As was the case with the AQ HDMI video. Dr. Waldrep busted that one wide open.
It really would be a nice experiment to see some cable being brought to market (be it power, interconnects, speaker or ethernet) that by all marketing means from the snake oil toolbox is attributed to blow everything else out of the water by a mile. Every grifting YouTube audio āexpertā to emphasise this. All the fancy word salad BS unproven included. Just louder, more aggressive.
Now the catch: It costs next to nothing. The holy grail for any self acclaimed audiophile for $5,95. Directional arrows included. Factory burn-in (> 20hrs) done. Free shipping. Cardboard cable lifters (DIY) to be made from the package.
So no status, no bragging for semi-deaf Ritchie Rich.
Cannot get off the ground, right?!
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Because what we hear and prefer is the only thing that matters in this hobby, everything else is irrelevant. Thereās no need for scientific proof in this case. Weāre not fighting global warming or a deadly virus here, weāre listening to music. It wonāt get any more subjective than that. Some of us prefer jazz, some rock music. Some prefer tube amps, some prefer solid state amps. Some prefer more bass, some prefer less bass. Some prefer perfectly measuring but crappy sounding gear and think that it canāt get better than this since ASR gave a pink panther for this product.
Measurements are irrelevant in the end. Theyāre good base to check that nothing is broken but thatās it. After that you need to listen. Some, or probably many, prefer the ābrokenā even though it measures worse. Itās all subjective. Thatās the reason why sighted listening test is the only thing that matters. Itās the most real life situation you always have when you sit down on the couch and press play. No one listens blinded at home, our awareness plays always a role in the mix and in the end we always know every single component in our system. Even though we would ABX test the system, when we take the blindfold off itās back to sighted listening and awareness. Itās just waste of time to test in any other way.
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I guess thatās where weāll have to agree to disagree, because I also think itās important to understand why we hear what we hear.
Yes, but awareness of what? Awareness that you paid several thousand dollars for a network switch? Awareness that you have cable lifters that cost more than an average family car? Awareness that you read a great review of an audiophile product so feel like you might be missing out if you donāt have one? This awareness, and associated beliefs, inevitably colour your perception: of what you see; how you feel; and what you hear. This is basic cognitive science, for which there is plenty of objective evidence.
If you genuinely believe that āwhat we hear and prefer is the only thing that mattersā please carry on - itās your hobby, your money, and your enjoyment - but I think itās an intellectually careless path to follow.
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Exactly, awareness of everything Iāve ever heard, read, seen about the different components sets expectations and assumptions of how something might sound. Yet it might sound completely different than what I expected and itās not even unusual for this to happen. Our brain will always do tricks to us and it simply canāt be avoided so better just to accept it.
I will carry on and please let people carry on who prefer subjective approach to this hobby. I just canāt understand the need of forum engineers to come trash these threads with theories and zero personal subjective experience in given subject. Just let people share their experience and opinion, we canāt deny what someone else experiences. Obviously we should also remember that subjective listening experience is always just one persons opinion, nothing more or nothing less.
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Or we can do our best to inform ourselves as to how and why it happens. I can see what youāre saying, but simply saying āoh well, I better just accept that Iām fallible and make the most of itā isnāt how I want to live my life. I would like to be better informed than that.
No, but we can, and I believe should question why they have that experience in the first place.
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āDo router and ethernet cables affect sound quality?ā
No mention, in the title thread, of the evidence base for contributions. If you want a love-in for those who share one perspective then start an appropriately named thread. You could call it āyou show me your expensive cable and Iāll show you mine!ā
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patouskii has already replied. Needless to say that I wholeheartedly agree with the patouskiiās views.
Still, you raise an interesting question, which deserves a considered response.
Letās take your example of Covid-19 vaccines.
How do I know when I can be confident to make the right call? Thatās the epistemological question at the heart of the matter. I think it ultimately boils down to risk assessment and trust. In this particular case, it seems to me that attempting to figure out on my own whether the vaccines work or not represents a risk that Iām not willing to take. So possible fatal consequences clearly outweigh my desire to figure things out on my own. I also have great respect for the international scientific community. And I trust that the various medical boards that greenlight a vaccine know their job and do not intend to harm the population. Hence: Iām fully vaccinated.
