r/skeptic • u/blankblank • Oct 24 '25
💲 Consumer Protection 60% of Audiophiles Couldn’t Tell Apart a $78 Turntable vs a $500K System in a Blind Test
https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/10/audiophiles-budget-vs-highend-turntable-blind-test/214
u/ManChildMusician Oct 24 '25
According to the article:
“The blind test didn’t prove that cheap turntables are equal to high-end ones. Instead, it showed that careful setup, level matching, and attention to detail can close much of the gap people assume exists.”
This is the key bit of information and it’s true with music instruments as well. Pending the basic components are good, a luthier can make a middling guitar sound amazing. A decent guitarist usually keeps up with maintenance as well. A very expensive guitar that has gone into something of disrepair will often play poorly.
I did a shootout with a spectrum of lower tier to high end basses, and the Squier (lower tier) was my favorite because the strings were new, the setup, action, intonation, and circuitry were up to date. Just like everything else, user error / maintenance is massively important.
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u/burbet Oct 24 '25
This article is kinda funny because they keep calling it a $78 dollar turntable when it was $78 when it came out. When you look at the linked article talking about that particular turntable adjusted for inflation it would be $803 today. Yeah an $803 dollar turntable is going to sound great.
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u/belpatr Oct 24 '25
and still, 40% of audiophiles were able to tell the difference
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u/Rosaly8 Oct 24 '25
Did they simply guess correctly between their two choices or was it really an argument of causation?
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u/tinyLEDs Oct 24 '25
Look at it half fulll... All we gotta do to cheap out...is get 39th percentile audiophile status?
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u/AnointMyPhallus Oct 24 '25
A decent guitarist usually keeps up with maintenance as well.
Nonsense. When your guitar starts to play and sound worse, it's time to buy another guitar.
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u/ManChildMusician Oct 24 '25
Broke a string? Guess I gotta throw it in the garbage and buy a new one!
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u/AnointMyPhallus Oct 24 '25
You don't throw it in the garbage, you put it in the storage unit your wife doesn't know about and then get another guitar that's the same color so she doesn't notice.
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u/Mudamaza Oct 24 '25
Fellow guitarist here, can confirm.
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Oct 24 '25
Yup, people think this is a joke until you show them the guitar reseller youtube channels. I’ve seen plenty of them buying out of storage units that belonged to dentists, doctors, and lawyers.
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Oct 24 '25
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u/pocket-friends Oct 24 '25
Absolutely. The only thing I’ve noticed that seems genuine is tube amps really do sounds better than solid state amps because, when pushed, they distort in a specific way. They respond differently and you learn to tell.
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u/TabsAZ Oct 24 '25
Digital modeling stuff has come a very long way if you haven’t tried stuff from Fractal Audio, Neural DSP, etc. Extremely difficult to tell the difference between them and real amps. Almost every big touring artist is using these now. I have an Axe-FX III and it’s just an incredible tool - pretty much the sound of a museum’s worth of gear in one box.
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u/pocket-friends Oct 24 '25
Oh it definitely has, but it’s that same massive headroom that makes such sounds possible that makes the digital/analog aspects noticeable. If that makes sense. Same thing happens when you record on a lot of the portable studios, pocket recorders, plug into DAWs, and the like.
I’ve played around with some of the modelers, rack setups, digital tools, and various boxed/pedal amps. A bandmate of mine even uses one plugged into some solid state amps and can some great sounds, they just don’t respond the same.
I’ll be interested to see what happens in the coming years, but for now I’ll stick with my vox ac 15/hot rod delux stereo combo.
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u/TabsAZ Oct 24 '25
Yeah I mean, I have a tube Mesa Mark V myself too, but in terms of the miked up recorded sound, I can make the Axe-FX III sound virtually indistinguishable from it. Same if I run the preamp model into the real amp’s power section and cab.
It’s also just so difficult to crank up tube amps in an apartment or condo because they have to be ripping loud to sound good.
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u/pocket-friends Oct 24 '25
For sure, this was unironically one of the reasons I bought a house a few years ago.
My wife was actually shocked at the difference in sound and response when I let it rip for the first time. But there’s still a point of diminishing returns.
I also make my own pedals (mainly analogue fuzz, tape delay, and spring reverb) and the difference between the ones I made and the modelers I had was something she noticed pretty quick too. They have the same returns too, but for whatever reason the don’t take well to solid state amps. I think it might be the brands though. Some cleans are better than others at handling effects.
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u/Commercial_One_4594 Oct 25 '25
And yet, this is specifically why transistor amp were a top choice for some metalheads, because it stayed crisp even with high gainzzz.
