Is Audiophiledom a confidence game?

[crenca]

8 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

'The great audio debate' very much relates to The OP premise and MQA. It's about ability and reliability of hearing differences and therein making fraudulent claims for profit.

 

 

Nope.  All along I (and others - such as Robert Harley!) have said that MQA is not about SQ.  MQA's status as a SQ tweak comes into play only as a mechanism for the use and manipulation of confidence.  In both the majority and importance the criticisms of MQA are not around it's alleged "sounds like" tweakiness.  Just a few examples are "end to end" and what that means to innovation, IP & DRM, lossy/bit depth/etc.  

[crenca]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

Nor am I aware of any peer reviewed published study that says that Ethernet cables can’t affect SQ.

 

Theres no actual science to say one way or the other. 

 

I don’t waste my time comparing Ethernet cables and am very skeptical of claims promoted by people who are selling snake oil, but there is no scientific basis to call someone delusional for hearing a difference.

 

Thats the bigger picture.

 

46 minutes ago, jabbr said:

I entirely agree and to clarify: was responding to the larger discussion between these 2 threads rather than quoting you in particular 

 

jabbr, what would you call it then if not delusional?  If it is as pkane2001 says it is, that while we can not scientifically prove what these good folks are hearing is some placebo/expectation bias/etc. but that we have a large body of experience and foundational EE "principal" (so to speak - phrase it as you wish) that points that all these diverse and contradictory experiences are most likely can not be justified as actual electrical/mechanical phenomenon, what would you call it?

 

Now, take the above fact and see it in the light of an industry, a culture called "audiophiledom" that absolutely is drunk on these kinds of experiences of the unknown and strange (in my system, I can hear Close Encounters of the Third Kind!") in otherwise fairly well understood electrical systems, and what do you have?

 

I submit, you have a confidence game.

 

Remember, the confidence game is not primarily built on the deception of the manipulator, but on the natural trust and social conditioning of the victim.  Is Audiophiledom a coalition of victims who like their victimhood and defend it endlessly?

[crenca]

44 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Look, this Ethernet cable straw man has probably been beaten to death.

 

If you'd like to look at something which by all reasonable indications is snake-oil confidence game, why not "grounding boxes" aka an antennae stuck in the sand.

 

That is a topic where known physics does not provide a mechanism of action (at least to my own knowledge). @marce -- you got anything on this one?

 

So, if I may sum up the last few pages - basically, jabbr and company is saying that no one has (and no one likely ever will - Big Science is expensive in both time and $money$) do the rigorous science needed to enable anyone to say with any "scientific" confidence that in spec Ethernet cables can not/do not sound different.

 

Thus, even Big Science is leveraged as part of the Audiophile confidence game, not by its input, but by its absence - all you objectivists don't really understand the very objective ground you argue from.  And the status quo goes on and on and on...

[crenca]

53 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

Nah ... I think that if there are any differences, they are artifactual and can/should be eliminated with better power supplies and improved isolation techniques at the DAC. I've long suggested fiberoptic Ethernet which is really cheap these days and eliminates any issues with EMI/leakage currrents along the cable itself. Common sense argues against spending $1000 on an Ethernet cable. I don't need scientific proof of common sense.

 

There is no common sense (singular).  There are common senses (plural), and they are not commensurable with each other.  From the general to the particular, we have two conflicting con-sensus (the latin etymology is illuminating) about what IS audiophildom (i.e. subjective vs objective).

 

As an "obejctivist", I agree with you but probably for differing reasons.  While I grant the Scientific Industrial Complex its authority - in this case to define what is and what is not science, I also recognize that in our technocratic modern lives we rely on all sorts of things on that rest on much less rigorous evidence, and yet are not "subjectivised" to the degree that some allege audio is.  

 

I do think you have set an unnecessary high bar that was always going to fail and that "common sense" as applied to audio is in fact a subjectivist position.

[crenca]

4 hours ago, jabbr said:

I’m a pragmatist. That’s a thing.

 

2 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Everyone is entitled to opinion....It doesn't solve the confidence game, granted. Who cares so long as folks are *informed* of competing opinions, they can make up their own minds.

