Is Audiophiledom a confidence game?

[lucretius]

6 hours ago, mansr said:

Why do you need earth ground (unless building a radio)?

 

Safety, RFI/EMI?

[sandyk]

4 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

Safety, RFI/EMI?

 

John Swenson is reporting Audibly improved results with his designs by grounding the 0 volts side of typical SMPS PSUs

[Rexp]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

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...

I agree with you to a point, however not all promoters of Audiophlia are scammers, those that advise that you need to have an analog source in your system to access the superior masters out there are genuine Audiophiles, those that say a digital source is all you need are fake Audiophiles.

[esldude]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

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?  

Highly, highly over-simplified, but in answer to how this happened:

 

Most gear became so good there were few actual differences in sound quality anymore.  All that was left was to delve into the subjective or at least the only avenue left for publications.  Remember this started just prior to the internet.  The big rise in popularity of subjective mags like S-phile and TAS happened as Audio, High Fidelity and Stereo Review declined and ceased operations.  When good SS amps and CD was taking off.  

 

Plenty of facets to this.  Re-emergence of tube gear, which really did have a sound.  Vinyl never quite died and re-emerged as it has a sound too.  Flim-flammary just by natural selection made more money than honest products partly due to the decreased cost of good quality gear.  Imagination trumps all and reigns supreme when other than appearance, cachet and marketing they sound pretty much the same.  This is where cables could sink in roots and prosper like kudzu covers the south.  Speakers were never, and still aren't close to transparency or equivalency between different brands.  Everything else swept them along however. 

 

One long term trend in the press, sometimes spoken about directly by HP was how SOTA gear (or gear they considered SOTA) diverged in basic sound character as it improved.  If we were getting closer to better fidelity the reverse should have occurred.  In fact other than in people's minds or bizarre designs (which also exploded) that is factually what happened, but not subjectively.   Imagination combined with basic human psychology where everyone wants to feel special with special powers of perception just lit it all up.  

 

The idea USB cables and Ethernet are significant contributors to sound quality is truly way out there wacko unless you have some faulty gear.  I mean cloud cuckoland crazy.  Maybe we should have a rating system for such things.  How high on the CCC scale does it score.  It would end up like Martin Collom's subjective scoring system.  Gear now rated crazy level 10 would be eclipsed and we would have ratings in the hundreds in just a short period of time. How do you give a relative crazy level score for ethernet cable vs Entreq grounding boxes.  Price must enter into it as well.  AQ Ethernet would be a benchmark product on the CCC scale I think.  

 

I guess I need to go post in the civility thread now.  

 

NOTE:  I am NOT calling audiophiles crazy.  The ideas they get sucked into by being human are crazy.  Not to mention how lots of flim flams happen to highly intelligent sane people.  Those people are human however. 

[sandyk]

11 minutes ago, esldude said:

The idea USB cables and Ethernet are significant contributors to sound quality is truly way out there wacko unless you have some faulty gear.  I mean cloud cuckoland crazy. 

 

 

Dennis

As far as USB cables goes, you are WAY out of touch with a very large number of C.A. members, including Peter St. and others.

The construction of the cable, especially when used with a typical internal SMPS computer really does matter, due to coupling of noise from the +5VBus into the D+ and D- lines of the cable.

 The better sounding USB cables keep the power lines completely separate from the sensitive Data wires, and numerous members will tell you that replacing the noisy SMPS power with much cleaner power may result in a significant audible improvement. 

Perhaps you need to read other sections of the forum instead of just hanging out in the first few areas of this forum ?

 

Alex

[marce]

2 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

Safety, RFI/EMI?

SAFETY, that's all its the protective earth, It is NOT a sink for RFI/EMI.

[marce]

The main problem with digital as I see it is some treat the whole stream as one entity from source to speakers... It isn't it is two, a digital data transport system to a DAC and an analogue output from the DAC to ultimately the speakers. You have to look at it as two separate entities and engineer each accordingly. For a cable used for the digital data stream to have an effect on the analogue output, then you have a design problem, somewhere in your system. At the point where the two meet, the DAC there is a wealth of information regarding digital/analogue layout, how to avoid interference between the two systems.

Again, some info on what GROUND is...

http://web.mst.edu/~jfan/slides/Archambeault2.pdf

And as we are discussing EMC here is some practical notes from Keith Armstrong, less theory based than Henry Ott and Ralph Morrisons stuff. 

http://www.emcia.org/keitharmstrong.aspx

[firedog]

12 hours ago, vmartell22 said:

 

Burning-in a USB cable? oh god   [v puts popcorn in microwave and start hitting refresh...]

