audiophiles get mention in today's WSJournal

What makes anyone think that those were audiophiles milling around T.H.E. Show? No one knows anything about the people who wandered into that show. They might have been at CES to check out the latest in refrigerators...

This test is 100% meaningless...

O

o

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All audiophiles don't spend $50,000 on turntables. This guy is one of the many reasons I quit reading the newspaper. Seriously, why would I listen to a guy whose medium is dead??

No surprises here. It is indeed extremely difficult to hear such small differences (for most mere mortals)

I did extensive test with Sony's Atrac compression and concluded I could hear a difference but it was not at all easy. The same result for iTunes files AAC 128 Kbps - often it is extremely hard to tell them against uncompressed files but generally you can with careful & extensive listening. Hoever, somewhere above 256 Kbps compressed files the ability to tell the difference becomes exponentially harder...just my experience with my tin ears....so I am hardly surprised by the findings in this article.

How does the WSJ know which is the better product?
If most people picked the other one, maybe it is the better product, and not the one the WSJ thinks is better.
The one the WSJ thinks is better might be an overpriced piece of hype. Not all that uncommon.
How do you define better?

Well I agree with the totally insane versus the merely crazy part.