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

[Superdad]

17 hours ago, firedog said:

 

You guys are doing just what the OP asked about, and being snarky about it, to boot.

Please stop putting words in my mouth that don't reflect my post, but do reflect your apparent desire just to "score ponts" for your POV.

 

Gordon wrote about effects digital cables can have on a system. The obvious implication is that they are audible effects, otherwise there wouldn't be any reason to be concerned with them.

 

Whenever a claim is made that a digital cable or a device like the USB Regen makes an improvement to SQ, there are retorts that "it can't be"; "that digital cables can't conduct noise/interference/disturbances (many names are used) to the DAC, they just conduct data"; or that, "sure digital cables can conduct interference etc., to the DAC, but it is irrelevant, since any "competently designed"  DAC is not effected by this in any way that changes the resulting analog signal produced.

The typical "subjectivist" response is then, "but I can hear the improvement in SQ this cable/device makes".

 

"Objectivist" comeback is then, "BS, what you are "hearing" is just a result of bias and expectations. Show me measurements that prove your device made a measureable improvement to the analog output of the DAC."

 

That's what I asked Gordon to respond to.

 

Indeed Danny.  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.

 

It would appear that somehow products from the likes of Aurender, Auralic, Mutec, SOtM, iFi Audio, Sonore, PS Audio, Wyrd4Sound, Amarra, Audirvana, Phasure, UpTone, Lumin, Vinnie Rossi and many others are all cynically designed simply as money engines to dupe unsuspecting audiophools, because virtually none of them have published measurements to prove the audibility of what they sell.  It's all a mass delusion--or so we are to beleive.

 

Yet when thoughtful engineers attempt to humbly offer theories about the complex mechanisms involved, the skeptics just shout "but we still have winter, so global warming is a hoax", er, "where's the graph showing the differences?," while the sea levels keep rising and thousands of music lovers directly compare and enjoy better sound.

 

Jud mentioned capacitors and was quickly rewarded with snarky comments.  This year marks 29 years that I've been continuously producing and sellling MusiCap film-and-foil polypropylene caps to high-end loudspeaker and electronics OEMs around the world.  Despite my winding house having raised our costs fivefold in that time (which I pass along to our clients with just a bit less margin that in the past), relatively few firms have left me, or left whatever has been their chosen brand of film cap.  Most of them would very much prefer to spend an order of magnitude less on parts their customers never see and which they don't typically talk about what they are using (I have some major name speaker clients with whom I've signed an NDA promising not to reveal their use of MusiCaps). So why do they chose what they choose?  It certainly is not because of anything they can measure with their microphones or their Audio Precision analyzers.

 

Maybe someday all the parameters of what affects the subtleties of our perception of musical realism will be quantifiable on the test bench.  And then maybe the skeptics will be satisfied and can choose all their gear from a spreadsheet.  Until then, most audio engineers and manufacturers will utilize a combination of measurement and critical listening to develop their products.

 

Remember, there was a time (in the 1970s) when transistor amps sounded like crap but measured great with all available tests of the day.  Yet the music lovers held onto the best of their tube gear until understanding, measurement, and parts caught up.

 

I don't think too much of what I just wrote should be particularly controversial, but I am sure the responses will make one think I've committed some act of treason against audio science.  At least that is how this typically goes.  

 

So I, along with my fellow manufacturers, will just go back to selling our snake oil products with a money-back guarantee while basking in the delusional praise of thousands of unsuspecting, tin-eared, gullible plebeians (most of whom really are educated professionals who've been pursuing audio for decades--but of course that doesn't count).

 

--Alex C.

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, AJ Soundfield said:

I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things. I speak to a lot of people, but my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff

 

Got any measurements for those instincts?

[Superdad]

20 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

My sincere hope is that no one calls millions and millions of educated folks who experience positive effects of those bracelets, gullible plebeians.

 

But clearly not the instinct to recognize sarcasm.  

