The Blind Men and Audio
Posted by: Chayro on 03 September 2006
There is an old fable about the
Blind Men and the Elephant that really reminds me of all the chatter about audio products that goes on here and elsewhere. I consider myself guilty of it as well, although lately i've been trying to avoid doing it.
In short, we compare two pieces of equipment in a certain room, with certain recordings and then, based on our personal tastes and the sound under one set of conditions, we pronounce one "better" than the other. IMO, it's just like a blind man contacting one portion of the elephant and then concluding that the elephant looks like a ... whatever.
There are times that such postings serve a purpose - to simply share experiences or to help out someone in a part of the world where a demo may be impossible. But I think we need to realize that perhaps our valuable opinions about gear are valid only under the test conditions we've evaluated the equipment under. At the very least, it's a cute poem. Enjoy.
Posted on: 03 September 2006 by Don Atkinson
Chayro
The forum is more like "a hundred blind men" [and a few one-eyed wonders] groping different parts of the elephant. [possibly groping different elephants]
The person seeking advice then has to complete a jigsaw from the information received, of the elephant without knowing its an elephant and without knowing whether he ha all the pieces in the jigsaw.
Cheers
Don
Posted on: 03 September 2006 by Stephen Tate
hi,
Yes hi fi magazines are guilty of this too when reviewing products. The amount of times iv'e believed what a magazine has said about a product and then with my own experience in the flesh this product turns out to be a pile of crap. This has happened a few times.
When iv'e been to hi fi shows experiencing all this so called amazing kit that i remember reading about and here i am listening to it only to come away thinking most of the music aswell as the kit has been very underwhelming.
NO BASS! no true power on most kit! with crap music demoing what this is all about.
P.s For this reason i really do not give a fig for all these product of the year awards, best buy and so on.
regards
Posted on: 06 September 2006 by Jonathan Gorse
While the acoustics of a room and individual preferences undoubtedly have a great influence on the impression of sound, I do think that careful reviewing serves a useful purpose for the reader. Hopefully as a reviewer you come to appreciate the acoustics of your room and can still make comparative judgements between components. By describing the sound to the reader one hopes to give an impression of the presentation offered so the reader can form a shortlist of worthwhile products. IMHO there is no definitive 'best' at any price point, however there are definately a few landmark products that are clearly better than the competition.
This forum serves as a fun community of people who probably all enjoy a common style of sound and ergonomics. Given that premise it's an excellent marketing tool for Naim to up-sell to its existing customer base and for people to fantasize about owning wildly high-end gear (me included!)
Jonathan
Posted on: 06 September 2006 by Chillkram
It's a good point you make, Chayro, and one could say that it applies to almost everything in life. Almost everything we 'know' is a result of someone's experience(s) under a given set of circumstances and their (our) interpretation of them.
Listening to music being reproduced is no different and as no-one really knows whether we all hear live music in the same way there can be no absolutes against which to judge equipment, only a subjective reference.
The poor bastards who design and build this stuff don't really stand a chance do they??!!
Mark
