New forum ethos - what exactly is it?

[RobHolt]

But isn't this precisely what's been happening here for the past twelve months or so?
I don't see a tidal wave of objectivists signing up which probably indicates the model as pursued of late isn't attractive enough.
Endless repeats of objectivist pulpit thumping gets a tad boring pretty quickly to be honest.
Though I can see the attraction of evangelical zeal, an empty church ain't worth a sh*t.

So what is the answer?

From where I'm sitting, all bases are more than amply covered out there in forum land.
That in itself, ie the sheer number of forums means the church is never, at this stage in the game, going to be full. The best you can do is aim for a reasonable Sunday congregation (which we've got - almost)

 

[UK Duty Paid]

But isn't this precisely what's been happening here for the past twelve months or so?
I don't see a tidal wave of objectivists signing up which probably indicates the model as pursued of late isn't attractive enough.
Endless repeats of objectivist pulpit thumping gets a tad boring pretty quickly to be honest.
Though I can see the attraction of evangelical zeal, an empty church ain't worth a sh*t.

.

From my POV The church analogy doesn't sit right here .. what with me being an aethist & supporter of anyone who questions blind faith .. perhaps its taking it a bit far to carry it into HiFi, but then sometimes I wonder if a good dose of secularism is what is really needed.

 

[RobHolt]

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From my POV The church analogy doesn't sit right here .. what with me being an aethist & supporter of anyone who questions blind faith .. perhaps its taking it a bit far to carry it into HiFi, but then sometimes I wonder if a good dose of secularism is what is really needed.

Removing blind faith from audio - that'll be the day!

If only I had a Tardis and could hop back to the 1950s and 60s

 

[sq225917]

and bring back lots of valve amps with skewed frequency responses and audible distortion spectra? ;-)

I'll have a couple of big Leaks and a cart load of grease bearing 301's please Rob.

 

[RobHolt]

and bring back lots of valve amps with skewed frequency responses and audible distortion spectra? ;-)

I'll have a couple of big Leaks and a cart load of grease bearing 301's please Rob.

The big difference between then and now is that there was good understanding and correlation between those measured 'irregularities' and what was heard.
No mystery - that came later with the invention of pure subjective reviewing.

Makes interesting reading to look at a Martin Colloms group amplifier test from 1980 - complete with a whole raft of technical testing and blind listening tests and find that a panel of listeners have difficulty telling a Quad from an Exposure from a NAD3020 from a Pioneer and a few others.

Jump forward 30 years and the testing has largely gone out of the window, we have sighted listening sessions and suddenly everything sounds very different.

Different process - different outcomes - different audience.

 

[cooky1257]

So what is the answer?

See my earlier post re data mining.
You are I think mistaken in searching for a definitive usp rather you need to be searching for a brand ID, one that encompasses more than this recipe for interminable yah-boo squabbles. The audio downloads such as the needle drops are much more interesting when conducted without an agenda but rather open enthusiast participatory enjoyment along the lines of the TT comparisons a while ago.
This forum has innumerable strengths/points of contact for the unbaptised who see no attraction in the sub/ob dichotomy but gain great benefit from precisely those areas that avoid them.If arguments are responsible for the collapse of ZG then setting out to invite more is a mistake imo.

 

[RobHolt]

See my earlier post re data mining.
You are I think mistaken in searching for a definitive usp rather you need to be searching for a brand ID, one that encompasses more than this recipe for interminable yah-boo squabbles. The audio downloads such as the needle drops are much more interesting when conducted without an agenda but rather open enthusiast participatory enjoyment along the lines of the TT comparisons a while ago.
This forum has innumerable strengths/points of contact for the unbaptised who see no attraction in the sub/ob dichotomy but gain great benefit from precisely those areas that avoid them.If arguments are responsible for the collapse of ZG then setting out to invite more is a mistake imo.

Data mining would indicate that people like both the argumentative and circular threads, such as those on cables (despite what we might like to think), and the active testing such as the lossy/lossless comparisons and the investigative stuff - so long as there isn't thread overload. Running several threads requiring file downloads puts people off so it has to be managed.
To me that indicates that the direction we've been following is broadly correct - we are busier and more active than a years ago but the process is slow. This is about tweaking what we have and not starting over. We have started over.

I don't think arguments killed or will kill the forum, to my mind that is healthy so long as it remains good natured. We had one or two posters a few years ago being pretty abusive and gratuitously confrontational and that really did some damage. The latter is a moderation issue and should be pretty easy to deal with, though we don't currently have such problems IMO.

At the end of the day someone (or team) has to make a call and run with it. That's what we did about a year ago with a completely dead forum. We aren't going to please everyone - so perhaps in response to the OP's question we should have just given a direct answer, backed as you say by the data. We have actually been through all of this before and too much navel gazing won't be productive.

 

[Dave Simpson]

As a subjectivist, I'm not an engineering student (or interested in becoming one) and if I post an adjustment or tweak that can't be measured, what should I expect as an acceptable reaction from the community including the moderators if my claim can't be verified?

