nwavguy is like the Muad'dib of audio and objectivists are his Fremen

So, I spend a fair bit of time on Reddit's /r/headphones and /r/audiophile because that's a lot of where I learned how to be an audiophile. I'm spending less and less time there because the so-called objectivim there is becoming, well, oppressive. Anyone who dares to discuss DAC or amp sound signatures is downvoted to oblivion and called out by several people who clearly have no idea what they're talking about and in ways that are most un-chill. It has become a cult and anyone there who doesn't know better is sucked into it because they claim the whole of science on their side.

I saw someone in /r/audiophile post two very lovely high-end tube amps and say that he was trying to decide between them; someone said "lol haven't you ever read that all amps exactly sound the same? nobody has ever been able to distinguish them in an ABX test. look it up. way to throw your money away". TUBE AMPS. I saw someone called out and downvoted because they suggested that a reviewer let a Bifrost Multibit warm up for more than 20 minutes ('don't you know that burn-in is a myth??' DUDE BURN IN AND WARM UP ARE NOT THE SAME THING. WAT.). If cables are bullshit, everything else audio companies sell you about the signal chain must be bullshit too.

Personally, it was the gamma2 that taught me that maybe, not all DACs sound alike. I traded a Magni/Modi stack for it and have never gone back. I tried it against the ODAC, Dragonfly, and a couple other things and it was always just better in a way that really isn't subtle. Then, OJNeg let me borrow his AMB CKK which taught me that the O2, while a good amp, is most certainly not the end of the story.

It then struck me how much nwavguy is like the main character of Dune. For those of you who haven't read the book (spoilers ahead), Paul or Muad'dib is the main character and antagonist of the book in that he ends up knowingly and intently tricking the native people of the planet Arrakis on beginning a holy war in his name (Muad'dib is the name of their supposed savior, as whom he is posing). He does this in order to bring down the empire that tried to take him down. The jihad and the destruction it brings to the universe continues long after his eventual death.

In a way, nwavguy showed that the powers that be and the prices they charge are outright bullshit, that measurements are the Way in many cases, and that good sound didn't have to cost an arm and a leg. He was a very important and critical figure in this way. But he also unwittingly started an army of noobs on a jihad against anything but mid-fi amps and DACs. Even those of us who are careful about the money we spend, non-believers in cables, aware of those parts of the industry that ARE bullshit, and are actively trying to sort the bullshit from the good stuff, are assaulted (as much as one can be on the internet) just for having a simple discussion about differences that are actually pretty apparent if you're using something better than the HD598 or K7XX.

I laughed a bit when I realized how funny of a comparison this was to make. Hopefully lots of people here have read Dune and know what I'm talking about. hah.

Anyway, I'm going to a head-fi meet today, so time to start packing up the gear. Cheers, SBAFs.

PS I know this is a sensitive topic for some so I hope this doesn't turn into a flame war of some sort. I like my audio discussions to be chill, which is why I'm here. I really really appreciate the tone and pace of this forum, and feel like I've found my audio home.

 

If nwavguy is Muad'Dib, I shudder to think what will happen when the God Emperor arrives on the scene.

 

It's too long since I read Dune... over forty years, I guess!

NwAvGuy (as he likes to spell it) was a man of his time. I like that you give him the credit that you do give him, but I think it is unfair to blame him for what followed after. People have more or less respect for NwAvGuy; people agree more, or less, with the actually level of technical ability and knowledge that he had. I don't know... the only thing I can say, personally, it that he was one of the people, one of the things, that made me think about taking a harder look at audio myths and realities. Oh, and I bought an ODAC, because it was an affordable experiment.

NwAvGuy is history. Yesterday's man. Gone. And it is not his fault that people who call themselves audiophiles string together ridiculous, basic errors of common sense, let alone logic, to support the unsupportable. And it is not his fault that people who call themselves objectivists string together ridiculous, basic errors of common sense, let alone logic, to support the unsupportable.

It's very possible that there may be far more worthy people for the awards of introducing, or at least supporting, objectivism in audio than him, anyway.

 

@ohshitgorillas I was one of the ones battling it out attempting to clear up the whole warming up multibits thing, I feel you.

I also got my start primarily on Reddit, and in the last few months have had the same feeling as you. Been shying away more and more as a place to continue to "learn". I still show up a lot, particularly to help answer questions and recommendations, but yes, discussion of Amps or DACs above $200 dollars (or even high end headphones sometimes) is a hostile, closeminded, minefield

 

well how can you argue with this logic "Transparent DACs are transparent."? someone tell me please.

