Why Are We Breaking Our Brains?
Good luck to you as you try to change how others think, because that's your challenge. You'll certainly fail if you only try to get them what to think.
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Really provocative post, in the best sense. I love the way that you have painted the analogy. I agree with your point of view, but playing Devils Advocate here, I think that it is possible that there is more variation in the hearing and perception of tones between individuals and the taste perceptions of individuals . I have no way to prove this, just an observation. |
Actually there is well established controversy about wine experts. Blind wine tasting is a thing and the results can cast doubt upon the expert opinions. Plus the wine world has been rocked by fraud scandals. For instance, the label is not what's in the bottle and drinkers didn't seem to notice. Also wine making is a craft, but there is tons of science involved. Wine is water and ethanol plus 2% by volume of other chemicals. It's not like the wine makers don't know what those other chemicals are and manipulate them to their preferences. |
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Interesting question.
Maybe because wine tasting has a check… did you get the region vineyard, and year correct.
Although, on the other hand, I suppose “1992 Wilson Watt Puppies”… might constitute a test. Hmmm, I could completely see classes… identifying all the attributes, rhythm and pace, transient speed, micro details… etc. I would love to take the advanced class. |
There are "master" audiophiles too. but just like master sommeliers, master audiophiles don't spend time chatting with random guys on the internet. Imagine a master sommelier's response when @jasonbourne52 responded to his thread that there is no difference between ripple and grand cru? Imagine when @mastering92 suggested things that violate the laws of physics. They would just not come back, which is what many tip guys do here. Jerry |
My dad always said to consider the source. I'll take an experienced and seasoned audiophile over all the naysayers here. Having that repository of knowledge and experience, knowing what and how to listen for musics cues and tells cannot be done with a scope. Never could. On my semi frequent wine tastings I've met an actual sommelier (besides the one who pours) and conversations with him are so enlightening, informative and just good fun. Any question I have (and I've had some zingers) are deftly dealt with, which gives me the impression that the ones who always cite the shortcomings of a sommelier have never really met one or are too afraid to go out and meet and drink with one. All the best,
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Being a wine geek and an audiophile I find your analogy thought provoking. I think that there are some major differences that account for the acrimony. Unless we personally made the wine outside of what we paid for it, we have no skin in the game . We audiophiles usually put together our systems so we not only are personally invested ,we are also financially. If a bottle of wine I pour isn’t up to snuff I can shrug it off by saying, I didn’t make the wine. Yes ,I may have selected it but unlike a stereo system it is just one bottle. I haven’t purchased a wine publication in years. I trust my senses because there is more to wine than just taste. I don’t take it personal if someone doesn’t like a wine I pour. We all have our own preferences. My wife loves beets, I can’t stand them. I am guilty of reading the two main audio magazines and if they have an opinion about a record, piece of gear etc. that is the opposite of mine I chalk it up to each their own. |
Every price has story behind it. One price reflects the marketing trick, the other price would reflect the real process. For example, building SET tube amp is light-to moderate task compared to building high-powered solid state amp. One would cost a fortune while the other will reflect the real process. |
There are certainly parallels in wine and hifi both are a blend of art and science and both are sensory experiences. Both have criteria about them that are both objective and subjective. I will say this though deductive blind tasting can make you a better taster for sure but I'm not sure listening makes you a better listener without some training. Nice post Waytoomuchstuff! |
I follow the audiophile path because I love and appreciate every nano-nano-nano of improvement (cue Robin Williams). This isn't a quantitative, scientific pursuit for me. I don't agonize over the numbers. I don't care about the test results. I just want the stuff coming out of my audio system to get reasonably close to what I subjectively hear from musical instruments, the human voice and other audio sources in real life. |
Great analogy OP. Baylinor, I drink way more wine than beer, but beer has become as complex and interesting as wine and audio. As others have stated, a somm must be able to identify a wine in detail, blind, to get certified, and there are different levels. I have a friend that is a top level somm and he did it just for fun. For us laypersons, the rules are simple. 1. If you like the wine, it is good. No matter what anyone else says. 2. If you like the sound of your component/rig, see rule #1. No certification required. The best resource is an honest, brick and mortar audio dealer but from what I hear from y'all is these are getting harder to find. |
