Is Audiophiledom a confidence game?

[kumakuma]

1 minute ago, Allan F said:

 

The line between sarcasm and snide remarks can become so thin as to be virtually non-existent, especially with certain members of this forum. Those who closely approach or occasionally cross it should not expect apologies but, if it makes you feel better, I offer mine.

 

Please accept mine as well. I'll try to remember to include the smiley next time.

[wgscott]

HTFU, snowflakes!

[kumakuma]

15 minutes ago, wgscott said:

HTFU, snowflakes!

 

Bill, perhaps this article will help you understand the passive aggressive nature of Canadian apologies:

 

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-use-and-abuse-of-sorry-americans-do-not-say-it-the-british-do-not-mean-it-and-canadians-overdo-it

[wgscott]

Thanks for the link!

 

Even being married to a British individual for > 20 years, I still find the whole "sorry" business a sorry business.

[Allan F]

2 minutes ago, wgscott said:

Even being married to a British individual for > 20 years, I still find the whole "sorry" business a sorry business.

 

Sorry about that!

[kumakuma]

58 minutes ago, wgscott said:

Thanks for the link!

 

Even being married to a British individual for > 20 years, I still find the whole "sorry" business a sorry business.

 

My wife is Japanese so someone (usually me) is always apologizing in our house:

 

https://kotaku.com/behold-extreme-japanese-apologizing-1553479803 

[fas42]

8 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

But, FR is far from being a benign distortion and is often the largest offender in an uncorrected system. Phase distortions, I'll agree with you, are not as obvious although can be audible. Also, these types of distortions are most often non-linear.

 

My experiences have been otherwise - a competent system where the FR is varied has minimal impact subjectively, for me - a classic counter example is a cheap radio, where you twiddle the treble control; the radio has highly distorted treble content, so what the FR changes are doing is altering the level of (non-linear) distortion relative to the desired signal. If a supposedly high performance rig has the higher frequencies lifted in level, and it becomes unpleasant to listen to as a result, then that system is faulty - it's as simple as that for me.

[mansr]

I'll just throw this into the debate:

http://www.psaudio.com/article/wine-and-chocolate/

[fas42]

I note in the OP that health food supplement industry is suggested a near relation, as regards confidence being so important. And why is that so? Because, 'healthiness' is a pretty damn hard thing to measure! A bit of sickness, out of the blue,  hits us like a hammer, the contrast with what was before is so striking that someone saying that your feeling sick is merely delusional, because we can't easily measure it, would be enough to provoke some to give that person a whack in the head. OTOH, if we are feeling really great, but a doctor says that you have a major condition which should be debilitating, are we healthy at that moment, or aren't we?

[christopher3393]

8 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

It was a joke, Allan, in the same vein as Bill's Taliban references.

 

Clearly, you have not had a relative or friend put to death by the Taliban.

[sandyk]

10 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

 

Clearly, you have not had a relative or friend put to death by the Taliban.

 

We need to remember that C.A. is an  International Forum,  and that some of our jokes etc. may not go down well with members from some other countries.

[christopher3393]

1 minute ago, sandyk said:

 

We need to remember that C.A. is an  International Forum,  and that some of our jokes etc. may not go down well with members from some other countries.

 

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.

[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?

[christopher3393]

54 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

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

 

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.

[beerandmusic]

Is Audiophiledom a confidence game?

Probably for me.... I can't say that I can honestly say that an external usb dac sounds hands down, in all song selectioins, any better than doing DLNA to a marantz reciever, but I just bought a $1300 DAC because of reviews.

[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...

[mansr]

9 hours ago, crenca said:

I don't see the use of "Audiophile Taliban" quite like you do

I don't see why it's any worse than "grammar Nazi."

[mav52]

13 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

We need to remember that C.A. is an  International Forum,  and that some of our jokes etc. may not go down well with members from some other countries.

Well said,  Sometimes people forget to be respectful.  

[pkane2001]

16 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

My experiences have been otherwise - a competent system where the FR is varied has minimal impact subjectively, for me - a classic counter example is a cheap radio, where you twiddle the treble control; the radio has highly distorted treble content, so what the FR changes are doing is altering the level of (non-linear) distortion relative to the desired signal. If a supposedly high performance rig has the higher frequencies lifted in level, and it becomes unpleasant to listen to as a result, then that system is faulty - it's as simple as that for me.

