Judgement of Audiophilia

[SimpleTheater]

In 1976 the Judgment of Paris turned the wine world upside down as California wines won a blind taste test against the great French wines.(1)

Of course wine snobs questioned the validity of the test, and they weren't completely wrong in doing so, because of the limited number of tasters and the scoring methodology. However two things happened in the wine industry that hasn't happened in Audiophilia Land. The first was California wines were immediately vaulted in status.

The second, and more importantly, the wine snobs, to their credit, conducted MORE blind tastings - a lot more, and California wines continued to perform very well. To this very day there are great French and California wines, and almost no wine snobs will snub a top quality Napa Valley wine - at least not in public.

Audio almost had its 1976 moment, like The Carver Challenge in which Bob Carver made his $700 amp sound like anything the audiophiles at Stereophile wanted it to sound like, or the amazing ABX product that showed many people they couldn't hear the difference between solid-state amps. These should have been wake up calls that high quality sound didn't need to be at the nose bleed price territory, but these events are unheard of by the masses, who are still beguiled by the self-proclaimed 'Audiophile'.

Unlike wine snobs, who will admit a California wine can beat a French wine, the wine snob can still marvel at the California wines $100 price tag, thus protecting the wine industry's 'high end', while the audio snobs are not protected, as tests have proved, against significantly lower cost products.

It is my opinion that audiophiles judge with their eyes AND the price tag. It can't just look great, it has to cost a lot.

I would like to see well designed sub $1,000 amps stuck inside a Krell box and a Sony box, and the same of all other components. I'd like to see decent 12 gauge speaker cables wrapped in Nordost wrappers and Radio Shack wrappers. Basically I'd like to see AA testing, where the audiophiles can oooh and aahh at the packaging they hold so dear, and then let them listen and rate each item.

That would be audio's moment.


(1) Paris Wine Tasting of 1976

 

[pkane]

I would like to see well designed sub $1,000 amps stuck inside a Krell box and a Sony box, and the same of all other components. I'd like to see decent 12 gauge speaker cables wrapped in Nordost wrappers and Radio Shack wrappers. Basically I'd like to see AA testing, where the audiophiles can oooh and aahh at the packaging they hold so dear, and then let them listen and rate each item.

That's cruel!

 

[DonH56]

It's been done. It didn't matter. People believe what they want, manufacturers sell what they can (at any price), and marketing goes on.

 

[Hypnotoad]

I would like to see well designed sub $1,000 amps stuck inside a Krell box and a Sony box, and the same of all other components. I'd like to see decent 12 gauge speaker cables wrapped in Nordost wrappers and Radio Shack wrappers. Basically I'd like to see AA testing, where the audiophiles can oooh and aahh at the packaging they hold so dear, and then let them listen and rate each item.

Not everyone is a bargain shopper and some just want the name. Does a Rolex keep better time than a Seiko, it's a status thing for some. Also when you see claims that our premium speaker cable can turn a good system into a great system it's hard for some to ignore.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Oh the ultimate betrayal by some of the Ultra High End royalty. Had to be in 2004 when at one of the big audio shows Wilson played one of the big time speaker sets with a Krell amp and expensive transport set up. Hidden behind the rack was a $1000 amp and the source was an iPod. A 16 bit iPod. They were in a big display against a competitor's even more expensive system. No one knew, and many complimented the sound.

Here is a thread about it. Some of the links don't work anymore, but Wilson and some of the audio press reported on it at the time.

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/17887-wilson-sophia-ces-demo-with-apple-ipod-as-the-source/

 

[LeftCoastTim]

Pg 115 from https://www.listeninc.com/wp/media/Perception_and_-Measurement_of_Headphones_Sean_Olive.pdf

 

[Blake Klondike]

My first exposure to this phenomenon was when I was working as a secretary at a biotech company years ago-- one of the consultants told me he had just sold his house for $250k + an additional $300k for the equipment in the listening room. And he had just paid more than my week's salary for a sealed Muddy Waters 1st pressing on Chess.

 

[DuxServit]

As many here have pointed out, there is a threshold in price above which it’s no longer about sound quality. I’d call it “audio bling”

 

[JJB70]

High end audio should be viewed the same way as expensive watches. The difference is that watch makers admit that they are selling expensive jewelry and status symbols. If it is just about the sound then good sound quality has been commoditised and has never been so accessible.

