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objective vs. subjective rabbit hole

There are many on this site who advocate, reasonably enough, for pleasing one’s own taste, while there are others who emphasize various aspects of judgment that aspire to be "objective." This dialectic plays out in many ways, but perhaps the most obvious is the difference between appeals to subjective preference, which usually stress the importance of listening, vs. those who insist on measurements, by means of which a supposedly "objective" standard could, at least in principle, serve as arbiter between subjective opinions.

It seems to me, after several years of lurking on and contributing to this forum, that this is an essential crux. Do you fall on the side of the inviolability of subjective preference, or do you insist on objective facts in making your audio choices? Or is there some middle ground here that I’m failing to see?

Let me explain why this seems to me a crux here. Subjective preferences are, finally, incontestable. If I prefer blue, and you prefer green, no one can say either of us is "right." This attitude is generous, humane, democratic—and pointless in the context of the evaluation of purchase alternatives. I can’t have a pain in your tooth, and I can’t hear music the way you do (nor, probably, do I share your taste). Since this forum exists, I presume, as a source of advice from knowledgable and experienced "audiophiles" that less "sophisticated" participants can supposedly benefit from, there must be some kind of "objective" (or at least intersubjective) standard to which informed opinions aspire. But what could possibly serve better as such an "objective standard" than measurements—which, and for good reasons, are widely derided as beside the point by the majority of contributors to this forum?

To put the question succinctly: How can you hope to persuade me of any particular claim to audiophilic excellence without appealing to some "objective" criteria that, because they claim to be "objective," are more than just a subjective preference? What, in short, is the point of reading all these posts if not to come to some sort of conclusion about how to improve one’s system?

128x128snilf
rocray's avatar
rocray
1,448 posts
 

It is interesting to see both camps picking a topic like this as a hill to die on.  I guess I’m of the belief that if something sounds good to my ears,it sounds good to my ears.  To me this hobby is about reproducing music to my tastes.  However,if someone likes to narrow gear down by measurements, I’m not paying their bills,they get to choose whichever they like.  The way we hear things,is certainly open to interpretation.  

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,837 posts
 

"gear brand name tasting fetichists" and "alleged objective measuring tools fetichists" are only that : gear fetichist ot tool fetichist....

We must develop our listening abilities with a systematic CORRELATIVE set of listenings  experiments between objective dispositions and devices and subjective evaluation this is called : acoustic and psycho-acoustic science...

Opposing objective measures and subjective evaluation is child play...negating the importance of one over the other child play too...

 

 

sgordon1
412 posts
 

Which is more important, how reproduced music sounds to you, or how the electronics (and room), measure on paper?

russ69's avatar
russ69
3,360 posts
 

Which is more important, how reproduced music sounds to you, or how the electronics (and room), measure on paper?

I did the measurements thing for the first 20 years, then I wondered why my cheap a$$ headphones rocked and my system didn't. It was then I decided I wanted my system to please me not the scientists. I tune my system to give a pleasing performance, I care not one wit what it measures. 

deludedaudiophile
493 posts
 

I paid an acoustic engineer to design and setup the acoustics in my room. He took a lot of measurements and made adjustments to finalize the result. It sounded better than anything I had previously. For most music and most of my moods it is great. There are times, though, more my mood than anything, where I use the AV processor and one of the ambience surround modes. It sounds more alive and I enjoy it. Other times it just sounds fake.

My cheap headphones have never rocked. The moderately expensive ones, those rock. I recently purchased some IEMs on a whim that were measured for very very low distortion. If the measurement is accurate, the distortion is not that much higher than Sennheiser's stupidly expensive flagship. I have not heard that one, so I cannot make a comparison, but there is something sublime about the low distortion and perhaps it is the distortion without room reflections, but the proverbial "I am hearing things I never heard before" is happening in spades.

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