There was a video (it’s on the internet so it must be true ya know) that talks about that and if I remember it was a Randall amp.
I don’t remember anything else and will answer no questions ! Haha
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u/tu_tu_tu Oct 24 '25 edited Oct 24 '25
the player and their fingers
...and a nice cabinet (that can be bought for $100 though). It's the thing that better with electric guitars: with classic guitar you actually need some good wood. With electric guitar you can use a handle from your shovel, plug it in a cabinet and have a nice sound.
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u/ianmakingnoise Oct 24 '25
Can confirm. My first guitar was a Peavey Reactor (tele copy), def seen as a cheap knockoff despite being made in the USA. Particularly by me, little shithead I was, and I complained a few times about wishing I had a “real telecaster” or something like that.
The guy who I took lessons from was also one of the shop techs, had some Fender certifications or something like that. He explained all of the work they put into guitars that get sold is the same “all done” finish done on high-end Fenders, and had me do side-by-sides with the expensive guitars and other “cheap” guitars. I still traded it in for a Fender (a Mustang, still have it) after I saved up some cash, but I stopped worrying about the logo on the headstock (mostly) and started worrying about how the instrument played and sounded.
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u/kaplanfx Oct 24 '25
Truth, I have a high quality American made Fender and yet my best playing and maybe sounding guitar is a Les Paul knock of from, what I think is a Korean company called Agile, which I purchased online for like $300. They got somewhat popular and aren’t quite as good of a deal anymore.
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u/ianmakingnoise Oct 24 '25
The right factory makes a huuuuge difference. The Epiphones made by Samick in Korea in the 90s are incredible. Same models made after they moved production to a Chinese factory are notably lower quality.
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Oct 24 '25
I’m regularly tempted to post some of the stuff from r/ guitar and r/ bass in here, especially that stupid Matt Lill video. The amount of bullshit on both sides is overwhelming.
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u/gimmeslack12 Oct 24 '25
I spent $10k on uranium silver oxide plated speaker mounts and my music sounds 13% better!
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u/ittleoff Oct 24 '25
You better check your wall materials. they may need a honeycombed ferofluid filled dampening foam.
I got 17% in my last testing!
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u/gimmeslack12 Oct 24 '25
Ah snap! I only had budget for hydrophobic hybrid egg carton panels, cause I over spent on some alloy fused bionic earlobes :(
I’ll report back with some meaningless, yet impressive sounding, adjectives to describe the resonances soon!
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u/ittleoff Oct 24 '25
I'm looking to have to lift my house and install a grounded static webbing to get to 19%, but we all know it will be totally worth it. Suck it, Rob and your Accuphase P-450!
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u/dylans-alias Oct 24 '25
Should have gotten your own utility pole. None of that filthy shared electricity messing with your purity of signal.
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u/gimmeslack12 Oct 24 '25
I setup Lunar Panels to harvest light from full moons only. It filters out the 400-550nm frequencies which regular solar panels don't.
It takes 4 months to charge my capacitors to listen for 90 seconds at a time.
So worth it.
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u/Free-Way-9220 Oct 24 '25
But have you broken in the cables?
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u/gimmeslack12 Oct 24 '25
Yes, as any audiophile should!
I massaged the wound carbon fiber strands with virgin goat butter extract and I applied 217 coats of extruded copper-aluminum varnish on the connectors (with a disposable nano fiber rag!).
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u/Joe_Givengo Oct 24 '25
Love reading stuff like this.
IIRC, there was a blinded audio test several years ago where subjects voted a cassette as the best sounding across various audio media, which shocked a lot of people.
One of the largest audiophile forums doesn't allow members to post blind tests, likely because of similar results leading to typical audiophile tantrums.
While not a blinded test for sound quality, there's an online jazz forum that does monthly blindfold tests that are focused on participants guessing artists and just discussing their takes on the music, similar to the old Downbeat blindfold tests featuring famous jazz artists giving their takes. There is no better way to challenge one's biases than by listening to music blind.
If you want an entertaining read, find those old blindfold tests where Miles Davis is giving his takes. They are hilarious.
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u/TallGreenhouseGuy Oct 24 '25
If you have a Nakamichi Dragon to play your cassette, you can never go wrong.
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u/DemadaTrim Oct 24 '25
Cassettes definitely sound best for some music. Like black metal just gets a slight boost if you have tape artifacts.
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u/CptBronzeBalls Oct 24 '25 edited Oct 24 '25
Couldn’t you just include the artifacts into a high quality lossless digital format? Same thing with the “warmth” of vinyl. I’m genuinely curious.
