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Audiophilia and its discontents

syn08

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if 50 people in Amazon reviews say the bass sounds too loud or monotone (…) If 50 people say it has a "harsh / piercing / metallic / shrieking" sound,

Show me examples of 50 people independently reaching such sound impressions and I may agree with your opinion.
 

MattHooper

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I think it's also a bit context-related if those words are usefull or not. Most people are not technical at all, and use words to describe their impression in a very subjective way mos of the time. And those describtions are subjective, and relative worthless as technical review, but very usefull as describtion of how the person receive the sound (and it can tell something about the sound).

Yes and the point is also that people use informal descriptive language successfully to communicate. As I've said, it's about communication, which is always a two-way street.

I work in the creative end, in pro sound. Yes my job is to a degree technical, but much of it is living in the world of creativity, and communication with informal language. So I'm quite comfortable with sonic characteristics being put in to descriptive language. Just today we did a mix playback and at times when they wanted an additional sound effect, I had groups of people trying to articulate the type of sound they want. They were magical sounds - there was no formal technical glossary they could use, they simply did their best, putting words together, using analogies, etc to get the character of the sound across. Imagine if, like some here, I dug in my heels and became dismissive of such attempts at communication: "Sorry, but all this flowery language is useless!" But I can't do that - I live in the real world of consequences, not just an audio forum comment section where one can just voice skepticism about the worth of informal descriptions
and log off. I have to understand what they are communicating. And frankly it wasn't hard to "get" what they wanted. I created the sound immediately...thumbs up all around...just what they wanted! The system tends to work!

Someone who doesn't do this, or is maybe of an "engineering mindset" may not be comfortable and reject anything less precise, less reliable than what they seek. Which is perfectly fine. It's only when that rejection moves from "I personally don't have a use for this type of communication about audio gear, give me measurements please" to a blanket dismissal "this form of communication is worthless...nothing but flowery nonsense"...that I object. I know that to simply be untrue, as my work depends on successfully communicating in this way, and I have communicated this way often with other audiophiles.

It doesn't take Every Single Audiophile To Have Agreed Precisely On A Formal Glossary Of Terms before communicating about the sound of gear is possible. Nor does it take every audiophile's impressions to be the same, or perfectly accurate. If you personally care about this form of communication, you can notice when a writer or audiophile seems to be listening for things you care about, seems perceptive (do his impressions track with yours if you've heard the same gear?), seems articulate enough to paint a sonic picture, etc. Then you get: "this is a person whose descriptions I can understand." It's a selective approach. I am certainly baffled by some writing by audiophiles, but I also know what my audiophile pals (and many on-line audiophiles/writers) mean when they are describing gear. And visa versa. If you are inclined to *not care* then, no, you won't get anything out of it. But that's not necessarily because it's actually worthless.
 

MattHooper

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Agree with this. Subjective language in reviews is not a bad thing when 1) it's used in good faith and 2) it actually corresponds to something the speaker is actually doing.

Unfortunately a lot of reviews don't meet those criteria, so there are folks around here who shut down as soon as they hear the word "subjective", not without reason.

I think what Matt is getting at is the fact that you CAN develop a credible estimate of how something will sound (and measure) based on subjective reviews that do meet those criteria. For example, if 50 people in Amazon reviews say the bass sounds too loud or monotone, I think we should expect some bad port resonance / tuning from the speaker, probably in the 80-120hz range. If 50 people say it has a "harsh / piercing / metallic / shrieking" sound, you can guess at some distortion/peaking in the 4-7khz range, probably.


Yup. Measurements correlated with sonic impressions = best of all. Sonic impressions alone, though, can communicate. And occasionally sonic impressions put in to descriptive language can communicate more then just the measurements (get at "what it sounds like").

I was conscripted by an on-line audiophile mag to write some speaker reviews in the early 2000s. This came after I had been posting on audiophile groups/forums my reports from auditioning speakers, just sharing my experience. I was getting consistent feedback that the descriptions were "accurate" to what others would hear from the same speakers. Hence the reviewing gig.

Not being super knowledgeable about the deep technical aspects (like an Amir or John Atkinson) I was a bit hesitant, but took it as a challenge as just being a "regular joe" doing his best to describe what he hears. My ideal outcome would be to act as a sort of remote pair of ears for the listener - if I could describe what I heard, paint a sonic picture vivid enough, such that if the reader heard the speaker (either before or after reading the review) he would think "Yes, that IS what music sounded like through that speaker. That DOES convey the specific character of that speaker!"

