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How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever en

by Paul_S 4y ago

How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever enough to figure out crystals in bags taped to cables do not affect music quality. Just some nuggets from that thread: "Sounds awesome, the previous version had a slight tendency to defuse the treble, but with VS2012 compile it is a much more complete sound with absolutely no digital harshness, some 16/44 albums I could hardly play before without getting a headache are now rendered in their full glory." "It's just lazyness on the part of the player developers that they rely on the old methods, I guess they think bits are bits." "Goto also sounds better than anything else I have tried." - the "Goto" in the quote means a goto in C used to replace a loop. "also most players use malloc to get memory while new is the c++ method and sounds better."

tmnvix 4y ago
> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? Because not all audiophiles are gullible
unmole 4y ago
This has to be an elaborate joke.
ryanmcbride 4y ago
Knowledge is easily available and so is a whole lot of misinformation.
swatcoder 4y ago
Like kernel or compiler development, audio and DSP development is seen by some as a black art that’s subject to mysterious incantations and arcane rituals. Everybody knows how to write a for loop and wire up a CRUD app these days, but satisfying a low-latency audio buffer request while decoding media and applying effects feels fraught and often (genuinely) looks like a garble of translated Matlab with countless inscrutable variable names and seemingly random constants peppered everywhere. From that sense of awe (traditional meaning), it’s only a small leap to start wondering if even “known” textbook truths about things like memcpy matter differently than normal. And then the cultist gossip begins, you get the echo chamber effect on casual forums and meetups, and this is where you end up.
mrandish 4y ago
Audiophile-grade self-delusion is, fortunately, fairly rare. What's far more common today is the error many consumers make about 4K TV. I have friends who show me their new 4K TV and think it looks "amazing" just because they are feeding it a source labeled "4K" resolution, without considering (or even knowing) the bit rate of the compressed source. While there are good 4K sources like UHD Bluray discs and a few decent streaming sources (but it's spotty and inconsistent), the vast majority of "4K" sources look pretty awful due to being wildly over-compressed. And the level of self-delusion from some of my friends – who are otherwise very smart – is near-emperor's-new-clothes level. A recent example was the Super Bowl which was one of the few "special events" Comcast aired in 4K (only available on the latest version of Comcast's streaming boxes which few people have – and 4K is not available if you use DVR). I checked it out on a current-year higher-end 65" 4K TV (~$3k) which I adjusted myself to disable the myriad default settings claimed to "enhance" signals but often mangle them in unexpected ways. Even set up properly on a good TV it looked terrible. The tell-tale DCT macro-blocking was rampant and in many shots the base 4K-ness of the resolution space seemed to highlight the 'peggishness' worse than the 1080p version (which I was cross-checking against out of now-morbid curiosity). The super bowl is widely claimed to be the best quality 4K live broadcast. $250,000 lenses on the best cameras sent through the best signal paths managed by hundreds of engineers across a small city of the world's best production trucks. All stomped into a peggish mess so that cable and satellite companies can shove hundreds of channels of infomercials and decades-old Murder She Wrote episodes down the pipe simultaneously. I guess they'll keep doing it until enough people demand better or someone offers an alternative. Afterward I searched online and it appears the only widely accessible way to view the SB in decent 4K was if you live in one of the few cities that currently have broadcast TV stations airing true 4K and you set up an over-the-air antenna. While it's still compressed, due to FCC specifications for signals actually broadcast OTA, it's pretty mild and apparently looks sensational compared the what most people saw at home on their "awesome" new 4K TVs.
- deleted 4y ago
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- vosper 4y ago
  Oh, this is something I've been wondering about - I've had a 4K TV for years, but I don't think I've ever seen a 4K Bluray (I don't think I even know anyone who had a Bluray player). Are you saying that streaming a movie (say a recent Marvel one) in 4K from Disney Plus will look noticeably less good than if I played the same movie from a Bluray player? What about a Bluray torrent?
SergeAx 4y ago
The same way as flat-earthers. Also, showing off. Also, self-suggestion. Also, monetary incentive for vendors to keep their buyers spending money on snake oil.
sdfghswe 4y ago
> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever enough to figure out crystals in bags taped to cables do not affect music quality. You don't have to be clever to be a software engineer. It's not that difficult.
kloch 4y ago
> no digital harshness Reminds me of comments when CD's came out int he 1980's. Audiophiles and magazine articles insisted they could "hear the aluminum". What they were actually hearing was songs mastered for Vinyl or casette that had not been properly remastered for digital. Vinyl and casettes required pre-emphasis of highs to offset the limited high frequency response and noise of analog media.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  It's actually one of the best reasons to buy old vinyl for music that wasn't very popular. So much stuff got put into CDs without being mastered for it and it does sound objectively worse, as you've pointed out. There's a lot of great music (to certain people anyways) that you can't get a great digital copy of because it was never made. Even the digital copies are often pulled from a record or from a master tape but never remastered. Anything that could sell was probably remastered for CDs and digital. Of course, anything recorded with digital recording equipment and pressed to vinyl is simply for aesthetic reasons. Some people just like playing records and listening to music this way.
  - randy909 4y ago
    I'm not sure buying old vinyl helps all that much. The bass was cut from recordings so the needle would move less and not collide with the groove before it. Early CDs also lacked bass until trends changed. I would guess that most of the time a CD made from the master tape sounds better than the vinyl even without a remaster. Of course the remaster is almost always the best bet.
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      It depends on how many minutes of music were out on each side. There’s a lot of 45s that sound great and they’re worth a lot in part because of that for example. A lot of mainstream stuff started to get pressed on thin, cheap vinyl and was packed with as many minutes as possible. So yeah, loss of fidelity there and remastered CDs may in fact sound better. I think you’re probably safe until late 70s before that became practice. There’s no masters of a lot of rare, non-mainstream things, or at least not known masters. And a lot of great music that wasn’t going to be mainstream for a variety of reasons. Think regional funk, blues, punk, psych, etc. You just can’t get a great digital recording in many instances.
jalino23 4y ago
> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever enough to figure out crystals in bags taped to cables do not affect music quality. I consider myself an audiophile because I hear a difference between no amp+dac sennheiser hd650 vs with amp+dac. so when you ask "How can audiophile continue to exist" ? thats a bit of a dumb take aint it?
realworldperson 4y ago
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ravenstine 4y ago
The human ear is analogue, therefore it can be subject to a form of asymptotic Sysipheanism, ever searching for the smallest shred of better quality audio, not realizing that "quality" can be hallucinated.
npteljes 4y ago
>How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? Humans are not rational. This is easy to say, and hard to swallow - so, pretty similar to when you'd confront anyone's beliefs with rational refutation.
_a_a_a_ 4y ago
Are you sure this isn't some po-faced intentional self-parody? Sure sounds like it to me.
s9w 4y ago
[dead]
Smar 4y ago
Maybe they all have a quantum computer.
mrguyorama 4y ago
There are millions of people that genuinely reject the idea they suffer from normal cognitive biases, or that they can be fooled, and that's a huge part of their worldview, that they are "smarter" than other people because they aren't affected by those pesky "biases". So whatever they "experience" must be ground truth. So if they think the song sounds better under C++, it doesn't matter what "the experts" say, they must be wrong.
sliken 4y ago
