Wine and HiFi are indeed very similar. Drink and listen to what you like, what someone else measures or consumes makes no difference to what you may actually like.
Why Are We Breaking Our Brains?
A master sommelier takes a sip of red wine, swishes it around a bit, pauses, ponders, and then announces: “…. It’s from a mountainous region … probably Argentina … Catena Zapata Argentina Malbec 2020.” Another sommelier at a fine eating establishment in a major city is asked: “What would you pair with shrimp?” The sommelier hesitates for a moment then asks the diners: “What shrimp dish are you ordering?” The sommelier knows the pairing depends on whether the shrimp is briny, crisp, sweet, or meaty. Or some other “house specialty” not mentioned here. The sommelier can probably give good examples of $10 wines and bad examples of $100 wines. And why a good $100 wine is worth … one hundred dollars.
Sommeliers do not have a master’s degree in biochemistry. And no one from the scientific world is attempting to humiliate them in public forums for “claiming to know more than a little bit about wines” with no scientific basis to back them up. No one is shouting “confirmation bias” when the “somm” claims that high end wines are better than cheap wines, and well worth the money.
Yet, guys and gals with decades of involvement in high performance audio who claim to “hear differences” in various elements introduced into audio chain are pulled thru a gauntlet of scientific scrutiny, often with a great deal of fanfare and personal invalidation. Why is there not a process for “musical discovery” for seasoned audiophiles, and a certification process? Evaluator: “Okay, I’m going to change something in the system. Tell me what you hear. The options are interconnect upgrade, anti-skate calibration, removal of acoustical materials, or change in bitrate. Choose one.”
How can those with pretty “sensitive antennas” and years of hands (and, ears) on good gear convince the technical world that they are actually qualified to hear what they are hearing?
Why is it viewed as an inferior process for seasoned professionals to just listen, "swish" it around in their brains for a bit, and comment?
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If you are using the wine analogy, you should read up on The Judgment of Paris tasting in 1976.
Sometimes the underdog can taste better... sommeliers can be taken aback. Similarly, a "lesser brand" may sometimes sound better in a system. Trust your ears, not the hype...
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Why would someone “know what they hear,” so to speak, and then give a good gosh darn about specs, measurements, and other figures printed on a page? I wouldn’t. If someone wants to enjoy music via measurements on a page instead of with their ears, brains, heart and soul, that’s their prerogative, but their protestations against my personal experience wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans in my world. |
Regrettably @waytoomuchstuff has misdirected himself. He suggests that because confirmation bias is not present in wine tasting, it cannot be present in listening to music. His statement is an inductive proof - that is, the proof of a proposition relying upon a different proposition that has not been proved. The result of course is rubbish. Confirmation bias exists in all fields - why shouldn't it. In fact the record shows that confirmation bias is present in wine tasting to a far greater extent than in listening to music. There have been legions of published accounts of confirmation bias in wine tasting. Almost certainly the most famous case is that of Rudy Kurniawan a young conman from Indonesia who operated as a wine forger of the greatest wines in the world, mainly in the USA between 2002 and 2012. For 10 years and with probably tens of thousands of bottles he conned all the wine experts, auction houses, collectors and even wine makers with forged first growths imitating the greatest wines of the world. Some collector experts lost up to $5,000,000 each. They were all convinced the wines were genuine just because of the labels stuck to the bottles and so believed what they tasted was the real thing - pure confirmation bias. It is not known how much Kurniawan collected in all from these frauds, carried out in great number over 10 years, but it was certainly in excess of $20,000,000. He was tried in 2013 and sentenced to 8 years. The very interesting story can be read in 'In Vino Duplicitas' by Peter Hellman and is being made as a feature film. So the OP is not making any point, save to confirm confirmation bias is alive and well in all fields.
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