[573531]

@Bwanaasifiwe

One could argue that the foundation of marketing is to deceive. Countries have laws deciding when the deceit is going too far. It's the only legal and official stand on what's fine or not.
IMO, anything beyond that is a personal choice, or some more general philosophy about good and bad as a utopian ideal we'd like to see. In the real world, a human who never lies probably does not exist.


I don't know why you're doing this, but trying that hard to make headfi as the bad guy on headfi is probably not going to end well for you. As for baiting someone else into saying it for you, even I have a problem with it. If you're going for a fight against the big guys, at least own it.

It is natural that you will have a problem with it, you too have a conflict of interest here.

 

[bigshot]

Nope. I can't counter every lie in the world, I just provide information myself. Everyone gets to decide for themselves who to believe. It really isn't hard to discern the truth. I would assume if someone is interested in the hobby, they'd be interested enough to do a little research. If they're too lazy, that's their problem.

 

[redrol]

{mad posting}
I hate the ultra-consume mantra of this website.

 

[castleofargh]

It is natural that you will have a problem with it, you too have a conflict of interest here.

I'm just another regular of this subforum who happened to be given the keys to the torture chamber(classic technique to turn the prisoners against each other). I complained about many things many times, mostly trying to defend someone in the Sound Science section from getting banned. Then one day, an admin said something along the lines of "well, let's see how you'd handle the moderation over there then". I had to give my real name and that was the end of it. That's the level of bureaucracy Headfi has imposed on me so far.

I have no affiliation, no benefit, monetary or otherwise, no contract, it doesn't help me seduce girls at a bar, nothing!
I receive no order of any sort regarding sponsors, and never did over the years. I have close to no interaction with the admins, I PM one about twice a year to help me deal with a male Karen, and I only know that one admin a little bit from interactions inside the anime section(sirious bizness!).

Sorry if that doesn't fit the stereotypes.

 

[bigshot]

I got my first introduction to William S. Burroughs when I met him at an event and chatted with him a little. He was a nice grandfatherly old guy, not at all what you would expect. His book "Place of Dead Roads" had just been released and I had read it. It was super concentrated craziness. But there was one line in it that I really liked. One of the characters is relating the advice given to him as a boy by his father...

Spoiler

“Stay out of churches, son. All they got is a key to is the #&%* house. And swear to me you’ll never wear a lawman’s badge.”​

Feel free to delete this Castle. We all know you have an unenviable job.

 

[573531]

have you ever heard of another discussion website which outright bans scientific discussion and questioning then devices a small science section in a dark corner as an alibi? It’s a first for me.

 

[bigshot]

Welcome to the internet. Everything worth investigating is in a dark corner.

It's not that we disagree with you on general principles, it's just you don't go over to someone's house for dinner and tell them their wife is a lousy cook (even if she is!)

Think about how people use this site. They don't necessarily come here just to figure out what brand and model to buy. They come here to be validated in their purchasing choices. They want to be told, "You made a very good choice buying that set of IEMs." I do this myself. I bought a fancy oven recently it's got convection, air fry and even connects to the internet. I barely googled it when I bought it. But it's being delivered and installed on Friday and what did I do tonight? I went looking for youtoob reviews. They all said it was GREAT! I was happy. End of story.

Most home audio components made now are of a high quality. You can pretty much throw a dart at Amazon and hit a good choice. You can spend too much, but if you do that, you're doing it for features (air fry, convection, wifi) not for audio quality. If they want to tell me my oven can cook better tasting rib roasts than their competitors, it's fine with me. I can parse advertising purple prose.

 

[Blanchot]

So when you buy an oven you're fine with a bit of googling and some Youtube reviews. I think the psychology professor who visited us a while back may have had a point when he said that audio gear should be treated like other consumer goods. No one demands an ABX test if you claim that some new household device, be it an oven or a toaster, performs better than the one you had before. So why should we treat audio differently? Is it because audiophile marketing contains more lies than what you find in the rest of the consumer industry? Is there something about audio that makes it stand out from other consumer goods?

I have learned a lot from reading this subforum but sometimes I feel that all the talk about rigorous testing is overkill for what is essentially a hobby. And audio science is something I probably will never really understand, so I have to rely on authority, and that's frustrating.

 

[LisaShayBrown]

but aren’t you automatically against headfi’s source of revenue by spending your time educating people here?

he educates no one. he just preaches to three or so other "everything sounds the same" cult faithful. he claims everything that matters about how we hear music is known and that science topped out in this field some years ago.

obviously a uniquely extraordinary situation in the entire history of science.

he claims that everyone who's ever heard a difference in a cable or a DAC or even amplifier is deluded, despite the tens of millions of people who would disagree.

in sum, his "science" is nothing more than religion. you be the judge of how much credibility someone like that deserves.

 

[bigshot]

The ABX doesn’t prove that one is better than the other. In the case of cables, players, DACs and amps, it proves they all sound pretty much the same. Once you realize that the difference between models is mostly features, you probably don’t need to do comparison tests unless you suspect something is broken. The people who need to do ABX tests are the ones who think everything sounds different because of bias and perceptual error. But those are the ones who are least receptive to using the tool.

