I see you edited your post and added this:
As for me, I’m on the bottom of the DK, not on extreme right or left since I myself can’t design and manufacture audio gears but I can tell what sounds right to me vs what doesn’t and correlating it to measurements is silly and never works IRL in my experience
Huh, your (false) assertions were about mixing and mastering, “
design and manufacture of audio gears” are a different subject. Here is the DK Effect representation from wiki commons:
How are you anywhere other than near the left edge of this graph? What level of mixing and mastering “Competence” do you think you’ve gained from never having studied it, never having done it commercially/professionally and never even been in a commercial mix or mastering studio? Maybe your problem here is the same as with this:
Some of your science is the literally the total opposite of what I experience IRL.
Right, so all you need is the application of some basic logic: IE. Either the science is wrong or “
what you experience IRL” is wrong. If the science is wrong then international telecommunications doesn’t exist, the internet doesn’t exist, computers don’t exist and in fact no “digital” technology exists. So, either you’re claiming all this technology doesn’t exist OR “
what you experience IRL” must be wrong. Which one are you going for? And before you answer, it’s hardly controversial that what we experience IRL is wrong, it’s pretty much the reason science was invented. We experience IRL that we live on a stationary surface and all the objects in the cosmos move around us, we experience time as a constant, we experience the stereo effect and numerous other examples of our experience/perception being different to the actual facts/science/reality.
The turntables, tone-arms, cartridges, headphones, tape players, amps, pre-amps, and components/design of passive crossovers were inferior to what came after 1960.
True and don’t forget that in “
the early 1950’s” there was only mono, stereo was not even released to consumers until the late 1950’s (1957). Is mono really better than stereo and multi-channel?
I remember 1966 forward, and esp 1972 forward, and all the hobbyists, kits builders, Boston Audio Society. I do think it changes by the early 80's, more $ and less tweakers, Certainly boom boxes, walkmans, HT, headphones, and other things have splintered the audience.
Again, it’s just an audiophile marketing tactic from decades ago. Compare the cheap/convenient audio equipment of today (IEMs, DAPs, Bluetooth, etc.), with the best equipment of half a century or more ago. It’s an apples to oranges comparison but it still easily works out in modern technology’s favour in terms of audio fidelity. An apples to apples comparison is even more extreme, ever heard a portable AM Transistor Radio from the 1950’s?
there was an active, thriving listening counter-culture in audio as an alternative to the measure only modality of Hirsch-Houck Labs etc.
That “etc” at the end there is pretty massive though. It includes the ITU, IEEE, IEC, ISO, RIAA, AES, EBU, the list goes on and on and includes all the world’s universities, all the world’s telecom companies, all world’s commercial electronic circuitry, not to mention that digital audio itself is a measurement. It’s just that Hirsch-Houck Labs made their measurements easily accessible to consumers (by selling them to consumer publications). Your “
thriving listening counter-culture in audio” is actually a tiny niche segment of the market, mislead by decades of audiophile marketing.
**..... and CDs arrived in 1982. "Perfect sound forever"


. Convenience / glitter over sound / substance. The 'fix' was in .... ask Philips or Sony ....
No one here will argue that marketing is a reliable source of information/facts! However, digital audio did provide very significant advantages over the analogue formats it replaced, longevity being one of them. Not sure where you got “
glitter over sound” or “
substance” from though.
G