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

[wushuliu]

I don't think there's enough pushback against the armchair skeptics. It's pretty easy to discount them, all you have to do is follow through their own logic. It's easy to deride 'audiophiles' from a keyboard and throw around dog whistles like 'objective' and 'measurements' but you rarely see any of these folks actually step up to the plate and follow through with rigorous testing themselves.

 

Why? Because it's a difficult thing to do. Harman has a multi million dollar facility dedicated to blind testing of speakers and who knows how much development and research was spent on the listening tests (imagine that, focusing on teaching people how to listen instead of berating them). But some schmuck on the internet feels vindicated when he gets no response to 'show me the measurements' and 'double blind testing'. Like there's a DBT kit you can buy off Amazon. Then even more hypocritically, if any of these guys does some kind of 'testing' from their armchair then omg nothing but 'I knew it', 'great job', 'that's what i thought too' from the rest of the tribe. As long as the results validate your bias then it's 'objective' and the methodology sound.

 

The reason I became a 'subjectivist' (whatever that means) when I didn't even know what an audiophile was, was because I realized right away you can't call yourself 'objective' if your first response is to ridicule and deride other people's personal experience. That's not how the scientific method works.

[wushuliu]

2 minutes ago, rickca said:

Galileo had some good observations to back up his theories.  Didn't help him much.

 

And in that statement we must confront another truth: even if all the controversial audiophile elements had readily available documented data to back them - we'd still be polarized and arguing anyway. It's what people do.

[wushuliu]

6 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

Objectivists are concerned with confirming results in a way that passes the smell test.

 

That is a vague collection of signifiers. Objectively that statement means absolutely nothing. The equivalent of a product needing to be '100% natural'.

 

If someone needs to know why subjectivists should push back here is why. 

 

 

[wushuliu]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

people's personal experience may be the result of SQ differences or may be the result of confirmation bias

 

that is why there are things like statistical analysis, randomized designs, and blind testing

 

it can be troublesome and something simple, direct and powerful would be nice but to really find out if there is a difference a good test regime is worth the trouble - otherwise, you may be left with a bunch of empty hand-waving

 

I agree. But that means time and money. Much cheaper to tell people they're making things up.

[wushuliu]

1 minute ago, Jud said:

And by the way, as you know I’ve asked as strongly for respect to be shown to “objectivists.”

 

I think it would be beneficial to know what exactly objectivist means... 

[wushuliu]

Just now, jabbr said:

 

Thing is, many people might be entirely uninterested in using science to advise their purchases. What would be the point of the effort, not like it's going to get anyone tenure  

 

Ah more signifiers. Question is what do we mean when we use the word science...

[wushuliu]

Now that I see some typically divisive rhetoric from names familiar from other forums it's clear this thread has hit bottom.