Is the entire audio industry a fraud?

[kevinh]

Some amplifiers may oscillate when seeing a load like that.

Well the load (at least in the panels being made circa 1990), was above 8 ohms at 1000hz. dropping to like 2 ohms at 20k. This could cause issues with a poorly designed amp.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Well the load (at least in the panels being made circa 1990), was above 8 ohms at 1000hz. dropping to like 2 ohms at 20k. This could cause issues with a poorly designed amp.

Try more than 30 ohms in the low end, and dropping to 3/4 ohms at 20 khz (depending upon the brilliance setting on the back) on Soundlabs. In any case, my amp definitely oscillates. It is a class D amp. Plays the Soundlabs better than any amp I've had connected to them, which includes some bridged A/B amps that would be near 1000 wpc into 8 ohms.

 

[solderdude]

my amp definitely oscillates. It is a class D amp.

 

[beeface]

It's been almost two months and 45 pages. Time to settle this once and for all.

Is the entire audio industry a fraud?

Yes.

 

[atmasphere]

The entire industry??
No. That's ridiculous.

 

[Bob from Florida]

It's been almost two months and 45 pages. Time to settle this once and for all.



Yes.

That answer is total BS. Like anything else you have total lies at one extreme and total honesty at the other extreme. Then there are all points in between. Most stuff ends up somewhere between the extremes.

 

[egellings]

Speaking from experience, the ENTIRE industry isn't a fraud, but there are a few factors that make it more fraudulent.

(FYI: Wattage numbers in the low-end non-audiophile range are basically all outright lies, just so you know.)

Beyond that, the situation outside of places like ASR is difficult if you want to be honest while selling audio gear. The underlying problem is that (again, aside from ASR), NOBODY is going to stop manufacturers from lying about their performance. Not the FTC, not the DOJ, not the press, nobody. This basically makes it impossible to compete without lying.

And it gets worse, because subjective reviewers don't even lie, they just spread fantasies about what they heard without bothering to check if what they heard was due to the gear or just their imagination / placebo.

If you are an audio manufacturer and you don't like lying about your specs, you face the following problems:

1. Many, if not all of your competitors (if they are publishing specs) are lying to some extent. Even the best of them, who publish FR charts, will often use generous smoothing or large dB scales to make them look better... So the 'honest' speaker at any given price point looks worse than the lying competition. See also: Lance Armstrong and how he justified cheating in the tour de france. Well, in audio marketing nobody is coming along and investigating you after the fact, so...

2. Consumers don't usually understand measurements / specs even if you do publish them. So you've taken up valuable ad / marketing space with what amounts to gibberish from your customer's point of view.

3. The norm of the industry is to market any actual technological advantage as if it were the result of a collaboration between Einstein, Steve Jobs and Jesus Christ, and basically any feature (even if it hurts performance) as if it sounded like the silken voice of angels. Subjective language is something people actually take seriously for some reason. Weasel words are not red flags, for some reason. So there is no advantage to be gained with about 80% of buyers by sticking to the facts.

Example of how high-end companies cheat: We use a lab-tested monotonic radially diminishing magnetic field pattern in our drivers to optimize linear cone motion and reduce distortion.

Translation: It's a normal magnet and we measured the field in a lab at some point, in the process of building a completely normal speaker.

Example of how low-end companies cheat: 600 Watts
Translation: It's actually 40 watts but it sounds about as loud as we think people think 600 watts sounds.

At the end of the day, you put yourself at a serious disadvantage if you accurately describe the performance of your gear solely in objective terms.

At my previous company, our gear was good enough that we didn't actually have to lie about it, but we certainly used flowery language and touted our features to the limit of credibility, that's just how it works - as you've noticed.

That's how all advertising works. Maximize the importance of any product benefit, however small, and overlook or minimize any product deficiencies, however glaring. We're here to make money, to provide you with a product just good enough to pass muster.

 

[egellings]

Well the load (at least in the panels being made circa 1990), was above 8 ohms at 1000hz. dropping to like 2 ohms at 20k. This could cause issues with a poorly designed amp.

I should have said that by 'load like that', I meant one that was highly capacitive in nature, not one that was just low in magnitude, like, say, a 2-ohm resistor. A screwy phase angle can drive an amplifier nuts, as can too low a magnitude.

 

[egellings]

Almost 900 posts before finally coming up with that. Amazing. If we were squirrels, we'd starve looking for nuts.

Jim

Git dat mouse!

