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Topic: Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed? (Read 46327 times) previous topic - next topic
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Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #25 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
Well, one must certainly worry a bit about the folk who put little strips of shiny foil on their wires and use various goos on the outside of equipment in order to field their morphs, or morph their fields, or something like that.

I think the term "beltists" is a bit too personal, but still descriptive.

Hmmm, I'm not so sure that is a good example. IIRC, the Belts claim (quite correctly) that the "effects" are actually upon the person, rather than the actual sound field. But I could be mistaken.
The level of audiophile disorder varies per afflicted individual, I don't claim that it is consistent. We have some here who are convinced that there are reasons outside of LCR (and of course omni-present RF) why cables/wires/cords "sound" different (psychological reasons are automatically dismissed as audiophiles are immune).
Any idea what type of audiophile condition must exist for one to purchase a VPI "brick" or Bybee "Pro filter"?
Quote from: Woodinville on
Ambiguity
It deflects one's reasoning
So what did you mean?

I'll add smilies for unambiguity next time.

cheers,

AJ
Loudspeaker manufacturer

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #26 –
I think the very existence of the concept of morphic fields in Beltist discussions necessarily requires that they believe the effects are well outside the person.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #27 –
Quote from: Axon on
I think the very existence of the concept of morphic fields in Beltist discussions necessarily requires that they believe the effects are well outside the person.

You might be correct. The only thing I know with absolute certainty myself about the Belts is that they hold up the Trousers.
Loudspeaker manufacturer

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #28 –
Quote from: ajinfla on
Quote from: analog scott on
you say "unless the showroom has a Harmon shuffler." How would a Harmon shuffler change the fact that "your comparisons will be between those speakers in those positions interacting in those rooms.?"

Seems to me the Harmon shuffler would only make for quicker switching and will not change the fact that the comparisons will be between "those speakers in those positions interacting in those rooms." That is true of the situation at the HK facility.

Do yourself a favor. Look up what a Harman shuffler is, what it does and for what reasons. Then compare it to "the showroom of a retailer that provides a listening room and [level matched?] switching between speakers"(objects).
Try to figure this out on your own.
When you can't, come back and ask questions. I'll be here to help you Scotty.


I know what it is and what it does and for what reasons. Do explain how it would change the fact that the "comparisons will be between those speakers in those positions interatcing in those rooms." I can't figure out on my own how the Harmon shuffler will change this. Please explain. Does the Harmon shuffler rebuild the speakers? Not that I can see. So it will still be "those speakers." Does the Harmon shuffler adjust the speakers for position? Not that I can see. so it will still be "in those positions." Does the shuffler simulate my listening room? Not that I can see. So those speakers will still be "interacting in those rooms." So go ahead and help me here AJ. How would a Harmon shuffler in the show room help a dealer change the reality that the comparisons will be "between those speakers in those positions interacting in those rooms.?"

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #29 –
Quote from: ajinfla on
Any idea what type of audiophile condition must exist for one to purchase a VPI "brick" or Bybee "Pro filter"?


Toomuchus Moneyius?
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #30 –
It's neither the Hormone shuffler (I guess), but the Harman shuffler.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #31 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
Quote from: ajinfla on
Quote from: Woodinville on
Observer bias.
Everyone has that problem.
Even those who don't.

I read your post and found it to be quite biased. But I'm not sure if that is conscious or subconscious.

cheers,

AJ


Ambiguity
It deflects one's reasoning
So what did you mean?


I took it to be a joke of sorts.

I think there's actually a philosophical point somewhere in there.

If you say that everybody is biased (and of course you are right), might that statement be an example of your biases in action? ;-)

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #32 –
I'll just make one comment about online discussions.  I've found that online discussions on certain audio forums typically end up severely skewed towards a small subset of people with extreme beliefs.  I'm a somewhat active member on an "everything makes an audible difference" forum and my view on that forum is that the majority of members believe every piece of eqiupment makes a difference and you need to spend big bucks to get the "best."

Yet my experiences at various face-to-face meets with these very people is that many members are much more balanced in their views.  They do support cables, but they also admit placebo, the audio industry being full of snake oil and rip-off artists, and that a certain amount of stuff said on those forums to be total BS. 

I've never seen this balanced view on this particular forum I visit.  So using online forums as a baseline for answering your original question may give you a answer that is not representative of the larger population.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #33 –
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I kinda wish JA were still around here. His existence is a pretty effective counterexample to this Manichean worldview about subjectivism/objectivism. He disagrees strongly with Beltists, and he believes in measurements enough to, well, still do them.

(Which reminds me, on a completely unrelated note, I need to send him a thing about a thing he posted about a thing that I posted.)