The difference in taste is easily explained by science. Taste is controlled by the taste buds on your tung. The number of taste buds carry greatly from person to person. This is why some can handle spice some can’t, it’s why some say it’s to sweet others just right. As far as what a person can and can’t hear is not as easily explained but everyone has different hearing levels and what you hear is not what I hear. I think in a forum like this one more than half the bias critics are jealous of envious that they don’t have the means to spend f u money on a piece of stereo equipment. This leads to their argument that a $1000 amp sounds as good as a $20,000 amp. Don’t get me wrong that quality has a definitive price tag it does not but it does cost more to use the best material over run of the mill parts. |
@lwin :
Great post. Well said ☝️
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I thought sommeliers had formal training. And there were different levels for different certifications. They learn about growing, dirt, cultivation, weather, etc. as influences in the taste, plus have experience in tasting and distinguishing. I don't drink anymore but would trust a sommelier to make recommendations from their cellar for the table. I think in audio, there really are no qualifications are there? Someone can have engineering experience, which is good, but that doesn't necessarily translate to knowing what gear sounds like or even what to listen for. Many of my guests over the years have been working musicians. They usually comment that they have never heard anything comparable to the kind of playback a high end system can deliver-probably because they simply haven't been exposed to much of the stuff we take for granted. I enjoy their reactions-- not to the "audiophile spectacular" stuff, but to records they know--like, wow, I never heard the kick drum that clearly- or those horn parts are amazing. I'll never be an audio sommelier. But, that isn't terribly important to me at this stage of my life. As to the fruit of the vine, enjoy. We used to spend a lot of time in Beaune, France. And you realize why that juice is so expensive. The plots of land on which the grapes are grown are small, there's not a huge output each year. We had a favorite restaurant just outside of town that we used to frequent. It was a hang for the vineyard people. They had a pretty crazy cellar. Been years.... |
@whart There are certifications for Sommeliers, through the Court of Master Sommeliers or CMS, Intro, Certified, Advanced, Master. Plenty of somms are not certified in any way. I've done through Certified and took the Advanced exam, just passing tasting, though I've never been a somm. |
@curiousjim ’I’m coining Loretta.” @waytoomuchstuff You wax poetic. So thanks. I’ve posted this quote before but it seems appropriate. ‘There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ’my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’ Issac Asimov The internet has let so many pontificate and prattle as if they were experts. Not using our real names and faces doesn’t help. Most here are kind and want to help. And then there are the righteous bomb throwers (And if someone cuts up and does it well that’s laudable too). But all and all this joint rocks. |
For some reason, Investigating if ultrasound is harming LPs, has brought me back up here. Wondering Wednesday. |
If you are using the wine analogy, you should read up on The Judgment of Paris tasting in 1976.
Sometimes the underdog can taste better... sommeliers can be taken aback. Similarly, a "lesser brand" may sometimes sound better in a system. Trust your ears, not the hype...
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Why would someone “know what they hear,” so to speak, and then give a good gosh darn about specs, measurements, and other figures printed on a page? I wouldn’t. If someone wants to enjoy music via measurements on a page instead of with their ears, brains, heart and soul, that’s their prerogative, but their protestations against my personal experience wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans in my world. |
Regrettably @waytoomuchstuff has misdirected himself. He suggests that because confirmation bias is not present in wine tasting, it cannot be present in listening to music. His statement is an inductive proof - that is, the proof of a proposition relying upon a different proposition that has not been proved. The result of course is rubbish. Confirmation bias exists in all fields - why shouldn't it. In fact the record shows that confirmation bias is present in wine tasting to a far greater extent than in listening to music. There have been legions of published accounts of confirmation bias in wine tasting. Almost certainly the most famous case is that of Rudy Kurniawan a young conman from Indonesia who operated as a wine forger of the greatest wines in the world, mainly in the USA between 2002 and 2012. For 10 years and with probably tens of thousands of bottles he conned all the wine experts, auction houses, collectors and even wine makers with forged first growths imitating the greatest wines of the world. Some collector experts lost up to $5,000,000 each. They were all convinced the wines were genuine just because of the labels stuck to the bottles and so believed what they tasted was the real thing - pure confirmation bias. It is not known how much Kurniawan collected in all from these frauds, carried out in great number over 10 years, but it was certainly in excess of $20,000,000. He was tried in 2013 and sentenced to 8 years. The very interesting story can be read in 'In Vino Duplicitas' by Peter Hellman and is being made as a feature film. So the OP is not making any point, save to confirm confirmation bias is alive and well in all fields.
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We have a good friend that is a sommelier and the wine buyer at the place we shop. From the first time we went and said, we are looking for a wine that had a label sorta like this and tasted like that" She walks over to the shelf and says "we don't have that one, but this is almost the same" Spot on along with every other recommendation she gave.
