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Topic: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles (Read 552457 times) previous topic - next topic
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Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #775
I´ve tried to broaden your mind just a tiny little bit - but apparently some people are very narrowminded. I even went so far admitting mistakes I´d done myself in communicating my ideas & opinions. Did you? I think not. 90% of you people didn´t even bother to consider the slightest possibility that you are in fact incapable of accepting another ones opinion without critzising it.
If you're saying this because of what I said earlier, it's a complete misrepresentation. I also clearly said what would change our minds. Your basic point is that science and pseudoscience deserve equivalent time and effort. What is your evidence, or at least rational argument for this? Once you provide evidence, we'll surely change our minds. Or have you changed your mind about that assertion?

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Now please, everyone back to the subject at hand which was... eh... let me see... ah yes! "Why we need Audiophiles."

This discussion goes to the crux of the reason why people like the Giz writers think we "need" audiophiles, and why they think those people have any more authority to speak on reality than anyone else.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #776
That October 2008 reference proves me wrong, thanks. After a longer pause I had become active again at HA not before January '09. Wasn't LAME quite ahead a couple of years before that? Has your codec been continuously under development or is this the result of a rather large revision?

I think LAME was only ahead a few years ago in terms of VBR quality. I think back then Fraunhofer didn't focus on VBR. So yes, over the last years our codec has undergone tuning and bugfixing just like LAME did. As you can see, we do monitor HA listening tests  Whether there was a large codec revision in between, I don't know (I working on AAC, not MP3).

Chris
As I said in the article, the codecs used were the Fraunhofer, as implemented in Adobe Audition...


Mr. Atkinson, which version, by the way?


Adobe Audition 1.0, which I purchased in 2003.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

The proximity and content of these two posts is nothing short of amazing.

Mr. Atkinson,
7 year old encoders sound like 7 year old encoders.
Your sample for your demonstration will not even be close to being representative of what a modern mp3 encoder can achieve.
elevatorladylevitateme

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #777


I mean the ones from posters that seem to be almost sympathetic, or at worst *resigned* or *rueful* or *patronizing*, saying in effect, hey, look, what do you expect from the guy?  He's got ad space to sell!  He can't go telling his readers that CD players aren't generally likely to sound different if they compare them fairly, or that they could easily make mp3s that they likely couldn't tell from an SACD without specific training.


I've been pretty hardly avoiding that line of argument, actually, but I will say that I've only responded to about 30% of the posts that I'd like to respond to, with infinite time and concentration. (Including several of yours)


Well, I'm slightly sleep deprived right now so I'm having trouble parsing this...by 'pretty hardly' do you mean, just' barely', or you've kept well away from it ' (fwiw, I had no particular poster in mind, I've just noted a type of post appearing again and again)

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Some of the most skeptical and intelligent people I know are firm believers in astrology, and believe it has a genuine scientific basis. And, y'know, empirically, calling their beliefs pseudoscientific just does not get me very far. Nobody believes their own beliefs are pseudoscience - it's always somebody else's. It's kind of like calling somebody a "dumb sheep", actually.


I'll go further and say people tend not to believe that their own beliefs are wrong.  Film at 11!   

I might also say that some of the most skeptical and intelligent people you know must not be all THAT skeptical, if they firmly believe in astrology.  It's interesting that you bring that 'field' up btw, because just today I was wondering what's analogous to high-end audio journalism -- maqazines about astrology and homeopathy came to mind first.  So it might be a good gedanken to substitute homeopathy, and terms of art there, for 'audiophilia' and its arguments, here.  I have no doubt there are or have been reasonable-sounding, articulate, polite editors and writers at those journals , even some willing to conduct in objective measurements.  But in the end, they, too are just*wrong* about some awfully fundamental stuff.

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ZOMG. Statements perceived as overly emotional get mistaken for statements on the losing side of an argument? Film at 11.


Dammit Jim, I'm sayin' people should be more skeptical of 'reasonable tone'.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #778

I am sure that that claim hasn't been made on HA. But it is widely made in the outside world, in places like the "Circuits" section of the NY Times, and in advertising. Even the low-bit-rate audio offered by satellite radio is routinely described as "CD quality."

