ASR Member Takes Offense At Real Science; Also Cries

My first and only post here

Let's be honest, the vast majority of SBAF members here like to see audio as a fundamental science rather than a product of engineering. That means for some reason audiophiles have convinced themselves that hearing "how something sounds" in an uncontrolled environment even remotely qualifies as an observation (it does not and never will)

I have no doubt many "amp/dac comparers" here did not do correct volume matching (measure voltage at output), or did not even remotely bother with a correct blind test procedure.

I believe this approach to audio is severely damaging to the hobby, but it has sadly been the standard for many decades. Trust your ego, not your ears, because if you actually trusted your ears, you'd conduct a proper blind test.

I won't call people here fools, as questionable as most methods and advice here is and as unfounded and baseless as it can get, but I feel I really want to point out the smelling-your-own-farts nature of this thread.

In short: it's f*****g amps and dacs lmfao, an amp's only purpose is to amplify a signal, a dac's only purpose is to convert a signal. If any "colour" is introduced during the process (ergo, not acoustically transparent), the device has failed its fundamental purpose, and thus becomes a questionable product.

Another funny thing (off topic): headphone FR measurements on SBAF! If only we lived in such a perfect world where there was only a single perfect frequency response! This is a pet peeve of mine because due to lackluster measurements, we don't receive important info about seal dependancy, leakage tolerance, acoustic impedance. Because of that the typical audiophile sees two similar "FRs", doesn't think too much about it, tries them out, they sound different to the audiophile, he automatically assumes that individual physical properties of the listener's head, ears, hair and ear canals are somehow "preference". Of course, he never thought about the impact of these things on frequency response, that's not the point, in audio, sadly, Eristic is king. He can now take his "observation" and say lies like "FR doesn't matter", "FR is not the be all end all" (it is)

 

And what prompted this tantrum in a latent thread was...?

ADD: there is so much to pick apart here but I have a life. I mainly want to point out it seems you're making a case for "audio" not existing independently of engineering, and if that doesn't lay you bare for what you are I don't know what can.

 

If you trusted your ears, you'd be able to figure for yourself, without recourse to SINAD or other pseudo-objective nonsense, whether your headphones bring you pleasure when you listen to music.

As someone smarter and with more experience than me remarked, one of the great shames of some people in this hobby is that they try to convince people not to believe their own senses.

 

Don't kink shame me, OP.

I believe my reading comprehension skills are pretty good, although I have not done any recent double-blind tests. Did OP not begin by arguing that measurements are the only thing that matters, and then finish the post by indicating FR measurements of headphones don't matter?

So the argument is that measurements are important and tell a part of the story. But simultaneously and at the same time measurements cannot illustrate the complete experience? Wow, what a mind trip!

In summary, it seems as though Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

 

I just really appreciate the title of this thread.

 

Member since 2020. Lol. What a waste of an account.

 

This is a sentiment that I've seen a few times and it makes no sense to me. An ideal amplifier would indeed amplify a signal without introducing any "colour" (distortion, etc), but that's the ideal. In real-world engineering the confluence of approximations and imperfections (resistors that are not perfectly matched, etc) means that we don't reach the ideal. So even if all amplifier engineers are trying to reach the ideal, they're going to try different strategies and make different trade-offs and all of these things are going to change how the amplifier sounds. Then the game becomes trying to figure out which trade-offs are worth making and which ones make the amplifier sound like crap.

This logic applies to headphones and DACs, too. To me, the whole point of being an audiophile is to explore all of the imperfect gear to figure out what sounds the best to my ears.

 

That, and headphones are a reactive load. Complex resistance, capacitance, and back EMF that interacts with the amplifier and particular pieces of music in ways you can't predict. The tiniest of these little variations between equipment do not show up on an FFT, but may or may not be audible.

 

Imagining that this guy thought his thoughtprovoking nonsense was some breakthrough wisdom we never heard before is almost infuriating. The smell of his own fart probably made his eyes yellow and his brain malnourished.

 

I think he is unhappy because we are so obviously unhappy. We should be happier and have more fun.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

As others have addressed the audio related parts, I'd like to point out the tone of this inaugural post is an example of bad, insulting writing in any context.

Taking a breezy tone already tells your audience you're an egocentric person that thinks any thought that pops in your head is important and relevant. You then go on to demonstrate poor understanding of your audience with an inaccurate, patronizing characterization of them.

The word choices and awkward laughter read as anger and frustration because we sense your own doubt at your authority to convince us of your points. But you cover that up by trying to say you are too brilliant to be understood, evidenced by the flourish "I won't call people here fools," and yet, we feel that is your intention.