If it's ridicule, I (and others) won't likely be posting much of anything again. If you want activity beyond discussing things which can only be measured or verified you might want to consider this before hanging the 'subjectivists are welcome' sign. (Why stress your mods and lose ground again when folks find the forum isn't what they were led to believe? )



regards,

dave

 

[cooky1257]

Data mining would indicate that people like both the argumentative and circular threads, such as those on cables (despite what we might like to think), and the active testing such as the lossy/lossless comparisons and the investigative stuff - so long as there isn't thread overload. Running several threads requiring file downloads puts people off so it has to be managed.
To me that indicates that the direction we've been following is broadly correct - we are busier and more active than a years ago but the process is slow. This is about tweaking what we have and not starting over. We have started over.

I don't think arguments killed or will kill the forum, to my mind that is healthy so long as it remains good natured. We had one or two posters a few years ago being pretty abusive and gratuitously confrontational and that really did some damage. The latter is a moderation issue and should be pretty easy to deal with, though we don't currently have such problems IMO.

At the end of the day someone (or team) has to make a call and run with it. That's what we did about a year ago with a completely dead forum. We aren't going to please everyone - so perhaps in response to the OP's question we should have just given a direct answer, backed as you say by the data. We have actually been through all of this before and too much navel gazing won't be productive.

It appears I misread the OP.
I thought it was an invitation for suggestions to help increase members and traffic-I didn't realise this was covered ages ago.
I think you should re look at your assessment of data, thread popularity etc-(dismissing it as navel gazing isn't very community spirited of you either)-call yourself an objectivist?.

 

[larkrise]

Do you think this is the right moment to re-introduce the virtues of the Nespa Pro CD treatment into ZG Forum discussion?

 

[Fnuckle]

You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

There's an argument that subjectivism has helped delay the end of hi-fi.

Specialist manufacturers from the Workshop of the World couldn't compete with products from the then-Sweatshop of the World. Having seen what happened to the TV, camera and motorcycle specialists when going up against the Japanese brands, the specialist hi-fi brands shifted the goalposts. Magazines and dealers were keen to follow because the big Japanese brands weren't interested in supporting them where the specialists were. So, they moved from a purely objective set of benchmarks to a more descriptive review scheme, aided by an increasingly unsophisticated and non-technical market.

What no-one noticed is that the bigger Japanese brands actually won the war, even if the specialists won some of the battles. The natural progression of hi-fi should be the tiny iPod dock-style systems you find in Currys today, because that's the ultimate expression of a measurement-led big-business audio product.

I suspect the decadence in specialist audio today is a reflection of losing that war. It's playing to the old soldiers who can't quite understand why they lost.

 

[ditton]

... the invention of pure subjective reviewing.

Makes interesting reading to look at a Martin Colloms group amplifier test from 1980 - complete with a whole raft of technical testing and blind listening tests and find that a panel of listeners have difficulty telling a Quad from an Exposure from a NAD3020 from a Pioneer and a few others.

Jump forward 30 years and the testing has largely gone out of the window, we have sighted listening sessions and suddenly everything sounds very different.

Different process - different outcomes - different audience.

good observation.

even the best ears hear what they wish to hear

 

[Dev]

Do you think this is the right moment to re-introduce the virtues of the Nespa Pro CD treatment into ZG Forum discussion?

As good as any I'd say.

 

[RobHolt]

Agreed Dev. Nothing is off limits.
The only difference between discussing it here and some other places are the nature of questions asked regarding any findings. That is healthy, surely?

 

[RobHolt]

You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

There's an argument that subjectivism has helped delay the end of hi-fi.

Specialist manufacturers from the Workshop of the World couldn't compete with products from the then-Sweatshop of the World. Having seen what happened to the TV, camera and motorcycle specialists when going up against the Japanese brands, the specialist hi-fi brands shifted the goalposts. Magazines and dealers were keen to follow because the big Japanese brands weren't interested in supporting them where the specialists were. So, they moved from a purely objective set of benchmarks to a more descriptive review scheme, aided by an increasingly unsophisticated and non-technical market.

What no-one noticed is that the bigger Japanese brands actually won the war, even if the specialists won some of the battles. The natural progression of hi-fi should be the tiny iPod dock-style systems you find in Currys today, because that's the ultimate expression of a measurement-led big-business audio product.

I suspect the decadence in specialist audio today is a reflection of losing that war. It's playing to the old soldiers who can't quite understand why they lost.

Very well put and hard to argue against the gist of that.

Important to know our place and where we fit within the much wider AV industry. Expectations for a (very) minority interest forum need to be scaled accordingly.

 

[h.g.]

There is certainly no subjectivist bashing here.

Have you asked some subjectivists?

Telling an audiophile-subjectivist they are wrong and presenting information which they cannot argue against in a rational manner is likely to be perceived as attack on them. Audiophiles believe they are right, have experiences that they know make them right and have confirmation from others that they are right. Curiously, I have found that audiophile-objectivists tend to react emotionally just like audiophile-subjectivists when the idea that their beliefs should be adopted by audiophile-subjectivists is challenged by asking for justification.

