[chesebert]

This article on Soundstage got me thinking about the state of the audiophile influencer community and I wanted to take a pull on the sentiments in the community. https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/features-menu/opinion-menu/1084

 

[bifcake]

These shills produce so much garbage that it makes it hard to find good and relevant information about pretty much anything. What happens is that the bull that they spew gets picked up and repeated by everyone else, so you have to wade through so much bull and obfuscation that it may take you months to finally get a grip on something that should have taken you a day or two.

 

[Powermankw]

The audiophile hobby has integrity? It is a completely subjective field based on personal opinion and bias driving product sales of a purely 1st world luxury appliance.

... I'm sorry, what was the question again...

Oh... Being somewhat new to actually seeking and buying said luxury appliances... I find it very difficult to find good data that is relative across product tiers... Basically, all good gear is discussed like it is class leading regardless of price point. I don't care if a product is best $500 offing when it is discussed like it is best bleeding edge SOTA. Yes I want to know what the best product for a $1000...but don't gush like it is a $30,000 product. And appearantly.... It is very easy these days for any type of product to out perform any other offering at 3-5 times the cost. It does get hard weeding through that...

 

[bifcake]

The audiophile hobby has integrity? It is a completely subjective field based on personal opinion and bias driving product sales of a purely 1st world luxury appliance.

... I'm sorry, what was the question again...

Oh... Being somewhat new to actually seeking and buying said luxury appliances... I find it very difficult to find good data that is relative across product tiers... Basically, all good gear is discussed like it is class leading regardless of price point. I don't care if a product is best $500 offing when it is discussed like it is best bleeding edge SOTA. Yes I want to know what the best product for a $1000...but don't gush like it is a $30,000 product. And appearantly.... It is very easy these days for any type of product to out perform any other offering at 3-5 times the cost. It does get hard weeding through that...

We have reached a point (at least with electronics) where it's easy and cheap enough to develop a product that sounds indistinguishable from any other product. In other words, if an amplifier or a DAC is engineered correctly, it has essentially no sound of its own. It just produces music and ideally, you shouldn't be able to distinguish one from another regardless of costs. Given that we have reached the point of what amounts to perfection on the cheap, the fashion now is to maintain some sort of a "house sound", which is essentially euphonic distortion. So, in effect, we've gone a full circle: People used to strive for electronics that reproduced the recording faithfully in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Now, people pay top dollar for electronics that do exactly the opposite. How bizarre.

 

[chesebert]

I would say this another way. All the low hanging fruits of audio reproduction are gone at this point. Any improvements are really from designers using better parts and paying attention to minute details on the analog front, and writing more complex code and using more processing power on the digital front. Nothing is easy any more at the high end.

EE doing FPGA signal processing work is very expensive - you are talking about paying someone 250-400k a year to do the work in the US. There aren’t that many programmers who understand audio reproduction, signal processing and VHDL

 

[LaughMoreDaily]

Why was this thread created? Your ears can't be deceived.

 

[taffy2207]

 

[SilverEars]

I generally don't care for sound quality reviews for audio. For visual stuff, it's obvious. Audio opens up for high level of subjectivity and fake reviews.

I look at measurements for headphones/iems. But, in general, demo'ing/trying the equipment tells me what I need to know. A review on sound can never achieve the same level of obviousness that you get from visual mediums.

Measurements will always be consistent at least. With no room for subjective bias.

Companies providing reasonable length demo period of the products would ensure consumer trust. It would be the most ideal/precise way for the consumer to know if the product is for them. These days, reviews are a waste of time to me.

I just use common sense and skip majority of reviews. If you been in this hobby awhile, you heard everything you need to hear. You realized it's a never ending cycle of same o crap with different clothing.

My interest turns to other hobbies if audio loses interest.

 

[Philimon]

Do you think paid shills are a big threat to the integrity of nearly everything? Duh yes.

Internet trolls are the ones you have to watch out for ... You can never be certain of their intentions ... agents of chaos. Am I right @SilverEars ?

Head-Fi is a business with the pretense of community forum for the semblance of integrity. Make no mistake, this is North Korea. USA is North Korea. And North Korea is the Matrix.

 

[Powermankw]

I generally don't care for sound quality reviews for audio. For visual stuff, it's obvious. Audio opens up for high level of subjectivity and fake reviews.

I look at measurements for headphones/iems. But, in general, demo'ing/trying the equipment tells me what I need to know. A review on sound can never achieve the same level of obviousness that you get from visual mediums.

Measurements will always be consistent at least. With no room for subjective bias.

Companies providing reasonable length demo period of the products would ensure consumer trust. It would be the most ideal/precise way for the consumer to know if the product is for them. These days, reviews are a waste of time to me.

I just use common sense and skip majority of reviews. If you been in this hobby awhile, you heard everything you need to hear. You realized it's a never ending cycle of same o crap with different clothing.

My interest turns to other hobbies if audio loses

But measurements don't tell you the whole story either. If you don't have the means to demo everything, then you are left to what other people say. That is all sources, of all types. You eventually can at least narrow it down.

 

[bifcake]

But measurements don't tell you the whole story either. If you don't have the means to demo everything, then you are left to what other people say. That is all sources, of all types. You eventually can at least narrow it down.

Which part of the story don't the measurements tell?

 

[SilverEars]

Humans can tell lots of different kinds of stories, but a machine doesn't know how to.

 

[chesebert]

Which part of the story don't the measurements tell?

Sound. I know measurement tells me a lot except for how it sounds

 

[bifcake]

Sound. I know measurement tells me a lot except for how it sounds

It's actually quite easy to look at the frequency response graph and get a pretty good idea of how something sounds.

 

[Powermankw]

Which part of the story don't the measurements tell?

Electronic measurements measure electronic parameters. How it sounds to a human is not an electronic parameter. We know now the trend to strive for boxes that measure exceedingly well, but they don't all sound exceedingly good.