yage
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2001
- Posts
- 1,270
- Likes
- 457
I know I posted about this before head-fi went down and I'll try to repost in the same spirit...
I find hi-fi to be a fun hobby. Part of that fun is getting to try out new gear - components as well as cables, new speakers and tweaks. Being an engineer, I like to know how things work. Being a research engineer, I know that things that you thought weren't possible, sometimes are and already thought of and done by somebody else.
So I try to take a moderate approach. Learn what makes things tick, yet also realize there's much we don't know. If someone can hear an improvement with a new cable in their system or a system tweak - although science can't explain it or says it shouldn't be so, maybe we really are detecting and discovering something that makes our listening experience better and more enjoyable.
I simply don't understand why there are posters out there that just want to ruin the party. Not just every once in a while, but all the time. You know who they are, and they're accounted for, yet they post nonetheless, on a deluded "mission" to save audiophiles from "wasting" their money.
Hopefully, these posters have heard of the concept of a free market. Sure, we're susceptible to marketing and hype like any other person, but if a product has true value, the market (being us audiophiles) will recognize it and keep buying it. If it doesn't, then it simply goes away. It's analogous to what Benjamin Graham said about the stock market (and I'm paraphrasing here), "In the short term, the market is a voting machine; in the long term, a weighing one."
Maybe what the cables forum needs is a sticky on top with some text to the effect of the following:
"I, the undersigned, forthwith declare all cables to be relatively unimportant to a system's performance due to (insert reason here - i.e. double blind testing, "whitepapers", stubbornness, tin ears) and in lieu of expressing my vehement belief in all threads on cables or tweaks and thus sidetracking future relevant and real discussion, hereby note it in this sticky for all other posters to see in perpetuity."
Then, maybe, the audiophiles will come back and start to enjoy the hobby a little bit more.
***
On a separate note, I've been in the market for new speakers as it were. I've listened to and highly enjoyed the Vienna Acoustics Strauss (which probably should be the topic of a another blog post) - which, to the best of my knowledge, has suddenly been dropped from their product line. I don't know why. The step below (Beethoven Concert Grands) are quite good in their own right yet lack the imaging and dynamics of the Strauss, but the the step up (Mahler) seems to have waaay more bass (dual subwoofers in each speaker!) than my room could possibly handle.
Oh speaker gods, why dost thou mock me?
I find hi-fi to be a fun hobby. Part of that fun is getting to try out new gear - components as well as cables, new speakers and tweaks. Being an engineer, I like to know how things work. Being a research engineer, I know that things that you thought weren't possible, sometimes are and already thought of and done by somebody else.
So I try to take a moderate approach. Learn what makes things tick, yet also realize there's much we don't know. If someone can hear an improvement with a new cable in their system or a system tweak - although science can't explain it or says it shouldn't be so, maybe we really are detecting and discovering something that makes our listening experience better and more enjoyable.
I simply don't understand why there are posters out there that just want to ruin the party. Not just every once in a while, but all the time. You know who they are, and they're accounted for, yet they post nonetheless, on a deluded "mission" to save audiophiles from "wasting" their money.
Hopefully, these posters have heard of the concept of a free market. Sure, we're susceptible to marketing and hype like any other person, but if a product has true value, the market (being us audiophiles) will recognize it and keep buying it. If it doesn't, then it simply goes away. It's analogous to what Benjamin Graham said about the stock market (and I'm paraphrasing here), "In the short term, the market is a voting machine; in the long term, a weighing one."
Maybe what the cables forum needs is a sticky on top with some text to the effect of the following:
"I, the undersigned, forthwith declare all cables to be relatively unimportant to a system's performance due to (insert reason here - i.e. double blind testing, "whitepapers", stubbornness, tin ears) and in lieu of expressing my vehement belief in all threads on cables or tweaks and thus sidetracking future relevant and real discussion, hereby note it in this sticky for all other posters to see in perpetuity."
Then, maybe, the audiophiles will come back and start to enjoy the hobby a little bit more.
***
On a separate note, I've been in the market for new speakers as it were. I've listened to and highly enjoyed the Vienna Acoustics Strauss (which probably should be the topic of a another blog post) - which, to the best of my knowledge, has suddenly been dropped from their product line. I don't know why. The step below (Beethoven Concert Grands) are quite good in their own right yet lack the imaging and dynamics of the Strauss, but the the step up (Mahler) seems to have waaay more bass (dual subwoofers in each speaker!) than my room could possibly handle.
Oh speaker gods, why dost thou mock me?
