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

[esldude]

2 minutes ago, kennyb123 said:

I’m pretty sure that he’s claimed that his years of experience in networking has informed his view that there’s no benefit an audiophile switch can do over any regular switch (my paraphrase - I can dig up quotes if needed).  He’s staked his reputation on this claim.  

And no one has shown otherwise in a credible way.  Customers being satisfied with a product that does something as ephemeral as the Ethergen aren't credible.  

[kennyb123]

1 minute ago, plissken said:

 

Indeed I have. Do you know anyone that will sit and listen to some music without know what switch is in play?

I would do it - providing that I could somehow switch off my innate instinct to feel pressure/stress when test results matter.

[KeenObserver]

15 minutes ago, ARQuint said:

 

It's not supposed to be a backhanded compliment - it's meant to be a regular, standard-issue compliment. It's admirable when you call out ad hominem attacks for what they are.

 

They are not, it seems to me, just an assault on someone's professional worth but an attempt to inflame and provoke. Lavorgna? He's a pretty excitable guy, but Lee S? He's really a gentle and thoughtful person who tried to engage in a serious discussion about the merits of you-know-what, and it took a lot of effort on the part of a dedicated few to get him unhinged enough to emit a bad word. If you'd given the sort of dressing-down to several of the worst bullies at the time that you gave to Plissken here, maybe there could be more discussions that stay useful for longer on any number of controversial subjects. As there are, by the way, on plenty of AS threads.

 

So, by all means, keep up what Cogley and crenca would refer to as "finger-wagging." It's what separates us from the the beasts of the forest.

 

Andy

 

Wow!

 

Is Lee your boss now?

[esldude]

2 minutes ago, rickca said:

Windows and Linux sound different.  I think that's accepted by anyone who has experimented with both.  Tuning either OS can change the sound quality significantly.  None of this stuff has been measured AFAIK.  

 

 

I'm someone who has experimented with it.  And I don't accept it. 

 

One big issue I have is something anyone with a AM radio can try.  See what sort of interference you can pick up with one piece of computer gear.  Now try it on another one with the same OS, but different hardware.  There almost is no relationship.  Yet I'm to believe the same tuning works everywhere? That is stretching ones credulity.  

 

I've put different OS's on the same hardware, and all emit different noise profiles.  Dramatically different. It is simply too chaotic and varied a thing to be able to tune as some claim.  

 

And finally if you hear a difference which is real, the output waveform was changed.  If it has changed in principle and largely in fact it can be measured.  

 

If you are going to take the mystic route, then fine.  Just be aware that is what you are doing. 

[sdolezalek]

Computers and the Internet: They were supposed to give us access to unlimited learning and knowledge.  Those, in turn, were supposed to resolve disputes about facts and knowledge and leave us with little uncertainty.  Instead, the exact opposite has happened. The volume of available information has far surpassed our feeble brains abilities to distill it to useful/reliable knowledge.  The resulting confusion, not clarity, has led us to retreat to tribal systems of belief, where we turn to reinforcement from members of our tribe to give us comfort that our belief is the correct one.  These days it is hard to find any area in which there is a true consensus, never mind universal agreement. Instead, we have vehement disagreement about almost everything, with the very uncertainty that led us to a tribal view emotionally leading us to defend that view with even more force than if it were one we safely had in hand. 

 

My only safe solution: Sit back and listen to the music... 

[rickca]

17 minutes ago, esldude said:

Customers being satisfied with a product that does something as ephemeral as the Ethergen aren't credible.  

So you consider them all delusional.  At least it's clear why both sides are talking past each other.  I value both subjective and objective observations.  

[kennyb123]

3 minutes ago, esldude said:

And no one has shown otherwise in a credible way.  Customers being satisfied with a product that does something as ephemeral as the Ethergen aren't credible.  

And there we have the crux of why our sides are so far apart.  
 

I once worked for a company that had a very simple motto:  “we exist to delight our customers”.  At the end of the day that’s all that really mattered. 
 

An awful lot of people are going to take the opposite view that UpTone has more than demonstrated their credibility by how willing folks have been to spend their hard-earned dollars on a switch that is very expensive relative to the generic switches on the market.  How a product is received by the target market  is viewed by many as an excellent measure of credibility.

 

Had the EtherRegen flopped with their target market, might you have used that as grounds to challenge their credibility?  If so then it’s only fair that it work both ways.

