I think about the audiophile fringe approximately the same way I think about flat-earthers: I'm sure there is a core of true believers, but that at this point there's just massive amounts of trolling going on - and Poe's law applies: any sufficiently advanced form of trolling is indistinguishable from kookery.
That is always my initial thought... until I remind myself that audiophile products exist, and they are being bought by somebody! Trolling on internet is cheap/free; buying audiophile equipment is not :O
My favorite is audiophile network switches. Never mind the fact that two devices connected with RJ45 ethernet have no direct electrical connection since signalling is done via transformer coupling, so it is impossible to have a ground loop. Never mind the fact that it is a digital signal and audio streaming has robust error correction via TCP.
For the low, low price of $3800, you can be the proud owner of an audiophile grade, 100Base-T network switch: https://innuos.com/phoenixnet/
I know this sounds stupid, but I actually had something like this happen to me. It was due to the cable.
My PC is very electrically noisy on account of the GPU. This noise was coming out of all the ports, including the Ethernet port. It was making it through that port, by CAT-6 cable, to my switch. The switch then sent it to my Raspberry Pi I was using as a streamer, then into my DAC, amplifier and finally speakers. You could hear it, it was loud when a game started up.
The solution - swap out the CAT-6 with CAT-5 cable which doesn't connect the ground planes. Instantly solved.
I think electrical engineers having done some RF designs generally regard audiophiles as flat-earthers explaining what is wrong with a flat map; they might get it right now and then, but always for the wrong reasons. Remember how in the 90ties you could hear an SMS coming to a phone near an audio device? Right! No physical connection and sure you can’t hear the 900mhz ish gsm signal, but the rectified and smoothed signal had an audible time division multiplexing (envelope). And the carrier wave often resonated with paths in the signaling path of the audio device.
The keywords are: EMI (electromagnetic interference), signal integrity, power integrity.
Memcpy can have second order effects due to EMI radiated by CPU, motherboard or coupled via power fluctuations.
There are audible and measurable effects of audio system clock jitter which in turn depends on oscillator power quality.
Someone mentioned that ethernet has isolation transformers. But isolation transformers have parasitic common mode coupling which can inject the noise to ground plane if interference is strong and device is susceptible enough
Watch the EEVBLOG on company which designed scope capable of measuring 1kV common mode signals. (present in EV electronics)
https://youtu.be/I7ppDNLlEL4
Audiophile stuff is a weird mix of real effects and snake oil.
Yeah.... but somehow changing the memcpy method improved the audio also of the commenters. Unless the commenters have all the same PC, it all smell like "bias".
This, so much this. Many people ignore most of the things affecting sound quality in their setup. Audiophiles don’t, and they often go the extra mile to satisfy their compulsion for better sound—up to and including psychoacoustics.
If a $10,000 power cable makes your amp sound better to you, who’s to say it doesn’t?
the aunt of a friend promised sick people to talk to angels about their issues for only a modest sum. i'm sure those people felt at least a bit better afterwards, because they were of options otherwise.
on the other hand, they spent hundreds of dollars for nothing and if they eventually recovered they'd tell other sufferers about it, dragging them down too.
does the victims glimmer of hope justify her scam?
background: she herself suffered from an "incurable" illness for months, where she paid other angel conjurers (that's where she got the idea from). turns out it was just iron deficiency and easily cured with iron supplements. at that point she'd already paid several hundred dollars to those charlatans.
What do you mean the 90s? I can still hear my phone pining the tower when it's too close to my speakers ? (Eris E5 on balanced XLR into a Scarlett 2i4)
No, we don't. And with having enough budget and skills we try our best to shield stuff we make. As for radio noises: just remember that every freakin physical body is an antenna. Not just wires. All we can do generally is tune things in such ways that they resonte in a range we need and be as silent as possible in all other frequencies.
Hum,Im pretty sure you mean STP vs UTP, and not cat5 vs cat6. Electrically, cat5 and cat6 are equal; cat6 is slightly thicker, has a thread separator in the middle, and its rated for higher frequency. Electrically? The same. STP cable (regardless if specced for cat5 or cat6) does have a ground plane.
Oh! That must have been it, thank you. I'm not very familiar, I just knew the cables were cat6 and cat5. Thought it might have something to do with the shielding.
Looking over the product page, it's marked as S/FTP
Correct. More specifically, if a shield is not actually grounded, all it becomes is a re-radiating antenna for all of the EMI around it, as well as a means by which to directly transfer electrical noise from one device to another.
The "U" stands for Unshielded, the "S" stands for Shielded. For home use and office use, UTP is fine. STP makes sense in "noisy" (electrical or magnetic) environments, such as factory floors with heavy machinery, clinics & hospitals with specific machinery, etc. See more details on the kind of protection the shielding offers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shielded_cable
Makes sense, but my point was that I've never even seen an option to buy one kind of ethernet cable or other. Is it safe to assume the $15 StarTech cables I buy from Newegg are unshielded? And does the "TP" stand for "Twisted Pair"?
I have a computer that will sometimes crash hard, frozen screen and mouse, awful static on the speakers and, interestingly, something coming over the ethernet port too. This interference goes up to the next device on the line, my network switch, and brings that to its knees too. Nothing can move through the switch while that computer is having a seizure. I can disconnect the wire at the switch and the network comes back to life within a minute.
I'm considering putting a sacrificial switch from my junk box inline to that one computer so maybe the rest of the network can survive its crashes.
That is probably the nic in said machine still being alive and unable to pass any received frames up to the os. When its buffer runs full, it starts spamming pause frames, which dumber switches just blast out every port effectively paralyzing the whole network segment.
You could verify this by running Wireshark on another machine, or try disable sending pause frames on the machine before it crashes via eg ethtool
In my case just a few weeks ago I had an AP that went bananas, and was directly connected via ethernet to a RPi4, and made the Raspbian kernel panic on the Broadcom driver, randomly. Not long after the AP stopped working completely.
I cannot upvote you enough, as I've been through similar problems many times. But in your case you could just re-crimp one side of your cable with unshielded connector. This is actually a good practice not only for noise and ground-loop preventions, but electrical safety too. Also, CAT.6 doesn't require shielding like FTP/SFTP/etc. - I'm using a CAT.6 UTP right now.
And anti-audiophiles are sometime becoming even worse than manical audiophiles - because of their deep blind belief in their educated superiority (while in reality it's a bit .. untrue).
There's usually a grain of truth in that audiophile nonsense, that it could in theory have some material basis in reality. The problem is the complete rejection of the scientific method.