RBG.... I'm a little confused here. What... is the.... point of your post?

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #34 –
Quote from: Axon on
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I kinda wish JA were still around here.


He can be fun to play with for a while before he gets repetitive and tiring.

Quote
His existence is a pretty effective counterexample to this Manichean worldview about subjectivism/objectivism.


In reality, up front and personal, JA seems to be as Manichean (dualistic) as they come. Compare and contrast our opening comments at the HE 2005 debate.

Quote
He disagrees strongly with Beltists, and he believes in measurements enough to, well, still do them.


Many seem to loose track of the fact that the whole idea of audio measurements, from the start, has been as an analog for audible differences.

There is a profound dichotomy between JA and mainstream audio in that JA never ever relaxes his grip on the outcomes of biased listening tests. That means that his use of measurements is off in some other land where measurements have no relationship to actual audibility. To connect measurements with actual audibility you have to separate audibility from bias.


Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #35 –
Richard,

Thanks for the excellent post.  I definitely consider myself an objective audiophile.  Differences can be measured when they exist (provided we make the correct measurements with the required accuracy).  Likewise, differences can be detected in double-blind tests if they are large enough to create an audible difference.

Let me present my perspective as a designer of pro-audio and audiophile equipment:

I believe in ABX tests and use them on occasion when developing and testing products.  I rely much more heavily on measurements when designing products.  If I measure a defect and can cure the defect at little or no cost, I go ahead and fix the defect.  It is usually much easier (and therefore cheaper) to fix a measured defect than it is to determine whether or not it is audible.  I design with a wide safety margin to keep defects well below audibility whenever possible.  Often the difference in parts cost is only pennies.  If we were building millions of units, each penny would count.  We build thousands of units, and our development costs are a significant portion of our total costs.  The few pennies spent on better components, or extra ground plane layers on a circuit board are trivial.

As an objective audiophile, I have occasionally been surprised by the unexpected:

I decided to test speaker cables to show that the differences are insignificant.  I expected to demonstrate that 18-GA zip cord was indistinguishable from high-quality audiophile speaker cable or even the heavy-gauge cables used by the sound reinforcement industry.  I was shocked to discover that there were differences, and more shocked to discover that the zip cord performed better than most of the other cables!  Let me add that we do not sell speaker cables, nor do we have any plans to do so in the near future – I have nothing to gain or lose from this discussion. 

All of the speaker cables tested performed well when loaded with an 8-ohm resistor.  I substituted an 8-ohm JBL 4410A studio monitor, and the cables performed very differently.  The speakers do not present an 8-ohm load over the entire audio band.  The actual impedance varies from 1-Ohm to about 16-Ohms.  The impedance variations produced frequency response variations.  I then set up a demonstration that allowed us to listen to the error signal across the cable, played back through another JBL 4410A at the correct amplitude.  We could switch between long cable, and short cable, and cable error signal, and demonstrate audible differences with 100 foot lengths of cable, but no audible differences at 12 feet. 

One surprisingly poor cable was 10-GA SO cord.  The SO cord is the thick black neoprene jacketed cord (with many fine strands of copper) that is used for heavy duty AC power cords.  This cord is commonly used in long lengths (100 feet or more) for large commercial sound reinforcement systems.  This cord has lots of copper and had the lowest DC resistance, but surprisingly, it had the worst measured performance, and the most audible effect on the music played.  The reason for the poor performance is that the cable has far too much inductance, and far more inductance that the cheap 18-GA zip cord that we tested.  It turns out that the inductance of the speaker wire is much more of a factor than the DC resistance! 

The conductors must be closely spaced to achieve low inductance.  Telephone or Ethernet twisted-pair wire has very low inductance, but high DC resistance.  Multiple twisted-pairs wired in parallel can achieve near-perfect perfect performance at very long lengths.  25 pairs (in parallel) at 100 feet driving 8-ohms are astonishingly good.  10-GA SO cord at 100 feet is surprisingly bad.

Final thoughts:

I thought the claims about speaker wires were ridiculous, but it turns out that the differences were much larger than I expected.  I thought that the heavy-gauge wire would perform the best - it was actually the worst.  Like many things, expensive is not always better.

Moral of the speaker-cable story:

Test before claiming that differences don't exist.  Test before claiming that differences do exist.  Don't make claims without testing.  Don't waste money on claims that are not backed by good test data.
John Siau
Vice President
Benchmark Media Systems, Inc.
 

