Objectivists/Subjectivists

[firedog]

5 hours ago, esldude said:

The  problem is this isn't the first time I've been told this. I have tried things. So far a waste if time. So forgive me if I've grown tired of " no try this one it's for real."

 

Now if the difference blows me away it had to change the output signal significantly.  Show me the change in the output signal I'll give it more credence.

One of my issues with audiophilia is the language. “Completely different”, “veils lifted”, “dramatic” and other superlatives and extreme language.

If you aren’t talking about something involving speakers, I think these same differences, even when they do exist, are often much smaller than described. A power supply change or a digital source change may have improved your results, but it probably didn’t “totally change” the sound of your system. 
Probably many of these descriptions are dramatic b/c of expectation bias. We all want to hear differences when we buy something, and then we think we hear a much bigger one than there actually is. 

The above makes the discussion tend to extremes, as  they often aren’t credible.Let’s be honest: some of the $500 - $2000 electronic components are very close in performance to each other and even to their much more expensive brethren. In some cases, I’d bet those dramatic differences (or any differences at all) wouldn’t be heard if a non sighted comparison was made. When the measured  output of two components “null out” when tested, it’s hard to continue to argue that one sounds better than the other. 
 

On the other hand, it doesn’t do much good to constantly challenge someone’s subjective results with “did you blind test?”. Most of us can’t properly test or measure at home. We do the best comparisons we can and proceed on the basis of that.  As long as people say “this is what I heard” and not “this is what is happening”, I don’t have a big problem with their anecdotal results. 
I’m also not convinced there are some aspects of audio perception that we don’t know how to measure. I’m guessing that these have something to do with how “natural” or “relaxed” a component sounds. Some components measure well and don’t sound good to us. Now that could be because we generally prefer some kind of euphoric distortion that isn’t being measured, but I’m not convinced that’s all there is to it. Scientific investigation may yet come up with some very small aspect of reproduction that isn’t explicitly known to us but needs to be taken into account. 

[firedog]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Except the challenge being discussed was "Did you blind test?"

 

 @firedog also threw in that most folks can't do a lot of measurements for themselves, and @esldude helpfully responded that volume matching could be done with only a little bother.

 

But yes, folks often do respond to reports of measurements with some version of "Unless you've heard it yourself, it ain't valid." 

Not just measurements. If you don’t have someone interested in helping you test, even a simple blind test isn’t possible in many cases. Furthermore, many systems aren’t configured in a way that enables blind testing. So you just do the best you can-long term comparisons, short term comparisons, etc. 

[firedog]

27 minutes ago, Hugo9000 said:

to take over a niche that seems to be occupied mostly by Blue Jeans cable (their prices seem inflated to me for what you get, but at least they make no bs arguments about their products.  I'll admit I never looked at how much the connectors they use cost, so perhaps the prices are reasonable after all?).

 

I think their prices are reasonable for what you get: custom, well made cables (the make them per order, cut to length,etc. acc'd to your request) that are individually tested to meet spec and the test results are included with your order. Almost no one else does this.