Article: Guest Editorial: Why did audio stop being about audio?

[The Computer Audiophile]

40 minutes ago, Archimago said:

"This is audio folks. Whether I think I hear something or not isn’t that important. If my audio assessment matters that much to you, I’m guessing you’re anti-religion and/or anti-God. That’s fine."

 

Yeah, I'd second/third/forth the suggestions by others that religion and audio preferences as rather separate. I know of audiophiles who are objective and religious (perhaps even yours truly 😉).

 

The key for me when it comes to hardware adjudication is the fact that audio equipment is built on scientific principles, and designed with engineering principles in mind. While any one of us can speak of what "sounds good to me" subjectively, there is no doubt the existence of an important correlation with physical properties that can be measured and evaluated objectively helping us appreciate the concept of "fidelity" in the product.

 

Impossible to not think about science/engineering whenever a product reads and converts digital to analogue for example. Likewise, all the scientific principles that have to go into properly reproducing vinyl (eg. tonearm geometries, capacitance, quality of RIAA EQ in the preamp...).

 

Good to find balance.

Hi Archimago - I love your closing line - good to find balance. 

 

How do you rationalize the fact that people get so heated about another's opinion. It can go both ways, objective <> subjective, but for now let's focus on the objective attacks toward subjective opinions. It just seems like something else is at play when people fall all over themselves to make points that often aren't invited.

 

[Ralf11]

12 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

A speaker with a linear phase crossover will have a natural frequency response peak that can be ameliorated but not altogether avoided. Which measurement is better sounding, linear phase or flatter frequency response?

 

I just go with the tests done by JBL/Harmon.

[Marcin_gps]

Great post @joelha

 

I agree with you. Unfortunately the disease spread to other areas, not just our hobby, altough I have to admit that hi-end audio is heavily stigmatized - mostly from people who do not understand it nor did experience it. 

 

Best regards, 

Marcin

[whell]

“Why did audio stop being about audio?”

 

Probably around the same time for some folks that listening to music started  being more about listening to their gear, and obsessing about what they think they might be missing, not doing right, not having the latest and greatest new piece of gear, etc.  

 

Couple the insecurity that might flow from that obsession with the relative anonymity of the internet providing a forum for the obsessed to exercise their demons, and things can sometimes get nasty.

 

That said, I think it’s the relative few that derail discussions or engage in attacks.  Most folks come to audio web sites as lurkers.  Some choose to engage in the forums and a smaller number engage more frequently.  So, it’s the relative minority that cross the line into incivility.  But when they do cross that line, their comments seem to get an inordinate amount of attention. 
 

So, it’s not all bad, and most of what I read here and elsewhere is pretty darn educational, or at the very least an interesting read.  
 

Thanks for the editorial.  And an extra thanks to those who engage in civil discourse here and elsewhere.

[tapatrick]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Great post Jud. So true in every way.

 

P.S. I listened to a Gerry Spence audiobook on CD when driving across the country in college. What a story teller and great mind. 

To date the best post I’ve read on AS. Thanks Jud 😊

[rando]

That was enjoyably short and to the point.  Timely too, invoking the reason for the season.  What I especially enjoyed was questioning not whether any one of us personally feel called to god, but to behave like one.

 

[Rt66indierock]

Joel,

 

I just got back from the Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society's annual gala. Most of raffle prizes were expensive cables and other items of questionable value. 

 

I believe you are wrong. The people trying to push  snake oil on audiophiles will not go away quietly. And if they don't go away the industry will die.

 

Maybe your memory is selective there was a lot anger in the past. I avoided audiophiles in the 70's., 80's, 90's, 00's and 10's for that reason.

[emcdade]

44 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

For measurements, it is not clear to me that there is a set of practical measurements a consumer can look to that determines that the SQ of one good DAC, pre-amp or amp is better than another.  For speakers, yes.  I am also not saying that there is not a set of such measurements that can be made.  And, there are nice looking tube amps from one of the suspect countries that that distort badly.

