"Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!" wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm just curious. I just did a search of r.a.o. going back at least
eight years. Thousands and thousands of 'objectivist' posts by Mr.
Krueger, nob, and others.

Have these thousands of posts, representing hundreds and thousands of
man hours, been to any effect?

Has anyone ever actually changed their mind on how they think about
audio based on what they've read here?

Just curious...

I visited AK a few years ago. I did his double-blind test and picked
everything out with 100% accuracy. I have a good ear, but the point is that
he has a good point about subjectivism vs. objectivism.

I was surprised at my aural acuity. However it stands to reason. Not that I
don't think that proper cabling and amplification would sound different, the
point of the exercise was to see if the difference in encoding schemes was
apparent, and it was, to the aforementioned 100% degree.

The question of the increasing importance of the smaller difference can only
be answered by experienced and moneyed listeners, which I am not, on both
counts. They have the years of listening and the wherewithal to audition
top-flight equipment, and I for one have not the time or money to be able to
listen to the best stuff. So it stands to reason that the people who do
reviews for a living would at least be taken seriously.

Now about comparisons: The scientific method is more about proving an
hypothesis wrong than anything else. If a person thinks a thing should sound
a certain way, it is their job to try and find out why it should *not* sound
that way. If the hypothesis can not be disproved, it becomes more robust.
After repeated testing and experimentation, the hypothesis can become more
robust, even to the point of being accepted as a law, even if it is not
necessarily a law, in strict terms.

Listen for yourself. That is the ultimate arbiter. I have found that the
clean, analog path is the path to audio nirvana (not perfection, which I
think is theoretically unattainable). If you hear more stuff you need to
hear with a certain setup, that is your peak performing system. What people
on the outside don't realize is that there is more at play in the audio
chain than simple cabinet equations and crossovers. Tone controls? Use them
sparingly. I sound like an Apple guy here, but I do think that there is a
place for tone controls for a distributed audience. Not for me, though, I
like flatness.

Everyone has different aural acuity, we all have different aural frequency
responses. This is a physical thing, not a mental one. Eardrums are pretty
resilient, but the inner ear system is somewhat fragile. So I would say the
tendency for manufacturers to tilt the treble up is understandable, because
lots of the target audience has diminished hearing in the 12k and up range.

So what is the point here....it is that you have to find what sounds good to
you, and you better be ready to spend some few hundred bucks at least to get
it- this is not some kid-friendly game here, this is about real, good, hi-fi
sound, most bang for your buck. Otherwise you can build your own system from
readily-available parts. Know how to solder? Great, discover Google. Get
into power supplies and transformers, get into all the minutia of Litz wire
and the physics that make it so good. Go nuts with routing and capacitive
coupling, go crazy with the very real effects of variable magnetic fields.

These are all concerns. Don't get me started on water cable.