Personal vs. Market Values


Take truffle oil. Or truffles. The mushrooms, not the confection.
Honestly I can’t taste it. I’ve ordered all sorts of dishes with "truffle oil" which commanded a premium and if there is any difference at all in the taste I could not tell you even after being told about it.

The point of this is that truffle oil holds no personal value to me. I’m not trading in it or running a restaurant or buying it in bulk. If I did that I’d feel and be willing to spend quite differently than I do now.

The point to this and how this matters in audio is that you should be true to your own ears. Use friends, reviews (cough) and other sources as guides. You may also evaluate a brand based on re-sale value. That’s reasonable as the resale could have a material impact on you in the future.

But if you can’t hear a difference or prefer a speaker/cable/amp no one else does then serve only yourself and your loved ones. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the market value of a particular product has value for you or that it is a display of relative merit. It may not. Our hobby is filled with charlatans selling invisible clothes.

Those who say they can't taste the truffle oil or see invisible clothes spend less and are far happier I think.

Happy listening,

E
erik_squires
The post betrays an underling feeling of insecurity: “I can’t tell the difference, what’s wrong with me?”

If telling people to just trust their ears was an effective strategy, wouldn’t it all be so simple.  In actuality, it’s anything but..
I love good music and quality audio.  I have no place in my pantry for Truffle anything.
Truffle oil makes a great contact enhancer, or so Im told. Or read it somewhere.  Something. 

To lower costs, I’m looking for one of those pigs that can search and find truffles. Win/win, if the pig doesn’t work out, we have a party and roast it.
Truffle oil makes a great contact enhancer, or so Im told.
Mmm, doubt it.  Truffles are fungi and do not contain oil.  Truffle oil is made from soaking chopped up truffle bits (the tough, not edible parts) which extracts the volatile elements containing truffle flavor and aroma (mostly the latter).

The conductivity of truffle oil would depend on what type of oil was used for a base.  Considering that most oils and NOT good conductors and plant and nut oils have especially low conductivity, I would guess that truffle oil would not make a good contact enhancer.  But I have not tried it so this is just an uneducated guess.

I like truffle oil, particularly on fries. I trust my taste buds and I trust my ears. Something that tastes really great is generally pretty apparent to me. I say "MMM, I like that." Something that sounds great to my ears elicits the same reaction.

In thinking about it, I have been eating different stuff for more than 55 years, and have only been messing around with high end audio for a couple (notwithstanding my earlier experience with the 1990’s generation of Adcom amp/preamp and Dahlquist DQM9 (Box) speakers)-- all of which drove signals from vinyl played on my Acoustic Research turntable with a Grado cartridge.

This all leads me to the idea that it takes a while to learn what you like, and takes some experimenting. Education from the old grumpy guys speeds up the process, and helps build systems from components that sound good together-- I don’t think I want truffle oil ice cream any more than I want lobster ice cream.

At the end of the day, I have had great experience with Conrad Johnson for my amps and preamps, Pass Labs (Reno Hifi) for my phonostage, Rega for listening to vinyl, ModWright Oppo 105 for CD’s, and I think Mikey was right about the EgglestonWorks Viginti speakers, so I bought a pair of those and never looked back. I would take this system over pretty much any kind of truffle oil or funky flavored ice cream or typical high-end audio system. And every male in our household (me and my 2 sons) listen to Grado headphones. What do all these brands and products have in common?  Great products, great sound and well-run, friendly companies.

Happy listening.