4 ms·

"Audiophile" products get me so mad, I don't even want to look at them to mock them. It's blatant anti-science, willful ignorance. To the chagrin of people's ur

"Audiophile" products get me so mad, I don't even want to look at them to mock them. It's blatant anti-science, willful ignorance. To the chagrin of people's urge to keep optimizing, digital audio has been solved decades ago: CD audio can perfectly represent audio containing tones up to 22kHz, with a 96dB signal to noise ratio. Those are both figures that seem to exceed the hearing of even the best listener on earth. For studio use, 24 bits offer some benefits for editing, but not because it sounds better, because we cannot hear better. Instead, if you mix audio it's useful to have some headroom over the dynamic range of your music (headroom you cannot hear), before you mix it back down to 16 bits for listening. Think about pasting pictures into a bigger canvas before cutting it back down. Things like 96kHz or even 192kHz audio can actually be harmful for listening: Not because you can fundamentally hear a difference (you can't), but because if you have any nonlinearities in your audio playback chain, those inaudible frequencies above ~20kHz will cause intermodulation distortion in your audible range. Congrats, you've taken some useless crap over your hearing range and reflected it back as ugly crap into your hearing range. Anyone who has invested time into understanding Fourier transforms and digital sampling on a fundamental mathematical level realizes that, and just gets angry at the lies. The Fourier transform and the sampling theorem don't know what an "open sound stage" or an "airier voice" is, if you think changes in sample rates and jitter translate into such human concepts instead of plain noise, you live in some phantasy non-physical world. What is not solved is speakers and room acoustics. That remains notoriously hard, because a room easily can (and most often does) reflect parts of the spectrum such that it cancels itself out. No amount of equalizing can fix that (it's mathematically impossible), you need to change your room or speaker arrangement. If you want to optimize audio, nerd out about that. Or if you absolute must, argue about lossy encoding formats (e.g. AAC vs. MP3) and bitrate. There is much less hard math in your way there, as they strongly rely on psychoacoustics. But anyone who claims that they hear a difference with 192kHz (on a provably linear audio chain) or an "audiophile Ethernet switch" shows that they're talking bullshit to begin with, so why would I trust their opinion on some potential real difference.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
While I agree 110% with everything you've said here, I think we should be careful to not rule out the possibility that our sensation of "hearing" may involve parts of the body ouside the ear. For example, I think it's a long shot, but there is some vague possibility that supersonic frequencies may be detectable by other parts of the body. I would prefer to not be in the group laughed at in 110 years from now: "back in the 21st century, those idiots thought that we only experienced sound through our ears". That said this product and audiophilia in general is just pure unadulterated BS.
- ganbatekudasai 5y ago
  You've definitely got a point. But that ~20kHz figure to my knowledge was not just determined by "can the ear hear this" but by "can the person hear a difference". But yeah, theoretically, it's possible that all that science was only conducted with, say, headphones. Like with all things science, everything is only falsifiable, never 100% provable. But yeah, I think we're indeed on the same page, the claims that audiophiles make are often falsified already. Or make so little sense that it's akin to "eating an apple in the morning shifts Helium's absorption spectrum by a few nm". You can attempt (and succeed) to falsify that, but it's such a waste of time and energy...
- walrus01 5y ago
  > our sensation of "hearing" may involve parts of the body ouside the ear. It's definitely possible to tell the difference between the quality of audio from a shitty subwoofer ($50) vs something that costs $200... Not so much audio as perceived by eardrum but perceptible vibration felt by the body. The cheap one also is likely to rattle its own chassis and feet and vibrate on whatever floor you've placed it on.
  - ganbatekudasai 5y ago
    And nobody is disputing that. As said, you want to focus on optimizing audio, optimize your room, your speakers, your headphones etc... there is solid and well understood math behind speaker and room acoustic models.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

While I agree 110% with everything you've said here, I think we should be careful to not rule out the possibility that our sensation of "hearing" may involve parts of the body ouside the ear. For example, I think it's a long shot, but there is some vague possibility that supersonic frequencies may be detectable by other parts of the body. I would prefer to not be in the group laughed at in 110 years from now: "back in the 21st century, those idiots thought that we only experienced sound through our ears". That said this product and audiophilia in general is just pure unadulterated BS.

ganbatekudasai 5y ago
You've definitely got a point. But that ~20kHz figure to my knowledge was not just determined by "can the ear hear this" but by "can the person hear a difference". But yeah, theoretically, it's possible that all that science was only conducted with, say, headphones. Like with all things science, everything is only falsifiable, never 100% provable. But yeah, I think we're indeed on the same page, the claims that audiophiles make are often falsified already. Or make so little sense that it's akin to "eating an apple in the morning shifts Helium's absorption spectrum by a few nm". You can attempt (and succeed) to falsify that, but it's such a waste of time and energy...
walrus01 5y ago
> our sensation of "hearing" may involve parts of the body ouside the ear. It's definitely possible to tell the difference between the quality of audio from a shitty subwoofer ($50) vs something that costs $200... Not so much audio as perceived by eardrum but perceptible vibration felt by the body. The cheap one also is likely to rattle its own chassis and feet and vibrate on whatever floor you've placed it on.
- ganbatekudasai 5y ago
  And nobody is disputing that. As said, you want to focus on optimizing audio, optimize your room, your speakers, your headphones etc... there is solid and well understood math behind speaker and room acoustic models.