I read a bunch of posts on that thread, but it wasn't clear to me the setup. Certainly seems possible that different implementations would have different CPU utilization, and impact the power supply differently. Not to mention RF noise changes to the local environment. Today's PCs and cables aren't particularly well shielded. In fact I switched routers because an unshielded USB cable inside the router had a significant impact on Wifi performance if I used the USB for connecting storage. I also bought a USB connected SDR (software defined radio) and I can tell you that position relative to my PC and the quality of the shielding of the USB cable was directly visible on the waterfall display. Moving the SDR (but not the Antenna) showed significant changes in reception across large swaths of the frequency range. I've definitely had fan, coil whine, and related interference with different CPU utilization before. I've also had speakers, even wireless speakers get interference from my computer that varies with load, not to mention things like an incoming cellphone call. Doesn't seem that crazy that different memory allocation and memcpy implementations could impact sound quality of any local audio equipment. Or that playing from ramdisk could sound better than from disk (assuming said disk is emitting noticeable RF).
salawat 4y ago
I think audiophiles don't have any meta-perception of how their own cognitive process colors sensory information, while somehow being able to map the difference in aural space. So maybe in a sense it does "sound" different, but it's more because what they are thinking about leaks into their aural experience.
anovikov 4y ago
How can flat-earthers continue to exist? There is no limit to human stupidity.
- Tor3 4y ago
  I didn't think flat-earthers existed for real. Then I came across them on the good old internet. At first I thought most of them would have to be trolls, not really believing it.. but then you realize that so many of them get extremely angry when you try to debate them. They truly exist. But then again I actually met a person who believed the moon landings were fake.. brilliant guy otherwise, but too young to (unlike myself) having lived through the time period. He (and some others) seemed to believe that it was all CGI, not realizing or grasping that the watch he was wearing had way more computing power than the whole space program at that time. And that every illustration of the moon surface before Apollo 8 (they didn't land, they just took photos) were so very different from the real thing.
dusted 4y ago
For the same reason religions still exist.
alophawen 4y ago
> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? I think having a look at the current political climate answers this by itself. Knowledge has lost much value, and anecdotal reasoning is at pre-education system levels. Intelligence are declining in all ages [1]. And now top that with hallucinating AI:s that people without contextual knowledge can't even spot when they are making things up. We're in for a good ride. 1: https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html
tommek4077 4y ago
It's just like any other religion.
JohnBooty 4y ago
How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? Well, good news! There is a newer breed of data-driven audiophiles who rely on hard data and solid engineering. An example would be https://www.audiosciencereview.com https://www.audiosciencereview.com - he has reviewed a few thousand projects using industry standard measurement gear like Audio Precision analyzers, Klippel scanners, etc. Same with Erin's Audio Corner: https://www.youtube.com/@ErinsAudioCorner/videos https://www.youtube.com/@ErinsAudioCorner/videos Most of the audio-related subreddits hew to this approach as well.
dirtyid 4y ago
Skilled artists / machinist can train body to stupid degrees of precision, i.e. identifying colours, feeling out a thou. IMO something like that happening with audiophiles who are skilled at listening but when brain trained to discern fine details forced to rationalize inputs whose differences are largely chaotic and start hallucinating noise into conviction. I think many audiophiles are actually hearing differences, but the source of differences are subjective/meaningless.
antihero 4y ago
Back when I was a kid, I swore that using a different MP3 decoder in Winamp (libmpg123.dll I think?) had a much better soundstage and bass extension than the default one. I like to think that isn’t the same madness as thinking a different memcpy, because I figured different implementations would map different inputs to different outputs and thus could definitely affect the sound, but any context or knowledge would be appreciated!
- lozf 4y ago
  There were definitely variations in sound quality from different MP3 encoders, so you probably weren't imagining things. IIRC libmpg123 was for decoding/ playback rather than encoding, but there were a number of suboptimal encoders before the scene settled on LAME as the best option for MP3's. These days you can get better lossy encodes at smaller files with AAC (the industry standard for end-user lossy audio) or Opus — a great free & open source alternative. All you could want to know about audio encoding, including listening tests (with original posts from the heyday) is still online at the Hydrogen Audio forum. There are some great threads there, and they've been debunking audiophile snake-oil for decades. Enjoy the rabbit hole ;) https://hydrogenaud.io https://hydrogenaud.io
  - antihero 4y ago
    I appreciate the reply, I was talking about decoders :) fucking miss hydrogen audio, used to spend my teens making insane fb2k customisations and posting them there while everyone else was having sex
peepee1982 4y ago
I don't think audiophiles even like music. So if you take the bullshit from them, they are left with nothing.
InCityDreams 4y ago
>How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? You ever discussed religion with anyone?
2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
Most "audiophiles" won't argue in forums; they'll just buy the equipment they think sounds right for them and then just leave it at that. The listening experience differs from person to person, depending on everything from hearing, to noise to the individual listener's preferences and tastes. The audiophiles you mention try to justify that individual experience using whatever argument available, including false ones.
PaulHoule 4y ago
It is bad enough as someone who is conscious of sound quality I would never use the term “audiophile” to describe myself and I’d advise anybody marketing audio stuff (like the serious fallen “Audioholics” which is reduced to handwringing about why people aren’t interested in buying what they sell”) to avoid using it.
captainkrtek 4y ago
Reminds me of https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Gentoo-is-Rice.html https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Ge...
GordonS 4y ago
> I guess they think bits are bits Wow...
- dgritsko 4y ago
  A favorite of mine has been to say with a straight face that "it's important to make sure that there are no kinks in your cables, because the 0's pass through easily but the sharp edges of the 1's get caught on things" and seeing if anyone catches on.
fegu 4y ago
I love when one can't tell if someone are serious or not. This made my day.
- maicro 4y ago
  At the risk of falling victim to it myself, that's often referenced as Poe's Law (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law ): Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture saying that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    You don't have to explain Poe's Law on HN lol
    - maicro 4y ago
      Eh, you never know who's one of those lucky 10,000. And just to satisfy you, I won't explain _that one_. X)
bongoman37 4y ago
Same as how homeopathy, flat earthers, etc can exist. Also people like to have something to call themselves special. This provides a group in which you can show off your 'knowledge' and gadgetry and so on.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
I think about the audiophile fringe approximately the same way I think about flat-earthers: I'm sure there is a core of true believers, but that at this point there's just massive amounts of trolling going on - and Poe's law applies: any sufficiently advanced form of trolling is indistinguishable from kookery.
- de6u99er 4y ago
  I built my own audiophile stereo set based on Nelson Pass' Directly Coupled B1 pre amp design, Pavel Dudek's PA03 power amp, a pair of DIY loudspeaker kits from lautsprecherbau.de, and an audiophile Rasperry Pi DAC board which I sponsored on Kickstarter running Volumio player distribution. I went even as far as using discrete OpAmps because they sounded better to me. Was totally worth it! Here's some pictures of my amps: https://www.bursonaudio.com/pa03-gainclone-power-amp-by-pavel-dudek-with-burson-v5-upgrade/ https://www.bursonaudio.com/pa03-gainclone-power-amp-by-pave...
- snickerbockers 4y ago
