| Re: Audio myths [message #85771 is a reply to message #85763] |
Thu, 03 August 2017 10:00   |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18751
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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I've seen a lot of audiophile myths. One thing covers them all, and that's a subjective evaluation. If someone says something but cannot validate or quantify it with measurable, objective data, then it's just a guess, and often times, a wrong one.
It's not just in audio either. I find this to be true of most things. I think it's largely because we have to make decisions on limited data, so we sort of "fill in the blanks" on everything we don't know. We're just wired that way. But see - even that is me "filling in the blanks" with my own little hypothesis. 
And since I'm hypothesizing, I'll go further. I think once we've drawn a conclusion - even if it's not based on objective data - we tend to make that our new truth. After a while, we forget what came about to get us to that conclusion, so we can think it's reliable, like came from a reliable source or whatever. We can be absolutely convinced that we read or heard something from a reliable source, when in fact, we just made it up, thinking it "fit the facts." Add some ego, not wanting to be wrong, and we can get some pretty useless ideas totally entrenched. We'll aggressively argue to defend those ideas even against objective data that proves otherwise.
So I know that goes beyond the casual discussion of audiophile myths. But it is something I think explains why people can get (sometimes nonsense) ideas stuck in their head, and have certainty that they're right. I've seen it in a lot of areas, some technical, some not.
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