The raspberri pi isn't a dac, it's a streamer. It acts as a middleman to avoid using my PC as the source of the audio.
I'd definitely prefer a DAC with good filtering on its inputs so I wouldn't need to use a middleman, but that is expensive. One with a proper USB module with complete isolation can run ~$5000.
I've heard the following mind numbing phrase used by one person to describe their vinyl music listening experience: "uninterrupted magnetic chain" (ie: from the production all the way to their speakers). The absolute lack of understanding of: electrical engineering, acoustics and signal processing is on full display with these folks.
To me it really highlights the difference of those who seek to understand deeply, and those who interact with the world only in superficial and aesthetic ways. The latter really want to depend on the "magic" within the machine, and can get upset if you try to shed light on how these things really work.
The thing is, some original Vinyl recordings really do sound better than recent heavily compressed "remasters" on CD. Perhaps this person just doesn't know how to explain why the Vinyl sounds better when all the techies say CD is superior (e.g. higher dynamic range, in theory).
It looks like the big spend (besides avoiding Gigabit being a feature… wow) is the power supply being linear. Having taken scopes to power lines in homes, I can grudgingly attest to the non-zero impact switching power supplies have in audible frequencies.
But it’s comically small and solvable much more easily than spending this kind of coin.
I was expecting an AVB switch with locking connectors and redundant power. You know, like a pro audio mission-critical device. Instead it’s basically like using stacks of hundreds to vibration insulate your CD player. It might technically improve things, but the return on investment is poor.
By the way, if you are ever tempted to measure AC with an oscilloscope, please use differential probes to reduce the risk of damage/electrocution. It is very easy to create a pretty significant voltage potential across your probe and reference when poking around with high voltage.
> Never mind the fact that two devices connected with RJ45 ethernet have no direct electrical connection
> For the low, low price of $3800, you can be the proud owner of an audiophile grade, 100Base-T network switch
That buys you a seriously good piece of switching gear with 10GBe (or even higher) fiber optic links to whatever devices you could possibly want in a home. Heck, even a little over $100 buys you a switch with 4 SFP+ (Mikrotik CRS305).
I guess audiophiles will claim that the optical transceivers introduce latency and _they can hear it_
Like the sibling poster said, this won't cause jitter.
The audio isn't played directly from the ethernet packets. It has to be decompressed, decoded, buffered. In the end of it all the audio goes into a ring buffer and it is played very precisely by the sound card.
The playback itself is a hard-real-time process that needs time guarantees. Failure to fill the ring buffer by any reason can cause audible skips, but not jitter. But most players in practice will simply stop the playback.
The maximum jitter allowed by the IEEE specifications is 1.4 ns for 100-megabit Ethernet and 300 ps for Gigabit Ethernet. The bit time for a 48 kHz audio signal is ~20 000 ns. It is absolutely impossible that you can hear the Ethernet jitter.
Yeah, no because "streaming" is just transferring a chunks that can then be played. You are not sending bits from the network card straight to the audio out. Even if you have a certain % packet loss, there is 0 impact on the playback as long as the next chunk arrives before the previous one has finished.
That is a protocol specifically designed to accept input from audio devices like microphones, etc and output directly to audio devices like speakers.
To do the same with ethernet you would have to use an industrial ethernet implementation of which I know at least three and they are all incompatible with each other and even then you would most likely benefit from an audio focused implementation.
All of this is much harder than just buying a better switch and claiming it improves the sound. Your audio playback device and speaker would have to support the same implementation of industrial internet.
You know, streaming isn't really just getting bits across the wire intact.
For one thing, timing is important. A simple example would be getting video in sync with audio. You could go deeper and manage timing for speakers side to side or front to back. It would get lots harder if a microphone was introduced - then latency would be a big big deal.
These sorts of things are probably why bluetooth isn't used as much with a/v systems.
(lol, here I am arguing the merits of an audiophile network switch)
So long as the amount of audio sent in a packet is larger than how long it takes the next packet to get there, you'll be transfering audio data faster than it is playing, making minor fluctuations in timing between packets irrelevant.
Bluetooth isn't used because BT audio transmission is lossy, audio gets recompressed. Newer BT standards have good quality compression, but you are still recompressing the audio. BT isn't meant to be a high bandwidth protocol.
BT's latency around audio is because 99% of BT implementations suck. Latency can be as low as 50ms or so, but it is often in the 100s or even 200s of ms.
> So long as the amount of audio sent in a packet is larger than how long it takes the next packet to get there, you'll be transfering audio data faster than it is playing, making minor fluctuations in timing between packets irrelevant.
Even major fluctuations. Not talking about the quality here (but the received quality is identical to what is being sent), but just think about Netflix & Co, Imagine if they had to maintain an "ideal network, with no packet loss and constant ping" to your device or otherwise audio and video would be out of sync?
There are protocols that shuffle more or less raw audio streams over the network (Dante for example). In that case yes, you do things to make sure the variables are within a certain range by (usually) segregating the traffic etc, but even then if the timing is off the playback will stop until the stream is reestablished properly. Theoretically it's the same as with any other media stream, just much more sensitive to fluctuations as it is real time (i.e. delay so low you are unable to hear it).
192khz/32bit audio track is 6.144Mbps. Assuming smallest data packet, at 64 bytes data per packet that's 12kpps.
Any switch that has more bandwidth per port, more total non-blocking switching and forwarding rate that the sum of each port in use will suffice. These days, you would definitely go for gigabit non-blocking switches which have <1ns inter-packet gap and way too much bandwidth and forwarding rate than what your PCM stream needs.
On its way to your speakers, a audio file sampled at 192khz will ideally be identical to a recording done at 44.1khz, except over sampling can introduce audio artifacts that degrade audio quality so you can end up with worse audio.
If you're talking about a general WAN, there's no guarantee that jitter on your route may not violate 12kpps, and it's quite common on most oversubscribed ISPs to stutter receiving 6.144Mbps due to occasional high latency causing a missed packet window (oversimplifying here because there are audio receive buffers as well.) Over a LAN this would only happen if you're pushing your switch to the limit.
Should you buy an audiophile network switch? God no.
But this only matters either if you don't have enough bandwidth to compensate and a buffer, or for whatever reason can't buffer much (e.g. it's live and two-way)
Yeah hence I mention the WAN. Generally some link along your WAN route is oversaturated, on a shitty ISP it's probably the link to your local ISP itself. I presumed audiophile switches would be popular for real-time streaming solutions, but I still don't understand the appeal.
