That doesn’t set Head-Fi apart, there is at least one other site (and I believe several) that do the same, they completely ban any mention of DBTs from the whole site. In fact, Jude (the founder of Head-Fi) actually stated that the ban he was implementing was based on the same DBT ban implementation of another audiophile site. I don’t recall which site off the top of my head, maybe @castleofargh does?
Interestingly, psychoacoustics has always been the bane of the audiophile world and even when it wasn’t outright banned it was typically just dismissed or actively discredited. Going back to that inaugural edition of “The Audio Critic” is enlightening in this regard too. Take this statement: “Mark, a circuit designer himself, flatly asserted that all pre-amps sound alike, from the two transistor phono circuit in the GE transistor manual to the most elaborate audio freak unit money can buy, as long as certain conditions are met.” (exact volume matching and certain other condition). This demonstrates a few interesting things: First of all, that yet again, something we are asserting today was actually the case even half a century ago, let alone with today’s technology. Secondly, that some people in the science community were still engaging with the audiophile world back in 1977. The “Mark” making that assertion was Mark Davis, the then head of the psychoacoustics department at MIT! Thirdly, “The Audio Critic”, as the name vaguely implies, was invented to give honest opinions based on the facts, rather than the marketing inspired BS of all the other publications of the day. Yet even The Audio Critic still got it entirely wrong quite often because they were subject to some of the same “subjectivist myths” we still see today. The article goes on to discredit Mark Davis’ assertion on the basis that maybe his Hi-Fi test equipment wasn’t revealing enough, his DBTs were not done over weeks/months and that maybe his test subjects weren’t experienced or golden-eared enough, where have we heard all that before? Interestingly though, many years later the editor came around, after being involved in the Carver Challenge and other DBTs he came to understand what DBTs actually were, their efficacy and acceptance as the gold standard of listening testing. At roughly the same time as some other audiophile publications were just starting to try to discredit them.
Yes, they do point to the former, however that’s a nonsense argument. Sure, if you ban any mention of science then there can’t be any argument based on the facts/science BUT you could achieve exactly the same thing the other way around, if you banned assertions of fact based only on unsupported subjective opinions/impressions. For example, someone states a silver cable affects the sound. There could be arguments for or against that assertion on the basis of someone else’s opinion or impressions but not on the basis of science. The other way around would be arguments for or against that assertion on the basis of the science but not on the basis of unsupported subjective opinions/impressions. Both ways reduce or eliminate arguments but the latter “gets in the way of the sponsors/advertisers” and all the audiophile myths, hence why they chose the former, despite the fact that the latter has the benefit of honesty and of not deliberately misleading your membership!
Unfortunately I have. I didn’t watch the whole video but there was nothing in what I did see that was new, I’ve heard it all before, although not necessarily all at the same time!
A background in engineering would certainly help, just in terms of how you would evaluate information/marketing in general. Without a background in the specific engineering field though, that’s only going to somewhat help you. And that’s the rub, all of us have been caught out on occasion, even those of us in the audio engineering field because very few, if any, have enough knowledge in all the applicable engineering fields. Audio engineering covers or at least touches on a whole host of general and specialist engineering fields; software engineering, hardware engineering, acoustic engineering, music engineering, sound engineering, electrical engineering and then different specialist engineering within those fields; filter design, clocking, chip design, plugins and other DSP design, network engineers, different types/genres of music engineers and of sound engineers, etc., not to mention the whole field of psychoacoustics that so affects the work of music and sound engineers.
While the really crazy audiophile stuff doesn’t fly with audio engineers, there’s still BS in the pro audio world and we are still sometimes caught out by it. The main difference is that it usually doesn’t last for long, the BS pseudoscience or false implication/assertion is typically discovered and disseminated relatively quickly. You generally don’t find myths/falsehoods lasting decades as we so commonly see in the audiophile community.
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Fake tweeters are very common in cheap audio products. If the woofer has chrome-painted dust cap you know the woofer does treble also, but here the dust cap is painted black. Anyway, the price range of the speakers is a good indication whether the tweeter is real or just cosmetic placebo.