  No, audiophiles are absolutely real. Look at how many of them buy vinyl records of music that was produced digitally; any sampling artifacts that might hypothetically be audible would be replicated on the vinyl. As long as the master is digital there's no way a vinyl record could possibly sound better than a lossless digital recording like FLACC or CDDA. And then there are people who buy vinyl records of video game sound-tracks, in which case it doesn't even make sense to remove sampling artifacts since those would be present in the original game.
  - Jataman606 4y ago
    > As long as the master is digital there's no way a vinyl record could possibly sound better than a lossless digital recording like FLACC or CDDA Isn't the point to actually reduce quality by using imperfect media so recording has more oldschool vibe? Kinda like all the lo-fi mixes being so popular today. At least thats what I always thought, I didn't really research that at all.
    - 4y ago
Ladioss 4y ago
[flagged]
ouid 4y ago
i think its a joke.
- croes 4y ago
  Even if starts as joke, it can end as serious.
- Paul_S 4y ago
  If you read the whole thread it becomes obvious it sadly is not a joke.
  - ouid 4y ago
    You can commit pretty deeply to a joke. The indirect evidence is substantial.
    - Tor3 4y ago
      I was just showed an ethernet cable by a local hifi shop.. $4000. People are buying this stuff. A joke is a joke, but I don't think people will actually spend that amount of money just to keep up a joke.
    - Gualdrapo 4y ago
      For my own sanity I'm choosing to believe it is indeed satire.
    - Paul_S 4y ago
      If that's true those people have been maintaining a joke for literal years, and spending substantial amounts of time producing software. Do you expect them at the end of their lives to crack a smile and say "ha! got you!"?
      - burnished 4y ago
        Personally I'd expect them to take the joke with them to the grave
bilekas 4y ago
Wait till they get a handle on Rust.. There will be no stopping them. By the by : I'm almost certain this has to be satire.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  Due to Rust's fearless concurrency, every time I have to add a new instrument, I either have to make a copy of the entire track to add it, or temporarily borrow the bass from the guitar track, which leads to tiny jumps in the audio. Notwithstanding the need for unsafe when I want to put the amp to 11.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Last time I used Rust to build a music player, the resulting audio quality was much worse than my C++ version. I'm sure these new kids on the block ("Rustaceans" or whatever they call themselves) know what they are doing when building web applications and CLIs, but when audio quality has to 120% of the original sound, nothing beats true and tested C++. I cannot explain how or why, but programs made with C++ just sounds better, fuller and more authentic than programs made with other languages.
  - trhr 4y ago
    C++ has a lower-latency linker.
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      But Rust's advanced type system will surely result in better instrument separation and wider scene.
    - professoretc 4y ago
      The borrow checker acts as a subtle low-pass filter, rolling off some of the high end and leading to less clarity.
  - cozzyd 4y ago
    This is because rust's borrow checker is incapable of representing some perfectly valid sounds.
thepasswordis 4y ago
>How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? There are many things like this. Coffee people, for instance, who will straight faced insist to you that they can tell the difference between stirring the coffee grounds with a tiny metal "distribution tool" 5 times or 10 times, and who will post "recipes" for soaking ground up beans in hot water. Just let people have their thing. They like it.
- i-use-nixos-btw 4y ago
  Oh no, you’ve started something now.
- unmole 4y ago
  > Just let people have their thing. They like it. What if my thing is making fun of such people?
- rjh29 4y ago
  > Just let people have their thing. They like it. Could say that about your comment, right? Let the coffee fans enjoy the process of improving their coffee. Unless they start gatekeeping shit or insulting my (very pedestrian) taste in coffee, I don't care.
  - thepasswordis 4y ago
    That is exactly my point and is exactly what I want you to say about my comment.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  In addition to just letting people have their fun (so long as it stays fun/isn’t just a method of gatekeeping/isn’t just picking fights or whatever) I think we should all remember to exercise a little humility and consider that maybe we are wrong about what matters or doesn’t. Sometimes things look a little ridiculous from the outside, but once it’s explained or you do it yourself, it makes a little more sense. For instance, there was a time where if you had told me that the number one thing that would improve my coffee was the purchasing of a conical burr grinder, I would’ve raised an eyebrow. Now? I find it is almost more important than the beans I buy. Even my first cheap $50 one elevated my coffee to a whole new level. Despite years of people complementing the quality of my cold brew, I still have to insist that they buy even a cheap burr before anything else. And every single one of them that has followed my advice has thanked me later! All because someone else told me first and I said “screw it why not?” Anyway, the point of the above is not to brag about my coffee at home (which I’m sure isn’t even that impressive). It’s mostly to illustrate that sometimes what sounds ridiculous does actually matter. We just don’t know it.
JohnFen 4y ago
> I guess they think bits are bits. I'm guilty as charged.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
RajT88 4y ago
This seems like the commenters on the Marc Ornstein Freestyle Canoeing videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofq_nl366VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofq_nl366VM
dotnet00 4y ago
Audiophiles aren't just about dumb stuff of this sort though. The majority of the community is mainly interested in things like trying different speakers/headphones and listening setups, where there are measurable differences and what one prefers entirely subjective.
- pizza234 4y ago
  > where there are measurable differences and what one prefers entirely subjective. It may be true, but the audiophile in question didn't bother to do any blind test. And I believe that actually most of the audiophiles don't do any blind tests, otherwise they'd use twisted coatangers as cables and save themselves a lots of money.
- libraryatnight 4y ago
  For me the lack of understanding that it is subjective is part and parcel with being an "audiophile" - I like the "sound" of vinyl, the difference between me and the audiophile religious I know is they'll tell me I don't just "like" it, that it's objectively better and they start saying nonsense like we're reading in the posted thread. Comparison is the thief of joy, and the only thing audiophiles do is compare.
fatnoah 4y ago
This is basically the current "holy war" among some audiophiles. There's measurement-intensive approaches likes audiosciencereview and then there's the more subjective things like "soundstage" and "depth" and "clarity". That's why it's so fun, though. Audio reproduction can be measured objectively but the experience of listening to something can only be measured subjectively. Ultimately, if the $5k D-Link router sounds better to someone, who am I to argue? I have a mid-fi setup by audiophile standards, but it's still more of an investment than most people I know have made. When asked for advice, I tell people to focus on what sounds good to them. If it sounds good, then it _is_ good, assuming one isn't buying something to impress others. Also, if they ask nicely, I'll give them a discount on my optimized-for-their-CPU-architecture, hand-coded, machine language version of malloc, free, and memcpy.
- Night_Thastus 4y ago
  Measurement is complicated. It's not one-and-done and can easily be done incorrectly or misinterpreted. GoldenSound recently did a video on this topic, showing how minor changes in settings for analysis tools and analysis hardware can cause radically different conclusions. There are also many techniques in hardware that make a piece of audio equipment measure objectively better, but sound worse - like feedback. Audio is really complicated and can't be boiled down to one or two comparison charts. ASR is essentially worthless, unfortunately.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > Ultimately, if the $5k D-Link router sounds better to someone, who am I to argue? You can argue just fine when they fail the blind comparison test.
- leonidasv 4y ago
  >Audio reproduction can be measured objectively but the experience of listening to something can only be measured subjectively This is very true. I bought an earphone recently because it had the best technicals for its price-point. I was nice, but somewhat overwhelming to listen to for a long time. Some songs were harsh and sounded too airy. As much as I wanted to love it, I couldn't. Then I bought a cheaper one that lots of reviewers said sounded good on anything they tried (Tin T2). It had "worse" technicals but guess what, I'm using it more than the older one and finding it way more pleasant to listen to.