The larger the buffer size, the larger the latency. This is mostly irrelevant for playing an audio file, but in some cases a long chain of buffers in the OS before it leaves to the speaker can be an issue for music.
The main place you will see this issue is playing audio in something like a video game due to an action like pressing a button, firing a weapon, etc then it can be very noticeable if you're buffering too much audio because it wont sync to what you're seeing and the game will feel laggy even if it's running at a high frame rate.
>You could go deeper and manage timing for speakers side to side or front to back
Audio data frames are interleaved, ie RLRLRL. There's no point managing timing of network packets because after going over the network, all the data goes into a buffer at the other end before being played.
The timing is determined by the sample clock of the DAC. The network switch has zero influence on it. If the system has multiple DACs and/or ADCs, their clocks can usually be synchronized via BNC cables.
What if you have multiple dacs (and other types of conversions)?
Excepting subs, it seems many speaker systems are hardwired together downstream from the dac, but there should be a good way to have multiple independent speakers networked together that could be time consistent. and audio <-> video consistent with whatever display you have.
and bnc cables.... would be another whole network.
Sorry but you keep talking about timing. With network speeds nowadays, the audio files get completely or almost completely buffered in the PC from whatever source you are reading it (NAS for example), and then played. Same with video (even when it doesn't buffer the entire video). And video/audio frames are interleaved.
Is not that every packet is "output" as soon as it arrives to the PC.
A playback device creates a stream of audio and video data that is consistent and together. But if there's a network involved, say you have stereo wifi speakers, then the video and audio streams are separated. Maybe the playback device sends the data to the display using hdmi, and that device sends data over the network to the speakers. Now there are two delays - one for decoding and presenting video, and a second separate one for transmitting and then decoding audio. The second one is variable depending on the network.
These are old and solvable problems (audio sync). For example I'm using HDMI ARC to output the audio of my TV, and the TV has a menu to coordinate video/audio (by inserting a delay). In my case I don't need it.
But it's delay, and not integrity of the data being played back. If the network sucks and there are retransmissions, your data might still be integrous without loses (depending on the protocol).
It also happens for musicians on stage. They play and after some delay they hear their own sound back. So they use monitors to hear themselves and the rest of the band.
While in lockdown people gathered together to play music with special software. That tells you something about how this problem is well known and how it can be solved in every situation.
But it’s all buffered at a bunch of different places though, right? There must be a stream buffer before the DA to compensate for any upstream latency, no?
not a networking expert, but isn't all of this a complete waste of effort when you can just make the sample buffer deeper? uncompressed CD audio is only 1.5mbps, so it's not like the cost of dram is going to be a limiting factor.
Yes. It realistically only matters in cases where the bandwidth is so low you're teetering on the edge as it is or it's a live two way conversation where introducing too much buffering will create noticeable lag.
Its still bs. You have stuff like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avionics_Full-Duplex_Switche... already. For audio in a home setup? If your problem is arp or latency, you seriously barfed your setup (bear in mind you can actually use direct crossover configurations to deliver at least 100mbps, more than enough for many uncompressed high-bitrate streams). Audiophile is a niche market with many people with more money than brains, that more often than not, dont really understand tech.
I hate the network switch debate. Most center around noise shaping the sound.
It is a one or zero, it will checksum and TCP either gives the correct packet or drops it. Also I do not know many audio streamers that do not buffer since TCP works way faster than a song can play. Plenty of time to make sure the packets are correct.
I have no idea why the audiophile network switches irritates me the most. At least with audio cables I guess you can do measurements that show the signal is cleaner, even though there is zero chance of you hearing a difference most of the time (I just make sure cables have good shielding and if the cable has to be seen it better look cool too, haha).
Ya know there are even audiophile USB cables.......not a joke google it.
I know these products sound stupid, but Ethernet can insert a DC bias and repeat AC-coupled noise from other sources. This includes its own PSU. There are industrial Ethernet products that specifically address both these problems, because in a factory environment, both phenomenon can have practical consequences when there's motors and power electronics throwing around big magnetic fields. I imagine being near speakers with big drivers can also cause some of the same problems that would never be found in a typical desktop or datacenter computing environment.
But that would trigger error correction, not degrade the sheer quality like it would happen with analogical signals.
Ok, if there are enough errors it would make the playback problematic, but it would be the same for any kind of data transmitted.
Ok, then I misunderstood the big speakers magnetic field issue, sorry. I thought it was the big speaker interfering with the switch, and not the other way round.
Whilst I agree on it, this is partially true. shielded cables can create current flows between switches, have seen it previously, and had to fix it as it was inducing problems on the traffic over that cable
AVB is a set of IEEE standardized 802.1 extensions that provide better control over bandwidth and latency. This is important when you're playing multiple audio and/or video streams to multiple endpoints connected at different points in the network and they need to be low latency and still kept synchronized.
I've seen professional switches from a large vendor where the AVB license cost as much as the rest of the switch.
As with everything we cannot deal in absolutes. Whilst I in no way want to defend ripof garbage like the linked product you should consider Ethernet for live streaming. TCP correction can very much be audible and UDP is often used.
I use a RME DAC in my setup, and one of the things I like about it is the Bit Test feature. RME supply the WAV bit test files on their site. I've converted them to FLAC. The DAC shows up a message on the LCD when the bit test (played on repeat) is matched perfectly. So no stuck bits, missing bits, bit flips.. just the correct sequence repeated over and over again.
My FLAC files live on a SSD attached to a Raspberry Pi that serves them up over NFS. The data passes through three gigabit switches before arriving at another Raspberry Pi running Volumio, which is connected to my DAC.
There's enough there to keep an audiophile awake at night, but the bit tests have passed perfectly whenever I've run them. No expensive cables, linear mode power supplies, or audiophile switches would make the tests pass any better.
Im assuming you're using sata over usb for the ssd; that latency hoop alone would give nightmares to some audiophiles :) kudos for having a true hifi system without buying into the bullshit
However, it never works like this, except maybe in some rare live conditions (in which case, why are you even running this on TCP?). In reality, it goes:
Storage -> TCP Stream -> Ring buffer -> Sound output
Unless you manage to empty your ring buffer (which, in the case of modern hardware can easily be 32+MB, or multiple seconds of audio), you will not hear a single bit of difference. And if you do, it won't come in "after you were meant to hear it", you'll either get a massive gap, or repeats. There is no such thing as "data coming in too late/out of order".
Audio is rated at kilobits a second while modern networking equipment is rated at gigabits a second. So your networking equipment is multiple orders of magnitude faster than your audio file streaming speed.
