
Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey - collate
https://www.stereophile.com/content/stereophile-personal-odyssey
======
mbell
Stereophile routinely recommends $20,000 'power conditioners' and multi-
thousand dollar cables. FFS they've claimed CD players 'sound better' sitting
on 'special' racks.
([https://www.stereophile.com/standsracks/206finite/index.html](https://www.stereophile.com/standsracks/206finite/index.html))

This is the history of a successful charlatan.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
>This is the history of a successful charlatan.

Agreed.

Its tough though... I know of a couple times in my life I've thought something
was OK until I saw something else.

Examples, Glass. Binoculars, camera lenses, rifle scopes, telescopes. Glass
differences are very real. You might be A-OK with some Bushnell Binos, but USE
Swarovski or Vortex Razor or something lower-highend and you'll get it. Now, I
didn't write LOOK THROUGH, I wrote USE. This has an obvious point of
diminishing returns. I would never buy higher-highend glass.

Another example is something like TV black levels. If you don't notice black
levels - good for you! Don't look for it. Because once you have a dark room
and notice it, you'll see it forever. I notice soap opera effect, black
levels, local/regional dimming, burn in, and it all removes me from the
material. Again, Sucks. I wouldn't buy a higher-highend TV, but I pretty much
can't get by with low end anymore.

So... I KIND OF WANT to believe there is a serious quality range with audio
gear, but I guess the difference is in glass or TV black levels, I can snap a
picture and prove a difference. Audio is only ever perception. I can't prove a
wave on an oscilloscope is more pleasing than another exactly within reason.

That said.... You're right. Sterophiles and Audiophiles seem to be people with
too many dollars and not enough cents/sense, and lots of people taking
advantage of that. But maybe I just haven't used the right gear yet.

~~~
janekm
You can measure all the differences in TV picture you described (and you
didn't even mention colour gamut & dynamic range). You can measure the
differences in optical glass. You can't measure the difference between a $10/m
speaker cable and $10000/m speaker cable (usually... some of the expensive
speaker cable is so crazy it may mess up the sound), or an amplifier sitting
on a $5000 stand. And $1000 power cables, plugging into your usual wall
outlet...

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
We can measure the difference in cables though! I can put them through a scope
or analyzer and I can even show you real hard differences between them.

What we can't do is prove that makes a difference to your ear vs mine and
that's the real problem.

So there are two difference classes of scam here. The one where it's true
there is a difference in this $10 and $10000 cable, but they're effective
identical. And the scam where this is no measurable or even logical difference
at all.

It's the former scam that I think allows the "audiophile" industry to thrive.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Especially because measurements like Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) use sine
waves for their measurements. People pay thousands of dollars for marginally
lower THD (say, .02 % instead of 0.5%) but they listen to music, not sine
waves.

Well, I assume this. Perhaps people buy high end audio equipment so they can
listen to sine waves.

~~~
wl
THD is a measure of non-linearity, which adds harmonics not present in the
original signal. Yes, the standard tests use sine waves, but the results are
applicable to other signals. Just because most people don't listen to sine
waves for fun doesn't mean it's a valid measurement.

On the other hand, the highest THD in a sound reproduction system comes from
the physical transducers. Worrying about the THD of an amplifier makes little
sense when the speakers provide an order of magnitude more distortion.

~~~
lb1lf
-I fully agree with your sentiment, except I'd like to stress that a loudspeaker provides _several_ orders of magnitude more distortion than a competently designed amplifier driven within its limits.

------
thefounder
I wonder what's a fair price for a pair of tower speakers? Is $10k crazy
expensive? $5000?

People pay crazy amounts of money for some paintings so I don't see an issue
paying crazy amounts of money for audio gear that looks and sounds nice.

I visit Stereophile from time to time to see what's new but never bothered to
read all the crap. If you are into audio gear/hifi there is 10% useful content
though(i.e pictures, price range and measurements)

[https://www.listenup.com/shop/media/catalog/product/l/i/lili...](https://www.listenup.com/shop/media/catalog/product/l/i/lilium_wh_1.jpg)

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_9_8lCDuL3Q](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_9_8lCDuL3Q)

~~~
krautsourced
Having owned speakers in that range and listened to numerous pairs in the 5k
range: a fair price is the price the speaker that sounds good to you costs.
Measurable differences do not matter, what matters is your ear and your taste,
both of which change over time. So whatever you do, don't buy anything based
on reviews, go into a hifi store with a CD (or usb or whatever) with your
favourite songs that you have a good idea of how you would like them to sound,
and ask them to have a listening session with a number of different models.
Then buy the pair that sounds best.

------
W-Stool
There is literally no limit to the insanity of the audiophile universe. You
can spend a thousand dollars on a three foot "reference quality" ethernet
cable. I've seen "audiophile" SATA cables, USB cables, and USB signal
conditioners. There's a whole sub-culture around removing the stock fuses in
equipment and replacing them with "audiophile" fuses. I actually once saw two
guys comparing a song ripped by two different CD rippers and discussing which
one sounded better - despite the fact that the MD5 checksum on both files was
the same.

After a while it starts to look like an extremely dysfunctional religious
cult.

~~~
Hamuko
SATA cables? USB cables? Try audiophile electricity poles.

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/15/japan-audiophiles-
instal...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/15/japan-audiophiles-install-own-
electricity-poles/)

------
fmajid
Coincidentally Onkyo is in talks to sell its audio business to the US owner of
Denon+Marantz, after having rescued Pioneer. Hi-Fi as a whole seems to be in a
downward spiral, just like cameras, and most of the growth is in mobile audio.

------
compiler-guy
Stereophile is a terrific view into a culture of pseudo science and science
denialism, but with extremely low stakes: it's just rich people wasting their
money.

It's worth reading because the prose is actually quite good and you can also
see just how people determined to believe things can ignore or dismiss
rational arguments.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
“It's morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.” - W. C. Fields

My first impression most "audiophile gear" and specifically on ShakiStones
below is "well, that's so ridiculous it shouldn't be legal" but on better
consideration, good for them. If someone is that dumb, they need to be
relieved of their money before they do something dangerous with it.

~~~
im_down_w_otp
Does this sentiment only apply to rich dumb people, or does the "good" of
exploiting people's gullibility for profit also extend to taking advantage of
the poor and vulnerable?

I ask because I've often wondered if this trait of American culture, wherein
we've decided that defending oneself against predators & charlatans is up to
the individual and not up to society (and if the individual fails at this,
then "good for" the predator), might be the key difference between the U.S.
and other first world nations which tends to land the U.S. at or near the
bottom of various social goods & services metrics (balanced against the
relative cost and our relative wealth). Because if the bias is toward
rewarding predators for having been successfully predatory, then the result of
the incentive seems like it will be that the ecosystem will be dominated by
predators.

