Is Audiophiledom a confidence game?

[Jud]

1 hour ago, wgscott said:

Likewise for engineers or computer scientists etc. who legitimize what they doubtless privately and cynically recognize as the palpably absurd. It likely provides a real ego boost.

 

But on the basis of what expertise on your part (or that of others on which you rely) does this “doubtless” rest?  Sure, there’s stuff that’s obviously absurd just for normal reasoning humans.  But on some of these topics engineers disagree, and they both/all Know More Than I Do.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, wgscott said:

 

It isn't a question of expertise.  It is a question of whether the proposition is testable, repeatable, measurable ...

 

Donald Trump, by virtue of his current job, which includes access to highly classified intelligence, knows much more about what is going on in the world than you do.  Do you give his tweets the same benefit of the doubt that you do the statements of engineers disagree upon? Or do you apply a wee bit of common sense?

 

Sure, as I mentioned earlier there’s plenty of stuff, like the “box of rocks” (or dirt) where the bafflegab smells to high heaven.  That to me is something we can easily all agree upon, and to me not terribly interesting.  

 

What I’m more interested in are examples more analogous to those articles about how people prefer modern violins to those made by Stradivarius.  There, the efficacy and accuracy of the test procedure seems to me to be perhaps as much in issue as whether those who spend incredible sums on a Stradivarius are being hoodwinked.

 

There are questions in audio like that, where whether the testing is effective may be in issue as well as whether people are being hoodwinked.

[Jud]

2 minutes ago, mansr said:

That's not an electronic engineering matter.

 

Acute observation.

[Jud]

19 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

 

 

Again (and again) it is important to point out that the Audiophile culture does not rest on the resolution of these sorts of things.  Even if the Scientific Industrial Complex were to throw real money (billions) at digital cables, boxes of rocks, etc. Audiophildom would still be what it is.  In this it is like the herbal supplement market, where some real money has been spent at testing and yet it is as vibrant as ever.

 

The culture of Radical Subjectism and confidence goes deeper than this...

 

Don’t know if that’s the case.  I would be very happy to have more information with which to make reality-based decisions.  People like @jabbr and @barrows who design and build (and measure) their own components would I assume be similarly pleased.  Most of the audiophiles I run into are pretty smart and very intellectually curious.

 

Of course there are always those for whom nothing’s sufficient, but I think you’re painting with rather too broad a brush.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

 

I wonder if my brush is not too narrow.  The good intentions of some certainly don't somehow cancel out the reality of the whole culture.  Again (and again) it must be said that this culture does not rest on the lack of information (for which "more information" is the antidote).  The confidence game can not be reduced to the (unresolved) dialectic of the "subjectivist vs. objectivist", and even if there was wholesale change/resolution to this debate tomorrow it would not change the culture fundamentally.

 

Whatever @jabbr or @barrows personal position is (or mine), the cultural fundamentals remain the same...

 

You see a culture and a dialectic.  If that ever existed (in the heyday of the print mags?), I think it’s long since been replaced by individuals going in all sorts of different directions, with what you call “radical subjectivists” representing a rapidly fading old guard.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, esldude said:

I get what you are thinking in a sense.  In another sense, if once we remove labels, and we have trouble distinguishing a $3 million device from a $10,000 device we already know something important.  The method of testing would need to be horribly mangled for that result to be misleading.  It wasn't that badly mangled.  One could quibble with the specifics, but the over-arching idea that the aura of the Strad is partly myth looks very likely at that point. 

 

Would you agree that in a blind audio test, if one source is allowed to be louder than another, it calls the result into question?  Are you certain whatever other sonic qualities would be involved would outweigh a basic loudness difference?

[Jud]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Seems highly plausible to me. Perhaps on a terribly designed CD player some noise from the tracking servo might become audible. Nobody in their right mind would use such a poor device.

 

Yes, that makes sense. It also makes the original claim even less plausible.

 

Is there a compelling reason differences in manufacturing tolerances could not create differences in playback jitter levels, which would vanish when the contents were stored as files on a hard drive?