One thing I like is this forum can challenge your belief without being an in your face test of manhood. At least it does so more often than most. Look at evidence, give yourself a chance by testing blind if you will, and you might find your belief was off the mark. Which might lead to a change of belief.
You aren't obligated to change it, and you don't need others approval if it differs, but life is sometimes interesting when you learn new things, no? If you can change your attitude from your belief being so personal to being somewhat disengaged from your sense of self it can be enjoyable even.
This is very true.
It wasn't this forum that made me sceptical of "common wisdom" in the last few decades of hifi magazines, but being an engineer.
I looked at what was being written and it seemed daft to me.
I had had success in my career by being sceptical of "common knowledge" and working things out from first principles and, luckily, been encouraged rather than smacked down at University so I decided to apply the same approach to my hobby once I had retired and had some spare time for the first time in 40 years.
When I was first buying some hifi, in the late 1960s all the magazines were pretty technically focused but I had noticed the drift towards subjective reviewing, which seemed fair enough until applying a bit of first principle to what was being promulgated. It did not bear scrutiny.
The first seemingly ridiculous claims were, of course, cables. It seemed self evident that as long as they make good contact and are adequate in impedance there is no mechanism whereby a cable could have any influence at audio frequencies. Since I had been working long hours for good pay I had ended up with some expensive cables supplied with preamps, amps and CD players. I decided to do blind tests myself and found what I expected, no difference except thiose with in line filters.
Next I tested a few loudness levels. My amp has a volume control display in dB so it was fairly easy.
I found that if I reduced volume from my normal listening level by the time I had reduced it by 60dB I could only just barely hear it.
From this I deduced, perhaps wrongly but IMO logically, that since I could barely hear it
on its own a distortion level that low would certainly be inaudible given that the music would be playing at normal levels at the same time.
I now consider the idea that distortion levels need to be better than -60dB, or 0.1% to be not credible.
Lets face it there are loads of hifi enthusiasts who think LPs sound best and they are nowhere near that good.
Anyway the usual suspect hifi forums were not generally, with a few member exceptions, receptive of pretty well any technically based comment so it was with great joy I joined this forum after Amir suggested it may suit me following some facts I wrote about record players which were unwelcome on another forum.
So here I am!