Synesthesia: Some people hear with their eyes and feel with their logic. It’s not the sound, it’s the total experience. These are the stereotypical voodoo, superstitious audiophiles who tend to fixate on crystals, exotic cables, and other magical devices.
Limited audio training: Some people (myself included) hear more precisely and hear more detail when exposed to better equipment and sources. I’m expanding on your #3, but I’m saying simple exposure can provide valuable training too. At one time my wife liked Trader Joe’s “Two Buck Chuck” wine that sold for $2 per bottle. I bought her a $35 dollar bottle and she could not go back…
Hearing damage and partial deafness: Many of us listened to loud music when young, or were exposed to motorcycles, race cars, guns, factory equipment, etc. They hear no differences because their bodies cannot hear the differences.
Ego and political posturing: Some want to be perceived as sophisticated in owning and appreciating the best wine, the best watches, the best cars, and the best audio equipment. They talk up a storm about how great XYZ happens to be, but fail double blind tests. Others want to be giant killers and believe that their cheap stuff is “just as good” as the snobby stuff. To their minds they win on value, and refuse to admit costly stuff can be superior. Both postures can be totally wrong.
Yep. So what? Differing opinions and experiences are completely fine in this hobby, especially considering how much varying gear is out there; not to mention the different priorities people have. It’s when someone tries to convince the other their experience is invalid simply because they have an opposing opinion to their own that it becomes a problem.
Maybe I should’ve been a bit more direct with my definitions. It’s not really a difference of opinion, it’s a difference in philosophy and facts.
Like I said, DACs and Amps either do matter or they don’t. There are situations where the difference that they can impart on your system is lessened but the character of the DAC or amp does not change. If your transducer is extremely colored, of course you’re not going to hear any differences when you swap out a DAC or amp because the color from the transducer will dominate the sound. If your have an extremely neutral sounding setup, any additional color added when swapping out a component will stick out like a sore thumb.
If you take the stance that DAC and Amps don’t matter and continue to evangelize that philosophy, I would say that it is not reflective of the truth. It’s also dangerous for those who have a strong following to just parrot back their leader’s philosophies (i.e. ASR). It would be terrible if we just decided everything is relative and everyone should just be listening to their own truth. Sooner or later you’ll have people describing an objectively dark headphone as neutral.
Of course everyone can take their own path when it come to this hobby. Nobody has a gun to your head. What I have an issue with is skewing the truth to fit either your ego or certain motive. Everyone should be entitled to understanding truth and from there, they can make a decision of whether or not that thing matters to them.
I don’t disagree. Opinions are points of view based on experience rather than fact, and thus my point is that you shouldn’t be projecting your opinion as fact if you don’t have facts to back it up. You also shouldn’t be attempting to discredit someone’s experience without facts/truth. Seems like we agree…???
This all sounds good to me too. But, what’s the truth in this scenario? That ASR is wrong and amps and DACs definitively make a difference? Honestly, if there was a gun to my head, I’d take that stance; but, there are a boatload of people that think amps and DACs don’t make a difference, so is our stance on the subject truly a fact then? If we cannot definitely prove our line of thinking, then we cannot call it a fact and should stop attempting to discredit others who disagree with us until we have proof.
I don’t think we’ll ever be able to convince the ASR crowd, or even just the majority of headphone and speaker users, that DACs and amps definitely make a difference, let alone that they’re just as important as the transducer. So, why all the fuss then? Does it upset you that there are those that refuse to see our side of the coin?
I demand a double blind, nose-plug using taste test! @generic and the misses have to spin around a baseball bat 30 times and then swim 4 consecutive laps of the swimming pool first, though.
For some reason society today runs away from truth claims. You said yourself that gun to your head, you would take the stance that amps and dacs make a difference. Yet you say because a boatload of people think the opposite, that makes what they believe to be true. So which is it? Is it because a boatload of people believe something that makes something to be true or is it true because just as many people believe the opposite?
Truth - that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.
It can either be one or the other. I’m not trying to convince anyone and I’m not really upset at all. I just opened this thread up for discussion so that we can see what the experience is of people who frequent this forum. It’s quite clear that those who have spent the time to research and money to purchase gear that aren’t the best measuring understand that there are differences that SINAD doesn’t fully encompass.
The discussion on this thread was quite civil so I’m not sure why you think anyone is causing a fuss or getting upset. Maybe there’s something about this topic that you yourself are not sure about so it makes you uncomfortable?
