Audiophilia and its discontents

[birdog1960]

Not only is it not sheer, but not nonsense at all. Been working in a wine lab for quite a few years, so please, curb your enthusiasm. If a winemaker asks for advice what to do next, we tell him according to what we measure and according to what he wants to make. If not, all we look for is "heads" and "tails" in a wine. If there are none, it's a success. I'd expect your views on wine to be along the lines of "to me" same as in speakers. Which is useless (to the rest).


Let me just focus on these two. They shouldn't be mixed. You're not talking about speakers, but your impressions. The realm of impressions is in one's brain, not inside a box he buys. Given your "brand name dropping", I'd say it's the real audiophile talking. I heard such bad things about Triangles, again, it says nothing about the speakers. (And don't worry, I didn't believe those either).

If you can get "what goes in - comes out" formula for any piece of gear, than "believability" shouldn't come into question.

But you're free to start talking about all the things we can't measure whenever you feel like and save us all some time.

Of course, the fact that you don't like them is as welcome as any other taste, but you're trying to poor it over into a claim about the technical performance of a piece of gear. That's the only part I'm discussing. My guess is that the main reason for this is the fact that you get impressed by exotic. I may be wrong, of course.

and this brings us to the subjective part. My brother in law is a Master of Wine. One Christmas, he set up a blind tasting of different types (Cab, Burgundy, Pinot, Rioja etc) divided by white and red. He had printed a description of flavors and characteristics for each type and we were to identify each in small groups. All of us like wine to varying degrees but some felt they were experts. No group came close to identifying even a majority of the wines. But man, was it fun and delicious! A friend did a similar bring a bottle event for whiskey. Same results. Great party!

 

[symphara]

Not only is it not sheer, but not nonsense at all.

In retrospect, I was perhaps too quick to jump the gun. Reading your statement again, which was "every wine that doesn't harm people (more than alcohol does in the first place) is a complete success", I'd say it could make sense to an alcoholic. I didn't think of that angle before.

Of course, the fact that you don't like them is as welcome as any other taste, but you're trying to poor it over into a claim about the technical performance of a piece of gear.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm trying to "poor" it? Over what technical claim??

 

[kemmler3D]

Speakers vs. Wine - an OK comparison.

With wine, you could do a full chemical assay and with enough blind taste tests, correlate the ratios of each component of wine to general preference. Some correlation of preference and measurements seems possible. However, with wine, this is a waste of time because taste preferences are much more variable than audio preferences, and there are far more variables (hundreds of chemicals per bottle, I'd guess?).

The best you can probably do is test for compounds that are always or almost always unwanted, i.e. find the headless panthers.


With speakers, we have relatively few variables (at least not hundreds like you might with wine) and we have a small number that correlate very strongly with preference. And audio preference isn't nearly as variable as it is with wine.

As long as you can quantify subjective impressions among groups of people, you can also correlate them with objective measurements, and therefore quantify what "good" is, in a general sense. But at the individual level, "good" is always and in all things a matter of taste.

 

[symphara]

Speakers vs. Wine - an OK comparison.

With wine, you could do a full chemical assay and with enough blind taste tests, correlate the ratios of each component of wine to general preference. Some correlation of preference and measurements seems possible. However, with wine, this is a waste of time because taste preferences are much more variable than audio preferences, and there are far more variables (hundreds of chemicals per bottle, I'd guess?).

The best you can probably do is test for compounds that are always or almost always unwanted, i.e. find the headless panthers.


With speakers, we have relatively few variables (at least not hundreds like you might with wine) and we have a small number that correlate very strongly with preference. And audio preference isn't nearly as variable as it is with wine.

As long as you can quantify subjective impressions among groups of people, you can also correlate them with objective measurements, and therefore quantify what "good" is, in a general sense. But at the individual level, "good" is always and in all things a matter of taste.

Far from me to claim this is an exact comparison. I just tried to explain how I see the audio measurements thing. Useful to look for the bad stuff and especially where the limits of equipment are.

Looking at the thread topic again, and on the subject of hyper-realistic sound, I had forgotten about electrostatics. I got a few demos over the years and they’re, I think, among the best at the trick. With the major drawback (for me at least) of a very tight listening spot, with major coloration if you move, and not to mention bizarre/ugly looks. Again, my opinion, least someone jumps to bite my head off for making “technical claims”.

But every time I was subjected to electrostatics I wished regular speakers could do a bit more of “that”, the sensation of depth and, for lack of better words, floating sound.