Can we actually discuss What is Best on this forum?

[PeterA]

There is an interesting new thread asking the question: Is there a "World's Best Cartridge?"

I think this thread title and the discussion that follows provides some fascinating insights and gets to the heart of what this forum is all about. On its face, it seems pretty straight forward: name a forum "What's Best" and invite people to discuss what they think is best. In reality though, this is not really what we see here. We see opinions and comments suggesting that there is no best. There are simply competing products which sound different and appeal to different tastes. Everything depends on personal preference and subjective opinion. We have a list of various audiophile goals. We have endless debates about turntable drive types, amplifier typology, and analog versus digital. There are disagreements about which LP pressing or digital resolution sounds best, which cables sound more real, and lately, which super DAC is best right now, today.

Why are there so many different opinions and experiences? Why does there seem to be so much disagreement and an unwillingness to claim that something is in fact the best? We see reports of members declaring that such and such is the "best he has heard". Everything seems to need qualification. No one seems to want to proclaim an absolute. Are we afraid to offend? Does everything deserve recognition and respect? Is it the need to think one has to hear every single example of a type of component to "know" something is the best? Is it simply that we are unsure, still learning and searching, trying to understand what we like? We have a known reference against which we can judge what is good, better, and the best - what comes closest to the sound of the real thing. Why then can we not seem to agree on much?

The other observation I see all over the place is that everything is compromised: the room, the speakers, the source, the electronics. Nothing is perfect, so we select the component that best satisfies our sonic priorities. This too seems to be a huge qualification. Are there not some, even very few, components, rooms, and systems that are less compromised? The ones that seem to have come closest to solving the design challenge? These are the best because they are the least compromised. These are the components that do not draw the listener's attention to the gear. He does not analyse the sound asking what is good or bad. The best gear disappears. These best simply exposes the music on the recording and allow the listener to lose himself.

I see a strange kind of irony in the name of this forum and what seems to be a hesitation, an inability, or even an unwillingness to proclaim the superiority of those rare and coveted products that rise above the rest and sound the most real.

It is for these reasons that I find this comment from a member describing two of his turntables to be so unusual and so refreshing:

"Anyway. What I like to say is in reality, some tts are just "better" than the others. There are cases where saying "sound best upon preference" just cannot really apply because some tts are just "better." It is not about preference. Just like when people say tape sound better than this and that. In my system, the AS2000 is a better tt than the AF1P if we all put highest value on the reproduction sound nearest to recording venue, fool you real. I could start the day listening to the AF1P and fully enjoy the whole day til go home at 4pm...but Just dont switch to the AS2000. If during the day, I switch to AS2000, I will end up ending my day with the AS2000. It just draws me in. The best I could describe the sound difference between the two is the AS just sounds more real. Please dont be black and white interpretting I said AF1P cannot reproduce sound close to real. It could. But we are in a hobby of getting sound reproduction nearest to real. So what I am saying is in degree the sound from AS2000 fools me real more than the AF1P. There are threads discussing what contributes to fool you real sensation. We can go look at those attributes and the AS2000 has a lot of those. The AF1P has excellent dynamic, "exciting" sound stage, super details, super quiet, etc. But what is missing that make the AS2000 present the sounds with even less exciting sound stage than the AF1 but sounds more real. I am certain that Nishigawa San has his answer in the Zero otherwise there wouldntbe a Zero at the first place. If the Zero retains the gooness of AF1 plus increase the degree of fool you real, then some people could "prefer" the Zero to the AS2000."