rejectfinite 4y ago
All kinds of people are like this. Food, coffee, fashion etc.
rcpt 4y ago
Placebo effect still happens even when you know it's a placebo
- camjohnson26 4y ago
  I think this is key. I’m sure the listeners subjectively enjoying one version over the other, but not because the quality is any different. Instead they have the confidence that they picked the best option and can relax. Of course the real test would be if they could tell the difference, and I think the obvious answer is they couldn’t.
gabereiser 4y ago
Same reason why you can be a scientist and like Trump. Or be a nurse and be anti-vax. Or be a teacher who hates kids. The world is full of fakes and irrational people.
- EricE 4y ago
  Or think you are smart when you are really just parroting the party line of your tribe.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Or think you are anti-establishment while supporting an old white guy from new york who got all his money from daddy and has done nothing useful with his life but instead goes from one grift to the next Or wear the punisher skull while literally being a corrupt cop Or say that drag shows are grooming kids while the preachers in your church keep getting outed as kiddy diddlers. Or blame the insurance industry for the problems with american health care and then adopt a system they basically designed.
pjc50 4y ago
> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? People need to feel superior. So they choose a subjective field and claim to be objectively correct. Audiophiles are a relatively harmless version of this; other sorts of "truther" become actively dangerous.
dcormier 4y ago
> And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever enough to figure out crystals in bags taped to cables do not affect music quality. After living through the past several years in the US, this is not a question I ask.
- smorrebrod 4y ago
  Yep, once met an hydraulic engineer who thought his wife could find leakages through magnetic fields while looking at a map of a power dam.
- sseagull 4y ago
  It’s been noted for a while with the other kinds of engineers: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
>And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever enough to figure out crystals in bags taped to cables do not affect music quality. this is why IQ tests are BS. You can be smart in one thing (taking IQ tests) but not another.
tempestn 4y ago
I have to think there are some parody/troll comments mixed in with the true believers. Strongly suspect that goto one for instance...
fractalb 4y ago
> "Goto also sounds better than anything else I have tried." - the "Goto" in the quote means a goto in C used to replace a loop. > "also most players use malloc to get memory while new is the c++ method and sounds better." I think they must be the guys who understood the Matrix visuals.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Those have got to be thinly (to not at all) veiled troll statements...
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    No, people have hid behind "Nobody is that stupid" for too long. MILLIONS of people are this stupid and live among us and we should stop ignoring them, stop pretending they aren't being taken advantage of, and stop letting people get away with literal fraud just because it makes us uncomfortable that some people are born less able or willing to comprehend their world.
generalizations 4y ago
> "Goto also sounds better than anything else I have tried." - the "Goto" in the quote means a goto in C used to replace a loop. It strikes me as plausible that there might be differences in how the compiler treats goto vs whatever other loop. Pretty sure GCC can't optimize goto in the same ways.
- croes 4y ago
  I doubt that it matters if you decode audio files if you consider the amount data that needs to be processed and the speed of modern CPU.
acd 4y ago
I am a Hifi enthuiast. Member of church of hifi. Ie I believe it sounds better sometimes. This is similar to how a wine can be rated higher if you have a nice time with friends in a good setting. Lately I have started to switch over to studio monitors. Sound is subjective for example with headphones its harder to say that what audio curve is correct as that is subjective to the listener.
- leviathant 4y ago
  >Lately I have started to switch over to studio monitors. A colleague on a Zoom call noticed I had audio equipment in my room, and excitedly asked what my headphone setup was. He didn't recognize the Sony MDR-7506 cans on my head, which were running out of a Focusrite audio interface that I use for multitrack recording. Sometimes I listen on my Yamaha MSP7 monitors. He went on to rattle off some absurdly expensive equipment that I forgot immediately upon Googling. I forget if his amp cost four figures or five figures. I didn't have the heart to say: I'm just using what they use in recording studios. I understand chasing fidelity, it's driven me to upgrade my own equipment over the years, but capital-a Audiophile stuff is kind of its own thing. People extracting outrageous amounts of money in return for a certain kind of marketing copy and bespoke physical presentation. It feels cynical to me, but it seems to be an ecosystem that exists on its own without much harm to the rest of the world.
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graderjs 4y ago
But what if it's not fake...what if there's a slight...like...difference in timings or something? That nevertheless affects the ways signals are eventually rendered in the output? Or what if...literally...there is something more going on...among the movement of electrons (some other layer of information conveyance) than EE would consider...and these folks are picking up on that?
- bckr 4y ago
  Much more likely a combination of the McGurk effect and placebo.
kybernetyk 4y ago
>I guess they think bits are bits. I'm speechless. I wanted to write a witty comment but I just can't.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I think the same thing when I see fad diets and crypto currencies around here.
ekfruwhekrwhk 4y ago
Every community has a fringe of crazies. I remember back when I first got into audio in high school, when I bought my first pair of >$10 headphones and suddenly I could hear details in music that weren't there before, and wondering how deep the rabbit hole went. I started reading audio forums and saw that most postings came from a small number of extremely active posters that made absurd, hyperbolic claims. There's a product review that has since become a meme, about some ridiculous $1000 RCA cables, how they sounded "smoky" and "danceable". I read that when it was first posted and felt disgusted. Then the moderators of the forum I read most often announced that any discussion of double-blind testing was banned and anyone who discussed it would immediately be banned. I deleted my account on that forum. What a disappointment. But the fact that fringe crazies exist doesn't mean the subject is all a joke. Car tuning is a legitimate hobby, even though I have idiot cousins who will physically assault anyone who questions the purpose of their undercarriage neon lights. And there is a difference between junk audio equipment and good audio equipment, even though there is also plenty of snake oil under the label "audiophile".
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  There used to be Monster audio cables that cost thousands. The Amazon reviews were hysterical. I can’t find it anymore, but this one has funny reviews for a $1500 HDMI adapter: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-6-56-Braided-Cable/product-reviews/B003CT2A2M https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-6-56-Braided-Cable... Q: If I plug this into my Flux Capacitor will I finally be able to time travel? A: Yes because I am actually answering this question from 2035 and its best supported with the flux capacitor
  - giobox 4y ago
    The reason you don't see Monster so much is the death of big box retail. Monster's pitch to TV/electronic retailers in the early 2000s was that there was basically next to no profit margin on TVs themselves, so instead you could sell the customer a bunch of extremely high margin accessories to go with it. This worked well in the early 2000s, because myths like "you should spend 10 percent of the cost of your AV setup on interconnects and cables" were still widely believed, and TVs still expensive enough that 10 percent was often a pretty big spend relative to today. I worked for a major big box electronic retailer at the hight of the Monster cable era, you would not believe the pressures that were applied to sales people to include Monster accessories with every TV. It was quite common for the profit on the Monster accessories to exceed what little was made on the television being sold, and margins on almost all Monster products exceeded 50 percent. I used to wince every time I sold a 300 dollar set of component video cables.

