agree with most of your points here. but you might be missing my main point.
i was just giving those "material" things as examples because they are commonly cited by manufacturers. not to start a comprehensive discussion either way about how to make the best speakers...
the upgrades that the speakers manufacturers are making to their products (engineering included - which also costs money and requires expertise, btw) WOULD sound like snake oil in another context. was my point.
IMHO, the examples your provide give context to the point you try to make so people are bound to pick them apart.
E.g. personally, I can't think of any real loudspeaker upgrade which would be considered "snake oil" in another context, and the examples you provided in the initial post IMO hurt your argumentation.
However, if I disregard that, I assume your point is probably along the lines of "
sometimes people can consider things to be snake oil due to their lack of understanding of the underlying technology".
This I can agree with - there are a lot of people in the audio hobby who hold very strong opinions without having a solid understanding of even the basics of the field. This applies to both the people who subscribe to audio science, and those who subscribe to the classic audiophile lore. Again, we're all human and
no one is immune to bias.
Your point might also be "
most people saw many of the scientific breakthroughs as snake oil initially". This is true as well, but this kind of skepticism is healthy. Any new finding should be scrutinized and criticized - it is the only way to ensure it is a valid finding. It is exactly through such scrutiny that novel discoveries gather evidence supporting them, and false ones are rejected.
So I don't think we should be more susceptible to unfounded claims - we should challenge them. Even better - we should put in the work to prove them wrong through research. However, we should be aware that through this effort we might actually be collecting evidence supporting the claim we disagree with. This is something that happens in science more often than most may think.
Even with things that are considered established scientific facts it can be really healthy to question them. In such cases, and with methodology that is sufficiently rigorous, we will mostly just confirm the already known findings. But it is the best way to learn, and absolutely worth it.
If we do manage to find something new, we should expect scrutiny and criticism. This process will either pin-point issues in the methodology and/or interpretation that caused an incorrect result, or will eventually confirm the new finding.
This is a critical part of the scientific process.
i agree with you again, almost on everything. but this "danger" you speak of is a bit over-emphasised.
I wouldn't say my formulation was overly dramatic, but I guess people could see it that way. Feel free to replace "danger" with "risk".
this is a hobby, after all - so whether you want to spend x vs y on something or listen to manufacturer a vs b, it's not really going to do any real damage. right? at the end of the day perceived value varies a lot from consumer to consumer, and it's up to us to make the judgement for ourselves. a $1000 cable for someone with a $100k system may not be a big deal. the same way a $1000 mirror on a $100k car wouldn't be??
You could say that audio is a hobby where people spend their disposable income on, so who cares how they spend it - people's lives and livelihoods probably aren't at stake here.
While that may be true, IMHO it doesn't make my concerns less valid. If we look at your position through the same lens, where is the damage if a person online states that all cables sound the same and charging thousands of dollars for them is snake oil? I guess we both agree that this is a discussion that probably won't save lives - but it might still be worth having.
To return to my argument, if a manufacturer sells someone a product based on false claims I see that as fraud. This is what I see as the main issue, and it is common in our hobby.
Second issue I see in this hobby is that it created a lore suggesting you need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get any semblance of good sound. This can alienate some people just getting interested in the hobby, and it can also support neurotic behavior and anxiety in people highly invested in it. Neither is a good thing, IMO.
Third issue I have is that the common lore in audio circles perpetuates an anti-scientific and irrational view of the world. To be fair, we're already bombarded by such worldviews, and this is just one niche where such a view is widely spread so the global impact might be negligible. However it is a hobby I hold dear.
i also want to point out that in these kind of industries there is no real incentive to disclose private research that could allow your company to advance over its competitors. so imo it's unrealistic for them to present academic papers when they are making certain claims about their new products.
That is debatable. E.g. Harman publicly published their research on audio for years (some articles even being fully open access), and they are one of the leading audio companies in the world. Performing and publishing research can help the company build better products and build trust with the consumers. Note that this doesn't mean that all of the private intellectual property has to be disseminated.
some level of trust is required on our part as a consumer, and i really do feel like over time if what you are peddling is genuinely not good, then you will probably fail.
IMHO audio industry is a textbook example of that not being the case in practice.