[Superdad]

6 minutes ago, jabbr said:

The above quote demonstrates an individual with considerable experience who describes his own sensory perceptions.

 

But Jonathan, such is expressly dismissed!  

 

Seriously though.  This is the crux of the "battle."

[Superdad]

1 minute ago, jabbr said:

 

I think so, which is why I'm discussing this here. We need to be honest with ourselves about how we each make decisions. I've thought "wouldn't it be cool if I could make a DAC with an automatic phase error measurement system that could tell us when different tweaks had different effects" but y'now at the end of the day I don't think very many people would actually buy it, and likely not enough to go to the effort of commercializing --I don't underestimate that work  

 

Proof that great minds think alike!: 

John has come up with a method (I don't recall the tech details, think it was power supply related) for a circuit in a DAC to allow the dialing up and down of phase noise--specifically for lots of people to test their sensitivity to such.  He proposed putting it in an inexpensive DAC design (one that would sound quite good anyway).   It would be interesting, but I'm not in a rush to put such into production.  

[Superdad]

3 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

people get all sorts of sensory experiences with jewelry -- I accept that 

 

I see you are trying to back up your claims.  Nice... 

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

Just as cheap to tell people their ears are crap.

 

Speak for yourself.  My ears are just fine.  Can tell the difference between an average clock and a low phase-noise one, a good or great power supply, and different film types in a capacitor--among a few hundred other things that are claimed to be irrelevant or inaudible.

But if one has no sense of music (or any natural, acoustic recordings), and no ability to close eyes, breath, and experience differences, then sure, such things don't matter.

But judging by the continued vibrancy of the 2-channel audio market--including some pretty extreme headphone devotees--I'd say that there are more experienced and open-eared music lovers than there are nay-saying pseudo-scientists trying to "save" us.  

[Superdad]

23 minutes ago, esldude said:

Actually that's my Fisher or yours looks like mine.

 

Here's me with mine (well, my father's--he worked directly for Avery Fisher--and his was a silver-soldered unit, something Fisher did for the Navy).  Still have that very one in my vintage audio museum (aka the tops of my record shelves).

The LP playing when this photo was taken?  Nina Simone's very first album, "Little Girl Blue"--which the recent SACD remastering of is still a weekly reference recording of mine.

 

[Superdad]

6 hours ago, esldude said:

Actually in terms of fidelity it is black and white. CD is superior. Just like my 1967 12 inch vacuum tube analog TV is far inferior to a modern HDTV.

 

And exactly WHY do you still have your inferior 1967 12" b/w TV?  What are you, some sort of hoarder?  

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, beerandmusic said:

if a double blind test is needed to determine which is better....it's not worth the upgrade and really is not needed.

 

If something is worthy of an upgrade, it will smack you in the face.

 

Easily the most spot on post in today's arguments here!  

 

(Also the entire reason why our products have been so successful--with zero advertising and near zero returns.)

 

[Superdad]

5 hours ago, plissken said:

I agree. When someone says 'Night and Day', 'Easy to Discern', 'Readily Apparent' those are easy to spot. Blinded.

 

Finally, something we can agree on!  

 

As can virtually all the people who are reporting about our products:

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/31877-iso-regen-listening-impressions-kicked-off-with-some-measurements/?do=findComment&comment=678859

 

Shall I await your next retort about how I should invite you or Amir into my home?  Or Jinjuku (I think that is your name over at ASR), will you just run over and start another nasty thread about me?

http://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/alex-of-uptone-hypocrisy-unbounded.1739/

 

 

[Superdad]

18 minutes ago, mav52 said:

Actually the word I should have used is pattern recognition.

Pattern matching dictates that what we are looking for is either here or not and might not be accurate.. Like a baby wanting to suck on a nipple and instead is given a pacifier. Its matches but its not the same thing as a mothers nipple.

 

Oh okay. Now it finally makes sense why I prefer speakers that use that Scanspeak nipple tweeter! 