 

 

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Indeed. However, not every opinion is entitled to be right.

 

In the context of this discussion (as so many others) pragmatism is usually just a placeholder for the unexamined assumption.  It appears to me that you are arguing for what I quote from Audiophile Neuro, which is really just subjectvism and even if you agree with it (I don't), it is "resisted" (to pick a term) because there are too many like mansr who are not interested in your or anyone else's "opinion" (not even their own), but what is true and real.  Like mansr I find reality to be interesting enough and and don't need the unreality of "technically unexplainable" to spice up an already hot dish .  Also I should note that "technically unexplainable" won't work because it takes the likely (granted, in almost all of this not "proven") cause out of the language, namely the delusional agent (no matter how self satisfied the agent is with their state of affairs).

 

So after all this back and forth we are still exactly where we began, and that is the status quo.  I am more interested in the context of this discussion is how the status quo contributes to the seedy, snake oil side of Audiophiledom.  I would suggest that this very "pragmatism" is the root of it, and not a mere sideshow of a few bad apples as it is in most every other hobby/industry...

 

 

[crenca]

9 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

There is a great deal here that I could take issue with. I will simply say the status quo doesn't look like changing any time soon

 

I am more optimistic.  Like I said upstream, I wonder if a changing demographic - the younger more digitally competent,  "confidence" averse (often a "personal audio") audiophile has not already created a kind of counter culture to the Audiophiledom that you and so many others are more comfortable with.  Sure, we will always have the luxury audiophile - the guy with too many $ burning a hole in his pocket and who will end up with all sorts of gimmicks from boxes of rocks to MQA and perhaps this will be enough to sustain things as they are for a long time.  Still even this might lead to a more obvious line (drawn everywhere, from publications to manufactures) between a real "high fidelity" and a confidence based "high end".  Granted, this is not the way things are now but these cracks and contradictions are a kind of "pressure" pushing against the status quo it seems to me...

[crenca]

53 minutes ago, jabbr said:

That is a bizarre statement. 

 

"objectivism" is clearly your religion. too bad you don't understand analytic thinking.

 

Ok, help me analyze why the sound of ethernet cables is even a topic for discussion ever (let alone often), or why MQA could be thought of as primarily a sound quality tweak?.  In other words, what is it about the technical discussion that leads to an Audiophiledom that is so clearly dependant (like a drug addict) on the radically subjective (whether or not you think it delirious in a voodoo or "confidence game" ) sort of way?  How could the trade publications so clearly miss the import of MQA as a format, as DRM, as a business case for one company to $siphon$ off and "end to end" revenue stream?  

[crenca]

Just now, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Who said I was comfortable with anything other than enjoying the music and the hobby. The rest of the analysis I reject, politely, genuinely and not disingenuously ;-)

I think you are wrong about the upcoming generation. I don't think it hinges on digital technological savvy but more the nature of the human condition. Time will tell.

 

 

Say more!  You thinking in an economic or political economy sort of way?  Looking for some fundamental shift in our culture such that music is no longer what it is today?  Some kind of rapid macro evolutionary event?? 

[crenca]

3 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

I would be happy to help you. First answer a question: What specifically brought you, personally, to the opinion that Etheet cables do not have a “sound”?

 

1) Something you read? 

— where?

— textbook

— article? who wrote it?

— an opinion piece or technical analysis?

2) Something someone told you?

3) The discussion here?

4) An analysis you did based on Maxwell’s equations?

5) A different technical analysis? What?

6) Your own listening tests?

7) Someone else’s listening reports? Whose?

8) Sonething else? What?

 

 

Common sense

 

Again, these alleged technical "unknowns" as a ground for the larger culture of radical subjectivism that is the ground for the confidence game  -  this is what I am pointing to with this thread.  It is natural (given the culture) that most posts are in fact simply a reflection of this internal tension, the eternal "subjectivist vs objectivist" debate, but that is not any kind of "analysis" I am interested in.  I am pointing to and analysing the larger issues.