All I can say is: that was indeed the feedback I would get from the reviews "I heard that speaker it your description was accurate!" It left me feeling that, yes, this type of communication was worth something (and not merely entertainment). Which, in the end, shouldn't be that surprising as, like I said, we use this manner of communicating about sonic characteristics all the time in my industry.

I stopped doing reviews (only did several) many years ago, but have continued swapping impressions with audiophiles in forums, lo these many decades. I've had a popular, long running thread on audiogon in which I've detailed tons of sonic impressions of speakers I auditioned, during a massive speaker auditioning binge. The feedback has routinely been the same "you've put in to words the character I heard in those speakers." This isn't to claim to be a golden ear! I'm not! Just passionate about this stuff. I've been helped by the descriptions of other audiophiles, I try to do the same, for people who like to get a subjective description, not just a technical one.

For instance someone on audiogon started their own thread asking if anyone had compared the Joseph Perspectives (which he could get a deal on) vs the Harbeth Super HL5+ speakers (which he currently owned). Well...as it happens...I've owned both those speakers! So I wrote a detailed reply describing what I found to be the salient sonic characteristics of each speaker, the strengths and weaknesses, trade offs etc. He ended up buying the Perspectives, setting them up and comparing to his Harbeths. He reported back: "You were spot on with your analysis!" He described what he heard and it was just like what I heard!
He was over the moon thrilled to own the Perspectives.

I certainly agree plenty of skepticism is warranted depending on the claims being made! If we are talking audiophiles swapping impressions of AC cables, yeah, likely imagination. But once we enter the realm of the known-to-be-very-audible sonic differences, whether it's speakers (or for instance me adjusting sounds for my job) then, if one keeps dismissing all informal sonic impressions as empty, flowery nonsense and delusion - dismissing the plausibility of the speakers actually sound as described - that's in danger of slipping in to a lazy hyper-skepticism.
 

KellenVancouver

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Talk about word salad. The author must be getting paid by the word. That much convoluted fluff makes reading a chore. Compare that Harper's writer with someone who imparts genuine knowledge like Amir. Case closed.
 

kemmler3D

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Compare that Harper's writer with someone who imparts genuine knowledge like Amir. Case closed.
Either you didn't read the article at all, or you don't understand the point of the piece, at all.

There isn't a case to be closed here.

The author was describing what it's like to interact with fringe audiophiles, not describing the performance of a piece of equipment. This experience is interesting in and of itself. That's the point of the article. If you don't think that's interesting, why are you commenting on it?


"Moby dick? Total word salad, I prefer reading stock quotes in the business section" - that's how you sound right now. It's a non-sequitur critique. And you don't need to comment on something you didn't read just to say how much you don't care.
 
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krabapple

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Well, some of the article, towards the end, is about the 'performance' of gear Frere-Jones heard or bought after talking to Gutenberg and other audiophools. In short, veils were lifted, tulips bloomed, etc. , though he phrased it with more panache: he writes that Gutenberg's test pair of speakers sounded 'sick' , and the used pair of Kitsch (I mean Klipsch) bookshelves that he bought made some old familiar music sound ' alive, drunk, and present'

He also writes of Gutenberg, " I find myself swayed by most of what he says, largely because he seems to rate products based on his own preferences. He also clearly loves music (oddly not a prerequisite in this cohort)." To which I can only say, having enjoyed the article: bless your heart, Sasha.
 

kemmler3D

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Well, some of the article, towards the end, is about the 'performance' of gear Frere-Jones heard or bought after talking to Gutenberg and other audiophools. In short, veils were lifted, tulips bloomed, etc. , though he phrased it with more panache: he writes that Gutenberg's test pair of speakers sounded 'sick' , and the used pair of Kitsch (I mean Klipsch) bookshelves that he bought made some old familiar music sound ' alive, drunk, and present'

He also writes of Gutenberg, " I find myself swayed by most of what he says, largely because he seems to rate products based on his own preferences. He also clearly loves music (oddly not a prerequisite in this cohort)." To which I can only say, having enjoyed the article: bless your heart, Sasha.
Yes, but the article wasn't "Klipsch bookshelf speaker review" ... that was more just the outcome we can observe of their having delved into the audiophile world. The impressions of a given set of speakers that IIRC isn't even specifically named was obviously not the point of the article.

