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Audiophilia - From skeptic to believer

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PERFECT SOUND SYSTEM!

Es, you are doomed to failure from the start. Such a thing cannot be constructed!
 
Paulhoff said:
There first sign that it is all in you head and not real, if it was real you wouldn't have to tweak it again. But I think you will not understand that, because I couldn't get my friend to understand that either, and all he did for 25 years was tweak the wire. Oh it is OK now, he would say and then, oh no it isn't OK, tweak again and again and again. You guys just don't get it that ii is all in you head.

Paul

:) :) :)
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It's because the ears/brain improves and gets more sensitive.
Why does a pro athlete keep practicing if he was satisfied with his level a week ago? Skeptics can't understand it because they are just watching out the window of their little box.

calebprime said:
After a long stretch listening to synths in my studio, I went out to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall.

That big soundstage! The highs on the strings--they absolutely shimmered! The occasional clam in the brass! The amazing 1024-bit reverb! The incredibly life-like simulation of an old lady unwrapping her candy! The amazing speech-synthesis of yokels yakking!

All so incredibly...real.

After being shut up in a padded studio for a long time, everything sounded like it was a simulation--an incredibly high-fidelity simulation.
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For skeptics their old radio and real life sounds the same.
 
JonnyFive said:
So there is no cost you wouldn't be willing to pay in order to tweak a minor annoyance? Am I reading you correctly on that? (given that you've probably spent more on cables than I did on a brand new car, I'm guessing I am)
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My tweaking didn't cost me a thing because I already had the materials. I just had to optimize my system to get the best sound for as little as possible. The last thing I want is spending more on my system.
 
ExtremeSkeptic said:
My tweaking didn't cost me a thing because I already had the materials. I just had to optimize my system to get the best sound for as little as possible. The last thing I want is spending more on my system.
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Ah, I see. I thought by "tweaking" you meant "buying more stuff." My mistake.
 
ExtremeSkeptic said:
It's because the ears/brain improves and gets more sensitive.
Why does a pro athlete keep practicing if he was satisfied with his level a week ago? Skeptics can't understand it because they are just watching out the window of their little box.


For skeptics their old radio and real life sounds the same.
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When you start trying to use the word "skeptic" as though it were an insult, you need to stop and take a hard look at yourself.

Now, let's be realistic for a moment... I know it will be hard for you, but give it an honest try. There are absolute limits to the range and sensitivity of human hearing. Your ears and brain don't improve indefinitely. At some point, probably about $15,000 ago, your ears got about as sensitive as they are going to get. At some point, the "flaws" in the sound you are hearing are just imaginary. Think about all the money you have spent... don't you feel cheated yet? Normal people spend a couple of hundred bucks and are perfectly happy with what they get. Even people like me, who tend to overdo things, don't spend more than a few thousand on the entire home entertainment package, and we're incredibly happy. Don't you feel like you are missing out on that feeling?

About the athletes and practice: they don't have to keep raising the basket in basketball, because athletes practice to the point that they are jumping over it.
 
Jeff Corey said:
Absolutely not. In fact, after the age of 18, people start suffering a gradual hearing loss. This is called presbycusis, you should look it up.
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I was in a band of that name, once. We had an A in there, though - presbyacusis. Seems to be an alternate spelling?
 
Jeff Corey said:
Absolutely not. In fact, after the age of 18, people start suffering a gradual hearing loss. This is called presbycusis, you should look it up.
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So you are saying a 20 year old beginner is better than a 50 year old pro. It's like car racing, the pro can drive a slower car and still win if he has optimized the driving technique. While the beginner with the faster car keeps driving off the road.

Listening is a skill that needs to be practiced. The more you practice, the more you hear in the music, and the less the audio system sounds like real life.
Since I became an audiophile I hear more things in real life than ever before, my hearing hasn't got worse, it has got better. It's not that the sounds weren't there before, it's just that I'm starting to notice them more.

The problem with skeptics is that they assume everyone has reached their potential. Everyone are not Superman. They think everything is perfect and nothing can be improved. They sit there with their primitive classical physics books and think it's the last thing they ever need to read.
 
Your hearing deterioration is physical and unavoidable.

You cannot train physics away. You cannot train the little hairs in your ear that are sensitive to certain frequencies to not eventually die away. You cannot train away your mortality.
 
JoeEllison said:
When you start trying to use the word "skeptic" as though it were an insult, you need to stop and take a hard look at yourself.

Now, let's be realistic for a moment... I know it will be hard for you, but give it an honest try. There are absolute limits to the range and sensitivity of human hearing. Your ears and brain don't improve indefinitely. At some point, probably about $15,000 ago, your ears got about as sensitive as they are going to get. At some point, the "flaws" in the sound you are hearing are just imaginary. Think about all the money you have spent... don't you feel cheated yet? Normal people spend a couple of hundred bucks and are perfectly happy with what they get. Even people like me, who tend to overdo things, don't spend more than a few thousand on the entire home entertainment package, and we're incredibly happy. Don't you feel like you are missing out on that feeling?
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It's because they don't care about better sound. They just want to plug it in and go. They don't focus on the music, they just leave it in the background.


JoeEllison said:
About the athletes and practice: they don't have to keep raising the basket in basketball, because athletes practice to the point that they are jumping over it.
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Ok, so the referee sets a limit of 20 seconds to run 100meters, then everyone quits the sport once they reach it.
 
