Why do you visit audio forums?

I think that the quality or otherwise of any forum is largely determined by the people posting on it.

Zerogain has had periods where it's been very quiet. Even now, not a lot of active threads, but what it lacks in quantity of threads it makes up in quality of threads. Some very interesting ones here.

pfm - I'm taking a break from pfm at the moment for a bit of rest from the negativity and snide posters that make up an irritating but vocal minority on that forum. I've been enjoying reading Jackal's threads in the last few months. Interesting to watch his opinions and system evolving at a rapid rate.

Wigwam - great for bake-offs. Not so great for the pack of wolves mentality. There are one or two posters on wigwam that I really enjoy reading.

Hi-fi Subjectivist - a haven of calm and friendliness so far. Still in the early days for this forum. Be interesting to see if it ever grows into a more active forum...

Art of Sound. I'm frightened of joining this forum. Probably nothing to be afraid off. Also I'm not sure about this "Please introduce yourself before posting in the hi-fi sections" - just seems a bit sinister to me. 70% of threads in the Vinyl section seem to be on the Technics 1200.

Naim forum. I applied to join this forum. Never heard back from them. The only reason for joining was for expressing an alternative view to the non-amp / speakers threads. I can understand the pro-Naim bias on this forum - but the blinkered 1980's throwback opinions on turntables is laughable.

Lejonklou forum. This seems to be an expansion of the Linn forum. If anything, the posters here seem to be even more Linn fundamentalist than the Linn forum. Strange that using the Tune Method required for this forum for evaluating components that I come to completely different conclusions to every other active member there?

Audio Asylum. Good source of info on the sort of amps and speakers that I'm into from this US based forum.

Good Sound Club / Romys Cat - far too negative and opinionated.

Vinyl Engine. Great place for getting turntable owners manuals and other technical info. Nice discussion on a broad range of turntables. Seems to be a place where posters can disagree on topics without getting into personal ad hominem attacks.
 
Just checked-out HydrogenAudio

Here's rule 8 from HydrogenAudio's Terms Of Service:

8. All members that put forth a statement concerning subjective sound quality, must -- to the best of their ability -- provide objective support for their claims. Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (ABX or ABC/HR) demonstrating that the member can discern a difference perceptually, together with a test sample to allow others to reproduce their findings. Graphs, non-blind listening tests, waveform difference comparisons, and so on, are not acceptable means of providing support.
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Cuckoo!


What's ABC/HR? Is that like AC/DC?

ABC/Human Resources? What's the Presonnel department got to do with anything?


OK I'll just fill out these forms in triplicate, arrange a double blind ABX test with some associates. Not sure how I'll provide a test sample of the speaker sound that we're comparing though. Do you want me to provide a sample of my urine in this bottle? Are you taking the piss?
 
I think it should be realised that Zerogain nearly died, nearly killed of by some sick personalities posting here, by far the worst was StereoMic but some of the mods joined in. People were scared to post here because of them. Since Rob took it over it is a different place entirely and is growing out of the bad reputation it had. It is very easy for a forum to get a bad reputation in a couple of months, but takes a lot longer to climb out of it.

There is still the occasional person who comes here wanting to make personal attacks on other members but Rob handles it very well, I must say a lot better than he used to handle it at PFM ;) :p
 
Thanks.

Don't take these places anything like as seriously these days, which helps.

PFM is a lot bigger in terms of active members and so trying to keep everyone happy can be difficult if the issue isn't black and white. Do the wrong thing on a busy forum and you don't just upset and possibly lose one member, you can lose a whole group.
They don't always have an easy job over there.

I think this place was as the point where the undertaker had been summoned, but we've now passed through intensive care and find ourselves on the recovery ward.
Not there yet.

We get some great long threads that really motor and they wander off all over the place which is great. We also see lots of first timers asking for advice which is encouraging.
We just need to up the number of active threads a little.
It isn't a race to get to some pre defined level of activity but a little more activity would be good IMO.
 
pink fish is where I post most often. It's a good mix of opinions and people. I like pleasant irreverence and in my view pink fish does that the best. The off-topic, photography and music rooms are generally well worth your time. The audio room is more hit and miss.

zerogain gets the balance of my posts, which admittedly ain't that many. I'm inching toward being more objective and this forum is a good place to cut my less foo-ey baby teeth.

I posted on HDDA for a few months, but it never felt comfortable. I felt I was tolerated as opposed to welcome. I don't think they worship original Star Trek, the heathens, so it's just as well.

Joe
 
RobHolt said:
I think this place was as the point where the undertaker had been summoned, but we've now passed through intensive care and find ourselves on the recovery ward.
Not there yet.
Click to expand...