 

[LeftCoastTim]

High end audio should be viewed the same way as expensive watches. The difference is that watch makers admit that they are selling expensive jewelry and status symbols. If it is just about the sound then good sound quality has been commoditised and has never been so accessible.

If it was just "art appreciation", high end audio wouldn't annoy me so much. What bugs me is that beyond just art appreciation, they claim superior performance, without any objective criteria. It's equivalent to claiming that this $10K mechanical watch keeps better time than that $2 quartz one.

And what's worse is that this happens at every single piece of equipment, from power conditioners to green markers on CDs, to high-res audio. And it will never stop because there is too much money to be made from wealthy men with large egos and bad hearing.

 

[Thomas savage]

When it comes to the audiophile industry I think we are past judgment and just awaiting sentencing..

 

[krabapple]

When (former) Stereophile editor J. Gordon Holt in 2007 laughed in John Atkinson's face (albeit by email) about the high-end's abandonment of science, the game was well and truly up. But the zombie hobbled on....

Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?

Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.

Remember those loudspeaker shoot-outs we used to have during our annual writer gatherings in Santa Fe? The frequent occasions when various reviewers would repeatedly choose the same loudspeaker as their favorite (or least-favorite) model? That was all the proof needed that [blind] testing does work, aside from the fact that it's (still) the only honest kind. It also suggested that simple ear training, with DBT confirmation, could have built the kind of listening confidence among talented reviewers that might have made a world of difference in the outcome of high-end audio.

 

[Sawdust123]

Ron Streicher, a past AES president and author of a book on stereo recording used to give a seminar where he conducted AB testing of some widget. He had a very sophisticated setup where he could flip a switch and the sound would mute very briefly while switching between A and B. The only external indicator was a red or blue light.

I witnessed Ron perform the test with an AES audience. Some could hear a difference between A and B. Some could not. At first I though one sounded better than the other but the more he continued the tests using different types of music, the less sure I was of the difference. Nevertheless, some became more sure of the differences. Keep in mind, many in the audience were practicing recording engineers. At the end of talk Ron took an informal poll to see whether A or B was better. There were certainly some definitive opinions on the topic. Then Ron revealed that all his widget did was briefly mute the audio and change which LED was lit. The actual audio path didn't change between tests. A lot of people were humbled by this. It proved how poor our auditory memory is and how easy we can fool ourselves in side-by-side comparisons.

 

[VMAT4]

Ron Streicher, a past AES president and author of a book on stereo recording used to give a seminar where he conducted AB testing of some widget. He had a very sophisticated setup where he could flip a switch and the sound would mute very briefly while switching between A and B. The only external indicator was a red or blue light.

I witnessed Ron perform the test with an AES audience. Some could hear a difference between A and B. Some could not. At first I though one sounded better than the other but the more he continued the tests using different types of music, the less sure I was of the difference. Nevertheless, some became more sure of the differences. Keep in mind, many in the audience were practicing recording engineers. At the end of talk Ron took an informal poll to see whether A or B was better. There were certainly some definitive opinions on the topic. Then Ron revealed that all his widget did was briefly mute the audio and change which LED was lit. The actual audio path didn't change between tests. A lot of people were humbled by this. It proved how poor our auditory memory is and how easy we can fool ourselves in side-by-side comparisons.

Didn't David Byrne have something to say about this? I believe it went like this:

Lost my shape
Trying to act casual!
Can't stop
I might end up in the hospital
I'm changing my shape
I feel like an accident
They're back!
To explain their experience
Isn't it weir
Looks too obscure to me
Wasting away
And that was their policy
I'm ready to leave
I push the fact in front of me
Facts lost
Facts are never what they seem to be
Nothing there!
No information left of any kind
Lifting my head
Looking for danger signs
There was a line
There was a formula
Sharp as a knife
Facts cut a hole in us
There was a line
There was a formula
Sharp as a knife
Facts cut a hole in us
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
The feeling returns
Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head
looking around inside
The island of doubt
It's like the taste of medicine
Working by hindsight
Got the message from the oxygen
Making a list
Find the cost of opportunity
Doing it right
Facts are useless in emergencies
The feeling returns
Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head
Looking around inside.
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: David Byrne / Chris Frantz / Tina Weymouth / Jerry Harrison / Brian Eno
Crosseyed and Painless lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group

 

[Kvalsvoll]

It's been done. It didn't matter. People believe what they want, manufacturers sell what they can (at any price), and marketing goes on.

