[bigshot]

 

[Blanchot]

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


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.

OK, so if people were passionate about home appliances and created forums for it, then bigshot might have been frowned upon for basing his purchase decision on Youtube videos just like we are skeptical when someone buys an IEM based on praise from reviewers who get stuff for free.

 

[bigshot]

I only looked at the yootoobs AFTER I bought it. I chose the model originally based on features from the Lowes website. I didn't rely on any authority but myself.

It's a very nice range too!

 

[mbphotox]

There certainly ARE people who are VERY serious about their kitchen appliances!
Look at barbecues, for instance?
There are entire forums dedicated only to the weber smokey mountain water smoker grill. (I know that, because I bought one many years ago and did my research on the matter in those forums )

I'd argue that ovens, dishwashers, laundry machines, etc. don't get as much traction in online forums for one simple reason:
The majority of people (in Europe, at least) rent their places. They have no say in the purchase of kitchen appliances and stuff.
And a lot of people who buy a house pre-owned, will just use whatever the previous owners had in there.

Those who build a new house?
Sure, they might spend time researching kitchen appliances.. but they would be researching for years, because they need EVERYTHING, shower, laundry, dishwasher, oven, stove, steamer, toilet, you name it.

People building apartement complexes to rent out?
They buy whatever has the features they want, whatever is "usual" in their price category, or whatever has a good brand name.


If someone is a passionate cook who gets to build their own kitchen?
They would probably find forums discussing stoves and ovens and the likes. But they won't be as densely populated as those other forums..

simply, because the target audience is much smaller.


Grlls/BBQs are a different thing, because everyone gets to chose their own, just like with a TV, phone, etc.



I bought my DAC based on features.. I still regret spending this much, because all the features I wanted it for are also covered by my phone..

Should've gotten the Beyer DT1990 Pro instead, or maybe an Audeze LCD-2 because I'm curious about that type of headphone..



9 out of 10 reviews on Hifi gear annoy me. They always refuse to present measurements.
I do believe that a DAC can sound, that some companies "tune" their amps for a signature sound... and I know for a fact, that tube amps sound different.
But those things are all due to "deficiencies" in the device's prime directive:
An amplifier should amplify the signal it receives... but often times, the amplifier will add noise, distort the signal, or cannot amplify evenly (change in frequency response), e.g. because it's impedance dependent (like with tubes)


I chose to ignore this - aside from the tube thing which i'm going to measure next week (in-room frequency response based on amplifier, since that's what I care about and what I'm listening to... not measurements of currents at the output of the device) when I finally get some free time alone - because I realised that these tiny differences are nowhere near as significant as what you get when you swap speakers, or even rotate them slightly towards the listening position, move them slightly out of the corner, move your seat, etc. All these make magnitudes bigger impacts on your listening experience.

(And don't get me started on frigging pollen season clogging up my nose...)

 

[71 dB]

There certainly ARE people who are VERY serious about their kitchen appliances!

Here in Finland we drink more coffee than anyone else in the World and it is important to own a Moccamaster coffee brewer. Yes, I own one too.

 

[71 dB]

he educates no one. he just preaches to three or so other "everything sounds the same" cult faithful.

Not everything sounds the same! Loudspeakers don't sound the same. Headphones don't sound the same. Rooms don't have the same acoustics. The loudspeaker and listener position combinations don't sound the same (moving loudspeakers just a few inches changes the perceived sound!). Compared to these things everything else in audio makes little difference if at all. It is about investing money on things that matter the most. Putting your money on "better" cables and DACs improves the sound an inch if at all. Putting the same money on loudspeakers and acoustic room treatment improves the sound by a mile! Your choice how much bang you want for your buck.

 

[gregorio]

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.

Why the incessant insults? And why the incessant lying that I claim “everything sounds the same” and “everything about how we hear music is known”?

As everyone here by now knows the answers to these questions, what do you gain from repeatedly demonstrating that you’re a troll?

fortunately you don't need to understand audio science because you have ears.

Clearly that’s true for you. The rest of us don’t only have ears though, we also have a brain! A brain that not only changes/affects what our ears “hear” but is also capable of investigating and understanding this fact. That’s why we have audio science and why, if making claims about what you’re hearing, you need to understand it. Unless of course you’re just a troll!

G

 

[gregorio]

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?

In effect, “yes”, audiophile marketing contains more lies than most other consumer industries. There are some, such as the alternative health/wellness industry for example, that are just as (or even more) terrible than audiophile marketing and therefore demanding DBTs is just as wise. In most cases though it’s not the same, the marketing of other most other products almost always has at least some misleading implications but not the wealth of lies pertaining to such widely priced products. If for example we take the watch industry, we can find watches that are $100 to $10,000+ (say a Rolex for example), as we can with DACs, amps and cables. However, Rolex’s marketing is based on superior craftsmanship, materials, heritage/brand name and warranty. Rolex do NOT claim their watches are better/more accurate time-pieces than far cheaper watches and they don’t make up a bunch of lies/pseudoscience explaining how and why they’re more accurate.