Now being diagnosed by Gregory House aka Richard Dunn!

For what it's worth I kinda like the Tos 8 rule at Hydrogen, it circumvents an awful lot of mumbo-jumbo.
 
lindsayt said:
Here's rule 8 from HydrogenAudio's Terms Of Service:

Cuckoo!
Click to expand...
Far from it. It works very well in massively reducing the number of posts from those that believe in audiophile magic and helping promote fact based rather than opinion based discussions. Of course, this is not what most audiophiles want to do making it somewhat unusual forum.
 
h.g. said:
Far from it. It works very well in massively reducing the number of posts from those that believe in audiophile magic and helping promote fact based rather than opinion based discussions. Of course, this is not what most audiophiles want to do making it somewhat unusual forum.
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Quite daft!

What do people who own hi-fi use to enjoy it, their feet - their noses - no, believe it or not it is their ears, so why the hell shouldn't they describe what their ears hear without having to buy multi thousands of pounds worth of test gear, anechoic chambers, and computer simulation to try to prove it.

These people just seem to enjoy their ego centric babble firmly locked up an objective cul-de-sac, astonishing! Now if some of them are audio designers and they just want to talk to each other I could partially understand it, but for the normal end user it is complete gobble-de-gook.
 
Been away in Oz for a couple of weeks (had a fabulous time, thanks). Free wireless access in most places, and having taken a netbook with me, I picked up my emails, but tried to have a holiday from forums. Got back yesterday and idly looked at 2 weeks of activity on the various sites, and then wondered why I do it: what insights - if any - am I looking for?

The truth is, I go online to chat with people I've met (and a lot i haven't) about stuff that my friends aren't remotely interested in. Probably 5% of the people I know well have what you'd call hifi (as opposed to ipod docks, etc), and very few are particularly interested in talking about sound quality, or even music in general. Its not a major part of their lives, it just makes a nice noise in the background. I can live with that - we have many other things in common - but sometimes I just want to chew the fat with people about the pleasure that music, both live and recorded, brings to us. That's why I use forums.

Some of you make me laugh a lot too - not always intentionally :)
 
> Quite daft!

No it is not. People think about things in different ways. You may not want to take a cold rational value-for-money type approach to home audio equipment but quite a few people do.

> What do people who own hi-fi use to enjoy it, their feet - their noses - no, believe it or not it is
> their ears, so why the hell shouldn't they describe what their ears

You are confusing what you perceive with yours ears with what the audio hardware is doing to the soundfield. A rational approach would not do this.

> hear without having to buy multi thousands of pounds worth of test gear, anechoic chambers, and
> computer simulation to try to prove it.

It is quite extraordinary what one can now do with a few hundred pounds worth of PC based audio test hardware and software.

> These people just seem to enjoy their ego centric babble firmly locked up an objective cul-de-sac,
> astonishing!

A scientific approach to thinking is far from a cul-de-sac. It is what is responsible for your current state of comfort compared to a few hundred years ago. The belief in magic that has grown over the past few decades has created a lot of structural problems which will inevitably drive things back the other way when they bite in the near future.

> Now if some of them are audio designers and they just want to talk to each other I could partially
> understand it, but for the normal end user it is complete gobble-de-gook.

Far from it. It depends how the normal end user thinks and what they wants for their money.
 
One of the main reasons I visit these places is to find new music, only the other day I was made aware of a couple of superb EMI box sets by a wise man from the north!
 
Most of the posts on Hydrogen Audio seemed to be related to digital sources and digital file formats.

I think their Rule 8 is cuckoo, because before I can make a post that won't be sent straight to their bin I have to go to the effort of aranging an ABX or ABC/HR (whatever that is?) test. Then I have to provide a test sample??

WTF? What if I'm comparing speakers? Do I need to make some sort of high quality stereo microphone recording?


Talk about completely paranoid.

I have no wish to join a forum where my integrity is not trusted to this extent. Where my judgement is under suspicion from the word go. Where I'm supposed to jump through hoops before I can say anything. Hydrogen Audio is far too much like hard work.


Hydrogen Audio AKA the Viz Bottom Inspectors.
 
> I think their Rule 8 is cuckoo, because before I can make a post...

I think you may have missed the point. They don't want posts from people like you. It is exactly the same as audiophile cable forums having rules that only those that believe in cables can post because nobody there wants to bang on about blind tests.

> Talk about completely paranoid.

It is not the slightest bit paranoid. It is simply a rule to achieve an end that you do not like/agree with.
 
lindsayt said:
Most of the posts on Hydrogen Audio seemed to be related to digital sources and digital file formats.

