Totally Ridiculous....Auditions on YouTube!


Is it just me, or is it total nonsense when YouTubers play music to suggest you can hear a difference between components. Totally drives me crazy and I discount anything they have to offer from that point on......

rbertalotto

@the-audiophile-barista 

The interesting discussion is of course how much worth you should attribute to it, but claiming that differences cannot be heard is just factually wrong.

 

Of course it is.

To deny that there is an audible difference is disingenuous to say the least.

Maybe just blatantly dishonest.

As someone once said, the truth will set you free.

Perhaps that's the problem here, perhaps some vested interests here might prefer others to not be free?

 

As for how much worth we should give to these sonic differences, well that's always going to be a matter of personal choice.

However, it is generally accepted amongst most audiophiles that the evidence of your own senses is more valuable than that of someone else's hearsay.

I had a good firsthand experience of this only yesterday when I took my highly regarded PSB M4U1 headphones to compare against a friend's Philips Fidelio, Sennheiser 599 and HifiMan HE400 headphones.

The PSBs were close enough to the Philips and Sennheisers to be considered a matter of taste, but they were all no match for the HE400s.

Somehow, all of the reviewers I had previously read had forgotten to mention just how good planar magnetic headphones could be when it came to transient response and resolution.

Audible differences between two types of component platforms can easily be heard on the following You Tube video. Even on a cell phone even without earbuds. Listen again thru your real device your High Fi.

This type of simple and easy comparison could be performed and reviewed repeatedly by the listener, who is unsure of what they are hearing or searching for in musical quality.

 

In this instance, it’s easy to hear the difference between these two products in the same category and close to the same price points.

 

Why hasn’t a magazine or reviewer taken this comparison style on since I started asking for this type of review 20 years ago? I asked several over the years

 

Everyone would have saved a lot of time, angst, and money if someone had the brains and balls to perform such a service to the audio community.

 

Doesn’t a designer manufacturer want to know how their products stand up to the competition before they go to market? It appears they create a storyboard as a tool for those to see and read about rather than using a simple recording and playback method.

 

These manufacturers present misconstrued and poorly designed products to an audience who trust their brains and eyes failing to use their ears. After all, being a music lover is primarily about what information we experience through our ear canals and body feel. OK so let’s hear the comparison rather than reading about someone else telling us about how they experienced the product.

There are at least 2 other You Tube videos from the same reviewer that present more info on these 2 products and how they differ in operation. Tom

 

I've been listening to the jaysaudiolab channel on YouTube exclusively through my Samsung 4k tv via toslink to my big rig since he started. He plays enjoyable and resolute music. I've also watched/listened to countless other audio channels maybe almost 500-800 videos I'm guessing. The 2 outstanding channels IMO are jays and alphaaudio (the Dutch guys)

Yes I hear small differences between his many multitude of megabuck amps, preamps, speakers, dacs, cables, servers etc. But they were small and hard to decide which was really better, only different, EXCEPT on 2 occasions that was blind (not knowing what brand or price), until the reveal.

Jay demonstrating these 2 items took his rig to the next level to my ears and musical connection in 2 series of demos and were the most memorable/enjoyable and I could instantly tell they both served the music as it should be. So yes you can tell outstanding gear via YouTube but you have to slog through countless videos to find the real gems to aspire to, that are truly next or 2 levels up in the service of music.

OK I'll end the suspense and tell you the 2 *whoa, what?* series of videos they were.

1) His Magico S7s

2) His new line of relatively reasonably priced cable looms he just started representing but can't remember the brand, they're from a smaller European country if memory serves me right

BOTH OUTSTANDING and worth looking into IMHO.

 

YMMV..