Audiophiles should learn from people who created audio

@willemj  

I agree that intrumentation is far more resolving and reliable than human hearing.

However, it is still astonishing that we can hear up to 10 dB below the noise floor. Our hearing is very much like a spectrum analyzer. I dont subscribe to the idea we can hear the shape of wavefronts - this is nonsense. However, given enough audio signal it is astonishing how well we can work out the frequency content. 

In theory, and according to the designer, there shoukd not be an audible difference from Benchmark DAc 2 to DAc 3 but I hear something. Extremely subtle and I admit that I would not detect this in a blind test but with rapid A to B I hear something. Instrumentation of course sees quite a difference in THD+N performance but at a level that should be inaudible.

Statistically average and mediocre are actually about the same but cable afficionados have terribly wooley thinking and wouldn’t grasp that. These folks get up from their chair and swap cables and sit down again repetitively until they hear the divine speaking to them. It never occurs to them that something might be wrong when their components can’t reliably deliver a signal over a piece of wire and eventually to a speaker.

Instead of a focused microscope on the source signal, they think high end gear is supposed to be shoddy and unreliable so that every piece of wire and extraneous factor (power cord etc) should dramatically affect the presentation.

@willemj

+1 Absolutely. When a user reports a problem with their sound and an audible change happening with a change of wire. Instead of the dealer or salesman saying "Hang on, your high end gear is supposed to work properly and reliably with a variety of wires and it should not make a difference." The dealer or salesman turns it into an opportunity "obviously your equipment is so resolving you need to try these $1000 wires" or alternatively if the salesman sold the equipment originally for an astronomical price, "oh this is normal, you need to listen for at least 600 hours to break in"

In some ways this industry is like the way some celebrities are addicted to plastic surgery - constant tweaks until it all ends up in a horrorshow mess and a totally alien lifeless face.