[Mr Rick]

  Cable induced "treble etch". My worst nightmare.......

They make a salve for that.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Here's another example of an overactive audiophile imagination at work. I fail to understand how people actually believe they are hearing this. I don't think for the most part that they are purposefully imagining this.Or at least I hope not. But challenge this and they attack like a pack of dogs. I feel sorry for the innocent newbie that is easily influenced due to naivety and mob based suggestion.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/711824/hifiman-he-560-impressions-discussion-thread/13065#post_11609354

Just realized while reading that that Draug spelled backwards is Guard.

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[StanD]

Just realized while reading that that Draug spelled backwards is Guard.

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Sounds like a Beatle thing, backwards satanic messges. I heard that David Carradine was found hanging in a closet in Bangkok using one of those cables. Now that was a serious case of Treble Etch. 

 

[AudioBear]

The forums are full of those sorts of descriptions.  What's amazing is how many there are and how it is perfectly accepted with cans and IEMs in particular that you have to find the right $500 or $1000 cable for your $300 can.   There are some pretty good marketers out there.
 
It is impossible to have a discussion with these people.  I don't want to back over 400 pages but I'm sure it's been discussed dozens of times.  Is there a good article or link that objectively discusses why wires aren't circuits that we can refer them to?  Will they read it?  Good question.
 
When I made my long post a couple of days ago I mentioned how buying into commonly held beliefs is part of neo-tribal behavior.  It's worse than that.  One can hold such beliefs in spite of clear evidence that they are not true.  In fact, it is a defining characteristic of the tribe that people believe things that are clearly not true.  It is almost like a test of your sincerity.
 
Question.  Are some of these people hearing real differences caused for example by placing the cans in a different position or sitting in a slightly different position or something like that or are they all just imagining that wires can act like complex filter circuits?

 

[StanD]

  The forums are full of those sorts of descriptions.  What's amazing is how many there are and how it is perfectly accepted with cans and IEMs in particular that you have to find the right $500 or $1000 cable for your $300 can.   There are some pretty good marketers out there.
 
It is impossible to have a discussion with these people.  I don't want to back over 400 pages but I'm sure it's been discussed dozens of times.  Is there a good article or link that objectively discusses why wires aren't circuits that we can refer them to?  Will they read it?  Good question.
 
When I made my long post a couple of days ago I mentioned how buying into commonly held beliefs is part of neo-tribal behavior.  It's worse than that.  One can hold such beliefs in spite of clear evidence that they are not true.  In fact, it is a defining characteristic of the tribe that people believe things that are clearly not true.  It is almost like a test of your sincerity.
 
Question.  Are some of these people hearing real differences caused for example by placing the cans in a different position or sitting in a slightly different position or something like that or are they all just imagining that wires can act like complex filter circuits?

Wires are circuits, very simple passive circuits. Unfortunately the uninitiated romanticize them with all sorts of magic. To answer your question, they are imagining all sorts of Schiit.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Sounds like a Beatle thing, backwards satanic messges. I heard that David Carradine was found hanging in a closet in Bangkok using one of those cables. Now that was a serious case of Treble Etch. :veryevil:

Hehehe.

Just got off the phone with Trevor over at Norne. Was telling him about the Draug/Guard thing. He was joking saying maybe he should do a cable called Guard. And then it hit me. I said he should do a variation and call it Guard Draug. It's both a pun and a palindrome! Genius!

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[StanD]

Hehehe.

Just got off the phone with Trevor over at Norne. Was telling him about the Draug/Guard thing. He was joking saying maybe he should do a cable called Guard. And then it hit me. I said he should do a variation and call it Guard Draug. It's both a pun and a palindrome! Genius!

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Now that's what I call marketing genius. I actually got asked to code a palindrome detection routine in a job interview.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Now that's what I call marketing genius. I actually got asked to code a palindrome detection routine in a job interview.

Ha! No kiddin'?

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[cel4145]

Attack the idea, not the person. Unfortunately, some people confuse the two and take offense, while others misunderstand the two and attack the person. 

True. It's impossible sometimes for it not to be perceived as personal, though, when it comes to discussing subjectivist vs objectivist views on audio. In the sense that individual subjectivist views are sometimes based on a belief in one's own infallibility at observation, and using inductive reasoning, someone may have built up a set of personal theories about audio. Objectivism often requires that one confront one's own potential for fallibility, and in doing so, will often take down those theories like the house of cards that they are.

Note that I said "sometimes" above because I do not want to imply that all people take objectivist criticism personally. I also don't want to imply that people arguing objectivist positions don't get cranky when their beliefs are challenged. But I do think objectivist criticism can be more likely to be a perceived attack on one one's ego, and also the person may be subconsciously conflicted with the paradigm shift of objectivist thinking. When we face internal conflicts within ourselves which creates doubt, we often redirect that discomfort and lash out. If someone feels themselves to be a reasonable and logical person, it's sometimes hard to come to terms with the idea that their reason might be failing them.