 

I should be clear in that I don't believe Audiophiledom can or will be meaningfully shaped by someone "proving" the truth about Ethernet cables to yours, mine, or anyone else's satisfaction.  Rather, the conditions that allow for this and all the other cloud cuckoland crazy that is a systemic disease will change (in some way - maybe for the worse!).  Audio Neuro thinks it is just all par for the course because of the human condition, but I and many others note Audiophildom is a rather special case.  Esldude and others are talking about the history, the market, etc. that lead to this.  I am optimistic that their is a real (even "renewed") interest in "High Fidelity" as such and that a kind of split is coming or rather already here.  Perhaps I am just a crazy dreamer  

[crenca]

17 minutes ago, jabbr said:

@crenca answer the question : what caused you personally to believe that Ethernet cables dont/can’t have a sound. How did this enter your “common sense”?

 

Nope.  This thread (or at least my participation in it) is not about how I in particular avoided the audiophile curse of radical subjectivism and cloud cuckoland crazy.  It does not matter how I in particular came to the objective truth.  "Fate was kind to me" is as good as answer as any.

 

I am interested in the larger questions of how this culture came to be, where it is going, etc.

[crenca]

Anyone ever seen anything like this for Audiophiledom?

 

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/20-tough-questions-about-the-auto-industry-in-2018-feature

[crenca]

10 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

You are a radical subjectivist then. You can’t explain the basis, the simple rationale for a single belief. You are no rationalist, nor a real objectivist. You’re only relationship to objectivity is that you call yourself one.

 

Your beliefs are are as religious as those who hold idols sacred.

 

 

Exactly!  Now you are getting somewhere!  Not being facetious here - this is the absurdity that this "debate" of "objectivist vs subjectivist" leads - some assertion of "religious" devotion on the part of the person.  Everyone involved seems to believe that this debate can be "resolved" with "science" properly understood, or a realistic understanding of human nature, etc. etc.

 

I am looking for the "transcendent third option".  What are we missing that the terms of the debate miss?  This is the analysis I am interested in...

[crenca]

3 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

The bulk of participants in this nasty thread would demand proof from their own mother !

 It's not just John Swenson that you guys demand proof from. It's virtually every C.A. member who makes a subjective claim that you guys believe is impossible. This is often followed by calling the poster/s delusional.

 

"nasty thread"...reminds me of something.."nasty nasty nasty thread"

 

You should work on this post a bit, find a meter, and write a song...it has a poetic quality.

[crenca]

2 hours ago, marce said:

This is part of creating the aura and belief in audio... hand made, tuned by ear, we can't measure, etc. create and build the myths it helps sell hi end audio.

 

Nice summation of Audiophiledom as a confidence game.

[crenca]

1 minute ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Don't forget "designed, engineered, and built by renowned, respected and revered craftsmen utterly committed to the highest quality sound reproduction".

 

And here is the deal, there is an certain amount of craft involved in building electronics.  It's just that in Audiophiledom, the culture absolutely refuses to limit it in any way - it has the status of a sacred cow who carries all expectations, unknowns, and finger licking goodness.  It becomes a moral issue when anyone dare challenges "what I hear", "in my system".  

 

As the OP says though, digital audio is a real thorn in the side of this radically subjectivised confidence game.  Turns out, there is balance and limits in the world that no amount of earned or unearned trust can hide.

[crenca]

11 minutes ago, marce said:

 

Me I crave some ATC monitors or some Parasound Halo's JC1's with some bling speakers... Why not, but I wouldn't fork out for fancy cables. So no one is immune from the fun aspect, its just some of the wild claims...

 

 

I hear ya.  Often in my dream ideal system I set up a pair of lower end Magico's, powered by a pair of JC1's, with a nice tube pre from ARC (though this get's traded for a SS pre about 1/2 the time)

 

Edit:  Oh, and cables are the thickest they sell at Home Depot 

 

[crenca]

9 minutes ago, esldude said:

These experienced listeners are NOT that SPECIAL.  

 

The deal is that these "experienced listeners" are are so deep in their own confidence that the objective truth of bias.  

 

The Audiophile confidence game is not so much about the consumer trusting the designer/manufacturer/digital voodoo salesman, as it is about getting the consumer to trust his own varied and variable perceptions and manipulating those through suggestion, looks, vague claims, and price.

[crenca]

6 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

I believe the 3 of us are on the verge of founding a top level audio cable company!

