CV19 hype propagandists? What is *that*?
Stereophile complains it's readers are too informed.
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deviations from a certain standard.
I believe standards are real,, but I will not mention any product names. Read the reviws from unbiased critics,,that will tell you where the standards are. In speakers, I know well that SEAS is The Gold Standard. Scan Speak and SB are excellent, but as in all things of this world,,where Olympic swimmers win a silver medal due to ~~losing~~ by a milli second, = no gold cigar, onlya silver cigar...in speakers we also need Gold Standard (SEAS) , Silver Standard, Bronze Standard. Time to bring audiophile out the early medieval times into at least The Renaissance Epoch...,,,, then we can start to move into ~~THe Audiophile Enlightment era~~~ Snakeoil buster here. |
~~~Whena componet is measured,,,to what should be the comparison reference?~~~ Answer is easy, experience,,of course not exp as to say you've heard every speaker on the market,, I have some 40 yrs, off/on audiophile experience...It does not take me long to figure out what grade i consider a piece of audio. Of course its not easy at times,,, you have to know how the amp is voicing in the system, the cd player is voicing and thus is reflected in the speakers.. You need to analyze how each is affecting the overall sound.. Thus if I hear a over bloated midrange,,I know well enough there is no amplification chnage which will delete /cancel the muddiness of the speakers unique character. Lets say the listening audition room in the adio shop has another set of spakers to compare,,now you can hear how the amp responds to speaker B vs speaker A. IMHO, SEAS speakers are the benchmark against which all speakers are measured. Relatively speaking,, I am not refering to speakers over 100 lbs. Speakers over 100 lbs are dinosaurs as they offer nothing over which a 99 lb /less speaker can offer, w/o breaking the bank, nor the back. Bigger is not always better, and in this case, not in any way superior to a 99lb/less speaker. Conclusion : all speakers over 100 lbs should not be drawn into a topic of speaker recommendations. I see anudiogoners mentioning /suggesting speakers w/o telling us any of that speakers defects = its over 100 lbs and costs $$$$$$. IMHO speakers over say $3K, make sure you bring up the price factor , this way we are all ~~Informed/Educated/Enlightened~~~ this is what the author is trying to get across. Lets all get out of lala land (leave lala fantasy land to the CV19 hype propagandists *The Experts~~~ and let us audiophiles speak with some authority and accuracy,, We all want our systems to present highly refined music images,,yet most here on audiogon convey biased muddy opinions,,which do not help for the seekers who want solid fair evaluations. Snakeoil buster here |
If I were reviewing, I would state the data, and state what I heard in the product. It’s not for me to make inferences for others. Now maybe the magazine might claim to be adhering to those standards? Not sure they claim that they do that, or that they obligated themselves to point out deviations from a certain standard. |
@erik_squires, Thanks for posting. The entire article smacks of a desperate retreat against the vanguard forces of increasingly shared communal knowledge. Looks like Stereophile must have gotten complacent after all these years of churning out piffle on top of piffle. However thanks to sites like this and others, (can I mention ASR?) an increasing number of today’s readers are far better informed than their brethren of yesteryear. The tide of knowledge has turned and there’s no putting the internet genie back in the bottle. The piffle must stop or else... How about this for an initial plea for understanding? ’As the late Art Dudley wrote in one of his last columns, "From its acoustical beginnings, when two incompatible forms of physical media—Edison’s cylinders and Berliner’s flat discs—slugged it out for primacy, domestic audio has attracted an almost incalculable number of iconoclasts, heretics, mavericks, nonconformists, lone wolves, enfants terrible, and hidebound kooks. Because the above are among my favorite people, I don’t have much of a problem with that state of affairs.’ No, of course you don’t, since your main directive in attracting as many advertisers as possible you can wallow in as much subjective twaddle as your readers will, sorry, used to permit. Those intending to pay out large sums of money in search of sonic performance might have a lot of problems with this. The article then goes on expound upon the crux of the matter here, the issue that’s bugging them the most as referenced in its title - ’Hoisted on your own petard?’ ’It’s especially disheartening when narrow-minded online critics use one aspect of our coverage—our measurements—to attack the other side: our subjective judgments.’ Ouch! That’s what really hurts, isn’t it? The fact that savvy readers are ignoring your subjective ramblings and obfuscations and using your own measurements to reach their OWN conclusions!! To finish with, the author Jim Austin, offers up a final plea bargain to the reader. ’We’re providing a complete picture; the two halves make a whole. You don’t get that from our competition. Broaden your mind. Seek perspective. Look at the big picture.’ He just forgets to add ’please, and pretty please!’ Face it Jim, the game is up. The broad picture, at least your version of it, has clearly very little value in today’s informed market. Either you tell it like it is or dispense with what has been your main selling card for years - a decent set of technical measurements. Not the final word in analytical data by any means, but as you say, more than some of your opposition. Exactly how you will go about keeping your friends (and paying advertisers) happy in the future is not our concern. You need to keep in mind that your loyalty must primarily be to your readers who frequently place their trust in your words. We understand you’re in a hard place now, having to chose sides (advertising revenue versus sales revenue), but that’s not the readers dilemna, is it? |
I agree w erik to an extent; on the other hand I don’t :) The part I disagree with is erik’s later comment that speakers should be judged based on the designers goal. I don’t give designers that latitude. It’s my firm belief that all speakers should be designed with the goal of reproducing the signal fed to it ... with precise fidelity to that signal in all aspects, frequency,dynamics,phase,etc. |
