Why Do People Come To Computer Audiophile To Display Their Contempt For Audiophiles?

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2 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

I'm seeing two groups of audiophiles with different approaches to the hobby arguing with one another.

 

I'm not seeing a lot of folks coming to this site to attack the hobby itself.

You beat me to it  

 

As @wgscott alludes, certain other sites have much less tolerance of anything other than the party line.

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1 minute ago, Albrecht said:

Hi, not the subject of the OP's post.

Many times it is choice of language:

 

a) you are an idiot 

vs

b) I disagree with your idea for the following reasons

 

I think that, probably, folks intend to disagree with an idea, an approach or even a way of thinking but instead attack a person (an audiophile)

 

Thats more common than, for example, certain people who denigrate audiophiles as "suckers" as a way to make themselves appear more "on the know" -- that's less common

 

So I strongly think that if we could all avoid personal attacks, this behavior would diminish

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What I've also seen is that certain folks who are industry experts have been aggressively chased off the site -- is this related?

 

(eg @alfe and did @bdiament just get tired of us?)

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2 minutes ago, Daudio said:

 

No, he was driven off by @YashN. I witnessed the whole ugly business

 

For the purposes of our discussion here, and specifically how to avoid this is the future, what was your impression about what the cause was?

 

-- and let's still avoid getting personal -- this should be a general learning experience

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13 minutes ago, Daudio said:

I miss Barry, he was deeply experienced and knowledgeable, happy to share, a true audiophile, and a true gentleman. He graciously helped me get started with DIY vibration isolation, and always a pleasure to talk with.

 

Entirely agree!

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13 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

if you think this is a highly combative environment, do not visit a sports car forum

The less purely objective differences there are, the more emotional people get  

 

been to to a football game recently?

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11 hours ago, Sam Lord said:

You're working in the industry now, right?  I greatly appreciate your posts, especially addressing the very dense DAC architecture questions, etc.

 

Thanks! I am working in an industry but not the industry  My background is science and technology, very much from the days of when we had to build everything we used, and write all of our own software.

 

I dislike the "objectivist/subjectivist" terminology/dichotomy in that, philosophically, I believe it is the job of measurements to explain subjective sensory phenomena, rather than explain them away  

So I reserve the right to wander back and forth and poke holes.

 

11 hours ago, Sam Lord said:

This topic is the reason I use my full, real name.  I do it everywhere except skiing forums, where travel security makes it unsafe.  It makes you deal with mistakes, which is terribly humbling. 

 

Unfortunately there are reasons where using one's professional name has its own problems. Contractual obligations etc. My primary business is not consulting but I use my name for consulting and have a second entity to hold IP and other activities not associated with my primary field.

 

That and folks like @wgscott have had threats that someone would go to their employer ..(!)

 

Another reason not to use your own name, nor profession is that what we write, what arguments we make, should stand on their own. I wouldn't want someone to believe (or disbelieve) an argument based on who someone is -- the argument should stand on its own. Of course if we are deciding which airplane to fly on, we want to know that the pilot has verified expertise, similarly if we are deciding whether to get on an elevator or travel over a bridge (yes we need real engineers), but for the purposes of a hobby everyone should be able to equally contribute their ideas, and make their own arguments. We shouldn't argue by authority.

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15 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

To the point of your post: in many ways, - you (not you but people) don't see "audiophiles" making a concerted point to attack those who don't believe there are varying levels of performance in audio playback gear. 

 

I wasn't thinking of a specific subgroup of audiophiles. Don't all audiophiles think there are differences in at least some playback gear? -- could you clarify?

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15 minutes ago, esldude said:

I believe everything other than transducers* can be and are fully transparent.  Exceptions would be gear designed to have a sound so it is different than all the others.  If the others are transparent and interchangeable, you have to put in sound character to have something to sale in audiophile circles.  The other exception would be amplifiers which do need some matching with widely varying speaker loads. 

 

*  transducers would be microphones, phono cartridges, tape heads, headphones and speakers.

 

Interesting. An honest question: why participate in CA then, if all that matters are transducers why not participate in fora devoted to speakers and other transducers?

