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Re: How Can YOU Be Sure About Anything In Audio?

Posted by thetubeguy1954 (A) on January 22, 2007 at 06:49:57

In Reply to: Re: How Can YOU Be Sure About Anything In Audio? posted by dado4 on January 19, 2007 at 20:17:11:

dado4,

I have to disagree with your belief that an improvement that does not exist is a logical impossibility. What if a person buys a new interconnect that has it's midbass attenuated a few dB which caused the bass to seem more pronounced as opposed to his older interconnect. This could lead the buyer to believe this new interconnect has "better" bass than his old interconnect did. When the reality is they both produce bass the same, but the new interconnect just has attenuated midbass. Hence the reality is the buyer bought an improvement that didn't exist.

If he was part of group 1 which consists of those whose end criteria is to have a system that gets as close to live unamplified music as they possibly can achieve. He definitely threw away his hard earned $$$ on an improvement that didn't exist! The presentation changed, but it wasn't an actual improvement based on his actual criteria of having a system that gets as close to live unamplified music as he possibly can achieve.

However if he was a part of group 2 which consists of those whose end criteria is to have a system that simply sounds like they want it to. He definitely didn't through away his hard earned $$$ on an improvement that didn't exist! The presentation changed and it was an actual improvement based on his actual criteria of having a system that sounds like he want it to.

In the case of a person being in group #2 his criteria is a purely subjective concept. It cannot be measured, quantified or even explained. It is just a statement of his personal preference - a system that simply sounds like he likes it to. (Regardless if it sounds like live unamplified music or not!)

dado4 this following statement you made only is only true for those in group 2 "...Ultimately if a buyer likes the experience he gets from a product more than the he likes the money the seller is asking for it, how is he throwing money away? Indeed, assuming he has no other wants he values more than this increase in pleasure, he would be throwing his money away if he did not buy it."

The reason your statement is only true or group #2 is because of this part of your statement "...assuming he has no other wants..." ONLY group 2 has no other wants than to like how their system sounds. Group 1, in addition to wanting to like how their system sounds, ultimately wants a system that gets as close to live unamplified music as they possibly can achieve and group 3, in addition to wanting to like how their system sounds, wants a system that measures a certain way. They both have other wants besides simply liking how their system sounds. Thus for these 2 groups it could be possible to fooled into throwing their hard earned $$$$$ away buying components that actually provide differences and not actually improvements based on their original criteria for building an audio system.

Thetubeguy1954

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