Very interesting discussion going on. This is something I have really been trying to understand better now that I am a rookie at doing reviews on my own.
The OP about DAC/Amps is about 50% what I have been wondering. The full 100% is simply is it DAC more then AMP or visa versa? I say that because lately I have been reading so much about AMP’s and considering a move to something else only to find that possibly it’s my DAC that I may notice a difference in. Sound wise anyway.
Then again, because I am new to clinical listening, I may be too young in my journey to really notice the differences other then what my brain is telling me I notice simply based off of all these written reviews and impressions. That and my age, which I am no spring chicken anymore.
Human’s are so easily swayed by popular opinions or just the (puke) meta. Flavor of the month if you will. That and it is so easy to get lost in topics like these only to just go deeper and end up completely mad. Which is why I do understand those like Crinacle that just say “it doesn’t really matter”
Problem is if we all were to think that then companies would lose some serious money! However then I also look at all the fancy science that goes behind the technology and think…it can’t all be mumbo jumbo. Which is why I love me some side by side benchmarks of systems when it comes to CPU’s or GPU’s. Solid numbers I can get behind.
Not at all - that statement sounds like pure conjecture on your part. You’ve posted a lot lately on this, hence my question; seems you’re real passionate about this specific topic.
Right, no argument there. So which is the truth then? What we believe or what they believe?
I didn’t say what they believe is true. Reread my statement.
Personally, I have in the past experienced relatively subtle but still obviously noticeable differences with both DACs and amplifiers, but in two of the three cases I eventually learned that the equipment in question measured (very) poorly for noise and distortion, and in the third case, channel imbalance with the volume pot was a problem. So I chalked up what I heard to those defects.
I don’t know if DACs or AMPs “definitively” make a difference, assuming that units in questions are controlled (their noise and distortions are comfortably below the audible threshold, their output impedances and loads are controlled for when evaluated, etc.).
The reason I don’t know, and the reason any of you should also not know if you’re in my boat, is that I have not seen any blind or double blind evaluation of source components of any robustness, and until we have sound research in this area, nothing can be definitively claimed one way or another. From what I’ve seen in the past, manufacturers of high-end source components have been aggressively and unambiguously unsupportive of any effort in this direction, which admittedly does not look good…
My issue with audiophiles is that 99.9% don’t account for human biases and psychoacoustics when they personally attest to something. @frkasper’s “mood camp” is a humorous and lighthearted example of this in action. Frankly speaking “trust your ears” has fatal limitations when it comes to deriving anything beyond subjective takeaways. The way our emotions affect our experiences, the way our brains get accustomed to sound over time despite the sound waves not changing (burn in?), price biases, etc., these and more are well researched and factual phenomena. We are all limited by the same hamster wheels spinning in our heads whether we like it or not.
Unfortunately, the typical audiophile finds it nigh impossible to take a step back and question if what his ears have told him actually reflects some objective truth that is independent of his incredibly malleable and fluctuating brain. It typically doesn’t occur to audiophiles that what they experience could not be further away from being publishable in any journal dealing with factual discovery.
Anyway, not enough research, not enough tests, and people have a hard time coping that their north stars are perceived by others to be a bedroom light.
You’re not wrong. I see places like reddit and ASR that spew utter nonsense when it comes to audio. There are people who are barely in the hobby who follow people who become “experts” in this topic just because they have a youtube channel. Not only do they not understand that they know nothing, they get unbelievably toxic when you ask them to back up their statements. Nothing you say or show them will change their mind because they have very little experience on the topic.
This is the main question. The answer from this thread seems to be what we believe. If you ever watch interviews of dac/amp/speaker engineers, they will rarely tell you that all they aim for are the best measurements available. They do recognize that measurements have a place in audio but most if not all components are tuned by ear.
The measurements crowd have existed since measurements were made. Transistors blew tubes out of the water when it came to measurements and transistor amplifiers took the world by storm in the 70’s and 80’s. The key was how much power could be provided with the lowest THD. What the transistor really did was provide people with really cheap audio. Everyone can buy something good sounding for not a lot but even with such great measurements, transistors never killed the vacuum tube. Musicians and producers still use tube mics and tube guitar amps. Audiophiles still covet the 300b midrange. As most of us know, there is something with tubes that can elicit an emotion that can be tough to find with SS amplifiers.
