Alas all good things end including summer, so this will be the last instalment to my "Summer Musings" series for the year. For completeness, since we talked about the "audiophool" consumer hobbyist last time, let's make sure to address the other side of the coin when it comes to audiophile silliness - the supplier - manufacturers, and the media that sell us stuff.
As a pre-emptive comment against sounding like a grumpy old man who doesn't want audiophiles to have fun, let me just say that this commentary is not against "having fun". If fun means enjoying your music, trying out different hardware, exploring the various sounds you can achieve at all kinds of price points, I'm totally on board with that!
However, freedom to do all kinds of things obviously doesn't imply that we shut down our brains and accept that "anything goes!". Many things can be a lot of fun at the time but not good for us, the hangover could be nasty, and regrets more common than we might want to admit. So if there's foolishness when it comes to the Industry itself, let's make sure to think about that and come to terms with it for ourselves.
In the recent post about audiophoolery, Solderdude and Mikhail wrote the following comments:
Solderdude 18 August 2025 at 23:13
I have often wondered how many snake-oil sellers actually believe in what they are selling and are equally 'misguided' by their hearing (they are human after all). Examples could be Paul McClown and Danny.
Some, for sure, are just unscrupulous money grabbers (think Machina Dynamica and absurdly priced cable sellers).
And, oh boy, most audiophools as well as audiophiles usually have plenty of money to spend on their hobby and being human and lacking actual knowledge are very easy to 'hear' things that aren't there just as they are equally fooled by optical illusions.
Some might simply have fallen for the same 'perception effects' and fully believe in what they are selling. Are these sellers also unscrupulous ?
Perhaps only the ones that sell their wares at way too high margins for what it costs to manufacture ?
Mikhail 19 August 2025 at 07:18
Should we start calling this sector of the audio industry "alternative engineering"? If there was Federal Audio Administration they would require putting labels like "Claims not verified by double blind testing" and "This product is not intended to actually improve the sound of your audio system" on their products.
Interesting points. Let's talk about this.