Interconnects and non-believers

prof

How do you think we could determine hype from substance, and just as important, self-delusion from reality?

The best approach is to use the same techniques that have proven effective in the rest of your life. After all, deceit and propaganda are everywhere.

First, ditch the fear. It's a negative emotion that can cloud your judgment. Second - and this is important - understand the subtle distinction between illusion and delusion. If you can avoid being fooled by illusion, then you are not much at risk for delusion.

Avoid snap judgments and evaluate "expert" advice carefully. Do at least some of your own research. That means not simply reading the opinions of others, but diving deep enough to conduct your own analysis. In audio, that means you are going to have to do some of your own, first-hand testing.

The truth tends to be revealed over time.  Those who seek instant answers are the ones most easily fooled.

prof,

Your questions are very difficult, if not impossible to answer definitively.
But I still stand by everything I said.

cleeds,

Thanks for your answer.

Here are some thoughts that come to mind when I read it.

The best approach is to use the same techniques that have proven effective in the rest of your life. After all, deceit and propaganda are everywhere.

That would be reasonable advice only insofar as someone has been using ’proven effective’ techniques to begin with. Obviously a great many people fall for deceit, propaganda, scams and a huge number of other errors. You don’t want to say "keep using the same technique" to them. So it seems we would need to refine this advice to discern "effective" (or reliable, more reasonable) techniques of inquiry vs ineffective/unreliable.

First, ditch the fear. It’s a negative emotion that can cloud your judgment.

I admit I don’t get this reference to "fear." If we were talking about the hobby of cliff climbing, well then yeah. But I can’t remember the last time I felt "fear" related to my high end audio hobby (except perhaps fearing dropping my speakers when transporting them). Would you like to elaborate on what role you think "fear" plays in high end audio?

understand the subtle distinction between illusion and delusion. If you can avoid being fooled by illusion, then you are not much at risk for delusion.

Generally speaking, an illusion is a mistaken prima facie inference from a misleading sense stimulus.

A delusion is a mistaken belief held despite what should be motivating evidence to the contrary.

Being aware of one does not protect against the other. You can be deluded and experience illusions. You can understand some things to be illusions, but be deluded simply by an error-strewn thought process that leads you to a conclusion you will not give up. On the other hand, one can fall for any number of illusions, but so long as one is open to error-correction, this will not amount to delusions based on those illusions.

But I take what I infer to be an implied point: that being fooled by an illusion is not the same as being deluded. I would certainly endorse that! It’s one of the mistaken assumptions I have to keep battling. Suggesting someone may be falling for a perceptual mistake doesn’t suggest they are "deluded" or "deluding themselves." They just don’t mean the same thing. However, IF someone persists in a belief derived from a perceptual mistake, and that belief is incorrigible in the face of any counter evidence, then it can cross into a form of self-delusion.

Which, again, suggests the relevance of having an error-correction technique.

Avoid snap judgments and evaluate "expert" advice carefully. Do at least some of your own research. That means not simply reading the opinions of others, but diving deep enough to conduct your own analysis. In audio, that means you are going to have to do some of your own, first-hand testing.

Agreed. That all makes sense. Though, as before, it also needs the context of what constitutes "good research," "reliable testing methods" etc. After all, Flat Earthers would endorse every word of what you just wrote as well, as they question expert views, think about it themselves, do their own tests etc. The problem is, they are operating on various faulty assumptions, and poor methodology.

Hopefully we would want to avoid that in the realm of high end audio.
But it often seems like this is not the case.

Thanks again for your thoughtful reply!

Hey Prof, d'you remember me? Prolly not, but that is OK. I am the guy with the DeVore O/93's. Along with a lot of others, I admire your ability to write about and describe the unique attributes of various loudspeakers. You are superior in doing that than most professional reviewers. It struck me a discordant when I first saw you post, in another thread, your conviction that wire is wire and your absolute belief that anything other than basic cabling is a waste of hard-earned money. My subjective experience over many years and many systems is that it all depends. With some electronics (which for some reason tend to be solid state) and speakers, the cabling makes only subtle differences. With others, often but not always tubed, the cabling makes a very large difference in sound character. I am being careful not to claim that some cabling is superior in certain systems, only that they make a greater change. I happen to believe that often these [greater] changes are qualitative but I would never insist that someone else either would have to agree or be wrong. Assuming separate components, the IC's between preamp and amp and from amp to loudspeakers tend to be most critical, but again, there are no "always". I do find it surprising that with all the loudspeakers you have auditioned, that you have not noted the importance of cabling but then again, it does not seem that you have experimented with cabling nearly as much as you have mixed up loudspeakers. Last thing; I feel zero compulsion to convince anyone that dismisses cabling of their mistake. I got where I wanted to go. At the end of the day, everything is different for everyone-listening room, electricity, gear, goals, tastes, everything. It is amazing that there is any common ground at all and mostly the common ground is the music and the piece of kit being discussed. After that, it is random. A free-for-all like the food fight in Animal House. 

fsconicsmith, of course I remember you. I really appreciated your contributions regarding the 0/93s! And thanks for the kind words.

On cables: I have tried to make it clear that my own view is far from settled, and that I’m not claiming there aren’t ever differences in sounds among cables.   I'm in no position to know such a thing, let alone believe it.

Rather, I think I still have good reasons for not placing a strong emphasis on high end cables in my system - that is spending a lot of money on cabling. Which is a different thing.

Cheers.