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

[Suffolkhifinut]

How about this one:
memory distortion

Extreme audiophile humbug, or something that is worth considering?

To find out would cost more than I’m prepared to spend. Then we have the self justification when a new expensive piece of kit is bought. What a great difference it makes usually lasts for a couple of weeks and then reality sets in.

 

[Tangband]

The problem with relying on your ears is that you cannot separate what you actually hear from what your brain thinks you hear. The brain introduces biases that are indistinguishable from reality. All observation is thus biased and thus cannot be held as scientific evidence.

True, - your enjoyment of the music and how your brain perceive the music is very heavily biased.
But this is what you use your hifi for - to enjoy listening to music with your ears. That is the main purpose.

On the technical point: the really big fault is the 2 channel stereosystem. Its seriously flawed.
The sound can never be perfect, because it is flawed at the beginning.

This is much worse, and makes a much bigger listening difference than a DAC measuring 0.1 % THD vs another , better DAC that measures 0.0001 % .

 

[DonR]

True, - your enjoyment of the music and how your brain perceive the music is very heavily biased.
But this is what you use your hifi for - to enjoy listening to music. That is the main purpose.

On the technical point: the really big fault is the 2 channel stereosystem. Its seriously flawed.
The sound can never be perfect, because it is flawed at the beginning.

This is much worse, and makes a much bigger listening difference than a DAC measuring 0.1 % THD vs another , better DAC that measures 0.0001 % .

Not only that but music is now mostly mixed for headphone or (gasp!) soundbar listening which is where 90% of all content will be consumed. With only a meter of separation, soundbars are almost mono channel. Then we have Echo Dot's and Google mini's.

 

[egellings]

How ghastly!

 

[Spkrdctr]

I highly recommend not to waste time on these worthless videos. To get the gist of what this guy is about, the spoiler below is a small snippet of the transcript from Part I.

Spoiler

​

...​

25:41 part 4 of this series​

25:44 but despite such challenges human​

25:46 observation is still a foundational tool​

25:50 in science many objectivist audiophiles​

25:54 like to dismiss human sensory reports​

25:56 calling them untrustworthy or saying​

25:59 that any differences someone claims to​

26:01 hear are just the result of a placebo​

26:03 effect well like it or not using input​

26:07 from our senses has always been used and​

26:10 using them is here to stay​

26:12 warts and all​

26:14 furthermore to call a difference someone​

26:17 hears a placebo​

26:19 is often very hand wavy and overly​

26:21 dismissive the placebo effect is a real​

26:25 thing but it's also a scientific​

26:27 explanation that requires evidence​

26:30 that's right​

26:31 you actually have to have direct​

26:33 evidence that a placebo effect is​

26:35 happening to say that some what someone​

26:37 is observing is the result of a placebo​

26:41 also to my knowledge there are no​

26:43 documented applications of the placebo​

26:45 effect outside of medical testing so​

26:48 let's be careful how and where we use​

26:51 this term​

26:52 finally​

26:54 observing something that is not readily​

26:56 explainable is where science starts​

27:00 we see​

27:02 or hear​

27:03 or smell or feel or taste something we​

27:07 don't understand​

27:09 why is that happening is that normal​

27:12 those are all questions we start asking​

27:15 sometimes hearing differences isn't​

27:18 something that should be quickly​

27:19 explained away​

27:21 it's just something that needs to be​

27:24 explained​

...​

​

It has been explained thousands of times. This guy is a subjectivist nutjob. Subjectivists are worse than cockroaches. They just seem to crawl out into the open when you think you have gotten rid of all of them.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

It has been explained thousands of times. This guy is a subjectivist nutjob. Subjectivists are worse than cockroaches. They just seem to crawl out into the open when you think you have gotten rid of all of them.

Why do you need to be so abusive, he has the right to express his opinion, even if you don’t agree with it! Aim your ire at the contributor who posted it, he gave it the oxygen of publicity.

 

[DonR]

How ghastly!

... and we all know what comes next... “Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”

 

[Spkrdctr]

Why do you need to be so abusive, he has the right to express his opinion, even if you don’t agree with it! Aim your ire at the contributor who posted it, he gave it the oxygen of publicity.

Hmmm, you might be right! I will allow the subjectivist to proceed unmolested. Must be my lack of sleep. But in the end I still don't like subjectivists since they are like cockroaches. But I can keep that to myself.

 

[Spkrdctr]

... and we all know what comes next... “Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”

Now that was funny! My two cats approve.

 

[DonR]

True, - your enjoyment of the music and how your brain perceive the music is very heavily biased.
But this is what you use your hifi for - to enjoy listening to music with your ears. That is the main purpose.

That is why subjective reviewing is a waste of time. All it is, in reality, is the reviewer expressing his biases and his brain's interpretation of the equipment, giving it attributes that it may or may not have. Does an $18,000 power bar correct a "wandering soloist"? Only in the addled mind of the reviewer.

