Audiophilia is the mirror of modern times

[mocenigo]

I demand the right of my speakers to identify as microphones.

Do I get banned for that?

No, it is their right. They can also choose their pronouns.

 

[Timcognito]

Otherwise the one news source which seems to do a pretty even job is Al Jazeera, despite that it is partly sponsored by Qatar.

I like https://www.dw.com/en/top-stories/s-9097 out of Berlin, https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/ Japan and Hong Kong, and know others don't feel this way but PBS does a good job IMO.

 

[Basic Channel]

I'm afraid to express myself badly.
My reflection essentially indicates that the natural human tendency to polarize (today, yesterday and tomorrow) (and even more than 2 poles) is inadequate to rattle off the most complex arguments.
The more the information increases, the more complex, uncertain and conflicting they become, the more the polarization of thought becomes inappropriate.
And audio is a relatively complex argument, not black-white.
However, more polarization in absolute terms, not relative.

I suppose you are French so you are not expressing yourself badly mate (it is way better than my French). I am not sure how much politics is allowed on here so I will refrain from going into it too much (i am left wing), but I think what you describe (and make a timely thread about) is the lack of polarisation in politics. We don't live in a world that has punks and mods anymore, we don't live in a world that watches the Queens coronation or not, we don't live in a world where Frank Sinatra (or Jimmy Shand, etc) sells more LPs than record players in the country, yet we still live in a world that gives a binary choice regarding politics.

I sympathise with the idea of the 'splintering' of ideas, per my other posts I'd agree everything gets more grey. I'd also agree it makes ideas more dificult for the 'average' person to understand. Same reason you used to have 'polymaths' who were experts in various fields. It's not clear that much has changed though in the grand scheme of things, the coalminers didn't know about general physics back in the day.

 

[pablolie]

the funny (or sad) thing is that history has repeatedly revealed the terrible consequences of polarizing discussions with intellectually lazy shortcuts (also called fanatic sh#t).

when people lose critical thinking for themselves, they start to toss virgins into volcanos for a better harvest, burn witches or slaughter minorities etc etc.

 

[mhardy6647]

I demand the right of my speakers to identify as microphones.

Speakers work fine as microphones, and vice versa.
Within some limitations of bandwidth, SPL, and power handling, of course.
I learned this as a kid (son of a TV repairman). Clipleads are wonderful catalysts for discovery.


Photo of a rather nice Fostex "supertweeter" being used as such, and not as an expensive and rather response-challenged microphone.
The image does illustrate the versatility and option creation afforded by a handful - or a bag or two - of clipleads, though.

Altec famously used a microphone diaphragm in a low-ish cost compression tweeter (the 3000) and as the treble driver in their entry level "Duplex" (601). The only problem was that they were a little fragile. Now, the diaphragms are more or less extinct, sadly.

(both borrowed internet photos of no particular pedigree)

The nice thing about the 601C (e.g.) Duplex -- the 'woofer' part is essentially an Altec 414, a darned nice 12" LF driver. I.e., a 601C with a dead tweeter can still be a fairly worthwhile investment.

 

[KellenVancouver]

To begin with, my first music playback devices were terrible.

I'll bet I have you beat. My first speakers were from Radio Shack!

 

[Robin L]

I'll bet I have you beat. My first speakers were from Radio Shack!

My first record player had a tape recorder head hooked up to a turntable with a ceramic cartridge, the tape recorder functioning as amplifier. Used an electrolytic cap to tame the high frequencies. The system buzzed, hummed and hissed. But I could hear music. Within four years I had the system of my (or Consumer's Report's) dreams, Acoustic Research Model 3 speakers, AR XA turntable, AR amplifier and a Shure 91 ED cartridge.

I recall some Rat Shack speakers I owned in the 2000s with some strange tweeters I used in a surround sound system, not the worst I've owned.

 

[Petrushka]

My first record player had a steel needle. My first record:

Amazon.com

 

[Basic Channel]

My first record was a CD, Turtle Rhapsody by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I am quite impressed that I managed to make those two posts last night, its clearly not only playing pool that I can do drunk.

 

[mhardy6647]

I'll bet I have you beat. My first speakers were from Radio Shack!

Yeah... despite the rose-hued memories of many vintage hifi buffs, R/S sold many, many really pretty terrible loudspeakers.
The much-vaunted Minimus 7 was one of them (despite widespread opinions to the contrary).

FWIW: My personal favorite R/S speaker was the decidedly unprepossessing 40-1354 5-1/4" twincone "fullrange" driver sold mostly for automotive use. R/S sold them for many years, and they were never expensive. When these were on closeout, they were a pretty remarkable deal for extremely fine midrange performance, and more than acceptable bass and treble when appropriately baffled. As Bottlehead's Paul Joppa said of them in the 1990s: "they get the midrange right" (no mean feat, then or now).


N.B. the "phase plugs" in this pair of 40-1354 are an aftermarket enhancement The cabinets are mass loaded, folded tapered quarter-wave tubes (ML-TQWT) designed by Bob Brines and built by my second-career woodworking friend Mike Berg.

