Hi-Fi is NOT a subjective hobby.

[Another Johnson]

Yeah someone can think a crap system that has distortion, bad frequency response, no spatial details is high quality but it's still crap.

Gordon Gow used to chafe over the reviewers who preferred the euphonious distortion of his competitors over his best efforts to measurably prove accuracy.

 

[thedudeabides]

Not if the owner thinks it sounds fine. It is his or her system, not yours to pass judgement on sound quality and enjoyment.

I often wonder why some people cannot understand / accept this basic concept.

 

[thedudeabides]

Gordon Gow used to chafe over the reviewers who preferred the euphonious distortion of his competitors over his best efforts to measurably prove accuracy.

Please post specific examples assuming this is fact based. I would really like to see proof to back up your claim. If I posted that in the past, I shall respond accordingly.

Apparently unlike you, I really try to respond to any disagreement I may have in a respectful manner.

I do not play gotcha. Does seem popular amongst some on this forum. Have fun with your little game. Another member I have put on my "ignore" list. Bye AJ

 

[Another Johnson]

Please post specific examples assuming this is fact based. I would really like to see proof to back up your claim. If I posted that in the past, I shall respond accordingly.

Apparently unlike you, I really try to respond to any disagreement I may have in a respectful manner.

I do not play gotcha. Does seem popular amongst some on this forum. Have fun with your little game. Another member I have put on my "ignore" list. Bye AJ

My comment was in support of your position.
Different people like different things.

It is from my personal memory, and I think it is also stated in the History of McIntosh book (I think Ken Kessler was the author, compiler of that work). If I have time, I’ll find the page number.

I don’t see how you turn my comment into a personal attack. I do agree that we’re not alike.

 

[thedudeabides]

My comment was in support of your position.
Different people like different things.

It is from my personal memory, and I think it is also stated in the History of McIntosh book (I think Ken Kessler was the author, compiler of that work). If I have time, I’ll find the page number.

I don’t see how you turn my comment into a personal attack. I do agree that we’re not alike.

My name is Gordon Gray. Thought you intentionally mispelled my name. Thank you so much for your clarification. My sincere apologies for the mistake. Unfortunately, too many members take personal shots at others (and recently at me) in my view. Hope / trust you now understand.

 

[Rexp]

Not if the owner thinks it sounds fine. It is his or her system, not yours to pass judgement on sound quality and enjoyment.

I often wonder why some people cannot understand / accept this basic concept.

So in your view there is no low v high fidelity, no point in pursuing the latter?

 

[morricab]

So in your view there is no low v high fidelity, no point in pursuing the latter?

Not sure I completely agree with your (apparent) view on what is high fidelity.

 

[Rexp]

Not sure I completely agree with your (apparent) view on what is high fidelity.

Higher fidelity systems can reproduce the sound of an unamplified instrument (assuming a good recording) closer to the sound of the actual unamplified instrument being recorded.

 

[morricab]

Higher fidelity systems can reproduce the sound of an unamplified instrument (assuming a good recording) closer to the sound of the actual unamplified instrument being recorded.

Not sure that this standard has all that much to do with frequency response...within limits of course.

 

[Geoffkait]

Merely a different interpretation and a IMHO post. No agenda / mal intent. Best

your interpretation was not only different it was incorrect. What I said was we all strive to get better sound AND we all experience times when our systems sound bad. My statement isn’t really open to interpretation.

 

[Geoffkait]

Higher fidelity systems can reproduce the sound of an unamplified instrument (assuming a good recording) closer to the sound of the actual unamplified instrument being recorded.

Not sure I agree with that statement. As for myself I strive to reproduce what’s on the recording while considering limitations of the recording, the medium, mastering (e.g. compression) AND the playback system. The latter being a huge can of worms as I’ve been intimating. As for the claimed dynamic range and SNR of compact discs of 90 dB or higher, give me a break.

Furthermore many recordings are INTENTIONALLY skewed from reality, e.g., Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin in terms of recording technique, contrived ambience, “headphone effects,” etc.

“I know what I want, I just know how to go about getting it.” Audiophile refrain

 

[hopkins]

Higher fidelity systems can reproduce the sound of an unamplified instrument (assuming a good recording) closer to the sound of the actual unamplified instrument being recorded.

Microphones can be very sensitive - I assume some are more sensitive than our hearing. But they capture sound differently than our ears, and speakers have their own limitations (for example, in their limited reproduction of "life like" dynamics).

 

[ssfas]

I spent about 30 years regularly going to live acoustic performances, often over 200 annually, before I gave much thought to hi-fi. When that happened, about 15 years ago aged 45, I hadn’t changed anything in my relatively modest hi-fi system for about 12 years. I continue to go to lots of live music, over a wide range, for example last Saturday was classical Indian percussion and Kattak dance, tonight‘s show is likely to be mixture of acoustic and electronic. So when I came to hi-fi a little more seriously and heard some very high end systems, I had no expectations that recorded music would ever get close to the live experience. All I can expect is a reasonable approximation that is an enjoyable musical experience and a worthwhile use of my leisure time.

