Saw a “gold plated” and “Dual shielded” optical cable in store the other day.
Kinda on the same topic…
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Thanks for sharing this, @Ohmboy. I think Currawong did a good job pointing out that the issues he sees within audiophilia are issues that are prevalent in most human endeavors. Just about all hobbies/institutions have their crusaders, aggressive self-promoters, single-issue cliques, toxic personalities, etc.
I’m of two minds in how Currawong handled the naming/not-naming of those who do the things he complains about, though. He does mention MQA/Bob Stuart by name (and he name drops someone toward the end too, although I don’t remember who it is offhand), but especially in regard to the all-measurement and misleading measurements brigades, I was very distracted by the question “who’s he talking about? ASR? Crinnacle? Someone I don’t know?” I get that he doesn’t want to point fingers and create the possibility of singling out a person or particular group and potentially creating a problem by so doing. However, saying that measurements have been reported dishonestly or that measurement tests have been rigged to portray certain companies in either an unfavorably good or bad light, is a pretty serious allegation. That kind of allegation feels like a definite “citation needed” kind of thing. Who did that? How did they do it? Where is the evidence they did it? I wonder if it’s not potentially more destructive to be so vague about the subjects/targets of his grievances.
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Do the words “Insufficient funds” qualify?
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I think it was nwavguy that he mentioned in regards to the ODAC.
But yeah I’m not sure against whom or what the misleading measurement comments were about. I’m guessing it was about the whole compression shenanigans going on, I think there was a thread about it here on the forums. About manufacturers making them look more favourable than they are. I can’t think of a reason he’d go about any of the reviewers. Either way I don’t know nearly enough to comment with any certainty.
do i even have to mention PRAT
Isn’t that just an insult lol
Edit: ok it’s also an audio term it seems lol, but I think of the insult first
Pace
Rhythm
And
Timing
The video was made a few years before he posted it. Roughly around the MQA was starting to get big.
Looking back, I feel like he was probably referring to a group of semi professional reviewers on the various sites like Headfi, super audio best friends, etc
There’s probably a dig at audio science review in there as well.
its kinda interesting that he admits that cables in a weird way make a difference
I think with a lot of things in this hobby there is some basis in truth but sometimes is taken too far. I dont think anyone will disagree low quality, broken, interference prone cables exist for both digital and analog.
I personally feel past a solid mogami, blue jeans etc etc cable then it should be more about tweaking sound than anything else. I feel the real expensive hifi shines best when it chases a specific sound or coloration.
Remember many people think Hendrix’s guitar sound was because he had shitty cables that rolled off highs
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I’d agree with this and most people who are into the cable part of this hobby, and aren’t like off the wall about it, admit that the cables really only make a difference once your set up reaches a certain price/level of clarity or revealing…ness (?) (I dont get a lot of audiophile terms lol) and even then it could be said to be really for like… high level tweaking of sound.
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Here is what I consider to be the problem. Sound is a technical thing, it’s not something you can see - therefore when using non-technical terms, you must explain them, otherwise you are doing nothing. We all hear differently, so if something is “bright” for you, it may be pleasant for another person.
This brings me onto my next point. For Christ’s sake, use reference tracks. This is the biggest problem with reviewers, the absence of reference tracks. Reviewers nowadays are poets. They talk about sound like romantically describing a woman… they aren’t even trying to explain what the actual f they are saying. Using terms like “fast” and “slow” are particularly annoying. Where is it that you hear something is fast or slow? Explain it, give minute marks to your reference track, this way people know what you are talking about.
Something physical that you can touch and feel, we all perceive it the same. Well… mostly.
When you say red, you know how red looks like. Red is red for everybody, whether your red is different than somebody else’s red, that you cannot know - but you both reference to it as red.
With sound it’s not the same. You cannot start using descriptive words to explain something so technical and varying from person to person. You simply cannot. When saying something like “fast/slow”, sound doesn’t run, it’s about explaining yourself in detail when using such complex terms.
The audiophile media and reviewers have never been in a worse place - almost all of them making crap content and nobody is complaining. That is the primary problem. People have become okay with this poetry era of being an audiophile critic. Saying “the bass goes incredibly deep” is just absurd. Incredibly deep - let’s take a simple example to explain how wrong this is. You have a 2 meter (6.5 foot) deep pool. It will be deep for a kid, but for a tall man it won’t. Same with sound, what is very pleasant bass to you, could very well be too much bass for another. So your job is to take the time to go into a great amount of detail explaining to the reader why it was pleasant, describing the quantity, definition, and “weight” of the bass.
But, oh well… You can’t do much, can you?
I always include reference tracks in my reviews, and do my best to explain the terminology that I use. Never have I made absurd comparisons or using the crazy romantic metaphors. I personally hate it, and cannot see how that style of writing will help anybody to actually judge if they should buy the product or not. It’s cheap marketing and you are selling the product with words, you are not helping the reader/consumer understand how the product performs.
@PABastien you cannot get a lot of audiophile terms when all of them aren’t being used correctly. Transparent, natural, neutral, mid-bass bleed, fast/slow, reference, bright/dark… too many of them, yet there is little to no explanation of them.
It would actually be equivalent to poetry - describing something you see, but the reader doesn’t see it, they use their own imagination to picture what you have written. Now… umm… we are talking about sound and understanding the sound performance of a product - I doubt anybody would actually like to use their imagination to picture wtf the writer is saying. It’s the wrong approach if your aim is to help somebody understand the sound performance, you cannot use your imagination for sound. It’s not right.
It’s okay if you are doing it consciously, and your aim is to sell the product… then that’s a marketing approach, it’s suitable.
Had to get this off my chest. This is the biggest problem in this hobby (IMO). Even the cable believers and burn-in believers - they don’t use a single word explaining where they heard the difference. Was it the same volume, same track, no listening time in between? Yup… too many problems. It’s all like fairy-tales, you cannot believe them.
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Clapping to this man’s text. Brilliant.
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Like him or hate at least BGGAR gives track and sound time stamps to explain how various IEM’s differ, cymbal splashes, kick drum impact/decay, vocal separation etc…so you have a “real” sound to reference against.
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Grainy.
God, I hate this nonsense. Real grain is the distortion you get with vinyl. How can the poor HD58X be grainy?
Ehh, I do, all the time. I’m developing a reviewer allergy and I’ve said this in this forum in several occasions.
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Oh well… As I already said - it is what is is.
You have to know that the majority of the people write reviews as a hobby, besides it they have a full-time job. This being said, nobody will waste their time giving minute stamps and reference tracks. They just want to express their artistic poetry about the experience with the product. This is fine, but I simply have to speak out that it will not help a person to decide how the product sounds.
@Ohmboy he is pleasant to watch. I personally don’t have too much time, so I very rarely watch any reviewers. I am more focused on written reviews, that’s what I based my message above about. Some video reviewers are entertaining, and that’s
Wow, I can’t believe no one has mentioned this yet: “musical”. The single most uninformative word in audio reviews. All it really means is “I personally liked it / it fits MY taste for how things should sound”. Makes the statement perfectly useless to me unless I know that reviewer’s sonic preferences like the back of my hand. And I don’t know any reviewer’s preferences like the back of my hand. 
Therefore I really wish everyone would stahp saying “it sounds musical” when reviewing gear.
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Audiophile terms don’t piss me off. It’s people that use them incorrectly that is irritating. If you dont know the meaning of a word, for God’s sake don’t use it.
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