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From: henryp@bnr.ca
Newsgroups: rec.audio.high-end
Subject: Re: Engineers, Audiophiles, and High End
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1996 19:55:51 +0000
Organization: Bell Northern Research
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: Henry P wrote something like (I can't find the specific posting):
: > "It would be easy to teach an audiophile how to be an engineer,
: >but for an engineer to become an audiophile, he'd have to get a
: >lobotomy!"

What I wrote was, "You can train a golden-ear whiner to be an
engineer, but you can't turn an engineer into a golden-ear whiner
without giving him a lobotomy." In other words, an engineer is
superior to an audiophile by virtue of his training, knowledge and
experience. On the other hand, technical training does not disqualify
an engineer from being an audiophile. This seems to be a point of
contention between us. I use the term "audiophile" in this case to
mean someone who cares about music and who has keen ears for the
differences among hi-fi equipment.

You qualify your remarks by referring to a subset of engineers who
are "closed-minded". That's wonderful. Since the majority of
engineers on this group are not "closed-minded", you shouldn't have
anything to complain about. Rather than telling stories about the one
or two engineers you've caught in mistakes, you should address your
complaints to specific remarks by scientists and engineers in the here
and now. For every one of your closed- minded engineer stories, I'm
sure Dick and Gabe and jj can provide a dozen examples of
"open-minded" audiophiles whose ears tricked them into hearing things
that simply didn't exist. The phony amplifier A/B switch test comes
to mind. Let's get real and to the point for a change.

You imply that becoming an engineer is basically a matter of
memorizing formulae. With all due respect to physicians (my wife is a
talented and hard-working pediatrician), memorizing facts and formulas
is what medical students do. Engineering education is hard work that
requires constant grappling with subtle and often non-intuitive
concepts. Most of my engineering exams were open- book. You can't
"cram" for that kind of test. Momorizing equa- tions is useless.

In contrast, with sufficient motivation, an average "man off the
street" can become an audiophile in an evening. Take him to a good
listening room, spin some disks and invite him to have a good listen.
You and I know many people with no prior experience in high-end will
be stunned by such an experience. Voila: instant audiophile.

You claim that engineers refuse to listen without technical
prejudice. This is just one of those whining audiophile myths. Among
engineers, as in the general population, you will find individuals who
are more or less attuned to audiophile attitudes. I certainly am
capable of listening without being biased by my technical prejudices.
What I am not so likely to do is jump on some voodoo bandwagon to
explain what I hear afterwards.

"Open-minded" can be just another term for "naively willing to
believe anything." I've been accused of closed-mindedness by
evangelical Christians who dared me to open my mind to religion.
That's just bull-puckey. What makes an audiophile into a whiner in my
book is the burning need to justify himself intellectually to
skeptics. Audiophile whiners want their hobby to be treated with
respect by the technical community, but aren't willing to put forth
the effort to earn that respect. They'd rather spout Duraybito-esque
mumbo-jumbo and hurl insults than address technical and psychoacoustic
issues head-on with incisive analyses and formal methods. Their
arguments are characterized by inconsistency, over-reliance on
anecdotal subjective reports and uncontrolled experiments, ignorance
of technical facts, and more rhetoric than substance.

I don't have a lot of respect for audiophile whiners. It's not
because I don't believe in the difference between good and bad sound,
it's not because I dispute preferences for vinyl or triodes or
whatever, and it's not because I think engineers have all the answers.
The real reason is that most audiophiles can't argue their way out of
a thin paper bag, but they expect to be treated like world-class
philosophers. They claim to be open- minded, but they're really
conformists who struggle to believe, and grovel for the approval of
dealers and industry demagogues.

So, to get back to my original point, I see no reason why
audiophiles and engineers can't have a productive partnership because
I see no reason that engineering has to be incompatible with proper
(not whining) audiophile experience. As far as I'm concerned, the
friction between the two groups is largely due to the whining of
people like you who have an axe to grind and no legs to stand on.

Sycophantic Sesame Street Muppet buddies, indeed.

-Henry