Hydrogenaudio don't like us (Head-Fi) very much? - Page 4

If by fun, you mean civil war...
(man, that smiley is creepy looking!)

Saying that head-fi is mostly placebo has some merit, but the problem is that testing equipment through blind testing is impossible in some cases, and highly impractical for almost all cases. The tests they do over there are largely about codecs, which is easy to test since you can use software like foobar2000's ABX feature.

How the hell would anyone be able to do a blind test between different headphones? They obviously have a different fit so the person doing the test would know which headphone is which. Trying to measure frequency response would be impossible for pretty much everyone on this forum. With sources, amps, and cables, you might be able to do a blind test with help from a friend, but again you're limiting the discussion.

I think part of the reason head-fi has this negative "placebo" reputation has a lot to do with discussions on things like power cables and interconnects. Personally, I think it would be nice if there were some blind tests on these types of things. The problem is that blind testing would most likely discredit at least some of these claims, and the sponsors on the site would lose money by not selling $1000 power cables.

I sortof agree with that article. I don't hear any difference between ASIO and DirectSound. The only reason why I use ASIO is because other people recommend it and say it sounds better.

I had a hearty LOL at the "proven to sound better" quote.

HydrogenWho?

-Ed

I think you may have misread what I wrote or I wasn't clear enough. I was trying to say ASIO made a dramatic improvement in sound quality. I used M-Audio Transit > Micro DAC > various amps > various headphones.

And best of all? ASIO is free.

HydrogenAudio and Head-Fi serve very different purposes. HA is about whether a difference between an encoded sound and original sound can be perceived and their goal is to minimise how perceptible that difference is. They use ABX as a tool that combined with aggregation of results gives them as close as can be practicably had an absolute scale by which to judge lossy audio codec transparency. Head-Fi is about discussing different audio equipment and how certain equipment is preferred over other equipment in regards to how pleased the listener is with the sound. There is no absolute benchmark which all audio equipment discussed on this site is compared to, with the only goal being to minimise perceived differences between that benchmark and the audio equipment being discussed. The goals of both sites are almost entirely separate from one another, and in actuality are quite complimentary, if the core purposes of both sites are taken into account. People on both sites take their respective site's philosophies to extremes at times, and use it to attack the other site, but I fail to see how HA and Head-Fi are inherently at odds with one another.

x2.

Differences make us stronger.... someone learns something new everyday...

Hydrogenaudio and Head-Fi are complementaries, not opposites. They have different purposes.

Head-Fi is for people that enjoy music and their equipment. Music lovers, gear collectors, etc. It is all about fun. Head-Fi is an hedonistic forum.
HA is for people that want to understand how computer audio works (codecs, algorithms, software, etc). It's all about knowdlege. HA is a technical forum.

Objectivity is difficult to maintain in the audio world. I think headfiers have forgotten about it long time ago. It is not important for us, and we prefer to face music reproduction as an art. And by definition art is subjectivity. We even see our equipment as works of art, not as hardware. Try to explain this to most people in HA. They try to be more scientific. Of course this is a difficult goal for a forum with a lot of different people, specially a forum dealing with audio. But they try. One thing is clear to me: when I want to understand how lame works, there is no doubt: HA is the forum.

I say we go over there and shank em' holmes......













ofcourse I mean, shank em with a the spear of knowledge

You can use a swithbox.

Anyways, I am a member of both forums and my opinion is that on Head-Fi there isn't so much research and not so much scientific testing going on.

Sometimes this is getting annoying. On both forums. I'll try to give an exaggerated example of the same subject on different forums:
(this is not something which actually happend, but I see it happening all the time)

Post #1: Does anyone know if the Opera does well with the Grado RS-1? I am planning on using it with USB because I don't have a soundcard that has coaxial output.

Post#2 HF: The Opera is supposed to be a pretty warm amp so I think you are good.

Post#2HA: Well, the frequency response of Grado headphones shows that the highs are overwhelming and maybe you will start hearing jitter because you are using a USB interface to get the music from your computer to your DAC. I would definately advice against it. *shows graph of USB jitter which is clearly audible*

Post#3 HF: Have you actually listened this combo?

Post#3 HA: So, what is jitter?

Post#4 HF: I have heard it on meet once. Sounded great to me.

Post#4 HA: *Starts explaining about jitter and giving a dozen links to other articles.*


So, without the intend of flaming these forums I would say that HydroGen Audio is slightly to scientific some times and Head-Fi is not scientific enough.

You should realize that on HydroGen Audio there is a lot of software developing going on and this can't be done without proper testing. I feel that Head-Fi is more hardware orrientated.

I also think that there are more fun topics on Head-Fi than there are on HA. 90% of the topics there are really serious. (with a joke every once in a while ofcourse, but still)

On HA a topic like the one Skylab made about the portable amps wouldn't survive. I think that's a shame since the article is really informative for people who have never heard any of those amps before.

On Head-Fi there is a tendency to accept things other people are saying to easily though. This will often lead to exaggeration of what has been said by the actual reviewer.

If Grado's are bright and not extremely comfortable; on Head-Fi a lot of people are exaggerating this and saying that they are way too bright and extremely comfortable. ( I can't wear them for more than 10 minutes.)

You are all getting my point.

Now, ofcourse it's easy ( and fun ) to pick on the flaws of certain people and certain comunities. I think however that HA and HF are complementing each other very well. You should just go to where you feel best. In my case this is mainly Head-Fi.


P.S. As far as ASIO is concerned: It's better than DS in XP because of the kmixer issue. On a lot of setups this is audible. In Vista I can not hear a difference any more and I haven't heard of anyone who can.

I couldn't agree more.

I'm glad to see that this thread has leveled off and there have been some really great posts for the last page or two. I agree that Head-Fi and HA serve different purposes.

I found this thread at Hydrogen Audio which contains some good explanations of the Hydrogen Audio philosophy:

After spending a fair amount of time at Hydrogen Audio (mostly reading, rather than posting), I think that the quotes that I've excerpted above are representative of the approach that Hydrogen Audio tries to take. I guess my only other thought is that we should be careful about judging the entire Hydrogen Audio community based on the extreme posts of just a couple of members. Some of the quotes that open the first post of this thread are extreme, but it is not fair to judge all of Hydrogen Audio using only those quotes any more than it would be fair to judge all of Head-Fi by using quotes from Patrick82. Or quotes from me, for that matter.