The Audio Hobby

The audio hobby means different things to different audiophiles, and isn't that wonderful?

Not always, perhaps.   It can be made awful in many ways.  People can fall victims to unfounded beliefs that cause them to waste time and/or money.  It can lead to the virtual inability to listen to music anymore, in extreme forms of audiophilia nervosa.

It can lead to endless bullying.  I think generally the best attitude is non-judgemental: live and let live.  However all the same I believe audio is filled with frauds of many kinds, both on the big and small levels.  You probably already know I side mostly with the audio objectivists as to what kinds of audio beliefs are founded and which are not.  All the same, I don't take it as my mission to change anyone's mind.  I suppose, in some cases, even I could be wrong too.

Anyway, nowadays I think generally it's a waste of time to compare good amplifiers, DACs, cables, power conditioners, or anything of that ilk.

All have been tested endlessly by audio objectivists getting only null results.  With my lack of patience, I'm unlikely to do better, if I follow all the proper procedures.  If I don't, then the result may be meaningless anyway.

My normal result with good amplifiers is this:  I start the auditory level matching process by matching the apparent loudness with both amplifiers to make it identical in fast A/B testing.  Once I have matched the level, I attempt to match the quality of the sound.  If one seems to have more bass, or highs, I assume that's because it's actually louder.  In this second phase I make only the smallest adjustments, 0.25dB at at time (I'm fortunate to have a first generation Emotiva Stealth DC-1 with 0.25dB adjustment.  That means, on average, the best case is within 0.125 dB of being exactly correct, which is close enough to pass the 0.1dB minimum in my experience.)  Ultimately, on every amplifier I've tested, I can make them sound identical simply by matching the level that closely.

Now I did not do such procedures when I thought for several years my then go-to amplifier, the Aragon 8008 BB, was sounding a bit harsh.  Back in those days, I found myself avoiding listening to the FM for very long.  It drove me insane.

I later found the distortion had risen to 0.7% because of low bias.  After bias adjustment, I got it back to 0.07% and sounding fine.

But I know that from years of experience and not A/B tests.  And measurements which make that experience believable.

And that's another thing.  One should often believe measurements, when they are meaningful and honest.  Not necessarily specifications.

Anyway, distortion can be a factor down to 0.1%, so products having higher than 0.1% should generally be avoided.  (In electronics, anyway, where it's easy to do better.  There's hardly any speakers that can do as good as that.)

In audiophile land, there are often electronic products with higher than 0.1% distortion.  And sometimes they sound better.  I think what's happening is that in some cases products with predominantly 2nd order distortion may fix recordings that were made with high amounts of 3rd order distortion.

Furthermore, boosting the amount of 2nd order distortion, which tends to occur with zero feedback designs (feedback works best at suppressing 2nd order distortion) can add additional "spaciousness" and air to recordings lacking those things because of poor production.

Things like this may work on some recordings and not others.  It may work best on recordings that are fairly simple, like a few instrumentalists.  Not on works of great complexity, like a full symphony orchestra.

Euphonic adjustments are like that.  Generally it's best to stick with low distortion, wide response, low noise, because that's the combination that works overall best on everything.  Basically what the objectivists say.

Other claimed magic requirements in design, however, are sold on the basis of faulty comparisons, typically failure to match levels very well.

Anyway, if feedback free amplifiers, and electrically charged cables, or whatever makes sense to you, go for it.

The best is when we're not bullying people over such things, one way or the other.

Even being forced to make a decision is a kind of bullying.

We are generally not designed to discriminate among audio reproduction systems.

We don't have a 'memory' that works very well for making such comparisons.  We don't store 'experience A' in anything like the raw form that would make for a good comparison with 'experience B.'

To be reliable at all requires, as the objectivists always say, instantaneous A/B switching.  Other than that, perhaps exhaustive training.

Furthermore, always being assigned to make the equipment comparison detracts from the process of having the most enjoyable and enlightening experience from the music, appreciating the music itself rather than arcana of possible sonic differences caused by different audio equipment.

Fine, the uber subjectivists say, just see which piece of gear gives you that most transcendent audio experience.

That's basically impossible, because each time you listen to the same piece of music you get a very different experience.  Symphony orchestras often like to prove this by playing a Premier (first ever) performance of some work twice, sometimes even without warning.  Few guess it was an identical repeat.  The identical music doesn't provoke an identical response.  And for a very important reason.

The you listening to any work the second time is now older and wiser, having already heard the music before.  The brain has already stored memories and made new connections.   Usually that opens up entirely new realms of experiences.  While closing down others.

(Curiously a work with more 'movements' can be heard more times without seeming repetitious.)

As many have often opined, that is what audio should be mostly about, the music, and quite often isn't.

(However in line with non-judgmentalism, I prefer to say that any mode of enjoying an obsession with audio reproduction is fine.  If your thing is building amplifiers that test conventional theories -- fine.  If your thing is arguing about whether such things can or do make any difference -- fine.  As long as I'm not to much detained by your obsessions.)

But along those line, I fear the excessive denigration of standard audio engineering practices, as often occurs in the writing of audio subjectivists (including the one I always loved to read anyway, Harry Pearson) tends to promote rather than discourage audiophilia nervosa and therefore lack of being able to enjoy music.

But some people swim in one thing or the other, so whatever works for you.  Doing 'comparisons' is also a way of just hearing things twice, which may itself be beneficial.

I have dubbed such demonstrations magic shows, and typically enjoy them even when (that is, all the time) my core beliefs are unshaken.  

I myself only drifted into near audio objectivism in my late 20's, after doing carefully constructed experiments I felt would 'confirm' my beliefs in tweakdom.  That's the path of many noted audio objectivists.  First they were fully taken in, then they decided to do some tests.

After the recording, DAC, and amplifier problems are 'solved,' is there anything left?  Two things, the loudspeaker/room (or headphone) interface, and the selection of the music itself.  Neither is a problem that will ever be 'solved.'