Why we (often) upgrade the wrong things (first) and ignore the important things

@hilde45 you make good points but I do think that good sound is inherently subjective and I think your comments capture that when you talk about listener “preferences”. That’s what I mean by subjective. 

you and I could listen to the same system in the same room, alternating turns in the listening chair. I might think the sound was the best thing since seven up while you may not like it at all. To me, that’s the definition of subjective. Take a speaker brand like magico. most would agree these are very well designed well built speakers that have a distinctive house sound. Obviously, lots of consumers find that sound to be detailed, transparent and very enjoyable. Some, however, find it to be bright and fatiguing. To me, it’s a matter of subjective preference. And while we do continue to have these discussions, I think the inability to accept that a lot of this is simply a matter of subjective preference is why the discussions go sideways so often. Some people have a hard time accepting that what they like is not necessarily the definitive, objective and universal truth. It’s just what they like. Others may like something else. Maybe we just define the word subjective a little differently.

The guy does some nice videos but they're too long. And sometimes kind of annoying maybe it's cause it seems kind of condescending.

To get a really nice system you're gonna have to spend some money it's not that hard to understand. You're gonna be having to make adjustments and that's part of the fun. you have to keep all the boxes. 

@hilde45 ​​@kerrybh :

This "objective" vs. "subjective" debate is, to my mind, central to audiophilia. To rephrase: is the point of an audio system to reproduce what the original performance sounded like (that would be an "objective" standard, however it is to be measured and confirmed)—or, rather, is the point to please the listener (that, obviously, would be the "subjective" goal)? Those who favor measurements are, I think, looking for an identifiable "objective" standard. And surely, the engineers who designed the equipment relied on measurements, so they must be relevant. And yet: what is the "original performance"? Even if it’s the sound of a particular acoustic instrument or voice, one still must ask: heard where? What were the acoustics of the "original" listening environment? What did the recording engineer add to or subtract from that original sound?

And so, psychoacoustics must come into play. Everyone’s hearing, especially at our advanced ages, is different. If it sounds "good" to you, that doesn’t mean that it must also sound good to me, since my ear-brain-mind complex is going to be different than yours. A very well-informed friend who has spent a lifetime in the music business in various capacities (as performer, recording engineer, remix master, audio salesman) insists that it’s all a matter of whether or not you like sriracha sauce with your tacos. Some do, some don’t. Chacun a son gout.

Then again: in making purchasing decisions, most of us read reviews, etc., because we want to make "informed" choices. That means, we want to seek out components that are more likely to give us positive results than random guessing. So there must be some kind of "objective" standard here, otherwise this whole audiophile phenomenon is just a charade.

Our fetish is like any other (e.g., oenophilia). There are "objective" standards that the "experts" adjudicate, and the rest of us mostly aim to adjust our impressions to those standards. But it need not be so. I used to make coffee with tap water. When a friend, also fond of coffee, suggested I should use filtered water, I agreed in principle, tried it—and preferred the taste with tap water! But I knew this had to be "wrong." So I continued to brew my coffee with filtered water. Now, I’d never consider using tap water. Maybe I’ve just made my life more complicated.

Does anybody here know the presenter's name and contact information?

This guy's point about focusing on the constraining factor(s) certainly makes sense although he would relate this to cost if he understood basic economics.  The particular points that he makes, however, are more relevant for mid-fidelity systems than for high-end systems.  For example, his comments about amplifier headroom and speaker sensitivity are important for a mid-fi system where there might be questions about whether an amp is capable of driving a set of speakers.  If someone is constructing a high-end system, it's not hard to find amps that are able to drive a particular pair of speakers, and the focus should be on what type of sound that they produce together. 

Likewise, if someone has a mid-fi system, then the focus will be on simple basics, rather than on sound quality, and it becomes easier to justify spending  $200 or less on a pair of cables.  However, if one has a high-end system, than a pair of cables that cost less than $1,000 is likely to be an important limiting factor in a high end system.