Sanity Check

[Samuel T Cogley]

59 minutes ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

http://matrixhifi.com/ENG_contenedor_ppec.htm

 

Next time you have a GAS attack, go to the above link for a sanity check.  It's a blind test where one side was a cheap class AB amp, $5 interconnects and a consumer disk player.   The other side was some expensive audiophile gear.  There was no statistically significant preference for either setup.  They don't mention this, but the level controls on the A500 are known to measure terribly, and they had to be used because there was no line stage in use.

 

I read so much BS related to this hobby.  The two most inflammatory subjects these days are wires/cables/interconnects and MQA.  Who do you believe?  Your money might be better spent taking your honey out to dinner.

 

 

Thanks for this!  I'm not sure this will eliminate future GAS attacks for me (as those are rooted more in wanton consumerism), but it certainly puts things in perspective.  I suspect most "believers" in high end gear will find reasons to disregard the results of this test.  In other words, you're probably preaching to the choir.  But I still appreciate the post!

[Samuel T Cogley]

6 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

What does "GAS attack" mean?

 

Gear

Acquisition

Syndrome

 

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

41 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

So the question is -- does better audio interest you, or not?

 

"better audio" in the confines of rigid, audiophilic dogmatism?  No way.

[Samuel T Cogley]

14 minutes ago, new_media said:

Ha! I was guessing gullible audiophile syndrome.

 

I readily concede, I buy too much gear.  For me, it's not gullibility so much as wanting to audition new DACs.  I generally consider it a win if I don't buy the latest shiny object I have my eye on.

[Samuel T Cogley]

35 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

Of course I don’t have anything to do with better audio or your interest in it.

 

If you’re interested in better audio why did you deny better audio exists?

 

With due respect, I think the issue is the lens of covetousness that you use to determine desirability of gear that might be the issue.

 

In other words, if someone doesn't drink the, "sure, I'd love to have a dCS stack" kool-aid, they're not what you would call an audiophile.

[Samuel T Cogley]

19 hours ago, GUTB said:

This should be obvious but modern hi-fi doesn’t actually have much to do with high fidelity. First of all, speakers are totally incapable of it...well, recording equipment is also incapable of it. What we’re doing is chasing a form of sonic art. A Norman Rockwell painting doesn’t look like anything like real life. But you can appreciate the mastery of the art and derive pleasure from it.

 

 

I imagined it to be more like this:

 

 

 

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

4 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

While what you say IS the reality of high-fidelity, my view is that we should never lose sight of the fact that a perfect capture and reproduction of a musical event is the ultimate goal. Otherwise what is audio struggling toward? I mean, each year new and more capable equipment is released by the industry's manufacturers, and while not every new product is a step forward, the overall trend is toward less and less colored reproduction. Everything needs a goal or ideal; otherwise everybody is stumbling around in the dark.

I also am of the opinion that the tools on the capture/record end of the chain are much better these days than the playback side of things. I can remember when microphones sounded as different from one another as speakers still do. Today, the individual sonic character of different condenser microphones is much more subtle than it was just 20 years ago. Even relatively cheap mixing boards/microphone preamps are dead quiet (-127 dB and better) have extremely wide frequency response and lots of overhead. High resolution digital recorders are relatively cheap and make marvelous recordings. Getting a playback system together that can reproduce all that an even modest recording kit can capture will cost several magnitude more than did the recording equipment.

 

I agree with your point here.  I think what @GUTB is putting forth is more like subjectivist audiophile apologia than a rational argument.

 

It doesn't have to sound "accurate", it only has to sound, "good".  And in this dogma, "better" is always going to cost more.  Personally, I find some high end systems make "euphonic soup":  It tastes good, but who knows what's in there?

[Samuel T Cogley]

27 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

I don't think that SQ performance is a monotonically increasing fn of price.

 

It likely is up to a certain hinge point (the $10k figure is reasonable); but after that the function tails off rapidly and is less a function than a spray of points in factor space.

 

And many of those factors are not even aesthetic or ergonomic or reliability... many are BS factors.

 

As an aside, but relevant to the thread, is how tenacious arguments can get about where that "hinge point" is.  While I think your number is in the ball park, there's no shortage of audiophile forum arguments about where that number is.  Some/many people who have spent less predictably think the number is lower (head-fi has countless examples of this), and the other side is generally true as well.

[Samuel T Cogley]

Is all consumerism a form of decadence, or does the price of the item have to cross some line of low or negative price/value ratio before it rises to the level of decadence?

 

Put another way, at what point does gear (including accessories like cables) become more like a bauble and less like an appliance?

[Samuel T Cogley]

7 minutes ago, rando said:

What now crumbles to sand becomes highly valued for leveling the bricks still capable of holding together.  At a high charge for the long, and already highly profited from, stages of processing it into sand.  Yet the average person living in an average house made of good solid original bricks hardly lives at the height of decadence.  They do stand to make an honest dollar on their investment to buoy the next generation above sinking into the sand though.    

 

I read this 5 times, and while it appears to be a level of eloquence so high that it eludes my apparent comparative ignorance, I am nonetheless utterly baffled.

 

But more importantly, it doesn't seem to attempt to answer the questions I asked.