If you’re getting audible errors from your network then literally everything you do on that network would feel like 90s dial up days and with lots of corruption. Most websites wouldn’t even load due to TLS errors.
The problem such arguments as yours is that people have subjective experiences that can be influenced by a multitude of personal emotional states and they then retrofit pseudo-technical explanations for why they perceived those experiences. Or in layman’s terms, you basically just buy an expensive placebo.
I aggree the placebo effect is a huge problem. I am not suggesting expensive solutions, I am just saying check your physical installation and maybe not the very cheepest hardware off AliExpress.
The are lots usecases for nearly live audio where TCP stalls cause problems you would never notice browsing the web and would not be a TLS error (which is ushally how networks are 'tested' leaving the problems unfixed).
Live is a very different problem to home listening. Live requires near real time playback on content that is generated in real time. Whereas for any kind of pre-recorded performance, such as listening to music at home, you can read ahead and buffer. So the issues you present simply don’t exist in home set ups.
And before you comment about listening to live performances at home: the broadcaster would be compressing your audio stream anyway. That would be far more impactful to your audio quality than a few dropped networking packets.
Source: I used to work in broadcasting.
Edit: and just to be clear, the biggest reason that live performances are sensitive to latency isn’t because of sound quality. It is because latency is distracting to the performers (eg if their ear piece is ahead of the speakers) and annoying to the viewers if different systems aren’t in sync (like with a movie where the sound is half a second behind the video). So it’s got naff all to do with satisfying audiophiles.
As someome pointed out, even 99% packet loss on a modern network wont affect the stream. I've actually seen (unfortunely) 100mbit "working" with cat3 (phone) ribbon cable... For short distances (<10m), it wont even reach 10% packet loss.
And players buffer. Always.
For lossless CD-quality audio you need about 160kbyte/s.
So on a gigabit network (125Mbyte/s), you'd need over 99.999% packet loss in order to not keep up.
So they're comparing to an almost completely faulty cable.
I feel like a lot of audiophile stupidity is not understanding scale.
There is a difference between the fancy speaker cables and acceptable cheap ones, but it's so ridiculously minuscule as to be completely inaudible compared to, say, whether or not the listener is wearing socks or not.
And that's not an exaggeration, that difference will literally be more than the difference in cables, probably by an order of magnitude.
The only real difference between the cables will be at frequencies over, say, a GHz. ie RF frequencies 50x higher than cats might be able to hear.
But the audiofool will say, "see, there's a difference - I want my system to sound the best".
And they focus so much on ridiculously overkill cables, amplifiers and stupid stands, yet seem to often ignore room treatment which could really make a difference. It's often massive speakers in horribly reflective minimalistic rooms, driven by amps running at 0.1% of their power rating.
Another thing is not understanding tradeoffs. Everything is a compromise, so when you buy the amp that's rated at 2000W but only run it at 2W, it won't measure as well as the same quality amp that's rated at 50W, also running at 2W.
Similarly a speaker with a max rating of 500W running at 2W won't be as accurate as a speaker with a max rating of 50W running at 2W, because physically the material the speaker is made out of has to be more resilient/less flexible to handle that kind of maximum power.
But they focus on one particular thing (usually the expensive thing) to the detriment of other things.
Also not understanding wattage.
Because sound is logarithmic, it is really eye-opening how little power you need for quite loud audio. Most systems you wouldn't want to listen to at over 5W.
Eg for, say two Kef R7 speakers which have a sensitivity of 88dB, at only 5W, from 3m away is 94.4dB.
You don't need a 5000W amp. But they don't understand any of this so they just think higher number and more expensive equals better.
It's like buying a Mack truck because you heard it carries more than a hatchback when you're going to the supermarket, and thinking it must be better because it's more expensive.
If your ethernet switch needs snake oil on your home network to sound good, I have bad news about your ISP, your cable modem, your ISP's transit provider, and your audio streaming app's data center connection.
I am not talking about snake oil. I am saying _LOTS_ of (most?) networks are installed with AliExpress wall sockets etc. and tested by loading google.com once.
If you want trouble free audio streaming it is worth checking the network.
That actually sounds a lot like snake oil. Electrical noise from outlets is irrelevant for digital package relay. Your big ass tv switches 100x more data each frame flawlessly, identifying way more channels than traditional 2-way signaling; when was the last time you heard someone saying "I bought a true filter for my wall socket and my led tv gives me better colors"? Is that level of stupid we're talking about.
Being an audiophile when you have lots of money isn't much different than buying NFTs--it's merely a status you hold by owning whatever the kooky consensus of 'best' is and being involved in making that determination.
Exactly my thoughts. Why do people buy iPhone cases with diamonds in them? Because they can and they hang around with people who are impressed by such stuff.
I thought that's a bit different, because they're playing a game of 1-upmanship about being able to discern flavor/scent. I suppose it is the same: ears vs nose.
I have however been shocked by how good a meal was with a proper wine pairing--having it being a firework of taste in my mouth and wishing I had the knowledge to know how to pick wines for meals.
Like wine, most audio tech and most "audiophiles" is entirely reasonable. Listening to your favourite album on a $10000 hifi setup is a much better experience than listening to it over Spotify on the cheap earbuds that came with your phone. Some speakers do obviously sound better that others, and how you place those speakers in your room objectively has an effect on how good they sound. People with good ears can absolutely hear the difference between cheap and expensive amps and DACs.
The problem is that a small percentage of people don't stop there and start chasing smaller and smaller 'improvements' in the experience until they're forced to make things up and delude themselves to find a new 'high'.
I can easily hear the difference between CD editions (of 1y/2y old albums, so its not related to mixing) and streaming. I have a low end cambridge audio setup and elac speakers. The difference is quite obvious, specially on complex tech/death metal tracks. Thing is, I really doubt a 10k system would offer something really relevant above this. For 10k, I could actually hire the band to play on my living room :D
> Thing is, I really doubt a 10k system would offer something really relevant above this.
The problem with testing Hifi using Metal is that only the recording engineer really knows what it originally sounded like. Metal recordings are also generally very compressed and so not a good test of dynamics and transients. A good test of a Hifi would involve acoustic instruments, violins, cellos, pianos, orchestras etc. You also need very well recorded source material.
Is matching the original recorded sound really the purpose of a good hifi system ? From what I understand, studio monitors as used in production / mastering have this goal (to sound "neutral").
Hifi speakers are supposed to add their own character to the recorded sound, no?
When talking about acoustic instruments, doesn't each one sound different? Like you could buy two violins from the same manufacturer and they wouldn't have the same exact sound, esp as the years go by. Same goes for analog synths & drum machines, and that's the good thing about them, the fact that they develop their own character.
