More 'Audiophile' bullsh*t

[ATG]

Tony1963 said:

And someone resorts to “unless you a/b test” almost straightaway.


Tell me. Let’s say you go to a pub, see a beer tap for a brew you’ve never tried, and you order a pint of it. You take a sip, and a second later your face lights up… you love it… do you order a pint of Carling just to make sure the label on the tap didn’t alter your expectations? I very much doubt it. You’ll just relax and enjoy the thing.

It's not "resorting" to anything. It's just a normal procedure for discerning if a subtle difference in perception exists in the external world or just in your head.

If a power lead clearly "sounded" distinctly different to another, then we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. It would be common knowledge that power leads mattered and it would be demonstrable with measurement kit and there'd be a perfectly sensible explanation as to why they made a difference.

Surely you are prepared to admit that the difference is subtle? If so, in any other field people would naturally use an A/B test to establish if a difference actually exists. These tests exist to eliminate our natural biases.

Can you tell me why detecting subtle differences in audio equipment performance is not at risk of being distorted by people's normal biases?

Can you tell me why blind A/B testing wouldn't be an appropriate way of objectively determining if you can really hear the difference between two power leads?

[Tony1963]

No. I can’t be bothered. Just as when I bought most of my system back in 1998/9 I only tested a couple of options (Saudi, not a huge choice) and chose what I liked and could afford, sometimes it’s just far too much hassle.

For example, to replace a mains lead for a test is in itself very simple, but it requires the system to be turned off, and that changes everything. You can’t sit there swapping back and forth making decisions, blind or not. It’s pretty much impossible. So, it turns into a monotonous chore with the help of someone.

Here’s what I do on the very rare occasions I try something different in the system. System off, swap item, system on, leave it alone for a few hours or maybe a day, then have a listen with a well known album. Leave it there for as long as necessary, ask if I think it’s different/worse/better or not. Then I put the original item back in. What do I think? Does that same album sound better or worse now?

And I’ll say again: I don’t have anything silly in my system. It has interconnects that cost about £35 each, speaker cable that cost £200 for the 10m stereo pair, a couple of PSUs, and that’s it.

But. I’m not going to tell a medical doctor or an aircraft engineering officer that they’re silly and imagining things. They’ve nothing to prove, and are perfectly level headed.

[LunarOne]

Tony1963 said:

And someone resorts to “unless you a/b test” almost straightaway.


Tell me. Let’s say you go to a pub, see a beer tap for a brew you’ve never tried, and you order a pint of it. You take a sip, and a second later your face lights up… you love it… do you order a pint of Carling just to make sure the label on the tap didn’t alter your expectations? I very much doubt it. You’ll just relax and enjoy the thing.

That situation isn’t remotely analogous. A closer analogy would be to say you tried the same beer in a different glass and loved it. Because the glass makes all the difference. There’s just no way on earth a mains lead could affect the sound of any equipment, no matter what it’s made of. If that lead included a transformer, rectifier, smoothing and filtering circuits and output a DC supply which you could use to replace your in–built PSU, then I could see how that might help. But manufacturers could easily sell their equipment with external PSUs from the factory if they thought it would make a huge difference. But they don’t.

[Sporky]

Tony1963 said:

And someone resorts to “unless you a/b test” almost straightaway.


Tell me. Let’s say you go to a pub, see a beer tap for a brew you’ve never tried, and you order a pint of it. You take a sip, and a second later your face lights up… you love it… do you order a pint of Carling just to make sure the label on the tap didn’t alter your expectations? I very much doubt it. You’ll just relax and enjoy the thing.

The more accurate audiophile comparison is this.

You go to your local. The landlord says "The usual?" You reply "Please". He then says "You should be drinking it from one of my new glasses though. They have a new cryogenic nano-abrasion finish which adds planck-length quantum tunnelling grooves - that means you're experiencing the beer as the brewer intended. It's only £300 to have the same beer from one of these. How about it?"

The audiophile would ask if there was a more expensive option - because that would be better - before insisting on gluing a bit of polished gravel to the side of the glass opposite the logo.

[Sporky]

LunarOne said:

That situation isn’t remotely analogous. A closer analogy would be to say you tried the same beer in a different glass and loved it. Because the glass makes all the difference.

We crossed over. I should type faster.

[Tony1963]

LunarOne said:

But manufacturers could easily sell their equipment with external PSUs from the factory if they thought it would make a huge difference. But they don’t.

You might want to rethink that.

[Tony1963]

Sporky said:

The audiophile would ask if there was a more expensive option - because that would be better - before insisting on gluing a bit of polished gravel to the side of the glass opposite the logo.

Every one of the ten (?) people I have met who is really into playing music is very careful about where they spend their money. And I’m serious about this. They all understand the importance of the room/speaker interaction, and once they’re happy, nothing changes for years.
One good friend has just admitted that his hearing isn’t what it was, and he doesn’t want to leave his (much younger) wife with a mountain of silly electronics to get rid of when he passes. So he sold almost everything and bought Accuphase pre and power. Beautiful. Heavy. To me it just sounds the same as his old top of the line Naim amps but without the nasty bits. Still has the Linn turntable and Naim DBLs. I love it now.
He also has some of his living room back!

Edited by Tony1963 on Thursday 12th August 17:31

Edited by Tony1963 on Thursday 12th August 17:32

[gregs656]

I highly recommend the people on this thread who are convinced they are hearing differences go and read 'Concerning Tobacco' by Mark Twain, a short essay which covers the topic of perceived difference.