ExtremeSkeptic said:
It's because they don't care about better sound. They just want to plug it in and go. They don't focus on the music, they just leave it in the background.
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No, they don't become obsessive to the point of mental imbalance over better sound. It is ridiculous and ultimately useless to spend more than a certain amount on home audio, unless you are either suffering from some sort of OCD complex, you want to show off how much money you have, or you are overcompensating for some other emptiness in your life.

The reality is, once you get past a certain point, there is no more improvement that ANY human ear can pick up. Further, there is an absolute limit to the medium you are using, and more expensive equipment cannot draw out more fidelity than exists in the medium itself. You are listening to what, CDs? Vinyl discs? They only hold so much information, and once your system has drawn all of that information out, there is nothing else you can add to or subtract from the system that will make more information magically exist.
 
ExtremeSkeptic said:
So you are saying a 20 year old beginner is better than a 50 year old pro. It's like car racing, the pro can drive a slower car and still win if he has optimized the driving technique. While the beginner with the faster car keeps driving off the road.

Listening is a skill that needs to be practiced. The more you practice, the more you hear in the music, and the less the audio system sounds like real life.
Since I became an audiophile I hear more things in real life than ever before, my hearing hasn't got worse, it has got better. It's not that the sounds weren't there before, it's just that I'm starting to notice them more.

The problem with skeptics is that they assume everyone has reached their potential. Everyone are not Superman. They think everything is perfect and nothing can be improved. They sit there with their primitive classical physics books and think it's the last thing they ever need to read.
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Have you considered the possibility that this "training" you speak of may be more a process of convincing yourself that you're hearing "better" or your system "sounds better" after your tweaking?

Unless you can properly conduct, at least, a single-blind ABX test, how can you be so sure what you're hearing is objectively real?

If you really think you can distinguish some of this stuff on a double-blind ABX, you might consider applying for Randi's challenge. A million bucks would buy a lot of fancy power cables. :)

I'm not going to stick my nose up at you, because I'm something of a video junkie myself (I don't give a rat's tuckus about stereo systems, but I love hi-def video), but when it comes to spending a lot of money on this stuff, I feel it's generally better to be cautious about psychological effects. I'm not sure what the term is, but there seems to be a psychological effect of consumers basically convincing themselves they've made the best choice when they spend a lot of money on something.
 
cyborg said:
Your hearing deterioration is physical and unavoidable.

You cannot train physics away. You cannot train the little hairs in your ear that are sensitive to certain frequencies to not eventually die away. You cannot train away your mortality.
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That's why the "golden eared" old audiophiles have low resolution vacuum tube systems, because they can't hear anything better anyway. They only hear the synergy of the whole system.

You can optimize your listening technique to get synergy. If the brain+ears and audio system aren't synchronized it sounds very bad. It takes a few months to get used to a new audio system. When I installed my vibration isolation rack it took 2 months for my brain to adjust to the extra resolution. Transients were so fast my brain couldn't keep up with the speed, I just kept getting a headache after 5 minutes of listening. That's far from placebo because I could listen whole day without fatigue before I bought the new tweak.
 
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ExtremeSkeptic said:
So you are saying a 20 year old beginner is better than a 50 year old pro. It's like car racing, the pro can drive a slower car and still win if he has optimized the driving technique. While the beginner with the faster car keeps driving off the road.

Listening is a skill that needs to be practiced. The more you practice, the more you hear in the music, and the less the audio system sounds like real life.
Since I became an audiophile I hear more things in real life than ever before, my hearing hasn't got worse, it has got better. It's not that the sounds weren't there before, it's just that I'm starting to notice them more.

The problem with skeptics is that they assume everyone has reached their potential. Everyone are not Superman. They think everything is perfect and nothing can be improved. They sit there with their primitive classical physics books and think it's the last thing they ever need to read.
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You're right about this--listening is an active skill that needs to be practiced.

There's ears for: pitch, absolute.
pitch, relative.
pitch, fine-tuning.
frequency--which bands?
eq
noise, absence of.
discerning little details buried in the mix
direction of sound.
doppler effects.
rhythm.
tempo.
balance.
distortion and lack of it.
image.
many other 'parameters' or 'dimensions'.

All of these things improve with practice--to a point.

This doesn't change the fact that I used to be able to hear above 20k, and now I can't hear flyback transformers at 18.6k. Nothing can be done. waaaah!:( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :D

You're right that ears for audio can improve with practice, and in fact this learning only occurs with good equipment. Thing is, with a good CD player and an excellent pair of headphones costing a few hundred dollars, you've already gotten 99% the way there.

You don't hear any more detail and image with electrostatic speakers than you do with a good pair of headphones--but I still love my Acoustats.
 
JonnyFive said:
If you really think you can distinguish some of this stuff on a double-blind ABX, you might consider applying for Randi's challenge. A million bucks would buy a lot of fancy power cables. :)
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Great post, but be careful with this suggestion. Any claim for the MDC would have to be clearly paranormal. Any old ABX wouldn't do, as it isn't controversial that there's an audible difference between, say, two different amps.
 
JonnyFive said:
Unless you can properly conduct, at least, a single-blind ABX test, how can you be so sure what you're hearing is objectively real?
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Even if he can hear "different", does any of that mean "better"? I'd argue that at the extreme range of sophistication of high-end audio equipment, the only thing you can really adjust for is personal preference, not anything that would be considered objectively better.

To bring up your own personal video obsession, as a good example: since the human eye can only perceive about 9-10 million colors, wouldn't you say that it would be sort of daft to pay a premium for video equipment that can capture or display 75 million colors? How could you even tell? I think a ton of this audiophile stuff comes under the same category as that.
 
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