intelesting... veddy intelesting...

[markw]

Do we get what we pay for, or what we deserve?

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2008/01/14/4772578-ap.html

A little primer for the marketing types for setting prices for their goods.

[GMichael]

Bet it works the same for audio.

[markw]

Bet it works the same for audio.Audiophiles are too sophisticated and their senses are too well honed to fall for this sort of chicanery.

[GMichael]

Audiophiles are too sophisticated and their senses are too well honed to fall for this sort of chicanery.

Yeah, I guess you're right. Not sure what I was thinking.

[johnny p]

I'm going to hang price tags from my speakers to make them sound better...... "Was $199, NOW $24,999.00!!!!!!"

[GMichael]

I'm going to hang price tags from my speakers to make them sound better...... "Was $199, NOW $24,999.00!!!!!!"

$200 sounds better to me.

[Rich-n-Texas]

How could I make these test results work in my favor as I shop for a new receiver?

[Woochifer]

Yup, lots of similar tests have been done using wine drinkers (I remember an article about this a couple of years ago in Psychology Today), and all of them identified severe biases that occurred when people knew in advance what they were drinking. Usually, the higher priced and/or better known wines would rate higher in a sighted test.

This isn't to say that differences between wines don't exist. I recall a party several years ago where people were asked to bring a bottle of Merlot, and then the hosts did a blind tasting to see if people could accurately pick out what they were drinking. A friend of mine (who is a big time wine buff) was able to correctly identify 10 out of the 10 wines in the sample (and apparently this wasn't the first time she'd scored this well in a blind taste test).

And under blind conditions, the highest priced wines don't always fare the best. Just last year, the "two-buck chuck" Chardonnay sold at Trader Joe's won the gold medal at the California State Fair.

And applied to audio, this is no different than when McIntosh and Dunlavy used to pretend to switch out the speaker cables at audio show demonstrations, and let people go on about these "night and day" differences that they were hearing, when in fact nothing had changed. Clearly a case where perception created reality.

[SlumpBuster]

Grappa exhibits the skin effect.

If you get that joke you know too much about wine and audio.

[pixelthis]

Audiophiles are too sophisticated and their senses are too well honed to fall for this sort of chicanery.


Great sarcasm.
Wait, you're not serious? You're talking about a race of people who pay thousands for speakerwires that dont sound as good as zipcord from dan's hardware shack.
WHO rapshodise about a 5 watt MONOBLOCK tube amp S.E.T that was obsolete
in 1934, with 5% distortion and a 5K pricetag.
Who futz around with a 5k turntable with half the dynamic range of a 29$ CD player
from Dan's stereo shack.
Who pay 500 bucks for a power conditioner and plug it into the most advanced
power distribution system on the planet.
And dont get me started on Powercords...
Is this the bunch you're talking about?:1:

[Rich-n-Texas]

I'm trying to figure out what bunch you're talking about! :idea:

[Feanor]

Great sarcasm.
Wait, you're not serious? You're talking about a race of people who pay thousands for speakerwires that dont sound as good as zipcord from dan's hardware shack.
WHO rapshodise about a 5 watt MONOBLOCK tube amp S.E.T that was obsolete
in 1934, with 5% distortion and a 5K pricetag.
Who futz around with a 5k turntable with half the dynamic range of a 29$ CD player
from Dan's stereo shack.
Who pay 500 bucks for a power conditioner and plug it into the most advanced
power distribution system on the planet.
And dont get me started on Powercords...
Is this the bunch you're talking about?:1:

... most of which I agree with. :cornut:

[Ajani]

Yup, lots of similar tests have been done using wine drinkers (I remember an article about this a couple of years ago in Psychology Today), and all of them identified severe biases that occurred when people knew in advance what they were drinking. Usually, the higher priced and/or better known wines would rate higher in a sighted test.

This isn't to say that differences between wines don't exist. I recall a party several years ago where people were asked to bring a bottle of Merlot, and then the hosts did a blind tasting to see if people could accurately pick out what they were drinking. A friend of mine (who is a big time wine buff) was able to correctly identify 10 out of the 10 wines in the sample (and apparently this wasn't the first time she'd scored this well in a blind taste test).