 

On one side you have mags like Stereophile, The Absolute Sound and sites like 6Moons. On the other you have the defunct The Audio Critic and sites like Hydrogen Audio. One side has the money and the exposure, the other, not so much. So, NwAvGuy in the 2010's is like Peter Aczel of the 1990's, providing a much needed counter point. Neither was always right, nor were they always wrong. Both took the heat for going up against the "Rah-Rah" brigades.

 

I understand the hostility. I can't tell you how many times someone has told me with a straight face that you have to spend at least $5,000 to even approach decent sound out of a hifi system. There are some serious audio snobs out there, and people who will believe any marketing claim of any company because if it's expensive, it must be good!

When someone comes along and says, "No, you can get the best sound possible very cheaply", of course people were going to jump on that bandwagon. Many of them ended up as dogmatic as the snobs though.

I'm not surprised Reddit has fallen prey to this. It's a populist site and the invite/down vote system invites the hardcore objectivists to knock down anyone who disagrees with them.

 

My DIY stuff has always been well received over there, but I never go there anymore for exactly the reasons everyone else has stated. /r/headphones has become /r/atheism, only with headphones.

 

The problem was Nwavguy's designs didn't sound good as he had no idea what the hell he was doing. He wasn't the telekinetic God Emperor of the known universe or the stoic philosopher king of a third of the Earth's population and the majority of its industrial output like Marcus Aurelius. He was just an internet troll with an electrical engineering textbook and a measurement device that shook things up. He could've been a twenty year old frat bro at Arizona State for all we know. There was cheap stuff that sounded better than his crap both before and after him.

 

Perfect science, isn't a perfect science.

 

I had an interesting conversation with a so called objectivist called Bigshot (yep the Headfi one), about amplifier differences on another forum called talkclassical....

http://www.talkclassical.com/36183-amplifier-upgrade-4.html

It is impressive how there was no clear response to my argument from him and other 'enlightened' individuals.

I have some experience in critical appraisal and study design in the medical field. The objective statement that measurement equals transparency is misleading to say the least. Measurements are only surrogate outcomes.

In order to determine, in a scientific valid manner, whether Amp A sound = Amp B sound, a well designed randomised controlled trial is needed. This would then account for known and unknown variables.

Unsurprisingly this resulted in several ad hominem rants from Mr Bigshot with no substance whatsoever.

 

@ohshitgorillas > You seem to have a problem with idiots, which would make the internet a bad place to hang out. In fact, it makes the world a bad place to hang out. There are idiots at both extremes. The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. The limits of stupidity have never been found. There are subjectivist idiots who think that sticking a 10 gauge IEC cord on the end of a 100 ft. run of 14 gauge Romex will "open up" the sound of a device that takes 1/2 amp from the wall socket. Or they claim they can tell which way an AC fuse is oriented. There are objectivist idiots who think that an amp that measures worse will always sound worse or that two amps that measure the same will sound the same. In both cases, you are an idiot or deaf if you disagree. In a bizarre twist of reality (see Dunning-Kruger), the idiots think they are geniuses and the smart people will begin to question their own intelligence.

I find warring camps on every SIG (I'm old) or forum that I participate in and have quit many of them multiple times. It is facilitated by the fact that they are anonymous and that there is no barrier to entry. It is fueled by the general decline of civility in our culture which is seen in everything from road rage to mass murder. The best approach is probably not to say anything. I have a sticker on my computer monitor that says "I have no opinion on that". Unfortunately (like now) I have never been able to pull it off.

 

Those ungrateful fucks at r/audiophile and r/headphones can go suck it. So damn narrowminded and nearsighted that Helen Keller had better vision.

 

I got brigaded when I posted pictures of my Schiit Megastack on /r/audiophile. I basically gave up on them them. If they downvoted me just for being excited about new gear, then I'm just fine ignoring them. I basically just give people computer-related tech support from time to time now, I don't get involved in most discussions.

I'm still a big participant at local meets because I enjoy helping prevent people from making my mistakes, so I bring most of my cans so people can try gear before committing. Hell, that's really the only reason I stay on HF, just to make sure I have the right date for the next meet.

 

I got brigaded for posting my audio-gd and Krell powerstack on /r/audiophile too. Basically told me I shouldn't buy nice things and wouldn't make a difference. They are definitely a hopeless bunch of cunts.

 

I'm so glad I never was enticed by reddit. Tried a few times, but the site seems very confusing and not user-friendly. Good stuff when it came straight from the horses mouth (AMA's were interesting from time to time), but still "special-snowflake"-y for me.

 

At the end of the day why does it matter what other people think about your purchases? Personally I don't buy into most grey areas in audio (Oh you don't like those headphones? Must be a problem with your source, you haven't spent at least $x and don't have the right cables or there isn't any 'synergy' in your system!) but at the same time I'm not going to criticize those that do unless they try to force their opinion on me.

tl;dr - do your own research and don't let opinions on the internet sway you too hard or get under your skin.