 

[Mike Lavigne]

how'd that work for me?

i inferred the Wadax was the best digital, maybe not in so many words, wrote about my experiences, and crap shower has not even slowed down in 8 months. any chance someone had that ever got sideways with me to be negative was pushed and pushed. they are still pushing. no signs of that slowing down. as always, feedback is always a part of things. but agendas are pretty easy to spot.

discuss what is best (not just the best i've heard)? maybe not the best idea. or maybe it's just me doing it? seems to bring out the worst in some of us. like they are being attacked. maybe i'm just paranoid? but probably not.

the vinyl side seems to be a bit less contentious. more celebration, less finding fault. more respect, but i sense it's a delicate balance kinda thing. know where the boundaries are. and who can go there, or not go there. who is safe, or not safe. i guess we will see how that plays out.

i do have a viewpoint about some 'best' talk. tonight i'm enjoying my new Primary Control FCL (field coil) tonearm. it's mounted on the NVS turntable, with a special version of the Etsuro Gold cartridge (yes, the best i've heard). not sure i can say that the FCL is the best tonearm, but in the context of my particular system, playing large scale music, i would claim it's the best tonearm. period. but my point is that there is a context involved. my system does a few things to allow the FCL to be singular and be all it can be. but just throwing it in any system i'm not sure it would work the same way.

my system has active isolation under the tt, phono pre, line pre, and the both amps. the cables are suspended. the speakers and room are very acoustically developed. so the ultra precision of the FCL can be fully utilized. it's remarkable when i'm playing large scale recordings. other-worldly.

yet my claim is just an opinion, based on my personal experiences. but i don't know what i don't know. yet i do feel that way. and am willing to share my viewpoint.

 

[tima]

You've opened a very ... very ... interesting set of questions, Peter -- good for you, great subject -- it may touch some nerves and it will be interesting to read the replies. I'll make the following remarks to stir the pot.

There seem to be several (many?) roadblocks to even try gauging or assert What's Best.

One of those is the strong personal relationship people have with their choices and the difficulty in detaching oneself from those choices to acknowledge what is best.

Two is the issue/problem of context. No single component operates outside a system context. Can a component be best independent of a context? Or can we simply say X is best in any system that enables its potential?

Three associates to the platitude that "we all hear differently" and thus it is impossible that 'what's best' can be determined. I suspect plenty of people are settled with that. I believe we hear more similarily than differently but we have different preferences or place different values or emphasis on what we hear. Can we ignore our own preferences in determining what's best?

Four, is what you touched on talking about reference. "Is it simply that we are unsure, still learning and searching, trying to understand what we like? We have a known reference against which we can judge what is good, better, and the best - what comes closest to the sound of the real thing." As discussion of natural sound has shown us, many people have difficulty accepting "what comes closest to the sound of the real thing" as the basis against which best is assessed.

I don't think that last issue in intractable. I can imagine someone saying "I have a reference sound in my head, I call it Organic Orange. Just like those people who say they know real when they hear it, I know Organic Orange when I hear it." Okay, at least he has a reference even if it is accesible only to him. For folks who do not have an objective reference such as the sound of an orchestra in a concert hall the notion of 'what best achieves that' can be pretty fungible, perhaps depending on what they had for breakfast.

The canard that I need to hear every single X to know which X is best comes from the same minds for whom consistency is a hobgoblin.

 

[shakti]

On a regular base, I invite up to 30 people to my house for a listening workshop over a Weekend. The main theme is driven from my particular component interest in the time of the venue.

Mostly this workshops are supported from Distributors or manufacturer, which often likes to attend.

During the last workshop, wie compared phonostages, up to 30 were available,
from Allnic to Zanden…

the listening sessions are in smaller groups and for me, as the presenter, it is interesting to see, how the component preference differs by group.

Personal Taste and Sonic Education are driving the process of preference, so in the most workshops no component was found, which was the best Winner for all attendees.

In all workshops two major groups will be seen.

- emotional listeners, who want to feel the music
- rational listeners, who want to hear Every Little Detail of the Recording

as some visitors do attend the workshops on a regular base, I can tell them in advance, which component they are going to like.

So it is very difficult to find a component , which is the „best“ for all listeners.

Same here in the Forum.

 

[morricab]

On a regular base, I invite up to 30 people to my house for a listening workshop over a Weekend. The main theme is driven from my particular component interest in the time of the venue.

Mostly this workshops are supported from Distributors or manufacturer, which often likes to attend.

