Yes, but who here buys audio equipment and records, cassettes and CDs or streams, listens and thinks about what the poet wanted to say?
You, a reasonable man, or your pets?
-
Welcome to ASR. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
I am a convert. Goodbye snake oil!
- Thread starter Indydan
- Start date
You, a reasonable man, or your pets?
Or when one becomes an audiophile, the poor kitten throws itself into the seaEvery time an audiophool gets wise, a kitten is born.
From one extreme to the other, I personally always strive for the "Gold in the middle" in anything.I'd rather a hot cup of sinad in the morning than snake oil... ymmv.
JSmith
English it is not my native language so I don't know how to translate it correctly ...
Yes, Hetaclit's statements are profound.
There is only one first kiss....
- Thread Starter
- #205
Living in Canada, as I do, the place to sell used audio gear is Canuck audio mart.
I have noticed anecdotally, that there seems to be a lot more "fancy" cables for sale. I know that the cables I sold recently, took a longer time to sell and sold for less than they would have a few years ago.
Maybe the work Amir, Gene and others are doing, is finally educating people.
I have noticed anecdotally, that there seems to be a lot more "fancy" cables for sale. I know that the cables I sold recently, took a longer time to sell and sold for less than they would have a few years ago.
Maybe the work Amir, Gene and others are doing, is finally educating people.
It's very hard to educate people who don't want to be educated. It seems more likely that the work of our politicians, enriching their billionaire masters by impoverishing the rest of us, is having an effect.
- Thread Starter
- #207
I agree it is very difficult to educate people!
Over on the Naim forum, there are people pushing back strongly against my claims that cables and ethernet switches do not make a difference. I don't understand the stubborness.
I think this relates to formal education, or lack of it. Individuals can be intelligent, capable and successful in life but they've never read a book. Consequently when personal experience conflicts with knowledge, personal experience wins out every time. Anyone with an academic background in any field is aware of the pitfalls of that approach. Someone without that is usually not.
AndyBell
Member
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2025
- Messages
- 90
- Likes
- 145
Cognitive biases and fear play a huge role here. Fear? Yes, having to admit to yourself/significant other that you wasted maybe thousands on something that you could have spent a few hundred on is very real.
And it’s not just the super rich who buy this stuff. I know hobbyists (in this and other activities) who spend huge amounts of relatively modest incomes to fund their hobbies, chasing improvements, real or imagined.
Taking away the perceived benefits may be too much to face…
- Thread Starter
- #210
Good points! I know it was hard for me to admit I had been wrong all this time. I am happy to not be spending on useless cables and accessories anymore.
Better late than never!
The fear part can't be overstated. It's hard to admit you have been wrong for long years, been fooled, wasted money, talked nonsense to others. Highly embarrassing for many, takes a well developed personality to admit it to yourself, let alone to others. You don't want to look the fool. So unpleasant! Every instinct tells you to avoid unpleasant feelings. That's easily strong enough to override an otherwise well developed intellect.
We boldly call ourselves homo sapiens, but we're merely capable of reason and hard logic. 99% of the time we don't even use it. The animalist subconscious reigns supreme.
Of course being unable to admit long standing personal errors and stubbornly refusing to learn is what ultimately makes you look the fool. But certain personality types, mainly those whose self-worth heavily depends on others' opinions and "public image", have big difficulty with that. We are hypersocial animals after all.
Obviously, OP @Indydan isn't that kind of person, but actually showed some character.
Last edited:
- Thread Starter
- #212
I watched this entire video!
The nonsense and pseudo science the guy says is just ridiculous!
I especially like the parts where the Audioquest spokesperson practically begs the audience, to admit they heard an improvement.
Some people have no shame...
The nonsense and pseudo science the guy says is just ridiculous!
I especially like the parts where the Audioquest spokesperson practically begs the audience, to admit they heard an improvement.
Some people have no shame...
Last edited:
AndyBell
Member
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2025
- Messages
- 90
- Likes
- 145
The late Scott Adams wrote that human beings are not logical by nature. We rationalise things all the time. He called it ‘The Dilbert Principle’ and we all, in some way or other, are affected. And we don’t like it when someone calls us out on it…
Such is life…
That won’t always help there are many engineers in this hobby, including myself I fell for the BS anyway. I was hooked during my late teens when you still are impressionable*, I had not finished my degree but even after that I took an awful lot of time for the understanding to percolate trough my thick brain .
Psychoacoustics where an unknown to me when I was young, but the electrical part was already in my head , so with critical thinking I could have deduced that cables and differences between digital sources and spdiff and optical etc where just bogus. Even with a flawed sense of importance ( not thinking about how much we can hear ) the downright impossible should have been clear to me
*Religions and Tobacco companies now that you have to get to the kids to sell , try to convince a 40 year old that it’s time to start smoking.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2019
- Messages
- 16,860
- Likes
- 38,352
I'm a simple man with little options in terms of room and playback systems. However: I made this long ago, with the hopes of it sounding really good on proper stereos:Inconceivable!
Drat.mp3 | Powered by Box
app.box.com
Compressed to full volume warning
The stereo effect on the bassline is nothing but parametric analog EQ on two mono channels tweaked realtime while recording an analog monosynth, the Waldorf Pulse (a monster and a classic, but that aside). The rest including mixing and livejamming arrangement is software (Renoise).
How does it sound on your big stereo?
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2019
- Messages
- 16,860
- Likes
- 38,352
Challenge accepted!
hold my beer...
hold my beer...
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2019
- Messages
- 16,860
- Likes
- 38,352
Oh. I just heard this on NPR. I am not sure where the best place to post it at ASR would be, but it deserves to be posted someplace.
This doesn't seem like a bad place.
This doesn't seem like a bad place.
We like to think that we make decisions in life rationally and logically, but most of them are actually decisions based on emotions.
You're right, it can take time to put two and two together.
I was chatting with a consultant surgeon who is an enthusiast and quite involved. The discussion moved on to cables and their effects, and I mentioned the role of cognitive bias. He was surprised and said it was something that he sometimes considered. It was clear he hadn't quite made the leap of marrying the two though. I suppose he had more serious things to think about.
For my own part I did accept things like cables and even supports might matter and that at least some electronics had a 'sound'.
Power cables and anything beyond that I never could take seriously. It also bothered me that CD players seemed to be at least sometimes different despite having flat FR, and no noise or distortion. Eventually the penny dropped on that one but not before I'd bought about 20 of the things
Similar threads