 

For listening tests, they are not the horrible time-eater that they are made out to be.  They are quite easy and require only a willing 2nd person -- and a wife or gf is often delighted to debunk your hearing claims.

 

Science is not a belief system, and comments to that effect above are not correct.

 

For religion, I like to "ride side-saddle on the golden calf"

Measurements of speakers falls into the same camp for me of:  the measurements only correlate to part of the experience.

 

A Martin Logan Electrostat may measure flat as can be across it's frequency response the same as a dynamic driver speaker could, identically even.  But the way ESL's present the music with their technology is so fundamentally different that it ends up being a completely different experience altogether, despite an identical tonal balance.

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

The people trying to push  snake oil on audiophiles will not go away quietly. And if they don't go away the industry will die.

I don't believe that causal relationship is supported by any data.

[joelha]

1 hour ago, Archimago said:

"I know of audiophiles who are objective and religious (perhaps even yours truly 😉)."

 

I agree and never suggested otherwise.

1 hour ago, Archimago said:

Impossible to not think about science/engineering whenever a product reads and converts digital to analogue for example. Likewise, all the scientific principles that have to go into properly reproducing vinyl (eg. tonearm geometries, capacitance, quality of RIAA EQ in the preamp...).

I agree here as well and, again, I never suggested otherwise. As Chris asks in a later post, the issue isn't whether science should be applied, it's how emotional people become about advocating for the scientific assessment of a product and how personal they can be about the opinions of others that are only subjective.

 

For those who become inappropriate, I believe an anti-religious bias is at play for reasons I've already mentioned in my OP.

 

My article was not written to address those who are respectful as they invoke science to make their arguments.

 

Joel

 

 

[joelha]

13 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

Joel,

 

I just got back from the Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society's annual gala. Most of raffle prizes were expensive cables and other items of questionable value. 

 

I believe you are wrong. The people trying to push  snake oil on audiophiles will not go away quietly. And if they don't go away the industry will die.

 

Maybe your memory is selective there was a lot anger in the past. I avoided audiophiles in the 70's., 80's, 90's, 00's and 10's for that reason.

If there was that much anger in the past, Rt66indierock, more's the pity.

 

The people pushing expensive snake oil have something far more difficult to contend with than inappropriate comments on audio forums.

 

They have to exist in a shrinking audio market.

 

Our comments won't push them away, the market will.

 

Inappropriate comments stand a far better chance of pushing us away from each other.

 

Joel

[HiFiHeard]

Such an interesting discussion and I couldn't help but sign up just to join this community and partake in the banter.

1. Just like any other passionate hobby, you have tribalism (Mustang vs Camaro, 911 vs Corvette, digital vs vinyl) where we conflate our self identity with the things we consume. This I think is completely normal because it is one of the defining characteristics that drive human survival (seeking like minded individuals to form stronger teams). 

2. The key to avoiding toxicity is respecting the others' tribal choice (exotic cables vs amazon specials), but the problem arises when we have evangelism: where an individual or group seeks to establish absolute positions like "I'm right, you're wrong", in lieu of "I like this, and it's OK if you don't like it."

4. Or worse, we are unable to separate unimportant hobbies (home audio) with the truly important tribalism issues that affect our society (vaxxers vs anti-vaxxers). And so toxicity ensues because certain posters elevate the importance of the discussion from "let's agree to disagree" to "my sanity requires that I change your mind."

[Archimago]

49 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Archimago - I love your closing line - good to find balance. 

 

How do you rationalize the fact that people get so heated about another's opinion. It can go both ways, objective <> subjective, but for now let's focus on the objective attacks toward subjective opinions. It just seems like something else is at play when people fall all over themselves to make points that often aren't invited.

 

 

Hi Chris,

Yeah. I think there's a bit we can say about this. It's complicated isn't it when things get emotional and "attacks" happen, that's the issue. Sounds like a good blog discussion topic at some point 😁.