by Paul_S 4y ago

tmnvix 4y ago

> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? Because not all audiophiles are gullible

unmole 4y ago

This has to be an elaborate joke.

ryanmcbride 4y ago

Knowledge is easily available and so is a whole lot of misinformation.

swatcoder 4y ago

Like kernel or compiler development, audio and DSP development is seen by some as a black art that’s subject to mysterious incantations and arcane rituals. Everybody knows how to write a for loop and wire up a CRUD app these days, but satisfying a low-latency audio buffer request while decoding media and applying effects feels fraught and often (genuinely) looks like a garble of translated Matlab with countless inscrutable variable names and seemingly random constants peppered everywhere. From that sense of awe (traditional meaning), it’s only a small leap to start wondering if even “known” textbook truths about things like memcpy matter differently than normal. And then the cultist gossip begins, you get the echo chamber effect on casual forums and meetups, and this is where you end up.

mrandish 4y ago

Audiophile-grade self-delusion is, fortunately, fairly rare. What's far more common today is the error many consumers make about 4K TV. I have friends who show me their new 4K TV and think it looks "amazing" just because they are feeding it a source labeled "4K" resolution, without considering (or even knowing) the bit rate of the compressed source. While there are good 4K sources like UHD Bluray discs and a few decent streaming sources (but it's spotty and inconsistent), the vast majority of "4K" sources look pretty awful due to being wildly over-compressed. And the level of self-delusion from some of my friends – who are otherwise very smart – is near-emperor's-new-clothes level. A recent example was the Super Bowl which was one of the few "special events" Comcast aired in 4K (only available on the latest version of Comcast's streaming boxes which few people have – and 4K is not available if you use DVR). I checked it out on a current-year higher-end 65" 4K TV (~$3k) which I adjusted myself to disable the myriad default settings claimed to "enhance" signals but often mangle them in unexpected ways. Even set up properly on a good TV it looked terrible. The tell-tale DCT macro-blocking was rampant and in many shots the base 4K-ness of the resolution space seemed to highlight the 'peggishness' worse than the 1080p version (which I was cross-checking against out of now-morbid curiosity). The super bowl is widely claimed to be the best quality 4K live broadcast. $250,000 lenses on the best cameras sent through the best signal paths managed by hundreds of engineers across a small city of the world's best production trucks. All stomped into a peggish mess so that cable and satellite companies can shove hundreds of channels of infomercials and decades-old Murder She Wrote episodes down the pipe simultaneously. I guess they'll keep doing it until enough people demand better or someone offers an alternative. Afterward I searched online and it appears the only widely accessible way to view the SB in decent 4K was if you live in one of the few cities that currently have broadcast TV stations airing true 4K and you set up an over-the-air antenna. While it's still compressed, due to FCC specifications for signals actually broadcast OTA, it's pretty mild and apparently looks sensational compared the what most people saw at home on their "awesome" new 4K TVs.

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vosper 4y ago
Oh, this is something I've been wondering about - I've had a 4K TV for years, but I don't think I've ever seen a 4K Bluray (I don't think I even know anyone who had a Bluray player). Are you saying that streaming a movie (say a recent Marvel one) in 4K from Disney Plus will look noticeably less good than if I played the same movie from a Bluray player? What about a Bluray torrent?

SergeAx 4y ago

The same way as flat-earthers. Also, showing off. Also, self-suggestion. Also, monetary incentive for vendors to keep their buyers spending money on snake oil.

sdfghswe 4y ago

> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever enough to figure out crystals in bags taped to cables do not affect music quality. You don't have to be clever to be a software engineer. It's not that difficult.

kloch 4y ago

> no digital harshness Reminds me of comments when CD's came out int he 1980's. Audiophiles and magazine articles insisted they could "hear the aluminum". What they were actually hearing was songs mastered for Vinyl or casette that had not been properly remastered for digital. Vinyl and casettes required pre-emphasis of highs to offset the limited high frequency response and noise of analog media.

nemo44x 4y ago
It's actually one of the best reasons to buy old vinyl for music that wasn't very popular. So much stuff got put into CDs without being mastered for it and it does sound objectively worse, as you've pointed out. There's a lot of great music (to certain people anyways) that you can't get a great digital copy of because it was never made. Even the digital copies are often pulled from a record or from a master tape but never remastered. Anything that could sell was probably remastered for CDs and digital. Of course, anything recorded with digital recording equipment and pressed to vinyl is simply for aesthetic reasons. Some people just like playing records and listening to music this way.
- randy909 4y ago
  I'm not sure buying old vinyl helps all that much. The bass was cut from recordings so the needle would move less and not collide with the groove before it. Early CDs also lacked bass until trends changed. I would guess that most of the time a CD made from the master tape sounds better than the vinyl even without a remaster. Of course the remaster is almost always the best bet.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    It depends on how many minutes of music were out on each side. There’s a lot of 45s that sound great and they’re worth a lot in part because of that for example. A lot of mainstream stuff started to get pressed on thin, cheap vinyl and was packed with as many minutes as possible. So yeah, loss of fidelity there and remastered CDs may in fact sound better. I think you’re probably safe until late 70s before that became practice. There’s no masters of a lot of rare, non-mainstream things, or at least not known masters. And a lot of great music that wasn’t going to be mainstream for a variety of reasons. Think regional funk, blues, punk, psych, etc. You just can’t get a great digital recording in many instances.

jalino23 4y ago

> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever enough to figure out crystals in bags taped to cables do not affect music quality. I consider myself an audiophile because I hear a difference between no amp+dac sennheiser hd650 vs with amp+dac. so when you ask "How can audiophile continue to exist" ? thats a bit of a dumb take aint it?

realworldperson 4y ago

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ravenstine 4y ago

The human ear is analogue, therefore it can be subject to a form of asymptotic Sysipheanism, ever searching for the smallest shred of better quality audio, not realizing that "quality" can be hallucinated.

npteljes 4y ago

>How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? Humans are not rational. This is easy to say, and hard to swallow - so, pretty similar to when you'd confront anyone's beliefs with rational refutation.

