Audiophile Guru Syndrome

[microstrip]

My goodness Micro, you really do like pontificating! It is exactly as I mentioned.
Suggestion: do purchase the 4th edition, thereby helping the authors, and check if you wish. (however, it doesn't really matter if you do or not.)

My goodness, you really love to talk about you don't know. Read the full book and quote from it, not from your imagination. F. Toole was not born with the 4th edition - it added material, it did not change the fundamentals. The Toole research is science, it is not your usual entertaining audio gossip. Bye.

 

[JiminGa]

My goodness, you really love to talk about you don't know. Read the full book and quote from it, not from your imagination. F. Toole was not born with the 4th edition - it added material, it did not change the fundamentals. The Toole research is science, it is not your usual entertaining audio gossip. Bye.

I like Tooles book. I've read it a couple of times cover to cover. It's background information that helps you understand why you are hearing what you are hearing but it is just a starting point. Something you keep in the back of your mind when you are trying to get great sound. Necessary but not sufficient information. The actual process is iterative and may lead you somewhere which contradicts Tooles thinking from time to time. We don't yet have the science and room interaction is so complex we will never have a book with knowledge that is transferable to all situations. At least that has been my experience.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Is F . Toole a guru yes / no ?

 

[microstrip]

I like Tooles book. I've read it a couple of times cover to cover. It's background information that helps you understand why you are hearing what you are hearing but it is just a starting point. Something you keep in the back of your mind when you are trying to get great sound. Necessary but not sufficient information. The actual process is iterative and may lead you somewhere which contradicts Tooles thinking from time to time. We don't yet have the science and room interaction is so complex we will never have a book with knowledge that is transferable to all situations. At least that has been my experience.

Toole science and engineering driven approach needs reliable data and aims mostly at predictability. Deeply knowing about the limitations of the stereo standard and the non predictability of audiophile preference he accepts to sacrifice our iterative approach to a statistically general, surely not universal, preference. The high-end is surely not part of his book.

But as you say, reading it is an excellent introduction to our hobby. It helps us understanding it in depth and keeping north in our less guided searches.

Surely the book is not a book without criticism - for example we can consider that it underestimates the full capabilities of stereo, as he discards listener education and ignores some valid options of speaker design because of their set up needs.

In some sense, the never ending WBF fights - horns versus boxes versus planar or tubes versus SET - prove the wise man is right ...

 

[bonzo75]

I like Tooles book.

Microstrip was the first to like this post, surprised he did not put a love symbol.

 

[Bobvin]

Humility goes a long way.... even in life. I have a tendency to keep my mouth shut, instead of interjecting. A lot of folks could learn from that.
Some of you have seen that I have cut back on posting, because I don't want to listen/read the drama. As you get older, your time becomes more precious. I've always followed Ralph's posting... I just have to weed out the minutiae....
Happy hunting....

I think happy people recognize how precious their happiness (and time) is and guard against/steer clear of things or people who would F it up.

Unhappy people seem to relish in their unhappiness and like to suck others into their despair. I think social media is a clear example.

 

[JiminGa]

Microstrip was the first to like this post, surprised he did not put a love symbol.

You see my post is Luke warm?

 

[Robh3606]

Is F . Toole a guru yes / no ?

No not as described/defined in the OP . He is the real deal, a professional in the field, not an opinionated You Tube influencer.

Rob

 

[Rt66indierock]

Is F . Toole a guru yes / no ?

Nope

 

[Rt66indierock]

I think happy people recognize how precious their happiness (and time) is and guard against/steer clear of things or people who would F it up.

Unhappy people seem to relish in their unhappiness and like to suck others into their despair. I think social media is a clear example.

A lot of times happy people need to do things that make them unhappy or angry. There is a greater good after all.

 

[JiminGa]

A lot of times happy people need to do things that make them unhappy or angry. There is a greater good after all.

