I'm a bit amused, but also a bit sad that I have apparently come across as sincere when I was in fact joking. I am a repentant subjectivist that was turned around by your very posts a couple of years ago. I used to be just like that. The post was essentially mocking the typical audiophile.
Around here, irony is in short supply. We get a steady stream of people saying the exact same thing with a straight face!
Some people come here for no other reason than to do battle. They come out swinging and blustering and throw up smoke, talk about how unscientific we are and then tell us science doesn't know anything. They insult us constantly and if we reply at all in kind, they get mad and offended, notify the admins that they are being abused, and scurry back to the rest of Head-Fi to tell them how awful we are and how they made us all look like monkeys.
Other people seem to think Sound Science is like Survivor or Dancing With The Stars for junior scientists, where everyone is expected to compete until they're "voted off the island". The way to score points is to furiously type out long paragraphs of hyper technical dense techno-speak full of footnotes and irrelevant details and exceptions. If they win, they are accepted into the cast of "regulars" at Sound Science. The best way to win is to needle and nit pick and annoy one of the existing regulars and try to drive him off so they can take his place. (That never works, it just robs the forum of another voice.)
Still others come here with the "Rain Man" syndrome. They vomit out contextless facts without ever following a single train of thought. It doesn't matter if the facts are true or not; and it especially doesn't matter if the facts don't follow the topic of the thread. It's a constant flow of random information that derails discussions and makes everyone forget what we were originally talking about.
And then there are the one trick ponies who will take every opportunity to talk about their own pet topics- hot mastering, vinyl cartridges, the amateur choir they record, their own personal woes. It doesn't matter what anyone else says, they have their own topic and they'll drag every thread over into it.
Lastly there are people who enjoy chatting about how to assemble and set up a great sounding home audio system and use scientific principles to do that. They like helping people set up their first blind test to find things out for themselves. They tend to be practical, focusing on affordable and realistic ways of solving problems, not hyper-expensive and complicated solutions or pie in the sky theories with no application to home audio. They sincerely try to offer suggestions for how to make things better, and learn from other interesting knowledgeable people in the group with the same mindset. But they don't get much of a chance to do that, because all of the oxygen is taken up by the first four types.
I can probably fall into all into all these categories at times. But you can guess where I try to focus my participation. I'm not the only one. There are at least a dozen other people like me here. Threads here disappear into the rear view mirror so fast, and good posts get buried under a huge pile of discussional detritus. I often wrap up my posts with, "Hope this helps." after I offer a suggestion. But in Sound Science, we rarely know if we ever really help anyone. This is a long-winded way of saying, I'm glad we were able to help you.
