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Why is audio so angry?

RayDunzl

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jsrtheta

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The web may be ideal for taking out the basis instinct of man, the «reptile» instincts.

As man is cultured, he learns what is humour, irony, sarcasm, he learns to play with words, not just use words and language to get things done.

Internet is not a place to nurture the finer traits of human culture, so everything boils down to reptile hate-love, fight-or-flight.

Excellent point. While the Internet is a miracle, it also has created a 24/7/365 hate machine populated by people we would never encounter, much less listen to otherwise.

One reason I will never have Twitter, or Instagram, or any of the other platforms whose existence depends on more and more idiots signing up to foist their dubious "facts" and "expertise" on the rest of us.

Remember "flame wars"? It's only gotten worse.
 

RayDunzl

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One reason I will never have Twitter, or Instagram, or any of the other platforms

I have a Facebook account that I don't use.

Just before their IPO they were flaunting the idea that they were deleting fake accounts and blah blah blah...

https://www.facebook.com/faik.akkount

I like the picture. I just thought a terrorist looking guy who resembled The Fonz was cool. Also didn't realize there were AK-47s in the back on the flag until much later. So, maybe he is a no-fly guy.


And another, that I also don't use, registered much earlier.

https://www.facebook.com/arfen.barf

But I forgot the login to that one so I really don't use it. I like the picture for this one too.
 

Sal1950

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Why so much passion?
Because I'm mad as hell that con-artists, snake oil marketers, and all of their ilk have taken a hobby that I've enjoyed since the 1950s and turned it into the laughing stock of serious minded people. I won't even start to list the crazy things being purposed and products sold at ridiculous pricing levels, that anyone with a common sense thought process wouldn't automatically discard as voodoo.

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"
Peter Aczel
 

svart-hvitt

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Because I'm mad as hell that con-artists, snake oil marketers, and all of their ilk have taken a hobby that I've enjoyed since the 1950s and turned it into the laughing stock of serious minded people. I won't even start to list the crazy things being purposed and products sold at ridiculous pricing levels, that anyone with a common sense thought process wouldn't automatically discard as voodoo.

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"
Peter Aczel

Madness is in many more places, Sal.

I visited the wine shop today and got a shocker. A wine I bought five years ago, a 1992 special vintage, cost five times more today for a 2009 vintage. So audio is not the only place where price and value have disconnected. Conspicuous consumption, a term coined by Thorstein Veblen in 1899. It’s déjà vu all over again.
 

SIY

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I visited the wine shop today and got a shocker. A wine I bought five years ago, a 1992 special vintage, cost five times more today for a 2009 vintage.

The difference there is supply and demand. There is only so much of a particular vineyard, and if the wine from it is discovered and becomes popular, they can't just make more. Not true for audio equipment.

Sadly, this is the case for my favorite wines, Cote-Rotie and Cornas, which used to cost $15, then after becoming glamorized, shot up well over $100. I'm now living off older vintages, I can't afford anything decent being sold out of these now.
 

svart-hvitt

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The difference there is supply and demand. There is only so much of a particular vineyard, and if the wine from it is discovered and becomes popular, they can't just make more. Not true for audio equipment.

Sadly, this is the case for my favorite wines, Cote-Rotie and Cornas, which used to cost $15, then after becoming glamorized, shot up well over $100. I'm now living off older vintages, I can't afford anything decent being sold out of these now.

main-qimg-05a7ad034781c1c0f7a88577e6b154ef
 

SIY

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I haven't bought wine from Veblen. I'm more of a Marcel Juge kind of guy.
 

Hypnotoad

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I won't even start to list the crazy things being purposed and products sold at ridiculous pricing levels, that anyone with a common sense thought process wouldn't automatically discard as voodoo.

Vinyl records? ;)
 

JJB70

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True i can't stand the crowd who get rude as hell to any Grado headphone fan or even ER4 fans kinda, on how there opinions are not valid until they get better measuring gear.

I think that the Etymotic ER4 series is a good example of how specification may not be the be all and end all. Etymotic seems to have opted out of the brochure figure arms race for frequency response and some of the specifications seem very ordinary. Yet they are a company with a basis in audiology and a solid understanding of hearing. They seem to have designed their product around our ears and hearing rather than chasing brochure bragging rights.
 

edechamps

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I think that the Etymotic ER4 series is a good example of how specification may not be the be all and end all. Etymotic seems to have opted out of the brochure figure arms race for frequency response and some of the specifications seem very ordinary. Yet they are a company with a basis in audiology and a solid understanding of hearing. They seem to have designed their product around our ears and hearing rather than chasing brochure bragging rights.

