May 2026

That's Not How It Always Works
While a possibly futile task, let's try to discuss audiophile fact and fantasy.
Article By Roger Skoff

  When I was just an ordinary Hi-fi Crazy, not yet having gotten into our industry either as a writer or a manufacturer, I and my buds used to spend hours doing what seems to be standard audiophile practice: When we weren't actually working on our systems, we'd sit around talking about hi-fi gear: About what we owned or had heard someplace; about what we wanted or didn't want to buy; about what we had read a review of or heard about from a friend.  We always talked as if we were the world's greatest hi-fi experts, and when we passed judgment on something, it was always absolute and always extreme: The item in question was either "the world's greatest" or  "dog meat", with never anything in the middle.

When I actually became a reviewer for one of the magazines (Sounds Like…) and editor for a monthly Audio Industry newsletter (Sounds Like…News), all of that changed radically. Instead of issuing high-handed pronunciamentos, as I had done before, when it didn't matter, once I had a real "voice" and a real platform to project it from, it dawned on me that, instead of just shooting my mouth off, I now had—just by a careless or unkind word--the power to actually hurt a designer or manufacturer or, by hyperbole instead of well-defined praise, the ability to stick a trusting audiophile with a not-really-all-that-good product that I had unthinkingly "loved not wisely but too well."

In short, I learned responsibility and, all of a sudden, I found myself – on remembering the case of one very-fine-for-its-price-point product that was actually killed by a reviewer negatively comparing it to another product many times more expensive—becoming no longer just the happy audiophile, flinging stones or roses as the mood struck me, but a serious "Statesman of Sound", far more aware of and concerned for the potential consequences of what I might say.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to apply to everybody who voices an opinion.

I'm still seeing that same sort of "Black or White", "fabulous or dog meat" commentary that we used to dole out when I was an amateur, but now it's not just coming from audiophiles having fun with their pals, but from a whole new source of self-appointed dispensers of audiophile wisdom–the social media.

There, for a while, now, I've been seeing self-proclaimed, but not necessarily well-informed with many years (decades) of experience, "reviewers," or simply, over-enthusiastic audiophiles setting forth what they apparently believe to be helpful—or provocative (clickbait) — information. Sometimes they're actually right, and their observations or insights really are of value. More often, though,  they seem to fancy themselves something like the "muckraker" journalists of yore, and dispense warnings, true or not, about ways the unwary (meaning anyone not blessed with their wisdom) can be gulled or ripped off about hi-fi. There's also the Best (____) I've EVER Heard!," plus AI-created videos too.

Their subject matter covers a broad range, but often they just seem to harangue against anything topical, popular, or not clearly within the audiophile thought of any generation / decade: Premium cables or cable lifters, AC power devices or other "tweaks", even "audiophile" labeling, or anything else where division of opinion exists or can be created.

One good example is analog sound. Even though interest in vinyl and audio tape recording has clearly been growing for years, we now live in the Hi-Res Music ‘lossless audio' digital age. Thus, anything that promotes analog over digital is panned by these "Defenders of the Faith" as not just incorrect, but benighted.

It's not all negative. though: They do the same thing on the positive side, too, categorically embracing currently fashionable (at least among a certain kind of audiophile) practices such as measurement or blind testing over simply using their ears as the only valid way to judge a product's worth.

This. of course,  ignores the fact that test standards (both what to measure and what to expect) can, and have changed substantially over the years, and that blind testing—while truly the "gold standard" when a single variable can be isolated—has little or no value when the test material is music. With its multiple frequencies, multiple amplitudes, and constant change, the necessary single test criterion can never be identified for "clean" testing. And, in cases where only one single factor can be tested (such as which of two test tones is louder or of the higher pitch) the answer is obvious and blind testing is unnecessary overkill.

The fact of it is that testing with sophisticated tools or techniques can be of great value to designers and manufacturers, to make sure their products either are good, or stay good in production. But what they mean by "good" may be entirely different from what their customers do, and simply to publish or compare specs may be of no value to an end-user at all.

The perfect example of this is classic vacuum tube gear. Although older tube electronics were known to have significantly greater harmonic distortion than comparable solid-state gear, a great many people did, and still do, prefer their sound, which can only lead to the question "Which is better, the one with good measurements or the one I enjoy music?

That's a real issue for people about to spend money on a new high-end audio sound system or hi-fi component, and one that I've never seen discussed by anyone on social media.

Something that some experts may do is to make all-inclusive blanket statements that may be true, but misleading: "Hi-fi is too expensive" may very well be true, but too expensive for whom? And why does it cost that much? And what does all that money buy, especially if the unit works flawlessly for decades? Unless questions like that are at least considered, the writer's comment isn't a review, it's a polemic imho.

Similarly, to describe  "all of" anything as a scam, "voodoo", or "snake oil", is at least risky: Unless you've heard or tried every one of whatever the thing is, in every circumstance or possible application, you simply can't know. And to give a summary conclusion based on incomplete knowledge is the act not of an expert but of an amateur.

In everything except the stuff that really is a scam, "voodoo", or "snake oil", (the fantasy products of Peter Belt, for example, including the famous purple pen that, if you put a one centimeter mark on the edge of one of your CDs or LPs, would, it was claimed, make every recording in your collection sound better) it's not a "light switch" effect – the product is not either "bad" or "good" (on or off). Instead, there's good, better, and best, and everything in between, usually priced accordingly.

Real reviewers (and I know lots of them) don't just deal with "the world's greatest" or "dog meat". It doesn't work that way in reality; there are those somewhere in the middle, too, though pricing is another matter. What some of these hi-fi guys will do is to write about their own experience, using their own ears, within their own sound system they know well, and will encourage you to do the same.

Just try it.

How else are you going to...

Enjoy the music.

 

Roger Skoff