> Is matching the original recorded sound really the purpose of a good hifi system ?
Yes, at least it used to. Hifi means High Fidelity, which means a high degree of exactness in reproducing the music, as the artists and recording engineers intended.
> Hifi speakers are supposed to add their own character to the recorded sound, no?
I would argue they should not. But consumer "Hifi" certainly does often colour the sound. This is why many audiophiles had to seek out "studio" monitors and earphones. However, even this term has lost its meaning. You will not find "Beats Studio" earphones in any studio.
> When talking about acoustic instruments, doesn't each one sound different?
Maybe slightly yes, but only in certain ways. A bad audio system might make them sound unnatural. Pianos and violins certainly have much less variation than electric guitars.
Im not testing, Im listening. Sure there are degrees of creativity involved in mastering & mixing, but oddly enough, more often than not I've actually seen them live. And your definition of metal is amusing - id suggest you Ne Obliviscaris, Fleshgod Apocalypse within the segment I mentioned or Dream Theater, Haggard or Epica as multi-instrumental, operatic recordings.
That seems like a huge claim. There used to be different mixes for vinyl, radio, and cd. It’s hardly inconceivable that streaming would have a dedicated mix (I’d assume something which “pops” so it’s noticeable as standalone in the middle of a streaming session, whereas the CD would be part of the album flow)
It might be the same mixing, but a different mastering.
On mastering it is completely usual to have extra compression/limiting, some light EQ and even extra "color". It is supposed to be subtle, but that hasn't been the case for quite a while.
Mastering is also when you get the final "bits" that go into a CD, so you need two different mastering sessions to get two different sounding CDs.
Fair enough. But consider this: If you're pressing 1000 units at a time, you probably don't have the budget to have separate mixes for each media. There is plenty of stuff edited by small labels (ex. transcending obscurity) on a tight budget.
Definitely. Engineers historically would monitor in the car, in tiny speakers like Avantone Mixcubes, on even on boom boxes (I think Michael Brauer and Michael Beinhorn have gone on the record about doing it).
Today a lot of them are checking on Airpods and the like.
Definitely, and there are specialized plugins and EQ presets for this, as well for other media, such as vinyl. Have a look at this article about mastering for different streaming platforms https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/mastering-for-streaming-pla... (from a software manufacturer)
For sure. The issue is the zillion variables in headphone mechanicals and transducers. Eventually someone will be making mems transducers in relatively cheap - acoustically inert - form factors and you'll just dial in your sound.
It's close with using hybrid anc but still too many variables to claim no sonic difference.
I think there is probably more psychology going on than people think. I know people are assure me that some weird Swiss water contraption (a piece of wood) makes water taste noticeably better and "aligns molecules" and what have you.
I can imagine someone giving you a taste and you already assume it must be nicer so you confirm the lie. It is also possible that other variables like the fact it has been standing in a jug for longer allowing the chlorine to evaporate make people think that it tastes nicer for the wrong reason.
Man... I remember as a kid we had salesmen going around in our neighborhood selling "water magnetizers", and asking people to A-B-taste magnetic and normal water. A neighbor ended up buying the thing! And it was actually expensive, it wasn't a 10 bucks scam. It required ordering and took a few weeks to arrive. Then I went to check it out and it was just a cover for those commercial watercooler bottles with some magnets. But they swore their water tasted better.
I think these people are kids of 70s-80s who dreamed of hi-fi gear back then and now can afford it but it's no longer a thing. They are paying for nostalgia.
Sometimes I noticed older people going into tech discussion about things which were super important once but no longer is relevant.
Most are able to recognize their nostalgia as such and are willing to accept it (e.g. by doing cb radio or retro game development on deliberately limited hardware).
Lots of 60+ people trying to find the holy grail they dreamed about when they were kids. But HOW can a 2000, 1000 USD guitar be a "holy grail"?
So they end up with collections of six, seven, eight high-end Les Pauls, Strats, etc. Or perhaps buying USD 5000+ custom shop instruments. Some of them get to collections of 30, 50, 60.
Of course it's a lot of fun, and not as expensive as, say, a Cello or Oboe collection. So I get why they do it. But as someone who moves often, I'd rather have just one :D
This is insanity... Accidentally, clicked on a link for audiophile network switches and my brain just hurts from reading the article. You have been warned.
"Think about that for a moment: the network streamer is directly connected to a router designed for functionality but with zero made concession to audiophile sensitivities."
Well, if there is a market of nutcases, people will peddle to that market. I mean... people pay for reading the stars, tarot cards, or for literal chlorine bleach [1].
> I mean... people pay for reading the stars, tarot cards
I used to consider these to be pretty worthless things too. After a while I started to realise that a lot of these things provide a lot of the same random platitudes that therapists typically provide too.
Given that therapists are a bit of a dice roll as far as the quality of advice you get, why not just instead make the advice given itself a dice roll. At that point, there’s a non negligible probability that the advice given by a half decent palm / star / tarot reader might actually be relevant.
Sure, it’s all just chance and luck, but when the advice ends up being relevant (or becomes self fulfilling in its relevance) and actually helps the receiver, why not?
(These learnings are brought to you by my ex who very patiently explained to me one of the ways I was an asshole when we were together. I’m now a bit more open minded and keep my eye rolls to myself behind my sunglasses)
> At that point, there’s a non negligible probability that the advice given by a half decent palm / star / tarot reader might actually be relevant.
In most cases, the advice those people give probably isn't random at all. It's likely tailored to the client, based on "cold reading" techniques, the practitioners general experience with life and people, maybe the practitioner secretly scouring social media for information about the client, etc.
Exactly. Well.. mostly. I would say you're getting advice, not "therapy" per se, and that most people that others might seek advice from are not licensed therapists. Parents, mentors, priests, elders, etc.. all people that somebody might seek advice from who aren't licensed therapists, and generally nobody makes a big deal about it.
If you're going to the fortune teller or priest for advice, that's what you're getting and the quality of the product might even be good in some cases. If you're going to the fortune teller or priest to receive magical services, then obviously you're getting scammed.
> Sure, it’s all just chance and luck, but when the advice ends up being relevant (or becomes self fulfilling in its relevance) and actually helps the receiver, why not?
It's like homeopathy: still a mixture between fraud, pseudoscience and sometimes outright dangerous advice, the ratio depending on the provider. And people can and do lose entire life savings to that shit. Just because someone's cold "went away" after downing a ton of sugar pills, it doesn't mean the homeopathy caused that - it was the person's own body all along.