Now, when it comes to audiophile passions, thatās a different matter. Here risk assessment doesnāt play a role. What do I risk should I wish to spend thousands of Euros on cables? My bank account may take a dent, but thatās all relative. If I can afford the expenditure, so what? As to trust: some objectivists claim that measurements are practically all that matters. Based on my own experience, I think this is garbage. So my trust in the measurement camp is rather low.
Which means that in the case of audio gear, I privilege my own impressions. That seems to be the rational (and reasonable) way to go. I find it absurd that objectivists tell me to trust their measurements rather than my own ears.
I donāt claim that I have golden ears (I suspect that I donāt) ā but I know what I hear and whether I like it or not.
On a different note, our hobby is so fascinating because it makes for all sorts of eccentric behaviour and preferences. Why would anyone want to put an end to eccentricity and, furthermore, reduce the highly complex interaction between sound and the brain to a few graphs? (I havenāt seen a graph yet that has anything to say about sound stage, dynamic attack, or the feeling that everything about the sound is just right.)
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Itās one way to go, but Iām not sure itās the most rational. Both you and @patouskii seem to be suggesting that we should wholeheartedly embrace some form of philosophical idealism when it comes to listening to music, i.e. that we should reject physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind. I disagree, but my disagreement doesnāt imply that the only alternative is objectivist measurements.
All Iām saying, as I mentioned above, is that I have absolutely no intention of simply privileging my own impressions, because I know that human perceptions are fallible. If youāre happy to ignore that, fine, itās not my problem, and itās not anybody elseās problem in this context. But, as I said, I think itās intellectually careless.
The problem here is that even if I deep down know that something shouldnāt be able to make audible difference in my system and it still does, which is the right way to choose? Do I just religiously believe in theories and studies saying that thereās no difference while Iām hearing clear difference between cable a and b? I could double blind test it and maybe I couldnāt hear the difference in the test, who knows. But immediately when the āblindfoldā comes off and all my senses are in the game, I can once again hear (or should I say sense) the difference. Obviously since this hobby is about enjoyment and listening pleasure (at least for me), I choose my personal experience as ātruthā here. Iāve been at this point several times during my 20+ years journey in hifi.
And yes we can question and try to discover the reasons behind other peopleās experiences but I hate the way people are immediately ridiculed and laughed at when they report that changing a switch made a difference. Instead we should ask why there was a difference.
Many people seem to take this hobby so damn seriously. Everything should be measured in a hobby which aims to listening pleasure, relaxing and enjoyment. Makes zero sense to me. What sounds best to me is what I choose, itās as simple as that.
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Indeed, thatās exactly what we should ask.
Fair enough, thatās your choice, but itās not one that I can make with the same sense of ease. Iāve had various careers during my working life. One of them was teaching undergraduate psychology. During that time I learnt enough about how we perceive the world to approach questions such as this with more scepticism than you feel is warranted. As such I simply canāt accept that my personal experience has sufficient status to count as the only ātruthā I should consider.
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I see your point and itās great we all have our own way to approach this hobby. Mine is clearly simpler approach but itās working great for me and Iām happy where Iām at currently. Journey continues and probably never fully ends.
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History is littered with fascinatingly eccentric behaviour, preferences and theories, many of which have no contemporary status. For example, some early psychologists argued that race was a determinant of intelligence, while the proponents of physiognomy wrote extensively about head shape and personality. Dangerous and pernicious stuff by todayās standards.
Audio is clearly not such a politically or socially relevant topic, but I would argue against theoretical eccentricities in audio for exactly the same reason I would with respect to psychological theory (or theories in any other discipline) ā¦ because theyāre more than likely wrong, unless proved otherwise.
And just let me add, thatās not to say that I want to āreduce the highly complex interaction between sound and the brain to a few graphsā, itās that I want a more nuanced and plausible explanation than āI can hear it so it must be realā.
Thatās the thing though, isnāt it. Of course history is littered with āeccentricā theories that have caused great harm. (Although, as you mention phrenology and race theory ā well, that was underwritten by the āscienceā of the day ā so, if anything, this is a good example to show us that we shouldnāt blindly trust āscienceā).
But with audio gear, the stakes are not that high. When it comes to truth claims, the kind of evidence we call for is domain specific. Letās imagine that someone asks whether youāve seen Fred recently. You answer that you think you last saw him yesterday afternoon, but canāt be too sure. Your friend will not ask you to provide evidence for your claim/ answer or insist that youād better be sure. A few minutes later, though, a police officer asks you the same question. Your answer to your friend wonāt do, because you might be the last person to have seen Fred. So it matters a great deal whether you are indeed sure that you saw him yesterday afternoon (what time exactly?).