During the last workshop, wie compared phonostages, up to 30 were available,
from Allnic to Zanden…

the listening sessions are in smaller groups and for me, as the presenter, it is interesting to see, how the component preference differs by group.

Personal Taste and Sonic Education are driving the process of preference, so in the most workshops no component was found, which was the best Winner for all attendees.

In all workshops two major groups will be seen.

- emotional listeners, who want to feel the music
- rational listeners, who want to hear Every Little Detail of the Recording

as some visitors do attend the workshops on a regular base, I can tell them in advance, which component they are going to like.

So it is very difficult to find a component , which is the „best“ for all listeners.

Same here in the Forum.

Did you have an Aries Cerat Talos in that test group?

 

[Kingrex]

I thought TAS printed a list of the best.

 

[andromedaaudio]

For anyone searching for the best here is the german databank from a leading german hifi magazine

HiFi-Test

STEREO HiFi-Test ermöglicht den Vergleich tausender Testergebnisse, Messwerte und Fazits zu HiFi- uns High End-Lautsprechern, -Verstärkern, -Kopfhörern, etc.

www.stereo.de

You can just click on what you wanna buy and in what price range and you automatically get the best according to them .
You dont even need to read a forum , lol .

Ps The time i still read this nonsense is about 17 years ago

 

[Ron Resnick]

There is an interesting new thread asking the question: Is there a "World's Best Cartridge?"

I think this thread title and the discussion that follows provides some fascinating insights and gets to the heart of what this forum is all about. On its face, it seems pretty straight forward: name a forum "What's Best" and invite people to discuss what they think is best. In reality though, this is not really what we see here. We see opinions and comments suggesting that there is no best. There are simply competing products which sound different and appeal to different tastes. Everything depends on personal preference and subjective opinion. We have a list of various audiophile goals. We have endless debates about turntable drive types, amplifier typology, and analog versus digital. There are disagreements about which LP pressing or digital resolution sounds best, which cables sound more real, and lately, which super DAC is best right now, today.

Why are there so many different opinions and experiences? Why does there seem to be so much disagreement and an unwillingness to claim that something is in fact the best? We see reports of members declaring that such and such is the "best he has heard". Everything seems to need qualification. No one seems to want to proclaim an absolute. Are we afraid to offend? Does everything deserve recognition and respect? Is it the need to think one has to hear every single example of a type of component to "know" something is the best? Is it simply that we are unsure, still learning and searching, trying to understand what we like? We have a known reference against which we can judge what is good, better, and the best - what comes closest to the sound of the real thing. Why then can we not seem to agree on much?

The other observation I see all over the place is that everything is compromised: the room, the speakers, the source, the electronics. Nothing is perfect, so we select the component that best satisfies our sonic priorities. This too seems to be a huge qualification. Are there not some, even very few, components, rooms, and systems that are less compromised? The ones that seem to have come closest to solving the design challenge? These are the best because they are the least compromised. These are the components that do not draw the listener's attention to the gear. He does not analyse the sound asking what is good or bad. The best gear disappears. These best simply exposes the music on the recording and allow the listener to lose himself.

I see a strange kind of irony in the name of this forum and what seems to be a hesitation, an inability, or even an unwillingness to proclaim the superiority of those rare and coveted products that rise above the rest and sound the most real.

It is for these reasons that I find this comment from a member describing two of his turntables to be so unusual and so refreshing:

"Anyway. What I like to say is in reality, some tts are just "better" than the others. There are cases where saying "sound best upon preference" just cannot really apply because some tts are just "better." It is not about preference. Just like when people say tape sound better than this and that. In my system, the AS2000 is a better tt than the AF1P if we all put highest value on the reproduction sound nearest to recording venue, fool you real. I could start the day listening to the AF1P and fully enjoy the whole day til go home at 4pm...but Just dont switch to the AS2000. If during the day, I switch to AS2000, I will end up ending my day with the AS2000. It just draws me in. The best I could describe the sound difference between the two is the AS just sounds more real. Please dont be black and white interpretting I said AF1P cannot reproduce sound close to real. It could. But we are in a hobby of getting sound reproduction nearest to real. So what I am saying is in degree the sound from AS2000 fools me real more than the AF1P. There are threads discussing what contributes to fool you real sensation. We can go look at those attributes and the AS2000 has a lot of those. The AF1P has excellent dynamic, "exciting" sound stage, super details, super quiet, etc. But what is missing that make the AS2000 present the sounds with even less exciting sound stage than the AF1 but sounds more real. I am certain that Nishigawa San has his answer in the Zero otherwise there wouldntbe a Zero at the first place. If the Zero retains the gooness of AF1 plus increase the degree of fool you real, then some people could "prefer" the Zero to the AS2000."

Thank you, Peter, for starting this thread.

I am genuinely puzzled, however, because I believe that the Tang post you are excerpting supports my view as expressed in its entirety in the “World’s Best Cartridge” thread more than it supports your view that people can agree on a single “best” component, for all preferences, and that this component is objectively “best.”

1) Most of Tang’s post focuses on a direct, apples-to-apples comparison between two turntables in an extremely familiar system (his own system). Tang has even swapped different tonearms and different cartridges between these same two turntables. This type of comparison is intellectually valid. A comparison doesn’t get more intellectually valid than this.

2) Tang sets forth a sonic objective he is trying to satisfy: “the reproduction sound nearest to recording venue, fool you real.”

3) Tang explains clearly the reasons he believes the AS-2000 better satisfies the sonic objective than does the Air Force One Premium.

4) Tang concludes that if one’s sonic objective is “fool you real” the AS-2000 is better than the AF1P.

I am pretty confident that most people who would have conducted this comparison with Tang would come to the same conclusion.

So we have two contenders; we have a designated personal sonic objective; we have a direct comparative analysis of which contender better achieves that particular sonic objective, and we have a winner according to that sonic objective.

I do not know why you feel Tang’s post supports your view that by evaluating a small subset of components you can pronounce that that component is objectively the “best” in the world for all audiophiles and all sonic preferences. (I appreciate that this may overstate your thesis.)

I will go further and say that if one’s sonic objective is maximizing resolution and information from the grooves of a vinyl record then I would bet that in a direct comparison most people would agree the AS-2000 is the most highly-resolving turntable they have ever heard. In other words if you narrow the proposition in advance to one or more particular sonic objectives, then I would agree that people very likely will be able to achieve consensus (if the members of the audience have sufficient experience with live music and sufficient experience auditioning the type of component in question). For the members of that group, according to one or more particular sonic objectives, that group can achieve consensus as to which component is “best.”

 

[Alrainbow]

Im not sure how this will go over
there is no best it insults me for one
I feel I’m not qualified. to
judge what’s best either
it’s all personnel to most but I admit I admire some and gladly except there view to helping me make my
own better.

 

[Fishfood]

As a relative new member here, I must say I took the name of the forum to be "an invitation to discuss what's best for your particular situation", not an absolute.

There can be no absolute best. We all hear differently. That's just a physical truth. We also all receive pleasure from listening.... but what pleases each of us is different. Thus there can be no absolute standard for "best". There can be a best for one's particular ears and sense, not to mention room and budget!

 

[morricab]

Perhaps the name of this website is a little bit tongue-in-cheek?

 

[Al M.]

Four, is what you touched on talking about reference. "Is it simply that we are unsure, still learning and searching, trying to understand what we like? We have a known reference against which we can judge what is good, better, and the best - what comes closest to the sound of the real thing." As discussion of natural sound has shown us, many people have difficulty accepting "what comes closest to the sound of the real thing" as the basis against which best is assessed.

I don't think that last issue in intractable. I can imagine someone saying "I have a reference sound in my head, I call it Organic Orange. Just like those people who say they know real when they hear it, I know Organic Orange when I hear it." Okay, at least he has a reference even if it is accesible only to him. For folks who do not have an objective reference such as the sound of an orchestra in a concert hall the notion of 'what best achieves that' can be pretty fungible, perhaps depending on what they had for breakfast.