 

I suggest we set up a GoFunkme account for the initial $$ flow and call it Confirmation Bias Cable Company

 

maybe Bill will join us

LOL!

 

 

 

In fact, I think this is a two emoticon post:

 

 

[crenca]

1 hour ago, wgscott said:

 

No, his point is that outside of pure mathematics, there is not inductive law that permits you to prove a hypothesis.  cf David Hume.  So the best we can do is try to falsify a hypothesis.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

 

Amongst other things this leads to a form of intellectual humility.  Unless you can state under what circumstances you would be willing to accept that your hypothesis is wrong, you are operating in the realm of metaphysics and religious beliefs.  In other words, science is simply a formalized approach to being reasonable.

 

Ask SankyK under what conditions he would accept that his hypothesis that music files having identical checksums can sound different, depending on his past history, would be demonstrably wrong.  His answer is fairly telling.

 

 

Just a quibble - methodological science itself is incapable of defining reasonable.  Such a limit/boundary of reason itself would be a hypothesis.  

 

Metaphysics (of all kinds - excepting perhaps what goes by that name in you local New Age bookstore), religion, etc. do not observe the same limit.  Not that they can not be wrong, etc.

[crenca]

Hey, as far as the something actually "pragmatic" in the realm of audiophiledom that is also compelling in its view of the "subjective" vs. "objective" audiophile, some might like:

 

https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/approaching-neutral

 

Now, if we could somehow steer back toward the thread OP. Just a little perhaps...

[crenca]

1 minute ago, sandyk said:

 

 Probably better to let it die a natural death, as most of what can be said, probably has been said already ?

 

Oh don't worry, the Cloud will think of something, she always does

 

(that's right, the Internet and her collective Cloud Concsiousness is a women...you know, like your boat)

[crenca]

3 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

 

Effort much appreciated. You are a decent guy. But the people I'm addressing are Americans. I think they'll get it. They'd better get it.

 

What country are you from Christohper3393 (I'm American)?  Have you actually had a friend or relative put to death by the Taliban?

[crenca]

43 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

 

Yes. Born and raised in the U.S. I should NOT have said put to death, but killed by Taliban in the line of military duty, yes.  Also, badly injured and psychologically struggling relative. But this is not about me. it's about principle. I'm really done here. This is not shit I want to dig up online.

 

 What i really want to say here, buddy, is that I see NO comparison, not even a humorous one, between people who want to say a member is out of line here and should not be tolerated, and the Taliban. Not even a little funny, and also not true. Painting ML as a 100% intentional TROLL and letting you and plissken and Cogley completely off the hook is utter bullshit. I like you, and I think you have good points to make and have made a real contribution, as have the others I've named, and I don't want to see any of you banned or humiliated.  And I have fucked up at times here myself. Seriously. But I think maybe you guys pushed it too far, even going back to January or earlier. And I think ML also chose a path that was going to piss people off. Hell, I think I remember some other ridiculously nastly PMs he sent. I think they were to mansr. He probably should have been booted then.

 

As to the larger question of this thread, I think you've painted a bad blanket over the whole industry and I"m pretty damn sure that is wrong, so I'm not confident that this will help one bit. But you are passionate about a real issue in this industry, imo.

 

The big challenge, from where I sit, is stuff like civility, tolerance, forbearance, humility, even love, all the while pushing for reform. A hard act to pull off.

 

I wish you all well. This military stuff is just to close to me and is harming me. So I have to step back.

 

Well I hear you.  I don't have any immediate family battling the Taliban, but both my grandfathers fought and killed Germans in WWII and most of my uncles were in Vietnam.  I live in the desert SW right up against a cluster of major military installations.  One of my friends has had some percentage of his skull replaced with steel, and suffers horribly from brain damage and PTSD.  His wife full time job (she was a successful lawyer) is taking care of him and their two young children.  I actually know several people like this, as well as active duty who find themselves "in country" all too often.  My wife and I own a medical practice and because of her specialty she treats many of these folks and we both are quite familiar with real suffering that this endless war has caused.  So I hear you.