In short, the need for evidence for our claims depends very much on the seriousness of the situation. Listening to music is NOT a āseriousā situation, so here the threshold for evidence is low. Someoneās testimony (as long as I believe, after Quine, that the person is both rational and benign) is as good to me as a scientistās categorical denial of what that person actually hears.
However, I will not give hasty credence to what someone says about an audio experience. I will consider it together with the rest of the āevidenceā, and, should I so desire, I will try it out myself.
I side with Aristotle who warned against extremes. To me, objectivists represent one extreme, the others are the golden ears crowd. I try to steer a middle course ā consider the available evidence, and see what I make of it all in a listening test. Thatās what I mean being rational about audio impressions.
Of course, I may be imagining things. I have long been fascinated by the study of delusions (including biases of all sorts). So Iām very much aware of the enormous influence that unconscious biases exert on our decision making and how easily our brains can be fooled. The only way I can see to guard against those biases is 1) be aware of them (but awareness alone doesnāt undo the influence of biases, as numerous tests have shown ā still, itās a good beginning) and 2) consider the literature on the topic (audio gear, or cables as in this thread), which will give you an idea of how probable your impressions are as to their āobjectiveā valueā and 3) spend time with your gear and see what effects it has immediately (if any) or over a longer run (affecting the deep mind) ā (3 is important because, to my mind, measurements donāt give the full picture).
Whatās there to lose? And yes, when it comes to harmless activities, long live eccentricity!
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Everyone knows that green Kawasaki motorcycles are faster than any other colour. Ours is not to reason why.
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I agree with pretty much everything you just said, but this is the point where we part ways ā¦
Someoneās testimony, in this context, doesnāt carry much weight for me given what I know about the fallibility of human perception, but the accepted practice, wisdom and theories of science do. Thatās why I havenāt jumped down the rabbit hole of exotic cables or other bits and pieces of audiophile paraphernalia. That you choose to do so is perfectly fine, but itās not a route I would like to follow.
For me: time, effort, and money, all in the pursuit of (most likely) self-delusion. Different world views, different behaviours.
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I often find myself replying to threads such as this (as I recall doing very early on in this thread), even though I tell myself not to bother because it wonāt change any minds. But I sometimes end up posting in any case thinking about some future person reading the threads that is just learning about all this stuff. If they see threads talking about magical cables, fantastic (yet scientifically impossible) results, etc. and they read not a single counter argument, then they might actually think that such things are accepted facts.
Thatās a long way of saying āwhatās to loseā to me.
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Would you then buy an audio component without actually listening to it? That strikes me as eccentric. I have no problem with that, as I love all things eccentric. But eccentric it surely is.
Would you buy a car without test driving it first? Or a pair of shoes without trying them on first?
Why would it be different for audio components?
Over at audiosciencereview someone posted what seems to me a perfectly reasonable question. He (or she ā but in this business itās usually a he) wondered whether the objectivists all had the same gear ā namely an AHB2 power amplifier coupled to a Topping DAC, as these components measured best. The thread was terminated, on the grounds that it was most likely opened by a troll.
I find this question very interesting. And Iām not a troll. Do objectivists actually buy stuff solely based on measurements and without listening to the component? Because why bother listening ā itās just a waste of time as the objective values are indisputable. And should they think that they prefer other gear, they must surely suffer from one of the numerous biases that the audiophile flesh is heir to.
According to audiosciencereview (although they donāt state this in these terms, but thatās the implicit conclusion one would have to draw) anyone who spends more than 4000 ā¬ on amplifier + DAC is an audiophool. How many audiphools then have posted in this thread? Iād think quite a few.
Why did they kill the thread? I think it hits too close to home. The question is actually a trap. If you answer that you buy gear after listening to it first or that you have spent more than 4000 ā¬, then this means that you donāt entirely trust measurements, which punches a big hole into your argumentative armature. In fact, the hole is so big that your whole objectivist worldview implodes.
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Thatās certainly not the case here. As far as I can see, objectivists outnumber subjectivists.
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A bit too much of it here in my opinion, but youāre correct, thereās WAY, WAY less of it here than at some audio forums.