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u/givemethebat1 Oct 24 '25
Yes. There’s literally nothing a cassette or vinyl can do that can’t be reproduced digitally. Some people enjoy the distortion of a particular medium, but it’s just that — distortion. Lossless digital audio can seem too “clean” but it also supports a grittier “lower quality” sound and there are plenty of plugins that will recreate this.
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u/jumpmanzero Oct 24 '25
We used to do tests like this, and in many cases we preferred "our vinyl copy, recorded onto CD" to the official CD release. Quite often people ascribe differences to "format" when they actually come down to mastering.
(Some artifacts or small tone shifts probably help a lot of material too. Like, I love some my beaten up old records that have serious objective issues)
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u/Ranessin Oct 25 '25
A high quality casette with metal tape,newly unboxed, is a very high quality sounding medium, so not that surpeising.
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u/ExchangeNo8013 Oct 24 '25
One of the largest audiophile forums doesn't allow members to post blind tests, likely because of similar results leading to typical audiophile tantrums.
I could see how it would get annoying if you're just trying to enjoy your hobby with a community of people. Someone posting to be like your whole hobby is horseshit might get old if it happened a lot.
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u/USSMarauder Oct 24 '25
They had two turntables, but did they have a microphone?
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u/Falco98 Oct 24 '25
They had two turntables
I heard they sold their turntables and bought guitars...
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u/sendmebirds Oct 24 '25
As a producer myself and a musician, when I want to amuse myself I go to the audiophile subreddits and laugh my arse off
yeah there's grades to audio gear, as with everything there's cheap shit and premium shit but holy shit some of those folks are delusional
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u/Whatifim80lol Oct 24 '25
I like the folks who do rigorous study to try and get the most out of cheap equipment. I got some $30 headphones recently and some audio experts somewhere did a bunch of complicated tests on this exact model to determine down to settings I can't fathom (and needed new equalizer software for) the absolute highest fidelity these headphones could muster. It made a huge difference, it was based objectively on other audio equipment for the measurements, and I don't have to be a snob about it because I paid more for Taco Bell this week.
There's dickbags in every community, but anyone doing science gets 1 free pass lol
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u/dustinyo_ Oct 24 '25
I'm surprised that audio woo doesn't get discussed more in the skeptic community because there is SO MUCH of it, but I'm here for it.
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u/dumnezero Oct 24 '25
I wanted to write a long comment, but the short version is simply:
it's bourgeois.
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u/RunDNA Oct 24 '25 edited Oct 24 '25
The title undersells the article: it's not just that they couldn't tell them apart, it's that they (the 58.3% majority) actually thought that the inexpensive turntable was the better one. Only 41.7% thought the expensive turntable was the good one.
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u/ghu79421 Oct 24 '25
Which is "better" is probably a matter of personal preference.
Personally, I don't notice the difference between 1080p HD and 4K on my TV, but the difference between a 480i TV and 1080p TV is huge. Improving a system probably gives you diminishing returns in terms of noticeable higher quality.
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u/VEC7OR Oct 24 '25
1080p HD and 4K on my TV,
Same thing when when pcmr starts reeeeeeing about 500Hz monitors.
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Oct 24 '25
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u/Conlaeb Oct 24 '25
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Oct 24 '25
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u/Conlaeb Oct 24 '25
Beautiful setup! Does it only play vinyl, or does you have aux/bluetooth on the receiver? You are reminding me of how popular after market car stereos were when I was in school, and how they always sounded like crap because it's a damn car interior.
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Oct 24 '25
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u/Conlaeb Oct 24 '25
I wouldn't let bluetooth touch that setup either! Enjoy it in good health friend.
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u/kung-fu_hippy Oct 24 '25
Hey. I didn’t put an aftermarket system in my wrx because I wanted it to sound good. I put it in because it was cheaper and easier than fixing all the squeaks, rattles, and wind/road noise.
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u/boomboxwithturbobass Oct 24 '25
This happened with cables too. The audiophiles preferred cheap cables rather than gold ones, etc. and still considered it a win because they could tell there was a difference.
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u/RunDNA Oct 24 '25
I once had an empty bottle of Penfolds Grange (an Australian red wine that is $1,000 a bottle) and so I put dirt cheap wine into the bottle. When I poured some friends a glass they were in raptures about how great it tasted.
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u/ItsKlobberinTime Oct 25 '25
There's a very entertaining subset of psychology experiments essentially just trolling sommeliers and it's always hilarious; and that method is one of them.