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #36 –
I think the saddest thing is what you touch on at the very end. Our (at least my) hobby is listening to music, not audio equipment. It's nice to know what the ideal bitrates are for various encoders, and what tests have been done to show that purchasing X will or will not have a difference in your listening experience, but if I cared that much about fidelity I would never use headphones. I'd go to concerts every time I wanted to listen to music. The fact is just that music usually gets it's message across without being perfectly reproduced.

I will not call myself an audiophile because of this Fantasy vs Objectivist types... I look for objective tests when I'm considering a purchase or a change in my encoding habits, but really I just really like music and listen to a lot of it every day.

EDIT: Wow, John_Siau, thanks for the very insightful post. Next time you do something like this, I hope you record your specific procedure and post it on the internet for curious people to enjoy  While I believe you, it would be hard to make a legitimate argument to someone by just showing them a random forum post ^^

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #37 –
Quote from: Chef on
I think the saddest thing is what you touch on at the very end. Our (at least my) hobby is listening to music, not audio equipment.


Great point!

My job is building tools for professional recording.  This puts my focus on testing and listening to the equipment and not the music.

I have to work very hard to ignore the equipment when I just want to enjoy the music.  I guess this is an occupational hazard.
John Siau
Vice President
Benchmark Media Systems, Inc.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #38 –
Quote from: odigg on
I'll just make one comment about online discussions.  I've found that online discussions on certain audio forums typically end up severely skewed towards a small subset of people with extreme beliefs.

Electronic communications seem to bring out the worst in some people. I'm sure most of us have had the experience of getting things fubar'd through e-mail and then using the phone or in-person meeting to quickly untangle things.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #39 –
I shed a tear for the brave men and women who test audio equipment so that I can enjoy transparent sound in ignorance.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #40 –
Quote from: John_Siau on
One surprisingly poor cable was 10-GA SO cord.  The SO cord is the thick black neoprene jacketed cord (with many fine strands of copper) that is used for heavy duty AC power cords.  This cord is commonly used in long lengths (100 feet or more) for large commercial sound reinforcement systems.  This cord has lots of copper and had the lowest DC resistance, but surprisingly, it had the worst measured performance, and the most audible effect on the music played.  The reason for the poor performance is that the cable has far too much inductance, and far more inductance that the cheap 18-GA zip cord that we tested.  It turns out that the inductance of the speaker wire is much more of a factor than the DC resistance!

Hmmm, that's interesting!

The inductance of the cable varies roughly as the log of the ratio of the distance between the conductors to their diameter. If the distance between the conductors in the heavy-duty wire is larger, you would expect that to be somewhat canceled by the larger diameter.

Did you actually measure the inductance and what values did you see?

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #41 –
Quote from: John_Siau on
I then set up a demonstration that allowed us to listen to the error signal across the cable, played back through another JBL 4410A at the correct amplitude.  We could switch between long cable, and short cable, and cable error signal, and demonstrate audible differences with 100 foot lengths of cable, but no audible differences at 12 feet.

Listening to the difference signal is sort of cheating. It basically proves that there is a measurable difference between cables. I don't think this a surprise to anyone. (You already knew you were dealing with different impedances with the different cables.) It is a surprise that there was no difference "measured" with reasonable length (12 ft.) cables. Those lamp cords are even better than either of us thought

Listening to the difference doesn't say much if anything about whether these differences are audible or significant (e.g. just turn it up a little louder to compensate for higher DC resistance) in the context of program material. Did you do any testing listening to full program comparing one cable to another or comparing long cables to short cables?

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #42 –
Quote from: Notat on
Listening to the difference signal is sort of cheating. It basically proves that there is a measurable difference between cables. I don't think this a surprise to anyone. (You already knew you were dealing with different impedances with the different cables.) It is a surprise that there was no difference "measured" with reasonable length (12 ft.) cables. Those lamp cords are even better than either of us thought

I don't think that he actually said that there were no measured differences between 12 foot cables, only no audible differences.

I am also curious to know how the 100 foot cables were laid out. Were they laid out in a straight line (100 feet between the amp and speakers) or were they in some way coiled, which would vastly increase their inductance.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #43 –
Quote from: Notat on
It is a surprise that there was no difference "measured" with reasonable length (12 ft.) cables. Those lamp cords are even better than either of us thought

No audible differences at 12 feet.  The differences are definetly measureable at 12 feet.

Quote from: Notat on
Listening to the difference doesn't say much if anything about whether these differences are audible or significant (e.g. just turn it up a little louder to compensate for higher DC resistance) in the context of program material. Did you do any testing listening to full program comparing one cable to another or comparing long cables to short cables?


