Beware the audio guru

"There are a few contributors to these forums who apparently see themselves as gurus. They speak in absolutes, using words such as "always" and "never." They make pronouncements about products or techniques they’ve never heard or experienced, justifying their conclusions because contrary claims are "impossible" or "snake oil.""

Hmmm...I smell the whiff of a strawman, so I hope you could give some more detail because of course I could be wrong.

I’ve read, and been involved in, a number of threads in which some people are voicing skepticism against other people defending some high end audio claim.

But I don’t recall many...or even any...people speaking in the absolutist terms you are writing about. (Certainly that wouldn’t apply to me even when I’m being skeptical).

Admittedly I may have missed such posters, or perhaps forgotten someone making such absolute negative claims. But I’d like to actually see an example or two. (These days I don’t just take someone’s word on what a skeptic may have argued, because I see skeptical arguments, mine very often, continually depicted inaccurately on this forum...)

No true professional will insult you for the questions you ask, or abandon you if you seek a second opinion.

I couldn’t agree more strongly!

And that of course goes for anyone who is seen as, or presents himself/herself as a "guru" making claims for a product, tweak, or just dispensing high end audio "wisdom." Generally speaking: beware gurus!

In short: Decide for yourself. Don’t let other people tell you how to think, or listen.

Absolutely. But on the other hand, don’t go overboard with that attitude to another form of close-mindedness: "nobody can tell me anything, I have my own opinions!" We want to remain open to information or arguments others may make, so we can modify our beliefs if warranted. Agreed?

*(And, again, I don’t know that I’ve actually seen anyone here telling other people "how to think, or listen.")

cleeds,

If you keep reading the forums, I’m confident you’ll recognize those who speak in absolute terms. I’m not going to single anyone out beyond what I did in the original post.

Hmm...

1. I’ve been active on this forum for years now, and don’t recognize or recall anyone making the type of absolutist claims you’ve depicted.

2. What I HAVE seen, almost routinely - and especially applied to my arguments - is misrepresentations and strawmen. Every time I say "I’d like to see some better evidence for that" or "here are reasons for some skepticism about that claim..." it’s translated into "you are dogmatically dismissing the claim as impossible while having no experience with the claim in question."

So I’m going to have to remain skeptical on these grounds, until I see more evidence that anyone is making the statements you are attributing to them. I don’t deny it; I just have reasons to not simply accept your OP as accurate.

Of course, I certainly agree that anyone who DOES make absolute claims isn’t being very reasonable and should be regarded with caution.

Geoff, you don’t seem to have a clue how critical thinking and consistency works.

The way you think I should operate when being skeptical is the opposite of being skeptical! No wonder you push teleportation tweaks!

I have a very heavy, expensive, delicate turntable. The isolation shelf is a major contraption. I was not able to listen to the turntable before I had my rack re-built to accommodate the turntable (which included adding the layering/isolation components).

Therefore I had no before and after to compare.

And now that I have the shelf and turntable set up, how in the world am I to do any practical back and forth testing? Listen...take disassemble the turntable taking it off the shelf, take the shelf off, put the turntable back on and listen again? Then if I want to switch back to compare...do all that again and again? That would of course be absurdly impractical, not to mention the last thing I want would be my delicate turntable risking mayhem every time I had to disassemble the system and put it back to do any such back and forth.

And what am I going to do if I wanted to blind test it; yell out to my helper "ok, I heard it with the isolation stand - now disassemble the turntable and take it off the stand!"

As I’ve said: sometimes - often even - blind testing for some differences may be impractical to impossible in a domestic setting. So in no way do I say everyone needs to be doing this, including myself.

BUT...as I wrote before...I therefore scale my claims to the level of evidence I have. I don’t have any tests or evidence that my isolation base altered the sound of my vinyl playback vs no base. So I simply don’t make the claim either way.

That you can not recognize the reasonableness of this speaks volumes.

(A lot of this changes for manufacturers, though, who could in many more practical cases produce iterations of an item - with and without tweak X - and compare them in a listener-bias- controlled fashion).

 
@rodman99999,

So, for this theoretical reason I think that there is a complete consistency between the moral view, or the ethical aspect of religion, and scientific information. Sound familiar, to anyone?

If you'd said there was consistency between a moral view and scientific information I would have agreed.

But when you say a consistency between *religious* morality and scientific information I would disagree.  Religious morality tends to incorporate historical and ontological claims that can conflict with scientific information.  (Not to mention, the general conflict between faith, or religious knowledge and science itself...)

But that's a discussion for another type of forum....:-)

Off to consult my Audio Guru....

Cheers.