 

[DuckToller]

Dear Joel,
Audio and Religion, can you compare the antagonism of Religious and Agnostic (science?) with Subjectivists and Objectivists?
I think not, here is why:

I feel that the discussion about Religion has far more dimensions in its fabric than science does know as of today.
It has a dark history of power, mobster mentality, betrayal, domination, influence, revenge, racism and genocide, just to name a view and a pleasant reality of forgiveness, self-empowerment, solidarity, love, determination, education and hope on the other side of the balance. Nearly everyone has been touched by presence or absence of Religion in one way or another, and it may have been different for any two person in a room.
The reality is, the administrators of Religion are still in the game for power, influence and money, and the name of God is used in so many different languages and Religions to punish the agnostics or the ones to be dominated/repressed due to ethnicity, skin color, gender or sexual orientation, that it (imho) cannot be held as antithesis of science or be compared with dualism of objective/subjective. Belief, maybe, Religion not.
I respect everyone who has profited personally from his/her beliefs to any kind of Religion, as long as they accept that Religion with its peculiarity in society is a monster in need to be tamed (for most), as the benefits have never been globally or socially evenly distributed, but offered gains only for individuals or for some hierarchical structured organizations like churches. And that his/her experience are personal and may be different for me and others. That is what I call tolerance.
I am personally convinced (I believe) that science relies on some fundamental principles that are valid for (almost) everyone. And as a person, I may have the right to subjectively dislike that or feel different, which just doesn't make me immune to the existence of gravity when I am standing on a mountain top ...

Where I totally agree with you Joel, is that even I know that I am correct in a "scientific" way, I need to acknowledge that my opponent does not criticize me personally because he has a different way of regarding/hearing the things (under which bias ever). This works in the other direction as well. So far for the communication I'd wish for in our forums.
In recent times we undoubtedly are in need to grow more skin to resist the impact of often unfounded critic that targets us only for just having found a target.

I see as well that we are acting members of a changing industry, where investment interest often play an important role, which to a certain extent impacts the behavior of company representatives and their strategic decisions concerning their products. May it be half baked products, fake marketing promises and quality issues packed in nice promises about an update that never arrives.

With the distribution channels changing from the decried old and personal HiFi shop experience, places we visited to talk with other enthusiasts and experts, towards online marketplaces and big electronic stores with just the same range of goods in every other city, be it Pacific or Atlantic division, the marketing activities have changed their character and faces.

Imagine you have received a bad product and the company behind starts playing the game improperly, decries unfair treatment, bad testing scenarios or let you feel its industry related power if you want to publish a less than mediocre experience about one of their products, then you know that this is a hobby, where lots of people hold different kind of stakes in. And a serious business. We usually say then, we pay with our customer satisfaction and vote with our wallets, though it might cost us a bit more than we wish for - especially in the high end sector.
Even this picture is not really a desirable development, it is far away from the mobster mentality of the Religion business.

Stay tuned, Tom

[Rt66indierock]

29 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I don't believe that causal relationship is supported by any data.

 

Give me ten British  Audiophile Companies.

[Archimago]

28 minutes ago, joelha said:

 

I agree and never suggested otherwise.

I agree here as well and, again, I never suggested otherwise. As Chris asks in a later post, the issue isn't whether science should be applied, it's how emotional people become about advocating for the scientific assessment of a product and how personal they can be about the opinions of others that are only subjective.

 

For those who become inappropriate, I believe an anti-religious bias is at play for reasons I've already mentioned in my OP.

 

My article was not written to address those who are respectful as they invoke science to make their arguments.

 

Joel

 

 

 

Hmmm, hang on @joelha, I'm just not sure who you're talking about when you said this:

 

"Allowing audiophiles to post their subjective conclusions without proof brings them one step closer to accepting those who relate their religious experiences without proof. For them, science is god and a subjective conclusion upends their god and belief system. They fight hard so that doesn’t happen."

 

Who are the "they" in this excerpt? Who are these "religious objective" people who worship this scientific "god"?

 

Rather than looking at objective-leaning audiophiles as religious themselves or anti-religious as to desecrate the subjectivists' god, what about simply the idea that objective people get emotional and could fight hard at times because they have concerns about lies as it pertains to things that were engineered by humans using scientific principles? Since we're not naive to how the world works, one has to admit that advertising departments exist to create emotional impressions and sales people lie simply because there is/might be a financial motive.

