Avoid the snake oil

I don't like snakes let alone what ever you have left once you put them in a press or blender and strain them. :panic:
 
Unfortunately (though to little surprise given some of his other articles), that piece was poorly argued.

First, Roger Skoff bemoaned "some consultant guy" for various transgressions. Conveniently, the target is left unidentified, hence the audience of the piece can not check if Skoff is accurately representing that person's position. The scent of strawman is very strong there.

Second, he makes poor arguments against blind testing - suggesting that blind testing in audio may be fine for test tones, but using actual music introduces too many variables. First, the logic there makes even more of an argument against sighted un-controlled testing, since it would suffer ALL those variables with the ADDITION of confounding bias effects!

Further, he's just wrong that music can't legitimately be used in blind testing. It's used all the time. Companies developing audio codecs have long used blind listening tests. Floyd Toole and others have presented tons of evidence where using music in blind testing - e.g. in testing loudspeaker designs - have provided highly reliable results.

Personally I've used music in blind testing, successfully identifying gear. If there is a difference to be heard, it can be heard whether you are peeking at the gear or not.

Articles like this are preaching to the choir - it's made to be lapped up by those who prefer to reject any method that might cast doubt on their own perception. This is a "technical guy" "sounding like he knows what he's talking about" so "all the more reason to reject that obnoxious objectivism."

Before that is interpreted as claiming nobody should rely on his perception in evaluating gear, it's not. Few of us have the time, ability and inclination to get scientifically rigorous about everything we buy. I certainly don't. There's nothing wrong with approaching, say, a magazine like Positive Feedback with the understanding "These are all subjective impressions...the reader is free to put as much stock in the reports, or not, as he wants." No problemo. But it's never a good look to go so far in defending one's turf as to try to undermine...with bad arguments...the very science of blind testing. That's what you find in pseudo-science, and it's always used as a move to defend dubious belief systems.
 
MattHooper said:
Unfortunately (though to little surprise given some of his other articles), that piece was poorly argued.

....

There's nothing wrong with approaching, say, a magazine like Positive Feedback with the understanding "These are all subjective impressions...the reader is free to put as much stock in the reports, or not, as he wants." No problemo. But it's never a good look to go so far in defending one's turf as to try to undermine...with bad arguments...the very science of blind testing.

...
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Totally agree. Not to mention that way too many of the reviews read like advertorials.
 
IMHO there are a couple of take home messages from this article. First, use reviews to get information about a product (not uncommonly a reviewer is given information from the manufacturer or distributor that is not easily found elsewhere). Second, don’t be foolish and buy something based on another person’s recommendation unless you are confident that that person’s sonic tastes and priorities are like yours.

Almost everything else the author says is just as much snake oil as the opinions he is criticizing.
 
mep said:
Have we run out of new things to discuss?
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An interesting topic is the rapid rise in “vloggers”. Are they a threat to print media? Will we see print media have to jump on board into the vlogger world?

Someone sent me this video the other day and my reaction was “who the F are these guys?”

Danny at GR-Research Is Elitist and Delusional - YouTube

60,000 subscribers.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
Mike said:
An interesting topic is the rapid rise in “vloggers”. Are they a threat to print media? Will we see print media have to jump on board into the vlogger world?

Someone sent me this video the other day and my reaction was “who the F are these guys?”

Danny at GR-Research Is Elitist and Delusional - YouTube

60,000 subscribers.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...


Looks like Audio needs drama to keep it interesting. And as we know, its the internet where everyone is an expert at something..
 
I took it as trust your ears and trust your local dealer.

Double blind tests are good, but I do not need one to tell me what piece of equipment sounds better to me.
 
How many audiophiles only buy gear if they can do a blind listening test first? Professing love for blind listening tests vice actually using blind listening tests to choose your gear are two separate worlds that don't meet. It's just one more category on the audiophile argument wheel that keeps getting spun.
 
mep said:
How many audiophiles only buy gear if they can do a blind listening test first? Professing love for blind listening tests vice actually using blind listening tests to choose your gear are two separate worlds that don't meet. It's just one more category on the audiophile argument wheel that keeps getting spun.
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It's one thing to acknowledge that the vast majority of audiophiles don't employ blind testing in making decisions on gear, which is of course true (for reasons I stated). The problem is that the article makes gratuitous, bad arguments against the very method of blind testing.

In any case, I personally have used blind testing occasionally and sometimes it certainly has influenced my purchases. For instance I had a bunch of very highly regarded, expensive AC cables to test out. At one point I perceived one of the AC cables as changing the sound of my system. When I had a friend help me blind test between them, I couldn't tell any difference in the sound. I saved a lot of money right there!

Back when home theater was becoming all the rage and cable companies were seeing dollars in their eyes "more cables to sell!" the subjective mags were lauding the performance of expensive video cables (deeper contrast! Better color saturation! Clearer image!).
I got a hold of a range of video cables from cheap all the way up to Nordost.

I *thought* at first I was seeing some differences. But in blind testing...I realized I couldn't reliably detect any difference at all (which would have been predicted by the engineering theory anyway of such cables). Again...saved money by realizing I could get the necessary performance from cheaper cables.

More recently I switched digital servers. For some reason I perceived the new server as sounding a bit off balance, a bit brighter, which bummed me out because I really wanted to use it. If what I was hearing was real it would force me back to using the old server.
But knowing that there should not be any technical (and audible) difference I double checked, blind tested between them and...what do you know?...there was NO detectable difference. I'd imagined it earlier. So I just went with the new server and had no issues since...sounds just like the previous one.

So I am among those who are happy to have blind testing in the tool box.

(As I mentioned earlier, it's not like blind testing erases any audible differences: I've successfully identified between DACs, for instance, in blind testing).
 
Why shouldn't there have been any differences in SQ between two different servers?
 
mep said:
Why shouldn't there have been any differences in SQ between two different servers?
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Because they were sending the identical digital sound files to a competently designed DAC (Benchmark).

(If digital signals didn't work reliably in that fashion, my industry - digital post production sound - would be sh*t out of luck as we are constantly sending our digital sound files via all sorts of servers).
 
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