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


If your primary complaints are that people involved in the selling of this still comparatively new technology make exaggerated claims about their products in order to drum up business and that journalists do too much of their work from press releases without any substantial critical examination or analysis then all I can respond with are hoary cliches about pots and kettles that don't even make sense to me because my teapot is a lovely shade of turquoise.


Marketing-speak, isn't it wonderful?  I'm waiting for the coin to drop and record companies start advertising vinyl as 'better-than-CD quality'.  Then we will at last have come full circle from 'perfect sound forever'.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #779
I would let this thread become the black hole of Hydrogenaudio. Eventually the whole universe itself might collapse into it.


and then it will wormhole its way out and find itself in a Stereophile forum thread. 

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #780
I don't know what to think about the whole new lossy frequency plot contemplation thing in this thread, that Axon started.
IIRC, more people than just myself were worried about that.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #781
The proximity and content of these two posts is nothing short of amazing.

Mr. Atkinson,
7 year old encoders sound like 7 year old encoders.
Your sample for your demonstration will not even be close to being representative of what a modern mp3 encoder can achieve.



Indeed.  Interested parties, please use the HA forum advanced search function with this input

+Audition +Fraunhofer

Return results as posts, and scroll down to posts dating from 2006 and earlier.  Note posts from gurubroolz, for example, mentioning the issues with the Audition 1.0 encoder.  Click to read the posts around it Repeat ad libitum.

Audition's encoder was hardly SOTA in 2006, much less 2008 when JA 'behaved' his article.  But of course he's claiming that he merely wanted to show how a 'typical' mp3 performed ....as if mp3 sources were typically using Audition's 2003 encoder in 2008??

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #782
Insofar as JA's article deliberately avoided the whole issue of observed audibility of lossy encoding artifacts, and that (as I pointed out) a modern codec shows similar numerical issues, I'm not sure how important the Audition/Fraunhofer thing is in the context of the article itself.

The more important issue here is that Stereophile readers are being kept in the dark about important lossy encoding information that can and will affect their listening quality. I'll grant to John that, for the high-end audio person who demands all sorts of perfection, losslessness etc out of playback stacks, MP3s have no place in them. But these same people - like Mikey - have iPods, and cell phones, and all sorts of other things which have very finite storage space. Until we all have terabytes on our cell phones, or download all our music losslessly from the cloud, people will continue to have a need for lossy encoding of audio into the 64-192k bitrate regime. And the real point krab and others are making is that there are real mistakes being perpetrated in these encodes - there really are "good" and "bad" encoder settings - and that by not describing them, Stereophile is ultimately performing a disservice to its readers. It's easy and a cop-out to just tell people to use 320kbps MP3s. Where's the discussion about inherent preecho issues at that bitrate, and why other codecs at lower bitrates may be superior? Or any kind of discussion about which encoders to use when a lower bitrate is required?

John, I think it's really too easy for people here to question your motives given your silence on stuff like that. The impression I get about Stereophile is that it is, first and foremost, a luxury audio magazine, and should be compared to other luxury magazines than other magazines covering audio. And frankly, I can grant luxury people their snobbery, because to do otherwise is in its own way elitist. But in the absence of a magazine catering specifically to lower end audio - and the absence of reviewers and review protocols revolving around that - I think Stereophile has also, willingly or unwillingly, also taken the mantle of a magazine of authority for mainstream audio as well as high-end audio. And if the magazine can review entry-level turntables and iPod sound quality, why can't it also review low bitrate codecs? And more specifically, why can't it review them on their own terms - with ABX testing?

I mean, god, I'd write the article myself gratis if you'd let me. I'd just summarize all the collective HA wisdom into "go lossless if you can, but if you can't, and storage is at a premium; these are the encoders and settings people tend to be using at these bitrates; this is how you should be thinking about selecting a codec <...>; consider running your own ABX tests to evaluate the importance of sound quality defects." Surely that isn't that terribly misleading or contrary to the goals of the magazine.

EDIT: Note that this is very central to the original premise of the thread.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #783
Also, John: Alas I cannot attend the Colorado show, although I do want to. Y'all in the high end world need to do a Texas show sometime. Dallas or Houston or SA is easy for me

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #784
Insofar as JA's article deliberately avoided the whole issue of observed audibility of lossy encoding artifacts, and that (as I pointed out) a modern codec shows similar numerical issues, I'm not sure how important the Audition/Fraunhofer thing is in the context of the article itself.


