Chris's Objective/Subjective moat seems one-sided

[Currawong]

 

14 hours ago, daverich4 said:

To me, the comments section of Austinpop's review of the EtherRegen comes across as a "Front of the Web Site" version of his "Massively Improve" thread. That is, a one sided viewpoint on a topic with no disagreement allowed. That's fine, Chris wants people to be able to be able to discuss a topic without disagreement. But I noticed that when I took a look at the Objective-Fi discussion of the review we have @Sandyk, @Superdad, @Vortecjr and others rooting around in their discussion. Does the wall between the Subjective and Objective audiophiles only go one way? To be clear, I'm not commenting on the content of the review and the massive (see what I did there?) amount of time it took to put it together, just the way the firewall seems to be working. Or for me, not working. I don't have the electronics background to be able to always follow along with the technical parts of a discussion. I appreciate it when forum members who are knowledgeable in those areas can point/counterpoint on a given topic. I found the discussion on Objective-Fi with the back and forth interesting and informative and the comments on the article itself, once you accept that "everything matters", boring. I hope that doesn't continue forever. My two cents.

 

I don't think that the issue is disagreement, so much as it is about the issues Chris described is post from that thread, which I quoted below. A genuine scientific approach involves making a hypothesis from an observation (in this case, subjective impressions) and testing it. This is completely different to the issues forums have, where a bunch of so-called objectivists try and put people down who don't worship science and disagree with the possibility of anything existing outside their own belief system.

 

When a genuine scientific approach is taken, there is much to learn. For example, I felt that a particular DAC had a slightly warmer presentation, or maybe more bass, than another, during listening comparisons. Going into the measurements, I found a particular pattern in the crosstalk where there was a bump in the bass around certain frequencies that correlated with what I was hearing. Answer found!

 

7 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

My take:  John’s approach of using objective data to try to explain why audiophiles are hearing what they claim to be hearing threatens the attacker’s status as “objectivists”.  I believe it even causes narcissistic injury in the case of the strident, vitriol-spewing segment.

 

John is what an objectivist is supposed to look like.  He finds great interest the claims of subjectivists - but instead of ignoring or mocking what they claim, he puts forth a hypothesis to explain what might be going on.  He then sets out to both prove his hypothesis and solve the problem(s) underlying the subjectivists’ claims.  His success is at the later is proven by the positive reaction of those buying the products he designed.  

 

A narcissist often feels compelled to rip to shreds those who have abilities they wish they had.  They do this to feel better about their own inadequacy.  I would imagine John’s successes cause those inadequacies to be felt more strongly amongst this segment, so tear down they must.  Unlikely UpTone would be singled out if John and Alex were like other manufacturers and not participating in these threads.  

 

To be clear, I’m only taking about a subset of the “objectivist” crowd: the strident, vitriol-spewing segment.  
 

I really wish we had more objectivists like John participating here.  I know there are others and wish they would drown out the mockers spewing objective nonsense.

[Currawong]

On 3/14/2020 at 9:20 PM, daverich4 said:

I never suggested that what you posted was wrong, just pointed out that you were allowed to post a counter argument in an objective thread. And yes, @SuperDad and @Vortecjr did contribute to a BALANCED discussion in an Objective thread, something that is not allowed in a Subjective thread such as the comments section of Austinpops article. 

 

What is a counter argument to something subjective? What is a counter argument to something objective?

 

Much of the problem is that the idea of countering someone's subjective impressions has been to say that their impressions are impossible, or imaginary. As Chris pointed out, a genuine counter-argument would be that someone experienced things differently. Take the Schiit Unison thread. Someone made a post a short while ago saying that the Regen had a negative effect with the Unison USB, whereas it had had a positive effect with the Gen 5. Actually, that's not an argument at all, but a data point. That is real "balance", where people can talk about their experiences.

 

Often the behaviour of many so-called objectivists is irrational. They seem so intent on wanting someone's impressions of a product to not be true, that they will draw upon any argument they can to argue their subjective belief.  That is far removed from actual science. Real science, as I've already pointed out, would be to test hypotheses as to why people have particular impressions, using electronic analysis and measurement.

 

19 hours ago, garrardguy60 said:

Here's my take on how we arrived at this place, with the subjectivists being unable to take the behavior of the objectivists anymore, and the objectivists left unable to understand that the subjectivists no longer wanted to hear the objectivists' take on, for example, cables, even if those takes were correct [and, in the minds of the objectivists, they were and are.]

 

I believe a big reason for the unwelcome commenting behaviors is that people with technical backgrounds find it literally impossible to relate to the profound scientific ignorance [frequently coupled with innumeracy] of the average person. Engineers and scientists look at the whole world through a technical prism; they know no other way; they don't grok normalcy.

 

I posit that's why the comments from the objectivists became ruder and more disruptive as time went by -- it was the objectivists' version of 'shouting louder' at the subjectivists to try to get them to understand.

 

Now, I must emphasize that I don't mean 'scientific ignorance' in the previous paragraph as a pejorative, but as a statement of fact. And I'm not ''accusing' the subjectivists of being ignorant, I'm just saying that's how an engineer or scientist is looking at the situation. I should also be more specific and eschew 'scientific ignorance' [since most people know Darwin, Einstein, etc] and instead narrow the focus to ignorance of electronics, which is really what the objectivists are shouting into the wind about.

 

Not to belabor the point, but I think Chris made the right decision for his business. Even though it now leaves me out in the cold. I originally came to this site by discovering the MQA Vaporware thread, for which Chris should be given kudos for hosting a key community at a key time for discussion of that lossy, lossy encoding scheme.