There is another good experiment with branded and generic paracetamol and holding your hand in cold water - the people who had taken the fancy paracetamol which claimed to be faster acting and longer lasting cold hold their hand underneath for longer, even if the tablet was a generic paracetamol tablet.

It is fine to know you are being duped and accept it, that happens to all of us, it is a different thing to claim there is an objective change. That is why people ask for blind testing.

[Tony1963]

I’d rather be listening and enjoying.


And this is the crux of it all for me: my hifi is for listening to music. In the grand scheme of things mine is somewhere near the bottom of the cost ladder, and is mostly entering into being vintage gear lol. So there’s a few thousand boxes I could’ve demoed with A-B testing…. Really? I’m already happy!

But if a nutty mate popped round with a £35k mains lead or £20k interconnect, would I give it a go for a laugh? Of course I would!

Edited by Tony1963 on Thursday 12th August 18:04

[swisstoni]

We can often fool ourselves.

You could play the same music system twice to an audio buff and ask them to say which one sounded best.
They would very likely choose one over the other because they think they are sufficiently discerning.

[TonyRPH]

Tony1963 said:

Every one of the ten (?) people I have met who is really into playing music is very careful about where they spend their money. And I’m serious about this. They all understand the importance of the room/speaker interaction, and once they’re happy, nothing changes for years.
One good friend has just admitted that his hearing isn’t what it was, and he doesn’t want to leave his (much younger) wife with a mountain of silly electronics to get rid of when he passes. So he sold almost everything and bought Accuphase pre and power. Beautiful. Heavy. To me it just sounds the same as his old top of the line Naim amps but without the nasty bits. Still has the Linn turntable and Naim DBLs. I love it now.
He also has some of his living room back!

Edited by Tony1963 on Thursday 12th August 17:31

Edited by Tony1963 on Thursday 12th August 17:32

It doesn't take much to better most Naim amps, in particular the older ones, where the design was compromised.

[Tony1963]

TonyRPH said:

It doesn't take much to better most Naim amps, in particular the older ones, where the design was compromised.

His were three NAP500s etc.

Anyway. No need to go down the Naim bashing route. Every single hifi is a compromise. Full stop.

[Sporky]

Tony1963 said:

Anyway. No need to go down the Naim bashing route. Every single hifi is a compromise. Full stop.

Mine certainly is. A glorious one. But it uses the mains cables that came with each component, speaker cable that is just the correct gauge of OFC for the power, distance, and impedance, and a 65p ethernet cable.

[TonyRPH]

Tony1963 said:

His were three NAP500s etc.

Anyway. No need to go down the Naim bashing route. Every single hifi is a compromise. Full stop.

I agree, the difference being that Naim was deliberately compromised to achieve the 'Naim sound'.

But that's enough of that.

[gregs656]

Tony1963 said:

I’d rather be listening and enjoying.

You've spent the last few pages arguing that you can hear differences from mains cables.

[Tony1963]

gregs656 said:

You've spent the last few pages arguing that you can hear differences from mains cables.

Please be so kind as to point out where I said that.

[Gary C]

Gregs65, you got the wrong tony

tonyg58 said:

I heard some of the Valhalla mains cables a few years ago when they were trying to get the shop i worked in to open an account.
The effect they had on the system was truly remarkable, bass tightened up a lot and mid was much cleaner.

Would i pay for them?- Don't be f*****g stupid - even the trade price was ridiculous, and no, i'm not going to tell you the dealer margin.

[gregs656]

Tony1963 said:

Please be so kind as to point out where I said that.

Tony1963 said:

take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey said:

But we're talking about a mains cable...the thing that's connected to the crappy wiring in your house. Which plugs into a fairly basic transformer in the amp / CD / streamer / turntable.

Yes. I know. And I’ve seen the arguments for 30 years. And I agree with science and engineering. And then I hear a bloody difference ffs lol. Sometimes you just need to accept things, and also accept that we might not be looking in the right place when we say “It can’t work”.

Here you go.

[Tony1963]

I was talking about hearing differences in general when changes are made, sorry for not being precise.
And as I’ve at least hinted at, I haven’t even tried any expensive mains leads. And again, as I’ve definitely said more than once, if someone waved a very expensive cable of any sort in my face and told me I could try it in my system, I’d be a very blinkered, boring old guy to say no to it.

[Lucid_AV]

ATG said:

It's not "resorting" to anything. It's just a normal procedure for discerning if a subtle difference in perception exists in the external world or just in your head.

If a power lead clearly "sounded" distinctly different to another, then we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. It would be common knowledge that power leads mattered and it would be demonstrable with measurement kit and there'd be a perfectly sensible explanation as to why they made a difference.

Surely you are prepared to admit that the difference is subtle? If so, in any other field people would naturally use an A/B test to establish if a difference actually exists. These tests exist to eliminate our natural biases.

Can you tell me why detecting subtle differences in audio equipment performance is not at risk of being distorted by people's normal biases?

Can you tell me why blind A/B testing wouldn't be an appropriate way of objectively determining if you can really hear the difference between two power leads?

BIB: There's a big problem with that argument. It's that how much a listener is bothered if there's a difference very much affects their perception. This goes for Hi-Fi in general, not just tweaky ancillaries.