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42 minutes ago, esldude said:

Well I originally came to CA when there were just beginning to be high quality ways to feed bit perfect audio from your computer to DACs in a high end playback system.  There were things to learn about good ripping practices, and over the years various ins and outs of modern playback software.  While here I suppose it got to be a comfortable community. 

Fair enough. I think that each person can decide at which point music reproduction is "good enough" and at the end of the day, if the system is enjoyable to listen to, that is the most important consideration. At what point did you decide that digital reproduction had become perfect? What led you to this decision?

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13 minutes ago, mansr said:

Go upscale  with 

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1 hour ago, esldude said:

So taken altogether not hard to come to the conclusion that nothing between microphone and amp need be nor likely is audible unless someone makes it audibly different (read colored to taste) or performs some kind of processing.

Thanks for answering honestly. Seriously. Although I don't dra w the same conclusions from your experiences, I belieive that if people can honestly share the reasons why they believe what they believe that we might collectively be able to more honestly see where people are coming from. I do think that we each should respect the different reasons why each of us have come to our own conclusions and if we wish to convince others of our viewpoint, this should be done respectfully.

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5 hours ago, mansr said:

Through scientific studies.

Yes! Unfortunately we very infrequently know the differences because very few real scientific studies, and fewer definitive ones, are done on home audio products... the flip side would be that in the absence of a real definitive scientific study we ought not assert anything ... ssshh  

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3 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

Thought you might. Do you now see your thread title is a loaded question fallacy? That you fallaciously presumed "People" as guilty of your charge, then asked why 'they" are here?

 

Are we having a fellacious focus??

3 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

 

Ok, now on to your next charge.

If I make the general statement that loosening screws on the chassis of a component to improve "sound" is absurd (a very real belief for some audiophiles) and said audiophile reading the general statement is deeply insulted (aka "collateral damage"), you're saying my act of criticism of the belief is unwarranted and unwanted on this forum?

 

I am curious. I have fun explaining things... perhaps, just perhaps loosening screws affects the transmission of vibration to components. So if we are talking tube amps ... I could see this having an effect.

 

Now if this is indeed the case, I'd say do a proper vibration isolation, rather than screw around but y'know maybe what folks are hearing is real...

 

You are a speaker manufacturer? Surely you pay attention to box stiffness or is stiffness just fallacious?

 

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3 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

I know that Demian Martin, designer of some Spectral and Constellation equipment, did write about concerns regarding vibration when he used to hang out here, and he was never one for fantasies.

 

On the other hand, @mansr could well be right.

You could just build a bottlehead crack and then give it a smack while your headphones in  that would be empirical evidence that vibes affect tubes  

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13 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

 The tendency of some audiophiles to invent "new science" to explain what they are hearing goes a long way to answering Jud's question. 

I wouldn't even call this "new science" rather effects, behaviors for which there is no known physical mechanism, nor has one been provided. That's very different than a loose screw or a loose tube for which audible effects are known and do, in fact, follow from known physical principles.

A problem I see is when people might assert that because loosening screws might actually effect say a tube amp (to continue this example) that the same sonic effect would occur when loosening screws on ones NAS -- in many cases individual sonic experiences are individual to ones own system -- it takes a great deal of work to create a generalizable theory i.e. "New science"

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1 hour ago, Daudio said:

The wonder of it was that as time passed, I could see different studies of the same/similar thing with differing results, none definitive, but together they painted a picture of the evolving nature of scientific thought, based on multiple views of all kinds of evidence,

 

Throwing away any evidence, 'subjective' or not, is foolish and clearly unscientific !

 

Kuhn is apropos -- most scientists ignore the little bits of data that don't follow the standard model of the day. A scientist comes along and uses these discrepancies (ignored evidence) to create a groundbreaking new theory.

I've seen scientists whom I greatly admire do this.

That said -- need to focus on important stuff -- Id love to see more folks build stuff eg build an "Amp Camp Amp" before getting too caught up in linear vs SMPS or various cables etc. That's just what I think -- at end of day people should do what makes them happy.

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48 minutes ago, mansr said:

. A prime example is assuming that behaviours of analogue signal connections apply equally to digital interfaces leading to the crazy talk of USB cables having great bass response and whatnot.

 

I have a hard time understanding why digital USB cables have a sound. Best idea is that it is some combination of leakage noise and induction of phase error -- these effects should be measurable. That said I asked @Wavelength about this recently here and he stated very clearly that the USB interface is sensitive to cables -- I very much respect him.