Intelligent rational people are quite happy to have their beliefs challenged or shown they are wrong because it is one of the main ways of increasing their knowledge and understanding. When challenged they tend to respond by giving the basis for why they consider something to be true and asking why it is false. The challenger then gives their basis for why it is false and a reasoned debate can proceed. It works because both have a shared pyramid of things they agree are true and are debating the truthfulness or otherwise of the top layer and its supports. I have never seen such a debate on an audiophile forum between and audiophile-subjectivist and an audiophile-objectivist.

On the point of where objectivism fits within the overall audiophile 'scene' - I'd agree it represents a minority view but that doesn't make it wrong, or mean that it shouldn't be represented, or that the balance cannot change. It has previously - it wasn't always this way

Setting aside the question of what objectivism means (your spell checker is likely to have underlined it) why did home audio change so markedly in the late 70s driving off those with a technical interest? And, perhaps the key question for those with an audiophile-objectivist viewpoint, was it on balance a good thing or a bad thing for home audio as a hobby/industry in the UK?

 

[h.g.]

From where I'm sitting, all bases are more than amply covered out there in forum land.

I would not agree. I have a strong interest in sound, quite a strong in interest in the mechanical and electromechanical side, a minor interest in the electronic side and a modest but growing interest in the people side. My interests are poorly served by existing forums and, in turn, my posts seem to hold little interest to most other posters on the forums.

 

[RobHolt]

It appears I misread the OP.
I thought it was an invitation for suggestions to help increase members and traffic-I didn't realise this was covered ages ago.
I think you should re look at your assessment of data, thread popularity etc-(dismissing it as navel gazing isn't very community spirited of you either)-call yourself an objectivist?.

How many times do we go through these processes though?
ISTM that forums are set up for a reason, and while discussions on how to improve them are fine - we've had some good ones and they are being seriously considered - we aren't looking at starting over again with a fresh page. That's what I mean by navel gazing.

We have active threads, actually its been quite lively over recent days and we are in better shape than a year ago. We just need some tweaking.

We've got pfm, WW, AoS, Audio Talk, WD, Hydrogen etc. I can see no point trying to duplicate what they are doing. We simply aren't going to have 40+ active threads every day and this process won't give us that.

 

[Labarum]

What no-one noticed is that the bigger Japanese brands actually won the war, even if the specialists won some of the battles. The natural progression of hi-fi should be the tiny iPod dock-style systems you find in Currys today, because that's the ultimate expression of a measurement-led big-business audio product.

Except that none of these big boys has produced domestically acceptable quality loudspeakers - active or passive.

The final transducer is where the biggest difference can be made.

 

[RobHolt]

Have you asked some subjectivists?

Telling an audiophile-subjectivist they are wrong and presenting information which they cannot argue against in a rational manner is likely to be perceived as attack on them. Audiophiles believe they are right, have experiences that they know make them right and have confirmation from others that they are right. Curiously, I have found that audiophile-objectivists tend to react emotionally just like audiophile-subjectivists when the idea that their beliefs should be adopted by audiophile-subjectivists is challenged by asking for justification.

Intelligent rational people are quite happy to have their beliefs challenged or shown they are wrong because it is one of the main ways of increasing their knowledge and understanding. When challenged they tend to respond by giving the basis for why they consider something to be true and asking why it is false. The challenger then gives their basis for why it is false and a reasoned debate can proceed. It works because both have a shared pyramid of things they agree are true and are debating the truthfulness or otherwise of the top layer and its supports. I have never seen such a debate on an audiophile forum between and audiophile-subjectivist and an audiophile-objectivist.



Setting aside the question of what objectivism means (your spell checker is likely to have underlined it) why did home audio change so markedly in the late 70s driving off those with a technical interest? And, perhaps the key question for those with an audiophile-objectivist viewpoint, was it on balance a good thing or a bad thing for home audio as a hobby/industry in the UK?

Very good points, but we cannot go through life treading on egg shells, holding off any challenge to what others might believe for fear of upsetting them.
I'm all for the type of discussion you suggest and would strongly encourage you to start a thread to explore that and the other topics you raise. I do however know from many years forum experience and moderating on one of the UKs largest that keeping such discussions both civil and informative is a huge ask.
Such discussions do interest me, partly because as I've tried to explain many times, objectivism and subjectivism need are complimentary - they just slot into different parts of the process IMO. That clearly doesn't stop some applying the 'extremist' label and you'll discover attempts to derail any thread originate from that quarter. But please do it - get a thread going as it really deserves a grown-up discussion.

The big change in the 70s had several reasons IMO, not least the much larger market for specialist home audio and therefore the budgets to do extensive technical testing and DBT.
Take that away and something needs to be substituted to fill the void - others in the trade here have confirmed that subjective reviewing is far less expensive. Man sits at home with amps, listens and writes a few pages