And under blind conditions, the highest priced wines don't always fare the best. Just last year, the "two-buck chuck" Chardonnay sold at Trader Joe's won the gold medal at the California State Fair.
And applied to audio, this is no different than when McIntosh and Dunlavy used to pretend to switch out the speaker cables at audio show demonstrations, and let people go on about these "night and day" differences that they were hearing, when in fact nothing had changed. Clearly a case where perception created reality.

I believe that wines taste different, more expensive wine tastes different from cheaper ones, etc.... but that doesn't mean that more expensive tastes 'better', maybe it just tastes different..... so in the case of wine connoisseurs (like your friend), their ability to differentiate between cheap and expensive wine really just proves that wines taste different, not that expensive wine necessarily tastes better.

An interesting experiment (though truly impractical) would be take a person with ambition to become a a wine connoisseur (but no experience in wine tasting) and teach them the difference in wines, with the expensive wines in cheap bottles and vice versa. So that they learn to associate the taste of cheap wine as being expensive. Then see what wine they prefer to drink.

Now to tie this back to audio.... I believe that audio equipment sounds different.... I don't think all CD players sound alike.... but I question whether more 'expensive' really sounds 'better' or whether in many cases it just sounds 'different'.

[E-Stat]

Bet it works the same for audio.
It does. Drinking wine out of a straw (that's how the test was administered) is just like measuring gear with test tones. Bears little resemblance to the real world.

rw

[E-Stat]

Who pay 500 bucks for a power conditioner and plug it into the most advanced power distribution system on the planet.
Those who understand the sources responsible for generating RFI found in modern homes.

rw

[Feanor]

...
This isn't to say that differences between wines don't exist. I recall a party several years ago where people were asked to bring a bottle of Merlot, and then the hosts did a blind tasting to see if people could accurately pick out what they were drinking. A friend of mine (who is a big time wine buff) was able to correctly identify 10 out of the 10 wines in the sample (and apparently this wasn't the first time she'd scored this well in a blind taste test).
....

I have heard stories from audiophile writers about individual who could distiguish between cables (or was it ampliers) with almost 100% accuracy in DBTs, while most participants, including audiophile commentators, scored the same as random guessing. The opinion of people like this might count for something. But short of running scientific DBTs on all audio commentators, who are we going to know who they are? And I'm not only talking about differences, not better or worse.

Somethings, even cables, do have measurable difference even if tiny. So I don't entirely discount that some people can hear the difference. But I have a real problem with claim that Brilliant Pepples, Intelligent Chips, the Teletweek, $500 wooden knobs, etc., actually work. Apparently intelligent, sincere people insist that they can pronounced changes using these products. They aren't lying, but self-delusion is the most likely mechanism.

By the way, I've had great results from my jade elephants: more air, transparency, more musical, organic, yada-yada -- and if you don't agree, you're close-minded, influenced by negative expectations, and/or you system or your ears are sadly deficient.
...

[blackraven]

I've also heard that Jade Elephants sitting on top of your amp really does improve the sound!:cornut:

[bobsticks]

I've never heard of the Jade Elephant but am more than enthusiastic to experience this audio epiphany.

I have found in my own room that drinking water from a dying glacier south of Madagascar helps open my eustacheon tubes, but only if it's in glass as plastic oxydizes the hydrogen molecules.

Also, this only helps if the system is cabled with cryogenically treated brass yak asshair.

[O'Shag]

I've never heard of the Jade Elephant but am more than enthusiastic to experience this audio epiphany.

I have found in my own room that drinking water from a dying glacier south of Madagascar helps open my eustacheon tubes, but only if it's in glass as plastic oxydizes the hydrogen molecules.

Also, this only helps if the system is cabled with cryogenically treated brass yak asshair.

HAAAA Ha HEEE Ho Ho Ho Ha! Sorry mate.. you just had me rolling on the floor with the cryongenically treated brass yak asshair. But then Ive already drunk a few glasses of Trader Joe's Charles Shaw $2 a bottle Merlot Plonk, and I kid you not, it tastes bloody good! Mind you its not as good as Chataeu Neufe Du Pape.