[Superdad]

27 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Dude, you were brought up wrong ...

 

That's for sure! 

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, Sal1950 said:

The bottom line still being that sighted human opinions and judgement is next to useless unless they can be substantiated with either measurement, or under blind bias controlled conditions.

 

What about when the differences are obvious?

 

And then what about two people listening and one of them is a musician who can tell the difference between two brands of trumpets on the recording?  Is that person's judgment only valid if it can be "substantiated with either measurement, or under blind bias controlled conditions"?

 

As much as I dislike you Sal--for all the snide things you have said about me (here and elsewhere, your most recent calling me the "Top 10 Audio Snake Oil Salesperson Of The Year")--I ask this question in earnest, not just to you, but the group.

 

That is: Who decides where to draw the line with regards to what differences can be heard and what can not?  There are a bunch of active, very serious threads going on right now here at CA where a host of people are comparing a variety of interface chains--with products that run from better clocks or offer better signal integrity in various ways.  Take a look at the quite in-depth reporting going on here: https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-the-sms-200-and-microrendu/?do=findComment&comment=686596

There you see a group of rather sober people spending real money on a range of products that are not stones in a box.  A good part of what they are hearing is likely variations in jitter and leakage current loops between gear.  

 

Admittedly, some people would not be able to hear all the differences between the permutations they are experimenting with.  But none of the products they are playing with are snake oil, and just because those individuals are using their ears (instead of an arsenal of test equipment they neither have nor which has been proven to be effective at identifying and correlating what they readily hear), they can no more be dismissed than the trumpeter who identifies a trumpet or the birder who recognizes a call.

 

I'm sorry that not all of you can hear the sorts of things that are apparent to others.  But I can assure you that if you walk into a room at a show (or at a dealership or a friend's house) and hear great sound, the components in that system were designed and refined through a long process of measure and listen.  

 

 

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, christopher3393 said:

 

It's a strong and quotable statement from the first volume of his Popular Lectures. Thanks for introducing it.

Uncle Martin is Martin Heidegger. Quote is from his Memorial Address. His essay "The Question Concerning Technology" takes up this concern in depth.

 

Thanks for clarifying that for us non-philosophy/science nerds.  

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

I can state with confidence that all amplifiers, even copies of individual brands, will have measurable differences. I am not making such an absolute claim to audibility -- let's say that amplifiers often have a sonic signature 

 

 

During my years at Hovland Company, we would make small "in-line" production changes and improvements (sometimes just a single resistor change--of value or composistion), and these were not announced, even to our largest overseas distributors, unless there was a real need to, because otherwise they would want all their inventory and demo units swapped out or upgraded--a HUGE expense.

Much of the time nobody would say anything, mostly because their dealers and the end users would just get the latest and be happy.

But our big German and Japanese importers were very, shall we say anal, and they listened to almost every amp and preamp unit before delivery to their dealers.  And almost invariably I would get a call from them reporting that the new shipment sounded very different and demand to know what we did--and could we update their demo units. (Luckily they both had good techs and most of the time we could just send them a few parts and instructions.)

 

Of course the above proves nothing to those who hear nothing...

[Superdad]

15 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Amplifiers, or more accurately, systems "disappear" in the sense that a particular recording will always sound the same - a very useful approach is to assess a new, unknown setup by playing well known recordings and asking, how much is missing, how much mangling of that recording am I hearing?

 

Another very telling metric for "transparency" is how different the overall character of each recording presents itself.  If every record has the same general presentation in the room, then that system is the opposite of transparent (and frankly there are more than a few popular DACs that are guilty of this).

The one thing that blows most visitors' minds about my room/system (heck it even blows my own sometimes when I explore albums I have not listened to in a while) is how one recording can bloom like mad into the space and create one sort of atmosphere, while another will sound radically different, intimate, small and tactile.

Again, if most recordings have a similar character and room presence, that's the opposite of a transparent system.

