The bestiary of the most common (and debunked by science) audiophile myths

[Doodski]

The ingenious marketing in the 80’s and 90’s that somehow made for example British cottage industry brands much better and more musical than an Japanese amplifier

What a load of ..... such terrible products like Sugden A21 or Musical Fidelity A1 or some entry level little NAIM ?

This is history now , but I still remember and in retrospect i’m thinking what fools we where.

I remember that a proper card carrying audiophile tried to minimise the amount of Japanese products in their hifi .
High end was American or British hifi .

Exceptions where loudspeakers, for some reason probably logistics back them shipping speakers where not a big thing so we had a lot of local brands in Europe and local manufacturing.
Nowadays Far East manufacturing and shipping has gotten so cheap that speakers are made everywhere .

I laugh and laugh about this being so happy to have skipped all that stuff. I was so freakishly busy with my work in the 80s and 90s that I never read a newspaper or watched the news not once and I never read an audio magazine either. I was completely in my own bubble and focusing on my work. It worked well for me @ the time.

 

[Mnyb]

Maybe it can be shortened to:

Somehow audiophiles prefered underground stuff from cottage companies and one man garage operations with a story

Imagine the frustration of the big companies like Sony or Pioneer providing perfectly fine products with much better performance for a 1/3 of the price and the customer still picks some crummy piece of bent sheet metal from a man i a shed the power of the audiophile story ! that fits the OP

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Maybe it can be shortened to:

Somehow audiophiles prefered underground stuff from cottage companies and one man garage operations with a story

Imagine the frustration of the big companies like Sony or Pioneer providing perfectly fine products with much better performance for a 1/3 of the price and the customer still picks some crummy piece of bent sheet metal from a man i a shed the power of the audiophile story ! that fits the OP

You mean like this?

Not so sure build quality is the issue

 

[LeShog]

You mean like this?

Not so sure build quality is the issue

what’s that, a Hi Fi museum?

 

[Mnyb]

You mean like this?

Not so sure build quality is the issue

Here it’s a lot of things not the actual build quality where to start i sumarize that it works but is an incredible expensive and inefficient way of build an amp ?

 

[Brian Hall]

Here it’s a lot of things not the actual build quality where to start i sumarize that it works but is an incredible expensive and inefficient way of build an amp ?

And it is very ugly. I would not want that thing in my house even if it was priced the same as a Fosi V3 and somehow sounded better.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Here it’s a lot of things not the actual build quality where to start i sumarize that it works but is an incredible expensive and inefficient way of build an amp ?

Yep. But it ain’t a cheap crappy piece of gear.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

And it is very ugly. I would not want that thing in my house even if it was priced the same as a Fosi V3 and somehow sounded better.

Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. I think a lot of uber expensive high end gear, particularly tube gear looks very cool. Audio porn. I enjoy audio porn.

I’m also a bit more forgiving of such gear. Someone builds a tube amp, makes hand wound silver wire transformers, uses rare vintage tubes, point to point wiring with chassis milled from solid blocks of aluminum. That ain’t cheap.

I’m not going to pay for that but that kind of craft and build materials is real. If you do your homework you know what you are getting. It’s not the same thing as buying a stock fuse, painting it purple and then fraudulently marketing it as some cryo-quantum-time space aligned game changing device for $600.00.

I draw the line when the builders of audio porn make erroneous claims of objective performance.

With all that said there is no way I would own a 400 lbs amplifier. My stereo room is upstairs

 

[phantompowered]

Children have innocent souls, so their audio reviews are the unadulterated truth.

If you can't hear the difference, your child isn't resolving enough.

 

[Mnyb]

With all that said there is no way I would own a 400 lbs amplifier. My stereo room is upstairs

I think you need 2 if these are D’Agostini mono blocks and your stereo won’t be upstairs for long if you manage to place those monsters there

 

[egellings]

My experience with Chinese quackery including audiophiles, their arguments always go on a very predictable route of "How could you know if you never tried it" to "Those will spent so much on BS couldn't be stupid" then finally "Hahaha what do poor plebs know".

Also, your hearing or related audio components aren't good enough to hear the difference.

 

[HetRegentDiamanten]

Audiophile myth, hand built in country x is better than machine built in country y.

 

[egellings]

I think you need 2 if these are D’Agostini mono blocks and your stereo won’t be upstairs for long if you manage to place those monsters there

Hire a crane.

 

[Punter]

You mean like this?

Not so sure build quality is the issue

Interestingly, having a CNC outfit cut this enclosure wouldn't be as expensive as the pricetag of the finished unit would suggest. With some volume of production, the setup cost would be absorbed into the machine time and would come down to something quite bearable. From a design perspective, there's not much sophistication, fairly basic shapes and pattern repetition. Obviously, these would posess significant mass but hey, that means you can go with the "gear on the floor" look that seems to be in favour now.

 

[Brian Hall]

Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. I think a lot of uber expensive high end gear, particularly tube gear looks very cool. Audio porn. I enjoy audio porn.

I prefer my equipment to fade into the background and not be "Yelling" at my eyes all the time.

With all that said there is no way I would own a 400 lbs amplifier. My stereo room is upstairs

Just install an elevator, reinforce the floor and get a motorized dolly.

 

[mhardy6647]

I think you need 2 if these are D’Agostini mono blocks and your stereo won’t be upstairs for long if you manage to place those monsters there

Atmos or bust!

 

[Emlin]

Atmos or bust!

Bust, then.

 

[Audiofire]

The change from harddisks to SSDs was a remarkable milestone in pace, rhythm and timing of audio. Likewise, other flash storage sounds better than harddisks, especially when made for Premium Sound.

 

[Somafunk]

The change from harddisks to SSDs was a remarkable milestone in pace, rhythm and timing of audio. Likewise, other flash storage sounds better than harddisks, especially when made for Premium Sound.

I find that my sandisk extreme ssd sounds more musical when placed in the freezer with a 25 ft usb cable cable running to my imac, not quite cryogenically treated but -25° is not to be sniffed at. Obviously you need the extreme variant of the sandisk as a normal ssd is not cut out for the task.

 

[Emlin]

I find that my sandisk extreme ssd sounds more musical when placed in the freezer with a 25 ft usb cable cable running to my imac, not quite cryogenically treated but -25° is not to be sniffed at. Obviously you need the extreme variant of the sandisk as a normal ssd is not cut out for the task.

I put my router behind my freezer to cryogenically treat my wifi and got the darkest, inkiest silence ever.