So conversations about audio ideas and beliefs and where they come from will definitely get heated sometimes. That's why it's important to try to not cross the line from making it about audio beliefs and ideas and to making it about the person. That will escalate the discussion to making it more personal, and of course it's off topic. The topic of this forum is not about other individual posters. It's about audio science.

 

[bigshot]

  What is your field of study? You must be an acoustic or electrical engineer, yes? It would be hilarious if you weren't.

 
Actually, I'm a producer in the entertainment business. I work with both creative and technical folks.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Actually, I'm a producer in the entertainment business. I work with both creative and technical folks.

All one has to do is listen to your voicing of Yogi Bear to know that you're a man to be reckoned with.

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[bigshot]

Ha! The biggest complement I got on that was a big cartoon fan who said, "I never even realized that it was a different person doing the voice... it was just Yogi." It's nice to be anonymous!

 

[AudioBear]

True. It's impossible sometimes for it not to be perceived as personal, though, when it comes to discussing subjectivist vs objectivist views on audio. In the sense that individual subjectivist views are sometimes based on a belief in one's own infallibility at observation, and using inductive reasoning, someone may have built up a set of personal theories about audio. Objectivism often requires that one confront one's own potential for fallibility, and in doing so, will often take down those theories like the house of cards that they are.

Note that I said "sometimes" above because I do not want to imply that all people take objectivist criticism personally. I also don't want to imply that people arguing objectivist positions don't get cranky when their beliefs are challenged. But I do think objectivist criticism can be more likely to be a perceived attack on one one's ego, and also the person may be subconsciously conflicted with the paradigm shift of objectivist thinking. When we face internal conflicts within ourselves which creates doubt, we often redirect that discomfort and lash out. If someone feels themselves to be a reasonable and logical person, it's sometimes hard to come to terms with the idea that their reason might be failing them.

So conversations about audio ideas and beliefs and where they come from will definitely get heated sometimes. That's why it's important to try to not cross the line from making it about audio beliefs and ideas and to making it about the person. That will escalate the discussion to making it more personal, and of course it's off topic. The topic of this forum is not about other individual posters. It's about audio science.

 
I'd like to pick up and extend your comments.  I hope we all agree that making hurtful personal attacks is over the line.  When we attack irrational beliefs we have a dilemma.  As you point out, it can be hard to separate an attack on unscientific or irrational conclusions from an attack on the person making them.  You are if nothing else criticizing their methodology which is part of their persona.
 
There is another aspect of this that leads to hard feelings.  Objectivists understand the difficulty in being objective, scientists adhere to a set of principles they call the scientific method to help them keep their prejudices and intuitions out of the process of seeking truth, engineers have their own toolkit and logic for problem solving, doctors are taught a method for diagnosis that helps them kept out of the trap of faulty assumptions.  Believers have no roadmap for arriving at an unbiased answer.  They freely admit they trust their senses and they are proud of how well their senses work.  They also have a liturgy of facts that have been discovered through their approach to inquiry.  It includes beliefs about wires, fuses, balanced circuits, and its own vocabulary (harshness, grit, bass grunt, warm, dark, bright, voiced, etc).  Their belief system has many of the characteristics of a cult, if not a religion.
 
And we all know what happens when you attack someone's religion.  It's worse than attacking them, and they react strongly because it is an attack on what they believe.  What do facts have to do with it?  Not much.  Psychology research on the consequences of confirmation bias shows that when you cite contrary evidence to someone who strongly believes something that is demonstrably untrue, they not only don't believe the evidence, having heard it actually reinforces the strength of their beliefs.  Let me say that again, trying to prove them wrong makes them believe their erroneous conclusion even more strongly!  That's what the research shows.  Humans are indeed a very perverse species.  So when you tell someone who has spent $1000 on an IEM cable because it really brings out the bass grunt and smooths the mid-treble grit, that blind studies show they can't tell one cable from another, what you do is make them hear the differences more clearly and make them angry at you for suggesting they are wrong.  They are absolutely sure the cable makes a big difference and they are indignant and offended that you say it doesn't even when you prove to them they cannot tell one from another in a test. 
 
Some of us are ready to be proved wrong if we're wrong. Others seem to get great ego satisfaction by bandying around terms in a way that proves they are a member of an elite group of savants.  It's like mixing oil and water.

 

[StanD]

@AudioBear The one thing about the religeous audiophiles that bothers me the most is how they influence the lay person down a false road at that person's expense and wasted time. IMO that is the worst.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Ha! The biggest complement I got on that was a big cartoon fan who said, "I never even realized that it was a different person doing the voice... it was just Yogi." It's nice to be anonymous!

Yeah. I'm very sensitive when cartoon characters I grew to know and love get voiced by someone other than those who originated the voice. But I'd wager even Daws Butler would be hard pressed to tell the difference. That's the first thing that really stood out to me when I first watched the short. Boo Boo was obvious. Ranger Smith was a bit closer, but Yogi was nailed.

I wonder how The Simpsons will fare if they're not able to entice Shearer back.

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