[Arny Krueger]

"Skler" wrote in message

Audiophiles seem to obsess on their perceptions of any
differences at all, and tend to perceive any difference
as being an improvement. Their abhorance of formal tone
controls and their infatuation with implicit tone
controls that can only be changed by swapping equipment,
seems like a big clue to their true motivations.


Subjective description and metaphor are a big deal now.

Been so in consumer audio since at least the early 70s.

The rise of similar thinking in pro audio probably came with the
"consumerization" of pro audio.

Even now that FFT measurements are easily obtained and
could illustrate some interesting differences in
performance, especially with regard to speakers, there's
little of that to be found.

Many have been brainwashed to absolutely distrust any measurement.

Instead it's a bunch of
poetic description of the sound, which is great, but
you'd think that people who may actually be above average
in their ability to discern audio quality would want to
quantify it some way,

This sort of information only has global meaning when fixed benchmarks are
used.

as opposed to the typical consumer
for which most gear is probably good enough and they
don't care about specs anyway, just features.

The significance of quality gear and quality implementations is greater with
pro audio because more are affected by its quality.

Perhaps the
fact that so many audio enthusiasts resort to subjective
metaphor instead of physical measurement specs is an
indication that our measurements are not so good after
all, at least in terms of how they relate and correlate
with subjective experience.

The relationships are not always simple.

I think psychoacoustics still has lots of territory to explore.


In some ways.