 

[Salida]

To the thread’s title, the audiophile myths really started with the emergence of alternative print media, specifically “The Absolute Sound” and to a lesser extent “Stereophile”.

Before that, the mainstream mags like Audio and Stereo Review tested everything and published measurements along with generally cursory personal reviewer impressions.

In mainstream print audio, this was the era of Len ‘I’ve never met an amplifier I didn’t like’ Feldman and the monster receivers from the likes of Pioneer and Sansui. Products were compared on features and measured performance mostly. Kind of like ASR today. If your belief system centered around numbers then you were comfortable opening your wallet knowing you were buying something that was competitive and a good value.

At the same time, the alternative press was hearing and reporting on differences between components that measured the same, or even measured worse but to their ears sounded better.

For example they were asserting that some older tube equipment sounded ‘more musical’ than modern SS gear. Blasphemy!

As it turns out, the subjective reviewers were onto something because in those days THD and IM were measured at full power, so the very low energy, low duty cycle crossover distortion in SS amps of the day measured great compared to the high second order distortion of a tube amplifier.

Subjective reviewing was born and took off from there.

Now our measurement capabilities are much more comprehensive.

But the genie is out of the bottle, and anybody can claim anything is an audio improvement, irrespective of the level of quackery and bullshit involved.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

Hmmm, you might be right! I will allow the subjectivist to proceed unmolested. Must be my lack of sleep. But in the end I still don't like subjectivists since they are like cockroaches. But I can keep that to myself.

Can’t resist can you? Whether you like it or not without subjectivists the HiFi industry wouldn’t exist. Let’s not forget music calms the savage p****, why not try it!

 

[Midwest Blade]

Not only that but music is now mostly mixed for headphone or (gasp!) soundbar listening which is where 90% of all content will be consumed. With only a meter of separation, soundbars are almost mono channel. Then we have Echo Dot's and Google mini's.

A perfect example of giving the consumers what they want…the loudness wars, dooming serious listeners to loads of poorly produced music. But this is really another topic.

 

[SIY]

Can’t resist can you? Whether you like it or not without subjectivists the HiFi industry wouldn’t exist. Let’s not forget music calms the savage p****, why not try it!

No. The niche fashion hifi segment wouldn’t exist. The other 99% of the market would be just fine.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

No. The niche fashion hifi segment wouldn’t exist. The other 99% of the market would be just fine.

Do you really believe the cheap and cheerful sector accounts for 99% of purchases? On it’s own it couldn’t support the industry.

 

[DonR]

Do you really believe the cheap and cheerful sector accounts for 99% of purchases? On it’s own it couldn’t support the industry.

False equivalency. Cheap and cheerful is not the bulk of the market outside of the niche hi-fi market. Most mainstream product is perfectly fine for the vast majority of hi-fi enthusiasts. Sony, Marantz, Denon, Teac, etc all built on this.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

False equivalency. Cheap and cheerful is not the bulk of the market outside of the niche hi-fi market. Most mainstream product is perfectly fine for the vast majority of hi-fi enthusiasts. Sony, Marantz, Denon, Teac, etc all built on this.

Would agree with the makers you’ve mentioned yet on this site most seem to believe nothing in the HiFi industry should cost no more than $100. Don’t think any of the makers you make things around that price and their dearest stuff is sold for thousands. Then you have trickle down technology were copies of their circuits do sell much cheaper. So R & D piracy underpins the lower end of the market.

 

[Pogre]

Oh geez. Which ones?? There are some myths with some grounding in truth, then there are those that are invented from whole cloth. This hobby is rife with both. The latter type are the ones that drive me crazy. I can understand some of them, if still not true, but at least there's some grounding to them.

Ported being better for music than sealed is an example of one with some grounding in truth. Esoteric cables are pure fiction.

 

[DonR]

Would agree with the makers you’ve mentioned yet on this site most seem to believe nothing in the HiFi industry should cost no more than $100. Don’t think any of the makers you make things around that price and their dearest stuff is sold for thousands. Then you have trickle down technology were copies of their circuits do sell much cheaper. So R & D piracy underpins the lower end of the market.

I don't believe that for a second. Just because bargain bits of kit that punch well above their price bracket are rightly lauded doesn't mean that most people here think nothing should cost more than $100. Decent hi-fi speakers start at around $300-$400 for instance.

 

[SIY]

Would agree with the makers you’ve mentioned yet on this site most seem to believe nothing in the HiFi industry should cost no more than $100. Don’t think any of the makers you make things around that price and their dearest stuff is sold for thousands. Then you have trickle down technology were copies of their circuits do sell much cheaper. So R & D piracy underpins the lower end of the market.

Almost no “technology” trickles down from fashion audio. It comes from other industries that are, by contrast, based on rational engineering.