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Stereophiles editor Jim Austin publicly disagreeing with Kal Rubinson

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fpitas

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i kind of get the feeling it's "us" against the world.
Our own fault, for listening to sine sweeps and square waves. But someday people will know we were right.
 

Astoneroad

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i kind of get the feeling it's "us" against the world.
It always has been. The good news is that presumably none of us have an eagle repeatedly eating our liver. Alas poor Amir... I mean Prometheus.. I knew him well.
 

fpitas

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617

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Imagine continuing to have these arguments well into middle age
 

fpitas

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Vacceo

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Imagine continuing to have these arguments well into middle age
Ockham or Aquinus? ;)

I don't believe that's true. I can prove how good my stuff is... I've got the receipts and a stack of subjective magazine reviews to prove it. ;) We don't need your stinking badges... or Ohm, Maxwell and Majidimehr... when we have Ritchie, McGowen and Austin. My reality is really... really... true. Really.
Reality is just a clumsy attemp of representation of the Real. The Real is a desert, dry as the graphs our host publishes. :p
 

AdamG

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i kind of get the feeling it's "us" against the world.
Your not far off the mark here. We are here to serve the Consumer by providing actual performance metrics for products and services when and where we can. Up against a world full of chiselers and scammers and outright liars who will say anything, and make any claim, about what their products do. The more people they trick the more money they make. Sadly the Audio world is ripe with this nonsense and Consumers are being taken advantage of at every turn. All of this B.S is being hidden behind a curtain of false and misleading scientific claims. Just look no further than the Audio Cable Market. I bet just about everyone here has fallen for the expensive cable bit. Sold to you as an add on must by the friendly salesperson at Circuit City or Best Buy. Then realize that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

As a growing Community in the Audio World we find ourselves in the position of trying to be Truth Tellers to an audience that many times doesn’t want to hear the truth. Primary because it will expose their own gullibility and bad judgment in the gear they have bought. Ownership Bias can be a painful thing to expose and experience. Admitting that you were fooled is another mental hurdle that sometimes is a bridge to far for some.

So yeah, we feel your point. Trying to open people’s eyes and minds every day, over and over again. Becomes a endless struggle for many of our Senior Members. ;)
 

Astoneroad

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So yeah, we feel your point. Trying to open people’s eyes and minds every day, over and over again. Becomes a endless struggle for many of our Senior Members. ;)
Socrates revisited. (Hint... don't buy anything from Hemlock Audio.)
 

fpitas

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Your not far off the mark here. We are here to serve the Consumer by providing actual performance metrics for products and services when and where we can. Up against a world full of chiselers and scammers and outright liars who will say anything, and make any claim, about what their products do. The more people they trick the more money they make. Sadly the Audio world is ripe with this nonsense and Consumers are being taken advantage of at every turn. All of this B.S is being hidden behind a curtain of false and misleading scientific claims. Just look no further than the Audio Cable Market. I bet just about everyone here has fallen for the expensive cable bit. Sold to you as an add on must by the friendly salesperson at Circuit City or Best Buy. Then realize that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

As a growing Community in the Audio World we find ourselves in the position of trying to be Truth Tellers to an audience that many times doesn’t want to hear the truth. Primary because it will expose their own gullibility and bad judgment in the gear they have bought. Ownership Bias can be a painful thing to expose and experience. Admitting that you were fooled is another mental hurdle that sometimes is a bridge to far for some.

So yeah, we feel your point. Trying to open people’s eyes and minds every day, over and over again. Becomes a endless struggle for many of our Senior Members. ;)

Dogs bark, fish swim, flies fly and con artists con people.
People want to believe what the con artists tell them rather than logical data because con artists understand how to lead them in that direction, by pushing their emotional buttons. Science has no emotional buttons; it's based on logic.

Jim
 

Astoneroad

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Dogs bark, fish swim, flies fly and con artists con people.
People want to believe what the con artists tell them rather than logical data because con artists understand how to lead them in that direction, by pushing their emotional buttons. Science has no emotional buttons; it's based on logic.

Jim
Amen.
 

Purité Audio

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The psychology is really interesting, so much more than just the financial investment the whole ego/self worth fascinating really.
Keith
 

DonR

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Subjective listening impressions are still useful data.
This is difficult for applied scientists (“engineers”) to appreciate, since you can’t measure subjective listening impressions with an oscilloscope.
Whereas, this is easily appreciated by natural/research scientists, who are accustomed to experimental research involving human subjects. Unfortunately, natural/research scientists also happen to be vastly underrepresented in this forum.
Most of these impressions tell us more about the subjects' biases and thought processes than they do about the equipment under review. Next thing you will be telling us is that there are some as-yet-unforeseen phenomena happening in the equipment that engineers don't know about but can be picked up by audio reviewers although strangely absent when presented with a proper double-blind test.
 

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I bet just about everyone here has fallen for the expensive cable bit.
I have a bi-wire pair of fancy van den hul. I like them, they have a nice flexible feel and the terminations fit some of my gear really nicely. They do nothing for sound, except provide a robust connection and I'm happy to use them. I might separate them someday because I find speaker cables really useful, and this would potentially double the usefulness!

Reading through the Stereophile comments, it mystifies me why Kal's very reasonable statement got derailed by a co-worker. But I guess Stereophile needs to defend every square millimeter of their sandbox, even the fringe corner that this "OUTBOARD passive bi-wiring" evangelist lives in.
 

fpitas

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I run separate cables to each midbass module (two per speaker). Gotta say it's mostly because I had a big spool of Monoprice twisted pair ;)
 

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After subscribing to Stereophile since the 80s I have weaned myself over the last year or so. My subscription still has a few more months but I haven't read the last 6+ issues. ASR confirms a lot of what I felt/ suspected. Gear prices kept skyrocketing and the benefits were dubious at best. Some past writers were entertaining, but there has been an increasing gap between reviewer claims and JA's measurements that gets glossed over. And I do not enjoy Mr Austin's essays.
 

MAB

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The psychology is really interesting, so much more than just the financial investment the whole ego/self worth fascinating really.
Keith
It is, just like you say. Reading this fringe bi-wiring fantic's posts... That odd combination of golden-ear syndrome, combined with the misplaced perception that they somehow created or elevated the musical performance in a way that physics and engineering can't. Even the artist and performance is second. It's like the music would have been crap without all of the hard work they did; tweaking cables, arranging lifters, inventing OUTBOARD passive bi-wiring... Agree, all ego and a bit fascinating to read.
 

MAB

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I run separate cables to each midbass module (two per speaker). Gotta say it's mostly because I had a big spool of Monoprice twisted pair ;)
Heck yeah! If I had a big fat spool of van den hul MC-Grand-Kyber-Crystal-CRYO;), no driver would ever have to share the same conductor again!!!

Like @RayDunzl said, "because I can":
 
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