Chris's Objective/Subjective moat seems one-sided

[sb6]

I'm more of an observer on this forum and very much appreciate all the information including the technical info (I was a EE/BME Tech and MIS admin some years back, still into computers as I work for a lead OEM) and all the opinions (long time audiophile with 30+ years in the hobby on and off + an amateur musician). Overall I appreciate the ability to click a link and have copious computer gear reviews and discussions readily available since I / we can't demo every piece of gear and I thank Chris and all contributors for that. However, every site has its own culture of dialogue, this site embraces a culture of threads akin to, "A novel way to massively improve your ..." based on individual's tweaking with little to no engineering data.

 

The engineering part of me finds the pervasive personal inconsistencies as garbage data yet the audiophile in me says, hey, if x# of people agree that this cable or this PSU sounds warm/thin/<add descriptor here> there must be some truth in hearing, a human commonality we all have (in our youth humans hear ~20 - 20KHz). And yes, I know about psycho acoustics, system synergy, individual preferences and plain old human emotional subjectivity. However, as already discussed above, it's difficult to have it both ways. We're not talking about reviewing pancakes, we're talking about two extremes - our attempt to achieve the best recreation of an art form - music which is only possible via high quality engineering, science. 

 

What to do? I've learned to mostly keep quiet as to not be perceived as a troll, a non - contributor or worse be banned. I learned that lesson at Amir's site when I questioned his plethora of data coupled with his healthy dose of sarcasm along with tons of members' insults hurled at anyone questioning anything data - based. Ultimately and surprising to me, I was banned. I would encourage those that post extreme positions like the "massive" improvements from switches, cables etc., for example to do so with a disclaimer of sorts since one person's massive improvement is another's nothing burger. On the other side of the coin, while measurements and specs are important I don't believe they relay everything humans can hear, not yet at least, so be open to new information and not closed - minded in your audiophile journey to sonic perfection.

 

FWIW - in all my years of tweaking I'd say about 70% of the time my purchases yielded sonic improvements close to or exactly as reviewed / discussed. With that success rate, I'll be glad to continue to listen and contribute every now and again. Happy Listening! 

 

 

[sb6]

What I try to do to when providing a software and / or hardware assessment is to include as much relevant detail as possible so a baseline can be established making the assessment more meaningful. I also try to A/B with the help of a kid or the wife when at all possible. Posting, "I tried gadget X and it sounds great!" is useless in and of itself. Devil's in the details as they say...