As I said, the premise behind the article was not to use the very best examples of the breed but to show typical results.

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The more important issue here is that Stereophile readers are being kept in the dark about important lossy encoding information that can and will affect their listening quality. I'll grant to John that, for the high-end audio person who demands all sorts of perfection, losslessness etc out of playback stacks, MP3s have no place in them. But these same people - like Mikey - have iPods, and cell phones, and all sorts of other things which have very finite storage space. Until we all have terabytes on our cell phones, or download all our music losslessly from the cloud, people will continue to have a need for lossy encoding of audio into the 64-192k bitrate regime. And the real point krab and others are making is that there are real mistakes being perpetrated in these encodes - there really are "good" and "bad" encoder settings - and that by not describing them, Stereophile is ultimately performing a disservice to its readers. It's easy and a cop-out to just tell people to use 320kbps MP3s. Where's the discussion about inherent preecho issues at that bitrate, and why other codecs at lower bitrates may be superior? Or any kind of discussion about which encoders to use when a lower bitrate is required?


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.

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John, I think it's really too easy for people here to question your motives given your silence on stuff like that. The impression I get about Stereophile is that it is, first and foremost, a luxury audio magazine, and should be compared to other luxury magazines than other magazines covering audio. And frankly, I can grant luxury people their snobbery, because to do otherwise is in its own way elitist. But in the absence of a magazine catering specifically to lower end audio - and the absence of reviewers and review protocols revolving around that - I think Stereophile has also, willingly or unwillingly, also taken the mantle of a magazine of authority for mainstream audio as well as high-end audio. And if the magazine can review entry-level turntables and iPod sound quality, why can't it also review low bitrate codecs?


If Stereophile has acquired that mantle,  that makes sense. But I don't believe it has.

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And more specifically, why can't it review them on their own terms - with ABX testing?


Again a good point. But I'd have to reinvent who we are first. Maybe a task for the next editor. :-)

Seriously,any good magazine (and in the world of publishing, Stereophile is indeed good, as witnessed by the high price just paid for the company that owns it) basically represents the tastes, thoughts and interests of its editor. In the word of Henry Luce, "All great editors are men able to see how stories, episodes, and personalities flow and merge one into the other to reproduce the pattern of a world that only their own inner eye perceives." While I may not be a "great" editor, I am safe in saying that there are no good magazines that edited by committee. Thus the magazines stance on lossy codec stems my  own distrust of them and my feeling that in a world where storage follows Moore's Law, why bother.

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I mean, god, I'd write the article myself gratis if you'd let me. I'd just summarize all the collective HA wisdom into "go lossless if you can, but if you can't, and storage is at a premium; these are the encoders and settings people tend to be using at these bitrates; this is how you should be thinking about selecting a codec <...>; consider running your own ABX tests to evaluate the importance of sound quality defects." Surely that isn't that terribly misleading or contrary to the goals of the magazine.


Food for thought. Thank you.

And sorry you won't be in Colorado. There's a chance I might be Austin later in the year, in which case we could continue this conversation over a bottle or two of Shiner Bock.


John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #785
Quote
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.


Really? Were you 'asked' to show how mp3s *measure* in the ways you measured it, rather than to give an fair indication of how mp3s can sound, and why?



And it's 'close enough' to compare mp3s to junk food? That analogy makes the following dubious assumptions:


1) that the sensory difference between 'organic' foods and fast food is analogous to the sensory difference between lossless  and mp3.

2) that a burger made of 'organic ingredients' will OF COURSE taste better than a Burger King or Wendy's burger -- who will of course know which is which beforehand

3) that just as fast food is essentially not worth differentiating, neither are different mp3 settings or codecs

4) that making mp3s your entire 'diet' of audio -- regardless of settings or codec -- will degrade your audio 'health', just as a diet consisting only of fast food will turn you into a sickly undiscriminating thing


Yes, the analogy is superficial, and and like the mp3 demo you did, and the one you propose to do, it's not close enough to a fair rendering of the situation to really be called  'educational'.  What it is, is notably biased.  Since mp3s are based on perceptual lossy encoding, the 'proof' of an mp3s quality really IS in the listening, not the measurements -- one would think Stereophile of all places would embrace a paradigm like that. However,  a swarm of graphs of mp3s *does* serve excellently if one wants to pander to readers' assumptions of superior taste and discrimination instead. 