 

Hi Frank,

 

You often state that the mark of a quality system is 'the speakers disappearing'. Do you know what causes this phenomenon? What signal changes cause soundstage to collapse into the speakers? I would argue that this has primarily to do with phase. So, you think that phase is more significant than the frequency response in quality sound reproduction. I disagree in their relative merits, but I do agree that both are important.

 

That's why my system is adjusted for linear FR with minimum phase response. I've done this with both of my speaker systems and now with  headphones. The change due to phase was a slightly more natural soundstage, a bit more sense of the overall space. The change in FR resulted in a much greater sense of pace, a more 'complete' sound, better balance between instruments, more natural sounding piano, etc. To me, the FR correction is about 10 times the value of the phase change and is nothing like the treble control of the old radio. Soundstage is nice, but proper sounding instruments and human voices are a must. Maybe I'm just too sensitive to frequency imbalance.

[opus101]

5 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

You often state that the mark of a quality system is 'the speakers disappearing'. Do you know what causes this phenomenon? What signal changes cause soundstage to collapse into the speakers?

 

In my experience the 'collapsed into the speakers' state is caused by noise modulation. The noise created in the electronics by intermodulation distortion doesn't have a location in space so the ear/brain takes it as emanating from the surface of the drive units. The more noise modulation the 'flatter' the presentation.

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, opus101 said:

In my experience the 'collapsed into the speakers' state is caused by noise modulation. The noise created in the electronics by intermodulation distortion doesn't have a location in space so the ear/brain takes it as emanating from the surface of the drive units. The more noise modulation the 'flatter' the presentation.

 

So, this is due to noise modulating the signal? What does that do to the output signal relative to the low-noise version? I posit that it destroys the phase relationship between the left and right signals.

[opus101]

Just now, pkane2001 said:

 

So, this is due to noise modulating the signal? What does that do to the output signal relative to the low-noise version? I posit that it destroys the phase relationship between the left and right signals.

 

'Noise modulating the signal' isn't how I see this arising. Given music has very large numbers of discrete tones the resulting error signal (resulting from non-linearities in the electronics) from all the intermodulation between these tones has a noise-like character (rather than a distortion-like one). I believe Frank calls it 'distortion' though.

 

I don't believe phase needs to be invoked at all, that's just my opinion though. The noise modulation confuses the perceptual processing of lower level cues which the ear/brain uses to create the illusion of depth from the perceptual input.

[pkane2001]

Just now, opus101 said:

 

'Noise modulating the signal' isn't how I see this arising. Given music has very large numbers of discrete tones the resulting error signal (resulting from non-linearities in the electronics) from all the intermodulation between these tones has a noise-like character (rather than a distortion-like one). I believe Frank calls it 'distortion' though.

 

I don't believe phase needs to be invoked at all, that's just my opinion though. The noise modulation confuses the perceptual processing of lower level cues which the ear/brain uses to create the illusion of depth from the perceptual input.

 

Let's turn off the left channel and only listen to the right one. No matter how clean or noisy the signal is, it will never get out from inside the speaker. The only way a sound can appear to come from outside the speaker (ignoring the two-speaker mono case) is if there are two signals with some phase difference arriving at the ears of the listener. The only way this can be destroyed is by destroying the original phase relationship. 

 

Phase can be easily manipulated to place the sound in almost any position in the sound stage one would like. Mastering engineers use this technique to place multi-miked feeds in an artificial soundstage. Phase relationship between two channels is the primary source of the feeling of depth and width of the presentation, spatial instrument separation, etc. Anything that affect phase will affect this sense of space, including noise and inter-modulation.

[opus101]

1 minute ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Let's turn off the left channel and only listen to the right one. No matter how clean or noisy the signal is, it will never get out from inside the speaker.

 

 

Already done this experiment - a clean signal most certainly sounds like its coming from well behind the drive unit in the speaker.

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, opus101 said:

 

Already done this experiment - a clean signal most certainly sounds like its coming from well behind the drive unit in the speaker.

 

I see. So Frank is talking about the depth and not width of the soundstage when saying speakers disappear? That would make it a slightly different point, in which case I withdraw my phase comment