I am lucky that I could be subjective because regular demonstrations are available to me and I can get home loans of hifi equipment before I make any decisions. If I can’t get a home loan, I’m not interested.

I presume that many audio engineers do lots of objective measurement when they design equipment, but I know that there are some world-class speaker designers who very much go by ear (because they told me). That’s really not my concern.

On the other hand, I can fully understand that if I did not have decades of experience of life acoustic music and had completely different musical tastes, plus I were an engineer rather than an economist, I might take an approach based entirely on the measurement of known variables, such as total harmonic distortion et cetera.

The irony is that the king of measurements, Dr Floyd Toole, noted the importance of listening. He couldn’t call it subject preference, but referred to it as the potential existence of new variables. The problem with some objectivists is that they don’t think there are any new variables to discover.

See page 27, penultimate paragraph: https://www.harman.com/documents/AudioScience_0.pdf

As has probably been said many times before, you can sit two people in front of the same system and one person will enjoy listening to it and another will hate it. I’ve experienced this many times. people just have different preferences in the presentation of music and sound, and it is profoundly arrogant to deny anyone their personal preference. Because some objectivist can’t get their head around this subjective preference, they blame it on factors like marketing, ego, etc.

The amount of keystrokes spilled on this subject is mind blowing. Personally, I really don’t care if anyone else thinks my audio system is high fidelity, low fidelity or no fidelity at all. As the title says, it’s a hobby, aimed at personal subjective pleasure, which is not something you can measure.

 

[hopkins]

On the topic of subjectivity, some interesting comments from Janos of Real World Audio in his latest video:

 

[Another Johnson]

https://www.harman.com/documents/AudioScience_0.pdf

This is a great paper. Thank you for posting this link.

Potential readers - don’t limit your reading to the penultimate paragraph on p27. Read the whole thing.

 

[Geoffkait]

This is a great paper. Thank you for posting this link.

Potential readers - don’t limit your reading to the penultimate paragraph on p27. Read the whole thing.

Of course we know that Controlled Blind Tests are not the end all do all that Toole and others portray them as. A single blind test that has negative or inconclusive results has no meaning, it cannot be used as proof or even evidence. You certainly cannot draw any conclusions from it. That’s because too many things can and do go wrong with blind tests, or any tests.

Positive results of a single blind test perhaps have more meaning since the results were obtained IN SPITE OF all the things that could go wrong.

Confidence in results of blind testing only appears after many tests by different people, and on different systems, under varying conditions. The results must be repeatable. Repeatable and transferrable.

“I bet it can’t pass a controlled blind test!” - angry skeptic

 

[Another Johnson]

Of course we know that Controlled Blind Tests are not the end all do all that Toole and others portray them as. A single blind test that has negative or inconclusive results has no meaning, it cannot be used as proof or even evidence. You certainly cannot draw any conclusions from it. That’s because too many things can and do go wrong with blind tests, or any tests.

Confidence in results of blind testing only appears after many tests by different people, and on different systems, under varying conditions. The results must be repeatable. Repeatable and transferrable.

I didn’t say that I agree with everything in the paper. I said it was a great paper, great in the sense that it is a worthwhile read.
Even so, it is clear to me from my reading that the author understands better than most here that human hearing is NOT uniform … listeners respond to audio stimuli differently. If we neglect this idea, we get into foolish arguments about What’s Best for Everyone based on What’s Best for one.

 

[Al M.]

If we neglect this idea, we get into foolish arguments about What’s Best for Everyone based on What’s Best for one.

That seems to be the essence of many arguments on WBF, unfortunately.

 

[PeterA]

The evidence that there is no best for everyone is the simple observation that everyone has a different system and that there are very many different approaches to the hobby. Even when there is some consensus among some members who follow a similar approach, it often results in very different outcomes and gear relative to everyone else.

There can’t be what’s best for everyone when there is so little consensus. This lack of consensus combined with ego and puffery is why I think there are so many arguments here.

 

[Geoffkait]

I didn’t say that I agree with everything in the paper. I said it was a great paper, great in the sense that it is a worthwhile read.
Even so, it is clear to me from my reading that the author understands better than most here that human hearing is NOT uniform … listeners respond to audio stimuli differently. If we neglect this idea, we get into foolish arguments about What’s Best for Everyone based on What’s Best for one.

I didn’t say or mean to imply you agreed with everything in the paper and I didn’t say it wasn’t a worthwhile read. Nor do I think human hearing is uniform. When someone mentioned penultimate paragraph on p 27, I went straight there. So, my comment referred to that paragraph 27, which included some talk or hand waving about blind testing