The root of audiophile myths (and how we fell for them)?

[JSmith]

[Editorial] Audio mythologies, audiophile myths

Audio mythologies, the myths and legends of audiophiles, by Mark Wheeler, on TNT-Audio - Internet HiFi magazine - www.tnt-audio.com

www.tnt-audio.com

"A phenomenon remains unexplainable as long as the range of observation is not wide enough to include the context in which the phenomenon occurs. Failure to realize the relationship between an event and the matrix in which it takes place, between an organism and its environment, either confronts the observer with something 'mysterious' or induces him to attribute to his object of study certain properties the object may not possess"
Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J. & Jackson, D.D. (1967) Pragmatics of Human Communication. NY: Norton, p21

JSmith

 

[solderdude]

Audio is just like any other subject, so there will be myths based on perception and wild theories about just about anything.
This is not exclusive to audio.
Root cause is often an incorrect assumption and/or observation that was made and made public and was either misunderstood or incorrect.

 

[coonmanx]

I want to sell you something. Now I must find a way to get you to release that money from your hand...

 

[loud n clear]

I want to sell you something. Now I must find a way to get you to release that money from your hand...

i bought 2 of these put them on my system then watch them lift off out the door into outer space. amazing!

 

[egellings]

I read in some political science magazine that a political lie or myth will spread much mor quickly than a truthful political statement will.

 

[krabapple]

“A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.”—Mark Twain

 

[TurtlePaul]

One time someone heard a song and they were in the groove and very happy. Another time they heard the same song and were indifferent. Of course it must be the playback that causes the differences. It can't be in our impurfect human emotions. Once you are playing back the songs on very similar equipment, you need to find more outlandish reasons for the differences in sound.

Of course, if you are of the tweaking disposition (I know I am and suspect may here are) then the very act of tweaking will make you happier and therefore will make the sound be perceptually better.

 

[JSmith]

One time someone heard a song and they were in the groove and very happy. Another time they heard the same song and were indifferent. Of course it must be the playback that causes the differences. It can't be in our impurfect human emotions.

Yes I think some attribute emotional responses to their equipment... bad move as equipment doesn't have emotions, it just does what it is designed to do (hopefully).


JSmith

 

[IPunchCholla]

Part of the issue is also that to grok what is actually happening in the sound reproduction chain, you need to have a fairly good grasp of the nitty gritty of what your source is (for most people now that is digital) and how the playback mechanism outputs it (meaning you need to have some understanding of file formats (bit depth and sample rate, codecs, and audio data routing for your OS)). What percentage of people have that knowledge?

Then you need to have a pretty good grounding in electricity and understanding of electronics and circuits (inductance, resistance, voltage, amps, watts, potential, transducers, rectifiers, capacitors and on and on. Then we get to fluid dynamics and wave dynamics. Then psychoacoustics.

And I just want my music to sound good. I might be an expert in my field, but that doesn’t mean it is easy for me to grok enough of all those things to not be susceptible to a good snake oil salesperson.

 

[FishInLA]

I think what happened is that lore that made sense in the analog era persisted into the digital era in ways that no longer make sense. With turntables and tube amps, various mechanical accoutrements really do help - isolating the turntable from vibrations, finding ways to keep the motor perfectly steady, impedance matching, the fact that you really could alter the sound by swapping tubes - all of these things led to a tweaker culture that has persisted. Of course this stuff no longer makes sense - digital sources and solid state amps are not sensitive to minor mechanical vibration in the room, distortion from the source is no longer an issue, DACs have been essentially perfected, etc.

 

[Talisman]

Yes I think some attribute emotional responses to their equipment... bad move as equipment doesn't have emotions, it just does what it is designed to do (hopefully).


JSmith

From certain points of view I understand this, attention, not in the sense that a "magical" 8000 euro dac can bring out different emotions from one of 200, but in the sense that a good level stereo system can certainly give different emotions to the listening to a transistor radio.
By good level I also mean just a couple of mid-range bookshelf speakers, a $ 100 but decent class D amplifier and a minimally good dac.

 

[sarumbear]

Audio myth or good design? Why is this open back speaker open when the audio myth(?) is that the front and back of the speaker's energy will cancel each other out and cannot function this way?
View attachment 166118

It’s not a Hi-Fi device. It’s an instrument.

 

[Axo1989]

Look all I want to know is who came up with this bullshit about veils being lifted... maybe something happened at a wedding and it stuck.

It derives from Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils before King Herod (in literature, notably Wilde's play Salome which introduced the seven veils motif). Basically a strip-tease. So we have the sublimated sexuality of the audiophile-erotic fetish expressed as a reviewing conceit.

But as Mallarmé said: "the veil always remains".

Edit: an interesting variation (as these were westernised versions of imagined Middle Eastern styles of dance) was Loïe Fuller's 'Veil of Vapor' with clouds of steam instead of fabric (eg at New York's Standard Theater in 1886).

 

[Ricardus]

The one that really bothers me is when some audiophool tells me that my system isn't "resolving" enough to hear the differences they hear (presumably in cables and power chords and such).

So just what is it that my amplifier, that measures well, isn't resolving? Is it forgetting to amplify some bass guitar notes or some piano arpeggios?

Is it doing it on purpose? Like out of spite?

These people are SO desperate to believe they're better than other people, it's just sad.

 

[IPunchCholla]

Another study I feel I should have a one-button hotline to.

 

[JSmith]

Is it doing it on purpose? Like out of spite?

JSmith

 

[Snoopy]

Pretty sure some people talk about warmth , harshness and tube sound etc that never even heard a vinyl or seen a tube amp in real-life.

But since we are on the internet it's easy to read and repeat some stuff a reviewer mentioned in their YouTube video or blog post.

 

[freemansteve]

Audio myth or good design? Why is this open back speaker open when the audio myth(?) is that the front and back of the speaker's energy will cancel each other out and cannot function this way?
View attachment 166118

Most combos are like this to make them louder. You don't usually play combos - or stacks - with their backs to a wall. Ideally they are the wall

Anyway an electric guitar has 8kHz b/w at best and a terrible S/N, and is rarely played without distortion, and with any number of pedals - it probably doesn't matter a lot about the open back!

 

[freemansteve]

Audio is just like any other subject, so there will be myths based on perception and wild theories about just about anything.
This is not exclusive to audio.
Root cause is often an incorrect assumption and/or observation that was made and made public and was either misunderstood or incorrect.

Yep. Look on any car forum! Always a staggering amount of "physics from a different universe" on those - usually to sell an upgrade to the gullible!

 

[JiiPee]

How about this one:
memory distortion

Extreme audiophile humbug, or something that is worth considering?