John Darko
1. Nobody can hear a difference between lossy and lossless
Why do we wish it to be true? Because we are someone who listens to lossy audio via Spotify or YouTube Music and we don’t want to switch to a (possibly) more expensive streaming service with a different user interface.
Some people can hear the (admittedly small) audible difference between lossy and lossless audio, while others cannot. But it’s not ‘nobody’.
2. Furniture, bookshelves and rugs are as effective at taming midrange and high-frequency reverb as ‘proper’ acoustic panels
Why do we wish it to be true? Our significant other won’t let us acoustically treat the living room. Or we can’t afford to. Or our rental contract says “no”.
‘Proper’ acoustic panels have predetermined and predictable behaviours. Their absorption coefficients and dispersive properties are known. Unlike everyday furniture, they are not designed to be sat on or used as storage containers. Adding furniture to an empty room will make a small improvement to its reverberant behaviour, but the improvement won’t be in the same league as fitting ‘proper’ acoustic panels to the walls. And it won’t be predictable. No mainstream furniture manufacturer provides a graph showing the absorption coefficient at various frequencies of its sofas or tables. Some furniture can make a room sound worse. And if we insist that the floor needs a rug because it’s a highly reflective surface then so does the ceiling. Alas, the average rug’s absorption coefficient only kicks into gear at 5 kHz. A rug should be several centimetres thick to be effective at absorbing lower frequencies; hardly practical for floors that need to be walked on. Which means – surprise! – we can do more to improve our room’s acoustic behaviour by treating the ceiling instead.
3. The smaller audible differences between hi-fi products can be demonstrated in a YouTube video
Why do we wish it to be true? Auditioning hifi gear is a pain. We have to stand up, leave the house, drive to the hifi store and interact with the store staff. Imagine being able to skip all that hassle and audition gear from the comfort of our living room without actually having any new gear in our living room. It’s the ultimate shortcut in an age of shortcut culture.
It might be possible in a YouTube video to show how one speaker delivers more bass than another or that one is brighter than the other. But soundstaging? Nope. Dynamics? Nope. Transparency? Nope.
4. Hi-fi shows are a reliable place to audition hi-fi gear
Why do we wish it to be true? Most of the hi-fi stores in our area have closed down and hi-fi shows are all we have left if we want to ‘listen’ to the newest gear.
Imagine a sponge cake without a topping or filling. It’s made from only four ingredients: flour, eggs, butter and sugar. Those ingredients are mixed in a bowl in the correct ratios, poured into a tray and baked for 30 minutes. Once the cake has cooled, take a bite: can you tell me exactly what brand of flour was used? What kind of eggs? And can you discern the qualitative contribution made by each ingredient to the cake’s overall taste and texture?
A hi-fi show demo is like a baked cake. The ingredients are fixed – loudspeakers, amplifier, DAC and streaming source – and the room’s acoustic behaviour shapes their combined sound.
5. This more affordable product competes with other products selling for 2x or 3x the price
Why do we wish it to be true? It helps us ‘cope’ with our budget not stretching to that two- or three-times costly item. But it’s a linguistic trick…
Unless those more expensive items are explicitly named, this type of statement – often favoured by reviewers struggling to say something – serves as a generalisation that pleases the manufacturer and/or helps existing owners feel good about their hardware choices. We should not underestimate the thirst for giant killers in the hi-fi community. They do exist, but they are excruciatingly rare. Wishing them into existence with only unsubstantiated generalisations will eventually lead to buyer’s remorse. Establishing a product’s giant killer status starts with naming the costlier products – make and model – that it outperforms on looks, build quality, functionality or sound quality.
6. People buying super expensive hi-fi products are idiots
Why do we wish it to be true? This is the other side of the ‘cope’ coin: for we are not idiots. And yet we cannot cope with our budget not stretching as far as we might wish. To soothe our inner angst, we say things like “all you need is ______” or “all ______ taste the same” or “any well-made ______ will do”. Let us not hide behind generalisations. Let us specify which exact qualities constitute ‘well made’?
Translation: “Despite having zero experience with this product, I can’t afford it, so anyone buying it is effectively throwing their money away”. And yet we know that income inequality is real (and it’s no joke), so it’s safe to say there are plenty of people out there whose relationship to $5000 is the same as my (or your) relationship to $50. They are more likely to take a punt on bigger-ticket items because they can afford to take risks and, sometimes, make the wrong choices. Or they might simply prefer the aesthetics of a pricier model. It would be the height of arrogance to suggest that we are saving them from themselves. Like the clothes they wear, the car they drive and the house they live in, how other people choose to spend their money is none of our business.