Exactly.

One good example from a few years back - expensive cd-player revealed when someone opened the lid and exposed the internals as nothing more than a budget dvd-player board (Edge-CD). By then there had already been rawing reviews describing the sound in the most prosaic ways. The point of that particular case is not whether it was a scam to charge 20x the price for something that actually has lesser performance (the original dvd-player could play dvs's as well as cd's). 2 important facts coulde be learened; Here, the hifi-press was exposed, the only logical conclusion is that the reviews were worthless as they decribed sonic differences that simply did not exist. Second, it showed that any cd-player/dvd-player of decent design most likely are sonically transparent, and it does not need to cost much.

So, what was learned from that? Did the reviewers sit down an analyze what they did wrong - perhaps include some measurements of technical performance, do controlled listening testes? Try to learn that experienced differences on sound actually could be psychological rather that the sound itself?

No. Nothing like that happened. And audio continues a steady decline, as most people do not want to spend money on something that is obviously pure nonsense.

 

[garbulky]

I am lucky. For the most part when I try out a piece of gear in my house,m I don't usually spend much. So I'm pretty critical of the price because I have to decide if the price is worth for me to buy the thing. I've heard a bunch of dogs. And a bunch of surprises. Sometimes the price is definitely commensurate with the performance. I've usually found that with internet direct gear. But a lot of times with really popular brand names, the price is not even close to commensurate with performance.

I am all for tests that dress things up in different ways and let people listen to it. I think the visual and tactile aspect is quite important in forming opinions in how it will do when you are using it in real life. For instance if I think a piece of gear needs to have certain things to sound great - and it doesn't have those things, I would be interested in finding out how much satisfaction I would still get out of it.

I think it would also be good to know what kind of gear that people like, how the looks influence it. How the presence of features or unique stuff in it influence their decision. Etc.

 

[Sawdust123]

Are you referring to the $3k+ Lexicon BD-30 Bluray player that Audioholics exposed as a recased $500 Oppo BDP-83? That happened in 2010 I think. The Lexicon had a beautiful case of machined billet aluminum if I recall correctly and they were the first to get the THX certification but not one ounce of the electronics appeared to be of their own design (based on visual observation and test results).

 

[LTig]

I'd like to see decent 12 gauge speaker cables wrapped in Nordost wrappers and Radio Shack wrappers.

I recall a story where a reviewer opened a very expensive cable made by an audiophile company (can't remember the name, sorry) and found a standard cable inside, with name of maker (Lapp) and model printed on it. The audiophile company claimed that this cable was especially made for them and did not represent the standard model (which was much cheaper). That was a lie which was revealed when Lapp stated that they had never produced special cables for this audiophile company.

 

[Kvalsvoll]

Are you referring to the $3k+ Lexicon BD-30 Bluray player that Audioholics exposed as a recased $500 Oppo BDP-83? That happened in 2010 I think. The Lexicon had a beautiful case of machined billet aluminum if I recall correctly and they were the first to get the THX certification but not one ounce of the electronics appeared to be of their own design (based on visual observation and test results).

Don't know what this lexocon was. But there is nothing wrong with oem. A bd-player or cd-player is complicated to develop and manufacture in small series, but they are readily available as oem, and this is a non-critical part of an audio system - they do what they are supposed to do, perfectly. BUT - this should be made very clear in the product information.

 

[Frank Dernie]

High end audio should be viewed the same way as expensive watches. The difference is that watch makers admit that they are selling expensive jewelry and status symbols. If it is just about the sound then good sound quality has been commoditised and has never been so accessible.

I disagree completely.
I see no similarity between the watch market ABD Hi-Fi, and whilst one may see a fancy car somebody may be poncing around in, and some nice watches may be recognised by some people and Rolexes by many one’s Hi-Fi isn’t seen by many people and certainly no strangers so I see no way it is a status symbol, personally.