[kennyb123]

42 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

Because Ethernet RJE is heavily isolated it's all transformer coupled at both ends. Also the Ethernet clock is based at 25Mhz. WAAAAY outside of human hearing.  And if I'm doing optics there's no leakage currents. 

 

I've yet to see 60hz mains noise on properly implemented networks. 

 

There is one situation that can cause problems and that is with shielded cabling tied to switch. You can get ground loop hum. UTP is recommended. 

 

You mentioned seeing problems at level 1 only in one particular situation.  Have any of the devices connected to your networks been extra sensitive to noise?  Or has it just been the typical networking gear you’d find in a typical office or data center?

[tapatrick]

9 hours ago, vmartell22 said:

Science is not a belief system

There is plenty of philosophical discussion that science is a belief system...

[tapatrick]

35 minutes ago, sdolezalek said:

These days it is hard to find any area in which there is a true consensus, never mind universal agreement. Instead, we have vehement disagreement about almost everything, with the very uncertainty that led us to a tribal view emotionally leading us to defend that view with even more force than if it were one we safely had in hand. 

Which makes this particular thread in a small way so significant...

[esldude]

40 minutes ago, kennyb123 said:

And there we have the crux of why our sides are so far apart.  
 

I once worked for a company that had a very simple motto:  “we exist to delight our customers”.  At the end of the day that’s all that really mattered. 
 

An awful lot of people are going to take the opposite view that UpTone has more than demonstrated their credibility by how willing folks have been to spend their hard-earned dollars on a switch that is very expensive relative to the generic switches on the market.  How a product is received by the target market  is viewed by many as an excellent measure of credibility.

 

Had the EtherRegen flopped with their target market, might you have used that as grounds to challenge their credibility?  If so then it’s only fair that it work both ways.

Their credibility for marketing to a particular kind of customer and make them happy?  Sure very credible.  Credible in a business sense.

 

That however doesn't automatically make their technical claims worthy or true or credible.  

[firedog]

3 hours ago, ARQuint said:

 

That's clear-eyed, honest, and a breath of fresh air, Chris. Change the word "companies" to "writers" or "magazines" and direct the observation toward a half-dozen or so participants on a very few Audiophile Style forums and you'll be taking an even more principled stand. Manufacturers help keep AS afloat; TAS and Stereophile and Michael Lavorgna and Lee Scoggins and John Darko are merely competitors. Unfounded claims of dishonesty and unethical behavior should be no more acceptable with these targets, even if you disagree vociferously with what they have to say. "…a fear of something, jealousy, or something else at play" ?  I'd say so.

 

Sorry Andrew, false analogy.

 

"The Magazines" and some of the writers insist on repeating corporate claims they know have been shown to be false, or at least extremely dubious. And often with no caveats. The Magazines and the writers are operating in a commercial arena with profit motives. Most individual posters here are not.

 

So I'd say repeating such claims in a magazine is clearly unethical, and in some cases crosses the border into lying. 

[firedog]

1 hour ago, ARQuint said:

He's really a gentle and thoughtful person who tried to engage in a serious discussion about the merits of you-know-whati

Nope. He continually obfuscated, ignored direct questions, quoted marketing speak as fact, opinionated on technical issues he clearly didn't understand, and when specific points of his were successfully challenged - he simply ignored it and created a new argument.

 

I don't think his participation in that particular thread was in any way thoughtful, serious, or in good faith - it was simply (for whatever reason) an attempt at propaganda/influencing.  

[firedog]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

I think that's accepted by anyone who has experimented with both.

No it hasn't been. 

[kennyb123]

2 hours ago, esldude said:

Their credibility for marketing to a particular kind of customer and make them happy?  Sure very credible.  Credible in a business sense.

 

That however doesn't automatically make their technical claims worthy or true or credible.  

 
We are talking past each other because you care only that technical claims can be proven.  I only care that my ears and others whom I trust can confirm the claims that have been made.
 

To ignore completely what users of a product are saying isn’t very scientific.  I hate to be blunt, it seems like a pretty stupid thing to do in the absence of other measures..

 

There’s a ton of data that can be collected from the reported observations from listeners that can help to reach some conclusions. In the real world this is done every day by data scientists who are working with huge sets of data about how we behave.  

Human beings are the ones who will ultimately be deciding whether a products claims hold up.  To toss out all that data - I can’t imagine that such an approach would hold up when presented to any scientific authority who doesn’t already have skin in this particular game.  
 