Perhaps as penance you could run an article educating your younger readers about these newfangled things called LPs, focusing the article mainly on measurements of surface noise.  Make sure you end with the observation that your investigations demonstrate that no way, no how does LP approach CD quality.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #786
Again a good point. But I'd have to reinvent who we are first. Maybe a task for the next editor. :-)


Perhaps you might consider that your intransigence on this one thing is going to ultimately make the next editor's job that much more difficult because you've made your mag irrelevant to practically everybody under forty by pissing on their listening preference.  How is Stereophile, its advertisers and your hobby prepared to cope with the potential loss of an entire generation?

 

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #787
Again a good point. But I'd have to reinvent who we are first. Maybe a task for the next editor. :-)


Perhaps you might consider that your intransigence on this one thing is going to ultimately make the next editor's job that much more difficult because you've made your mag irrelevant to practically everybody under forty by pissing on their listening preference.


Your comment is based on a false premise, that Stereophile is irrelevant to younger people. Yes, historically our reader base has been the boomer generation, to which I belong,  but it does appear that we are getting an increasing proportion of readers under 30.

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How is Stereophile, its advertisers and your hobby prepared to cope with the potential loss of an entire generation?


Advertisers are not my concern. But if there _is_ a "missing generation" among our readers, I feel it is actually Gen X not Y, ie, those now in their mid-30s.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #788
Perhaps you might consider that your intransigence on this one thing is going to ultimately make the next editor's job that much more difficult because you've made your mag irrelevant to practically everybody under forty by pissing on their listening preference.  How is Stereophile, its advertisers and your hobby prepared to cope with the potential loss of an entire generation?
Their business model is clearly to lay claim to as much of the sinking ship as possible.

It's not a bad business model. There are other "Hi-Fi" magazines that jumped into home cinema and lossy audio - I don't know how well they're doing, but they're contemptibly DBT-free and not particularly popular with most home cinema and lossy audio fans, who would rather get their information from the internet. So Stereophile is ahead of them.

The "lad's gadget mags" seem successful, and fun, while completely unreliable in terms of discovering the real technical performance of the items reviewed - maybe Stereophile is just a "posh" version of these magazines, and saw the niche first?

Actually, if that's true, a useful tweak to Stereophile's business model isn't accepting DBTs - it's draping tasteful but beautiful females across the products it photographs, e.g. an upmarket version of this. Then again, it would be a bad for subscription figures to give the older readers heart attacks.

Cheers,
David.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #789
Actually, if that's true, a useful weak to Stereophile's business model isn't accepting DBTs - it's draping tasteful but beautiful females across the products it photographs, e.g. an upmarket version of this. Then again, it would be a bad for subscription figures to give the older readers heart attacks.


We're all adults here, right? We do want to appeal to Stereophile's current demographics, right?  Let me put this a gently as possible: you need to rewite the above as follows:

"Actually, if that's true, a useful weak to Stereophile's business model isn't accepting DBTs - it's draping tasteful but gorgeous *models* across the products it photographs"

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #790
This discussion goes to the crux of the reason why people like the Giz writers think we "need" audiophiles, and why they think those people have any more authority to speak on reality than anyone else.


The high end press has been minting profits by churning consumer paranoa for decades.  The hidden subtext in the "Everthing sounds different" myth is that everything you currently have sounds really bad, so run right out and spend the big bucks on what we advertise.

The subtext of the current Gizzy story is that people like F are our saviors, and we really need to listen to them, burn our iPods, quit downloading files, and go back to spinning vinyl on megabuck tubed equipment in dedicated listening rooms.

The current scare story that the high end press is trying to spread, is that the big bad profit-mongers in the computer and music businesses are trying to ruin us and our sacred  enjoyment of music by addicting us to degraded SQ in the form of iPods, earbuds,  and compressed music files. 

I'm not a big fan of earbuds but I dig IEMs. ;-)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #791
The "lad's gadget mags" seem successful, and fun, while completely unreliable in terms of discovering the real technical performance of the items reviewed - maybe Stereophile is just a "posh" version of these magazines, and saw the niche first?

Actually, if that's true, a useful [tweak] to Stereophile's business model isn't accepting DBTs - it's draping tasteful but beautiful females across the products it photographs...


:-) A Swiss magazine tried this approach in the late 1970s -- it went bust within a year. Don't remember if it espoused DBTs, however.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #792
The high end press has been minting profits by churning consumer paranoa for decades.  The hidden subtext in the "Everthing sounds different" myth is that everything you currently have sounds really bad, so run right out and spend the big bucks on what we advertise.

So what? I've always thought that in a free market, the onus was on the consumer to make informed choices, or not. Don't people have a right to sell or purchase the products they want to? Without resorting to any audio issues whatsoever, since there's going to be a segment of the population that will spend money on expensive audio gear, won't there always be companies supplying that demand? Making it sound like people are being forced to buy this stuff, is factual incorrect.

Furthermore, clearly if people are happy with their gear, what's the problem with that? As well, audio isn't the only endeavor that relies on subjective opinions in order to promote products. Isn't it unreasonable to expect only audio companies, and their promoters, to be completely "objective" and without bias?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #793
The consumer has limited resources for making their buying decisions. Traditionally government has taken the resposibility for safety issues, and private organizations in many cases examine quality issues. The problem is when the "private organizations" have a vested interest in the products they are testing and reporting on.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #794
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!).

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #795
The consumer has limited resources for making their buying decisions.

  ... completely not true at all, in fact, consumers have never had more resources! Indeed, what would you call this website?

Traditionally government has taken the resposibility for safety issues, and private organizations in many cases examine quality issues.

The government  has the responsibility to make sure my stereo is safe and companies can only sell high quality products? 

Sorry, but I feel that when people need to go to extremes in order to justify their position, they actually are demonstrating how far removed from reality they have wandered.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #796
The consumer has limited resources for making their buying decisions.

  ... completely not true at all, in fact, consumers have never had more resources! Indeed, what would you call this website?

Yes, HA is a resource. Not everyone has discovered HA, and there are many more websites (and magazines) where the information is overwhelmingly of the oposite kind. The average person may not have the time or intellect to determine which of the conflicting views to accept. THAT is the limited resource that I am referring to.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #797
The high end press has been minting profits by churning consumer paranoa for decades.  The hidden subtext in the "Everthing sounds different" myth is that everything you currently have sounds really bad, so run right out and spend the big bucks on what we advertise.


So what? I've always thought that in a free market, the onus was on the consumer to make informed choices, or not.


Agreed.

One of the changes that the internet put into the global siuation was that the loudest voices didn't always belong to people who bought ink by the barrel.

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Don't people have a right to sell or purchase the products they want to?


Within the law, for sure.


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Without resorting to any audio issues whatsoever, since there's going to be a segment of the population that will spend money on expensive audio gear, won't there always be companies supplying that demand?


*always* is a big word. Yes, there will probably always be companies who still sell buggy whips. However, market shares change, and eventually products no longer command enough attention to be worth much discussion.

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Making it sound like people are being forced to buy this stuff, is factual incorrect.


Did I say forced or anything like it?

No.

You did see the discusion of straw man, right? ;-)

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Furthermore, clearly if people are happy with their gear, what's the problem with that?


Did I say that was a problem that needs to be dealt with forcably?

I'm under the impression that we're in a marketplace for ideas, and so it goes.

The SP web site has their ideas, and HA and AVS has theirs.

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As well, audio isn't the only endeavor that relies on subjective opinions in order to promote products.


We do have a somewhat unique situation with respect to products that are placeboes, right?

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Isn't it unreasonable to expect only audio companies, and their promoters, to be completely "objective" and without bias?


Umm "completely "objective" and without bias" would be another straw man, no? Or more like from the excluded middle?

And I got whipped lately for debating style?  What's much of the above? :-(




Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #798
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.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #799
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!).
Not really.
I guess the case could be made that Stereophile is analogous to colon cleansing and "Japanese" detox footpads.

It's certainly not a medical journal, though.

[edit] too slow.
elevatorladylevitateme