I think I’ve related this anecdote on SD previously, but as it’s in keeping with the topic. Once more.
Way back in my college days my audiophile friend was over visiting one evening and we were listening to some CD or another on my Rent-a-Center stereo system. After about 15 minutes he states, “Heya Jammer, your left speaker has the wires crossed.” I checked, and sure enough, positive to negative and vice-versa. I couldn’t hear a bit of difference before or after. I even tried swapping them back and forth a few more times on my own after he was gone.
It doesn’t matter which way round a speaker is connected, but it does matter that left and right are connected the same way. If your left cone is pushing while your right one is pulling you get interference between them which can sound off.
That is pretty weird. One speaker out of phase is a very obvious fault. The stereo image will be wrecked. You do need to listen from a point where you are actually hearing the stereo effect, and not just some random point in the room.
Usually it is obvious if there is a phase problem within seconds of starting to listen.
I knew at the time what he was hearing and why. I just never could tell the difference myself no matter how hard I tried from any position in the room. It was a pseudo 5.1 system so that was probably how he was able to identify the out of phase speaker.
Man-o-man, I here (hear) you there. I have tinnitus that has a couple of different frequencies. Even with hearing aids, I’m lucky to hear speech. While I certainly approve, mask wearing makes it very, very hard to hear someone because I guess I’ve come to depend on facial expressions and lip reading to a degree.
I still listen to music of course, but it’s mostly just background noise now. It really sucks.
There should be a huge market for ‘hi-fi audiologists’ who will make careful measurements of your hearing, provide an equalization curve to flatten it, then provide the data to the customer for use with an equalizer. Or even better, headphones that correct for your hearing loss in each ear.
I never hear audiophiles talk about this. Maybe it’s because they would have to admit that they don’t have ‘golden ears’.
Several decades ago, I worked for a Japanese import company which imported high’ish end home audio as well as some of the best professional audio products.
I eventually became the pro audio sales manager but had experience with the consumer market and the difference was amazing.
For the professionals, they would have blind A/B testing to decide what they liked. They didn’t want a sales talk, they just wanted something dropped off and then they would listen and see if they liked it themselves.
Prices were reasonable. Not really cheap, of course, but not silly money.
For speakers, I used to tell people that anyone could tell the difference in magnitudes of scale for pricing up to a certain point. So anyone could hear the difference between a $50 and a $500 speaker. You should be able to tell between $500 and $5,000, although there are some good $500 speakers and some not really great $5,000 ones. But after that it’s all what you want to hear.
Can you tell between $50k and $500k? I’ve listened to them and tried to keep a straight face while the guy was explaining the reasons. He did very suggestive A/B testing as well.
Yeah, I kind of assumed that would be understood. What I intended to say is that even ordinary people (without hearing issues) without any special training or experience can pick out the different in quality of the lower end of the range. With experience, then people can hear more and more, but the high end is imaginary.
So much of this thread brings to mind Charles Rodrigues’s cartoons in Stereo Review. Especially the one with the stereo equipment store which had this sign in the window - centered between a pair of speakers:
“SENIOR CITIZENS! WHY PAY FOR USELESS FRILLS? BUY THIS 1200-5800 HZ SPEAKER SYSTEM AND SAVE!!!”
Usually, my guess with remarkably high prices on online stores is that some automatic pricing algorithm went gaga. But from what I hear from the audiophiles here, this price tag doesn’t seem to be so far off the charts.
Go to a number of high end consumer audio shows and your faith in humanity is either crushed or restored, depending on your take of people with more cents than sense getting willingly and enthusiastically taken for a ride.
Then there was a CD “tuner” which would “restore” commercial CDs. You put the CD in, it spins for a while, some lights blink and you are all set.
If you are looking for the ultimate in a spatially relaxed, sonically aligned sound with great ambiance and natural feel, you just have to get some of these for your speakers:
Translation: Your speakers will sound better if you put our very expensive bag of rocks on top of them. It also works on any electronic equipment, so they can sell you more than two.
More crazines: ‘Audiophile’ Fuses. Only $713 each.
Psychologically, a time delay is required to allow your brain to fool itself after being primed to hear a difference. Every review of these gimmicks has a passage like this:
From a review of a $4200 ‘groundihg box’:
Who wouldn’t pay $4230 for ‘additional sparkle’ in their high end? It’s virtually a no-brainer. Of course, a real Hi-Fi pro would,have a whole ‘system’ of these grounding boxes, to keep a ‘low ground floor’ between equipment. If you want the best, they make a giant one that weighs about a hundred pounds.
I can’t decide if this industry is based on mass delusion or is just a complete scam. But some of these companies are pretty big, woth lots of employees and ‘engineers’ working on this stuff. Some of them must be true believers.
And you thought anti-vaxx people were hard to convince. Audiophiles can nearly bankrupt themselves chasing the elusive ‘natural sound’, and will get almost violent with you if you attempt to reason with them.
They are only directional because they put an arrow on the pretty purple case. That way you have one more procedure to follow, and one more opportunity to ‘tweak’ your purchase to fully enjoy it. That seems to be important to audiophiles.