Well, to me, the main problem with Etymotic ER4 is that they were designed before we had a good understanding of the preferred response of in-ear headphones (studies such as this one and this one, which came out very recently). Because of this lack of data, presumably they had to take guesses when deciding what the response of their earphones should be, and it looks like they guessed wrong. Presumably, if Etymotic were to design new IEMs today, they would take the latest research into account and come up with a better product.
 

Soniclife

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Because I'm mad as hell that con-artists, snake oil marketers, and all of their ilk have taken a hobby that I've enjoyed since the 1950s and turned it into the laughing stock of serious minded people.
The rare times something about hifi makes it into the mainstream press it's amazing just how quick commenter's are to mock audiophiles for stupid cable beliefs. Amongst people who know nothing about hifi they know still know more than lots of audiophiles it seems. I don't see this with other hobbies,
 

Juhazi

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The Objectivists are the angry ones, really. Especially the ones reading and writing at hifi forums are obsessive narcistic paranoic autistic and emotionally cold and aloof personalities.

But of course that does not apply to me!
 

JJB70

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Well, to me, the main problem with Etymotic ER4 is that they were designed before we had a good understanding of the preferred response of in-ear headphones (studies such as this one and this one, which came out very recently). Because of this lack of data, presumably they had to take guesses when deciding what the response of their earphones should be, and it looks like they guessed wrong. Presumably, if Etymotic were to design new IEMs today, they would take the latest research into account and come up with a better product.

I don't think Etymotic guessed anything, if you look back over the history of the ER4 it has always ploughed its own furrow and generally been outside of what other manufacturers were doing. Over the years they seem to have made concessions to consumer preference and offer the slightly bassier XR alongside the flatter SR model but overall they have remained remarkably consistent to their preferred signature by headphone standards. Whether or not people like their sound is an open question (I know a lot of people don't) and the deep insertion design isn't for everyone but I really don't think they arrived at the design by guesswork.
 

edechamps

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Over the years they seem to have made concessions to consumer preference and offer the slightly bassier XR alongside the flatter SR model

Well, according to the studies I cited, the standard model genuinely doesn't have enough bass. This makes the bassier version objectively better, and I'm glad they released it.

I really don't think they arrived at the design by guesswork.

They made assumptions about what the target response should be. When I bought my ER4PT 7 years ago it came with a nice card showing a custom frequency response measurement, hand-signed and everything, and it was quite flat according to their target (which was probably diffuse field or something). That shows that they care much more about objective performance, as opposed to listening by ear. The problem is, they used the wrong target, but they couldn't have known that at the time - the research wasn't there yet.
 

JJB70

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I don't think the SR is bass light so much as they are not bass boosted. I think that most tastes have been moving towards a bassier sound because of trends in mastering and also tuning of headphones in particular. Preference is a dynamic property which evolves, it is always interesting (generally disappointing) to revisit the tastes of earlier periods in life. I find that bass is a bit like salt in that if you're used to a high salt diet food with no salt or just a pinch of salt tastes bland and tasteless but once you adjust to a new taste then eating something high in salt just feels like the salt is overpowering everything else. The Harman research is a statistical analysis of preferences, and preference is a subjective parameter which is subject to change.
 

JohnYang1997

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Well, to me, the main problem with Etymotic ER4 is that they were designed before we had a good understanding of the preferred response of in-ear headphones (studies such as this one and this one, which came out very recently). Because of this lack of data, presumably they had to take guesses when deciding what the response of their earphones should be, and it looks like they guessed wrong. Presumably, if Etymotic were to design new IEMs today, they would take the latest research into account and come up with a better product.
The thing is harman target sounds considerably worse than etymotic er4. There is no mean to choose 200hz and below as bass. Causing a lot of confusion. And the high frequency roll off is also problematic which is not the case of real world.
To prove, just use a pair of eqed studio monitors and use ear to eq the earphone. The end result will be much closer to etymotic than harman.
The process we used is use a collection of songs to define bass and mid range (probably 7k and below)
and to use sine wave generator to eq 7khz + . I use to like harman and sean olive. But they proceed to make n5005 and n700 which sound horrible and don't even represent harman target at all. And there is no reason to believe that the original speaker eqed curve has rolled off highs. That's just wrong. More so, the newer iem target is just getting worse and worse. Completely out of controlly wrong. Yes I'm angry. Because they doesn't fucking know shit.
 
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