It is pretty obvious that also people who strive to use an objective reference, like the sound of unamplified instruments in a concert venue, cannot agree on what sounds "real" in reproduction. Even among that subset of listeners you have huge differences in chosen playback systems and resulting sound.

Yes, striving to adhere to such a reference should narrow down things, but that is often true only in a limited way.

Of course, we could have a debate about who in that subset of listeners has more "experience", but even that would be a rather muddy endeavor.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Look i dont wanna get nasty here .

But the opposition to " we hear all hear differently and there is no absolute best " comes in a large part from reviewers.
Because stating there is no absolute best and everybody hears differently would basically render their work/ write ups useless .
So most magazines / reviewers have a vested interest in some sort of " picking order " .

Regarding myself , You can fool me 2 or 3 and may be even 4 times but thats it , lol

 

[Ron Resnick]

I think we all hear substantially the same thing in the concert hall. So why do we end up with audio systems which sound very different?

Audio components don’t reproduce sound perfectly — neither the sound of a single acoustic instrument played live in front of us in a small room, nor the overall sonic experience we enjoy in the concert hall. We don’t achieve 100% suspension of disbelief while listening to our stereo systems.

Since our audio components collectively cannot re-create the entire experience we perceive in the concert hall each of us chooses components that re-create those particular attributes of sound we hear in the concert hall which subjectively maximize our personal suspension of disbelief. Our selection of the particular attributes of sound which are most important to us as conduits to maximizing our personal suspension of disbelief is subjective. Different audio components sound different. Sonically contrasting audio components will be used by different audiophiles to achieve certain particular attributes of sound. This is why MadFloyd, a musician — who surely knows what his instrument sounds like — has a stereo which sounds very different than Peter’s stereo.

Choosing different components for our audio systems results in our audio systems sounding different. This is why our different stereo systems sound so different, even though we all are hearing substantially the same thing in the concert hall.

How each of us chooses to replicate at home with an audio system an experience similar to the experience in the concert hall is subjective. This is why there is no one, same “world’s best [component]” for all audiophiles.

Different audiophiles have radically different levels of high-end audio experience. The different levels of live music experience, the difficulty of even finding components other than popular ones from the most advertised brands, the difficulty of auditioning individual audio components in an analytically valid way, the difficulty of attributing sonic attributes to particular components, etc., all conspire to make this whole endeavor very challenging.

There is a huge problem of people not knowing what they don’t know — and not being introspectively aware of this. And if someone learns a little more, he/she still doesn’t know what he/she doesn’t know. Analytically valid experience to aquire more knowledgeable is not easy to get.

What this means is that there will be greater dispersion in the sounds of the resulting systems then there should be if the average audiophile had a higher level of experience and knowledge. This is another, separate reason why our resulting audio systems sound more different system to system than what we can largely agree we all are hearing in the concert hall.

 

[Fishfood]

It is pretty obvious that also people who strive to use an objective reference, like the sound of unamplified instruments in a concert venue, cannot agree on what sounds "real" in reproduction. Even among that subset of listeners you have huge differences in chosen playback systems and resulting sound.

What I always find interesting about this particular objective reference is that the sound of an unamplified instrument in a concert venue is way different than the same instrument sounds in a studio while recording, so you have a recording engineer adding his interpretation as to what that concert venue sound should be during the mixing process. I can assure you that the engineer and everyone here has a different opinion on what that sound is. And they you have producers chiming in with their opinion. I've been there. It's a pretty impure process.

 

[Ron Resnick]

It is pretty obvious that also people who strive to use an objective reference, like the sound of unamplified instruments in a concert venue, cannot agree on what sounds "real" in reproduction. Even among that subset of listeners you have huge differences in chosen playback systems and resulting sound.

Our selection of the particular attributes of sound which are most important to us as conduits to maximizing our personal suspension of disbelief in our own audio systems is subjective. This is why the resulting audio systems sound so different, even though we largely agree about what we all are hearing in the concert hall.

