Master Thread: Are Measurements Everything or Nothing?

[Mnyb]

Yes the labeling is problematic in that “objectivist” uses very subjective methods like listening test , but with controlls

It migth have started like a derogatory label like “big bang” with was minted by a guy that did not believe in that theory .

 

[Newman]

Recognisable values for sure , I certainly can relate to that iv just never felt the need to turn it into a ' identity ' in the sense of ' I am a objectivists ' . Then iv never felt the need to label myself in any way whatsoever . I personally find self labling and much of what seems to me to be a rapidly increasing need for self definition through labeling, interesting but ultimately a source of some hilarity while also rather worrying when seen in a larger context.

As definitions go , you're definition of ' objectivist' is a admirable one . ' I'm human ' , that's about as far as I go with all that.

At different times I known or read of situations where people would describe some trajectory of learning something and at some point say something like, "it was here I entered the culture of..........". It became as you say a self definition. It was also an indication to them and others they now had certain levels of knowledge. Often the cultures weren't really very good knowledge. Didn't keep the culture from being real. People feel much more comfortable in a culture. The culture can become much more important than the truth or reality. The efficacy of the culture must meet certain minimums to sustain itself, but beyond those minimums the culture need not accomplish all that much other than make humans feel a part of something.

You might be born and grow up in a certain part of the world and you are maybe in the culture of Germany or some other place. You also end up in other sub-cultures. Almost everything ends up working this way. You may be in the culture of fly fishermen, motorcycle riders, musicians, audiophiles, woodworkers, hunters or any number of other things. Humans readily form up in groups and create cultures or latch onto cultures that already exist. As a social phenomenon cultures tend to be self sustaining.

Yep, some people just can't help themselves in labelling others, it's an obsession and it is fundamentally derogatory (you can take that as a given) when using a label that they do not think applies to themselves.

I also think that there is a difference between a label and a categorisation. Sure, you might categorise a group of people as motorcyclists, but in that sense it is primarily intended to be descriptive and neutral. Labelling, however, is the uglier cousin and usually is intended to be derogatory, even when the actual words used look ever so neutral. I don't like it, and I don't trust it, and I don't like it when I see it being done within our hobby. When somebody happily labels themselves as a subjectivist, for example, I assure you that they think there is something better about being subjectivist than objectivist.

The ugliness of it does not elude me.

 

[Liberal Democracy]

Yep, some people just can't help themselves in labelling others, it's an obsession and it is fundamentally derogatory (you can take that as a given) when using a label that they do not think applies to themselves.

I also think that there is a difference between a label and a categorisation. Sure, you might categorise a group of people as motorcyclists, but in that sense it is primarily intended to be descriptive and neutral. Labelling, however, is the uglier cousin and usually is intended to be derogatory, even when the actual words used look ever so neutral. I don't like it, and I don't trust it, and I don't like it when I see it being done within our hobby. When somebody happily labels themselves as a subjectivist, for example, I assure you that they think there is something better about being subjectivist than objectivist.

The ugliness of it does not elude me.

I'm purposely staying away from identity politics in the wider sense , but..

Looking here at ASR , over time and given the extended period iv been away I notice a change .

There's actually seemingly less people defining themselves as ojectivists , to do so being a defensive mechanism imo and a sign of ' homelessness ' .

Possibly this is because there's been a growth in the cultural significance of ASR , that proving the ' home ' , the cultural heaven people find naturalising. Removing or helping to remove the perceive necessity for proclaiming a self designation, the feeling of being under threat as a individual removed by the increasing cultural significance.

Who knows .., to me it's interesting , possibly all bollocks and / or lacking effective expression on my part.

 

[Mnyb]

One can hope that the way “we” do hifi here at ASR becomes normal and need no label

 

[Geert]

Yep, some people just can't help themselves in labelling others, it's an obsession and it is fundamentally derogatory

Again there is a psychological background, and we all do it to some extent. The biases it creates (damn those biases again) can be really problematic, for example in the context of HR management. Some reasons for stereotyping (blatantly copied from a Quora post because I’m to lazy today):

Cognitive Efficiency: Humans have limited cognitive resources, so categorizing people helps simplify the processing of social information. This allows for quicker judgments and decisions.

Social Identity: People often derive part of their identity from the groups they belong to (e.g., race, gender, profession). This can lead to an "us vs. them" mentality, reinforcing the desire to categorize others.

Fear of the Unknown: When faced with uncertainty, people may categorize others to create a sense of predictability and control. This can manifest in prejudice or discrimination against those who are different.