The worst thing about all pseudoscience stuff is that accepting it as a society means that non-scientific opinions are accepted as an equal in democratic discourse - and that is the foundation on which quackery, vaccine denialism, MMS and a whole lot of conspiracy myths grow.
Besides: there's a reason why therapists (at least in Europe) generally have to be licensed similar to doctors... bad advice can literally kill people.
We, as a society, should push for equitable and accessible actual mental health care for everyone, provided by trained and continuously educated professionals - not for quackery.
Research has been done and we know why some people see good results from alternative practitioners.
It is because alternative practitioners with bad bedside manners don't stay in business very long.
If you have a minor problem, sitting down with someone who you trust and talking about it for half an hour (much longer than the 5 or maybe 10 minutes you'll get with a traditional doctor), who then gives you some sugar pills and some other good advice (get up and stretch very half an hour), is almost always going to result in an improvement of symptoms.
A lot of problems, including pain, measurably improve when a patient feels they have been listened to, and that advice they are given is tailored to them.
Those longer, and often more frequent, appointments, also means the practitioner gets to know the patient better, which means underlying lifestyle problems can be identified. If the alternative doctor finds out someone is eating a lot of canned food, recommending they switch to "fresh natural vegetables" is a damned good way to lower someone's sodium and potassium intake.
The actual treatments are woo bullshit, but the care setting makes a huge difference.
We could have actual doctors giving that device and detecting symptoms early, but no, we have far too few doctors everywhere, and in the US y'all have your insurance bullshittery on top of that.
The solution to the severe understaffing is not enabling quackers that end up recommending their patients MMS or against chemoterapy like they did with Steve Jobs.
> The solution to the severe understaffing is not enabling quackers that end up recommending their patients MMS or against chemoterapy like they did with Steve Jobs.
I agree it isn't the solution.
> We could have actual doctors giving that device and detecting symptoms early,
One potential lesson is that we don't need full on doctors giving advice. We need people trained to forward to a real doctor if something really wrong is going on, but for a crap ton of problems, someone with basic medical (or just lifestyle/health) training is enough.
Heck there was one study that showed that elderly folks talking to each other about their arthritis pain while getting an evening drink at their local watering hole served to reduce pain symptoms.
Chatting with local bartenders and barbers can be nearly as good as professional therapy for some issues.
Having someone trusted just listen and parrot back common sense advice works really damn well.
Trusting the source of the advice, and believing it will work, has a huge impact on treatment.
The use of tarot cards as therapeutic projectives is actually backed by science though, [1] and more and more practitioners are making use of them in clinical settings [2].
You're jumping to call it quackery without having an open mind. That's not science, that's prejudice.
Is it ok for doctors to give sugar pills for ailments too? They're shown to be effective for a variety of ailments.
Tarot reading goes hand in hand with reading people's fortune. I don't see how you can separate the 2 and therefore have an ethically acceptable treatment, and that's assuming the placebo isn't entirely based on the fortune reading expectation.
Tarot cards can't just be used as a projective because of their history. They are associated with fortune telling.
Denying that is like walking around with a swastika armband telling anyone who calls you a nazi that it's got nothing to do with the Nazis. Even if you're a Buddhist you still have to accept there an association there.
That is the problem with tarot cards. Some people are going to think you are reading their fortune, no matter how much you preface it.
But if I buy a lottery ticket, there's theoretically a chance of winning, even though I never actually will. It would still be fraud if someone sold lottery tickets for a lottery that never was.
Tarot readers are selling a fake good. You can't really escape the ethical implications of that.
As long as the fortune is vague enough to apply to more than 40-50 people, then the chance of a fabricated fortune-telling for you coming true simply by pure random coincidence seems to be greater than the chance of winning the lottery.
Tarot cards are a genuinely helpful method of probing one's psyche and I've used them to benefit in my daily life.
I know many people who use them but none believe they have a magical power. They're projectives, like a Rorsach test.
The card will give you something abstract and you fill in the blanks. What your mind fills in can be quite elucidating. Your feeling as well, in terms of gladness or disappointment at what card you pull, can also give you insight into what issues you'd rather think about.
The demonization of tarot in my mind mostly stems from internalised misogyny and a desire on the societal level to paint anything which appeals mostly to women as "kooky," "overly emotional,". "illogical" and "unscientific" (projectives are well studied and used in clinical settings).
>The demonization of tarot in my mind mostly stems from internalised misogyny and a desire on the societal level to paint anything which appeals mostly to women
Yes, absolutely. The patriarchy likes to dunk on magic future telling cards.
Yes, it does, thanks for proving my point. You just ignored everything I said about their use as projective and painted them again as magical and kooky without any counter argument.
But I don't think power structures have most of the blame for the fact that every single advocate of tarot reading I've seen until today said the cards were magical.
Carl Jung addressed the root issue -- pyschological taboos -- in his introduction to the Wilhelm translation of I Ching.
" The I Ching insists upon self-knowledge throughout. The method by which this is to be achieved is open to every kind of misuse, and is therefore not for the frivolous-minded and immature; nor is it for intellectualists and rationalists. It is appropriate only for thoughtful and reflective people who like to think about what they do and what happens to them -- a predilection not to be confused with the morbid brooding of the hypochondriac. As I have indicated above, I have no answer to the multitude of problems that arise when we seek to harmonize the oracle of the I Ching with our accepted scientific canons. But needless to say, nothing "occult" is to be inferred. My position in these matters is pragmatic, and the great disciplines that have taught me the practical usefulness of this viewpoint are psychotherapy and medical psychology. Probably in no other field do we have to reckon with so many unknown quantities, and nowhere else do we become more accustomed to adopting methods that work even though for a long time we may not know why they work. Unexpected cures may arise from questionable therapies and unexpected failures from allegedly reliable methods. In the exploration of the unconscious we come upon very strange things, from which a rationalist turns away with horror, claiming afterward that he did not see anything. The irrational fullness of life has taught me never to discard anything, even when it goes against all our theories (so short-lived at best) or otherwise admits of no immediate explanation. It is of course disquieting, and one is not certain whether the compass is pointing true or not; but security, certitude, and peace do not lead to discoveries. It is the same with this Chinese mode of divination. Clearly the method aims at self-knowledge, though at all times it has also been put to superstitious use."
By his "pragmatism", I understand something along the philosophical pragmatism of Wittgenstein and his "usage is meaning" line of thought. Jung is saying it is not clear how or why this stuff works, but subjectively a "thoughtful" and "reflective" person seems to discern meaning and gain (personal) insights through the process. In other words, a psychological phenomena.
