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Too good a post to waste

On a thread that is a running example of the textual equivalent of nonstop cat videos. So here it is again.


I could understand the cables are snake-oil doubters and take them seriously- in 1980. Back then there was no internet, Stereo Review was pretty much it, and Julian Hirsch was the Oracle of all things audio. Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch said if it measures the same it sounds the same. Wire is wire, and that was that. 

Even then though J. Gordon Holt had already started the movement that was to become Stereophile. JGH took the opposing view that our listening experience is what counts. Its nice if you can measure it but if you can’t that’s your problem not ours. 

Stereo Review and the measurers owned the market back then. The market gave us amplifier wars, as manufacturers competed for ever more power with ever lower distortion. For years this went on, until one day "measures great sounds bad" became a thing.

Could be some here besides me lived through and remember this. If you did, and if you were reading JGH back then, I tip my hat to you, sir! I fell prey to Hirsch and his siren song that you can have it all for cheap and don’t really have to learn to listen. Talk about snake-oil! A lot of us bought into it. Sorry to say.

But anyway like I was saying it was easy to believe the lie back then because it was so prevalent and also because what wire there was that sounded better didn’t really sound a whole lot better.

Now though even budget wire sounds so much better than what comes off a reel you’d have to be deaf not to notice. Really good wires sound so good you’d notice even if you ARE deaf! No kidding. My aunt Bessie was deaf as a stone but she could FEEL the sound at a high enough volume, knew it was music. The dynamic punch of my CTS cables is so much greater than ordinary 14 ga wire I would bet my deaf from birth aunt Bessie could "hear" the difference. Certain so-called audiophiles here, I'm not so sure.

Oh and not done beating the dead horse quite yet, according to my calendar its 2020, a solid 40 years past 1980. Stereo Review is dead and buried. Stereophile lives on. A whole multi-billion dollar industry built on wire not being wire thrives. Maybe the measurement people can chalk up and quantify from that just how many years, and billions, they are out of date and in denial. 
128x128millercarbon
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,947 posts
 
Science and belief systems progress, one funeral at a time. Or, to quote Plank fairly:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
We are simply arguing with the old guard over something that will become conventional wisdom itself, and in turn and it time, will be tossed aside as well. 😄

All the best,
Nonoise


millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
Old ideas are like Bruce Willis- they Die Hard. And the sequels aren't necessarily any better.
mr_m
1,900 posts
 
Actually, back in the day, there was another mag called "Audio." No, it wasn't a Stereophile or Absolute Sound, but it gave you a fresh prospective to Stereo Review and the "if it measures the same, it sounds the same" camp.
edcyn
1,876 posts
 
I guess there will always be wars between those who prefer to hew to what the numbers say and those who prefer to believe what their ears say.  To me, though, you're not buying stereo gear to better perform heart surgery.  As worthwhile as an objective/numbers assessment might be, you're looking for emotional satisfaction from audio playback and thus it's a reviewer's subjective analysis that should rule the roost.  Should a movie reviewer only talk about a film's color balance, or should they be delving into such esoterics as whether the actors convincingly flesh out their characters...and whether those characters are worth spending time with in the first place?
Audio gear may be the work of scientists but it exists to exalt the work of artists. 

Finally, yes, Audio was marginally more subjective in their judgments than was Stereo Review, but TAS and Stereophile were/are in an entirely 'nother league.
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