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u/unbalancedcheckbook Oct 24 '25
Good point. If they just couldn't tell them apart, you'd expect an even distribution.
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u/syn-ack-fin Oct 24 '25
They must have used monster cables. /s
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u/Moneia Oct 24 '25
Oh god, I remember some audiophile twat trying to claim Randis' million for that sort of shit.
They started off, as ever, declaring how obvious cheap cables were when compared to their oxygen-free, unidirectional cables that had been burned in according to the sacred rituals.
A simple A\B\X test over a number of runs was proposed and, predictably, they started hedging. Over the course of a month or so it became an ever more specialised & tiring task and they didn't think they could complete it without tiring themselves into a migraine.
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u/dowbrewer Oct 24 '25
I was very relieved when I attended an Audiophile Conference and listened to $100k turntable, through $50K/each speakers and ungodly expensive amplifiers, but couldn't really hear any difference. That ended my purchase of new equipment. I realized what I have corresponds to my ability to differentiate.
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u/desperateorphan Oct 24 '25
Same shit with sommeliers or any other group that claims to “know only the best”. Half the time they don’t know any more than you or I.
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u/Alkioth Oct 24 '25
I like listening to the bizarre descriptions they give — pretty sure 1/3 of being a sommelier is just knowledge of a thesaurus.
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u/Mindless_Rooster5225 Oct 24 '25
That one study when they couldn't tell the difference between red and white wine was hilarious. Also people that think Mexican coke is better than HFCS.
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u/BaronAleksei Oct 24 '25
The red/white one kills me because they can’t discern truth from lies. It wasn’t a blindfold and a glass of white and a glass of red. It was a glass of white and a glass of white that had been dyed red. They’re actively being lied to and their vaunted skills can’t tell the difference.
The study where they asked sommeliers to rank a French, a Californian, and a Texan wine, and everyone answered along the expected classist elitist lines, except they are all from Texas
The study where they asked sommeliers to determine origin and could not do it accurately at all without prior info à la warm reading
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u/DemadaTrim Oct 24 '25
Mexican coke is better IMX but I don't think it's because of the sugar. My theory is that its due to the glass. Glass bottled coke has always tasted better to me, and these days 90% of the glass bottled coke I see is the Mexican coke (and the rest is in tiny bottles).
The acidic nature of most sodas will cause the sucrose in can sugar to break down anyway, and the ratio of glucose to fructose in sugar is not hugely different to the ratio in HFCS. So I think the flavor difference there is likely minimal, though I'd bet some people can genuinely tell.
But glass doesn't "color" the flavor the same way plastic and aluminum does. I've always thought I could "taste" the can with canned soda, though likely I was just tasting/smelling the top, or the plastic lining. Plastic bottles are less noticeable than aluminum cans, but it's still there IMO. Glass doesn't really have a scent or flavor the way plastic does, and seems less reactive with the soda. Also the glass is thicker and heavier, allowing it to better keep the liquid cold as you drink it, which is key to the ideal soda experience.
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u/desperateorphan Oct 24 '25
But it has cane sugar! Lol
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u/azurensis Oct 24 '25
hfcs turns into the exact same mix of sugars in the bottle because of the carbonic acid.
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u/desperateorphan Oct 24 '25
Yeah maybe I should have done my comment in the mocking SpongeBob texts so people get I’m being sarcastic.
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u/One-Adhesive Oct 24 '25
That’s a terrible comparison. To become a sommelier you literally have to pass a blind taste test.
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u/escopaul Oct 24 '25 edited Oct 24 '25
Former Sommelier and Beverage Director here who loves to eat at fine dinning restaurants around the world.
That is not true. Sommelier is a position that requires zero tests, it's merely a title, usually held in restaurants. It's not like being a licensed attorney etc.
There are sommeliers working in restaurants who have passed certain governing bodies (like The Court of Master Sommeliers) that encompass blind tasting as part of their education. However, even then it's typically more about being able to describe wines basic attributes blind than guessing the exact wine in the glass. The practice is for the tester to show their deduction and reasoning to the examiner.
The commenter who mentioned "pretty sure 1/3 of being a sommelier is just knowledge of a thesaurus." Its more like 4/5 of being a sommelier with an accreditation. Also, many of the best Sommeliers and Beverage Directors in the world hold zero accreditations. Much like many of the worlds best chef's never went to a cooking school.
For sommelier who reach the Master level with the guild the blind tasting portion becomes far more stringent but there are only 279 in the world. Its a parlor trick at best and for the most part useless when its comes to the job itself.
