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

@hilde45 I appreciate your thoughtful comments. We are dancing on a conceptual pinhead-saying close to the same things in different ways. There may be reasons why we have different subjective tastes, but that doesn't mean our tastes are less different or that my preference is right and yours as wrong. I'm sure there is some difference in brain chemistry that explains why I know that butter pecan ice cream is best while many mistakenly prefer chocolate. Or that some misguided folks prefer opera to blues.

I tend to believe that people generally form an impression of the sound from equipment, good or bad, pretty quickly. For whatever reasons-and you make good points about what those might be-a certain sound signature will be pleasing to some but not others. I think the impression is often based on sound but also influenced by other factors-appearance of the gear, mood, expectation bias, preconceived brand opinions, etc. We then often backfit our impressions by wrapping them in fancy, poorly defined audiophile jargon, but that doesn't change the fact that we like what we like. I agree that we can have productive discussions concerning the nuance of our subjective preferences, but often don't because a lot of audiophiles seem to think that their preference is a universal truth-not just a personal preference.

How many times have you seen posts saying "I hear it this way and if you don't something is wrong with your ears or your system." Or heard from folks who believe if someone spends more for gear than they judge necessary that makes them a fool. Or if they spend less, their system is junk and they know nothing. We see people get quite agitated to the point of name calling because not everyone accepts their view that CDs are better than vinyl, etc. I think these are the attitudes that inhibit constructive discussion.

@mitch2 

Tomato (to-may-toe) - Tomato (to-mah-toe)?

Not at all. They are different things.

Why do you consider the subjective vs. objective characterization to be “loaded”?

It is a culture war that has arisen in audio. I suspect this a similar phenomena to the polarisation we see in politics due to the internet and social media. Each side believes theirs is the true faith. All nuance has been squeezed out.

Isn’t “qualitative” data based on subjective impressions?  

No. Qualitative data is non-numerical. That doesn't mean it's subjective.

Is your qualitative vs. subjeuctive delineation based on how the data is collected and analysed or something more?

Qualitative data is not at all synonymous with subjectivity. Qualitative data can be objective, just as quantitative data can subjective. Just because numbers are involved in quantitative data doesn't make it any more valid than qualitative data. 

I'm certainly sympathetic to identifying core bottlenecks as the primary concern and then working with the lesser constraints as part of a process of refinement.

However the question is which core bottlenecks or macro parameters are deemed most vital to address. Acoustics and speaker placement are a major influence, but above the Schroeder frequency not all speakers require the same degree of acoustical measures depending on how they excite the reverberative nature of a listening space. What's most important here is acting according to what acoustically suits a given pair of speakers' dispersion characteristics, and not least also what an individual feels is the most natural acoustical environment to his or her ears; some don't find highly damped rooms natural sounding, others again are more or less allergic to more lively acoustics - again, depending on the speaker context and their dispersive nature. 

I'm puzzled as to why the youtuber only addresses "amplifier headroom," as if lack of headroom is mostly about adding power. More power only gets you so far, at least until it leads to thermal compression/modulation on the speaker side of things, and at a certain point the need for a surplus of power is indicative of a significant bottleneck elsewhere, namely (not factoring in very large listening spaces and heavily damped acoustics) speaker sensitivity and load difficulty. The former is about speaker design and size, and the latter is about the amp-to-driver interface and how this is made a lot worse with passive crossovers. 

Depending on the system context I would also add the importance of impedance matching between the source/preamp output and power amp input. In many setups finding the right (and often quite expensive) separate preamp is what makes it all come together and you realize what your setup is really capable of - made all the more obvious when above mentioned amp-to-driver interface bottleneck has been addressed. 

Interesting and essential topic - thanks for posting, @hilde45. 

@hilde45 

Why do you like qualitative vs. quantitative better? I have my reasons but I’d rather hear yours.

Qualitative data and quantitative data have precise meanings unlike subjective and objective which are vague and appear to have a derogatory edge to them. I think they are less likely to lead to the polarisation and squabbles that abound at present.

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Great points, @jayctoy  Worth adding though: the video actually offers the bottleneck approach at whatever level of simplicity you want — the core idea is just identify your single biggest limiting factor first. You don't have to follow every meticulous step.

And that's exactly what protects the joy — knowing what's *actually* holding your system back means you stop chasing gear that won't make a real difference.

One gentle pushback though: even strong listening skills can mislead in a complex system. Room interactions, source issues, and component colorations mask each other in ways experienced ears often misread. Listening skill is necessary but not always sufficient for diagnosis.

That said, I agree: Match the tool to the task and enjoy both.

@kerrybh 

I think we're closer than we are far apart, but I'd resist the idea that we're just saying the same thing differently. There's a real difference between our positions that's worth preserving.

You say we "like what we like" and then backfit reasons in audiophile jargon. That may capture an initial reaction — and sure, sometimes we do rationalize after the fact. But the more interesting thing is that we can learn that what we liked was superficial and worth revising. I liked bright speakers when I started out. They sounded exciting and detailed. But over time I learned they were fatiguing, and that I was missing midrange tonality — something I came to understand matters more. My initial impression wasn't wrong exactly, but it was uninformed. The fact that perception and the feelings attached to it can be *improved* through experience and attention — that's "objectivity" if you want to use that word -- at work in taste. Not objectivity in the sense of measurements, but in the sense that some judgments are better educated than others. And that we're not stuck with "what we like." 

On the butter pecan point — let me shift the analogy a little. Some people love Coca-Cola. They'll say "I like what I like" and leave it there. But maybe they've never tried another cola. If you ask them *what about Coke* they like — the sweetness, the bite, the specific balance of flavors — and they actually start to break it down, you might help them find something that gives them all of that and more. The preference isn't locked down once you open it up to examination. "I like what I like" is only a dead end if you refuse to look inside it.

And in both these cases -- the speaker, the coke -- if they decide to stick with what they liked initially, it becomes a confirmed choice, not one that is just dumbly declared.

I completely agree about the toxic patterns you describe — the "something's wrong with your ears" crowd, the price-shaming in both directions. Those are real and they do poison discussion. But I'd argue they're caused by people who *can't articulate their reasons* and so experience disagreement as a threat. The cure for that isn't retreating to "it's all subjective." It's getting better at the reasons.