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eheh, I certainly don't disagree with your depiction of the state of things, and TBH as I just said at the end of last post, I really get why people wouldn't want to bother with a lot of complicated tests.
my real deep problem is about the accepted minimum requirements in audio to start talking like an expert.
list of audiophile requirements to talk about anything in a device:
1/ I've listened to the damn thing.
end of list...
and it's the same list if you're talking about the sound, the components, power, RFI, jitter, signal fidelity, PRAT, synergy, quantum mechanic, or pokemon master. you had the device for 3hours, boom, you graduate from lead expert school. you can make up any BS claim about the device, reject measurements, or blind test, or all of science if you so please. and even be offended if someone points out how ludicrous it all is to do so.
I've heard opera, that didn't turn me into an opera expert. I've used a computer that didn't turn me into a computer expert. what kind of magic turns a guy who listened to a device just sitting in a chair, into someone who can make claims about objective variables, or tell us that doing this is more reliable than a blind test? is it ignorance magic, or arrogance magic? maybe a lot of both.
the heart of the problem isn't to do or not to do complicated tests or to follow scientific methods. the problem is that without those, we lack the means to make most of the objective claims people keep making. if I'm not sure about something I shouldn't tell people that I am. and if I have no objective mean to verify my objective claim, then I should present my opinion, or my hypothesis. not pretend like I'm sharing a fact. it always comes down to placing events in the proper order, the origin of troubles is someone presenting something as a fact when he has no evidence it's a fact. debating if the fact is real is IMO secondary to debating why in the first place he posted something he couldn't prove, in a way that let people believe he could(because that's what making a claim is). measurements and blind tests can help bring pieces of evidence, but an uncontrolled listening can't bring more than "I felt like...". so that's how people doing casual listening should talk about their experience. at least if they were trying to be honest.
about posting pictures, I have a simple switch, else for almost all the things I do, I just record the output, with a mic or in a loop( to be able to abx or analyze the resulting files). so the tools are pretty often limited to... a cable. not sure that would impress a lot of people
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