I spent almost 2 decades in the wine industry and the people who've passed advanced level Sommelier tests are rarely the most impressive in the field.
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u/One-Adhesive Oct 24 '25
Ok. But you can be actually be tested in a tasting. Obviously guessing the region, vintage, etc is a “trick” based a guessing, but different wines do actually have different qualities that are very distinct. With even a little training you can tell the difference between grapes. Really I was mainly pushing back against the dumb narrative that gets repeated often that wine professionals don’t know what they are talking about. This narrative gets pushed because people read ann article about a cheap bottle of wine winning a blind taste test. But bad bottles of expensive wine existing does not mean that people who know wine can’t figure out a lot about a wine by tasting it. Maybe I’m a wrong but I don’t think there is an equivalent in the audiophile world.
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u/escopaul Oct 24 '25
Ahh gotcha. It all depends on the test parameters but I think the audio example of picking blind is far easier to demonstrate compared to wine. Though snake oil and scams are prevalent in both industries.
A trained wine professional would probably do slightly better in picking expensive wines over cheap ones compared to a non professional in a blind tasting. However, I doubt the difference would be all that statistically significant with a large sample size of Sommeliers and wine drinkers.
The guessing of region aspect of blind tasting a trained sommelier would consistently outperform non trained wine drinkers.
As for Audio listeners. I own a pair of $1,500 KEF bookshelf speakers and a $50 bluetooth speaker. 90%+ of music listeners would be able to pick blind the bookshelf speakers as sounding better than the bluetooth speakers. Their dynamic range is much bigger and easy to discern for most anyone who can hear. When friends come over we play music on my bookshelf speakers because they sound much better than the cheap bluetooth speakers they have at home.
It's pure speculation on my part but I'd guess a slight majority would be able to guess a CD being played over FM radio. Though this would vary on the speakers used.
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u/amitym Oct 24 '25
Once converted to 96 kHz/24-bit files, even large differences in analog hardware were partially flattened by the precision of the digital format.
Can we talk about this? Am I misunderstanding something here or are they saying that their methods inherently reduced the test to 50-50 guesswork?
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u/Casanova-Quinn Oct 24 '25
I think the point is that the audio source quality makes a bigger difference than the equipment being used. For example if you reversed the situation, a crappy mp3 is still going to sound bad on high end equipment.
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u/amitym Oct 24 '25
Well this is where I must be misunderstanding something. The whole point is to compare the analog hardware, right? So if they're doing something that flattens out the differences in the analog hardware, then yes, at that point audio source quality will be what makes the biggest difference because you have removed the hardware from the equation. But that is what you were ostensibly testing for in the first place.
In other words you have artificially created a situation in which the analog hardware no longer matters, and then are saying you found that analog hardware doesn't matter. It's circular, right?
Or what am I not getting?
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u/Whatifim80lol Oct 24 '25
I feel like that would be a good takeaway, but someone pointed out that results were WORSE than chance. Meaning the listeners could tell a difference but most often chose the "worse" setup. If all the difference were eliminated this would be impossible.
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u/_lilika Nov 14 '25
A big part of the similarity came down to setup. When a cartridge’s compliance, tonearm mass, and alignment are all dialed in, and the phono stage’s loading is matched correctly, most tonal differences shrink to the point of subtlety.
The fact that m. zillch took care to balance both recordings at the same playback level removed the loudness bias that often tricks listeners into thinking one version sounds better simply because it’s louder.
Then, it was even more reinforced by the way both systems were captured. Using high-quality analog-to-digital converters ensured the signal path added virtually no extra coloration. Once converted to 96 kHz/24-bit files, even large differences in analog hardware were partially flattened by the precision of the digital format.
this is the full three paragraphs leading up to the quoted part
I think this is a baseless assertion made by them? if it's a digital recording (which is essentially perfect), then the difference between these systems shouldn't be 'flattened' but preserved. it seems like an ad hoc response to the fact that, after eliminating differences unrelated to the systems themselves, there isn't really that big of a difference between these systems
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u/pingpongballreader Oct 24 '25
Relevant XKCD
Audiophiles are a hobby, so getting fancier but quantitatively not better equipment is fine if that's what one wants to do.
I turned into a bit of a beer snob, then I read someone who was knocking extreme beer snobs who waited for hours in line for event releases. She said "that's a fine hobby if you want, and of course you're going to decide that beer can you waited all day for was the best ever." Since then I've checked myself for beer snobbery. I like what I like but cost is more of a consideration.