And lastly I suspect that even if UpTone provided results that conclusively proved their claims, most of those demanding those results would find a way to weasel out of acknowledging it.  The verdict was decided the day these folks first learned about the product.  (And I’m sure the verdict has even already been decided for all the products UpTone hasn’t even announced yet).  Acknowledging that UpTone proved their claims would be the same thing as acknowledging that they were wrong.  Never gonna happen.

[esldude]

42 minutes ago, kennyb123 said:

 
We are talking past each other because you care only that technical claims can be proven.  I only care that my ears and others whom I trust can confirm the claims that have been made.
 

To ignore completely what users of a product are saying isn’t very scientific.  I hate to be blunt, it seems like a pretty stupid thing to do in the absence of other measures..

 

There’s a ton of data that can be collected from the reported observations from listeners that can help to reach some conclusions. In the real world this is done every day by data scientists who are working with huge sets of data about how we behave.  

Human beings are the ones who will ultimately be deciding whether a products claims hold up.  To toss out all that data - I can’t imagine that such an approach would hold up when presented to any scientific authority who doesn’t already have skin in this particular game.  
 

And lastly I suspect that even if UpTone provided results that conclusively proved their claims, most of those demanding those results would find a way to weasel out of acknowledging it.  The verdict was decided the day these folks first learned about the product.  (And I’m sure the verdict has even already been decided for all the products UpTone hasn’t even announced yet).  Acknowledging that UpTone proved their claims would be the same thing as acknowledging that they were wrong.  Never gonna happen.

Your first paragraph sums it up.

 

As for Uptone providing results we'll never know. They don't provide such things. The firmware upgrade discussed was quite comical.

[Iving]

8 hours ago, wgscott said:

 

This is a fundamental asymmetry that I think leads to many of the conflicts we see here.  Taken to the logical extreme, a subjective viewpoint is inherently a statement about its proponents, so any critique of the viewpoint becomes very difficult to separate from a personal attack, from the subjectivist's point of view. 

 

Nice - but (i) the asymmetry is broader than that; and, (ii) this remark could be taken to implicate snowflake sensitivity on the part of the subjectivist!

 

(i) The whole point of empiricism (the objectivist's foundation) - its main virtue - is that it allows agreement based on measurable phenomena. The empirical approach quite deliberately avoids the subjective. Philosophically speaking, the subjective cannot be resolved finally by the empiricist - and the sensible empiricist understands that. This is not to say that subjective phenomena cannot be explained by good science; however, empiricists can never fully contradict subjective experience armed only with empirical data - and shouldn't be terribly concerned to try. I'm sorry if you don't like it - but someone who believes s(he) is Julius Caesar is, irrefutably, Julius Caesar. I have stupidly brandished a hook - and you may or may not care to render me ridiculous. But I have made the point all the same. You may be convinced that I am not hearing what I am hearing - but you would be wrong. And even if you are satisfied to consider me mad - you could be wrong about that too. On the other hand, the subjectivist could join the empirical venture usefully as long as the subjectivist recognised the rules and limitations of the empirical approach (any given empirical paradigm doesn't tell the whole story unless it demonstrably does so). Thus - the asymmetry is one of pointlessness if not arrogance.

 

(ii) a. My limited forum experience doesn't compel me to find objectivists any less personally sensitive (or egotistical) than subjectivists.

 

(ii) b. Call me a rationalist or anything else you like. I shan't care.

 

For my own part - any worthwhile "truth" lies somewhere between the objective and the subjective and may be arrived at through both empirical and rational (even revelatory) routes. A collegiate (and preferably friendly) approach amongst us could get us somewhere useful (higher-octane musical thrills for all, say). War for its own sake (being right as an individual combined with an unfathomable willingness to escalate the cause) is (meaningless and) a lose-lose game (I can look outside my window to see the carnage). "Live and let live" (I can look to myself - all of us can do it) is a better fitting mantra for our age.

[Iving]

7 hours ago, Graham Luke said:

OR....you can just NOT read the offensive and opinionated garbage in the first place.

This argument reminds me of people who LIVE on social media and then whine and cry when someone writes something nasty about them.

For f**** sake...

 

But we are all reading the garbage 'cos it's better than watching TV.

[Iving]

7 hours ago, plissken said:

 

Can't win for losing here folks.

 

 

The videos you posted on the Cisco thread were appreciated deeply by me.

[Iving]

5 hours ago, esldude said:

Customers being satisfied with a product that does something as ephemeral as the Ethergen aren't credible.  

