Is There any Consensus at all amongst Audiophiles?


I remember once reading somewhere that theories in science don't necessarily disprove and succeed each other - merely that when proponents of less popular theories die they often take their theory with them.

So even in science there is no absolute right or wrong, merely an accepted consensus which can change from day to day. Much like the butter or margarine debate which has seen both sides on top at one time or another. Sometimes even old forgotten theories eg Flat Earth, can attempt a comeback!

However this lack of consensus only applies to cutting edge science. It does not mean that the vast amount of accumulated scientific knowledge is held in contention. Indeed there have been no major upheavals in scientific thought for almost one hundred years. 

And that despite the rise of the internet age.

Anyway, it would be interesting to see whether there is any consensus at all in the world of domestic audio playback. Very little, if the past few years of this forum are anything to go by. Professional audio on the other hand doesn't seem to have the time or stomach for this kind of endless navel gazing. 

But still, there must be some consensus in domestic aydio - there must be. Otherwise we're all doomed to die endlessly disagreeing with each other. Perhaps it might be easier to get the ball rolling if we can all state what we actually believe in. Perhaps.

I'd like to start by saying that err... this isn't easy. Hmm.. how about me saying that increased bandwidth (20Hz-20kHz) is a good thing?

Surely we can all agree with that, can't we?

What else is there?

Loudspeakers have a greater performance impact on the delivered sound than other components. Even more than other transducers like headphones and cartridges.

How about adding that this is because loudspeakers exhibit over a thousand times more distortion than the rest of the audio chain added up together?

Instead of constantly bickering, which we also enjoy, it might be of some interest to see what we actually believe in.

This might be more difficult than knocking other opinions (and less fun) but who knows, it might even make us consider different opinions, if not quite abandon our own.




cd318

Showing 5 responses by atdavid

You remember some of this statement, but the devil is in the details.


The statement was more along the lines of scientific advancement does not always happen because a new theory is so obviously better, but that those who hold on, often viciously, to "old" theories, eventually die.

It was not a statement about whether the old theory was right or wrong, the statement accepted that the new one was correct, it was that old ideas often literally have to die, because the proponents who hold old to them, their life's work, often respected scientists, refuse to accept they were wrong (and what that would mean).

Flat Earth is not a theory, and barely a hypothesis, but perhaps a good example. The Greeks showed the earth was round in about 2,000 BC. Look how long it took some powerful organizations to accept that it really was round, and even longer to accept it was not the center of the universe, even though the evidence was clear to those that understood it.


I remember once reading somewhere that theories in science don't necessarily disprove and succeed each other - merely that when proponents of less popular theories die they often take their theory with them.

So even in science there is no absolute right or wrong, merely an accepted consensus which can change from day to day. Much like the butter or margarine debate which has seen both sides on top at one time or another. Sometimes even old forgotten theories eg Flat Earth, can attempt a comeback!

vinylfan62,

Probably not. We are already listening in an artificial environment to music that is almost exclusively not representative of a single listener ... so why stop there.

A little extra 3rd harmonic distortion, a little aliased high frequencies, a little compression .... are all things that some people in this community prefer, and perhaps listening condition dependent, many will.

I think a better statement would be the potential for reproduction without alteration. Then let the user decide what they want to hear.
Nope, not sexy enough. Hard to brag on a forum about your room treatment when no-one cares. Most would rather wax eloquent about a $70,000 cable that has never been put through blind testing, versus room treatment where the impact is never questioned.  There is a large component of narcissism and it is not stroked by room treatment.