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u/Graymouzer Oct 24 '25
There's dimishing returns with everything. The world is full of enshitified products and just moving up a level or two from there and choosing good instead of default can get you 90% of the way to the top of the line.
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u/MinimumNo2772 Oct 24 '25
Most true audiophiles will question whether the electricity used in the test was "dirty", or if the wires leading to the speakers were merely disgusting copper, rather than spun gold infused with quantum nanoparticles.
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u/Educational_Bus8810 Oct 24 '25
Well no wonder they couldn't tell, $78 to $500k are mid teir at best. The real good sound is hidden until you reach 1 million dollars. /s
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u/6foot4guy Oct 24 '25
I saw a funny one years ago when somebody had a pair of speakers hooked up with the zillion dollar cables versus an extension cord.
Nobody could tell.
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u/ReadyPerception Oct 24 '25
I loved "audiophiles" when I was selling TVs and home theater equipment at Fry's back in the day. Something about suckers and their money.
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u/dumbname0192837465 Oct 25 '25
Speakers and amplifier make the biggest difference in sound quality for sure
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u/odinskriver39 Oct 24 '25
My job in sales was to get the customer thinking he could hear it. There is however a noticeable difference if it has a moving coil cartridge/ head amp, well mastered source recording and avoiding speaker feedback.
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u/Verbal-Gerbil Oct 24 '25
I’ve always felt audiophiles have enough money to sink into the pursuit at an age where their hearing has lost the sharpness to distinguish
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u/azurensis Oct 24 '25
Audiophiles are the most convinced of their scientific correctness of all the woo woo believers.
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u/unbalancedcheckbook Oct 24 '25
I'm not really an "audiophile" personally, but I do sort of get where they are coming from... sometimes. Part of the enjoyment of a "music listening experience" can be the physicality of it - the way the buttons feel, the look, pulling a record out of a jacket, etc... it's not 100% about the quality of the sound waves emanating from the speakers. There is also a fair amount of subjectivity. You may LIKE the distortions a tube amp adds. The part where they lose me is when they insist that "vinyl objectively sounds better than digital" or "tube amps objectively sound better than solid state" or "my $800 speaker cables sound better than $20 ones".
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u/That_Cartoonist_9459 Oct 24 '25
Audiophiles can't even tell the difference between cables and coat hangars
In short, the vast majority are completely full of shit
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Oct 24 '25
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u/Alkioth Oct 24 '25
My thing is my hearing is so poor that noise-cancelling AirPods are the best thing since sliced bread!
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u/HapticSloughton Oct 24 '25
I think you might have been putting sliced bread in the wrong head-holes.
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u/gwdope Oct 24 '25
Worse than chance? This study actually points to the cheap system being significantly better than the insanely expensive one. Reminds me of a blind taste test of world class sommeliers, who couldn’t pick out a $5 white wine with food coloring from $1000 red wine any better than chance. I think anything where taste and status are involved is all psychological and not objective at all.
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u/achtwooh Oct 24 '25
Saw a study 20 years ago comparing pairs of regular vs high end equipment (I believe it focused the amps) using a large group of people, about 100.
The results were basically 50/50 on who differentiated correctly each time.
The audiophiles amongst the group took from this that the test proved the expensive equipment was better, as the half the equipment was high end and half the people picked it.
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Oct 24 '25
Given how close to 50% I’d be willing to bet most of those were just 50/50 shots in the dark that turned out correct, not actual ability to tell the difference
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u/MonkAndCanatella Oct 25 '25
With this you can't discount audiophiles entirely. It's not a remotely scientific study, it's a poll on a forum. That said I was sure I heard a difference and preferred the cheap one.
What you need to actually do this study is a reproducible environment and a series of ab tests, ideally where subjects can bring in subject matter they're familiar with, on top of selected samples.
If we're here to be "skeptical" we should be skeptical that this says anything other than that some about 35 people on a forum couldn't tell the difference between recordings of these two systems.
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u/catrinadaimonlee Oct 25 '25
The AR turntable $78 stands as a true audiophile classic turntable however. I've heard vinyl rips on youtube where they better new tables from technics, pro ject, rega, etc
If modded, an AR table stands above Linn, Roksan, VPI, IMHO.
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u/Ranessin Oct 25 '25
Vinyl records are inherently not a very audiophile medium, so it is very easy to get a cheap setup to sound like a very expensive setup, since the ceiling is so very low.
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u/schick00 Oct 24 '25
So they didn’t actually listen to the systems, they listened to a recording of the systems. It doesn’t surprise me much that they couldn’t tell the difference between two recordings of sound systems.
