Too good a post to waste

Strangely enough it turns out that no matter what you are listening to, the music or the equipment, you are in the end listening to it through the equipment. Try as we might, there is no such thing as music that just appears in the room without any equipment. (It only seems that way sometimes, and when yours is as good as mine you will know what I mean.) So either way it does in fact matter how the equipment sounds. Not measures. Sounds.

The subject by the way is neither Stereo Review nor Julian Hirsch. The subject is the mistaken and counterproductive belief that something doesn’t exist until we can measure it. In this particular case its cables are snake oil, the argument for which boils down to, "there can’t be any difference, because we can’t measure any difference." But this same fallacy applies to lots of things.

Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch merely happen to be the two most widely recognized exemplars of this flawed philosophy. That’s why they were used. It has nothing to do with any personal animosity. I grew up with Stereo Review. I loved those same music articles. But on this score they let us down, big time.

Like it or not, in order to enjoy music audiophiles require equipment. Until this changes we will all be a whole lot better served by the Stereophile/JGH approach than SR/JH. That is all.

More to the point, people vilify Stereo Review simply because they fixate on Julian Hirsch.  Anyone who took his writings as gospel is either easily lead or fooled (your choice).   I started reading Stereo Review in 1970, simply for the music reviews and artists' profiles, the added bonus for me, was that the magazine provided a quick way to find out what was new in audio through both articles and advertising.  

Julian Hirsch's part of the magazine was intriguing only because he was attempting to use a quantified method to evaluate equipment.   But, if you were "into" audio, it became readily apparent that, although the measurements could quantify certain aspects of performance, the measurements didn't tell you anything about how the equipment sounded.

I looked at the equipment reviews simply as a method of seeing relative performance measurements that might be applicable to a piece of equipment.   As an example, wow and flutter are certainly applicable to the sound of a tape machine.  Finding out the performance differences between a TEAC versus an Akai, Sony, or Pioneer would give a starting point in evaluating the overall sound.

However, measurements can go beyond simply quantifying chosen performance characteristics if you know what measurement are important, and more importantly, know how to apply them.  This was demonstrated in the mid-1980's by Bob Carver through the Stereophile Challenge when Bob made a solid state amplifier sound like a tube amp and the "golden ears" finally gave up trying to find a difference in sound and conceded he'd won.

One of the problems with anecdotal equipment reviews sans any type of measurements is that people's ears are as variable as their eyes.  People have "tin ears" just like some people have color perception problems.  This was proven to me nearly daily when I worked in an audio store and would demonstrate a very expensive system versus an inexpensive one and the person would say, "I can't hear the difference." 

The opposite to that are the people who think they can "hear" every change no matter how small - like the direction a fuse is installed.  That's when I question the real reason they have an audio system.  Are they interested in listening to music or do they simply want to use  the music to listen to the equipment for imagined faults that need improvement? When that happens, the pursuit of perfection seems to be the point of the equipment rather than a way to listen to the art involved in making music.

I've had the same system for nearly 20 years at this point.  When I go listen to new equipment I find it provides a different, not necessarily better sound - so, I keep what I have and enjoy the music.

I kept my Audio, IAR and Listener mags.  Threw out the High Fidelity and did not trust Stereo Review.   I prefer the narratives of Absolute Sound to Stereophile although I like several writers of both mags (including the recently deceased Art Dudley).  I read more on-line articles now from Positive Feedback, Enjoy the Music, The Audiobeat, Soundstage Ultra and AnalogPlanet.  I maybe reading too much audio related stuff but I listen to music 1.5 hours or more every evening and 4+ hours on weekends.  For 20 years I read Fanfare mag which is 100% music reviews.  I also read International Record&Piano Review, Opera News & Grammaphone occasionally,   I often read while listening to music as well.  

As to cabling preferences, I began that journey in the 1970s with Audiosource cables which were superior to both zip cord/RCA and Monster.  Since 2000, I've used GroverHuffman.com cables and am the beta tester (I still pay for the cables, the design/labor is 90% of the cost).  The best system(s) I've every heard used MasterBuilt cabling which is possibly the most expensive.  I'm planning to upgrade my speakers b$35,000-$50,000, not the cabling.  

The recently decreased Art Dudley. I guess that’s one way of putting it. I would have saved my old Absolute Sound issues but the pages were all stuck together.

     The profit margin of the any old wire will do crowd is minimal.  Advertisers rarely pay to tout that their product is no better than another.  Plus, apparently , no one told the wire is wire crowd that the choice of what to measure was dictated by the availability of commercial measuring equipment, not by what anyone heard.     Despite the fact that I use and like the site, I like to say, Who Snopes Snopes?
     The advertisers won.  You buy what the dealers are told they can make money by selling.