Stereophile doubles down on the snake oil!

[Arindal]

@Mart68 i understand your emotions and there were moments I had similar feelings regarding snake oil. Funnily the most ridiculous stuff like CD-demagnetizers is not overly popular anymore which got me more relaxed. On the other hand, yes it is sad to see people throwing their money after some snake oil vendors, but the information to prevent this is one google search query away. They could have avoided it, brainwashed or not. Some 25 years ago, the information was seemingly not even available anywhere.

you cannot really change their minds by showing them 'objectively useful measures' since the brainwashing runs too deep for that.

My experience is saying otherwise, but it might be very personal as I am dealing with room acoustic consultation and seeing people accepting what is really useful and what not.

They think they are the experts.

That is an important assumption. I think many people spending money for snake oil want to simply feel special about what they have themselves discovered, telling others and feeling superior. I mean, this scheme is happening with ´alternative medicine´ and health care snake oil on a completely different level a billion times.

The best that can be hoped for is that new people are coming in fresh with a more rational approach that has not been defiled by 30 years of reading nonsense in the magazines.

I agree, but I am afraid that hope is not enough here, as a lot of people have walked away from quality audio gear completely. It might be a better idea to give people real understanding about acoustics and actively demo measures to improve things which they can experience themselves.

 

[Mart68]

@Mart68 i understand your emotions and there were moments I had similar feelings regarding snake oil. Funnily the most ridiculous stuff like CD-demagnetizers is not overly popular anymore which got me more relaxed. On the other hand, yes it is sad to see people throwing their money after some snake oil vendors, but the information to prevent this is one google search query away. They could have avoided it, brainwashed or not. Some 25 years ago, the information was seemingly not even available anywhere.

There's plenty of new ridiculous stuff out there, CD demagnetizer chat vanished when streaming took over.

Whilst availability of genuine information and knowledge is now much better it's of no use to people who reject it as contrary to their own personal subjective experience which they regard as the gold standard.

My experience is saying otherwise, but it might be very personal as I am dealing with room acoustic consultation and seeing people accepting what is really useful and what not.

Room acoustics and solving its problems is not contrary to a belief in nonsense. I've never encountered anyone who thinks room acoustics don't matter, even though they are happy to spend thousands on magic fuses.

There's a tendency amongst some to spend thousands on passive treatment on the grounds that a little helped so a shitload will do a lot more. But I've never encountered outright rejection of it. It lives happily side by side with the fantastical.

That is an important assumption. I think many people spending money for snake oil want to simply feel special about what they have themselves discovered, telling others and feeling superior. I mean, this scheme is happening with ´alternative medicine´ and health care snake oil on a completely different level a billion times.

There's an element of this coupled with peer pressure to not be the uncritical type who does not hear differences. But the actual issue runs much deeper. Primarily there is total ignorance as to how much research in audio has been done over the decades, this leads to the attitude that it is the wild west where anything is possible and ground-breaking research can be - and is - conducted by lay-people in their living rooms.

Again this comes back to the idea that personal experience trumps anything that can be dictated or bounded by physics, engineering, or even common sense. Psychological aspects such as cognitive bias are dismissed out of hand as simply not applying.

There's an aspect of wishful thinking to this, especially amongst those that do have a science background. 'It would ruin the hobby for me' has been said to me more than once by people who are smart enough, and have the academic background, to know better.

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

Okay, maybe our definitions of satisfying might differ.



Fully understood. My question was rather if one does the idea of audio objectivity a good service by focussing on mocking, insulting and calling for blind tests. My personal opinion would rather tend to the opposite direction, although I share the same goal. In the eyes of audiophiles and unaffected music lovers, the attitude of many audio objectivists is the opposite from appealing, perceived as ´no compromise´, ´no fun´, ´no understanding´, ´no tolerance´, ´no music´. While that might be lauded by fellow objectivists and feared by snake oil supporters writing comments, it appears to be highly deterrent to a lot of unaffected music lovers who might have entered this scene recently. At least that is what I have witnessed, a lot of hi-fi novices ignore measurements and objectivism. Looks like it is the opposite of fun in their eyes.