Now, have you ever noticed how some dogs hear every minute sound and react while other dogs don't? It's because every dog hears different than the next, just like humans do. Otherwise Hearing Aids would not be a thing. |
@clearthinker : (what a "relevant" username!):
This must have been the single post with most "confirmation bias" mentions. Which is real. But, it is real and true in your camp too, not just for people who report hearing some positive difference, have you ever thought about it? In other words, if you folks think everything sounds the same, they WILL sound the same. Even if you base your "listening tests" by reading stuff in the internet.
In the years I have been reading audio forums, I have come to believe that "confirmation bias" is simply a phrase naysayers throw in your face if you post something making a difference, anything making a difference. I.e. "this cannot possibly work, you are imagining things ---- confirmation bias!". Subjectively, the phrase / phenomenon has lost its true meaning to me. Unfortunately.
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It just seems so subjective due to the human side of things. Perception is not just the sound coming to your ears but your personal experiences affecting how your brain interprets that sound. To me there is no right or wrong. I can't tell you how many times i listened to my system and loved it - came back a day later and was scratching my head on how the sound changed - came back another day later and loved it it again. Being an engineer I look at the science side but that is just a part of what I consider. All choices are made to improve the sound I like. I have had people over that didn't like my setup and that is OK. I have gone down many of the paths that are discussed here - some produced real improvements for me and some did not. I can't always explain why or why not. The fun is the journey and everyone is on a different path. The path I follow is - read, learn, buy, try - then repeat the process. Its been a wonderful journey that will never end! |
@thyname Thank you for your response. I will take your comment on my username as a compliment. I did choose it carefully. I certainly did NOT say that in my camp everything always sounds the same. This is not black and white. It is not a case of you either hear differences or you don't. You miss my point. Of course I often hear differences when I make modifications to my system. I am sure I suffer from confirmation bias too. Certainly when drinking wine. We have all found that sometimes our system sounds different on different days, even when warmed up to the same extent, at the same temperature and humidity and listening to the same source material. Some people say their system sounds different in the dark to with the lights on. These are all subjective impressions we get, resulting from our mood and all sorts of other transitory personal conditions, many of which we cannot know or identify, still less quantify. All I am saying is that I don't know to what extent the differences I hear and taste are differences that truly exist and to what extent they are manufactured in my head, entirely unbenown to me. There is no way of knowing. I am afraid this truth is incontrovertible and entirely well known to psychologists. |
@brianh61 Your wine shop is only trying to be helpful of course by recommending a 'similar' bottle. Many will agree with me that as a very delicate grape Pinot Noir can present very variably. As a Burgundy drinker of many bottles experience, I have certainly found this. Even in a case of 12 bottles, without there being any question of a 'fault' I often find noticeable differences between bottles. This is not a confirmation bias as all the lables are the same and all the wine was bottled at almost the same moment. It may be that the differences between the wines you requested of your shop and those recommended were less than those I have encountered in a single case. A more amusing example of a shop offering something different to what was requested came a long time ago from a schoolfriend of mine who has rather large feet. He went into a shoeshop and asked for a size 12. The server came back and said 'sorry we don't have a 12 but we do have a large size 11'. |
This post resonates with me. As a wine lover, I have had many opportunities to blind taste wines and always enjoy finding that bottle that satisfies the palate at a nominal price. Especially fun when an inexpensive bottle knocks out a very high-end wine (read expensive) at a blind tasting. This is for some the holy grail of wine - finding the overperformer. Still, when it comes to percentages, the higher the price tag on the wine, the more likely that the wine will be of high quality. Not always true, and especially in the middle tier of pricing there are some clinkers, but when you start to pay higher prices the consistency of the producer and the quality of the product generally increase. So anyone with a fat wallet can afford to drink amazing wine every night...they just need to pay for it. Most of us are not so fortunate and therefore turn to the value proposition - is this starting to sound familiar. There is very definitely a risk of confirmation bias, especially when you have spent an inordinate amount of money on a "special" bottle, but the beauty of wine (unlike stereo equipment) is that blind comparison of wine is super easy. Find some bottles, remove the foil, pull the corks and stick them each in paper bags. someone can mix them up and another person can do the same and attach numbers, then the fun begins. One is freed of preconceived expectations and decides which they enjoy most and least. Seldom does everyone agree completely. Sometimes to everyone's surprise (like in Paris 1976) an "underdog" wins. If only blind