Audiophile 101 – The Science

We all learned in school about how, as we came out of the middle ages, instead of using superstition or religion to explain things that were happening all around us, we applied the Scientific Method:

Step 1. Observe what is going on

Step 2. Hypothesize why and how

Step 3. Come up with an experiment to test the hypothesis

Step 4. Perform the experiment to either prove or disprove the hypothesis.

Unfotunately, most people start and stop at step 2 when they hear what audiophiles do with their systems.

Everybody with a stereo system, PhD’s, Physicists, and other people who should know better rely on extrapolating from sketchy knowledge about the domain of psychoacoustics to describe why the published observations of repeatable experiments simply could not have been observed.

Put simply, they do not understand something, so they insist on shouting, pointing to their credentials, that it simply cannot happen, because THEY do not understand it.

Pushed further, their argument relies on the assumption that the scientific community, this year, now knows everything about acoustics and its affect on the human mind – that nothing exists beyond what science knows now, and, specifically, beyond what these people learned when they went to school.

Let me tell you something about scientists, PhDs, and what have you. We have worked with some of the smartest people in the country. People who do not have to tell everyone that they are PhDs, because that was so long ago in their career, and they have progessed so far beyond it, that it is like us telling people that we graduated from 1st grade.

These people, like Lawyers, Doctors, Plumbers, and Audiophiles, are just people. There are the ones who know what they are doing, …and then you got the others. People are smart in different ways. Don’t be intimidated by people who thrust their credentials in your face – you are just as smart as they are. You can perform experiements, gather results, speculate on what will happen next, and perform another experiment.

We all do it almost every day when we try out new cables, put them in different places in the system, try them in different directions, put them on break-in decices, or suspend them in air.

The only difference between an audiophile and a physicist is that we do not have adequate measuring devices. None have been built yet. We only have our ears. Perhaps if we had billion dollar budgets we could build some darn cool stuff. But we don’t.

But someday our measuring devices will improve, and we will be able to measure dynamic response continuously across input frequencies and magnitudes. We will be able to measure the impact of frequencies above 20K Hz on the frequencies below 20K Hz. And on and on.

But, more than scientists, audiophiles who put together high-end audio systems are engineers. There is the level of craftsmanship , and artistic flair that comes into play with engineering.

Bridges not only have a measurable function, they can be beautiful, or impressive. Or ugly and harsh, and unpleasant. Similarly with software and other engineering disciplines, there are humans you want to be able to enjoy the thing after it is built.

So, next time you read some guy pontificate that all cables sound the same, or some such nonsense, just realize that all young professions go through this period of dissrespect, from the lay person and intelligencia both.

But, eventually, over time, respect will come.