I chose the oven because of features.

 

[LisaShayBrown]

So when you buy an oven you're fine with a bit of googling and some Youtube reviews. I think the psychology professor who visited us a while back may have had a point when he said that audio gear should be treated like other consumer goods. No one demands an ABX test if you claim that some new household device, be it an oven or a toaster, performs better than the one you had before. So why should we treat audio differently? Is it because audiophile marketing contains more lies than what you find in the rest of the consumer industry? Is there something about audio that makes it stand out from other consumer goods?

I have learned a lot from reading this subforum but sometimes I feel that all the talk about rigorous testing is overkill for what is essentially a hobby. And audio science is something I probably will never really understand, so I have to rely on authority, and that's frustrating.

well said.

fortunately you don't need to understand audio science because you have ears. and you sound smart enough to never believe marketing hype in audio or any other domain.

 

[Ryokan]

The ABX doesn’t prove that one is better than the other. In the case of cables, players, DACs and amps, it proves they all sound pretty much the same. Once you realize that the difference between models is mostly features, you probably don’t need to do comparison tests unless you suspect something is broken.

And if there are differences they can be so small as to question the wisdom in spending much more money on top of what you've already spent. Diminishing returns.

My ears told me changing a silver wired cable for a copper one toned down high frequencies. The guys on here told me it wouldn't be the cable so I tried different things and after a few days switched cables back to test and couldn't hear a difference. If people say they can hear a difference maybe they can I won't question them could be their hearings better, it's just I'm not convinced especially after using a cheap cable on expensive iem's (when one broke) and they sound fine.

 

[castleofargh]

So when you buy an oven you're fine with a bit of googling and some Youtube reviews. I think the psychology professor who visited us a while back may have had a point when he said that audio gear should be treated like other consumer goods. No one demands an ABX test if you claim that some new household device, be it an oven or a toaster, performs better than the one you had before. So why should we treat audio differently? Is it because audiophile marketing contains more lies than what you find in the rest of the consumer industry? Is there something about audio that makes it stand out from other consumer goods?

I have learned a lot from reading this subforum but sometimes I feel that all the talk about rigorous testing is overkill for what is essentially a hobby. And audio science is something I probably will never really understand, so I have to rely on authority, and that's frustrating.

While a great many people are interested in eating good toasts, I don't know if discussing toasters gets much traction as a hobby. ^_^

As for the testing method, that's entirely dependent on what is asked/claimed and how much data we can readily get about that. For toasters, things can often be reduced to toasts having one of 2 states. Toasted, or partially carbonized. Most people will have no more question once they find a way to consistently avoid the burnt option. And of course, anybody can get irrevocable evidence about the state of a toast by looking at how it comes out.
If there were more specific discussions, maybe more specific methods would be needed to get accurate answers, but in general, we eat the toast, or we don't, and we have little to no curiosity about anything else concerning the toaster. If we do, the internet can answer without contradiction or ambiguity in a matter of minutes (like knowing which one has an actual timer in it, that's what I looked for when I decided to get one ages ago, and I had to send it back because "the color was wrong for the kitchen"... different people, different priorities).

Anyway, it's all about one of those old things

An objective claim is a statement about a factual matter, one that can be proved true or false. For factual matters there exist widely recognized criteria and methods to determine
whether a claim is true or false. A subjective claim, on the other hand, is not a factual matter; it is an expression of belief, opinion, or personal preference.
A subjective claim cannot be proved right or wrong by any generally accepted criteria.

Most audiophiles keep fighting for their opinions and personal preferences(maybe not based on sound at all) to be recognized as facts about gears and sound. It's mostly that simple and that clearly wrong.
No one would demand ABX or blind testing if people just stopped making so many empty claims that require a blind test to find a reliable answer.

 

[bigshot]

No one would demand ABX or blind testing if people just stopped making so many empty claims that require a blind test to find a reliable answer.

That would make a better quote for the top of the Sound Science page than the one that's there now!

 

[jagwap]

While a great many people are interested in eating good toasts, I don't know if discussing toasters gets much traction as a hobby. ^_^

As for the testing method, that's entirely dependent on what is asked/claimed and how much data we can readily get about that. For toasters, things can often be reduced to toasts having one of 2 states. Toasted, or partially carbonized. Most people will have no more question once they find a way to consistently avoid the burnt option. And of course, anybody can get irrevocable evidence about the state of a toast by looking at how it comes out.
If there were more specific discussions, maybe more specific methods would be needed to get accurate answers, but in general, we eat the toast, or we don't, and we have little to no curiosity about anything else concerning the toaster. If we do, the internet can answer without contradiction or ambiguity in a matter of minutes (like knowing which one has an actual timer in it, that's what I looked for when I decided to get one ages ago, and I had to send it back because "the color was wrong for the kitchen"... different people, different priorities).

I find that the Kenwood brand has most consistently made evenly toasting bread products. Many toasters are inconsistent between models and examples but Kenwood has better quality control.

I have not done blind testing though, as I don't want to burn my fingers.

(not the HiFi Kenwood brand that was renamed Trio in countries where Kenwood cooking products existed)