My ears told me changing a silver wired cable for a copper one toned down high frequencies.

As I’m sure you’re aware by now: Your ears did not tell you that, your brain did! And, as it’s quite trivial to objectively determine/measure that copper does not “tone down high frequencies”, the only question is why your brain “told you” something that was incorrect? The proven answer to that question is cognitive biases.

If people say they can hear a difference maybe they can I won't question them could be their hearings better…

On the other hand, I would question them. Because even if their hearing is better, it’s completely irrelevant. No matter how good their hearing, they cannot hear a difference if there isn’t a difference! The ONLY difference in high freqs they might perceive is an imaginary (biased induced) difference.

G

 

[bigshot]

I have a WSM too!

 

[Ryokan]

As I’m sure you’re aware by now: Your ears did not tell you that, your brain did! And, as it’s quite trivial to objectively determine/measure that copper does not “tone down high frequencies”, the only question is why your brain “told you” something that was incorrect? The proven answer to that question is cognitive biases.

I'm still trying to work out why the iem's sounded horrible, tips certainly make a difference though they can't have that drastic an effect, possibly they sound better after more hours but they're an all BA set.

 

[bigshot]

Maybe your ears were wonky from air pressure imbalance or earwax. Maybe you just didn't like your lunch.

 

[castleofargh]

Did it happen in a period of time close to a full moon?
Was it mysterious Chinese spy tech used in the area that affected the DAC at that time?
...
Again, it's not convenient or fun, but to get proper answers we have to first gather enough data. Conjectures based on ultra minimal information and guesses can land us pretty much anywhere, including far away from the truth.






Off topic, or maybe to illustrate what Greg mentioned beside the audiophile world, I stumbled upon this marvel:

Each essential oil is made up of around one hundred active aromatic and terpene molecules that are particularly effective at treating everyday health ailments.

I was skeptical about essential oil in general, but one hundred molecules!!! They're not messing around.

 

[bigshot]

SUNSPOTS!

 

[gregorio]

I'm still trying to work out why the iem's sounded horrible, tips certainly make a difference though they can't have that drastic an effect, possibly they sound better after more hours but they're an all BA set.

When we hear something we don’t expect, we tend to want to find an explanation. Nothing wrong with that but the problem in the audiophile world is that it’s so packed with false information, usually originating from some decades old marketing BS that’s been so blindly accepted for so long that it’s almost unquestionable, that the explanation you come up with is very likely to be wrong, while completely ignoring the explanation/s which are actually plausible.

Yes, silver is more conductive than copper but only by a small amount and the effect is minuscule. A 7ft 1inch silver cable has about the same conductivity as a 7ft copper cable, no way anyone can hear a difference of 1 inch greater cable length, it’s many orders of magnitude below audibility, you even need some fairly specialised equipment just to measure such minute differences. Here’s an example of a relatively expensive silver cable vs a cheap radio shack copper cable vs a ten year old, even cheaper, unbranded copper cable that’s almost double the length. There’s no measured difference at 16/44. Frequency deviation between the cables is 0.0dB! What about with a bigger freq range, up to 40kHz (96k sampling rate and 24bit), frequency deviation is still 0.0dB! It doesn’t matter how super human your hearing is, you can’t hear a frequency difference of 0.0dB. The only difference was with the double length unbranded cable when measuring cross talk, although it’s roughly 1,000 times below audibility and a couple of tiny noise peaks at about -130dB. And to put that into perspective: A theoretically perfectly silent room/anechoic chamber (which no one has ever managed to build) would still have a noise floor due to Brownian Motion, the random collisions of air molecules within the room creates a tiny amount of random noise. At sea level and 20C this noise is at about -24dBSPL. So this figure effectively represents the limit of absolute silence (for a human being), as any noise/sound would obviously have to add to that noise floor. Let’s say you set your HPs uncomfortably loud, say to 100dB peak level, the difference measured at -130dB would therefore be at -30dBSPL, about half the SPL required for a sound to actually exist! So again, hearing ability doesn’t come into it.

Tips can indeed make a difference, up to 6dB or more, so can an ear blockage due to a having a slight cold or just an air pressure difference behind your eardrum and that most definitely is “that drastic an effect” compared to a 0.0dB difference! Silver is a brighter colour than copper and some bright spark marketer, probably more than 40 years ago, stumbled upon the already well established (and widely employed) fact that what “the eye sees the brain can hear (make-up)” and so began the established audiophile BS that silver cables sound brighter.

G

 

[Benesyed]

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.

Having ears doesnt mean that you arent being misled or deceiving yourself. People have many faculties that are often misled.

I could have sworn that my sony wm1am2 sounded better than my hiby. Until i had my partner plug my headphones in at random and play the same songs. And let me tell you I could not tell things apart as reliably as I was certain I would haha.