So, @vodkadebugger, seeing that you just wanted to insult someone today, I hope you got in all the jabs you wanted to, because it's the last time anyone here is likely to listen to you.

 

Well, i guess the jig is up, Pyrates. We've been cleverly outed as rampant snake oil peddlers and fleecers of the uninitiated due to our significant influence and obvious kick back regime controlled by multi-national consumer audio manufacturers, hitherto entirely predicated on our willingness to smell our own farts. I guess I'll have to go back to my real job and stop relying on the SBAF-fart-smellers war chest to fund my exorbitant lifestyle of the rich and famous, and cease my indulgences of moderately priced and unremarkably measuring Sennheiser headphones. Better start saving up for some Dan Clark Audio and Topping gear, pronto!

Damn, we had it good there for a bit, guys. Amiright? It's just too bad this one single post completely annihilated us. Might as well shut down the forum!

 

I see what you did there!

 

Came for the front page pin; stayed for the replies. There’s something about watching this gang flay their quarry, even when said quarry sets their own trap and then steps in it.

/popcorn/

 

Since this post is in the toilet section already (funny, I was literally just chatting with someone the day before this happened about how HTWFAIP was a lot more sedate lately-- forgot to knock on wood I guess)-- I just think it's hilarious how self-contradictory this all is, and there's so much to cover that I'm using bullet points:

• Saying that SBAF "ruins the hobby" when the alternative is to only abide by the one EZ Bake Oven answer that oversimplifies things grossly, never mind how it's already been proven that conventional metrics are very limited in their ability to actually measure anything of substance, which kills learning and exploration. What's that one quote about how pseudoscience only ever seeks to validate itself, but real science is always in pursuit of truth, even if initial hypotheses turn out to be wrong? Someone much smarter than I on this forum who works in the hard sciences dropped that quote, and it's been living rent-free in my head since.
• Saying that FR is the only metric that matters which I can understand making sense if you've never actually listened to any gear. Why do headphones sound different when EQed to match, then?
• Even if you don't feel like evidently obvious matters like driver excursion-ability, transient response, attack and decays, and MANY other factors should make a difference [I can understand not immediately accepting the more woobly doobly stuff like temporo-spatial plankton because I thought that was silly until I started listening to more gear], HOW IN THE NAME OF FRESH PESTO CAN ANYONE THINK DISTORTION DOESN'T MATTER? DID DISTORTION SURFACE RESEARCH INTIMIDATE PEOPLE THAT MUCH????
• I actually appreciate them pointing out how headphone measurements are remarkably easy to screw up due to an assortment of factors influencing what ends up being heard/measured. I hate measuring headphones, and can only imagine how many orders of magnitude harder it is to get "correct" measurements for far more sensitive components e.g. amplifiers and DACs. Good thing people on the internet with expensive analysers have never messed up measurements because they suck at cable management (nb, sarcasm). Accidents do happen, unfortunately, provided they are accidents to begin with.
• "Trusting your ego, not your ears" was hilarious to me, I was actually laughing when I read the OP here. "Ego" would be carrying presumption of superior knowledge without really verifying the contested matter for themselves. "You CAN'T have been conducting blind tests correctly because the results contradict what I want to be true! "
  
• Preferences are a thing. I used to think "audibly transparent" gear existed in great numbers, but really a lot of what I see touted as such actually is just bright as freshly shaven balls in the treble, and the people who abide by them either have gear that fails to resolve the upper frequenices "correctly" to compensate for that or, frankly, simply are just used to elevated treble levels beyond what's conscionable. Heck I went from a Modi 3+ to an iFi Zen DAC V2 and if you just go by DAC measurements they're all effectively the same, but now I actually think people have been underselling how bright the upper frequencies on the Modi 3+ are. OUCH. But still, it was a sound I'd gotten accustomed to over years. It happens.
• Oh right, the point of this bullet was "people are allowed to like different sounding gear, and everyone has different personal sensitivities; presumption of what people SHOULD like is what I was referring to in my initial post where I said you were laying yourself bare for you were: someone that cares more about gear than music. How ironic.

There's a lot more I wanna write but I'm too lazy. What the actual hell, dude. Also when did SBAF start censoring F-bombs?


EDIT: weird grammar.

 

http://tinyurl.com/yc2nnja3

Thread needed more fart-smelling. Maybe OP would be happier if they took some time to smell the roses as it were.

 

why we even wasting our time responding to this?

i read about 2 lines, expected 1, maybe 2, responses, see a whole page of responses, and am now picturing triggered sbaf members.