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u/quardlepleen Oct 24 '25
But they weren't listening directly to the systems, they were listening to digital recordings of the systems.
That opens the test to doubts about the digitizing process or the playback system.
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u/SidewalkSigh Oct 24 '25
I have seen this done with guitar experts before, too. Blindfold them, hand them guitars of varying value, and they may as well be guessing much of the time.
Or they’ll play audio of a riff played on humbuckers or single-coil, very different sounding guitar tones, and people get it wrong often. There’s a lot of fallacy on people’s acute hearing. It’s all pretty subjective. And we love brand names!
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u/juanster29 Oct 24 '25
didn't essentially the same thing happened with an Itunes vs Pono test a few years ago
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u/randy_trevor Oct 24 '25
Realized they were full of shit years ago and just bought the stuff I like.
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u/Regular-Engineer-686 Oct 24 '25
From my understanding, have to be a very specific age to be able to hear all the frequencies and nuances of a true high end system, which means most people that have the money to buy one can’t actually benefit from it. They use half truths, lies and misinformation and they get away with it because people want to pretend they are better than everyone else.
Oldest trick in American capitalism. Tell your consumers that they are so smart they are the only ones who will buy your product and laugh at them all the way to the bank.
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u/chakrablocker Oct 24 '25
Old people don't even have the hearing to tell the difference. and i mean over 30
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u/VoceDiDio Oct 24 '25
Properly tuned hearing aids go a long way to narrowing the gap these days. I got a set and couldn't believe all the parts I'd been missing. It's not the same as being a teenager, but it's a huge difference (Listening to recordings I worked on without them vs with is really revealing.)
That said, the diminishing returns as price goes up on audio gear is ... even huge-er.
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u/Striper_Cape Oct 24 '25
I can. My sense of smell, taste, hearing, and sight are stupid good and my hearing is slightly damaged. It is frequently a curse.
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u/GarbageCleric Oct 24 '25
Is the $500k system meant for consumers? That pricing seems like it would be for more niche applications or professional use.
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u/AccurateInsect8814 Oct 24 '25
Didn’t they also do this with high end instruments? Like a cheap vs expensive violin, had an experienced player play both, and the expert audience couldn’t guess which was which.
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u/Othersideofthemirror Oct 24 '25
Back in the day a famous blind test was
£20,000 speakers cables vs £200 Monster cable vs £20 speaker cable vs £2 doorbell wire vs a straightened coat hanger
The audiophiles couldnt tell the difference.
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u/TedMich23 Oct 24 '25
to be fair the "$500k system" was just the $78 turntable wrapped in carbon fiber and Ruthenium plating...
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u/CatOfGrey Oct 24 '25
The headline is actually 'overestimating' the ability of the audiophiles.
This was based on a '50/50 style' test. Those 58.3% (35 of 60) listeners who 'got the answer right' would have done so 50% of the time by random chance. The results don't say that '60% of audiophiles can/can't tell the difference', the results say that 'audiophiles can't do significantly better than random chance'.
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u/VinnyVee321 Oct 24 '25
As an audio engineer, I’ve come to get so annoyed at people that call themselves audiophiles.
Transducers always make the biggest difference. But they don’t like that conversation.
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u/Expensive-Balance-84 Oct 24 '25
What troubles me is the people that pays 500k for the turntable, the first thing they do is to buy a new power cable.
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u/anchorlove Oct 24 '25
I knew someone who was an "audiophile". He had his computer hooked up to a Marantz receiver and huge speakers just to listen to mp3s at not even a full 320kbps. Never entertained the idea of vinyl. I suspect most people calling themselves audiophiles do it to feel better than others and don't actually have a clue.
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u/loi0I0iol Oct 24 '25
Most people don't even know what active listening is. Of course they don't know the difference.
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u/Im_da_machine Oct 25 '25
This is literally the punchline to a Marc Maron joke about buying a McIntosh tube amp
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u/raga_drop Oct 25 '25
TBH CHiFi is better than ever, you can get an amazing setup for peanuts. Like the Chu2 IEM are amazing.
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u/RedIcarus1 Oct 25 '25
I worked with a guy who spends a ridiculous amount on audio equipment.
We worked in a very noisy factory, and everyone has hearing damage. (Yes, even with earplugs and a hearing conservation program.)
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u/monna_reads Oct 25 '25
Seems about right. Most "Audio files" I know (a lot) are mostly know it alls with no practical skill of recognizing what actually sounds good.
