superlowfi's Deep Thoughts on SBAF; and BBQ

@superlowfi, welcome to the discussion. Always like to hear other points of view. Seems this discussion has rambled, but who I am I to criticize that. As to what an engineer wants who knows? Bands rarely have say so as to mixing and mastering. Water Roger's latest album is an example. Compressed/limited to death. He just let the recording people do their thing. He apparently regrets it and wants to do a re-mix. I just saw his US+Them tour. The songs on the new album sounded so much better live.

 

Hi superlowfi -

As a fellow new member, I would appreciate it if you could observe the spirit of this forum by reading more posts and establishing yourself, along with the credibility of your opinions, through topics less controversial for both the industry and this community.

Otherwise, and please do forgive the pessimism, I'm not impressed by exposition that serves to distract readers and commentators from critical points of contention here: professionalism and integrity.

After reading through your posts and the responses to them, I see a fairly concerted effort to divert this conversation to something that it's not: a community's posture towards headphone psychology and value. Rather, this topic was focused on more journalistic points of curiosity for the audiophile community: maturing scientific measurements for an industry, their utilization by significant voices within it, and a new development for the dynamic between those voices.

To outsiders (like myself) who value the signal-to-noise ratio maintained by the membership here, we do so because we recognize common themes within an industry that too often presents high-cost, low-performance value propositions to its customers. Given this community is passionate about the advance of its studied industry, from technical and social standpoints, I respect its efforts to highlight forces which ultimately serve to undermine growth.

And, to those of us who are somewhat-versed with the legal implications at play, we also feel the topic's original goal strikes closely to the heart of an endemic issue for marketing as a whole: truth in advertising. Please take a gander at the FTC's take and history of news releases on the topic:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advertising/advertisement-endorsements

So, again as a new member to another new member, I reiterate the better approach is to study up, establish yourself, and then create another topic of your choosing. Until then? Your fellow lurkers will probably judge your postings more on the noise side of the spectrum.

Best,
Cryptosom

 

Fair enough.

Fair enough again. In the context of a review, this makes perfect sense. Just like Sean Olive's research targets the largest percentage of people possible to satisfy their preferences, reviewers have to evaluate a headphone in the context of the market and people's expectations. The "perfectly average listener" model (for some definition of that as it pertains to your audience).

Outside the context of a review, there can be an understanding that individuals may exist outside such a "perfectly average listener" model. Further, there is an argument to be made that people's expectations inform their preferences, and those preferences are somewhat derived from familiar experience. If again, the ultimate goal is objective accuracy, you can see how preference, experience, and expectations can all be somewhat independant of the ultimate goal of accuracy along various dimensions.

Are v-shaped headphones popular because they are expected? Are they popular because people have the most experience with them? Are people generally expecting a v-shaped sound signature due to their experience, expectations, preferences, or because they think it is the most accurate? There is a bit of a chicken and egg situation going on, and some of these frequency response targets (such as diffuse field) have been around so long and targeted so ubiquitously, the relationship between expectation, experience, preference, and accuracy is somewhat a muddled mess.

This is why the sentiment that Sony created something different, and is therefore failing customers, or should be derided, or "can't seem to get things right", to be somewhat unfair, in my opinion. Again, outside the context of a review, where it is your job to inform customers that this thing they made is different, the ways in which it is different, and whether you personally like it.

That's why I say, the folks who stumbled into that cake shop, got that foie gras saffron trufffle concotion, and actually liked it, well, they aren't necessarily wrong (and neither is the headphone).

I don't think I've ever seen such a poignant, surreal, absurd, yet brutally accurate portrayal of the state of audio summed up so succinctly before. I don't mean to deride reviewers like yourself. All things considered, folks like you are truly like candles in the darkness in this hobby.

 

Hi Cryptosom, thank you for the advice. I am sure there will be more new members like us joining the community shortly as the ongoing drama unfolds. I suppose you are being more a model citizen compared to me.

That said, the quoted part above is quite the astute summation of this particular topic (which incidentally is titled "Jude E-peens Tyll and Gaslights Us with Alternative Facts" as a reminder).

