Popular Post ARQuint Posted April 24, 2018 Popular Post Share Posted April 24, 2018 This thread provides an opportunity to comment further on an aspect of the vexed relationship between audio publications and their constituents in online communities—a subject I addressed in an editorial that appears in the current (May/June) issue of The Absolute Sound ("Audiophiles Online: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".) I'm a faithful follower of Computer Audiophile, so I feel I have the right to participate; I'm claiming no special status as an audio writer. The term "shill" has been accurately defined (Wikipedia) as "a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with the person or organization." As so defined, my colleague Steve Stone (or, for that matter, Robert Harley, John Atkinson, or Jason Serinus) is not a "shill", though a few of the less thoughtful participants on CA forums focused on MQA love applying the term to pretty much any industry person with a positive view of the technology. It's a classic ad hominum attack, questioning the motives and integrity of that person. It's noteworthy that the ire directed at MQA at CA has so easily morphed into a contemptuous dismissal of the established magazines. When it comes to assessing audio equipment, these publications, as well as strictly electronic outlets, and even some blogs that are basically one-man shows, all operate on a very well-established protocol. A manufacturer sends a product, a reviewer attempts to understand its design goals and listens to it for a length of time that varies but is always longer and more comprehensive than a non-reviewer customer could expect, and then writes about his conclusions, incorporating a variable mix of objective measurement and subjective impressions that employ a descriptive language developed decades ago in the pioneering "high-end" magazines. In case you haven't noticed, that's what goes on at Computer Audiophile. A professional journalist assesses a product in an informed and disciplined fashion and produces a cogently written piece that intelligent people will want to read. At CA, that obviously means Chris Connaker, though there may be others that CC compensates for producing content for the site. It's not hard to imagine Chris functioning very successfully as a reviewer for TAS or Stereophile—he is technically savvy and writes fluently and entertainingly. Manufacturers seek out CA, as they do Stereophile and TAS because the publication gets them in front of the customer base they need to be in front of, which is a function of the quality of the content. What strikes me as an illogical and contradictory aspect of the bashing of the established publications in several CA forums is the suggestion that the content in the magazines is merely a platform for advertisers—the possibility that hobbyists actually read the magazines for entertainment and informed opinion is dismissed. The irony, of course, is that tens of thousands of people actually pay to subscribe to TAS and Stereophile. To be sure, advertising dollars are necessary to attract decent writers and to make these enterprises at all profitable, but there is a significant base of income that comes from paid subscriptions. Nobody pays to read Computer Audiophile. All the funds needed to sustain Chris C come from advertisers. And that's where you, the enthusiastic, sometimes unbridled, and largely anonymous posters come in. Many enthusiasts come to the site to participate in or just observe the catfights, takedowns, and general mean-girl posturing that informs many of the forum discussions. Did "MQA is Vaporware" need to run 329 pages? Of course not—it became a repetitive, self-congratulatory echo chamber early on—but the number of views were manna for Chris. It's not a surprise to me that CA forums are so lightly edited, compared to the way that noxious reader comments are dealt with on the TAS and Stereophile sites. So, is Chris Connaker a "shill?" By virtue of the fact that he commissioned Archimago's thorough review of the MQA story, one could conclude that, like many in the industry, he's very skeptical of the benefit of the technology for consumers. On the other hand, he doesn't feel the need to ring in on the merits (or lack thereof) of MQA whenever the subject arises. Take Chris's piece last November on the Berkeley Alpha DAC MQA update. At the outset of the piece, Chris felt it was important to state up front that "…this article is neither a referendum on MQA, nor an endorsement or rejection of MQA." A disingenuous straddling of the fence? A look over his shoulder at the advertisers that have decided to include MQA in the design of their products? Later, Chris admitted "Of course I listened to some MQA material through the DAC but I purposely avoided using that in the review. The topic is too loaded