He also touches on the point of your well aimed remark in noting "misuse". I personally think Jung is understating the dangers involved. (For relative reference, think of the not-so-hot topic of "dangers of meditation" to understand the underlying common pschological issue of probing your culturally protected taboo zones that keep you "normal"/"stable").
The fact of the matter is that occult "divination" tools are dangerous, more dangerous than even "scripture". They have been consistently proven to be culturally corrosive as they undermine rational thought and provide shelter for charlatans, undermine decision faculties of the diviner, and undermine the necessary coherence between our inner life and our outer reality. And the symbolism involved require deep study to avoid misunderstandings. People also seriously discount the inevitable impact of 'divination' on the mind of the inquirer, the careless and ignorant dabbler in occult tools. So promoting them as if they are harmless little nothings is very irresponsible. One has to be very thoughtful and reflective (to say nothing of the erudition required) to not misuse such tools. Very few people meet the required standard. I personally think it has been an error to promote esoterica to the masses. Its like giving guns and bullets to children.
> They have been consistently proven to be culturally corrosive as they undermine rational thought
Sources? Should be easy it's so consistent.
From what I understand of history this kind of fear mongering is much more harmful. It wasn't long ago that women were being burnt alive for using traditional medicines in Europe and the US.
Out of curiosity, would you say professional wrestling is culturally corrosive? I have to suspend my rational thought every time I enjoy watching that stuff.
> So promoting them as if they are harmless little nothings is very irresponsible
Has anyone done that here? They've only been defended for their therapeutic use as projectives. No one has said they're "nothings."
A responsible 'defense' would have the required surgeon general's warning on the tin. But your quick response here indicates you did not really reflect on what was said.
"defended for their therapeutic use"
Therapeutic means are to address 'ailments'. The ailments in this case are existential and psychological. Projectives are dangerous and require guided initiation. It is highly irresponsible to push these things.
Tarot Cards as self-administered "therapeutic" remedy on HN. We've been banging on the doors on paganism in the West for a few decades now. And here we are.
> A responsible 'defense' would have the required surgeon general's warning on the tin.
I can buy rorsach cards now on Amazon. There's no health warning on those. Maybe there should be but I think we can accept that most people buying them will use them responsibly. It seems very knee jerk to put a warning on every single thing that could be harmful if misused.
> Therapeutic means are to address 'ailments'. The ailments in this case are existential and psychological. Projectives are dangerous and require guided initiation
I understand the meaning of therapy and the types of ailments that can be helped by the use of projectives.
If you buy a set of tarot cards they inevitably come with usage instructions so that you can use them successfully and responsibly.
I'm not sure the danger is as great as you suggest. Have you got data showing the harm of using these cards?
> We've been banging on the doors on paganism in the West for a few decades now. And here we are.
Tarot cards have no basis in paganism, they are the creation of well educated men in the 19th century.
> But your quick response here indicates you did not really reflect on what was said.
This was uncalled for. I read your post and responded to the points you made.
> In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It's just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It's like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that's now been taken away and hidden. The graphite's not important. It's just the means of revealing their indentations. So you see, astrology's nothing to do with astronomy. It's just to do with people thinking about people.
oh lord, come on. the "demonization" of tarot in modern society has nothing to do with bigotry and everything to do with the fact that its widely understood, right or wrongly as you claim, to be a tool for fortune telling... which is absolutely a crackpot thing just like flat earth and other garbage. im glad you have found a use for it that helps you, thats a good thing, but your understanding of it as a tool in the way you describe it is not how its generally perceived, and that misconception has nothing to do with internalized misogyny.
You can find a tonne of literature on the clinical use of projective. The famous rorsach test is based on the same psychological mechanism.
In terms of logic they do actually have an attempt at systematising both a range of common emotions and a number of archetypal points along life's journey. I know that's maybe not what you meant by logic, but a system that differentiates its output based on input like "Cups, 6", "Coins, 2" etc. works for my definition of logic.
Lastly, and I know you asked in jest, but If your association between the cards and a specific ethnic group is what leads to you judging them as unscientific without first checking then there probably is a level of racism at play. That's nothing to be ashamed of, as everyone carries internalised racism (thanks society). As long as you can recognise it when it comes up in yourself like this and you do the work to combat it then you have nothing to worry about.
>You're bringing future telling into it which is something I've never mentioned or seen mentioned in the circles of the people who use them.
You keep trying to separate tarot reading as fortune telling/ entertainment and tarot reading as a legitimate tool. It may be both but you can't split the 2.
>I've only seen....
And I've only seen tarot cards used as a tool for fortune telling. Is my experience unique? Is my experience less valid than yours?
I'm not so sure about the patriarchy part, but it's certainly wrapped up in the move towards narrowly scientific thinking. Or as Nietzsche would put it, we're too Apollonian and not enough Dionysian.
FWIW I'm also fond of the Tarot, and the I Ching, and find both surprisingly insightful and useful (me of 10 years ago would not believe that I just wrote that).
You keep mentioning Rorsach tests as some kind of gold standard. Rorsach tests are purely based on pseudo-science, though. There is zero empiric / scientific evidence that they do anything useful. So yeah, tarot cards are probably on about the same level as that.
Except no one thinks that a designer handbag is objectively better at carrying things or that designer jeans objectively makes walking easier and more fun. Audiophiles keep arguing that the things they do and buy are better for objective reasons.
Had they said "I bought these expensive network cables because I like the way they look and they match my furniture" that would be an entirely different thing.
Exactly, not just "objectively better", but "objectively better in a way only other bagophiles can tell, which makes no sense to anyone else". I could see different pants designs/materials making walking better, but this would be more like "these pants are more comfortable because the cotton was spun clockwise to match your DNA".
I'm sure there are plenty of True Believers... which is why you see plenty of products, because there are plenty of Grifters out there. And I'll bet the latter are also producing lots of "content" which appears and purports to be written by True Believers.
The trick is that people really do hear differences when first listening to a new piece of audiophile gear, it's just that the difference doesn't come from the new hardware but from the very act of listening carefully to hear differences . This is a skill that can be improved with practice, it's called critical listening. When audiophiles do it by accident(or because they are told to listen for "details") they basically delude themselves into thinking the hardware really is different. Once the effect wears off and they start listening passively like normal, they go looking for the next thing to improve.
All depends. No doubt the fringe is fixating on the 0.1% that doesn't make a difference.
