The root of audiophile myths (and how we fell for them)?

[NTK]

Simple trick ... put your hand on the side or back of the speaker (whichever is larger) while music is playing. If you feel a lot of vibration, you might want to consider a different product.

Not all structural vibrations radiate sound. You may want a brush up on your structural acoustics.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243716526_Structural_Acoustics_Tutorial-Part_1_Vibrations_in_Structures

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243716469_Structural_Acoustics_Tutorial-Part_2_Sound-Structure_Interaction

 

[Deleted member 46664]

Not all structural vibrations radiate sound. You may want a brush up on your structural acoustics.

If it vibrates it moves air ... moving air is sound ... you're going to hear it unless something close by is vibrating in the opposite polarity causing acoustic cancellation. Whether you can hear it or not is a matter of how intense it is relative to the desired sound from a speaker cone.

 

[NTK]

If it vibrates it moves air ... moving air is sound ... you're going to hear it unless something close by is vibrating in the opposite polarity causing acoustic cancellation. Whether you can hear it or not is a matter of how intense it is relative to the desired sound from a speaker cone.

Well. May be you should know something about evanescent waves.

Evanescent Waves (sound radiation from a plate)

A small snippet from the above page:

​

Plate Wave Speed (Trace Velocity) Slower than Sound Speed in Fluid​

As the speed of the transverse bending wave in the plate decreases and approaches the speed of sound in the fluid, the direction of the radiated plane wave rotates from upward, perpendicular to the plate surface, to being parallel to the plate surface, when the two speeds are exactly the same. The condition when the flexural bending wave speed in the plate equals the speed of sound in the fluid is called "coincidence" since the two wave speeds "coincide". When the speed of the flexural bending wave in the plate is slower than the speed of sound in the fluid, the plane wave cannot bend back toward the plate surface, but instead the wave becomes evanescent with the wave amplitude decaying exponentially in the vertical direction away from the plate surface. Particles in the fluid near the plate surface move in counter-clockwise ellipses as the flexural wave passes by, while particles far from the plate surface don't move at all.​

​

 

[Deleted member 46664]

Well. May be you should know something about evanescent waves.

By way of a reminder...
"you're going to hear it unless something close by is vibrating in the opposite polarity causing acoustic cancellation. "

 

[NTK]

By way of a reminder...
"you're going to hear it unless something close by is vibrating in the opposite polarity causing acoustic cancellation. "

If you are able to understand the math ...

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

What does that have to do with your false claim that most people here think nothing should cost more than $100?

Nothing was replying to a different post. So many posts on ASR promoting cheap and cheerful products and then being abusive to people who can afford to spend more.

 

[Purité Audio]

Everything can vibrate it is just the frequency at which they vibrate that changes.
Keith

 

[Deleted member 46664]

If you are able to understand the math ...

Over think much?

 

[Mart68]

Nothing was replying to a different post. So many posts on ASR promoting cheap and cheerful products and thrm being abusive to people who can afford to spend more.

Not that again. I could afford to spend a lot more but I don't when there is no benefit to spending more. I doubt very much I'm the only one here in that position.

One of the reasons for this forum to exist is to help those who can afford expensive equipment to avoid being mugged off.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

Not that again. I could afford to spend a lot more but I don't when there is no benefit to spending more. I doubt very much I'm the only one here in that position.

One of the reasons for this forum to exist is to help those who can afford expensive equipment to avoid being mugged off.

Your money your choice, their money their choice! Consumer choice often mean what’s bought isn’t good value for money. Why do people spend £hundreds on trainers when perfectly good cheaper ones are available? Then we hear of AMIR Khan getting mugged at gunpoint for his £100k+ watch when a Seiko for a thousandth of that amount tells the time just as well. It isn’t my job or yours to tell someone how much to spend, will admit much of it puzzles me. I’m likely to be much older than you and life has taught me you can’t protect people from themselves. Nothing wrong with advising people not to waste money until it gets abusive and quite often it does. Not accusing you of being abusive, it does happen far too often.

 

[Blockader]

If it vibrates it moves air ... moving air is sound ... you're going to hear it unless something close by is vibrating in the opposite polarity causing acoustic cancellation. Whether you can hear it or not is a matter of how intense it is relative to the desired sound from a speaker cone.

moving air is not sound. Accelerated air is sound. Just moving air with a certain velocity won't result sound pressure(unless pressure chamber conditions)

 

[NTK]

Over think much?

No. They are the technical reasons behind Dr. Toole's post on the cabinet accelerometer test.

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/speaker-shootout-two-of-the-most-accurate-and-well-reviewed-speakers-ever-made.2907816/page-7#post-54570242

...
Putting an accelerometer on the wall of a cabinet is not a reliable indicator of the audibility of a resonance (sorry John Atkinson). For example, some panel resonances radiate sound effectively and others do not, but both exhibit vibration at a point on the panel. Harman and other advanced designers use scanning laser vibrometers to reveal patterns, polarity and amplitude of panel movement which guides the placement of structural reinforcements to reduce acoustical radiation from the resonance. When it is below the audible threshold in the anechoic frequency responses all is well (see the paper, or my books). It is not necessary to have foot thick concrete enclosures to eliminate audible resonances, good engineering can do it in rectangular wooden boxes.
...

 

[LightninBoy]

Getting back to the original post, one aspect of HiFi as a hobby that I believe opens it up to myths and snake oil more than others is that there is little structured competition between those in the hobby. Some small percentage might be involved in a local audio group with some listening sessions, but there is rarely any competition with real prizes and rigorously defined rules and measures for winning. The term "measures" here does not mean just objective measures. Many hobby competitions use subjective evaluations of judges to determine winners.