 

[Mnyb]

I feel that hifi once was a respectable hobby , like ham radio or photography or any other nerd interest. But in the late 70’s and 80’s something happened instead of reading “ practical hifi and gardening “ or what the rags was in vogue in the 60’s and build some boxes and put drivers in them . We were listening to cables and reading TAS ?

 

[Mnyb]

I feel that hifi once was a respectable hobby , like ham radio or photography or any other nerd interest. But in the late 70’s and 80’s something happened instead of reading “ practical hifi and gardening “ or what the rags was in vogue in the 60’s and build some boxes and put drivers in them . We were listening to cables and reading TAS ?

Our hobby basically got hijacked by pseudoscience and gurus and con men .

 

[BeeKay]

Our hobby basically got hijacked by pseudoscience and gurus and con men .

Now take a look at social media, influencers (formerly known as scroungers), and tell me if you see any major differences.

 

[Newman]

Our hobby basically got hijacked by pseudoscience and gurus and con men .

One of the early red flags was when western hemisphere media turned their preferences away from highly engineered Japanese turntables and amplifiers and described their sonics as deficient compared to less well-engineered products from the old world which had relatively poor measured performance and higher sample variation.

The 'vinyl love' aspect of today's hobby is still a cesspool of "pseudoscience and gurus and con men". Even today, older vinyl products with second-rate performance like early Linn and Thorens are held in near-magical regard for their sonics. It's not just cables and DACs where the issues lie with pseudoscience.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Our hobby basically got hijacked by pseudoscience and gurus and con men .

Yes it did. However, the new people in the hobby in those decades started it themselves. I still say the watershed event was the introduction of the CD. We finally had a transparent source at a time when other parts had become transparent already (excepting speakers). So there was effectively nothing to decide between. People being people let their tendency to see patterns even when there are none take over.

At least in the USA it was Stereophile and then TAS who spread these ideas. Stereophile had been around since the early/mid 1960s. It was so niche effectively no one had every heard of it. TAS was started once people were starting to pay attention, and it was also very niche for a long time. Neither could even maintain their schedule of 4 issues per year. In the mid 1980s they both took off and became the most influential audio publications in the USA.

Now in those days I don't think people with those ideas were con men. Some did like being gurus though it was more of a collegial co-journey. Even now I think a good many purveyors of gear believe what they are selling. OTOH, quite a few are con men now. You could certainly say pseudoscience was the kernel of all this from the very beginning. John Gordon Holt who started Stereophile came to understand his mistake in this approach and where it was headed. According to him, which may or may not be revisionist history on his part, he simply saw that measurements didn't tell the whole story about what you would hear. Truth was yes actually they do if you have the proper context.

I'll also say as someone who was let us say, taken in by those ideas, and should have known better that it was a fun and interesting experience. It did become crazier and crazier over time as well as more and more expensive. In time effectively doing a reductio ad absurdum disproof of its own ideas.

 

[Purité Audio]

Our hobby basically got hijacked by pseudoscience and gurus and con men .

But we are fighting back.
Keith

 

[MatrixS2000]

I still say the watershed event was the introduction of the CD.

Agree, but I would not say it was the CD. I would say it is digitization because the watershed moment applies to anything that has gone through digital transformation, not just audio.

 

[Mart68]

I wouldn't say it was CD. It was later than that. I think it was when Stereophile drew attention to the Shun Mook 'devices' - late 1980s - once something so ridiculous was made respectable, the flood gates were opened.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I wouldn't say it was CD. It was later than that. I think it was when Stereophile drew attention to the Shun Mook 'devices' - late 1980s - once something so ridiculous was made respectable, the flood gates were opened.

The very first CDs were out late in 1982. Took around 2 years for the discs and affordable players to become readily available. You could say a couple more before the full effect was seen. So we are into mid to late 80s. As I recall the Shun Mook stuff was after the Tice clock. After people were worried about cables. After we were told you needed a separate DAC from the CD, after we were told you needed to worry about jitter, after we were told having digital devices plugged in effect other devices. All things related to CD which encouraged people to listen and hear things that really weren't there. Once you have that going then yes flood gates are ready to open.

 

[August West]

When the digital output was added to the cd player, that is when all hell broke loose.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Agree, but I would not say it was the CD. I would say it is digitization because the watershed moment applies to anything that has gone through digital transformation, not just audio.

But not all digitization resulted in this. Digital video was a boon and a benefit. Same for other digital devices. Not so in audio. There were unintended results.