My personal experience is rather hinting to the direction of showing people how to have more fun with objectively useful measures. Teach them how to choose the best speaker for their needs, give them some EQ and knowledge to solve their room problems, give them the best bass reproduction imaginable, and they are much more likely to believe in objectivism than when anyone is disparaging their cables.

This thread isn't about teaching some wayward audio enthusiast how to build a better system. It's about a professional audio magazine promoting absolute junk - and I believe that is worthy of mockery at every opportunity. If you spend any time here and read different threads you'll see lots of examples of people doing (or attempting to that is) exactly as you suggest. You'll also see that it rarely pays off the way you imagine it might. On some occasions the person in question has an open mind and is willing to learn, but more often than not it's a futile effort. The information is here for anyone who does want to learn though and it's not very complicated. I'm not sure why suggestions regarding blind testing are seen as such a big issue for people. Can you or can you not hear these supposedly obvious sonic benefits you say exist without looking - ears only? It seems like the simplest, most fundamental thing one should consider doing with this stuff prior to making any (potentially costly) pronouncements. And as far as wiring is concerned, nobody needs to do any blind testing at this point because it's already been done for them and it's shown that nobody can hear any difference between boutique cables and friggin coat hangers and potatoes for cryin out loud, lol. Anyone still promoting the benefits of expensive cables is basically engaging in outright fraud as it stands now.

 

[Talisman]

What I don’t understand about people who respond to cable marketing, is the lack of information provided by sellers on the technical design decisions that are needed to produce a desired outcome from the cable. i.e. if I want a better cable, these are the things I need to do.

Speaker manufactures, for example, talk about design decisions in driver size, magnets, crossovers, etc. and how they produce a specific outcome (whether or not it’s actually realized in measurement or audibility). These decisions are generally based on known and accepted principles of speaker design and their contribution to a desired outcome. i.e. if I want to improve my speaker’s bass extension, these are the things I need to do or consider.

Of course they explain technically how they improve them.
They cost more, they have to sound better, if they cost MUCH more they will sound EVEN better.

 

[ivayvr]

"My personal experience is rather hinting to the direction of showing people how to have more fun with objectively useful measures. Teach them how to choose the best speaker for their needs, give them some EQ and knowledge to solve their room problems, give them the best bass reproduction imaginable, and they are much more likely to believe in objectivism than when anyone is disparaging their cables."

Is this not what this forum is all about?
Part of the mission is not letting scammers keep scamming.

 

[mns3dhm]

Wondering what @Kal Rubinson and @John Atkinson think

The cables John Atkinson uses are disclosed in the Associated Equipment portion of products he reviews for Stereophile. He apparently uses cables from Audioquest, Ayre/Cardas, and DH Labs. Kal Robinson uses cables from Mogami, Benchmark, and Blue Jeans Cable.

 

[HalSF]

I was hoping it would be more of a discussion about the editorial direction of Stereophile. It’s had a foot in both camps for a long time but this article in particular seems to signal a move to pure subjectivism

I don’t think this one atrocious Stereophile article signals much of anything about a meaningful shift in the current editorial direction. It’s just one more instance of the longstanding willingness to “audition” expensive audio cables, way over on the far extreme of the magazine’s purely subjective, zero-measurements reviewing-as-séance side. It’s an unfortunate editorial tendency that provides the most credible paranoid evidence that some of what Stereophile does is reader-hostile, advertiser-friendly service to bolster an important revenue stream, and it’s too bad they persist in this practice. It would be a lot better to simply ignore high-end cables on the editorial side and live with the consequences.

Stereophile is still a valuable resource in general as far as I’m concerned, and the policy of supplementing subjective renewing with objective gear testing (though not for cables) is one of the pluses. I do wonder what’s going to happen when John Atkinson is no longer available to do the testing however.

 

[Audiofire]

When there is hope to dissuade snake oil believers or to find out, the best way is probably to ask in a bona fide way what would convince them to change their mind. (Then work from there if possible.)

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Kal Robinson Rubinson uses cables from Mogami, Benchmark, and Blue Jeans Cable.