Personally, if I had to sum it up, I would say this topic is focused on calling out Jude as a whiny little bitch, and all that entails.

An important message to get out, especially in the context of the community, so if individuals are tired of this digression, I will relent. I find the topic discussed over the past couple pages as paramount to the relationship between measurements, performance, and what it really means to maximize the cost/performance ratio.

That said, I hope you can forgive me for this tiny bit of noise.

 

Differentiating between the candles in the darkness and the candles in the ears seems to be a big part of the issue.

 

Nah, normally stuff like this will be moved to an appropriate area of the site if alerted to the mods to do so. This isn't horribly off topic, but true that this topic is more geared towards the Head fi head honcho's recent actions.

 

A bit late to the party -- which is going wild much too quickly for me --, but I will plug this:
In France, when it comes to wines, I often stumble on wines that are simply 'not good' (to put it politely, but otherwise come off as an affront to my senses). As with audio I can't always articulate precisely what bothers me with the taste (these subjective perceptions are just as finicky in wine tasting as in audio, and just as difficult or sometimes even impossible to "prove"), but what really bugs me is that when sometimes I try to point out that this bottle isn't really all that good I usually get thrown at me "oh, maybe you don't like this type of wine" or "it's all about preferences and it's all relative anyway".

Well, no, BS: Sometimes I do like this type of wine (whereas this bottle is terrible!), and everything is not always about preferences, and 'everything' is not relative in this world*.
Some things are objectively** worse than others (think Audio-GD S19, or the build quality of the Hifiman HE1000), and it's not about preferences or all this 'relative' stuff. The product simply sucks***, and you're better off with your internal laptop card or something. Now you can like it, and that's fine as sometimes people will objectively** prefer inferior sound, or simply something that is just 'different'. Again, that's fine: Alcoholics can generally be relied on to have a preference for poor quality liquors, and more power to them.
Other times however there will be products that are objectively** good, but definitely not my preference. It happens to me with wines all the time, and the audio equivalent would be, say, Yggdrasil vs Pavane. Or HD600 vs HD650, where both are very decent propositions, but some will prefer a 'brighter' signature while others a 'warmer' signature. All fair game.

I believe SBAF's raison d'être is the latter. Find products that are objectively** 'good' or 'good value', be they the Hifiman Susvara 6K Edition or the good ol' HD650, and let the users choose what suits them most given characteristics, preferences and budget constraints. But it will tell you not to drop hard cash on an Ultrasone, an Awe God Damn S19 or myriad USB decrapifiers that don't do shit to make the sound 'better' as opposed to 'different'. Whether you take the advice or not is entirely up to you, but it is SBAF's duty to give it to you.


* We can get into dicey philosophical arguments here, but this is not what usually people have in mind when they argue these 'relative' things. If I were to ask them to run head straight into a tree and then argue that the impact was as soft as magical cotton, "cause it's all relative anyway", they'd drop the 'relative' theorizing in a jiffy. Getting hit by a tree is objectively** worse than getting hit by magical cotton.
** I am NOT using this term here in the "objectivist" or "measurements" or even "scientific" sense, but in its loose, non-technical understanding.
*** I haven't heard it, but the several trusted ears around here have, and the descriptions were either graphic, or brutal.

 

Well, if those folks paid over $2k for it, they aren't very discerning, are they.

In a culture of consumerism, it is easy to say "If you like something, buy it". I believe we can strive for a higher standard here.

 

Noun, verb, people, party, eats...

I thought a BBQ was a thing, with fuel, used for burning food.

 

It is your time and money. If you want to spend a lot of money on a specific product, enjoy it.

People here tend to be critical. Captain Marvey was lukewarm about the Sony so it must have had some good qualities.

Thing is, I heard Serious' modified HD800. For a lot less you can already be end-game with a dynamic headphone.

What is fair and unfair? Sorry I am too tired for philosophical discussions these days.

Enjoy your music, that is what this hobby is about.

