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Other Hi-fi and AV junkies anonymous

Discussion in 'General' started by Mister_Tad, 16 Jun 2020.

  1. Boscoe

    Boscoe Electronics extraordinaire.

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    Logic.
     
  2. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    The rapper?

    Fortunately, he’s not the arbiter of what others can value, any more than you are.

    And anyway, he reportedly spent over $200k on a Pokémon card, so it seems strange for him to take issue with a comparatively modestly priced headphone setup.
     
  3. Boscoe

    Boscoe Electronics extraordinaire.

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    Thing is, as humans, we don’t get the privilege of just deciding on how well audio equipment performs on our whim just like we can’t decide a football team won when they didn’t because you like them. However human hearing isn’t great and mostly psychological so we can convincingly convince ourselves something sounds better when we want it to. It’s just like wine tasting where no longer is there correlation with preference and price. When you buy £8k tweeters you buy a narrative (and maybe some good tweeters if you’re lucky) and because you buy into the narrative you’ll hear what you want to hear etc. The first reason this would be a waste of money is because you don’t need to speed £8k for a good pair of tweeters.
     
  4. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    But as humans, we do get the privilege of deciding how we spend our own money, and what we value for it, and it isn’t always because we’re ‘suckered’ by the hifi manufacturers narrative.

    Any logic you want to throw around about how in your opinion X is a waste of someone else’s money can be dismissed by one simple rebuttal - “I wanted it and I could afford it”

    Let’s try it… don’t suppose you have any particular thoughts on my £3600 AV processor? £900 earbuds? Or this one is bound to strike a nerve… £2300 valve-based amp?
     
    Last edited: 29 Mar 2022
  5. Mr_Mistoffelees

    Mr_Mistoffelees The Bit-Tech Cat. New Improved Version.

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    Well, if I find myself with enough money to buy the headphones and amp I mentioned earlier, I will go ahead and buy them. I’m damned if I am going to care if someone I don’t know thinks they are not good value.
     
  6. saspro

    saspro IT monkey

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    How are the Elegias? I've got a lack of closed back headphones and rather than spending £300 on the Meze 99's, the Focal's are hitting my radar.
     
  7. IanW

    IanW Grumpy Old Git

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    Floorstanding... headphones? o_O

    (Disclaimer - I'm not a hifi nerd)
     
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  8. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    Me neither I imagined something akin to

    [​IMG]
     
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  9. Boscoe

    Boscoe Electronics extraordinaire.

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    I have no problem with how people spend their money and how they get enjoyment from it. But, spending £8k on tweeters isn't an audio quality driven upgrade it's a 'I have cool stuff' driven upgrade. If the goal is better audio quality, that £8k is a waste of money as good tweeters don't need to cost £8k. Those tweeters don't really cost £8k, the company just charges that because they can. Speakers (drivers) are not complicated technology, children can make them, they do not need to cost £8k.

    If you really want good audio quality sober up to the real things to address in the system. If you don't, play with your toys.
     
  10. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    AFAIK he was referring to n £8k headphone/amp setup, but it's immaterial - you've jumped to the conclusion that any and all of this is driven by objective audio quality alone. It's an argument just as flawed as a VW getting from A-to-B just the same as a Ferrari. And it's not that we've all been duped by marketing.
     
  11. Boscoe

    Boscoe Electronics extraordinaire.

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    Apologies on the misunderstanding of headphones vs tweeters but it's still the same.

    I didn't jump to any conclusions, I've been designing audio systems for over 12 years where I initially believed the same as you. Objective measurements are plenty good enough for assessing audio reproduction. People tend to reject the results because they don't like what they see.

    The VW vs Ferrari analogy does not work. Ferraris are objectively far superior in the characteristics that people want in that type of car and the price is justified considering that difference. Sure there's a narrative in the sale of a Ferrari however it's not the same thing as a VW with woo attached being sold for something else.

    I think a better pick would have been Golf GTI vs a vintage British sports car. The VW will be better in nearly every way however the Austin Healey has something the VW just doesn't. So you could have good sound quality for a reasonable cost with no warm fuzzy feeling or spend crazy money, worse audio quality and a warm fuzzy feeling...
     
  12. spolsh

    spolsh Multimodder

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    For clarity, here's an image of one side of the floorstanding headphones :

    [​IMG]

    They're a bit heavy on your head, and you have to make your own headstrap

    (my attempt at humour may have gone a little wrong, thinking about it, in hi-fi world, floorstanding headphones may even be an actual thing).

    I'm sure that for me, it's a not audio equipment upgrade that would provide the best audio quality upgrade, it would be to have a room that was a different size and shape to what I've got (a solid floor would be nice too). That wouldn't really hold up for the headphone crowd though.
     
  13. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Isn't that the very point, though? That the characteristics people want in that type of car aren't really the same characteristics that make a car objectively "good"?

    A "good" car to me would be: affordable, plenty of room inside, good fuel economy, quiet, cheap to maintain, cheap to insure. A Ferrari is exactly none of those, objectively speaking. I wouldn't buy one.

    A "good" speaker/amp/headphones/whatever to me would be: affordable, doesn't take up half the room, makes sounds happen, doesn't... I dunno, clip, or distort, or burst into flames or whatever. An £8,000 headphone/amp pair is... three of those, to be fair, but falls down at the first hurdle. I wouldn't buy one.

    But people do buy Ferraris 'cos they're neat-looking, and they go fast, and they're super plush inside, and they make a vroom-vroom noise they like. These, which I don't care about at all except maybe the nice plush interior, make the car "good" in their eyes.

    And people do buy £8,000 speaker/amp/headphones/whatever 'cos they're neat-looking, and they're super plush, and they make nice noises, and maybe they come in a posh case with velvet bags over 'em and play a little fanfare when you open the box like the original Intel NUCs used to. I dunno, I've never shopped for 'em. But the point is those are all things that, to the buyer, make the item "good."

