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OK, I tried hydrogen audio. It didn't go too well.


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I thought this was fairly innocuous. I imagine I will have been banned before I finish typing this.

 

I didn't even post a poll (push or otherwise). I simply answered it. As simply and objectively as I could.

 

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll - Hydrogenaudio Forums

 

Then I got this from the moderator:

 

Screen Shot 2012-10-01 at 3.08.41 PM.png

 

So a humble request for our own Dear Moderator: If I should accidentally (or otherwise) manage to piss you off, please don't tell me to go to hydrogen audio. "Go to hell" at least would involve a more pleasant destination for that journey.

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My exchange with the "moderator" got worse. To his credit, he eventually apologized, but at that point I resigned, took my (now) dead dog avatar off, and logged out. I requested he delete the account.

 

What horrible, horrible people.

 

The one thing that does concern me is that these are guys going around wearing "Scientific" on their arm-bands. Scientists have enough of an image problem as it is. We don't need this. I would much rather hang with people who think USB cables sound different and music is described with words like "gooey" than those folks.

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I know the guys over there. They definitely are along the lines all blind tests show all players, cables, amps etc sound the same and DBT's prove it. They even believe high bitrate compressed formats are indistinguishable from the original and make no mistake about it. A bit sad really.

 

Knowing that to be the case, I avoided any sort of assertion to the contrary. I simply did what the poll question requested. I listed any player that wasn't one of the multiple choice options. I never made any claim one way or the other about sound quality. There are many reasons one might want to use Audirvana or one of the others, even if you can't hear a difference.

 

Hopefully posting around here is a much more enjoyable experience.

 

Thanks

Bill

 

Even our worst arguments are far better than that.

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I think if I had said something like "I use Audirvana Plus, because it sounds much better than iTunes," that would have been a reasonable point to ask for some objective evidence. But notice that never happened, with me or with them. I never made any such assertion (knowing the probable outcome), and they never asked. Being a moderately successful scientist by any reasonable standard, I don't really feel I need to prove anything to some anonymous goof-balls on the internet who, having recently discovered what a hammer can do, look everywhere to find some nails.

 

They aren't scientists.

 

They are anonymous keyboard bullies who slavishly ape what they wrongly perceive to be the aims and methodology of the natural sciences. It actually reminds me more of how things are done in the so-called social sciences (behavioral psychology and so on).

 

My sin was simply that I did not allow them to bully me. The "moderator" guy (and it almost certainly was a guy) clearly interpreted this as a "lack of respect". It takes a twisted perspective to see it that way, but clearly their self-imposed idiot-logical confines and bizarre rules and rigidity prevent them from seeing it any other way. The behavior is much more reminiscent of a religious cult. I spend almost all my time with scientists. My wife is one. Most of my friends are. None behave this way. Not one.

 

As for double-blind tests, they are resorted to when nothing better is available. They are quite helpful in determining things like the efficacy of drugs. I think it would be wrong to dismiss the utility of such a thing out of hand. But in many fields of science, there is no need for such a primitive approach. All good experiments are designed to test hypotheses. Double-blind tests are useful for testing a null hypothesis. But they can't take you much further.

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If someone says "I found that USB cable #1 is much better than USB cable #2" and someone else asks if there is any objective data available to corroborate that claim, I think that is perfectly reasonable. If the answer is no (as it usually is), the appropriate reply is "thanks anyway" and to move along. If it does exist, a link or something to the test result could be really useful.

 

Where it becomes problematic is where the statement "I found that USB cable #1 is much better than USB cable #2" is forbidden. That is a fascist mentality, not a scientific one. A scientific one, ideally would be, "what is it that sounds different, and how can we test that?" or "how can I reproduce what you found in my system?" or something along those lines.

 

If that resembles a reasonable discussion, it isn't by accident.

 

I think it would be equally counter-productive to ban that sort of discussion.

 

Also, every time you ask to start banning things, you are asking Chris to spend more time playing policeman, and less time doing audio stuff.

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Feel-good? Hydrogen Audio?