@rodman99999

OT/

Thanks. I admit I read your post pretty fast, saw the "sounds familiar" and just assumed you were referencing something else. I didn’t see your follow up post.

Nonetheless I presume in either case your quoting it meant you agreed with the quote. (A reasonable assumption...?)

Feynman was, of course, awesome. An incredibly sharp intellect and a great teacher. But even the sharpest intellects can go fuzzy outside their field, especially on religion, as I think Feynman does here (having read the expanded version). He identifies the conflicts I alluded to, but then goes a bit non-committal and mushy on whether the conflicts can be removed, even suggesting at some points they can be.

I would argue that’s wrong - there’s going to be a conflict. Certainly in the case of the classic revealed religions and accepting science and the scientific method. And Feynman was trying to keep the God Of Religions in view in his argument. As for deistic arguments with more modest scope, some of those involve teleological arguments that conflict with science, others are metaphysical/ontological arguments that are at least supposed to be "outside science" but even some of those teeter on the edge. Metaphysical/ontological arguments are fun to discuss too. (I’m a bit of a philosophy geek, no expert but I enjoy this stuff - I get all geeked when the subjects turn to ethics, free will, science, religion, epistemology etc. So your post caught my eye. It looks like you have an interest too).

But...this ain’t the place. Too bad there’s no "lounge" around here. :-)

Cheerio!

/OT

Back to audio...

rodman99999

Indeed, a lounge would have been fun to hash this out.

I'd like to find some time to respond to teo_audio's claims which venture into the philosophical (and which I find in some cases, dubious).

teo_audio,

I am admittedly opening a can of worms that I may not actually have time to follow up on (due to work), but just some comments:

teo_audio wrote: Objectivity is a state of mind in a purely subjective reality. Everything in this place runs through a subjectivity fundamental filter.

Well that certainly goes against much of the standard philosophical conceptions of "Objective" and begs the question against arguments for an objective reality. Typically, philosophically speaking, "Objective" refers to mind-independant facts - that is states of affairs/relationships and/or ontological entities that exist regardless of anyone’s (and any Mind’s) perception, beliefs, emotions or opinions about the matter.

So, for instance, the moon existed before anyone was around to have an opinion on whether the moon exists or not, and it’s existence doesn’t change with anyone’s opinion that it doesn’t exist.

Your first statement at least seems to imply that the fact "everything" runs through our subjectivity, that therefore all existence is "subjective" not objective. But that would be a non-sequitur. It doesn’t follow; there may be objective aspects of reality that we are perceiving via our first person subjectivity.

That is, after all, why we can talk about false beliefs and their consequences. Someone can believe all he wants that water will have the same properties as gas when poured in to his car’s gas tank. But his belief doesn’t alter reality and this is why we can easily predict: he won’t be getting anywhere in his car on that belief. Same would go for anyone believing he will remain floating in the air should he jump off a balcony.
That there is a reality independent of his beliefs explains and predicts why his beliefs can’t accurately predict what is going to happen; whereas we can.

Objectivity is merely and agreed upon individually derived mindset. Objectivity only exists in your mind. It’s a convention. A concept. A projection. Nothing more.

Again, this appears to be conflating concepts. That objectivity is an agreed upon concept or description - a convention - does not logically entail that the thing it is *meant to describe* doesn’t exist.

The labelling of certain snakes as venemous, or the divisions between reptiles and mammals are "conventions" in terms of their use, but that doesn’t mean that what they are meant to refer to doesn’t exist.

Similarly, if philosophers say "Objective reality is that which does not depend on a beliefs and opinions in order to exist" then they can explore if such aspects of reality fit that description. And it does seem to be the case. You can ask questions like "if this aspect of reality does not change based on a human belief about it, what consequences does this imply?" Well, it implies that if you can take beliefs that make alternative claims about the nature of X, and show how they do not change X - that the consequences stay the same as if X did not change based on someone’s belief. And this suggests we can have "true" (more accurate) beliefs vs "false" beliefs. You can say "IF this aspect of reality is as I think it is, objectively, then we should see X if we do Y..."

The fact that such hypotheses often enough fail shows that this is not some sort of circular reasoning that admits of no falsification.

Anyone who thinks objectivity is a real thing, really needs to get back to psych 101 class and get mentally slapped about and around for quite a while, until they let go of that fundamental logic error. :)

Anyone who thinks objective reality isn’t a "real thing" is invited to jump off a balcony on their opinion they won’t fall to the ground. ;-)

Finally, this other one:

And is part of how we create our own sensory input filter and apply previously cognated aspects to our new cognition, as a short cut in time, in order to posses a faster form of sensory recognition in the given moment. Ie we pull from our library of heard and seen things, when we encounter the new.