    I wouldn't buy 'em, just like I wouldn't buy a Ferrari. It took a lot of soul-searching before I dropped £300 on my Sony noise-cancelling headphones, for Pete's sake. But I ain't going to sit here and judge those who do.

    Except anyone who buys special £8,000 power cables or "audio-grade" SATA cables or the like. I'mma judge the hell out of them.
     
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  14. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    I know I'm wasting my e-breath here, but I'll go one more time anyway.

    You've said that the VW vs Ferrari comparison doesn't hold up because the are other things than a car's ability to get from A to B that matter to some.

    So why is it that you can't understand that these things can apply to hifi as well. There are dozens of aspects other than a component's technical proficiency that matter to many others. There's no amount of experience in the audio industry that entitles you to decide what is and isn't allowed to matter when it comes to hifi. You're confusing "more correct" with "better" here, and outside of a mastering desk, why should anyone care? It's the warm and fuzzy feeling of satisfaction that is the goal surely.

    Let's take an example, the aforementioned £2300 valve-based amp.
    There are more modern and less costly amps that will sound more correct. They're all almost certainly more reliable, have more features, offer better usability (e.g. more comprehensive remote control), are more compact, use less power, make less heat, etc.

    But to me this one is "better", in spite of being almost certainly less technically proficient at taking a signal from a source and sending it on to speakers than alternatives, for a variety of other reasons: I like the way it looks, my wife also likes the way it looks, I like the materials used in it, I even like the satisfying flick of the mechanical power switch, it's different and sort of weird, it sounds different to my other "better" systems and it sounds good/correct enough for it not to matter if it's not the pinnacle of technical proficiency.

    And overarching all of it is that affordability is relative. Spending £8000 on headphones is as inconsequential to some as buying a packet of crisps.

    Edit: ^^ so wot he said basically

    Also agreed, but considering my last point RE affordability I can see why they sell. There can be something quite satisfying about a chonky cable.
     
    Last edited: 29 Mar 2022
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  15. Boscoe

    Boscoe Electronics extraordinaire.

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    So, just to clear up some things...

    You can objectively prove a Ferrari achieves its design goals of being a sports car. Most of the time, expensive HiFi cannot be objectively proven to sound better.

    There's three things here. The intended aim of the product, the execution and the proof of achieving the aim.

    Expensive HiFi claims to sound better but it can't prove it. Why? Because music and the nature of audio reproduction is some mystical pursuit? I don't think so... I think not because exotic execution is needed to sell expensive things (the narrative) and you don't need it to sound good because people will convince themselves of that on their own.

    I don't have a problem with weird, obscure and expensive HiFi and actually quite like it on some level. I have a problem with weird, obscure and expensive HiFi when it claims to be better with no proof or logic to it.

    Cars are a good analogy. Imagine we want to make a really fast fun weekend car to drive around the countryside like a Healey or Mazda type of thing. Valve amplifiers (for example) would be like proposing a traction engine for an extreme price and then claim the very reason it's **** as the reason it's fast. Then, if anyone comes along to dispute this claim, people will say we don't have the tech to measure speed because there's so much nuance around it it's useless to do so.

    Trust me, valve amplifiers are worse than the SATA cable scam. Buying an expensive SATA cable doesn't make your system worse...
     
  16. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    Good grief, I give up. IMO you sound just as deluded as the people that put magic stones on top of their hifi because they "trust their ears"
     
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  17. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    You've missed my point. Ferrari objectively achieves its design goals of being a sports car. But, fully objectively, a sports car is not a good car. Except for sports, I guess.

    High-end audio equipment objectively achieves its design goals of being high-end audio equipment. Fully objectively, sure, high-end audio equipment like the £8,000 headphone and amp combo probably isn't £7,700 better than my Sony headphones - but that's not why people buy 'em.

    Nobody's buying a Ferrari because it's a better car than a VW, 'cos for any practical measurement it's not. Nobody's buying an £8,000 amp and headphone combo because, hand on heart, they believe they can not only perceive a difference in quality but that it's worth the money.
    I mean, I listen to vinyl. On an Aiwa turntable from the late 80s. Which I've got plugged into a Panasonic Quintrix 28" CRT telly, 'cos I don't have room in the office for a dedicated amp and speakers. My PC, meanwhile, is hooked into a £99 2.1 speaker system from the 90s from a company that doesn't even exist any more.

    I'm not one to talk about absolute audio quality, is my point.
     
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  18. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    Almost like it sound good enough to you for you not to care, right?
     
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  19. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Exactly.

    That, and the fact I've got a cloth ear - which, let me tell you, is a real money-saver!
     
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  20. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    I'm a PC gamer, and last year I wanted a CPU upgrade to play games better. Gaming doesn't actually stress your CPU all that much, so you really don't need to go high-end with it. But.... I bought a 5900X (this was pre-Alder Lake). I had the budget and I wanted it. Is it better for gaming than, say, a 5600X? Probably not. Am I ever going to run workloads with make full use of all 12 cores and 24 threads? Almost certainly not. The argument that "it'll be the last upgrade for a while" doesn't really hold water either. Newer generations will have improvements that can't be measured in terms of core counts or clock speeds; look at what Intel have achieved with Alder Lake. I've also made life difficult for myself because that chip chucks out a ton of heat; a lower-spec chip with less heat output would be just as good for gaming.

    I hardly make use of my high-end CPU... but I wanted it.
    I hardly use the retro stuff I buy... but I want it.
    I will hardly use the bartop arcade cabinet I'm planning to build... but I want it.

    Objectivity only gets you so far.
     
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