 

No, the claim quoted here:

 

over there, when there is a claim it almost always is backed up

 

especially the part in bold face. It is an extraordinary claim. It requires at least some convincing, objective evidence, or should be disregarded as subjective expectation bias, which it probably is, i.e., total BS that just makes the poster feel good about himself.

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If you google "computer audiophile" (which is how I just found this site) the number 2 search result is "Banished from Computer Audiophile", which points to "Hydrogen Audio". This tells me that the public has a different view of the relative intolerance of Computer Audiophile vs Hydrogen Audio.

 

They tolerate me far more here, even though "ideologically" I have more in common with what Hydrogen Audio claims to be.

 

So why is that?

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They lack inter-personal skills, and are flat out dead hostile to anyone who disagrees by one iota with their forum rules. They do have wide public awareness (many fellow trolls?), and seem to be perceived as 'sane' relative to all other types of audiophiles.

 

When I started to read this, I though you were talking about me. :D

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  • 1 year later...
My first thought was, "Huh?"

So I reviewed the thread. My second thought was, "Huh?"

rgtb (a newbie) was impolite and was rightly called on it by mudlord.

I've certainly seen worse here. I don't know what the HA moderator said in their original message, but I suspect there's a little more to the story than you showed.

I agree they tend to the hard-core objectivist over there, but a forum where it is mooted that copying a WAV file from one media to another changes its sound isn't the world's most balanced place either.

 

Almost everything has been deleted. I just re-read it and didn't even recognize it.

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OK, but in Bystander's case we are talking about "extraordinary claims like bit-identical files sounding different from each other." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (to paraphrase Carl Sagan).

 

Normally, if you wanted to check to see if two files were bit-identical, you would check the md5sum of each, and if they matched, you would be done. No need for a double-blind test or anything else. (The clinically paranoid might opt for a sha1 hash of each as well, but it is basically the same idea.)

 

Now we have the claim that two bit-identical files, with all else being equal, can sound different. Personally, I think this suggestion is implausible to the point of being insane, but if we want to test the claim, how can we do it? Implicitly, we are rejecting things like checksum hashes, so all we are left with is people's impressions of how they sound. A properly-conducted double-blind test is the only way you can evaluate such a claim.

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IIn any scientific endeavor, amateur or professional, one should at least be able to pass an EMT/ELM or the equivalent. That is, by the way, the *starting* point for any electrical engineering degree, and most other science degrees.

 

-Paul

 

I have no idea what this is, FWIW.

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And you in California? Or is it because I typed EMT vice EPT? :)

 

English Placement Test / Entry Level Math test.

 

Example: EPT/ELM Test Information - Admissions - CSU, Chico

 

Yep. I'm in California. I teach at University of California. I've conferred a bunch of Ph.D.s. I have 3 kids in the California public school system. I never came across this. Sorry. But then I never heard anyone say "maths" until I lived in Cambridge.

 

It is probably somehow built into the admissions requirements. I do know you have to have a year of calculus in order to declare a major in any of the sciences, and a statistic course. I assume it is more stringent for physics and engineering.

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Only a deluded person would keep defending them, knowing the feeling many CA members have about a forum with such strict censorship.( Rule No.8 for example)

 

Only a delusional person would repeatedly post, in every thread he can find, his claim that two files with identical checksums played under identical conditions can sound different.

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Oh, there are a lot of well reasoned and interesting posts there. But there are a lot of fanatical posts there too.

 

OOften, hundreds of posts get deleted after a person is driven away. I will read stuff from there, but won't post anything. Saying anything there about hires for example, is like inviting certain ethnic groups to a pig picking... Likely to be insulting and provoke a violent result.

 

It is fascinating to watch that place operate. Like having a birds eye view of the inside of a cult. Lots of interesting things, as long as one avoids buying into the cult itself.

 

Paul

 

 

Exactly.

 

The current version of the thread in question has been edited beyond recognition. That was one of my objections. They were actually deleting my posts as fast as I could type them, and I actually thought it was a bb software glitch, so I reposted a couple of them, before I was threatened with banning. These were very mild, btw. Nothing like what Alex and I banter about.

 

I do agree, as a read-only site, it is a great resource.

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