Yes the differences were noticeable on full program with 100 foot cables.  The diferences are frequency response dips and peaks.  The frequency response curve is the inverse of the impedance curve of the speakers.  In addition, roll-off increases with frequency due the the filter formed by the cable inductance and the impedance of the speaker.  The wide variations in speaker impedance near the crossover frequencies cause significant problems.

With a resistive load there is a high-frequency roll off due to the filter formed by the series inductance of the cable, and the resistive load.

The bulk of the differences were due to the inductance of the cable and not the DC resitance of the cable.  The 10-GA cable had the lowest DC resistance, but the most audible defects!
John Siau
Vice President
Benchmark Media Systems, Inc.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #44 –
Because this discussion has resulted from a double-post, I am merging it with the one that took place six months ago.  To those interested in contributing, I urge you to read it from the beginning.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #45 –
Quote from: pdq on
The inductance of the cable varies roughly as the log of the ratio of the distance between the conductors to their diameter. If the distance between the conductors in the heavy-duty wire is larger, you would expect that to be somewhat canceled by the larger diameter.

Did you actually measure the inductance and what values did you see?



The separation distance of the conductors is measured center-to-center.
John Siau
Vice President
Benchmark Media Systems, Inc.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #46 –
Quote from: John_Siau on
Quote from: pdq on
The inductance of the cable varies roughly as the log of the ratio of the distance between the conductors to their diameter. If the distance between the conductors in the heavy-duty wire is larger, you would expect that to be somewhat canceled by the larger diameter.

Did you actually measure the inductance and what values did you see?



The separation distance of the conductors is measured center-to-center.

OK, so the ratio of the wire thicknesses is ~2.7. Are you saying that the ratio of the center-to-center distances is much greater than that? I don't know, since I have never seen the wire in question.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #47 –
Frequency reponse plots for speaker cables.

http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/speaker-cable-test.php

Cable length = 100 ft.
Page 1 = no load
Page 2 = 8-ohm resistive load
Page 3 = 8-ohm resistive load, also shows phase response
page 4 = 8-ohm JBL 4410 3-way studio monitor as load

Comments:

12-GA SJTOOV cable had the highest attenuation at 20 kHz (2dB) (yellow curve).
Unfortunately I do not have the plots for 10-GA, but the 10-GA has more attenuation at 20 kHz than the 12-GA.

The zip cord (green trace) has much less attenuation due to inductance, but does show significant DC losses.

The DC resistance of the cable and impedance variations in the speakers cause the dips in the frequency response seen on page 4.

The inductance of the cable causes the high-frequency roll-off seen on all pages.

The high-frequency performance of the zip cord is superior to the heavy-gauge cable (due to lower inductance), but the resistive losses of the zip cord create some issues at speaker crosover frequencies.


The high-frequency attenuation problem gets worse in a 4-ohm or 2-ohm sound reinforcement system - especially when the cable lengths exceed 100 feet and the wire gauge is increased.

A cable made from 24-pairs of 24-GA twisted pair outperforms all of the other solutions tested (magenta curve).

Please note that in at least one of my prior posts I stated that inductance was more of an issue than DC resistance.  Let me correct that by saying that cable inductance is primarily an issue for high frequencies.  DC resistance can cause dips in the frequency response (as shown in the graphs).  These tests are from 2005, so it has been a while since I have looked at them.

These frequency respone dips have significant implications for the need for a low output impedance (high damping factor) on a power amplifier.  These cables have a much lower impedance than the output of most power amplifiers.



Cables are not a problem in a home audio system where cables are short.
John Siau
Vice President
Benchmark Media Systems, Inc.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #48 –
I think there are 3 types of Fantasy Audiophiles:

1) Misinformed FA: The one that doesn't know much about electronics, electricity, or things like double blind tests. But as soon as he/she acquires knowledge, he/she may have a change of opinion.

2) Delusional FA: Delusional FAs know, in the back of their minds, that they are buying snake oil hardware/software/media. But they still do it because of psychological problems. They "want to believe" in snake oil audio.

3) Dishonest FA: Those are the magazine publishers and equipment manufacturers that know they are selling snake oil but still do it for the money.

Fantasy Audiophiles vs. Objective Audiophiles: Has the hobby changed?

Reply #49 –
Quote from: John_Siau on
These frequency respone dips have significant implications for the need for a low output impedance (high damping factor) on a power amplifier.  These cables have a much lower impedance than the output of most power amplifiers.


I think you meant to say "These cables have a much higher impedance than the output of most power amplifiers".  For 24 gauge wire, the resistance is 0.0302 Ohms/ft.  You have 100 ft length for the cable, so it's 200 ft total of single-conductor wire.  That gives 6 Ohms total series resistance.  This is much higher than the output impedance of tube amps, let alone solid state.