10 Wonderful things and 10 bad things about the audiophile world.

i concur with your post opinion for sure ...

Very informative story and i believe you ...

I never enter in this debate analog-digital...The brain work analog-digital-analog -digital in translation ...

But my audio system is dac based and i own only lossless files ...

Also there is more about sound than clarity and details so ....But in speech perception clarity and details win the race ...We must clearly hear what is spoken ...And for sure in music without clarity and details there is a problem ...

Tacet a polish musical company record all their albums with analog tube process and their sound is audiophile grade and rich in harmonic not agressive and i love it more than almost any other recordings ( save the one mic recording by Sound Liaison ) ... Even if i listen from a dac Tacet albums they distinguish themselves by their refined sound ...

The truth is our brain work in a digital-analog- analog-digital translation chain... Choosing one over the other is misleading save for special audio purpose ...

I must admit though that you have experience in audio which i had not at all ... I am only a not completely uninformed music listener ...Then i believe and trust your opinion  for sure ...This must be said ...

😊

@mahgister Here is a story about perception that I’ve never forgot. I was doing the production sound (recording the actors on stage) on the TV show "Bones" about 5 years ago. I was using an excellent sound package with all the very best analog recording equipment then making a long story short I switched sound package and used one with the very best digital recording equipment using the same microphones with my usual headphones recording the actors who’s voices I knew perfectly in the acoustic environment that I knew exactly using the same boom operator who I had worked with for many years. I switched systems (which never happen to me before in almost 40 years of production sound). The first 3 seconds of hearing the actors voice made me a believer in digital. In production sound you have to be hyper critical and exceptionally careful about every aspect of the actors voice the digital signal was so much better. It was like looking down the grocery store aisle and seeing a beautiful girl then realizing that that girl is your wife, the reaction was honest.

 

 

 

In life or in audio, there is always many roads to the summit of the mountain...

 Thanks hilde45 for the video ...

And for sure my little self powered speakers are impossible to beat for the S.Q. /price ratio scale ...

But there is no one solution for all in my book ...

Great story....

A story with two sides, if someone understand a bit about psycho-acoustics ...

A side about the easy way we can deceive ourself, and walk in what the objectivist crowd accuse not without reasons the subjectivist crowd of : victims of deceptive placebo ...

The other side is very different and as true as the first side is true in his own way : sound quality is created by a complex set of electrical,mechanical and acoustical parameters, but it is also created by human biases , creativity , and motivation and conditioned be the moving and sound producing and perceiving body ...We contribute actively in the perceptive evaluation and interpretation with not only our brain but our heart ... It is why wise mothers and empathic doctors use positively the placebo effect to help and catalyse the body self healing process...Only drug company want to suppress it for statistical methodological reason in the testing of drugs we dont need most of the times ...

Myself being not a subjectivist nor an objectivist, but being interested by the true core of the sound process , psycho-acoustics, i push myself into ectasy by staying creative , even at the risk or i prefer to say with the profit of the placebo effect, which work by the way in the neural path of the body and in some organs the same way some drug work... It is verifiable with modern technology if we scan the body in real time ...

Also sound memory is not stored in a singular place in the brain, as books on a shelves but in all the gesturing body mapped in mutiple layers and in many zones of the brain associated with emotion which is the trigger of musical memory...

Viva placebo! If it makes musicians happier and participating they play better and they sound better and even the engineer will profit from it ...

Thank you for your kind words ...my deepest respect ...

@mahgister Hey brother I’m cheering you on every time I se you sticking up for acoustics and psychoacoustics. There is a famous story about a recording studio in LA that was very popular they had a box called the "funk box" sitting between the monitors it had only an on/ off switch on it and an input and output. The box had nothing in it but producers and musicians came to this studio for the sound of that funk box, when things needed a little extra something in the mix the engineer would carefully turn it on and watch the producers reaction to the great new sound.

Great post! thanks and welcome...

I appreciate especially this sentence  because i feel less alone:

The more one understands about psychoascoustics -- about how the brain perceives audio -- the more obvious it becomes that double-blind tests are not a gold standard for evaluating audio equipment.

I did not commented about point 6 and 7 because hilde45 did it better than i could 😁...

#6  Snake oil is not loathed but treated as an amusing possibility for better sound.

#7  Expensive equipment, confirmation bias, ego, no standards, will eat people who don’t like expensive cables.

 I must thanks the OP here for his ten wonderful things ... I only add my grain of salt about one of the 10 points ... 😊

my deepest respect to him ...

#10 Audiophiles make subjective decisions claiming to be scientifically objective.

You means here without doubt without saying it explicitly :  subjectivist audiophiles ...

But the reverse is true for objectivist audiophiles ...Then i will add this to your tenth point :

They appeal to an objective limited set of electrical measurement called specs as the only ground for ANY subjective perception ...

Psycho-acoustics research rules audio, not mere electrical specs, well measured or not ...

Then :

#2 Room acoustics are so much more important than they realize.

This is true subjectivist audiophiles underestimated the impact of room acoustic on their beautiful loved gear pieces ...😊

But objectivists audiophiles, enamoured by electrical measurements tools and double blind test, ignore also that electrical specs of the gear matter way less than the room/speakers/ears settings and psycho-acoustics principles ...

#9 Audiophiles are always moving toward a goal.

Here you means deluded consumers obsessed by upgrades collection or you means objectivist fanatic in a crusade to debunk audiophiles no ?😁

As a non-subjectivist and a non-objectivist audiophile myself , my goal is never moving when i walk because my goal is inside me : learning acoustics and loving music ...

« A single set of measures cannot say all the story to tell , because all possible measures, known and unknown, are not equals » -- Anonymus acoustician

«Do we need a new theory as much, if not much more than a new fact ? »-- Anonymus hearing aids designer

#8 Very little blind listening tests.

I made many simple blind tests in my few years of mechanical, electrical and acoustical incremental process of optimization for my system ...

Then you means by blind test : double blind test protocol ... guess why it is generally useless for me and any other audiophile optimizing his system ?😁

Only objectivist fanatic promote double blind test as the only "proof" of a small change ...

For small change i dont need public validated proof because all ears, all designs and all gear pieces and all acoustic rooms or all headphones etc are not equals ...

For big change i dont need double blind test public validated proof either ... A company may need it to sell it , not me designing my own system with gear pieces i use my ears.. ...

Hilde45 +1 😊