I believe this makes HiFi fairly unique compared to other common hobbies. Car audio has competitions. I wonder if someone involved in car audio can chime in here and tell us if myth and snake oil are as prevalent.

 

[Mart68]

Your money your choice, their money their choice! Consumer choice often mean what’s bought isn’t good value for money. Why do people spend £hundreds on trainers when perfectly good cheaper ones are available? Then we hear of AMIR Khan getting mugged at gunpoint for his £100k+ watch when a Seiko for a thousandth of that amount tells the time just as well. It isn’t my job or yours to tell someone how much to spend, will admit much of it puzzles me. I’m likely to be much older than you and life has taught me you can’t protect people from themselves. Nothing wrong with advising people not to waste money until it gets abusive and quite often it does. Not accusing you of being abusive, it does happen far too often.

Nothing wrong with consumer choice but consumers should have the information available to make educated choices, if they still want the ten grand DAC even though they are aware that a couple of hundred buys the same sound quality then that's fine with everyone.

Trouble is lots of people don't know that. If they did it's without a doubt that many of them would make a different choice.

I agree that there's no need for abuse, counter-productive in fact. But you're always going to get a few people who are too keen.

(I don't think you can be that much older than me unless you are Methuselah, I'm well past the half century).

 

[FrantzM]

Your money your choice, their money their choice! Consumer choice often mean what’s bought isn’t good value for money. Why do people spend £hundreds on trainers when perfectly good cheaper ones are available? Then we hear of AMIR Khan getting mugged at gunpoint for his £100k+ watch when a Seiko for a thousandth of that amount tells the time just as well. It isn’t my job or yours to tell someone how much to spend, will admit much of it puzzles me. I’m likely to be much older than you and life has taught me you can’t protect people from themselves. Nothing wrong with advising people not to waste money until it gets abusive and quite often it does. Not accusing you of being abusive, it does happen far too often.

Might not be your job. You may have to admit that there is something inherently wrong with the consumer being lied to and parted from his money. In most societies robbery is frown upon and in general is an act that is deleterious to the evolution of said society. We could say the same , and it would not a stretch, about the mountain of falsehoods regularly spewed by the HEA, ecosystem ... These have not advanced a iota the evolution of music reproduction in the home ... A bit of a rant ... I'll stop

Peace.

 

[Mart68]

Might not be your job. You may have to admit that there is something inherently wrong with the consumer being lied to and parted from his money. In most societies robbery is frown upon and in general is an act that is deleterious to the evolution of said society. We could say the same , and it would not a stretch, about the mountain of falsehoods regularly spewed by the HEA, ecosystem ... These have not advanced a iota the evolution of music reproduction in the home ... A bit of a rant ... I'll stop

Peace.

There was a scam doing the rounds in these parts some years ago. Blokes would target the elderly, tell them their roof was on its last legs and needed treating. They would then paint the roof with cheap orange paint and charge a couple of grand.

No different from making false claims about audio products. Even if those blokes genuinely but mistakenly believed the orange paint would protect the roof should they be able to carry on doing it with no-one saying anything about it?

 

[Pogre]

Nothing was replying to a different post. So many posts on ASR promoting cheap and cheerful products and then being abusive to people who can afford to spend more.

There's nothing wrong with praising a less expensive product that punches above its weight class for the budget minded is there? I see plenty of depressingly expensive products being praised here too.

Abuse is another issue and I agree there isn't a call for flat out abuse of anyone. However, one man's abuse is another man's questions about the truth of the claims. Challenging ideas and countering unsubstantiated claims is not abuse. It's an honest effort to get to truth, and it gets frustrating when the person making the claims dishonestly dips, dodges, ducks, dives and deflects away every attempt to get to the truth of a proposition.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

Nothing wrong with consumer choice but consumers should have the information available to make educated choices, if they still want the ten grand DAC even though they are aware that a couple of hundred buys the same sound quality then that's fine with everyone.

Trouble is lots of people don't know that. If they did it's without a doubt that many of them would make a different choice.

I agree that there's no need for abuse, counter-productive in fact. But you're always going to get a few people who are too keen.

(I don't think you can be that much older than me unless you are Methuselah, I'm well past the half century).

On the age scale I’m a lot nearer to my century than fifty. People do join ASR to ask for advice and that’s great, I’ve never posted comments on those particular threads, there is such a range of kit most of it I’ve never heard and wouldn’t comment on it for that reason. ASR runs a useful service with it’s testing regime and if it gets people to be cautious before buying it must be good. Only started posting on this thread due to abusive comments, yet most of you didn’t seem to mind him making them?

 

[Pogre]

being abusive to people who can afford to spend more.

Example, this is a dishonest framing. Most replies I see that give people a hard time for overspending are the people who claim that there are actual tangible benefits to doing so when there aren't. You're framing it as though everyone is just picking on rich people or something just because. That's just not true. Almost every single one of your posts have this type of dishonest framing. It's no wonder people get riled up around you.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

Example, this is a dishonest framing. Most replies I see that give people a hard time for overspending are the people who claim that there are actual tangible benefits to doing so when there aren't. You're framing it as though everyone is just picking on rich people or something just because. That's just not true. Almost every single one of your posts have this type of dishonest framing. It's no wonder people get riled up around you.

As I said before their money their choice, why is it dishonest framing? Some of you don’t seem to know the difference between All and Many. Point out one post where I’ve said all criticisms of subjective judgement shouldn’t be made? When it comes to abuse it’s another matter.