and would distract from the real story that is the firmware update." Fair enough. But by passing on an opportunity to give an opinion regarding the effect of a modification to a top-of-the-heap digital product on SQ, was CC responding to the sensibilities of some of the manufacturers that pay the pills at Computer Audiophile—basically what the "MQA is Vaporware" crowd is so vociferously accusing TAS and Stereophile of? No, Chris Connaker is not a shill. But there's a real tension in play with Computer Audiophile. So much of the content is well informed, helpful to readers, and reflects a sense of a generous and inclusive hobbyist community. At the same time, a small number of intemperate and self-important forum participants are generating a lot of the views that Chris Connaker needs to show advertisers. He does need to keep those advertisers convinced that CA is a productive place to engage potential customers. The risk is that his wonderful site is commandeered by a tiny cadre of single-issue individuals who are very much in love with the sound of their own voices. Andrew Quint Senior Writer The Absolute Sound ShawnC, darkmass, daverich4 and 5 others 4 4 Link to comment
Popular Post ARQuint Posted April 25, 2018 Popular Post Share Posted April 25, 2018 Thanks to all of the above posters—genuinely—for these perspectives and the manner in which you chose to present them. Somehow, the same strongly held positions seem more like impassioned principles and less like vitriol when we address each other as individuals rather than as enemy camps. Of which I am not a member, BTW. My topic has never been MQA itself but rather the tone of the discussion it caused. (My only meaningful exposure—that is, not a demo at a dealer or a show—was the three months I had an Aurender A10 in my system for a review. I made the best MQA/non-MQA comparisons I could, coming away with a mildly positive impression. Normally, I listen mostly to high-resolution FLAC and DSF files— downloads and thousands of stereo and multichannel files ripped from SACDs. I don't stream much; probably the most I've ever done was when I had the Aurender.) There have always been obvious fissure lines among enthusiasts, but I'd never seen anything quite like this in my 35 years as a card-carrying audiophile, not even in the earliest days of CD when my magazine played the role of gadfly that Computer Audiophile forums seem to play now, when it comes to MQA. I worry sometimes, in terms of our hobby moving forward. There can't be—shouldn't be—a total rupture with the past. Whichever way MQA goes, I'm thinking the issue may be remembered as a sentinel event in the history of Audiophiledom (as Crenca calls our strange universe), an inflection point in the trajectory of a noble pasttime. Andrew Quint MikeyFresh and HalSF 1 1 Link to comment
Popular Post ARQuint Posted May 2, 2018 Popular Post Share Posted May 2, 2018 I wasn't planning on returning to these fetid waters anytime soon, but emcdade's appearance on the forum (which I'm sure will be brief) was a breath of fresh air and I wanted to affirm, for him, that his read of the situation was spot- on. Yes, the choleric response you got—"What are you doing here?"— tells you all you need to know. This thread (and several others) is not typical for Computer Audiophile, a megaphone for an unwelcoming and xenophobic subculture that has found a place to install itself. It began as a useful nidus for the critical consideration of a technology, but an increasingly assaultive tone has metastasized to attack those, like you, who are astounded by the sheer nastiness of many of the postings. Whether the topic is MQA itself or the devolution of the "discussion" into 14-year-old-boy-style insults directed at manufacturers, audio writers, or other consumers—just look over the last week of postings for invective referencing excrement—the goal is to run you out of town. So, emcdade, don't feel you have to endure this for terribly long; your point has registered. If you examine the postings of some of the most aggressive participants, you'll note that they haven't been members of CA for all that long and that the MQA-bashing threads are pretty much all they are interested in. In my view, Chris Connaker has a problem on his hands—again, the tenor of this thread isn't usual for the site as a whole—and if MQA, the business, has some significantly positive commercial news to reveal shortly, as Chris implies, it's only going to get worse. look&listen, 2veg, Bill Brown and 4 others 6 1 Link to comment
Popular Post ARQuint Posted May 2, 2018 Popular Post Share Posted May 2, 2018 The "blather" part is an opinion you're entitled to. But I assure you that I have no idea who emcdade is. That's pretty paranoid. look&listen, tmtomh and Bill Brown 3 Link to comment
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