 

[Mnyb]

High end hifi as promoted by TAS stereophile 6moons et al is a total fraud.or cult where the members fools themselves without a central cult leader ? The first decentralised and self perpetuating cult

But we also have normal consumer audio maybe hyped up advertising but not fraudulent.
Likewise a large pro audio sector that includes PA from a stadium to a pub to a supermarket and the content of recording studios ?

So as usual it depends from which angle your are looking ? Cable vendors like Nordost and Audioquest are scams while Mogami or Canare is not for example .

But as a simplification of what has become of the hifi hobby it’s sadly “yes” :/ the largest magazines and hifi forums and youtubers never provides factual information or real tests. This validates this POV imho .

If a noob steps into this hobby he/she will be met by an avalanche of bs and needs a pitchfork to dig out the small tidbits of real information or will be lost in a miss information maze for decades like myself for example.

 

[mhardy6647]

Maximize the importance of any product benefit, however small, and overlook or minimize any product deficiencies, however glaring.

Marketing embraces the deficiencies!
Case in point. US Ford, for whatever reason, was hell-bent not to offer four-door minivans when the competition was embracing them (late 1990s). For the 1998 model year, Ford introduced a refreshed Windstar van with -- an elongated driver's door (the "King Door"!), to provide some (awkward) access to the center row of seats.
The 1998 Windstar brochure talks this up, all the while touting the enhanced safety (due to structural robustness) of the three-door platform.

In-Motion Outtake: 1998 Ford Windstar - Long Live The King Door - Curbside Classic

We have caught some rare and interesting things through the car windows of our many skilled car-spotting correspondents. But how about this: an early Windstar. Not just any early Windstar, […]

www.curbsideclassic.com

We... had a 1998 Windstar.

 

[fpitas]

Well the load (at least in the panels being made circa 1990), was above 8 ohms at 1000hz. dropping to like 2 ohms at 20k. This could cause issues with a poorly designed amp.

From what I know, since the 80s most amps have Zobels on the output, and a series inductor from the followers, to mitigate that. But back in the bad old days, some didn't, with predictable results.

 

[audiofooled]

That answer is total BS. Like anything else you have total lies at one extreme and total honesty at the other extreme. Then there are all points in between. Most stuff ends up somewhere between the extremes.

Pareto distribution
I wonder if this could be applied to calculate the distribution of fraudulence

 

[fpitas]

It's probably a tough industry to be in if you're scrupulously honest.

 

[audiofooled]

It's probably a tough industry to be in if you're scrupulously honest.

Especially if it were the case that 80% of your sales comes from only 20% of your products (not that uncommon). Then your marketing department must get highly "creative" to sell the majority of your stuff.

 

[fpitas]

Especially if it were the case that 80% of your sales comes from only 20% of your products (not that uncommon). Then your marketing department must get highly "creative" to sell the majority of your stuff.

Yeah. If 6 Moons or The Absolute Sound doesn't gush about your stuff, you have to sell it on the technical merits.

 

[kevinh]

Try more than 30 ohms in the low end, and dropping to 3/4 ohms at 20 khz (depending upon the brilliance setting on the back) on Soundlabs. In any case, my amp definitely oscillates. It is a class D amp. Plays the Soundlabs better than any amp I've had connected to them, which includes some bridged A/B amps that would be near 1000 wpc into 8 ohms.

Again circa 1990 A! had amn impedance of 50 ohms around 100hz IIRC.

 

[beeface]

That answer is total BS. Like anything else you have total lies at one extreme and total honesty at the other extreme. Then there are all points in between. Most stuff ends up somewhere between the extremes.

I was being facetious

 

[kemmler3D]

That's how all advertising works. Maximize the importance of any product benefit, however small, and overlook or minimize any product deficiencies, however glaring. We're here to make money, to provide you with a product just good enough to pass muster.

Sure, but in audio many of the specific, quantitative claims are outright lies (wattage, frequency response range) or highly misleading (super-smoothed graphs) which would not fly in many other industries. You can't ship a graphics card saying it has 1600 compute cores when it actually only has 70, but you can ship speakers that have "1600 watts PMPO" that only do 70 RMS.

 

[Tedkaz]

I don’t see the hifi industry any more of a fraud than any other. Sure plenty of dirtbags, but that’s 10% of the population in general. And as far as adding some credibility back to reviewers, we are back to that 10% again. Also , applying exacting science to something subjective is a fraud in itself.