I think their Rule 8 is cuckoo, because before I can make a post that won't be sent straight to their bin I have to go to the effort of aranging an ABX or ABC/HR (whatever that is?) test. Then I have to provide a test sample??
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It's clearly explained, you just didn't look.

lindsayt said:
WTF? What if I'm comparing speakers? Do I need to make some sort of high quality stereo microphone recording?
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What makes you think a verbal description of said speakers would be at all helpful?

lindsayt said:
Talk about completely paranoid.

I have no wish to join a forum where my integrity is not trusted to this extent. Where my judgement is under suspicion from the word go. Where I'm supposed to jump through hoops before I can say anything. Hydrogen Audio is far too much like hard work.


Hydrogen Audio AKA the Viz Bottom Inspectors.
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It has nothing to do with integrity, just the flaws in our powers of perception.
 
Basil said:
It's clearly explained, you just didn't look.



What makes you think a verbal description of said speakers would be at all helpful?



It has nothing to do with integrity, just the flaws in our powers of perception.
Click to expand...

Every component I'm listening to now was bought on the basis of verbal descriptions made by other people on the Internet.

Their descriptions were very helpful to me. I'm very glad that I was able to read them.

None of the descriptions were based on ABX tests. And it's highly likely that most of the posters wouldn't have bothered writing anything if they had been forced to do an ABX test supported by samples.
 
Basil said:
It's clearly explained, you just didn't look.
What makes you think a verbal description of said speakers would be at all helpful?
It has nothing to do with integrity, just the flaws in our powers of perception.
Click to expand...

There are no flaws in our powers of perception, there is just what we have *naturally* been designed to do, confront life with a full set of faculties. Remove one and you restrict the definition of the others. That is why *nature* uses this ability to break perception in its designs of predators. We learn from experience, including losing a sense, but why inflict it by choice unless you have a motive to confuse.

The thing about the mouth shape and the sound is just plain bloody daft, where does this happen naturally, and for me it just proves how confused you can get when you senses are messed with, as in blind testing.

Confusion = no difference.

Also to address TonyL insults and crap, people who promote subjective choice don't necessarily tell you what to choose so what is their advantage, huh! I have never told anyone in any post where I query the concept of blind testing or use sighted testing to convince people to buy NVA. The *ONLY* thing I promote is to choose by using your ears in your system, with your music, in your room, in your chair, in your time etc with your bloody eyes open and knowing what you are listening to as you would using your system normally. That is win win as it results in the best *for them* not for the organiser of the stupid bleedin' test.

You all seem to think this is something new, this crap argument has been going on for 40 years to my knowledge, sometimes it swing to the blind until people realise what a complete waste of time it is and just a blind cul-de-sac in the pursuit of knowledge. First time around in the 70's like so many of you I supported the concept 'till I realised what a waste of time it was. Even so I participated in it in the 90's and had fun taking the piss for about ten years at organised blind tests out of people who found they had gone blind (in the ears).

This concept harms choice, harms beginners especially, harms experienced people into believing there is no difference, ruins their pleasure in the hobby as there can be no progress without difference, so we then are just dead and might as well all buy Bose wave radios. Blind testing proves nothing apart from that you are blind in more ways than one.
 
Richard Dunn said:
Also to address TonyL insults and crap, people who promote subjective choice don't necessarily tell you what to choose so what is their advantage, huh! I have never told anyone in any post where I query the concept of blind testing or use sighted testing to convince people to buy NVA.
Click to expand...

Maybe not directly, but almost every post you make on the internet promotes your ideology and belief-set, and does so in remarkably absolutist terms, e.g. a hatred of SUTs, a love of Perspex cases / non-ferrous construction, a hatred of "complex" crossovers, a disregard of flat responses in speakers etc etc etc - it runs through absolutely everything you write along with your utter scorn (e.g. "insults and crap" above) for those who in anyway disagree with you or have differing experience. I'd far prefer to dem any such controversial product blind so I hadn't any bias, pro or con, clouding my judgement - I'd like to hear the product alone without the rhetoric.

Tony.
 
Just because people listen blind that doesn't in any way confuse things.

If two people are having a conversation behind me I can clearly hear vocal differences, tell if one has a cold, is using slightly different intonation etc, and also have enough information to make a judgment call on how they might be feeling. Nothing is masked because they are out of view - in fact you can argue the opposite.

You can (well i can) induce a false reaction from people by showing them what they they think they are going to hear. To deny that this effect exists is like saying that we don't breathe air or that the moon is made from cheese. It has been proven countless times.

Those who argue against it don't want it to be true.
 

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