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Generally speaking, the audiophile world falls into two camps. Those that think particular makes and models of audio electronics and speakers are somehow "magi

by rplst8 11y ago

Generally speaking, the audiophile world falls into two camps. Those that think particular makes and models of audio electronics and speakers are somehow "magic" and those that simply want their systems to measure "flat". The first camp are the ones that used to put weights on their speakers, used "magic" green markers to color the vertical edge around the outside of a compact disc, and would spend tens of thousands of dollars on a plinth for their turntable or a magic tube driven preamp. The rest are simply concerned with scientific measurement of the system. Does it produce a reasonably flat sound in frequency and phase that remains undistorted at volumes at which they listen to music. The latter camp will highly rate headphones (or any other piece of audio equipment) that can produce a the full bandwidth of human hearing while keeping distortion low over a useful range of amplitude. Comfort, cost, and construction quality would also be considered in the ranking.

andy_ppp 11y ago
There are also two sorts of hacker news commenters, those who divide people into two camps and those who don't. :-)
- aaronem 11y ago
  Maybe, but in this case at least GP is not wrong to do so, merely lacking a little in nuance, in that on the "measurement" side, not everybody is looking for the flattest possible response. On the whole, though, there absolutely is a sort of "audiophile" who spends thousands and thousands of perfectly good dollars on completely ridiculous paraphernalia, because a combination of placebo effect and escalating commitment convinces him that it makes his music sound better. I don't have time to dig up a complete selection of background for you, but here's a good place to start, with a fair selection of jumping-off points for further study: http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2011/12/30/audiophiles-and-the-need-to-be-special/ http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2011/12/30/audiophiles-and-th... The major difference between the fellow described in this article, and the more usual sort of placebo audiophile, is that this fellow happened actually to be an electrical engineer, and thus capable of demonstrating to himself that he was full of it. Unfortunately, such acumen seems to be rather rare.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  There are also two types of Hacker News comments, those that whine and those that go meta. ... oh wait.

by rplst8 11y ago

andy_ppp 11y ago

There are also two sorts of hacker news commenters, those who divide people into two camps and those who don't. :-)

aaronem 11y ago
Maybe, but in this case at least GP is not wrong to do so, merely lacking a little in nuance, in that on the "measurement" side, not everybody is looking for the flattest possible response. On the whole, though, there absolutely is a sort of "audiophile" who spends thousands and thousands of perfectly good dollars on completely ridiculous paraphernalia, because a combination of placebo effect and escalating commitment convinces him that it makes his music sound better. I don't have time to dig up a complete selection of background for you, but here's a good place to start, with a fair selection of jumping-off points for further study: http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2011/12/30/audiophiles-and-the-need-to-be-special/ http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2011/12/30/audiophiles-and-th... The major difference between the fellow described in this article, and the more usual sort of placebo audiophile, is that this fellow happened actually to be an electrical engineer, and thus capable of demonstrating to himself that he was full of it. Unfortunately, such acumen seems to be rather rare.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
There are also two types of Hacker News comments, those that whine and those that go meta. ... oh wait.