 

Flame away, but tell us what conventional measurements are going to correlate to that very obvious metric.

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

A  sensible sane person is not going to be burdened with blind testing things that don't sound different, only an believer insecure person is. 

 

There, fixed it for you.

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

Like when I was helping straighten out some bad sound at a strip club once.

 

Now those are some serious hardcore audiophile bonafides.  Dude goes to a strip club, and what doese he do?  Helps them improve their sound system!

 

I'm sure the other patrons were very appreciative Dennis, but I hope you were not disappointed when they declined to participate in a "blind" test.  Not what they were there for!  

 

[Superdad]

5 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

More rubbish. A rational person who believes there is no audible difference is not doing the blind listening tests.

 

1 hour ago, AJ Soundfield said:

What does that have to with being totally one dimensional by being incapable of measuring and subsequently having zero trust in ears and avoiding trust ears tests at all cost? 

 

55 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

I trust my ears.

 

35 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

The modus operandi of believers and magic shills is to shift the burden of proof to rational people for their claims and what they "hear", with zero evidence in the form of "trust ears" "just listening".

"prove I'm wrong" aka negative proof

 

Your contradictions are confusing.  Let me see if I have this straight:

 

a) You trust your ears and measurements so you don't do blind tests;

 

b) You don't trust anyone else's ears so they must perform blind tests or what they say is rubbish;

 

c) Anyone who performs a blind test is irrational and must be trying to prove there are differences--when none can be heard and none can be measured;

 

[I'll now venture a bit further that the quotes reveal, but still within the tenor of what is being said by you and others.]

 

d) Anyone who performs a sighted test is delusional, and any reports of what they hear are to be instantly discarded;

 

e) Well regarded engineers who have for decades been designing and producing products based on a combination of measurement and sighted listening (for selection of components which nobody can show measurable differences between) are likewise charlatans.

 

Have I left anything out @AJ Soundfield?  If not, then you are welcome just to paste the above summary into your signature.  That will save others from trying to decipher all your Twitter length quips and nonsensical barbs.  

 

 

 

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, AJ Soundfield said:

No, you are projecting your inadequate hearing abilities unto all others and fabricating numbers out of thin air, about subjects you clearly know nothing about.

 

You're such an ass AJ. 

You really ought to apologize to Teresa for being so rude.

[Superdad]

21 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

You mean you can't hear ABing. There are a lot of folks, including me, who would have zero problems identifying your Infinitys vs a boombox 100% 5/5, 10/10 which was playing in an blind AB test. When the differences are that large...and real.

 

But multiple times earlier you said that you don't do blind tests AJ.  You said you don't have to because you trust your ears.  

Yet when others (like me) tell you they do A/B tests (for far subtler things than speakers!), you dismiss them as being delusional about what they hear.  I smell a double-standard there...

 

By the way, in working on a new product, this weekend I was A/B/B-ing the difference between two values of a tiny 0402 capacitor (that's 1/4 the size of a grain of rice).  One was 1.0uF and the other 4.7V--and the application is just as a 2mm distant power supply bypass for the 1.2V feed to a USB hub chip.  Can't think of what bench measurement would show the difference (remember--the whole product is the sort the non-engineer "objectivists" deny makes any difference), but it took all of about 15 seconds for me to know which one sounded better.  I wen't back and forth a few times as usual to eliminate "memory error" (you know, ear/brain focus on one thing one time and something else the next), and the same version won out.

Which one?  Well I had to open the cases to pull the boards and look. (One case has a scratch on it so I did not get mixed up during A/B/A/B). So I essentially created a semi-blind test. 

 

Okay, you can go ahead and spin away with whatever denialist contradictory logic suits you. But what I have been doing here is about the same as what goes on in the offices and studios of hi-end audio manufacturers worldwide.  Measure and listen. They go hand in hand until you can't measure what you can hear.  (Of course it helps to have a good room, system, and trained ears.)