WHY DO SOME AUDIOPHILES TRY TO TELL OTHERS WHAT THEY CAN OR CAN’T HEAR IN A SYSTEM?


I ask the question. Because I have had several discussions on Audiogon where certain posters will try to tell another person what they can or can’t hear in a system. Most of the time never hearing or having experiences either the piece of equipment, cables etc. It is usually against those that spend money on more expensive equipment and cabling. Why is this so prevalent.  

calvinj

So if someone tells you that they can hear (not feel) an 8 Hz or 28kHz sine wave, that doesn’t give you pause?  What if tracks are accompanied by satanic rites heard only by them?

Some things are beyond recognized audibility and it is a fool’s errand to try to convince some people otherwise.

CAUSE WE ARE SMARTER. CAN HEAR THE FART OF A KNAT. AND KNOW BETTER THAN THEM. THIS OUR HEARING IS LITERALLY OUT OF THIS WORD !!!! cheeky.

But seriously folks. We all here know its more training and teaching others what to and not to listen for. Hell, I’ve been an "expert" for over 40 years ! My Buds in High School and many friends to this day ask me for advice.

My first questions is how much are you willing to spend. The 2nd one is with or without wires. Arrogance doesn’t help especially if someone is just starting out in the hobby young or an old Fxxxck !

 

All Good Points. But there's another factor in play. I used to manage a HiFi Stereo Store back In the day. We had most all Popular Speakers and Amps and Turntables as well as high end cartridges. Also Had all kinds of High end Separates.

The funny thing was what one person loved in combo "A"push button setup, meaning we could push a few buttons and connect any piece to any other piece of equipment, someone else thought it didn't sound as good a Combo "B" they were listening to.

The end result was evident to us. No two people see Color the same....No two People Smell the same smell...and No two people hear the same. When it comes to hearing, biologically, are ears work slightly different, But most of all... Are ears are just Microphones. How we hear is thru the Human Brain. 

So the end factor to us was to just simply select speakers based on what the customer said he liked in a speaker.. Hi ...Mid ..Low. After some time the right combo was selected based on the Preamp Stage of the unit and the output stage of the amplifier plus the speaker.

 

So what it all means from my $.02 worth is..... Whatever sounds good to you is the correct system.Of course, you should take the time to listen to all in your price range.

 

It’s always been a matter of defining what “the threshold of audibility” is. The experimental psychologists have run double blind studies with samples of normal subjects, and come up with answers we audiophiles accept in principle, like a 3dB difference is certainly audible, and a 20dB difference is twice as loud, or that even a .25dB volume disparity will spoil the reliability of an A-B comparison in favor of the louder signal. Controlling for these errors with precision, maintaining the listener blindness, it’s rare that listeners can reliably discern many of the substitutions of cables or components unless one of them introduces a significant alteration to the signal’s integrity…

Even the ASR crowd fall into error by rating SINAD down to infinitesimally low levels. As if less than inaudible distortion or noise is somehow…less. 

I don’t hear as well as I did when young, so my opinion means less now, but I can’t separate the profit motive behind commercial claims of superiority for whatever is being promoted from the verifiable evidence of that claim’s validity.  People hear differently and no doubt some people hear better, but the lure of our hobby is mixed up with all kinds of extraneous factors besides what it takes for truthful sound reproduction.