comparisons were so easy for stereo equipment! After 30+ years of tasting, I have experienced enough that I don't need to blind taste anymore to decide if I like a wine or not, and if it is worth the price tag to me. I don't care too much about the alcohol, or the phenols or glycerin or residual sugar quantitation of the bottle contents. I care how it tastes. If I like it, and the value proposition works for me I purchase it. if it doesn't tickle me I keep looking. To close the analogy, there are people who might buy wine based on technical information or price alone, but that approach doesn't work for me. I trust my senses, and leave the technical details for others to marvel over. Same with audio, although I do wish that blind comparison was easier. Until I can build identical side by side high quality systems for direct comparison (never), I will just have to rely on my ears with the helpful advice and experience of others. I fully recognize that this will always come with inherent confirmation bias, but as long as I am enjoying what I hear I can live with that :)
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your analogy breaks down rather quickly, as several people have noted already. Blind tasting is central to wine judging. Has been always will be. Professional sommeliers, are tested and accredited using this method. Winemaking is totally supported by science and in turn has invested heavily in research. you can get a degree in oenology from prestigious, land-grant universities in the US. The wine industry knows very precisely what makes a good wine and how to measure it. The trick is in producing it, and that in a large part is due to weather and its variability. of course, like hi-fi, there is the marketing and the wordsmithing, and the romance, which is essential to the enterprise. Without the Romance of wine it becomes just another form of alcohol, which is a known carcinogen, muscle toxin , and intoxicant. We know these things too also courtesy of science. so, I think you will agree there are large and very significant differences between the very large wine industry, and the rather small industry around hi-fi. |
If we are going to compare, please compare fully and look at the "numbers". How many manufacturers are there of hi-fi and how many vineyards? Pretty sure the wine dudes are much more prevalent than the hi-fi dudes. You would think that as much as has been spent in the field of wine and being a much older industry everyone would have arrived at a point of saying here is your red option and here is your white option. These are the best, not open for discussion. While sometimes you want a nice bordeaux, other times you just gotta pound some Night Train. If audio goes like wine, there will be more and more options and flavors and sounds, wonderful. |
We are not chained to our sensory perceptions! Over the past three centuries of the discovery of electricity we have developed theories and measurements to confirm or disprove said theories. Audio is a more recent subset, going back to Lee DeForest's invention of the "amplifying triode" in 1907. That's where it all started! None of today's gear would be possible without measuring instruments and the understanding of electronic theory. The human ear/brain is easily fooled! The anti- measurements crowd is a sad manifestation of the anti- scientific attitude prevalent in modern culture. |
Your earliest experience with recorded sound shapes your future preferences. I have no proof but it makes sense. Your hearing is "burned in" so to speak and thereby directs the average person in his audiophile journey. Alas, time does march on and my 64 year old abused ears no longer discern as well, which is another factor that is often ignored. (Do you really think all those rock concerts help your ability to hear the difference in power cables?) I have no problem with either camp as most manufactures test their products in some way. And those same manufactures acknowledge and depend on the subjective support of their buyers. One more thing, we do have audio sommeliers....youtube talking heads and a few print reviewers. And some retail individuals. Have any published their hearing evaluations from a medical provider? Why not? |
Interesting thread. @jpwarren58 wrote: Have any published their hearing evaluations from a medical provider? Why not?" I know my hearing has degraded at the upper frequencies due to age (I'm close to 70), But I think my judgment of what sounds like real instruments being played is as good, if not better, than ever due to a couple of things- one, lots of seat time over the years, access and exposure to well put together systems and to a large variety of recorded music (not just the audiophile 'pap'). So, I'm not sure that measure is going to tell you much- especially since much happens in the midrange. Then again, I'm not a YouTuber and don't put myself out there as a guru. (I do write, mainly about historical records and obscurities and have deep interest in the field--though not consumer audio per se). I'm a big advocate for people hearing real instruments as a reference and learning to trust their ears. I think people can learn to be astute listeners and at a minimum, can evaluate by comparison, which is an easy way to make judgments. Part of it too is having access to a wide range of material. |
We have only crude words with which to communicate most of these experiences. Those are musical speakers. The sound is bright. The amp has punch. Etc. Add that lack of finesse with language to a plethora of other variables, and it’s a miracle we can communicate at all. That said, what experts -- professional or amateur -- can do is nudge. |
Gimme That WineBy Lambert, Hendricks & Ross Lyrics My wife got tired a' me runnin 'round, so she tried to keep me home- |