Yes but that's not what Bobvin is saying. He is commenting on personality traits/learned behaviors which I think are valid and worth considering. You are saying that we all must sometimes do some very unpleasant even damaging things for the greater good. I think you are both right.

 

[Audiohertz2]

Audiophile Guru Syndrome is an ego-based thing that blinds audiophiles, in particular the one that has it.

Its something I've been on guard in myself for decades.

How it works has a prerequisite. One possibly suffering AGS has had some success with his stereo.

At some point though, hubris starts to have an influence. When things get to the point of actual AGS, the following symptoms can be seen:
1) Anything WRT matters audio issuing from the the individual is seen by that individual in such a way as it might have issued from the mouth of God. This is the 'guru' part.
2) Anything that conflicts, even if constructive criticism, will be seen as blasphemy.
3) Therefore tend to be a bit close-minded about different ideas they didn't create.

Now as many of you know, I'm a manufacturer. I'm also an audiophile, and my interest in music in general has led to a lifelong hobby that became a career. I've made a lot of mistakes along the way and I often feel like I've been wrong a lot more than I've been right. On that account, I try to keep my mouth shut on the internet unless I'm dead certain of what it is that I know (and not believe, as there is a distinction there). IOW, verifiable fact.

I went to engineering school at the UofM. To put myself through school, I worked at local consumer electronics repair shops (I started out in 1974 at the Allied Radio Shack service department). Somewhere along the line I got the idea on which I founded my company, so didn't take the engineering track that a lot of my classmates did.

I often find myself in a delicate situation. I really enjoy troubleshooting and so I've tried to help people and have been online doing that since the early 1990s. The delicate situation is that, as an EE and a manufacturer, I often really do know more than most of the people I try to help. But I have to be careful to not over do it, to not be a know it all. Decorum is important.

So how to deal with a situation where its clear that I know a lot more about how a system works than the person that own it? For me this is nothing new having been inside the innards of so many different bits of audio gear, as well as having designed such things and obtained pertaining patents. Every now and then I run into people that seem to think they know more about their equipment than I do even though its quite obvious they do not. I'm often tempted to tell them 'if you're so good at this, why not design the equipment from the ground up and show us all how its done?'. But right there is the nub of the matter. I don't want to be overbearing, but at the same time when I see misleading or outright false statements, something inside compels me to try to set the record straight.

An event like this happened just a few days ago. On that account, since it was online, I left the thread where it was obvious that if I persisted (more than I already had) I would be running afoul of my own concerns about getting AGS. It can rub off from others who have it.

The tricky bit about online forums is that we who indulge in them do not, for the most part, know the other players. I've found the best way to maintain decorum when people take pot shots at me is to not take things personally. If I don't know such individuals, have never met them and so they also don't know me, I've found it easy to deal with by not making their problems my problems. That doesn't work if I allow things to get personal.

This has been on my mind recently since I think I did take it personally in that last event. I'm not on these forums for any other reason than a love for music and to that end, audio.

For me its sort of like seeing someone prepare to shot themselves in the foot. I want to stop them hurting themselves. Now in audio its of course not so extreme, but you can spend a lot of money and time in this sport; and preventing people from making mistakes, or if they have already made them, helping them to make the best of it, does satisfy that goal.

But I get castigated for that. People make assumptions without knowing who I am that I'm only here to promote my products. If they did a search to see what sort of threads I respond to, they might not think that so much. For example last spring I was on this site helping someone through a refurbishment of an older ARC preamp which was successful.

Where I'm going with this is I'm actively trying to avoid having AGS. I find the people most likely to attack me likely already have a case of it (some of them I've had to put on ignore). One thing that is important to understand in all of this is human motivation. Most people might think the number one motivator might be money or happiness but its not. The biggest human motivator is to look good; failing that the 2nd biggest motivator is to not look bad.

That plays an enormous role on audio forums and pretty much drives politics.

I saw what you did there , Well played ….