By the way, I've heard turntables beat the pants off CD players, but only with a really good phonostage. I've also heard CD players sound better than other CD players. Take one Denon 3910 universal player; good, right? Then take a Musical Fidelity Trivista DAC 21 and use the 3910 feeding the Trivista then feeding the preamp. Transformation!!

Great comment Bobsticks ha ha ha ha!!

[bobsticks]

You're not the first person I've heard pass on compliments to the Trader Joe fare. Mebbe I'll have to take a looksie.

The aftermarket mods on the 3910, performed by the likes of Underwood Hi-Fi or Wainwright, will supposedly take them to such exalted heights. Never heard 'em but they're all the rage over on the Gon.

Oh, and BTW, yak=comedy gold...


Cheers to ya

[O'Shag]

Highly recommended mate.

Slainte (gaelic for cheers)

[pixelthis]

I'm trying to figure out what bunch you're talking about! :idea:

AS USUAL.
We're talking about the "great war", think the schizm between protestant and catholic
was something?
YOU AINT SEEN NOTHING YET.
In one corner we have logical, sensible sound and audio lovers, usually they have some training, their goal is to produce the clearest, highest quality sound.

And we have in the other corner the "audiophile" , self proclaimed.
Just like photography caused a neurotic breakdown in the artworld, so the CD player caused a similar breakdown in the audio world.
Distressed that a 30 dollar CD player sounded better than their megabuck turntables
they proudly proclaimed that their turntables sounded better anyway, pretty much like the Catholic church proclaimed that the world was flat no matter what that upstart Gallieo
said.
And then it got worse, people think tubes were always with us, but they resurged
in the eighties, some marketers figured that if "audiophiles" loved turntables they'd
LOVE tube gear!
So a bunch of SET (single end triode) tube gear hit the market.
The specs were worse than solid state, the prices astronomical, the sound, at up to 5% thd, atrocious, and of course audiophiles LOVED them, loved that "tube" sound.
So today some consider the "audiophile" a nut who sits around and listens to gear that is technologically inferiour to what was in a Sears catalog in 1935.
Wasnt that way in the seventies, then audio was solid state, turntables were it because they WERE the only way to listen to music, and real innovation was stuff like
FET transistors, not the latest bargain on some tubes from russia.
And building your own gear was more noble than paying the national debt of BRAZIL
to get the latest gizmo.
So we are today in a dark age, stereo mags are festooned with pictures of crap that was obsolete when tailfins were on cars.
But we who were once the renasaince , who led the public away from "soundesign "
rack systems and magnovox oak wood "consoles", we wait.
We sit in the darkness, with our USB DACS, SOLID STATE , and 200 wpc discrete amps,
we dont spend our money on four grand cables , we're too busy spending it on stuff that actually matters.
And we sit, and we wait, with our lossless codecs, our SACD, OUR COMPUTER
HARD drives full of lossless music, we wait for the tubes to burn out,
for those who care more about audio than trying to be "different".
We wait for the inquistion to be over:1:

[audio amateur]

An interesting experiment (though truly impractical) would be take a person with ambition to become a a wine connoisseur (but no experience in wine tasting) and teach them the difference in wines, with the expensive wines in cheap bottles and vice versa. So that they learn to associate the taste of cheap wine as being expensive. Then see what wine they prefer to drink.



Mate that's not how it works wine is either good or bad, and 80% of the time more expensive wines will taste better, and 'should' taste better to you. Wine 'connoisseurs', or simply people who do drink wine regularly (such people don't seem to be hugely frequent in the US), will tend to agree on different wines.
Don't take this as an offense, you just can't force bad wine on someone, it will never taste good even though you associate a high price tag with it.

[kexodusc]

I've never heard of the Jade Elephant but am more than enthusiastic to experience this audio epiphany.

I have found in my own room that drinking water from a dying glacier south of Madagascar helps open my eustacheon tubes, but only if it's in glass as plastic oxydizes the hydrogen molecules.