 

To me, much of the emotional force coming from the objective camp is more about recognition of money and psychological factors rather than any religious/spiritual dimension...

[emcdade]

I think that some portion of it is the wealth inequality gap and the overall discontent that breeds. 

 

When people see others discussing HiFi gear (say $600 network switches) that they will never have the disposable income to buy, it feels good to "take that guy down a peg".  Armed with double blind test results often from decades ago, away they go at telling him his cables/dac/amp etc. are all a giant rip-off.  They derive great satisfaction that blind tests and measurements say that their $9 Apple dongle DAC would be indistinguishable from a $100,000 DCS stack.

 

There is a great article in this month's Stereophile by Jim Austin called "Slow Listening"  that discusses scientific research about the brain's actual bandwith to process incoming data, and how great a liability this could be under a typical blind audio test.  I highly recommend it those in either camp.  

 

As long as a double blind test is considered to be the only valid method of proving sonic differences in objectivist's eyes, the debate will rage on and it will continue to be used as a cudgel against all opposition.  I suspect someday we will understand exactly why these double blind tests often fail to uncover the differences that are exposed under long term casual listening.

[joelha]

7 minutes ago, DuckToller said:

Where I totally agree with you Joel, is that even I know that I am correct in a "scientific" way, I need to acknowledge that my opponent does not criticize me personally because he has a different way of regarding/hearing the things (under which bias ever). This works in the other direction as well. So far for the communication I'd wish for in our forums.
In recent times we undoubtedly are in need to grow more skin to resist the impact of often unfounded critic that targets us only for just having found a target.
 

Tom,

 

If we agree on the above, that's good enough for me.

 

My only reason for mentioning religion was to try to explain the reason some people become inappropriate as they advocate for their objectivist views. That's it.

 

Thanks for taking so much time to create your post.

 

Joel

[joelha]

8 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

Hmmm, hang on @joelha, I'm just not sure who you're talking about when you said this:

 

"Allowing audiophiles to post their subjective conclusions without proof brings them one step closer to accepting those who relate their religious experiences without proof. For them, science is god and a subjective conclusion upends their god and belief system. They fight hard so that doesn’t happen."

 

Who are the "they" in this excerpt? Who are these "religious objective" people who worship this scientific "god"?

Archimago,

 

You're taking one part of my article out of context. But I'm glad you asked the question.

 

The "they" are not only objectivists but the inappropriate objectivists.

 

"Emotional force" is fine. Attacking others personally isn't.

 

That's the "they" I'm talking about.

 

Joel

[Rt66indierock]

25 minutes ago, joelha said:

If there was that much anger in the past, Rt66indierock, more's the pity.

 

The people pushing expensive snake oil have something far more difficult to contend with than inappropriate comments on audio forums.

 

They have to exist in a shrinking audio market.

 

Our comments won't push them away, the market will.

 

Inappropriate comments stand a far better chance of pushing us away from each other.

 

Joel

 

Inappropriate comments are  the cost of weaning people from authority figures in audio. It will die down as authority figures are seen for they truly are salesman. The same pattern occurred in golf and things have calmed down. 

 

The market doesn't have to shrink.

 

 

[joelha]

2 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Inappropriate comments are  the cost of weaning people from authority figures in audio. It will die down as authority figures are seen for they truly are salesman. The same pattern occurred in golf and things have calmed down. 

 

The market doesn't have to shrink.

 

 

By your own statement, that's not happening in our industry, Rt66indierock.

 

If you say there was a lot of anger since the 70's, the anger proposition doesn't seem to be working or is working way too slowly.

 

I'd rather have some of the bad players out there in the industry and a friendlier overall environment.

 

If you want to disagree, you can have the last word as I've made my point.

 

Joel

[The Computer Audiophile]

40 minutes ago, HiFiHeard said:

Such an interesting discussion and I couldn't help but sign up just to join this community and partake in the banter.

