How much does it cost to be an audiophile?

I notice the aural qualities of every room I enter; when I'm in a small space with hard walls, I hum a bit to identify the pitch that will make the room resonate. (I'll bet some with perfect pitch could measure the space between two walls quite accurately with their eyes closed by learning the wave sizes...).

I notice when someone's speech or laugh in my house causes sympathetic vibrations on the strings of my acoustic bass guitar in the corner. Or on the metal cover of the radiator.

I've spent decades learning to produce sound, from various instruments including the built-in ones (like whistling, body percussion, various forms of vocal music including Tuuvan throat singing), to making music from objects never intended to be instruments. When I listen to others making music I pick it apart in my head.

There are lots of people with better-trained ears than I have, who make better music as well -- so moving on: how much money have I spent on audio reproduction equipment?

Probably less than $500 in my lifetime.

The music I'm listening to the most right now are performances of the Brandenburg Concertos, from YouTube, played from a Macbook Air speaker in another room, while I march up and down the stairs with a baby over my shoulder.

I like the way it echoes up the narrow stairs, and how there's one spot partway up that's more resonant than anywhere else. I can't hear subtle details -- so what? I know what that sounds like already; my brain can fill in the missing bits. And there's no possible playback that can reproduce actually performing music -- imagine tje cello vibrating against your body and filling your ears, the thrumming pushback of the bow against your hand -- and these are the things worth having in your head when you listen to someone more accomplished playing a piece.

I'll probably get a decent set of speakers someday (though I can't imagine paying more than I'd pay for an actual well-made instrument), but any playback is unavoidably a shadow of the actual performance; I can't imagine caring deeply about getting a perfectly crisp shadow (as long as I get a reasonably clear one) when I'm just using it to imagine the real thing anyway.

That's a pretty broad generalization about a large group of people. Do you have any facts to back it up?

A review of audiophile SATA cables (yes, the digital connectors that let your hard drives talk to your computer) quickly became infamous:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/dont-buy-into-the-expensi...

I can't find the original, because the author took it down. Not because he realized he was wrong, but because he was getting too much hate mail. In a followup post (now also unavailable, for some reason), he completely stood by his original conclusion:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/that-sata-cable-saga-the-...

Please read the quotes from the original post, they are absolutely priceless.

Here is a similarly hilarious review of a high-end audiophile USB cable:

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/entreq/usb.html

A choice quote:

"As in, demonstrably more refinement in the upper ranges; more extended harmonics; better separation and superior articulation across the range. The generic cable sounded warmer, fuzzier, less distinct - actually blurry. The biggest differentiator was arguably the additional information above the upper midrange."

(That's from page 2, which is accessed by a not-entirely-obvious "next" link at the bottom.)

No, I didn't make that up. This reviewer is reporting substantially better audio from using a high-end USB cable. You know, a digital connector, where data either arrives or it doesn't. And he's not reporting that the cheap cable loses any data, because that would show up as clicks, pops, static, or worse. No, he's reporting that the cheap cable is "fuzzier", and the expensive one shows "more refinement". From a digital cable.

I have no doubt that there are people out there who actually understand audio equipment and spend good money on stuff that actually makes a difference. However, I doubt most of them will self-describe as "audiophiles", because that word has been largely co-opted by a crowd that operates on the same level as homeopaths and palm readers.

If anybody can reliably distinguish the expensive SATA cable from a regular one in a proper blind test, then I will cheerfully retract all of the above.

You've shown two anecdotes of audiophile reviewers making claims that a high-end digital cable improves audio quality. We both know that those claims are bunk. But picking a couple of anecdotes doesn't qualify as conclusive evidence. For example, I could find a few scientists that claim that global warming isn't real. But those scientists have a dissenting opinion from the rest of the scientific community on global warming. Hence, the anecdotes don't indicate the overall trend.

Every field has its share quacks. Showing me a couple anecdotes doesn't convince me that an entire field is filled with quacks.

> If anybody can reliably distinguish the expensive SATA cable from a regular one in a proper blind test, then I will cheerfully retract all of the above.

I appreciate that you're approaching this with skepticism. I think that's the right approach. I highly doubt that anyone will ever be able to distinguish between SATA cables in a blind study, so I think our conclusions about digital signal cables will hold.

The lack of skepticism on the part of the reviewers is the real problem we're seeing here. This quote from your second ZDNet link is telling:

I know full well that it is ‘scientifically' not possible for a data cable to exert such influence but I know what we heard and hoped that maybe someone might be able to throw some light on what might be going on.

I wouldn't be surprised the reviewer really did hear a difference, but it was probably in his head. (Even though he admits that he knows its impossible.) Enjoying music is a psychological process, which makes it even more important to do double-blind tests when doing a comparison in order to remove expectation bias.

This problem, I admit, is prevalent among hi-fi reviews. I've read a lot of reviews of different stereo equipment and not once seen a reviewer use a double-blind test. I've heard that a lot of times, reviewers have a financial incentive to post glowing reviews. I don't know how true that is. If it is true, that will probably make it harder to get reviewers to adopt double-blind testing. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes (ZDNet author) should be commended for taking Malcolm Steward (hi-fi blogger) to task over his SATA cable reviews. I'd love to see hi-fi reviewers take a more scientific approach.

However, it does not follow that all audiophiles are incapable of discerning the differences in equipment. First of all, the evidence we've looked at so far only concerns reviewers. We haven't looked at hobbyists. Do hobbyists accept everything that the reviewers write? It's one thing for a reviewer to write a glowing review for a new product (especially when the manufacture pays a lot of money for ads in their magazine). It's quite another for someone to actually spend hard-earned cash on that new product. Lastly, we've only discussed digital cables so far. Which isn't really fair, because that's not a component that can make a difference. What about DACs, amplifiers, and speakers? Do you honestly think that audiophiles can't tell the difference between a good speaker and a budget speaker? Even better, do you have any evidence that that's true?

I honestly don't know the answers to these questions. If I was a betting man, I would bet that a lot of people can tell the difference between cheap and mid-range, but I have no clue about mid-range and high-end. (Say, for example, $30 headphones from Best Buy versus $300 Sennheissers versus $3000 planar magnetic headphones.) So it's also going to depend on how we define "audiophile equipment" versus "mundane equipment." Are we comparing the $3000 headphones to the $300 ones or the $300 pair to the $30 pair? I suspect it will make a difference which ones we decide to compare.

My point in all of this is that more evidence is needed to substantiate a claim as large as, "not even audiophiles can distinguish much audiophile equipment from more mundane equipment in a blind test." Just like you're demanding a double-blind test for the reviewers to prove a difference in cables, I'm demanding a more representative sample of evidence from you to substantiate your claim that an entire group of people can't distinguish between two classes of equipment.

In case you're wondering why this matters so much to me, it's because of two reasons. (1) Generalizations about groups of people are the root of prejudice. (2) I want to build a better stereo system for myself. If there's a categorical bias within the audiophile community, knowing the details of that bias (e.g., at what price point does the bias start to outweigh the actual differences in equipment) could significantly reduce the solution-space that I have to search within. Telling me that some people believe that there's a difference in digital signal cables doesn't help. I already know that. And I already know that that's bunk.