 

It would be great if technical folks were able to spend more time explaining why USB cables have a sound rather than stating it's impossible. Personally my views are well known and my efforts are directed at fiber Ethernet.

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3 minutes ago, Wavelength said:

a) Data integrity, impedance correctness, eye pattern, low capacitence etc. Basically how well does the data get there.

b) VBUS/Ground how well does VBUS and ground get to the downstream device without effecting (a) above.

 

c) Computer noise, all cables can transmit noise, some cables will throw that noise back into the computer some will throw it at the device, which of course is really bad.

 

Thanks Gordon, b) and c) yeah very understandable. With a) assuming a short cable and reasonably good SI, the USB bits are crossing a clock domain at the receiver so assume FIFO with dual port and I assume the USB bits make it into the FIFO and out as I2S ... is the USB SI affecting the I2S jitter? 

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3 hours ago, mansr said:

What makes you think they do? Sure, ground loops and such can be audible, but no cable can fix those, only an isolation device will.

I am keeping an open mind. There are many reported electrical differences between cables. There are also many people who report sonic differences, so it is sensible to try to correlate. But certainly, an isolation device is most logically what's needed.

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3 hours ago, firedog said:

That's what I asked Gordon to weigh in on, as he listed a series of ways that a USB device could could conduct/reduce "noise"  to a DAC The question in the end is not whether a USB device reduces "noise", but whether this reduction is actually relevant to the analog sound produced.

I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to speak for Gordon but we could discuss which measurements would be appropriate -- another topic -- but there really aren't any that are published by the manufacturers of the cables -- he said he didn't think they have the equipment

 

I have suggested that one measure would be the analogue output line width of a pure digital tone fed into the DAC.

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46 minutes ago, esldude said:

Well there are no standard parameters for that test.  What would you suggest?

If I were ever in the business of selling USB cables I would provide measurements that supported the product I were selling. If pure USB conformance then impedance etc -- If I were claiming improvement in phase noise then phase error measurement and DAC output would be another. 

 

Theres actually a lot more hats been written about this over the last few decades (how to measure that is) more than a wide spectrum FFT

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3 hours ago, esldude said:

Now with pedestrian devices that number is already about 1 hz wide. And Full Width at 1/1000th voltage is about 1.5 hz wide. 

 

So in terms of spectral width what parameters would you think more telling?  And why do you think this is an audibly significant measure?

I don't know the limits of audibility--

Typically we use dB in audio so these units more familiar to discuss than voltage ratios. Close in phase error is highest so best to look at. Suppose a so-called femtosecond clock  is using a 1khz offset down -150 dB -- do you think that would likely be audible? Not many volts there  Would -70 dB be more likely audible? That's going to be very close in.

I'm  just pointing out what the electrical correlates are at the DAC output, i.e. If there is a claim that a "bad cable" that worsens "jitter" then this test will demonstrate that.  What is actually audible would need to be tested.

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4 hours ago, Superdad said:

And the pitchforks really come out for the entire class of USB products (of which my firm is now but one of many with) which improve signal integrity and clocking.  There is tremendous denialism with regards to many aspects of the digital audio chain, from the music server end, through to power supplies, data transmission, clocking, isolation, and signal integrity, and internal techniques in DACs.

Going back to how this started, with the discussion of differences in USB cables etc  that result in poor USB SI at the DAC, it does seem entirely reasonable that improving SI help -- I don't hear much argument about that (some but that's ok)

 

Again, an eye pattern is fine to demonstrate & Ethernet cable manf like Belden provide.

 

I haven't seen a good explanation of why cables ought matter when using a Regen etc. That's where I would personally delve into more detailed measurements at the DAC but I think you are right that such measurements wouldn't drive sales.

 

(That's why I don't directly  do sales to consumer market -- and when I'm buying I don't just look at measurements)

 

On the other hand discussion of SI etc naturally brings up the measurement issues.

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42 minutes ago, esldude said:

So I was interested in why you think it important

After educating myself, and speaking with people who I respect and then doing even more reading, I've come to this hypothesis-- that close-in phase error is an important but overlooked factor in digital audio circuits-- ymmv