Do you believe in everything that you hear?

There are some pretty incredible claims in our hobby...from the harmonizers ,to the effect of clocks, to the Synergistic bowls and geegaws. Many of us listen to the latest 'mod' and hear what we want to hear, and many of us struggle to understand and elucidate what we hear when we truly hear something different ( note, i didn't say better).
Question is, how many of you believe that there is a scientific reason for everything that we hear as a beneficial ( or maybe non-beneficial) quality. How many of us feel that there is just some "unknown" reason for the improvement ( or maybe detriment) which just doesn't fall into the current scientific explanation...and maybe never will.

 

If it exists....there is a scientific explanation.

 

I don't believe in 80% of the stuff that's 'pitched' on this forum. But the other 20% has been very beneficial.

 

Snake oil is pretty easy to spot, actually always has been. Sadly many still feel good about buying it. Their loss.

 

Hellbound thread if I ever saw one.

D.D.

 

I believe there's a fair amount of good-sounding gear out there; but am starting to strongly suspect that claims of 'magic' for a lot of it are flights of fancy. I will readily admit I've been susceptible to the poetry of reviews in Stereophile ...

The best kit is just stuff that most accurately reproduces the recording in your living space. I'm trying to deprogram myself out of audiophilia, back to a place where I regard my system as a music appliance.

 

Stereophile reads like a comic book, it's the biggest scam pushing products for ad revenue out there. Trash.

 

Don't think I'd go that far ...

I think they're generally sincere; or at least no "worse" than the others. My only issue is, the implicit notion in all the hifi mags that one must spend five or six figures to really get sublime replay of music. But I enjoy the prose (particularly Art Dudley).

In my darkest moments, I tend towards Peter Aczel-ism (the Audio Critic) ... "Get off my lawn" ...

 

I forced myself to read it for many, many years, as I felt I had to..... along with several other well known audio mags seeing I enjoyed music so much, sadly it seemed to be the right thing to do.

It took decades to realize it was all hogwash and a waste of time.

I do not come to my conclusions lightly.

 

The Audio Critic presents a welcome "alternative" p.o.v. ... his Ten Biggest Lies In Audio article is a classic and thought-provoking, even if you don't agree with all of it.

 

Let's face it, Stereophile and Absolute Sound have turned into magazines for the top 1% and throw in a bone for the rest of us. And Fremer is off the deep end.

 

Hey, there's always Class "D." I was always happy if I manage to snag something in that category!

 

Its like spices. Some like it hot, some like it peppy, others like it mild. Thats how we tend to buy our gear and 'hear' what we hear. We don't really 'know' why we like one level of heat over another, we just know we do - and thats where we go.

 

Folks having their own "flavor" of audio is one thing. A mag pushing their printed pages type as absolute facts is another.

 

You'd think by now that good stereos would not need any adjunct modifications to sound their best.

 

Not only do I believe everything I hear, but also everything I read on the Internet. Why would anyone say or write something untrue?

For the humor impared, that be sarcasm.

 

I hear they went to the Moon, but I don't believe it. Seriously guys I tend to let the two things placed on either side of my head be the judge. I think that it's so easy to get lost in the world of the listening enjoyment experience. We are all different and all hear different things, certainly mags/reviews can point us in the right direction but I tend to give them a wide birth

Nige

 

Only on this forum.

 

I know that most of the voices in my head are unreliable narrators, fabulists and con artists. I always listen to those voices with a grain of salt and a dash of tabasco.

 

Is the question do you believe everything you read or everything you hear?

All the talk about Stereophile upthread makes me think of the former. I certainly don't believe everything I read and any intelligent person doesn't. This not only applies to the audio press but the news and almost all non-fiction writing. The author has his or her own biases and those always need to be taken into account. If you believe everything you read, for your own safety, please get off of the Internet!

Going back to the OP's post, I also don't believe everything I hear. I have deluded myself so many times with my hi-fi, the instances are impossible to count, starting with a Soundcraftsman preamp I purchased in 1977 which had an equalizer built into it. I thought it sounded good for a month or two until I put a broken Audionics preamp in my system for the night and it smoked the Soundcraftsman. After that I tried a GAS Thoebe and it again sounded a lot more real. I've never believed my ears since then, at least on a short term basis. While I don't need a scientific reason for believing something makes my stereo sound better, I do need a portion of the scientific method. I reauire the experiment to be repeatable and verifiable, with any sonic improvement to last over time and in various systems.

My mind controls my hearing. To quote Mike Gordon from Phish, "my mind's got a mind of its own." While I might trust my ears, I never trust my mind. It will make me hear things that are ephemeral. I'll reach conclusions that don't last. It's only when I hear things many times under different circumstances that I believe what I hear.

 

I only know that after few glasses of good wine the music sounds wonderful, regardless of equipment. Only can guess about the effect of other substances...

 

That sounds about right to me. Hard part is sifting out that 20%.

 

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I believe my ears more than anything else. What is hawked as an improvement, must make an audible improvement for me. The problem is that we can't measure for everything as any given design is a consolidation of design choices to reach a result that may or may not be what every potential customer is looking for. Look at all the speakers over $5K, many different designs, they all sound different and many people own each of the models and love them. Amplifiers over $20K sound different. No one can say someone is wrong for liking what the do. Audio is more like ice cream, an abundance of flavors for us to enjoy. There are a number of DACS on the market, some expensive, some not, yet many like the ones that don't measure the best. We can't even agree on the simplest thing in audio, cabling and we don't seem to be able to measure those differences people seem to prefer. Plus, each of us has different levels of hearing resolution. Most of you will hear things that I no longer can. And, based on that, our needs will be different. Nothing will sound bright to me, I doubt.

 

That's the job for a true glutton for punishment.

 

Point of time in history.


Heliocentrism, or heliocentricism,[1] is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the Solar System. The word comes from the Greek (ἥλιος helios "sun" and κέντρον kentron "center"). Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at the center. The notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun had been proposed as early as the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samos,[2] but at least in the post-ancient world Aristarchus's heliocentrism attracted little attention—possibly because of the loss of scientific works of the Hellenistic Era.[3]
It was not until the 16th century that a geometric mathematical model of a heliocentric system was presented, by the Renaissance mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic cleric Nicolaus Copernicus, leading to the Copernican Revolution. In the following century, Johannes Kepler elaborated upon and expanded this model to include elliptical orbits, and Galileo Galilei presented supporting observations made using a telescope.
With the observations of William Herschel, Friedrich Bessel, and others, astronomers realized that the sun was not the center of the universe as heliocentrists at the time of Copernicus had supposed. Modern thinking is that there is no specific location that is the center of the universe, per Albert Einstein's principle of relativity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentrism