It's fashionable to dunk on audiophiles because many of their beliefs are silly and there are businesses that prey on them selling them "oxygen-free" cables and stuff like that. And some of their beliefs are auto-suggestion. But here's another way to look at it: some audio setups will sound better than others in your living room, because of a million variables you can't really control for. Maybe one manufacturer compensates for speaker characteristics in a different way and that accidentally works better with the speaker you have and the room you're in. Maybe it's the deficiencies of the amplifier that prevent resonance from a nearby bookshelf. Or a ceiling lamp. Or maybe they cause resonance that actually sounds good to you.

So yeah, audiophiles are in over their heads and tend to attribute near-mystical properties to individual electronic components, but the only tool they can rely on is trial and error. So if you can afford it, and if some of it seemingly sounds better... have fun? You're going to make mistakes, but that's not the end of the world.

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kraussvonespy 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Or they could buy equipment with active room conditioning like Dirac. I have Dirac receivers in two rooms that are absolutely terrible listening areas, and running the full Dirac calibration on the room creates a soundstage where you don’t hear individual speakers anymore.

But it’s much more fun to spend crazy money on magic rocks and snake oil that make your rich audiophile friends want their own magic rocks.

https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm

	▲	lich_king 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Or they could buy equipment with active room conditioning like Dirac. You realize that the pitch for this is basically the same as the pitch for magic pebbles? It's a cure-all box you put on the wire to make things sound better, for a low price of $1,500 or something like that. I know enough about signal processing to know that magic pebbles probably work worse, but I can think of many reasons why it might not produce the audio you subjectively like better. I suspect it can't really even correct for many of the real-world issues you might have, because equalization doesn't fix echoes, resonance, etc. In any case, it's a bit of a strawman, because most audiophiles are not buying pebbles in the first place. They're trying vacuum tubes instead of ICs, or are trying out different op-amps, or stuff like that.
	▲	zihotki 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Dirac won't be able to fully solve the room issues AKA it's not a replacement for proper room treatment, but at least it can reliably make the sound in the room not terrible.

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magicalhippo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> some audio setups will sound better than others in your living room, because of a million variables you can't really control for

Erin over at Erin's Audio Corner did a really nice video[1] recently which focuses on room treatment, but dives into some of these variables which gives a good insight in why something that works well for you might be horrible in my living room.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTshtgikT7Q

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mrguyorama 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This presupposes that audiophiles are finding real improvements in sound quality in their cases.

They aren't. They aren't even seeing statistical noise. There is nothing an "oxygen-free" cable can do to your sound, regardless of your unique particulars. They will still insist it sounds better.