 

But today, it's pretty clear to me that if 1,100 [or is it 2,200] people will shell out 650 bucks for the recently reviewed accessory, there are a lot more of them [subjectivists] than us. So I see the business sense. I do wonder if long-term traffic could be impacted if a flat-earth ethos infests some of the more technical threads, or, worse, they become concatenations of verbal 'likes' ['yo, that was a great review,' 'yeah, and so long too; you must've worked really hard.'] 

 

Anyway, I will end it here and just add a short close to say that I have tried very hard to not sound critical of this site in any way, because in fact I'm not criticizing it. In rereading this post just now, I see that I've insulted pretty much everybody. I didn't mean to do that, but I guess I have incremented the negative count for the 'o' team.

 

Thanks for listening. [As you also may have guessed, my parens keys are broken; hence the brackets.]
 

 

There are a bunch of underlying assumptions in this post that I believe should be considered. Firstly, the assumption that objectivists takes on things are correct. The attitude that the most obnoxious objectivists I've encountered use is, essentially, that because "it is science" that everything they say is correct, and whenever they mention science, it invalidates any subjective impressions. It seems not to matter if an objectivist has zero qualifications, has never manufactured a product in his (I've never encountered a "her") life, or even done a science experiment outside of high school, "Science" is put forward like "It's God's will". An observation a moderator made on another large audio forum, which parallels my own, is that these people often don't have much money and can't afford fancy audio gear, so they attack people who can.

 

The objectivists "shouting louder" is because people refused to join what amounts to their religion, and they seem to want to ruin peoples' enjoyment of the hobby, not help them enjoy it more. 

 

Like you though, I started spending more time on AS to read the MQA threads. I wanted to understand the technology deeper. But as much as the technical research done by people like mansr helped, it was tiring wading through page after page of back-slapping, congratulatory belittling insults thrown towards MQA supporters. When I was moderating Head-Fi, I stated to many people that technical criticism of technology was totally welcome, but personal attacks against anyone, including manufacturers we not. Time and time again, technical criticism was used to personally attack and insult the owners, often active on the forums, of particular companies.  The issue seemed to be that certain people cannot separate objective criticism, with a subjective desire to denigrate other people. 

 

You mention how "an engineer or scientist is looking at the situation". The good scientists and engineers sure as heck aren't looking at the situation as "This person is an idiot" but either "How can I explain this better to the customer so they understand it" or "Is this something I should look at closer or test to confirm what is going on?". Look at people such as the team from Chord Electronics or Schiit Audio as shining examples of how this is done. This is because scientists, engineers, and so-called science can be wrong and, most importantly, science is almost entirely incomplete. The purpose of science is to develop greater understanding. It is not to belittle people with!

[Currawong]

2 hours ago, John Dyson said:

There are no real sides.  When people don't know their limits, then they don't grow, and they confuse others.

 

This is a very important point. It's really a few noisy people with extreme viewpoints in one direction or another who cause the most fuss. The vast majority, who are not extreme, get put off. The internet is very much like this, where people with extreme beliefs drum up the most division. Since it is tiring to make a lot of effort putting forward sensible discussion in the face of these people, most people give up. 

 

Knowing one's limits are important too. I sometimes get asked why I don't do blind tests in my reviews. I know that the person asking is just trolling, but I always make the points that many of the differences I hear between components took a lot of effort to discern, and either I doubt I'd pass a blind test on them, nor would they matter for most people. That's simply being realistic. Darko recently made a good video about what people new to hi-fi should care about, and what they shouldn't, using his own system and reviews as an example.  I think it did a great job of bridging the gap for those who don't know what is important when starting out. 

[Currawong]

13 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

I like to give people a chance to shoot themselves in the foot.

 

While I'm an admitted hypocrite in writing what I'm about to, as I've done this myself occasionally, I think that this attitude of using the forums to make people you* disagree with look like fools, is unproductive to the conversation. I think it contributed significantly to negating much of what was discovered about MQA in the threads about it, as now people who like MQA consider anyone who posts negatively about it a troll -- on other forums too. This is the very kind of issue about the inability to separate arguments from the people arguing them that is being discussed here. 

 

*And I don't mean "you" specifically, but people in general. I'm saying that this is unproductive, not trying to point fingers at anyone specifically. 

[Currawong]

On 3/24/2020 at 9:16 PM, jabbr said:

If the site were ideally a bar and we were all sitting down for a drink, then I would enjoy having engineers, artists, scientists, composers, writers and others all free to give their own opinion. The weight of the opinion could be valued by what ideas are expressed, rather than the title of the person expressing it.

 

The hardcore objectivists would be the ones drinking water and telling us all that is wrong with beer in passive aggressive tones.

[Currawong]

The irony is that an objective approach to audio is a subjective choice made by the individual.

[Currawong]

On 3/30/2020 at 2:55 AM, kumakuma said:

 

Ahh, the old subjectivist refrain of "you aren't an audiophile because you're an objectivist"...

 

Sorry, but I refuse to let you or anyone else define me or make me feel like a second class citizen because I take a different approach to this hobby.

 

I've never seen anyone write that. The very problem is so-called objectivists trying to make someone else "feel like a second class citizen" by putting out their beliefs as superior, in a manner akin to a religion. 

 

It was especially frustrating in the MQA threads, as if I forgot to bookmark a post with important information, it would take me hours of going through page after page of crap to find it again. Since I've been wanting to make a video about MQA, that alone has put me off.