happens when someone who won't budge and doesn't fully understand reasoning goes against the grain.  Many people (again, including myself) get frustrated by this type of behavior as we have seen it over and over again.  People say that blind ABX tests don't prove anything, sighted tests are needed, frequency plots tell us everything we need to know, a tube amp is far superior to anything digital, vinyl is still the way to go due to the music being "warmer," and so on.  It just gets frustrating having to discuss these topics over and over again with some people being thickheaded and not willing to change their outlook despite common knowledge and detailed explanations.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #216 –
Quote from: Axon on
Quote from: Soap on
Is this really the side of HA.org we want shown?
More to the point, I must compliment the ability of this forum to chase off its own testers. Clap. Clap. Clap.



BORK. BORK. BORK.


Is he really gone? I'm not missing him yet, sorry.    I don't understand the lamentation for him; perhaps you and David might address some of the remarkable posts he's made in the last few days on this thread, explaining why sarcasm is better directed at those of us who 'chased him off' rather than at the BORK himself?  Heck, even translating them into coherent English prose would be a start.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #217 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
It just gets frustrating having to discuss these topics over and over again...
With that list at least, you don't have to discuss these topics again - they're in the FAQ.

Cheers,
David.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #218 –
Quote from: hybris on
The objective guys know what they hear (or more often than not - don't) as they have proved it through ABX tests. The subjective guys know what they hear, period.

While what you say seems quite sensible, I wonder however, whether or not this translates through to actual common human experience. For instance, don't the people who are listening to an expensive stereo, or drinking an expensive wine, enjoy the experience more, even if scientific testing clearly demonstrates no actual difference? In other words, doesn't the presentation enhance the experience, for some, despite the facts? It seems to me that if the goal is the experience, then often the facts are deliberately diminished or suspended in order to elevate the experience. Therefore, aren't those who garner experience in seeing through to the facts, risking a failure to achieve the experience that others are enjoying?

Please, rest assured, personally, I'm in no way, against double-blind testing. As well, for anyone dismissive of the value of double-blind testing in particular, or the scientific method in general, personally, I would remind them that everything in audio, and technology, has come from science. 

I'd also like to say that it seems a real crime to me that it's so difficult to find meaningful audio product comparison information.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #219 –
Quote from: 2tec on
Quote from: hybris on
The objective guys know what they hear (or more often than not - don't) as they have proved it through ABX tests. The subjective guys know what they hear, period.

While what you say seems quite sensible, I wonder however, whether or not this translates through to actual common human experience. For instance, don't the people who are listening to an expensive stereo, or drinking an expensive wine, enjoy the experience more, even if scientific testing clearly demonstrates no actual difference? In other words, doesn't the presentation enhance the experience, for some, despite the facts? It seems to me that if the goal is the experience, then often the facts are deliberately diminished or suspended in order to elevate the experience. Therefore, aren't those who garner experience in seeing through to the facts, risking a failure to achieve the experience that others are enjoying?


Those who 'think' they're drinking an expensive wine enjoy that wine more than those who know it's not expensive.  However, that doesn't necessarily mean the second group doesn't enjoy the wine (though 'cheapness' can work against the perception just as 'priceyness' can work for it) -- just not as much as the first group.  And possibly it works both ways (I know of no studies of this) -- the skeptical audiophile may get more pleasure-center activation from the low-priced gear (and the 'knowledge' that he's getting sound just as good as that pricey stuff), than the 'golden ear' does.  In this case, the golden ear is the one missing out -- both in terms of pleasure and in the wallet.

It all comes down, really, to what you claim afterwards.  If you claim you enjoyed the expensive wine more than the cheap stuff, great -- you're reporting your inner state; if you claim the difference was in the wine, you've made a claim about the object itself.  It's a really easy mistake to make, and people make it all the time; most people would make the natural --but logically flawed -- inference that the enjoyment must have been due to the quality of the wine, which , by inference, must be better if the price is higher.  A recurring theme even on this thread is that people don't want to acknowledge their own biases.  Few people are going to report 'Well, I loved that $10,000 Margaux, but maybe what I was loving most was the price."

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #220 –
Let me complete the expensive wine analogy.

Vincent Klink is a famous cook in my country. He holds a Michelin star for over 30 years. His palate is respected world wide. In a recent interview he disclosed that some of his favorite wines cost only 8 Euros a bottle, and that he would prefer them any time over many expensive wines his customers demand.

It is the same with audio. If you are more into actual quality than packaging, you can get very high quality audio gear for a relatively moderate price. But if you are subscribed to Wine Magazine and can't get happy without paying hefty price tags for all kinds of curiosities and blown up brand names, then feel free to go that route. The cook won't stop you.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #221 –
Quote from: rpp3po on
In a recent interview he disclosed that some of his favorite wines cost only 8 Euros a bottle, and that he would prefer them any time over many expensive wines his customers demand.

To extend the analogy even further, clearly, the rest of his favorite wines cost more, maybe much more. Indeed, who knows how expensive his most favored wine would be in terms of cost? Would I, or most others, pay as much? Not bloody likely, but then again most people aren't considered wine aficionados. Furthermore, his favorites might not be the same as his customers' favorites anyways.

Is there really any difference between say a connoisseur and an audiophile, other than one is interested in the palate and the other the ear? It seems to me that the more you know about something, the more likely you'd be in to spending time and money in that regard. Personally, I see no good reason to criticize how others spend money on audio equipment, if indeed that brings them enjoyment. However, that's not to say that spending money, in any way guarantees good sound. There seems to be no end of those who misrepresent facts for profit.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #222 –
I don't think anyone here would deny that there is one element of audio reproduction, the speaker, that makes a major difference to the sound. I hesitate to say sound quality because some people may prefer the coloration of a particular speaker, be it expensive or not so much.

The problem is that some of the claims of audible difference are about the equivalent of saying that it makes a difference what quality of glue was used to apply the label to the wine bottle.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #223 –
Quote from: Axon on
Quote from: Soap on
Is this really the side of HA.org we want shown?
More to the point, I must compliment the ability of this forum to chase off its own testers. Clap. Clap. Clap.


I am first to admit that I went off the kilter a little bit and for that I apologise. I was fine with the thread until Bork went off the deep end with this rant: 

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry628826

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #224 –
Quote from: Gag Halfrunt on
Questions invite explanations. And scientific method demands that those explanations include reliable and robust empirical data derived from experiments that can be investigated and replicated by others. The words 'reliable and robust' preclude "because I say so" proclamations, no matter how right or trustworthy such statements may appear.

Long-standing scientific theories can be overturned in the light of new hypothesis and experiment, but that's not what's happening in the audiophile world. There's no Michelson-Morley moment. Instead, faced with data that refutes concepts that audiophiles take as self-evident, they have invented a counter world view through logic-chopping.


Well said, I totally agree. This is my problem with most audiophiles as well. Of course explanations (answers) will ultimately lead to more questions, but that is besides the point.