 

 

v

 

This comment is really unnecessary. Whatever you think or know, what is the point of this comment other than ridicule? Do you think it is going to persuade Teresa to do something different? 

And whatever conclusions she makes at the end of her listening experiments, are you going to feel compelled to dis  them also? 

You are free to post whatever you want. But, maybe before posting, think about whether you are treating someone with a minimum level of respect.

If you think, after her conclusions, that Teresa is a victim of  "a confidence game" or some othe form of expectation bias, it's possible to say so w/out ridicule.

[firedog]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

Highly, highly over-simplified, but in answer to how this happened:

 

Most gear became so good there were few actual differences in sound quality anymore.  All that was left was to delve into the subjective or at least the only avenue left for publications.  Remember this started just prior to the internet.  The big rise in popularity of subjective mags like S-phile and TAS happened as Audio, High Fidelity and Stereo Review declined and ceased operations.  When good SS amps and CD was taking off.  

 

Plenty of facets to this.  Re-emergence of tube gear, which really did have a sound.  Vinyl never quite died and re-emerged as it has a sound too.  Flim-flammary just by natural selection made more money than honest products partly due to the decreased cost of good quality gear.  Imagination trumps all and reigns supreme when other than appearance, cachet and marketing they sound pretty much the same.  This is where cables could sink in roots and prosper like kudzu covers the south.  Speakers were never, and still aren't close to transparency or equivalency between different brands.  Everything else swept them along however. 

 

One long term trend in the press, sometimes spoken about directly by HP was how SOTA gear (or gear they considered SOTA) diverged in basic sound character as it improved.  If we were getting closer to better fidelity the reverse should have occurred.  In fact other than in people's minds or bizarre designs (which also exploded) that is factually what happened, but not subjectively.   Imagination combined with basic human psychology where everyone wants to feel special with special powers of perception just lit it all up.  

 

The idea USB cables and Ethernet are significant contributors to sound quality is truly way out there wacko unless you have some faulty gear.  I mean cloud cuckoland crazy.  Maybe we should have a rating system for such things.  How high on the CCC scale does it score.  It would end up like Martin Collom's subjective scoring system.  Gear now rated crazy level 10 would be eclipsed and we would have ratings in the hundreds in just a short period of time. How do you give a relative crazy level score for ethernet cable vs Entreq grounding boxes.  Price must enter into it as well.  AQ Ethernet would be a benchmark product on the CCC scale I think.  

 

I guess I need to go post in the civility thread now.  

 

NOTE:  I am NOT calling audiophiles crazy.  The ideas they get sucked into by being human are crazy.  Not to mention how lots of flim flams happen to highly intelligent sane people.  Those people are human however. 

I don't agree with every point here, but there is definitely truth to it.

Another small point may be that  gear that only costs a few hundred or up to $1000 has gotten so good that marketing and selling very high end expensive gear has gotten more difficult; and all sorts of "justifications" have to be made for it.

Cheap digital playback, volume compression of tracks and mp3, also contribute to unsatisfying sound and are partly responsible for the popularity of tube and vinyl playback, especially in the very inexpensive categories  where it clearly involves a preference for pleasant sounding loss of accuracy. 

 

I'm not saying all audiophile equipment is snake oil. But in today's market, if we are fair minded, we will admit that relatively inexpensive products like the Audioengine HD6 or the KEFLS50 powered will get you a high to very high percentage of what very expensive high -end equipment does for a fraction of the price. The diminishing returns curve is very steep here, and it isn't easy to create an environment that will convince people to lay out sums significantly greater for relatively small improvements in sound.  All of the above helps create that environment.

[marce]

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

 

 

Dennis

As far as USB cables goes, you are WAY out of touch with a very large number of C.A. members, including Peter St. and others.

The construction of the cable, especially when used with a typical internal SMPS computer really does matter, due to coupling of noise from the +5VBus into the D+ and D- lines of the cable.

 The better sounding USB cables keep the power lines completely separate from the sensitive Data wires, and numerous members will tell you that replacing the noisy SMPS power with much cleaner power may result in a significant audible improvement. 

Perhaps you need to read other sections of the forum instead of just hanging out in the first few areas of this forum ?

 

Alex

But only anecdotal evidence.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 hour ago, marce said:

SAFETY, that's all its the protective earth, It is NOT a sink for RFI/EMI.

 

Cannot the safety earth/ground be a path to discharge noise or other currents?