I think it's obnoxious to congratulate oneself on not being swayed by a review that effectively doesn't exist.
 

krabapple

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The speakers were specifically named by SF-J, in both instances. The 'sick' sounding speakers were PureAudioProject’s Duet15 Preludes; the 'alive, drunk, present' sounding ones were Klipsch RP-600Ms. You have to read to the end of the article to get to that info.

I really haven't a clue what you are on about, beyond that. I didn't write that the article is gear review. It's not, obviously. But there is some 'gear reviewing' in it, as I've noted, contra what you wrote.

As I wrote in an *another* thread about the article that *I* started *before* this one, I enjoy SF-J's writing and found interesting insights in this article. But the article doesn't bill itself as being about 'fringe' audiophiles. It's about audiophiles. As such its naivete and lack of exploration of other perspectives within the 'audiophile community' surprised and disappointed me. I kept waiting for a representative of more science-based audiophiles to make a showing. Instead SF-J just moved on to yet another subjectivist wahoo, as if this was 1992 instead of 2022.
 

kemmler3D

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its naivete and lack of exploration of other perspectives within the 'audiophile community' surprised and disappointed me. I kept waiting for a representative of more science-based audiophiles to make a showing. Instead SF-J just moved on to yet another subjectivist wahoo, as if this was 1992 instead of 2022.
These are fair points and I momentarily forgot that you actually posted this article in the thread before this one! :)

One of us should probably write a letter to the editor and give our growing audiophile counter-counter-culture a fair shake...

My cranky response was to post #67 which I read as declaring victory through "TL;DR".
 

kemmler3D

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I got a bug up my butt and wrote this to Harper's, will update if they respond.

Dear Editor,

I read Sasha Frere-Jones' account of his foray into the world of audiophilia with great interest, as did several of my fellow travelers in the depths of online audiophile discussions. The overall reaction was excitement about mainstream coverage of our hobby, but some chagrin that sub-sub cultures in the audiophile world were left unexplored and unexposed to the wider world. This probably sounds too niche to even finish reading my letter, but there's drama and upheaval in store.

While SFJ had a fascinating encounter with some of the most prominent and prototypical audiophiles, there's a growing contingent of people who find their pseudo-spiritual approach to technology bemusing at best. We don't want to hear about someone's emotional reaction to one speaker or another - we just want to know what's actually the best for the money. The vanguard of this "objectivist" movement is a website known as Audio Science Review, which along with a few others like Erin's Audio Corner, use professional lab equipment (at costs of $100K+) in their own homes to test speakers and other gear, and publish the results free of charge. The data they publish is generally the most thorough available anywhere at any price, and they've published thousands of measurements and counting.

This has led to a shockingly long parade of emperors in new clothes, where equipment costing $100-200 is now routinely found to trounce equipment costing thousands. Entire categories of equipment are exposed as elaborate scams**. Un-sexy Chinese brands are elevated to superstar status. Venerable personages in audio are mocked as crackpots or incompetents for their low numbers and high prices. This wholesale slaughter of sacred cows has upset many, and led some in the audiophile community to earnestly, if absurdly label the proprietor of ASR a criminal, on the suspicion of taking bribes and fudging numbers for/against certain manufacturers.

The schism in the audiophile world boils down to this: the subjectivists (like those in the article) are adamant that comparative listening and describing one's experience to others is authoritative, or at least important and useful. However, a great deal of academic research shows that the human ear is very easy to fool when it comes to subtle differences in sound quality. Placebo effect, expectation bias, and even small (like one click on a volume knob) differences in volume can all create a deeply convincing impression that one bit of gear sounds better than another, when in reality there's no difference at all*. It is very hard to accept that something you heard (and you definitely did hear it, nobody disputes that) was an illusion. It's also hard to accept that there's no magic in the boxes and that everything we can hear can also be measured - but it seems to be the truth.

The analogy to wine tasting and the correlation of taste and numbers on price tags comes up a lot in our world.