There were a few OK R/S driver and loudspeaker models over the decades -- but no real diamonds in the rough that I have encountered to date.

 

[Petrushka]

You actually believe a pro terrorist news service is pretty even?

There’s no news service I trust. The internet is pretty awful, but there’s value in watching people duke it out.

 

[Ron Texas]

There’s no news service I trust. The internet is pretty awful, but there’s value in watching people duke it out.

Lately there is a lot of conflict. The debate produced a non stop news feed. It's starting to drive me nuts.

 

[Petrushka]

Lately there is a lot of conflict. The debate produced a non stop news feed. It's starting to drive me nuts.

I subscribe to no news feeds. I used to have internet friends who seemed sane, but they dropped out.

 

[Ron Texas]

I subscribe to no news feeds. I used to have internet friends who seemed sane, but they dropped out.

I don't subscribe to any news feed, but it's all over the place.

 

[Petrushka]

You actually believe it is a "pro terrorist" news service? And you believe that it produces "pro terrorist" news and that a member on here would be so ignorant that he wouldn't notice all the terrorist sympathising if that's what it actually did?

I don't subscribe to any news feed, but it's all over the place.

It’s unavoidable, so I don’t need to go looking, nor do I need to invite it.

 

[Davide]

The loss of people's interest in information due to their uncertain credibility and/or complexity and/or contradictory is a phenomenon that sometimes is occurring.
In fact, in the long run it is boring and tiring to have to hear more and more bells to build a valid opinion about something.
And seeing people who often debate in a conflictual, non-objective, polarized way, is in turn a deterrent.

Every now and then I experience this phenomenon when I read ASR.
Although I am thirsty for knowledge, although I like audio world, I sometimes find myself giving up reading and participation because it is tiring to fathom the thousand comments to extrapolate useful things to this hobby.
Fortunately it is a hobby, therefore I never permanently lose the input to attend ASR. Also because when I need technical information, valid opinions, interesting points of view, this place is one of the few, if not the only ones, on the web.

But in a more general discourse in fact I have already seen people resigned to not inquire because of the complexity of doing it well today. Especially in the political sphere.

But I think the same reason is what leads people to adopt the most quick opinion, typically polar.

 

[KellenVancouver]

We have gone from the information age to the misinformation age. When I look at youtube (where a high percentage of people get there "news") over half the videos are full of false info. So I agree with the title of this thread. People, including the subset of audiophiles, believe what they want to believe and the internet will reinforce there beliefs no matter how wrong. A flat earther 30 years ago learnt to keep his mouth shut or get ridiculed, now he gets on line and finds a community of thousands that reinforce his delusion.

Excellent comment. All of what you wrote resonsates as true to me. One of the great promises offered by the internet was the ability to get information about anything from anywhere anytime. The unfortunate downside of that is withdrawal. Because we can now dedicate our time to focusing exclusively on our narrowest interests, from a social perspective we are withdrawing into separationist behavior. Of course, some people did that pre-internet (derisively called "bookworms"), but the difference today is that this is how the majority of people behave online. Polarization is a symptom of the internet's inherent withdrawal and separation effects.

 

[Davide]

What we are discussing is a sacrosanct acknowledgment process, and that's why I wanted to start the thread.
It would seem that beyond acknowledgment there is nothing else feasible, however, there are illustrious people who have been facing the problem for years.
For example, a course is offered at the University of Berkeley, which seems to be gaining ground, where they tries to teach a more appropriate method of thinking for the current world and the miriad of informations available.
It is called the "Third Millennium Thinking", aka 3MT.

 

[Ron Texas]

Excellent comment. All of what you wrote resonsates as true to me. One of the great promises offered by the internet was the ability to get information about anything from anywhere anytime. The unfortunate downside of that is withdrawal. Because we can now dedicate our time to focusing exclusively on our narrowest interests, from a social perspective we are withdrawing into separationist behavior. Of course, some people did that pre-internet (derisively called "bookworms"), but the difference today is that this is how the majority of people behave online. Polarization is a symptom of the internet's inherent withdrawal and separation effects.

The problem with having so much information available is a lot of it is either incorrect or incomplete. It has become a regular occurrence around here when someone wants to disagree with me they will (and I think it's sick) invest time in an internet search to find something that purportedly helps their position. Nearly always the tidbit they find is incomplete (or innacurate) and actually undermines their cause. The problem is they don't know how to interpret the information and in their desperation to win an argument they get it wrong.

 

[KellenVancouver]

I'm interested and googled that but this thread is literally the only hit on the entire internet. Do you have a link?

As an aside, I'm not surprised that you didn't get any hits using Google's search engine. I don't know why they "dumb down" their search engine, but it is not unusual for Google to not find information/articles using its regular search engine, even when I know something is available. Consequently, using scholar.google.com often provides better results, especially when searching for more academic articles. I'm sure you already knew that, but thought I'd throw that out here for anyone who doesn't.