When it comes to hardware: if you have a great and clean signal chain, good ears, decent monitors +/ good room, good headphones, you can record and hear the difference of good gear (diminishing returns though, you are paying for throughput (channels), latency, or even just build-quality/brand (Apple esque) etc at some point).
Of course marketing adds hyperbole and takes certain aspects into woo territory. At the software level: sampling rate can (depending on programming of individual plugins) make a difference in your mixing session (you get nasty artifacts, like EQ cramping, in plugins that don't have internal over-sampling).
This is all the professional gear with a track record rather than the "prosumer" gear (maybe that's the definition of audiophile you were connotating).
Most audiophiles seem to be men in their 50s+, which makes their claims of exceptional hearing extremely dubious. Degradation of hearing with age is a virtual certainty.
If audiophiles tended to be teenagers I'd be more inclined to believe them. But old guys? Old guys with a long habit of listening to loud music? Their ears are not golden.
I’ve lost a noticeable bit of hearing, but my ability to discern different instruments is much greater than it used to be. I think practice more than offsets hearing loss up to a limit.
Yes. You still see the claim that humans can hear 20Hz-20000Hz. Well, no. We had lab equipment at school and we regularly listened to signals from test equipment - IIRC I could hear up to about 17kHz when I was 16 or 17 (when I could still hear the (European) 15625 whine from TVs). A couple of guys could hear almost up to 20kHz.
All of that was gone when we arrived in our twenties. I couldn't hear the TV anymore (younger people: That applied to analog CRT TVs back in the neolithic). I was tested in the military when I was 22. They didn't even bother testing anyone up to more than maybe 14kHz - intense volume would anyway be needed to hear that.
I can't imagine even very careful people will be able to hear a particularly wide audio range when they're 50+, not even people who walk around with ear plugs all the time for protection (some audio engineers do).
Somebody who says "good ear" can be talking about how well trained a listener is rather than the physical characteristics of their ear, similarly to how when somebody says "good eye" when you spot a bug in their code they're probably not actually implying your vision is extra sharp.
No, audiophiles are absolutely real. Look at how many of them buy vinyl records of music that was produced digitally; any sampling artifacts that might hypothetically be audible would be replicated on the vinyl. As long as the master is digital there's no way a vinyl record could possibly sound better than a lossless digital recording like FLACC or CDDA.
And then there are people who buy vinyl records of video game sound-tracks, in which case it doesn't even make sense to remove sampling artifacts since those would be present in the original game.
> As long as the master is digital there's no way a vinyl record could possibly sound better than a lossless digital recording like FLACC or CDDA
Isn't the point to actually reduce quality by using imperfect media so recording has more oldschool vibe? Kinda like all the lo-fi mixes being so popular today. At least thats what I always thought, I didn't really research that at all.
Yes, kind of.. and I do get it. Back in the eighties I used to do long drives for work, and in the noisy car environment I found that what sounded "best" was old Rolling Stones recordings played from a low-quality cassette tape. The same songs played from a record on a hi-fi system at home in a quiet environment actually sounded worse, subjectively. Strange that. But it's all about the experience.
As a vinyl enjoyer, the sound quality is absolutely not why I buy it. I also use film cameras, and image quality (meaning, definition, color accuracy, etc) is definitely not why I use it.
There definitely are those that fit your description, but they are a minority.
I think where the difference comes in with vinyl is the mastering process. CD's/Digital and Vinyl usually go through two entirely different mastering processes. This will make listening to the two sound different even though the mix is the same, kind of like listening to your favorite song at home from CD, then hearing it on the radio with a more in your face sound because of brick wall limiters in the sound chain.
I am not going to debate if one is better than the other, but they will sound different just due to mastering. So it is not a direct apples to apples comparison.
I think most people buy video game vinyl just to display them, haha.
thats not a great argument because often the master for a vinyl record is different (crucially, less hyped and compressed) to even be cuttable on vinyl. thus the final product actually can sound better in some cases (not all), not directly because of the vinyl playback but the production processes leading up to that.
Vinyl requires compression within a certain range - too little or too much is no good.
Digital allows for far higher compression - historically digital released have been compressed to hell into a "brick" with very little actual dynamic range. This is so that when they're played on radio they're going to sound louder than anything else. Vinyl doesn't allow for this same amount of compression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
Modern streaming services will recompress songs to a common standard, negating all of the loudness war stuff, but I haven't looked at new releases to see if heavy compression is still common practice on the master releases but I'd assume they still do it because practices change slowly. In that case they're just throwing away bit depth for no reason.
> Modern streaming services will recompress songs to a common standard, negating all of the loudness war stuff, but I haven't looked at new releases to see if heavy compression is still common practice on the master releases but I'd assume they still do it because practices change slowly.
I assume good mastering engineers create dedicated masters for each major streaming service because of their different requirements.
If you like the sound of a higher noise floor and less dynamic range then vinyl might sound better to you. I’m not being facetious, some people genuinely prefer the sound of records.
There is no way a vinyl can ever sound better than digital. Different and maybe more "pleasurable" (for some), but definately not better. It's more of a built in EQ profile that stems from the physical medium itself.
I built my own audiophile stereo set based on Nelson Pass' Directly Coupled B1 pre amp design, Pavel Dudek's PA03 power amp, a pair of DIY loudspeaker kits from lautsprecherbau.de, and an audiophile Rasperry Pi DAC board which I sponsored on Kickstarter running Volumio player distribution. I went even as far as using discrete OpAmps because they sounded better to me.
My pet conspiracy theory is that flat-earthers are actually a false flag operation by some 3letteragency to make actual conspiracy theorists look bad. ;)
Vs. my pet conspiracy theory is that the 3 letter agencies are all false flag operations by the kooks, to convince us "normals" that trusting government is a ridiculous idea...
It doesn't need much of a theory to me. People who don't understand the engineering involved are being taken advantage of by charlatans selling phony products with explanations that almost make sense at first glance and induce a placebo effect due to that and price (so they do "sound better"). The audiophiles (and likely some amount of sellers) naturally try to defend their purchases, but they're trying to reason based on the nonsense they were sold, and end up in a feedback loop of nonsense. People getting older and trying to reclaim their faltering hearing probably plays a part in it too.
It's people that want to spend money on their hobbies and have fun collecting "cool" gear, but end up going overboard with it.
I don't do it, but IMO it's totally fine to spent thousands on a speaker or even hundreds on a cable if it brings you joy and doesn't cause financial problems, but you don't have to justify it to anyone, even (and especially) to other audiophiles. The problem is when you somehow believe that you have to justify your purchases and come up with crazy excuses. :(