 

This made me laugh, thank you.

 

The Incredible String Band sang:

You might have observed,
That when you walk into a wall,
You get a certain sensation of reality ...


.​

 

Indeed...



P.S. That pun was too good to resist.

 

Now that made me put on the album. Time to unwind. Thanks!

 

"Objectively worse" is a much conflated term, and I think that lends much confusion and hand waving to the discussions that are happening:

a) The HE1000 has objectively worse build quality compared to a Sony Z1R.

b) Sour grapes are objectively worse than a fine wine.

c) Airport headphones are objectively worse than the HD 800.

d) The Z1R is objectively worse than the HD 800.

You can see and understand how in each context "objectively worse" sounds very similar. But in each case, they mean something slightly different.

The HE1000 having objectively worse build quality means that the housing and drivers are more prone to failure. An easily measurable quantity using data.

That sour grapes are objectively worse than a fine wine, are based on the fundamental perceptions of taste common to every human being. By definition, sour will cause a physiological response in humans which will evoke a certain response that fine wine does not, such that people can be trusted to enjoy fine wine more than sour grapes.

Airport headphones are bargain basement bottom of the barrel exercises in cheap throw away manufacturing and design. No one would expect them to be better than almost any other store bought headphones, and so people can intimately understand what "objectively worse" means in this context.

Comparing the Z1R to the HD 800 - they sound differently, and the HD 800 is tuned to target the diffuse field frequency response with a ring radiator driver meant to position the sound in a certain way relative the listener's ear. The Z1R targets a variation of the diffuse field frequency response which some listeners may enjoy and some may not. If we define the diffuse field as "objectively ideal", than the Z1R is "objectively worse", because it deviates from that ideal.

Do you see how "objectively worse" does not have a constant relationship in the above cases? People here use the phrase "the Z1R are objectively worse than the HD 800", but when they really mean d) - which has implications on the fundamentals of how we define listener preferences, accuracy, and high fidelity music. Despite meaning d) - people assume that a) b) c) and d) are all the same meaning, so they jump from the Z1R are objectively worse than the HD 800 in the context above, to the Z1R are literally sour grapes and Sony should be ashamed of themselves and so on.

 

@superlowfi

OK dude. Chill out, and stop taking all our blather all that seriously. Step away from the keyboard. Start reading more on SBAF to get a hang of the land. And absolutely make sure to read this before you continue here:
http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/must-read-for-new-members.3/

I may be wrong, but the more I read your postings, the more it makes me think of sealioning:


Seemingly reasonable interjections and questions, but all with some sort of an agenda behind, and mostly designed to elicit a response. No, we cannot give you a scientifically objective definition for 'value' or 'good performance', but we do our best.

 

I can assure you I am very chill, and I am just trying to have a civil conversation. It is also not lost on me that you have not so subtly called me as ass with an agenda. I have thick skin, no problems there.

That said, I have repeatedly said that in the context of a review, assuming perfectly average listener preferences is a fine thing to do. Just like with wine, a particularly pungent blend that was produced in an exotic location using esoteric methods might get a bad review for being outside the perfectly average palates of the expected taste of wine lovers. This blend might even be more expensive than other blends.

It makes perfect sense for reviewers to call out this wine blend as different, strange, perhaps even call it bad according to the wine standards of the day. In the context of a review, that makes sense, and customers should be informed of such qualities before they make a purchase.

But, if I may respond to another point made by Marvey:

I would argue that fundamentally, risky products that don't fit in to common consumer paradigms are going to be inherently more expensive. Sony invested not only research and development to come up with something new, but marketing as well. In many ways, it makes sense to position esoteric unique options in the market place as flagship products. Again, a unique rocky mountain frequency response with M1 Abrams build quality equals a very expensive product that probably won't be on the average customers shopping list.

I would also put the Z1R as far above the build quality of the Grado RS-1.

 

Basically your entire argument is: "Some people like the Z1R, therefore it can't be bad."

Some people like to self-abuse too. Hmm..




Sort of like participating in this thread.