 

[MattHooper]

Recognisable values for sure , I certainly can relate to that iv just never felt the need to turn it into a ' identity ' in the sense of ' I am a objectivists ' . Then iv never felt the need to label myself in any way whatsoever . I personally find self labling and much of what seems to me to be a rapidly increasing need for self definition through labeling, interesting but ultimately a source of some hilarity while also rather worrying when seen in a larger context.

As definitions go , you're definition of ' objectivist' is a admirable one . ' I'm human ' , that's about as far as I go with all that.

TLDR: categories can be helpful and informative, and don’t need to be restrictive. The fact some used categories in an unhelpful way doesn’t mean they can’t be used in a helpful way.

Full:

I think perhaps that you are taking the issue more seriously than I am or perhaps in a direction I am not taking it.

I think we would agree with the pernicious aspects of identity politics. And I am of the mind that any sense of personal identity should be held loosely, so our self identities do not constrict how we can grow as people, change what we believe, learn new things, etc. I bet I’ve done as much as anybody here to defend not just my approach but varying viewpoints.

However, terms of convenience don’t require us to make them into some overriding, restrictive identity. If I’m driving home in a big rainstorm and the weather forecast on the radio says “motorists should avoid the McKinley exit due to flooding of that offramp” I have no problem identifying as a “ motorist” in order to understand how that warning would apply to me. I’m not afterward running out to make myself T-shirts or baseball caps with “motorist” printed on them.

That goes for any number of terms that can help describe one viewpoint we might hold, which doesn’t mean that viewpoint is our identity or restrains us.

For instance, Philosophically, I’d be termed a Moral Realist. Even though that leaves a hell of a lot off the table in terms of details, it carries some information to somebody into philosophy. Also, I am a Compatibilist on Free Will (and in the sub category of Leeway Compatibilism). Those are simply convenient terms for some views I hold. They are not everything about me. I am open to changing those views. And again I’m not putting them on T-shirts or baseball caps or attending Compatibilist rallies.

The reason such terms arose (eg Compatibilism, Incompatibilism) is because many people thinking about these subjects found that there were at bottom, some fundamental differences that explained a lot of peoples views and intuitions on a range of subjects relating to free will.

By the same token we can try to explain the type of conflicts that regularly arise in the audiophile community.

Why do we have threads devoted to snake oil? Virtually nobody here would purchase the type of things in the snake oil threads… yet there are plenty of audiophile who do.
Why?

Why do threads about cables notoriously erupt into fractious debates? On some audiophile forums cable discussions are actually banned!

What causes the conflict?

As I’ve argued before, it is best described or predicted by identifying epistemic attitudes in terms of what audiophiles are relying on to gain knowledge about audio gear.

A . If it is your view that, ultimately, the most reliable method of evaluating the performance of audio gear is based on one’s subjective impressions during informal (not controlled for biases) listening…

You are most likely to find that attitude among those arguing that high priced cables provide better performance.

B. If it is your view that, ultimately, the most reliable information about the performance of audio gear comes from measurements and / or listening tests control for bias..,

There are good reasons why we are most likely to find that attitude on the side arguing against the claims made for “high end” expensive cables.

So it essentially drills down on where we place the greatest confidence - in uncontrolled subjective experience, or in objective tools that help us overcome the limitations and unreliability of our perception - measurements (carefully correlated to subjective experience), listening tests controlling for bias etc.

This should hardly be controversial. This demarcation is made all the time in this forum. It doesn’t need to be some derogatory stance - that would come from whatever attitude somebody has towards other people. It’s simply factual… comprehending some information that helps explain certain phenomena among audiophiles. Using terms like “subjectivist” in the first category and
“ objectivist” for the other category Isn’t adding more constraint to the categories you’ve already identified. It’s simply using some shorthand terms to refer to those different approaches.

Just like “compatibilist” and “incompatibilist” are useful philosophical reference terms for those viewpoints.

That leaves (objectivist/subjectivist) all the room open for somebody to fill in any of the details of their view.

It also leaves all the room open for people to identify in neither category. And all the room open for people to have views that might end up somewhere in between, or jump back-and-forth on one subject or another, or whatever.

But so long as there remain some relevant proportion of people who incline one way or the other, it is a useful and informative demarcation conceptually, and there’s nothing wrong with having terms for those views.

As you’ve seen even my own understanding of “objectivist” doesn’t even restrict how one engages in the hobby.

I think whether one sees such terms as derogatory or restrictive or making too much of one’s identity… I guess that will depend on one’s own attitude. I myself try not to use the terms in such a fashion.

Cheers.