7. Digitisation is a sonic disaster for analogue sources
Why do we wish it to be true? We have an idealistic mindset that must be maintained to keep us in the “purists club”. We are analogue or die. We do not want to know what DSP can do for us elsewhere. Talk to the hand!
If digitisation were a disaster, all amplifiers with ADC circuits (chip + input stage) working their analogue inputs would homogenise the differences between phono cartridges. And they don’t. We hear the differences — and clearly. Even if we lose a couple of percentage points in performance to an ADC circuit (the chip and the analogue input stage), DSP-powered room correction and headphone correction more than compensate for our loss.
8. Being an audiophile is “all about the music”
Why do we wish it to be true? Because it sounds good when it rolls off our tongue. It makes us feel better.
As a Music-First Audiophile, I reckon I’m 60% music, 40% gear. You might be different but each of us is into the gear to some degree. Ergo, it’s not all – 100% – about the music. If it were, we’d be happy listening to our favourite songs on a kitchen radio or a smartphone speaker.
9. Internet-based audiophile communities are mostly polite and convivial
Why do we wish it to be true? It’s the community equivalent of that sign in the break room that reads “You don’t have to be mad to work here…but it helps”. It’s what we tell ourselves when a long-standing community member goes full HAM on a newbie asking about gear that’s beyond the average community member’s means, or beneath it. Or when that same long-standing member goes full egoboner with something like “all _____ sound the same” and someone says they don’t hear it that way.
These kinds of exchanges aren’t outliers and they aren’t uncommon. They are the shame of the hi-fi community:
10. Rap is crap. Electronic music is not real music. Metal is trash. Classical music is boring [submitted by Patron Darren]
Why do we wish it to be true? Older listeners will have had limited exposure to certain genres. What little we have heard, we didn’t like. First impressions are hard to change. Generally, only the most popular songs of any genre reach the ears of most listeners, traditionally through radio, where certain stations cater to specific musical tastes. The most popular songs on the radio are commercial and get overplayed, resulting in a lack of variety. Younger listeners may have feelings of insecurity, fear of being ridiculed, and peer pressure. If we like an artist or band that no one else has heard of, it takes courage and self-confidence to stand out. Algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence don’t help either. We may not even realise that our streaming service only recommends more of the same type of music that we’ve already been listening to. It takes determination, an open mind and patience to discover new music that we like on our own. It’s much easier to be dismissive and stay in our comfort zone or let Spotify or Roon Radio suggest the next song for us. The full depth and breadth of a genre, including sub-genres, cannot be summed up in a single word or catch phrase. Hating on people’s preferred music style doesn’t make you a better person.
11. Our ability to discern audible differences is as good as anyone else’s [submitted by Patron Ben]
Why do we want this to be true? Because it allows us to dismiss expert opinions whenever they don’t align with our own. If a reviewer or seasoned listener describes a sonic nuance we don’t perceive—or don’t want to perceive—we feel justified in saying “I’ve heard it myself, and I know better”. Why might this not be true? We may not have taken the time to listen carefully and reflect on what we’re hearing. We may also lack the broader experience that comes from using many different types of gear over many years, or a lifetime working in the industry. Or perhaps we’ve spent too much time at a keyboard, critiquing others’ opinions rather than questioning our own.
12. A commercial streamer (from WiiM or others) will work better than a Raspberry Pi streamer that I put together myself for about the same price [submitted by Patron Thomas]
Why do we wish it to be true? Because many consumers don’t want to spend their limited free time messing with computers. Why pay with your money and time for a DIY setup, when you can pay a little more for a fully-baked commercial product with more features? While it’s true that commercial products offer features not available on DIY setups (think closed protocols like Google Cast or Tidal/Qobuz Connect), some might underestimate, or be unaware of, the potential downsides of going store-bought.
Here are three examples:
a) The built-in streaming board is often less capable (a basic CPU + bare minimum memory and storage), which over time can affect performance and limit the addition of new features. Plexamp, for example, needs lots of storage and memory.
b) Hardware/protocol owners can remove or degrade existing features. A new “Cast Lite” firmware is eventually coming to all new AND current Google Cast devices, and it’s already reducing max sample rates and occasionally breaking app functionality. And even if AirPlay probably won’t disappear from existing certified products, its absence is notable on some newer models.
c) Android-based streamers often start and stay on old OS versions. Apps can miss out on important updates or lose functionality altogether.