 

[ddk]

I believe Peter is discussing a recent trend on WBF where some members take it upon themselves to police others what terms they're allowed to use and how they must express themselves; nothing to do with audio gear. We had it with the offended and excluded for natural sound and now we have it with you can't claim something is best because... Personally I don't care what people like or believe in, not my concern claim what's best with your own quantifiers and according to xyz if you wish but allow others to express themselves freely or the current contentiousness will only escalate.

david

 

[Elliot G.]

I think we all hear substantially the same thing in the concert hall. So why do we end up with audio systems which sound very different?

Audio components don’t reproduce sound perfectly — either the sound of a single acoustic instrument played live in front of us in a small room, or the overall sonic experience we enjoy in the concert hall. We don’t achieve 100% suspension of disbelief while listening to our stereo systems.

Since our audio components collectively cannot re-create the entire experience we perceive in the concert hall each of us chooses components that re-create those particular attributes of sound we hear in the concert hall which subjectively maximize our personal suspension of disbelief. Our selection of the particular attributes of sound which are most important to us as conduits to maximizing our personal suspension of disbelief is subjective. Different audio components sound different. Sonically contrasting audio components will be used by different audiophiles to achieve certain particular attributes of sound. This is why MadFloyd, a musician — who surely knows what his instrument sounds like — has a stereo which sounds very different than Peter’s stereo.

Choosing different components for our audio systems results in our audio systems sounding different than each other. This is why our different stereo systems sound so different, even though we all are hearing substantially the same thing in the concert hall.

How each of us chooses to replicate at home with an audio system an experience similar to the experience in the concert hall is subjective. This is why there is no one, same “world’s best [component]” for all audiophiles.

Different audiophiles have radically different levels of high-end audio experience. The different levels of live music experience, the difficulty of even finding components other than popular ones from the most advertised brands, the difficulty of auditioning individual audio components in an analytically valid way, the difficulty of attributing sonic attributes to particular components, etc., all conspire to make this whole endeavor very challenging.

There is a huge problem of people not knowing what they don’t know — and not being introspectively aware of this. And if someone learns a little more, he/she still doesn’t know what he/she doesn’t know. Analytically valid experience to aquire more knowledgeable is not easy to get.

What this means is that there will be greater dispersion in the sounds of the resulting systems then there should be if the average audiophile had a higher level of experience and knowledge. This is another, separate reason why our resulting audio systems sound more different system to system than what we can largely agree we all are hearing in the concert hall.

Ron, I think that listening is a learned skill, no difference than wine tasting or food tasting. In that means we don't all "hear" the same thing in a concert hall. It was said that people don't know what they don't know and this is the heart of this matter. If we look at audio with some wide eyed/ear'd wonder and are interested in the journey and exploration then the term best is viewed very differently than in a way of self protection of what has been chosen and what one owns.
Experience and the journey to find it promote learning and discussion, the path of protection IMO produces nothing positive.
All High End gear is NOT equal. The state of the art is constantly in flux, always has been and always will be.
I think the discussion should be of what's really good or excellent and loose the other b word as it really promotes the wrong discussion. My humble opinion!

 

[Jeffy]

Elliot I see you have not done a podcast in awhile.

 

[Al M.]

Ron, I think that listening is a learned skill, no difference than wine tasting or food tasting. In that means we don't all "hear" the same thing in a concert hall.

True, not everyone hears the same thing in a concert hall. Yet it is not just listening skill, but also personal filtering of perception that decides about what everyone hears in the concert hall. Another complicating factor is personal preference of where on average one chooses to sit in the concert hall, which in turn will shape which sounds one will perceive.

All High End gear is NOT equal. The state of the art is constantly in flux, always has been and always will be.
I think the discussion should be of what's really good or excellent and loose the other b word as it really promotes the wrong discussion. My humble opinion!

This is a great suggestion. Let's keep it at what's really good or excellent.