Also, this only helps if the system is cabled with cryogenically treated brass yak asshair.

You guys can spend big bucks on esoteric gizmos to pimp your systems all you want.
I've reduced the equation for marginal audio quality improvement down to a single a scientific expression:
The sounditude is directly proportional to the beerocity.

Dunno about you guys but by the time I grab the second six pack things sound so damn euphoric I can't imagine them getting any better...the best damn $10 I ever spent on my system!

[Rich-n-Texas]

AS USUAL.
We're talking about the "great war", think the schizm between protestant and catholic
was something?
YOU AINT SEEN NOTHING YET.
In one corner we have logical, sensible sound and audio lovers, usually they have some training, their goal is to produce the clearest, highest quality sound.

And we have in the other corner the "audiophile" , self proclaimed.
Just like photography caused a neurotic breakdown in the artworld, so the CD player caused a similar breakdown in the audio world.
Distressed that a 30 dollar CD player sounded better than their megabuck turntables
they proudly proclaimed that their turntables sounded better anyway, pretty much like the Catholic church proclaimed that the world was flat no matter what that upstart Gallieo
said.
And then it got worse, people think tubes were always with us, but they resurged
in the eighties, some marketers figured that if "audiophiles" loved turntables they'd
LOVE tube gear!
So a bunch of SET (single end triode) tube gear hit the market.
The specs were worse than solid state, the prices astronomical, the sound, at up to 5% thd, atrocious, and of course audiophiles LOVED them, loved that "tube" sound.
So today some consider the "audiophile" a nut who sits around and listens to gear that is technologically inferiour to what was in a Sears catalog in 1935.
Wasnt that way in the seventies, then audio was solid state, turntables were it because they WERE the only way to listen to music, and real innovation was stuff like
FET transistors, not the latest bargain on some tubes from russia.
And building your own gear was more noble than paying the national debt of BRAZIL
to get the latest gizmo.
So we are today in a dark age, stereo mags are festooned with pictures of crap that was obsolete when tailfins were on cars.
But we who were once the renasaince , who led the public away from "soundesign "
rack systems and magnovox oak wood "consoles", we wait.
We sit in the darkness, with our USB DACS, SOLID STATE , and 200 wpc discrete amps,
we dont spend our money on four grand cables , we're too busy spending it on stuff that actually matters.
And we sit, and we wait, with our lossless codecs, our SACD, OUR COMPUTER
HARD drives full of lossless music, we wait for the tubes to burn out,
for those who care more about audio than trying to be "different".
We wait for the inquistion to be over:1:
I'd SWEAR you're a computer program. You're personality is just all over the chart. I get what you're saying though (don't necessarily agree, but I get it).

[Rich-n-Texas]

You guys can spend big bucks on esoteric gizmos to pimp your systems all you want.
I've reduced the equation for marginal audio quality improvement down to a single a scientific expression:
The sounditude is directly proportional to the beerocity.

Dunno about you guys but by the time I grab the second six pack things sound so damn euphoric I can't imagine them getting any better...the best damn $10 I ever spent on my system!
Ya know, I thought I was the only one. Maybe I AM normal.

[E-Stat]

Wasnt that way in the seventies, then audio was solid state...
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you are unfamiliar with Audio Research and Conrad-Johnson. Or that the SS replacements to earlier tube gear from a wide range of companies including Marantz, McIntosh, Dynaco, et.al. were inferior sounding.

For that, I sentence you to life without parole listening to the "lowest distortion" component of the decade, the Crown IC-150 preamp aka The ICK preamp. :)

rw

[GMichael]

You guys can spend big bucks on esoteric gizmos to pimp your systems all you want.
I've reduced the equation for marginal audio quality improvement down to a single a scientific expression:
The sounditude is directly proportional to the beerocity.

Dunno about you guys but by the time I grab the second six pack things sound so damn euphoric I can't imagine them getting any better...the best damn $10 I ever spent on my system!

Is that why my receiver sounds so good to me?:idea:

Beer run! Oh, that's off topic. Wine run!