 

They are to themselves (and consistently so unless they are dirty fickle rats).

[firedog]

1 hour ago, kennyb123 said:

In the real world this is done every day by data scientists who are working with huge sets of data about how we behave.  

And this has nothing to do with the topic under discussion. What is acceptable as an "observation" in one situation isn't in another. Experimental design matters. 

 

And btw, how about the "sets of data" showing how all human beings are subject to expectation bias, and specifically in audio comparisons?

 

Did you go the link posted above from Harman about expectation bias?

 

Did you happen to see the recent experiment showing that users perception of loudness changed acc'd to the color of the loudness knob? The actual volume didn't change, only the color of the knob. Yet users reported certain colors had louder volume, and others has softer volume. 
 

Until subjectivists are willing to acknowledge the role of expectation bias, there isn't much hope for this discussion. That's the big truth being ignored here.
Just because 200 or a thousand users of a product report they heard something in sighted listening, it doesn't prove anything. The number of people reporting it isn't relevant. Each one is an individual reporting under conditions of expectation bias - their collective biases don't make each individual response more accurate. 

[Jud]

7 hours ago, plissken said:

 

Jud, your acting like this is going to end up somewhere in courthouse. So based on your conjecture I can't be sure you really know anything or not. 

 

One justice is expensive. Two it's not worth going to court over. Three what the heck is a manufacturer going to provide as proof of the efficacy of their products in this niche? And if they have it, it would already be incorporated into their marketing and spec pages.  

 

Where's my downside? If answering this question constitutes free legal advice I understand you not wanting to give the $$ away 🙂

 

Except of course I'm not talking about court. That's where tools to determine whether people know what they're talking about or not have been finely developed over centuries, but those tools are just a natural outgrowth of what we use every day.

 

What I'm saying in simple terms is that your willingness to make confident statements about all kinds of topics makes it difficult for me to determine whether you really are knowledgeable about many of them.

[Nikhil]

Quote

How many forum threads on this site (and others) devolve into heated exchanges about whether people actually hear what they say they hear? Without “proof”, listeners are often mocked, insulted and their experiences discredited.

 

This thread is following the script exactly as described.

 

That aside thanks @joelha for a really nice article that appeals to reason.

But as can be seen that is something that is far too difficult to achieve. 

 

 

.

[Jud]

6 hours ago, esldude said:

And no one has shown otherwise in a credible way.  Customers being satisfied with a product that does something as ephemeral as the Ethergen aren't credible.  

 

Which is fine, and I've said as much in the EtherREGEN thread.

 

I'm happy with mine. Why should I need anyone else or even myself to believe I'm right in order to be happy? And why should anyone else have a need to prove I should not be?

 

The company was absolutely up front with the information that the product was based on hypotheses/speculations for which no tests had been done, and anyone who bought the product was also well aware there are many people familiar with this general class of product who firmly state it cannot do what the manufacturer states they believe it does.

 

There is a point at which repeating to people the item cannot work simply becomes obnoxious, and many (though assuredly not yourself) have passed that point.

 

I don't think Synergistic Audio's stuff works. I've explained why a couple of times. But I don't feel a need to get in the face of everyone who I think is wasting money on their products. I know I won't succeed in convincing them, so why be obnoxious?

 

And there are also folks who feel a consistent need to say their personal listening pleasure means others must be wrong. Why isn't enjoying yourself enough? Why be obnoxious?

 

It appears some folks either take pleasure in arguments or putdowns, or just can't help themselves. I'm not here for that.

 

I'm certainly here to learn and be informed by people who are willing to do so in a manner that reflects joy and a generosity of spirit, and luckily there are many people here willing to do that.

[pkane2001]

41 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Which is fine, and I've said as much in the EtherREGEN thread.

 

I'm happy with mine. Why should I need anyone else or even myself to believe I'm right in order to be happy? And why should anyone else have a need to prove I should not be?

 

Ha! So it's all about you then?  How about what I need to be happy? I need audio manufacturers to really try to improve the SOTA, to innovate in the space that actually makes a real and not imagined difference. Instead, I keep running into new products around better cables, de-crapifiers to de-crapify something that doesn't have any crap, and designer fuses with beeswax. I fondly remember the days when manufacturers really tried to build a better mouse trap. But hey, I guess I'm just an angry and bitter person, like Kennyb said Make Audio Great Again!!!  Ooops! No political agenda intended, sorry...