_a_a_a_ 4y ago

Are you sure this isn't some po-faced intentional self-parody? Sure sounds like it to me.

s9w 4y ago

[dead]

Smar 4y ago

Maybe they all have a quantum computer.

mrguyorama 4y ago

There are millions of people that genuinely reject the idea they suffer from normal cognitive biases, or that they can be fooled, and that's a huge part of their worldview, that they are "smarter" than other people because they aren't affected by those pesky "biases". So whatever they "experience" must be ground truth. So if they think the song sounds better under C++, it doesn't matter what "the experts" say, they must be wrong.

sliken 4y ago

I read a bunch of posts on that thread, but it wasn't clear to me the setup. Certainly seems possible that different implementations would have different CPU utilization, and impact the power supply differently. Not to mention RF noise changes to the local environment. Today's PCs and cables aren't particularly well shielded. In fact I switched routers because an unshielded USB cable inside the router had a significant impact on Wifi performance if I used the USB for connecting storage. I also bought a USB connected SDR (software defined radio) and I can tell you that position relative to my PC and the quality of the shielding of the USB cable was directly visible on the waterfall display. Moving the SDR (but not the Antenna) showed significant changes in reception across large swaths of the frequency range. I've definitely had fan, coil whine, and related interference with different CPU utilization before. I've also had speakers, even wireless speakers get interference from my computer that varies with load, not to mention things like an incoming cellphone call. Doesn't seem that crazy that different memory allocation and memcpy implementations could impact sound quality of any local audio equipment. Or that playing from ramdisk could sound better than from disk (assuming said disk is emitting noticeable RF).

salawat 4y ago

I think audiophiles don't have any meta-perception of how their own cognitive process colors sensory information, while somehow being able to map the difference in aural space. So maybe in a sense it does "sound" different, but it's more because what they are thinking about leaks into their aural experience.

anovikov 4y ago

How can flat-earthers continue to exist? There is no limit to human stupidity.

Tor3 4y ago
I didn't think flat-earthers existed for real. Then I came across them on the good old internet. At first I thought most of them would have to be trolls, not really believing it.. but then you realize that so many of them get extremely angry when you try to debate them. They truly exist. But then again I actually met a person who believed the moon landings were fake.. brilliant guy otherwise, but too young to (unlike myself) having lived through the time period. He (and some others) seemed to believe that it was all CGI, not realizing or grasping that the watch he was wearing had way more computing power than the whole space program at that time. And that every illustration of the moon surface before Apollo 8 (they didn't land, they just took photos) were so very different from the real thing.

dusted 4y ago

For the same reason religions still exist.

alophawen 4y ago

> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? I think having a look at the current political climate answers this by itself. Knowledge has lost much value, and anecdotal reasoning is at pre-education system levels. Intelligence are declining in all ages [1]. And now top that with hallucinating AI:s that people without contextual knowledge can't even spot when they are making things up. We're in for a good ride. 1: https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html

tommek4077 4y ago

It's just like any other religion.

JohnBooty 4y ago

How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? Well, good news! There is a newer breed of data-driven audiophiles who rely on hard data and solid engineering. An example would be https://www.audiosciencereview.com https://www.audiosciencereview.com - he has reviewed a few thousand projects using industry standard measurement gear like Audio Precision analyzers, Klippel scanners, etc. Same with Erin's Audio Corner: https://www.youtube.com/@ErinsAudioCorner/videos https://www.youtube.com/@ErinsAudioCorner/videos Most of the audio-related subreddits hew to this approach as well.

dirtyid 4y ago

Skilled artists / machinist can train body to stupid degrees of precision, i.e. identifying colours, feeling out a thou. IMO something like that happening with audiophiles who are skilled at listening but when brain trained to discern fine details forced to rationalize inputs whose differences are largely chaotic and start hallucinating noise into conviction. I think many audiophiles are actually hearing differences, but the source of differences are subjective/meaningless.

antihero 4y ago

Back when I was a kid, I swore that using a different MP3 decoder in Winamp (libmpg123.dll I think?) had a much better soundstage and bass extension than the default one. I like to think that isn’t the same madness as thinking a different memcpy, because I figured different implementations would map different inputs to different outputs and thus could definitely affect the sound, but any context or knowledge would be appreciated!

lozf 4y ago
There were definitely variations in sound quality from different MP3 encoders, so you probably weren't imagining things. IIRC libmpg123 was for decoding/ playback rather than encoding, but there were a number of suboptimal encoders before the scene settled on LAME as the best option for MP3's. These days you can get better lossy encodes at smaller files with AAC (the industry standard for end-user lossy audio) or Opus — a great free & open source alternative. All you could want to know about audio encoding, including listening tests (with original posts from the heyday) is still online at the Hydrogen Audio forum. There are some great threads there, and they've been debunking audiophile snake-oil for decades. Enjoy the rabbit hole ;) https://hydrogenaud.io https://hydrogenaud.io
- antihero 4y ago
  I appreciate the reply, I was talking about decoders :) fucking miss hydrogen audio, used to spend my teens making insane fb2k customisations and posting them there while everyone else was having sex

peepee1982 4y ago

I don't think audiophiles even like music. So if you take the bullshit from them, they are left with nothing.

InCityDreams 4y ago

>How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? You ever discussed religion with anyone?

2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago

Most "audiophiles" won't argue in forums; they'll just buy the equipment they think sounds right for them and then just leave it at that. The listening experience differs from person to person, depending on everything from hearing, to noise to the individual listener's preferences and tastes. The audiophiles you mention try to justify that individual experience using whatever argument available, including false ones.

PaulHoule 4y ago

It is bad enough as someone who is conscious of sound quality I would never use the term “audiophile” to describe myself and I’d advise anybody marketing audio stuff (like the serious fallen “Audioholics” which is reduced to handwringing about why people aren’t interested in buying what they sell”) to avoid using it.

captainkrtek 4y ago

Reminds me of https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Gentoo-is-Rice.html https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Ge...

GordonS 4y ago

> I guess they think bits are bits Wow...

dgritsko 4y ago
A favorite of mine has been to say with a straight face that "it's important to make sure that there are no kinks in your cables, because the 0's pass through easily but the sharp edges of the 1's get caught on things" and seeing if anyone catches on.

fegu 4y ago

I love when one can't tell if someone are serious or not. This made my day.

maicro 4y ago
At the risk of falling victim to it myself, that's often referenced as Poe's Law (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law ): Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture saying that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  You don't have to explain Poe's Law on HN lol
  - maicro 4y ago
    Eh, you never know who's one of those lucky 10,000. And just to satisfy you, I won't explain _that one_. X)

bongoman37 4y ago

Same as how homeopathy, flat earthers, etc can exist. Also people like to have something to call themselves special. This provides a group in which you can show off your 'knowledge' and gadgetry and so on.

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

I think about the audiophile fringe approximately the same way I think about flat-earthers: I'm sure there is a core of true believers, but that at this point there's just massive amounts of trolling going on - and Poe's law applies: any sufficiently advanced form of trolling is indistinguishable from kookery.

de6u99er 4y ago
I built my own audiophile stereo set based on Nelson Pass' Directly Coupled B1 pre amp design, Pavel Dudek's PA03 power amp, a pair of DIY loudspeaker kits from lautsprecherbau.de, and an audiophile Rasperry Pi DAC board which I sponsored on Kickstarter running Volumio player distribution. I went even as far as using discrete OpAmps because they sounded better to me. Was totally worth it! Here's some pictures of my amps: https://www.bursonaudio.com/pa03-gainclone-power-amp-by-pavel-dudek-with-burson-v5-upgrade/ https://www.bursonaudio.com/pa03-gainclone-power-amp-by-pave...
snickerbockers 4y ago
No, audiophiles are absolutely real. Look at how many of them buy vinyl records of music that was produced digitally; any sampling artifacts that might hypothetically be audible would be replicated on the vinyl. As long as the master is digital there's no way a vinyl record could possibly sound better than a lossless digital recording like FLACC or CDDA. And then there are people who buy vinyl records of video game sound-tracks, in which case it doesn't even make sense to remove sampling artifacts since those would be present in the original game.
- Jataman606 4y ago
  > As long as the master is digital there's no way a vinyl record could possibly sound better than a lossless digital recording like FLACC or CDDA Isn't the point to actually reduce quality by using imperfect media so recording has more oldschool vibe? Kinda like all the lo-fi mixes being so popular today. At least thats what I always thought, I didn't really research that at all.
  - 4y ago