[nightflier]

Well, coming from someone who's had the pleasure of slipping the 2 buck chuck in more than one blind testing, I can tell you it doesn't even fool wine newbies. It's actually fun to do, because they all know me as having a large wine collection, so they don't want to insult me by saying that what I brought sucks. You get such compliments as "hmmm not as nice as the last one, but it's drinkable" while they try to hide a decidedly puckered and puzzled look on their faces. But it's unmistakable that it doesn't compare to even a good wine in the $5 per bottle range. I should also add that because of the way that the wine is purchased, stored, and handled through Trader Joe's, it's unlikely you'll find even a decent bottle there - TJ's is a wine liquidator and treats the bottles the same way as the dried fruit.

Speaking of the white wine from Charles Shaw, yes it is a bit better, but it is very one-dimensional with no clear nose, a noticeable beginning, a sweet but uncomplicated middle and no finish to speak of. If you can spare a couple of extra dollars, there are a lot more interesting whites out there - and you should probably try a better store like BevMo.

Now does this apply to audio? Some gear makes a noticeable difference, but the most notorious and volatile area of confusion is with cables. Most people who don't hear anything different with a fancy cable compared to an average priced one, are told that their gear just isn't up to snuff. I don't buy that, and I also have heard very little difference between cables. I have heard differences in the quality of connectors and common-sense physical factors (a thin cable will usually sound thinner), but there seems to be no correlation to price.

One company I've gone a few rounds with is Audioquest. Frankly I can hear very slight differences between their most expensive stuff and their cheapest, but nothing between the middle ranges. Now maybe I have bad ears, or maybe my gear isn't up to snuff. Well, if so, then why should I invest in a fancy cable that I can't hear a difference in?

Here's some other thoughts:

- Why is it that when the magazines evaluate cables there are typically no measurements?

- Why does a vendor like Audioquest have so many different cable models?

- Does a $1500 cable sound better or just different than a $2000 one?

- Would anyone who spends $1500 on a cable ever say on this board or anywhere else that they can't hear a difference?

- At the higher price points, who has an equally expensive cable to compare it too?

I suppose the same can be said for any other type of gear, but with cables it's especially relevant, I think. A more expensive wine typically has more depth, complexity, and a longer enjoyment on the palate, I just don't think that a cable has the same cost/enjoyment ratio. Remember that most wines range in price from $2-200, but most cables range from $2-$2000. Can anyone really say that there is a 10-fold increase in enjoyment?

[pixelthis]

I'd SWEAR you're a computer program. You're personality is just all over the chart. I get what you're saying though (don't necessarily agree, but I get it).

Nice change of pace.
Being a true audiophile who actually cares about the sound instead of stoking his ego is hard these days.
But Kex is right about the beer index, and I find that a blond in the sack with me helps
the sound quality greatly.
As for a "computer" program, we all are computer programs, our hardwares just organic is all:1:

[emaidel]

Interesting thread. I think the human mind, when informed as to a given parameter, will anticipate that very thing whenever an "A/B" testing is done. As many of us equate "expensive" with "better," it's not that unusual to believe that a wine (or an audio component) which we're told is more "expensive" than the other, will indeed taste, or sound, "better" than the first.

A better result when comparing two wines with each other, or two different pieces of audio equipment, would be to inform the taster, or listener, that the price points of the respective items are the same: then, there wouldn't be any preconceived notions that "more expensive" is "better."

I can attest to the fact that an aged cabernet will usually taste better than one recently bottled, and that quite often, a very costly old French wine will taste better than a recent vintage California wine, but I'll also admit that such isn't always the case: about 12 years ago, The Wine Spectator rated an $11 bottle of cabernet from The Hess Collection as "the wine of the year." Naturally, I ran out and bought all the remaining inventory of my local wine shop (which was only 6 bottles at the time!). The wine was absolutely phenomenal, especially for $11, but nothing coompared to a $150 bottle of a 1984 Caymus. Was that because the Caymus cost more than 10 times as much? No, it was just because the Caymus was a better tasting wine, but not necessarily the better value.