Some subjectivists are deeply offended by the ASR approach because they have a dog in the fight (sellers of overpriced equipment) or because their pride in their listening abilities is threatened by the fundamental unreliability of that type of listening. Some are just mad that the gear they spent half a mortgage payment on "measures poorly". Others demand respect for their decades of experience listening to expensive gear, regardless of what the numbers say. And of course there's the tribalism you find anywhere people have applied labels to themselves. The feud is ongoing.

Objectivist audiophiles are audiophiles for the same reasons as the folks in the article - we really enjoy listening to music with excellent sound quality, and we find the gear itself interesting. We're simply much more willing to trust numbers over the ears and words of others when it comes to buying our gear.

If any of your readers are interested in having the kind of listening experience Frere-Jones describes, but are turned off by the high prices or obscurity of audio marketing, they might do well to visit Audio Science Review. We have heaps of graphs and numbers, some guidance on how to read them, and very limited accounts of how certain bits of electronics made us feel.
 

krabapple

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Might be little long for the Harper's letter's column, but who knows, maybe they're run it. Good luck.

(I would have mentioned Hydrogenaudio.org too, the grandaddy of online 'objectivist' audio, and going further back, to the print era, the mainstream magazines Stereo Review, Audio, and the niche but memorable Audio Critic and Sensible Sound, but that's me)
 

Axo1989

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I got a bug up my butt and wrote this to Harper's, will update if they respond.

Looking forward to any update. Not a bad article from Harpers really (I enjoyed reading it at least).

Would've been interesting if he had managed a visit with our august host Mr Majidimehr and added a few paragraphs on the objective(ist) perspective, for sure. I wonder if he would have added a new c-word to the title? Certainly donning kimono and listening to a single speaker would add flavour to the narrative. But his impressions of the Klippel garage would be the most fun. I mean, it would blow your mind, wouldn't it? Personally I reckon 'club' still works: ASR is definitely interested in reaching people. But with a different angle, this club is interested in both music and measurements.
 

MattHooper

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I got a bug up my butt and wrote this to Harper's, will update if they respond.

Good letter!

On one hand I think that the Harper's piece was fine, and understandable. The equipment and approach is an off-the-beaten-path approach, with passionate characters, which makes for a good story. Plus, it seems it was the path the particular author went in his own journey, so he was documenting his own experience. Frankly probably more quirky and interesting a read for non-audiophiles than "KEF is making great, well-measuring speakers now, you know!" :)

So it's understandable why articles tend to go for the quirky world of audiophiles.

On the other hand...for the same reasons...yet another "aren't audiophiles quirky" is very been-there-done-that, and like you I wish there was some representation of the view one would find at ASR (and which seems to be spreading). I do think that the divide between "subjectivist/objectivist" approach (or however an article might want to phrase it), and the way subjectivism took over from objectivism, with objectivism making a comeback....could make for a compelling read in the right hands, even for non-audiophiles.
 

MarkS

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I would love to see an article about how the vast majority of audiophiles believe, falsely, that they can hear differences between properly functioning electronic components. Get some of the big names (Fremer! Guttenberg!) to sit for blind tests. ("OK Steve, we've put a new speaker cable into your favorite system. Not gonna tell ya what it is, and we've covered it up so you can't see it. Just evalutate it, as you normally would; take as long as you like: hours, days, weeks. Then write a review!") This would be a great example of how common delusional thinking is.
 

MattHooper

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I would love to see an article about how the vast majority of audiophiles believe, falsely, that they can hear differences between properly functioning electronic components. Get some of the big names (Fremer! Guttenberg!) to sit for blind tests. ("OK Steve, we've put a new speaker cable into your favorite system. Not gonna tell ya what it is, and we've covered it up so you can't see it. Just evalutate it, as you normally would; take as long as you like: hours, days, weeks. Then write a review!") This would be a great example of how common delusional thinking is.

Basically a version of the titillating wine blind testing articles, which undermined the abilities of wine experts.
 

jsrtheta

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I think this is why you get more out of subjective language than many of the EE types around here.

Subjective language is useful so long as you (feel you) can translate it into quantitative adjustments or measurements with an acceptable success rate. In your work you've done this so often that it doesn't seem very hard to you.

I think you should likewise take people at their word here when they say something like "crunchy" is literally meaningless to them. They may be exaggerating a bit, but without any experience trying to translate between subjective and objective, it may seem like a total black box to them. If your entire audiophile life has been spent in an engineering context, you really might not have any sense of what "crunchy" might sound like.
Oh dear god. Talk about missing the point.