Long story short, with all the experience of people who frequent audio shows, people who actually engineer audio gear, and those who dedicate their lives to describing the differences between gear, I’m more convinced that everything has a sound rather than not.
You implied that because a boatload of others believed the opposite of what we believe, the fact we believe in isn’t a fact anymore.
In the end, it normally takes a person who believes in measurements to truly experience what “subjectivists” are talking about before they are willing to be more open to things like synergy or DAC/Amps matter. A closed minded objectivist would never go to an audio trade show to experience more gear because they believe that numbers from a measurement rig should be able to tell you whether something is worth buying. Unless a friend of the objectivist forces them to actually listen to something different, it’s very easy to get affirmed in ASR and Reddit.
I guess most people here aren’t very typical then. Many of us actively try to understand how measurements correlate with what we are hearing. If we’re not able to see it, we want to understand what conditions are causing us to hear it and whether or not it can be recreated in a different situation. I think it’s quite dismissive to assume that everyone else is an idiot except for those who agree with you.
That’s not what I said. I said that there hasn’t been studies and research done in this area that can back firm stances in what is real or not. That’s a fact, not an opinion. You can correct me by pointing me to a well controlled and robust study that demonstrates that DACs and AMPs as a matter of fact make a difference.
I’m not interested in your debating with some others here so please don’t drag me into it.
Just as it is impractical to demonstrate they make a difference, it’s just as impractical to demonstrate that they don’t. Until there is a well controlled and robust study that demonstrates that all DAC and AMPs make 0 difference, I guess we are at an impasse.
Sorry for pulling you in since you responded while I was typing up a response. Seems strange to be posting on a thread expecting nobody to respond to you.
You can respond to me, but please don’t misconstrue what I said. To be clear: what I said, succinctly, was that there is way too much conviction in this scene given the lack of science and research that must underscore such conviction.
The fact that these strong convictions are also highly profitable certainly incentivizes manufacturers to maintain the status quo.
You know what, though? They are probably saying the same thing about us - that we “spew utter nonsense when it comes to audio.”
I personally don’t subscribe to the “my truth” philosophy, only to “the one truth.” So with that said, I have a simple solution: prove to the other side that you’re right.
Me too. I just can’t easily “prove” it, so I don’t get fired up over the topic anymore. I also choose not to purchase certain things, even if they sound better, because the cost increase doesn’t justify the gain in performance. That’s where true subjectivism, personal experience and opinion comes into play, which is what I was alluding to earlier.
Sort of, but it’s not that simple, and it’s not the same as claiming that I said what they believe is truth (which I didn’t). Truth without fact (proof) is not truth, and so if we cannot factually prove to them that we’re correct, then can we say our stance is indeed a fact?
I don’t agree with this. Gravity existed before we “discovered” it and defined it. Same with anything that have been “proven” with science. All of these existed before we could prove them. Was everyone floating on earth before Issac Newton existed? Was gravity not a fact?
Yes, but if we don’t yet know it’s truth, how can it actually be defined and fully accepted as truth by mankind? There’s a difference between simply being uneducated to the facts and having discovered and legitimately proven something to be a fact.
Hopefully technology will advance and more truths/facts about this subject will be revealed.
It’s worth reviewing @Resolve 's 10 stages of the love-hate relationship with the Harman curve. Some of the points are equally relevant to this discussion. Not only is the individual’s head, ear, and psycho-acoustic apparatus unique, nobody really knows what the other person’s perception is.
Further, as you point out about clinical listening, I found for years in professional publishing that experience creates changes. Once you see or hear something, you won’t unsee it, as I pointed out in a discussion back in 2019 What are you upgrading? - #178 by pennstac
And the herd mentality is not merely flavor of the month, it’s a key sales technique. It’s taught explicitly in quite a few sales books.
Good luck with your work on doing your own reviews. Make them really your own and you won’t go wrong. Trust, but verify, your own perceptions.
Oh, you underestimate the impact of recent inflation. That $35 bottle would cost at least $1,000,000,000.99 with 2022’s worthless money! My wife doesn’t drink much these days, so some guy with a $35 bottle of vitamins might steal her away.
Are you telling us something? Using “plugs” while blinded always seemed like living on the edge.
There’s a difference between simply being uneducated to the facts and having discovered and legitimately proven something to be a fact.