This is why some say that cables make no difference.

They’ve wired themselves to be aurally ’blind’. Seriously

Does that not also imply the converse: that the same aspect of people’s cognition that can lead them to "blind" themselves to their own rash inferences? For instance "I’ve been told cables sound different - or I have heard difference in some cables before - therefore there’s going to be and is a difference between these new cables"?

(And so this can lead to assuming and even perceiving differences - as their beliefs alter their perception - were none exist).

Surely all the mental heuristics that lead to biases operate in both (many) directions, right?

Therefore it leaves us asking: What method can we use to determine whether a sonic change is due to an illusion generated via bias we have inherently or picked up through experience, or whether those differences come from truly audible differences?

The differences have real world consequences.

Cheers,

(And like I said, I’m not sure I can go much further interacting on this one).

LOL.  Love dill's comment.   A critic.  

And I agree ;-)

^^^^^ Wise words from B Russel.

Doubt is an essential part of both critical thinking and open mindedness.   You have to be able to at least entertain doubt about your own position in order to alter it when better information comes olong.   That’s why a form of procedural doubt is built into the scientific method, and it’s why it features so heavily in philosophy.

I just wish I saw more of this among high end audio hobbiests, but in the more subjective world of high end enthusiasts, doubt tends to be incorrectly percieved as close mindedness of not outright negative dogmatism.  And even suggesting doubt about the perception reported by others is rallied against:  who are YOU to tell me my ears aren’t hearing what they hear!”

Among many audiophiles, their own perception is inviolate, it is the undoubted bedrock upon which any inference stands. 
“If you can’t measure what I say I’m hearing, the problem is in the science of the measuring, certainly not in my own perception!”

Again, a little more humility and doubt in ones own inferences and perception is not a bad thing.

And this applies to anyone, including and especially those who would be seen as “gurus.”

fleschler,

Good points.

On one hand I think someone who truly has reached a level of expertise and who has contributed to our knowledge - for instance about audio - deserves recognition and respect.

On the other hand, as you mention, the expert’s aims, criteria or subjective asssesment may not align perfectly with our own.

It reminds me of some interaction I’ve had with Floyd Tool who is about as close to an audio guru as there may be in terms of his work in audio and listener perception.

I have huge respect for his work.  He’s determined so much about how to predict listener preferences in loudspeaker design.

And yet I am left puzzling when I listen to a speaker line like Revel, designed using all the techniques Tool has handed them;   Why don’t I like those speakers more?
I mean, they certainly sound massively competent, yet they fail to grab me in ways many other speaker lines have which were not constructed via Tool’s research.

In no way does my own preference amount to a repudiation of Tool’s work, but it is a reminder to me that no matter how much compelling theory and experiment may support a product, there are still variables - particularly with speakers - that means theory won’t replace personal auditions.

Dave,  

I always keep in mind the nature of the speaker set up when I audition speakers - both in terms of the room, speaker position, amps.

I am pretty good at getting he gist of a speaker in a demo.   I generally prefer my CJ premier 12 amps to any solid state amps I’ve heard, I know the qualities they tend to impart to a speaker so I’m pretty good at mapping that on to what I’m hearing even when the demo is using other amps.  Yes you can massage the sound of speakers via dialing in set up/amplification, but generally speaking a speaker’s character or voice carries through it all (at least through competent system set up).

If found if a speaker has an “IT FACTOR” (for me) I’ll notice it in almost any set up, and further refine it at home.  I’m sure I could nudge the Revel sound further to my liking (and they were quite good!) but their voice didn’t have the IT factor that grabbed me in any way, to compel me to further effort.  

I’ve heard a number of the Revel floor standars in different set ups.  They all had that Revel sound - to me, extremely competent but never compelled me to want to spin Tune after tune.   Whereas for instance I’ve heard Quad ESL 57s, or Harbeth speakers (and many others) in tons of different rooms and types of amplification and I’ve never experienced that ho-hum feeling.  They always sound compelling to me.  Same goes for Thiel, MBL, some Audio Physic models, and other brands that, while set up conditions certainly affect their sound - they have a particular presentation that comes through and keeps me wanting to hear more.

What would be really interesting to me would be trying the blind test at Harmon.
Given Tool’s work, statistically I’d be likely to choose the Revels in a blind test (unless those other designs get close enough to the design criteria identified as desirable).
So I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if that happened.   Then I’d have to wonder what to do with those results.  Do I go with what I chose in the blind test?  Or with what I perceive as more compelling in my sighted tests?  It would be fun to find out.
(I’d have no problem sticking with my sighted test preferences for various reasons).