 

I don't see the use of "Audiophile Taliban" quite like you do, although I don't recall using the term myself and I am not sure I would.  Maybe because I am familiar with the suffering of war in ways many are not, I know that the distance between a kind of facile debate among hobbyists and the real Taliban is too great to confuse or worry me.  I am not offended, and I have and will continue to use humor in my relations with those who are intimately familiar with the utter horror of the real Taliban, ISIS, etc.  Also I am not much into a kind of politically correct moralizing around language and agree with those who note that this is usually done by elements within any given culture who are simply trying to ensconce their polity and morality.  You are not doing this however and I will now refrain from the term simply because you asked.

 

America, as you are quite aware is a big place with lots of differing people, lifestyles, and opinions.  I don't think this is a good thing because I can't find any significant civilization built upon "diversity" that lasts very long historically.  I am convinced we are in a real collapse and it is hard to not scoff at those who argue that cultural diversity is a strength.  It is our unity, not our "diversity" that we should be talking about - a house divided, and all that.  However, it is what it is so I am not sure of the pragmatic efficacy of trying too hard to cleanse language.  In my case, I simply try to win the war of rhetoric even if I lose some (or most) battles along the way.  

 

Coming back to this thread, of course the idea has some flourish to it.  In a room where one side is shouting over the other, I do not shy of shouting myself.  The OP and thread is meant to sting, to push folks out of a comfort zone - the zone that "enables" all that I and others point to.  I don't think I am disagreeing with ML's description of this hobby being like "art and wine" except I am saying it has real down side and something should change (even if it is just one of balance as opposed to wholesale change) whereas he (and just about the entire trade publication industry) think it is a good thing.  They resent the hell out of anyone who will not go along (in their confidence) and thus you get the "political" accusations (such as Quint's article) as well as ML's rather nasty opinion(s) of consumers and forums in general.  I find it rather obvious just about all of them think this way, even if ML is the only one who honest about it.

 

In any case Ive gone on too long.   hope that helps to explain where I am coming from...

[crenca]

4 minutes ago, Tony Lauck said:

The noise was from the audio equipment.  I would agree with you if the noise came elsewhere.  I see no difference between noise that comes through the air from a component other than the speaker or if the noise originates elsewhere in the system end comes out through the speakers.   My example is no different from problems I recall ages ago, such as noisy tape reels when playing reel to reel tape,  needle talk from an LP cartridge, etc...

 

 

I am incredulous as to your "point", which is quite besides the point of whether two bit identical software files can have some quality in-of-themselves that leads to 1+1=2 at on time, and 1+1=3 at another.

 

In addition, it is not on subject of this thread.

[crenca]

3 hours ago, jabbr said:

That’s essentially the point. The core of computer audiophile should be a set of best practices. Those aren’t a con game. I can explain why, in electrical terms, those best practices are best. I say this because among other things I’ve read books that are available to anyone.

 

The voodoo cables are to be avoided and we can say exactly why. 

 

3 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Ok, so we agree.  I'm flummoxed. 

 

 

As far as I can tell, jabbr's point (as well as Tony's, etc.) is not that two bit identical files are inherently different - it is that in real world electronics lots of things can and do happen that can lead folks (particular "subjectivists) to hear differences in actual playback chains (i.e. they are all "suboptimal").  Upstream he says this is a "crucial" point, and that he "holds objectivists to a higher standard".  In other words, he is on a bit of a crusade (though he won't put it that way).  He also seems to believe all this is important to the root cause(s) of the subjectivist vs objectivist debate and whether Audiophiledom is a confidence game.

 

He is wrong.  Not in the particular, but in its relative importance to the Audiophile Confidence Game. "the con" does not rest on this or that particular "misunderstanding" around digital, real world non-ideal implementation, and the all too real "grey areas" in any techno endeavour.  These are proximate and even contributing realities, but they are in no way sufficient or and while I would not call the reality that he points to "un-important", it is at the end of the day what the con game rests on.

 

Now, this is not to say that digital audio is not something that is not resistant to the con  - it's just that the truth of all this is not going to move the debate in any significant direction or in any way upset the status quo.  There is too much inertia built in.

 

What will is changing demographics, major market disruptions, a consumer awareness, etc. etc.