Mogami DB25-to-XLR snakes in/out from my Merging Hapi II.
Short Benchmark Balanced interconnects into my Benchmark amps.
BlueJeans SpeakON to banana speaker cables using Canare 4S11.
All long interconnects via AES72 (audio over Cat6) using appropriate adapters.

 

[RickS]

View attachment 452871View attachment 452872
I believe in Nordost

True bling. These are gold plated copper.

 

[Audiofire]

These are gold plated copper.

Pure BS looks unwelcome, so silver or gold plating helps sales

 

[mns3dhm]

Mogami DB25-to-XLR snakes in/out from my Merging Hapi II.
Short Benchmark Balanced interconnects into my Benchmark amps.
BlueJeans SpeakON to banana speaker cables using Canare 4S11.
All long interconnects via AES72 (audio over Cat6) using appropriate adapters.

My sincere apologies on the spelling Kal - I appreciate your viewpoints here and elsewhere.

 

[mhardy6647]

Just espied this on the Polk Audio forums - thought this thread was a worthy spot to share it.

 

[Short38]

I look forward to Stereophile each month. I read the measurements sections first and like the concluding remarks following the measurements for their subtlety. The listener narratives are generally predictable and hilarious for their sincerity. I’ll continue to subscribe so long as the measurements are performed by John Atkinson. The advertisements are always interesting and keep me up to date on Earth 2 Audiophilia.

 

[Chrispy]

There’s a whole top of page article on why cables matter: https://www.stereophile.com/content/colloms-cables

It’s worth a read just to witness the mental gymnastics at play.

TLDR since this post. Why on earth would I waste my time reading crap on stereophile like that?

 

[Chrispy]

That’s a bit harsh. They (the editors and contributors) create content that the publishers can sell advertisements next to.

You might as well get angry with the publishers of “psychologies” magazine, or goop.com

That said, Martin Colloms has a history of claiming to be objective, so this latest rubbish does look hypocritical at best.

Martin Collums is a joke, tho

 

[Chrispy]

I'm suggesting this sudden push by Stereophile to promote expensive cables might be evidence that it is?

I agree that, traditionally, cables have been a less expensive way to fiddle with the system rather than swap boxes or, god forbid, just use the damn thing to listen to music.

It's not impossible that the advertisers have requested a push on this front due to sales sagging. We aren't likely to be made privy to that data, but in recent years the existing paradigm of 'everything matters' has been shaken, if not overturned, due to this forum and other sceptical platforms.

Of course it might not be and it's just some random subject picked arbitrarily to pad out the editorial content. I sort of doubt that's the case though.

Sudden? Some of their idiotic reviewers have pushed this crap for ages....

 

[Cbdb2]

Maybe unfair, but to me it seems Martin Colloms has been muddying the hi-fi waters for long time.

At the end of the article John Atkinson refers to a 1995 article by Malcolm Omar Hawksford entitled, "The Essex Echo 1995: Electrical Signal Propagation & Cable Theory". That article seems to deal with the speed of propagation of signals within cables, arguing that aspects of the cable, e.g. diameter, can adversely affect transmission.

Since I'm no electrical engineer, scientist, or mathematician it's all gobbledygook to me but might be comprehensible to other people. The question is -- allowing for its from validity -- is it relevant to audio signals?

if not already mentioned that Hawksford paper has been debunked several times but these snake oil slingers will keep bringing it up for ever.I jujst lost any respect I had left for Jon Atkinson who just comes up with psuedo plaussible "scientific" reasons for snake oil. In a lot of ways this is worse than the reviewer.

 

[mcdn]

It’ll be interesting to see how Jon and Kal go under the new editorial direction

 

[ivayvr]

It’ll be interesting to see how Jon and Kal go under the new editorial direction

In what way "new editorial direction"?
Ole Jimmy was there since 2019 and most of the time he was directionless.
I owe him big time for not being a subscriber, soon after I figured what I was becoming part of.
I could not stand any longer his pseudo intellectual musings about audio and life in general.

changed the date from 1919 to 2019