Jeez, @erik_squires you used to seem like such an intelligent well-grounded bloke and now you seemingly have come off the rails (over the last few months). Whether you know it or not, that is not the point of Jim Austen's piece. Not at all. Perhaps I can break it down for you. He is commenting upon the divergence between the mainstream and the nonconformists. He is not complaining. S'Phile is not complaining. As the new editor, it his job in part to write a thought provoking op-ed piece here and there. That is what he did. He writes well and is more intelligent/knowledgeable (yes, two different things)-in my estimation-than most audio writers and editors. He is a very worthy successor to the also excellent John Atkinson. Perhaps you missed his effort-which was no coincidence-to pay tribute to Art Dudley who for as long as I can remember ignored the mainstream and went with what made him happy and made sense to his senses. FWIW, the yin and yang of S'Phile currently are Mike Fremer and Victor Jason Serinus at one extreme and Herb Reichert. Art was no match for the off-the-beaten-path nature of all that is Herb. He has gone so far into the pricker bushes that I don't even read his columns any more. At Axpona '19 I listened repeatedly to one room with CH Precision gear and Magico's driven by all digital and the Border Patrol/TriodeWireLabs/Volti room. That too is a pretty good example of the divergence that Jim Austen was writing about in the column you so misinterpret. Look up the S'Phile review-including the measurements-of the Border Patrol DAC. If you believe measurements of a DAC have significance, than what I heard in the Border Patrol/Volti room must have been delusional on my part. |
@erik_squires I see your point, Erik. If I’ve got it right, you’re saying that because there is an influential standard out there by Toole, it would serve Stereophile and its readers if they simply included a sentence or two in any review where a speaker design is intentionally heterodox. This would help "locate" the decisions behind that speaker design. The best film reviewers do such things, too — very helpful. @ebm Who really cares what they think.I’m new to the hobby relative to many here. Are you saying that Stereophile is *not* influential on other magazines, distributors, dealers, customers? Or that they should not be? |
From the article: " I admire Toole’s work, but I do not admire conformists who insist... that everything be judged by the same narrow criteria. " I agree with writer Jim Austin. Neither Floyd Toole nor his colleague Sean Olive claim that their measurements and analysis tell the whole story, though many mistakenly assume they do. From one of Sean Olive’s landmark papers, A Multiple Regression Model for Predicting Loudspeaker Preference Using Objective Measurements: Part II – Development of the Model: "LIMITATIONS OF MODEL "The conclusions of this study may only be safely generalized to the conditions in which the tests were performed. Some of the possible limitations are listed below. "1. Up to this point, the model has been tested in one listening room. "2. The model doesn’t include variables that account for nonlinear distortion (and to a lesser extent, perceived spatial attributes). "3. The model is limited to the specific types of loudspeakers in our sample of 70." Duke |
Stereophile seems pretty straightforward to me and they seem to be clear about their measurements. Of course, measurements can never tell the whole story and they're not a substitute for listening. Yep, I like their measurements. I just feel that they should be contextualizing, and if they see an issue, go back to listening and explain if it mattered. They are basically upset their readers are interpreting the measurements themselves. As I wrote in the comments section, providing data without context is often a road to disaster, especially at work. If you do the measurements also provide the context, and follow up if anything sticks out. |
Agreed cleeds, intresting to see people “translate” what is said, into what they want it to say. I believe that’s actually the point of that last paragraph. That some people are using what they say and post, in a way that was not said, nor meant. There does seem to be a subset of the community who are biased towards certain views, and not open to any that don’t correspond to those. While some may not agree with a review or comment, they have no problem with someone who feels differently, but there is a group who it bothers greatly if anyone doesn’t acknowledge their views as the “correct” interpretation. Right. Then to prove your point Erik posts a comment proving he does not understand a word of the article. There's nothing in there to support a word of what he says, but out of the way facts we got a narrative to push here! 😂 |
Stereophile seems pretty straightforward to me and they seem to be clear about their measurements. Of course, measurements can never tell the whole story and they're not a substitute for listening. Stereophile is one of the few magazines that actually conducts its own measurements, so the OP's claim that the magazine "complains it's (sic) readers are too informed" just doesn't make sense. |
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I did. The issue is the context of the article, which you’d have to be reading the comments from recent speaker reviews to get. While they invoke Toole here, they don’t in their reviews and completely ignore glaring differences from classical speaker design in their measurements, so they complain that their readers are using good speaker design practices to judge their measurements and reviews. I agree with the overall statements, that speakers should be judged by the intention of the developer, not an industry standard. That’s fine. What I disagree with is that they feel no reason to point these differences themselves, and also ignore times when they’ve been dead wrong in their conclusions, or biased towards speakers that had obvious color and called them neutral. They are producing measurements without context and are upset the readers will. Best, E |
Agreed cleeds, intresting to see people “translate” what is said, into what they want it to say. I believe that’s actually the point of that last paragraph. That some people are using what they say and post, in a way that was not said, nor meant. There does seem to be a subset of the community who are biased towards certain views, and not open to any that don’t correspond to those. While some may not agree with a review or comment, they have no problem with someone who feels differently, but there is a group who it bothers greatly if anyone doesn’t acknowledge their views as the “correct” interpretation. |