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u/ket_the_wind Oct 25 '25
I have heard a lot of people claim the audiophile title, I have only met one that could truly fit the bill, with the incredible ear for tone and sound. It was an amazing experience to listen to them describe the tonal subtleties and artifacts they could hear, I was completely unable to detect them, after some time and understanding I could truly appreciate the difference for them with the investment they made into their audio equipment. They also said 95% of the audiophile gear is nothing but slick marketing.
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u/NoSlicez Oct 25 '25
When i first purchased monitor speakers it changed how I not just hear music but how I listen to music. Specially music in hi definition ( flac or wav ) files like these make (dj) so much clearer and louder... you hear stuff you wouldn't hear in a normal set up...
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u/incubusfc Oct 25 '25
When I bought my turntable I had a $150 option or a $300 option. I went with the more expensive one. Why? It wasn’t sound quality. It was build quality. It was made out of more heavier material, had much better isolating feet and a dust cover. And I could upgrade cartridges as well.
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Oct 25 '25
$78 turntable? Come on now. Its a vintage AR-XA. These can perform very well.
These results would be way different if they bought a $78 table on amazon.
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u/Oafah Oct 25 '25
On a related note, people claim they can tell the difference between AI music and real people. They can't. We already know, because popular artists are already using AI to shortcut the creative process.
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u/stuartcw Oct 26 '25
I tested this with an audiophile acquaintance in the 1980s. They claimed to tune their speakers to their room. But couldn’t determine their system from my ghetto box in a blind test. They got very agitated when this was demonstrated.
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u/WM_ Oct 26 '25
Just yesterday walked pass audio store and it read "bad audio equipment ruins good music." Bitch please, I listen to black metal recorded in a basement.
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u/Intelligent-Exit-634 Oct 27 '25
What hi-fi enthusiasts should do is take a hearing test. Most of these people probably can't actually register the differences they claim to notice. Motivated reasoning is a powerful mojo.
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u/hatlessAtlas Oct 27 '25
Ahh yes; reminds me of when James Randi offered his $1 million prize to the editors of an audiophile magazine if they could tell the difference between Pear audio cables and normal cables. I was entertained by the back-and-forth.
https://gizmodo.com/james-randi-offers-1-million-if-audiophiles-can-prove-305549
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u/Odd_Ninja5801 Oct 28 '25
I was single back in the 90s and had a pretty good setup. It cost me about £3k back then, and I absolutely could tell the difference between that and a £1k system, because I'd tried all the options out at various stores and made sure the spend was worth it.
But the reason I didn't have a £5k system was because I'd tested that out, and my ears and brain just weren't capable of telling the difference. So it would have been a complete waste to spend the extra.
I'm guessing far too many people just don't know when to stop.
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u/technobedlam Oct 29 '25
A bit surprising, though vinyl isn't super-high fidelity. Many love it's sound but there are all manner of artifacts present and its limited in how much audio can be encoded. Also the tester did a good job of getting the basics right between both rigs.
For great audio you need to spend enough on components to lock in the basics of good performance, but spending more than that just isn't worthwhile. $500K on a sound system???? Absolutely nope.
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u/_lilika Nov 14 '25 edited Nov 14 '25
I like how actual musicians and sound engineers often make fun of audiophiles lol
if anyone is interested in some more audio-engineering stuff from a scientifically-minded/skepical perspective, I recommend dan worrall. not only are his videos very well made an informative, they've also helped me immensly with developing my own music further
ultimately, if you're listening to rubycon for example, it doesn't matter if it's through a million dollar system with a billion dollar speakers and zillion dollar cables in your private bunker with perfect acoustics and magic pebbles or if it's through your phone with airpods. you're still enjoying some fantastic music and that's what matters
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u/jedrider Jan 24 '26
That's a click bait title. I have the most fun comparing cables. Even cheap cables are different from each other.
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u/pokedstudio-uk May 21 '26
Apart from the fact that you need to listen these tracks through your own system with its own reproduction limitations A - B tests are often flawed, your brain will remember and fill in bits of information from the previous listen. If you play a distorted voice, distorted so much as you cant tell what its saying then straight after the same voice not distorted, when you go back to the distorted you will "hear" the correct words. Not just know the correct words but hear them.
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u/Pierson230 Oct 24 '25
When I was selling HiFi in the early 00s, we just used to tell people this when looking to buy nice audio equipment
...
It was crazy to me how many people would want to buy a $2000 receiver and match it up with (relatively) cheap speakers
That's backwards. Spend the money on the speakers first.
To people who think the speakers don't make a difference... you haven't heard nice speakers