Food for thought for all us audiophiles

The fact is (and that's a fact of life): there will be people (audiophiles?) who are purchasing audio components whatever the asking price. If I would make a (good sounding, though not better than the $2,000 version)$100,000 preamplifier, I'm convinced that there is someone who will buy this preamp. The same holds true for a $20,000 interconnect cable and so on... There are people who are so wealthy, they don't even know how to spend their money.

Chris

I disagree with his graph showing how hearing degrades with age. And that he states that if you trust a reviewer who is older than you, you are a fool.

Everyone is different, some have great hearing that lasts a long time, others probably stick closer to that graph. But, the author is making a ganeral statement that if someone is older than you, they have worse hearing than you.

Not mentioned in the article is something that surfaced in FI magazine (no longer published), that the hearing of different cultures is significantly different and it can be measured. The article explored how americans and the british hearing was differenct. In summary, it indicated there is something called a 'cultural equalizer'. Lay all that on the 'class' factor and you really have cognitive dissonance.

Well I will leave the psychology to the professionals and those with psychology degrees like my mother. Speaking of mothers, we mom and I attended RMAF on saturday. If any one can hear the difference in systems she can at 60 years of age she still has execelent hearing. She agreed this years show was much better than last, other than alot of the rooms being to loud.

This article reminds me of a scene in a movie where Robin Williams is an english teacher at a private school. The students are in the courtyard and he has them walk one at a time. He pays particular attention to how each persons stride is different. He then has them walk together they start out all walking to their own beat and it doesn't take very long for everyone to start walking in the same cadence. I for the life of me can't remember the name of the movie.

The article reminds me a pavlovs dogs (oops I said I wouldn't do that) are we all cut from the same mold, do we all conform to what others in society think we should be. Do we even conform to our social class structure.

This forum brings out the best (About Lugnut) and worst in us (The great cable debate). As a comunity do we shun others for having a less expensive system than our own. I don't think in the past 4 years I have ever read a comment bashing someone for not being able to afford the outlandish.

As for listening I noticed monster cable was chosen as the competitor. Does monster make a bad cable no they make a perfectly acceptable cable. Is it over priced IMHO yes.

I guess what I am trying to get at is, at my point in life I like to think that I now have just enough wisdom to develope my own opinions and not follow the crowd.

Happy listening

Michael

An interesting article. I suspect that much of the differences many of us hear can be explained by this. I personally have caught myself "hearing" differences based on my expectations and desires rather than what I actually hear. And I call myself an especially objective, analytical person. But there is one major problem with this article. In fact the problem is pretty the same as the problem the writer is lambasting. The article contains no information on testing "audiophiles" to determine if they actually can hear a difference. In other words, the writer made up his mind then dragged together a bunch of semi-related information to support his position, rather than running double blind tests himself. A bit hypocritical if you ask me.