Ladioss 4y ago

[flagged]

ouid 4y ago

i think its a joke.

croes 4y ago
Even if starts as joke, it can end as serious.
Paul_S 4y ago
If you read the whole thread it becomes obvious it sadly is not a joke.
- ouid 4y ago
  You can commit pretty deeply to a joke. The indirect evidence is substantial.
  - Tor3 4y ago
    I was just showed an ethernet cable by a local hifi shop.. $4000. People are buying this stuff. A joke is a joke, but I don't think people will actually spend that amount of money just to keep up a joke.
  - Gualdrapo 4y ago
    For my own sanity I'm choosing to believe it is indeed satire.
  - Paul_S 4y ago
    If that's true those people have been maintaining a joke for literal years, and spending substantial amounts of time producing software. Do you expect them at the end of their lives to crack a smile and say "ha! got you!"?
    - burnished 4y ago
      Personally I'd expect them to take the joke with them to the grave

bilekas 4y ago

Wait till they get a handle on Rust.. There will be no stopping them. By the by : I'm almost certain this has to be satire.

ohgodplsno 4y ago
Due to Rust's fearless concurrency, every time I have to add a new instrument, I either have to make a copy of the entire track to add it, or temporarily borrow the bass from the guitar track, which leads to tiny jumps in the audio. Notwithstanding the need for unsafe when I want to put the amp to 11.
capableweb 4y ago
Last time I used Rust to build a music player, the resulting audio quality was much worse than my C++ version. I'm sure these new kids on the block ("Rustaceans" or whatever they call themselves) know what they are doing when building web applications and CLIs, but when audio quality has to 120% of the original sound, nothing beats true and tested C++. I cannot explain how or why, but programs made with C++ just sounds better, fuller and more authentic than programs made with other languages.
- trhr 4y ago
  C++ has a lower-latency linker.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    But Rust's advanced type system will surely result in better instrument separation and wider scene.
  - professoretc 4y ago
    The borrow checker acts as a subtle low-pass filter, rolling off some of the high end and leading to less clarity.
- cozzyd 4y ago
  This is because rust's borrow checker is incapable of representing some perfectly valid sounds.

thepasswordis 4y ago

>How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? There are many things like this. Coffee people, for instance, who will straight faced insist to you that they can tell the difference between stirring the coffee grounds with a tiny metal "distribution tool" 5 times or 10 times, and who will post "recipes" for soaking ground up beans in hot water. Just let people have their thing. They like it.

i-use-nixos-btw 4y ago
Oh no, you’ve started something now.
unmole 4y ago
> Just let people have their thing. They like it. What if my thing is making fun of such people?
rjh29 4y ago
> Just let people have their thing. They like it. Could say that about your comment, right? Let the coffee fans enjoy the process of improving their coffee. Unless they start gatekeeping shit or insulting my (very pedestrian) taste in coffee, I don't care.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  That is exactly my point and is exactly what I want you to say about my comment.
Forgeties79 4y ago
In addition to just letting people have their fun (so long as it stays fun/isn’t just a method of gatekeeping/isn’t just picking fights or whatever) I think we should all remember to exercise a little humility and consider that maybe we are wrong about what matters or doesn’t. Sometimes things look a little ridiculous from the outside, but once it’s explained or you do it yourself, it makes a little more sense. For instance, there was a time where if you had told me that the number one thing that would improve my coffee was the purchasing of a conical burr grinder, I would’ve raised an eyebrow. Now? I find it is almost more important than the beans I buy. Even my first cheap $50 one elevated my coffee to a whole new level. Despite years of people complementing the quality of my cold brew, I still have to insist that they buy even a cheap burr before anything else. And every single one of them that has followed my advice has thanked me later! All because someone else told me first and I said “screw it why not?” Anyway, the point of the above is not to brag about my coffee at home (which I’m sure isn’t even that impressive). It’s mostly to illustrate that sometimes what sounds ridiculous does actually matter. We just don’t know it.

JohnFen 4y ago

> I guess they think bits are bits. I'm guilty as charged.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

RajT88 4y ago

This seems like the commenters on the Marc Ornstein Freestyle Canoeing videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofq_nl366VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofq_nl366VM

dotnet00 4y ago

Audiophiles aren't just about dumb stuff of this sort though. The majority of the community is mainly interested in things like trying different speakers/headphones and listening setups, where there are measurable differences and what one prefers entirely subjective.

pizza234 4y ago
> where there are measurable differences and what one prefers entirely subjective. It may be true, but the audiophile in question didn't bother to do any blind test. And I believe that actually most of the audiophiles don't do any blind tests, otherwise they'd use twisted coatangers as cables and save themselves a lots of money.
libraryatnight 4y ago
For me the lack of understanding that it is subjective is part and parcel with being an "audiophile" - I like the "sound" of vinyl, the difference between me and the audiophile religious I know is they'll tell me I don't just "like" it, that it's objectively better and they start saying nonsense like we're reading in the posted thread. Comparison is the thief of joy, and the only thing audiophiles do is compare.

fatnoah 4y ago

This is basically the current "holy war" among some audiophiles. There's measurement-intensive approaches likes audiosciencereview and then there's the more subjective things like "soundstage" and "depth" and "clarity". That's why it's so fun, though. Audio reproduction can be measured objectively but the experience of listening to something can only be measured subjectively. Ultimately, if the $5k D-Link router sounds better to someone, who am I to argue? I have a mid-fi setup by audiophile standards, but it's still more of an investment than most people I know have made. When asked for advice, I tell people to focus on what sounds good to them. If it sounds good, then it _is_ good, assuming one isn't buying something to impress others. Also, if they ask nicely, I'll give them a discount on my optimized-for-their-CPU-architecture, hand-coded, machine language version of malloc, free, and memcpy.

Night_Thastus 4y ago
Measurement is complicated. It's not one-and-done and can easily be done incorrectly or misinterpreted. GoldenSound recently did a video on this topic, showing how minor changes in settings for analysis tools and analysis hardware can cause radically different conclusions. There are also many techniques in hardware that make a piece of audio equipment measure objectively better, but sound worse - like feedback. Audio is really complicated and can't be boiled down to one or two comparison charts. ASR is essentially worthless, unfortunately.
Dylan16807 4y ago
> Ultimately, if the $5k D-Link router sounds better to someone, who am I to argue? You can argue just fine when they fail the blind comparison test.
leonidasv 4y ago
>Audio reproduction can be measured objectively but the experience of listening to something can only be measured subjectively This is very true. I bought an earphone recently because it had the best technicals for its price-point. I was nice, but somewhat overwhelming to listen to for a long time. Some songs were harsh and sounded too airy. As much as I wanted to love it, I couldn't. Then I bought a cheaper one that lots of reviewers said sounded good on anything they tried (Tin T2). It had "worse" technicals but guess what, I'm using it more than the older one and finding it way more pleasant to listen to.

rejectfinite 4y ago

All kinds of people are like this. Food, coffee, fashion etc.

rcpt 4y ago

Placebo effect still happens even when you know it's a placebo

camjohnson26 4y ago
I think this is key. I’m sure the listeners subjectively enjoying one version over the other, but not because the quality is any different. Instead they have the confidence that they picked the best option and can relax. Of course the real test would be if they could tell the difference, and I think the obvious answer is they couldn’t.

gabereiser 4y ago

Same reason why you can be a scientist and like Trump. Or be a nurse and be anti-vax. Or be a teacher who hates kids. The world is full of fakes and irrational people.

EricE 4y ago
Or think you are smart when you are really just parroting the party line of your tribe.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Or think you are anti-establishment while supporting an old white guy from new york who got all his money from daddy and has done nothing useful with his life but instead goes from one grift to the next Or wear the punisher skull while literally being a corrupt cop Or say that drag shows are grooming kids while the preachers in your church keep getting outed as kiddy diddlers. Or blame the insurance industry for the problems with american health care and then adopt a system they basically designed.

pjc50 4y ago

> How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available? People need to feel superior. So they choose a subjective field and claim to be objectively correct. Audiophiles are a relatively harmless version of this; other sorts of "truther" become actively dangerous.

dcormier 4y ago

> And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever enough to figure out crystals in bags taped to cables do not affect music quality. After living through the past several years in the US, this is not a question I ask.

smorrebrod 4y ago
Yep, once met an hydraulic engineer who thought his wife could find leakages through magnetic fields while looking at a map of a power dam.
sseagull 4y ago
It’s been noted for a while with the other kinds of engineers: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

>And how can someone be clever enough to be a software engineer and not clever enough to figure out crystals in bags taped to cables do not affect music quality. this is why IQ tests are BS. You can be smart in one thing (taking IQ tests) but not another.

tempestn 4y ago

I have to think there are some parody/troll comments mixed in with the true believers. Strongly suspect that goto one for instance...

fractalb 4y ago

> "Goto also sounds better than anything else I have tried." - the "Goto" in the quote means a goto in C used to replace a loop. > "also most players use malloc to get memory while new is the c++ method and sounds better." I think they must be the guys who understood the Matrix visuals.

sokoloff 4y ago
Those have got to be thinly (to not at all) veiled troll statements...
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  No, people have hid behind "Nobody is that stupid" for too long. MILLIONS of people are this stupid and live among us and we should stop ignoring them, stop pretending they aren't being taken advantage of, and stop letting people get away with literal fraud just because it makes us uncomfortable that some people are born less able or willing to comprehend their world.

generalizations 4y ago

> "Goto also sounds better than anything else I have tried." - the "Goto" in the quote means a goto in C used to replace a loop. It strikes me as plausible that there might be differences in how the compiler treats goto vs whatever other loop. Pretty sure GCC can't optimize goto in the same ways.

croes 4y ago
I doubt that it matters if you decode audio files if you consider the amount data that needs to be processed and the speed of modern CPU.

acd 4y ago

I am a Hifi enthuiast. Member of church of hifi. Ie I believe it sounds better sometimes. This is similar to how a wine can be rated higher if you have a nice time with friends in a good setting. Lately I have started to switch over to studio monitors. Sound is subjective for example with headphones its harder to say that what audio curve is correct as that is subjective to the listener.

leviathant 4y ago
>Lately I have started to switch over to studio monitors. A colleague on a Zoom call noticed I had audio equipment in my room, and excitedly asked what my headphone setup was. He didn't recognize the Sony MDR-7506 cans on my head, which were running out of a Focusrite audio interface that I use for multitrack recording. Sometimes I listen on my Yamaha MSP7 monitors. He went on to rattle off some absurdly expensive equipment that I forgot immediately upon Googling. I forget if his amp cost four figures or five figures. I didn't have the heart to say: I'm just using what they use in recording studios. I understand chasing fidelity, it's driven me to upgrade my own equipment over the years, but capital-a Audiophile stuff is kind of its own thing. People extracting outrageous amounts of money in return for a certain kind of marketing copy and bespoke physical presentation. It feels cynical to me, but it seems to be an ecosystem that exists on its own without much harm to the rest of the world.

deleted 4y ago

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graderjs 4y ago

But what if it's not fake...what if there's a slight...like...difference in timings or something? That nevertheless affects the ways signals are eventually rendered in the output? Or what if...literally...there is something more going on...among the movement of electrons (some other layer of information conveyance) than EE would consider...and these folks are picking up on that?

bckr 4y ago
Much more likely a combination of the McGurk effect and placebo.

kybernetyk 4y ago

>I guess they think bits are bits. I'm speechless. I wanted to write a witty comment but I just can't.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

I think the same thing when I see fad diets and crypto currencies around here.

ekfruwhekrwhk 4y ago

Every community has a fringe of crazies. I remember back when I first got into audio in high school, when I bought my first pair of >$10 headphones and suddenly I could hear details in music that weren't there before, and wondering how deep the rabbit hole went. I started reading audio forums and saw that most postings came from a small number of extremely active posters that made absurd, hyperbolic claims. There's a product review that has since become a meme, about some ridiculous $1000 RCA cables, how they sounded "smoky" and "danceable". I read that when it was first posted and felt disgusted. Then the moderators of the forum I read most often announced that any discussion of double-blind testing was banned and anyone who discussed it would immediately be banned. I deleted my account on that forum. What a disappointment. But the fact that fringe crazies exist doesn't mean the subject is all a joke. Car tuning is a legitimate hobby, even though I have idiot cousins who will physically assault anyone who questions the purpose of their undercarriage neon lights. And there is a difference between junk audio equipment and good audio equipment, even though there is also plenty of snake oil under the label "audiophile".

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
There used to be Monster audio cables that cost thousands. The Amazon reviews were hysterical. I can’t find it anymore, but this one has funny reviews for a $1500 HDMI adapter: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-6-56-Braided-Cable/product-reviews/B003CT2A2M https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-6-56-Braided-Cable... Q: If I plug this into my Flux Capacitor will I finally be able to time travel? A: Yes because I am actually answering this question from 2035 and its best supported with the flux capacitor
- giobox 4y ago
  The reason you don't see Monster so much is the death of big box retail. Monster's pitch to TV/electronic retailers in the early 2000s was that there was basically next to no profit margin on TVs themselves, so instead you could sell the customer a bunch of extremely high margin accessories to go with it. This worked well in the early 2000s, because myths like "you should spend 10 percent of the cost of your AV setup on interconnects and cables" were still widely believed, and TVs still expensive enough that 10 percent was often a pretty big spend relative to today. I worked for a major big box electronic retailer at the hight of the Monster cable era, you would not believe the pressures that were applied to sales people to include Monster accessories with every TV. It was quite common for the profit on the Monster accessories to exceed what little was made on the television being sold, and margins on almost all Monster products exceeded 50 percent. I used to wince every time I sold a 300 dollar set of component video cables.