Get a load of this! I can’t believe I hadn’t come across this yet.
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The writer’s opinion is shared by a lot of people, I believe. But so what? You can either waste your time and breath trying to change peoples’ opinions or spend that time enjoying music. And, whether you trust science and graphs or just your ears, keep striving for the best audio you can realistically get.
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Two things I see in this article.
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the author is pidgeonholing a pretty wide spectrum of enthusiasts (audiophiles).
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the characteristics that the author uses to justify low-key cultism seem (to me) to just describe characteristics of clubhouse elitism in the internet age and can be attributed to most hobbies that require financial investment and knowledge.
There is an incredible amount of snobbery, elitism, and superiority complexes that some folks relish participating in and many that don’t.
But if it truly was a low-key cult, would these pages be filled with cable debates, analog v digital debates? Probably not. It would instead be a doctrine that others must keep in line with. And if people speak up against that doctrine, get lambasted, then drop out, do others really care? Nobody NOBODY cares if someone doesn’t buy a product someone else thinks improves their system or sound reproduction. We seem to be more interested in what other people hear and report, because MOST of us live vicariously through others and their experiences, because we choose not to cycle through everything ourselves—some do, but they are just a small sliver of enthusiasts (audiophiles).
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Got to here.If they at all address [room acoustics], it is to dismiss it as unimportant.
What bulls***
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The link made me smile. The responses made me laugh. It’s entertainment, not science…
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IMO, the author sounds more close-minded and condescending than most audiophiles.
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I only classify a true “audiophile” by the following quote:
“Audiophiles don’t use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.” – Alan Parsons
I take pride in convincing some of my friends that I only do frequency sweeps and play test tones through my system and then wax poetic about how good the test tones sound after upgrading a USB cable. If that makes me part of a cult so be it. At least I’m having fun.
The only sad part is… Almost all non-audiophiles think the special handshake into being part of the “cult” is to spend money. This actually isn’t true. But so many people won’t ask me for advise because they just assume they will end-up with 5 figures budgets, 7 foot tall speakers, a divorce over room treatments and confusing remotes, endless hours burned on “research”, etc. It doesn’t have to be that way… or least I don’t think it does… wait? Maybe my friends have a point 
I don’t like to think of it as a cult. It’s really just a support group.
Audiophiles Anonymous
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Well, that would just be admitting I have a problem. Just because all my disposable income lives in Audio electronics doesn’t directly mean I have a problem.
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Just because all my disposable time lives in Audio doesn’t directly mean I have a problem.
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And how many rooms with kit in now?
Hysterically funny! I love this. As a lifetime audiophile, I can’t have any reaction except that.
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Depends. Without science, none of this would exist. Naturally, people are somewhere on a bell curve
Ah. I meant the linked article is entertainment; the kit should be engineering… 
Ah
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And the definition of an audiophile is an old music listener, which hearing gets worse with the years, so he buys every year more expensive equipment to compensate his hearing loss?
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You lost me at cables. Electrons move from the valence layer of the atom to the valance layer of the next atom at a constant unalterable speed and electrons do not remember where they have been and won’t act chill because you used a different cable. USB audio is not audio at all, it is data and if any of that data were altered via the USB cable, you would get no audio, it would cut out. It won’t affect bass or any other claim, it either will transmit binary data properly in order or it won’t. USB audio has the benefit of being asynchronous which means that it provides it’s own clock and the cable will not change that unless it will not transmit data at all. To reiterate, a USB cable does NOT carry sound, it carries data that will be decoded as sound. Basically avoid anything from monster as you will only pay for looks and a fantasy.
What Alan Parsons was saying was not as much of a compliment as you think, he was implying that you miss some of the value of the music by focusing on equipment too much. Even when he said that, most audiophiles really knew how the equipment worked and many knew electronic theory as well and they knew what is and is not in the audio path in an analog state which most of it was at that point. I was around when he said that.
The word Audiophile has become tarnished badly in the last 30 years and I will no longer wear the label.
You started out and went right into exactly what the author was talking about. Someone who believes that a USB cable which only carries binary data, is going to change the sound signature even though the data is re-clocked in the DAC downstream of it, the ones and zeros will move in the same order with a monster usb cable as a cheap one and it is re-clocked downstream of the cable anyway. This buying into a fantasy while knowing none of the theory of operation is exactly what is wrong with the modern Audiophile community. Have you ever bothered to connect to a scope and use the different cables to see the output of the DAC? We have had the ability to measure better than we can hear since 1958. Seeing your test tones on an oscilloscope would show the same waveform with either cable down to a gnat’s eyebrow and you would only see the result of the DAC output that re-clocked the same data in order with the same precise clock rate from whichever cable, 150hz would still be 150hz and the scope would make very visible any minute difference. The biggest problem with one’s ears is they are connected to the brain that knows that they are trying a different cable. Fundamentally impossible but confirmation bias makes you imagine otherwise.
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The equipment equivalent of
Methinks some posters are taking this far too seriously and can’t tell when they’re having their leg pulled…
… unless it’s me missing the joke?
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