[vmartell22]

56 minutes ago, firedog said:

This comment is really unnecessary. Whatever you think or know, what is the point of this comment other than ridicule? Do you think it is going to persuade Teresa to do something different? 

And whatever conclusions she makes at the end of her listening experiments, are you going to feel compelled to dis  them also? 

You are free to post whatever you want. But, maybe before posting, think about whether you are treating someone with a minimum level of respect.

If you think, after her conclusions, that Teresa is a victim of  "a confidence game" or some othe form of expectation bias, it's possible to say so w/out ridicule.

 

If you really read and think about it, you will see that the post is about the controversy cable burn-in, specially for digital cables, that rages on any audio forum, this one included - lemme further explain it - getting the popcorn in the microwave implies that it will be entertaining.

 

If you really read and think about it you will see that there is no judgments or even opinions in there.

 

If you really read and think about it you will see that is only a comment on how debates are triggered.

 

Will all respect of course.

 

v

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

If you think, after her conclusions, that Teresa is a victim of  "a confidence game" or some othe form of expectation bias, it's possible to say so w/out ridicule.

 

I agree ridicule is the intent or at least easily *misinterpreted* that way.

edit: my post crossed with vmartell22 who explained why it was misinterpreted.

 

perhaps it would help if audiophiles were not thought of as "the Taliban", and maybe audiophiles just learn to ignore it.

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, marce said:

But only anecdotal evidence

 

 That's a lot better than incomplete technical measurements  !

As well as many hundreds of positive reports by numerous members,

many members here trust John Swenson who is a highly experienced E.E. , his innovative designs and his findings, especially in the area of VERY low noise PSUs and USB Regens etc.  

My own experience , including posts from me that date back before John's reports in this forum, is very similar to John's findings. USB is highly sensitive to any minor earth loops, even when using a +5V Linear PSU, via capacitance between the primary and secondary windings of the PSU's transformer to mains earth.

 This is undoubtedly part of the reason  that John developed his LPS1 ( Ultracap) PSU which has almost complete isolation from the power source feeding it, due to the extensive use of optocouplers and switching transistors.

 

John now also has quite a bit of expensive test equipment at his disposal. 

[marce]

1 hour ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Cannot the safety earth/ground be a path to discharge noise or other currents?

If you read the link I put up, Henry Ott etc. the PE connection is not a current sink for noise. We had long an joyous discussion on the Entreq grounding box thread... It is there for protection.

Double insulated components, aeroplanes, submarines loads of stuff doesn't have a PE connection yet can have low controlled noise. You use the chassis to steer noise away from critical components.

[marce]

8 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 That's a lot better than incomplete technical measurements  !

As well as many hundreds of positive reports by numerous members,

many members here trust John Swenson who is a highly experienced E.E. , his innovative designs and his findings, especially in the area of VERY low noise PSUs and USB Regens etc.  

My own experience , including posts from me that date back before John's reports in this forum, is very similar to John's findings. USB is highly sensitive to any minor earth loops, even when using a +5V Linear PSU, via capacitance between the primary and secondary windings of the PSU's transformer to mains earth.

 This is undoubtedly part of the reason  that John developed his LPS1 ( Ultracap) PSU which has almost complete isolation from the power source feeding it, due to the extensive use of optocouplers and switching transistors.

 

John now also has quite a bit of expensive test equipment at his disposal. 

So lets see some measurements then...

[sandyk]

1 minute ago, marce said:

So lets see some measurements then

 

 I feel sure that John will release some measurements, if , and when he finds the time.

 John has far more important things to do, with new projects under development,  than humour demands from closed minded people like yourself ,and several other members of the pack that hang out in this thread attacking everything to do with "anecdotal" findings , as well as which I understand that his current circumstances have changed after a recent redundancy.

 

[marce]

19 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 I feel sure that John will release some measurements, if , and when he finds the time.

 John has far more important things to do, with new projects under development,  than humour demands from closed minded people like yourself ,and several other members of the pack that hang out in this thread attacking everything to do with "anecdotal" findings , as well as which I understand that his current circumstances have changed after a recent redundancy.

 

The measurements should be there as part of the design process... Its not humour its a requirement of the design and claims being made about what it solves. Further having proper measurements and data to relate to would give us far more information to look at any problem whether real or perceived and improve our collective understanding of audio reproduction... Thats how it works in other fields of electronics including pro-audio.

I am getting sick of your constant digs at myself, I am not as close minded as your self or many of a similar belief system, so stop attributing these things to me.