 

[kemmler3D]

I would say the watershed moment was when a few early CDs with technical problems that hurt sound quality (bad filtering, I think?) got out, and instead of analysing the issues on a technical level and explaining them to the audience, part of (a lot of) the hi-fi press ran with a narrative that there are deeply obscure and nigh unknowable problems with digital audio and audio production in general.

The 'digital sounds bad and digital' narrative was a commitment to a type of ignorant and pseudoscientific writing they couldn't come back from.

So it wasn't the advent of CD, but the choice the writers made to misunderstand why they sound the way they do.

And so, because nobody could admit they got "stair steps" completely wrong, people are still talking about it today.

 

[Mart68]

The very first CDs were out late in 1982. Took around 2 years for the discs and affordable players to become readily available. You could say a couple more before the full effect was seen. So we are into mid to late 80s. As I recall the Shun Mook stuff was after the Tice clock. After people were worried about cables. After we were told you needed a separate DAC from the CD, after we were told you needed to worry about jitter, after we were told having digital devices plugged in effect other devices. All things related to CD which encouraged people to listen and hear things that really weren't there. Once you have that going then yes flood gates are ready to open.

I don't recall if the Tice was endorsed? But Shun Mook was endorsed by at least two Stereophile writers - 'we don't know how it works, but just listen!' - no attempt to stop it or for the magazine to arrange a blind test to settle it. It was left unchecked - the cynic in me says maybe because it would open up a whole new revenue stream for the industry, and for the mags via the advertising.

Two or three years later and the sound of power cables is being reviewed like it's the most normal thing in the world. I remember the first time I saw a power cable review. I had to double take, I thought it was one of those advertorials at first.

Speaker cables and interconnects were a thing already before any of that, I agree.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I don't recall if the Tice was endorsed? But Shun Mook was endorsed by at least two Stereophile writers - 'we don't know how it works, but just listen!' - no attempt to stop it or for the magazine to arrange a blind test to settle it. It was left unchecked - the cynic in me says maybe because it would open up a whole new revenue stream for the industry, and for the mags via the advertising.

Two or three years later and the sound of power cables is being reviewed like it's the most normal thing in the world. I remember the first time I saw a power cable review. I had to double take, I thought it was one of those advertorials at first.

Speaker cables and interconnects were a thing already before any of that, I agree.

Well memory is a funny thing. It looks like Sam Tellig first commented upon the Tice clock in January 1991 and it was later reviewed that same year. The Tice clock was in their Recommended Components list so it was endorsed. There were some controversial letters written for a couple years. Shun Mook was first mentioned in 1994 review by Jonathan Scull. So I'd say both happened after CD was a thing.

I don't know the first cable review, but they were commented upon as part of associated gear with other reviews for some years prior to reviewing cables on their own. A quick search showed Dick Olsher did a group review of cables in July 1988. Probably not the first one they published. The following is quite cute from Mr. Olsher.

Science is about the search for a hidden reality. To say that all of the important design considerations for cables and amplifiers can be condensed into a simple recipe is to say that these aspects of audio are closed and require no further investigation. This mirrors the view of many physicists in the latter part of the 19th century. Many budding physicists were advised to pursue another discipline because pretty soon there would be nothing left to discover about reality.
Fortunately, for the time being, high-end audio remains largely an art. A high-end product should evolve on the basis of extensive listening tests.

If only those listening tests were controlled listening tests his last sentence might have been correct.

Just found this reference to a loudspeaker cable review from 1978 at Stereophile with a mention this wasn't the first specialty cable.

40 years of Stereophile: The Hot 100 Products | Stereophile.com

"Most important." That was the phrase I used when I e-mailed the members of Stereophile's extended family of reviewers and writers to ask for suggestions when I began to compile this list. I didn't want to be more specific because I wanted to cast the net as wide as possible.

www.stereophile.com

Read this curious entry into that same list about Monster cable.

[20]: Monster Cable (original) loudspeaker cable
(No Stereophile review.) Yes, it was not too different from heavy-gauge zipcord, and yes, its copper conductors showed a premature propensity to turn green. And Monster didn't create the high-performance cable category. But it was Monster that established the importance of using good cables, Monster that established cables as a separate component category, and Monster that made cables mainstream. (Monster Cable has also trained more audio industry professionals than any other organization except, perhaps, Harman.) More controversially and in my personal opinion, it was Monster, that opened wide the "anything goes" floodgates, and it was Monster that taught dealers to rely on the profit margin offered by cables. This was to high-end audio's benefit, in that margins on electronics and speakers were lower than they might otherwise have been; and to its detriment, in that high margins discourage sales initiative and marketing expertise.