This thread started with a non-audiophile's description of how his first enjoyment of good sound affected him, which by definition is a subjective experience, and so many responses totally miss the point.

Good art is magic. Appreciate the magic.
 

Cbdb2

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That article was discussed here earlier.

Certainly the article is packed with stuff the ASR crowd will find cringy. And it no doubt contains some dubious technical ideas.

But ultimately it's a writer trying to put his experience with new audio gear in to language...which is what writers (and humans) do.

One theme is it documents the writer's grappling with the idea of what does one want out of a sound system? He wrote about how, as someone who also made records: "You shape the material you have to make it do what you need it to. The idea of anything being “natural” or “accurate” in the field of recorded music made no sense to me."

He wondered what is the "more" that some audiophiles are looking for with their audio gear.

Basically his article seemed to me to document his journey from the mind set of not really expecting too much from a recording...beyond the basic sonic information contained about any recording...to experiencing how much more life-like sound reproduction can seem. So along the way he hears about some of the attributes some audiophiles are seeking, e.g.:

"When the audio critic Herb Reichert hears this quality in good speakers, he calls it “believable corporeality,”


Eventually the writer reports experiencing just something like that, when listening to music through the big horn system:

"One day, I brought Weiss a copy of Comet Meta, a record by David Grubbs and Taku Unami that features the sound of two electric guitars playing at relatively low volume. When we put the vinyl through his Imperia speakers, we heard the guitar lines ring and hang and interlock—and then something else happened. I felt a presence, as if someone had entered the room. The music had become a concrete experience. I don’t mean that I could see the musicians, but that the people in the music, and of the music, were with me."

He experienced a system producing a type of "life energy" from the musicians that he wasn't used to hearing, or even expecting could be part of listening to a stereo system. And it had a big effect on him. Good for him!

As you note, part of this article also has to do with grappling with language in describing sound. He's a writer with a new experience to express. And I enjoyed his attempt to put his experience in to words. And on the theme of the worthiness of putting experience in to words, in whatever domain:

It would be awfully impoverishing to de-legitimize or dismiss the worth of language and it's role in humans trying to communicate experiences and impressions to other humans. Who would want to dismiss literature from James Joyce (or name any other great authors), simply because they were using the imprecision of language, "Listen James, give us what you are trying to describe in measurements or don't bother, thanks!" How impoverished it would be to describe to one another the sensation and characteristics of a great meal, or cooking a recipe, or a sunset, or a concert, piece of music etc, only in terms of chemicals and physics, utterly missing the subjective phenomena.

Some here will roll their eyes at an article discussing audio in purely descriptive terms. But I enjoy it. Measurements can surely be enlightening about what is happening technically, but to know what this means perceptually, we need to (or can) put things in to language. There is no reason to treat the phenomenon of sound as inherently siloed in to technical language. Sound, like everything else, produces subjective experience. Audio gear doesn't just "measure like X or Y" it also "Sounds LIKE X,Y, Z" once you play music through the system. The subjective perception it produces is ultimately the point, and humans discussing "what this sounds like" "what type of experience this produced for me" is natural, normal, often informative and...fun...(unless perhaps one has some intrinsic discomfort with the imprecision of language and prefers numbers to descriptions).

As to the poor writer being misled by Steve G in to buying those Klipsch speakers...the writer seems utterly thrilled, and finds that they produced for him something like the thrill he had discovered in the bigger horn speakers. Could he be educated out of liking them and preferring something else? I suppose. But frankly I'm happy for him that he is thrilled with music through his new system. I mean, I could try to educate my son out of being happy with the sound of youtube music coming from his laptop. But when I see him dancing around and singing along happily...I re-consider why I would be compelled to do that :)
Really. You compare your son to a supposed audiophile who thinks his (dubious) opinions are worth spreading. When a persons thinks speakers that measure terrible and sound as bad as they measure (from Amir ". I was expecting bad sound but man, this is really, really bad sound. No detail. Muddy bass and somewhat but not extremely bright. ) are great why believe any of his fancy words.
 

Cbdb2

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Oh dear god. Talk about missing the point.

This thread started with a non-audiophile's description of how his first enjoyment of good sound affected him, which by definition is a subjective experience, and so many responses totally miss the point.

Good art is magic. Appreciate the magic.
But it wasn't good sound.
 
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