1. Just like any other passionate hobby, you have tribalism (Mustang vs Camaro, 911 vs Corvette, digital vs vinyl) where we conflate our self identity with the things we consume. This I think is completely normal because it is one of the defining characteristics that drive human survival (seeking like minded individuals to form stronger teams). 

2. The key to avoiding toxicity is respecting the others' tribal choice (exotic cables vs amazon specials), but the problem arises when we have evangelism: where an individual or group seeks to establish absolute positions like "I'm right, you're wrong", in lieu of "I like this, and it's OK if you don't like it."

4. Or worse, we are unable to separate unimportant hobbies (home audio) with the truly important tribalism issues that affect our society (vaxxers vs anti-vaxxers). And so toxicity ensues because certain posters elevate the importance of the discussion from "let's agree to disagree" to "my sanity requires that I change your mind."

 

Well stated HFH. Your 4th point is the best. Thanks for joining the community.

 

 

 

22 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Give me ten British  Audiophile Companies.

 

Even if I couldn't give you one, you haven't established the causal relationship between snake oil and a declining HiFi industry. You're taking the current facts, and imposing your unsupported reasoning on how we got here. 

 

 

 

21 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

Hmmm, hang on @joelha, I'm just not sure who you're talking about when you said this:

 

"Allowing audiophiles to post their subjective conclusions without proof brings them one step closer to accepting those who relate their religious experiences without proof. For them, science is god and a subjective conclusion upends their god and belief system. They fight hard so that doesn’t happen."

 

Who are the "they" in this excerpt? Who are these "religious objective" people who worship this scientific "god"?

 

Rather than looking at objective-leaning audiophiles as religious themselves or anti-religious as to desecrate the subjectivists' god, what about simply the idea that objective people get emotional and could fight hard at times because they have concerns about lies as it pertains to things that were engineered by humans using scientific principles? Since we're not naive to how the world works, one has to admit that advertising departments exist to create emotional impressions and sales people lie simply because there is/might be a financial motive.

 

To me, much of the emotional force coming from the objective camp is more about recognition of money and psychological factors rather than any religious/spiritual dimension...

 

Very interesting Archimago. Honest questions:

 

Is there a larger "problem" if the objective people don't fight hard? In other words, what happens if they let a conversation go with people believing what they want? Will science eventually be relegated to second class? Or something completely different?

 

I believe fear is a strong motivator for both the sub and obj groups. Objectives > Fear of attacks on science (end result unknown to me) and Subjectives > fear of losing a hobby or source of enjoyment. I don't believe either is rational, but that's just me.

[Middy]

Thanks for a thought provoking editorial.

 

I wouldnt even ascribe to any religious connotation but it is apt in this context of music. 

We come here for community and find community within community with like minded souls. We want to share our beliefs and become a greater sum of that shared experience.

Community is safe and sheltering. We forget this and tribalism comes to the forefront to protect us and our friends. 

Swap music for any subject and the same result applies.

 

I come here more for the people, in general, nice, funny, intelligent people who love audio and all that entails.

 

The price for this is a sea of opinion the web has given us.... a Pandoras box with a linear power supply upgrade.

This is a family by choice not chance but even a divided family is family all the same. We are more a like ..a common truism in life, remember that before fixing some post in anger full of bile. 

Audio brings us together so we can enact what makes us feel human, sharing, learning, helping, laughing, guiding. 

Yes there is the bad and the herd protects in the main. But i have learned probably more about people than audio.

 

Have a lovely audiophile holiday in style. 

I will now slaughter the fatted wallet at the alter of expensive fuses..

 

Sincerely 

Middy 

Aka David

 

Ps anyone with just a smartphone thinks all of us are nuts. There are more of them so think on that...

 

 

[plissken]

41 minutes ago, emcdade said:

They derive great satisfaction that blind tests and measurements say that their $9 Apple dongle DAC would be indistinguishable from a $100,000 DCS stack.

 

I'm super interested where you read that at. Please post a link.

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

I'm super interested where you read that at. Please post a link.

I believe it was used for illustrative purposes of the absurd levels some people go to.