People go on about objectives on this and other sites, yet all we ask is standard requests in Engineering and science, evidence... We can't call you names so don't call me names or attribute attitudes that I don't have.

I f he has been made redundant, then I wish him all the best in finding a new position, redundancy is and has been a curse of the Western Electronics industry for many years, I can think of several firms I worked for in the pats that are no longer in existence or have cut back so much they are a former shadow of what they were, so redundancy for many each time, myself included. Its not nice, but is common these days, especially with the preference for many to outsource human resources as and when they need them. Most big jobs now have as many contractors as they do permanent staff.

[marce]

Anecdotal findings have to be investigated further, to either prove or disprove them,

[firedog]

2 minutes ago, marce said:

The measurements should be there as part of the design process... Its not humour its a requirement of the design and claims being made about what it solves. Further having proper measurements and data to relate to would give us far more information to look at any problem whether real or perceived and improve our collective understanding of audio reproduction... Thats how it works in other fields of electronics including pro-audio.

 

Probably should be true. In a one or two man firm it is probably not a priority to spend tens of thousands of dollars they don't have on testing equipment, before they design product. So they design by ear.

 

I see lots of audio product sold without any meaningful measurement data, even by not small firms.

[marce]

You can't design digital by ear... As I said earlier the digital stream is a different entity than the analogue side, and requires measurements to confirm what is happening, that happens in the wider world of electronics. An awful lot of audio (add-ons especially)  are sold purely on say so, I would not purchase a device designed to reduce noise without some empirical data. Just to conform to the various EMC regulations around the world you need to at least do EMC testing, or are some products sold without confirming their EMC levels?

[jabbr]

7 hours ago, crenca said:

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?. 

 

I would be happy to help you. First answer a question: What specifically brought you, personally, to the opinion that Ethernet 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?

[jabbr]

4 hours ago, marce said:

But only anecdotal evidence.

 

Yes although anecdotes by established designers are valuable. I recall that I was initially of the opinion that USB cables couldn’t possibly have a “sound” until Gordon @Wavelength reported his own detailed experience (he has excellent equipment) that USB cables have readily measurable electrical transmission differences — IIRC there are some cheap cables that are as good as much more expensive but under the scope there are differences ergo there might be a sound.

 

Now my own scope is barely 2 ghz on a good day (4gsps) so not too eager to diagnose Ethernet but ...

 

( @crenca that was the single first piece of information that led me, personally, to doubt that all digital cables are the same — this info was reported a few years ago — is an observation under an oscilloscope by a highly qualified engineer subjective?)

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, marce said:

People go on about objectives on this and other sites, yet all we ask is standard requests in Engineering and science, evidence... We can't call you names so don't call me names or attribute attitudes that I don't have.

 

The majority of members of Computer Audiophile are NOT E.E.s , so kindly stop expecting people posting subjective reports, in a forum other than the likes of Hydrogen Audio etc. , to post measurements.

You are the qualified people, so if you don't accept the validity of posted subjective reports, then make suitable measurements yourselves.

I come from a technical background from 43 years with Telstra, but I am not expert enough to do in-depth measurements, neither do I have access to suitable test  equipment either. That is precisely the reason that I involved Martin Colloms , who is a qualified E.E. and technical writer with my previous findings, and he performed POSITIVE DBTs on them, I also asked Barry Diament, who is a highly respected Recording and Mastering Engineer to check out a comparison CD that I sent him.

Barry confirmed that he did hear differences , despite the checksums being identical.

 

Perhaps you are in the wrong forum if you expect more than this from non qualified members ?

 

G'night from Sydney Au.

 

P.S.

 Attached is a link to previous experimentation in this area before John Swenson became involved

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/13905-continuing-pursuit-of-power-supply-improvements-and-improved-dac-performance/?tab=comments#comment-198412

 

[jabbr]

14 minutes ago, sandyk said:

The majority of members of Computer Audiophile are NOT E.E.s , so kindly stop expecting people posting subjective reports, in a forum other than the likes of Hydrogen Audio etc. , to post measurements.

You are the qualified people, so if you don't accept the validity of posted subjective reports, then make suitable measurements yourselves.

Alex,

 

He doesn’t seem to be asking you to post measurements, rather John Swenson. The issue of John needing to post measurements for his claims has been brought up endlessly and John is very well aware. The delays are very understandable under the circumstances. AFAIK John is working on this.

 

I think there was s a general consensus that good low noise, low leakage power supplies are important. Lets keep the discussion rational.

 

Jonathan