About Changstar and Super Best Audio Friends. A Post from Tari

ok. Well said.

 

Besides, if grado lovers on here can't get past the initial gauntlet of dislike, and are insecure in their own beliefs, then whose fault is that? Certainly not the board's.

 

I guess it was just one guy on that thread that was so absolute in his hatred of the text used on the grado web site that got to me. I just don't understand that kind of hatred/passion.

 

I thought the Grado thread was pretty funny. Can we not mock manufacturers using hilarious hyperbole to sell headphones anymore? We mocked Sennheiser for the Orpheus 2; it's not like us 650/800 lovers were butt hurt over that.

We need to be able to have fun and provide useful info. Life is too short! I also don't think we should offend others here, but I think we've all done a good job of being super best friends.

 

I didn't want to actually respond to your crybaby post, but since I can't find any more appropriate memes I guess I will.

It seems like you are rather new to our community and might not be familiar with our stance on Grado as well as the countless other overpriced, low-fi, craptastic audio equipment out there. As a wise philosopher once said, I recommend you "check" yourself before you "rek" yourself.

This is not Head-Fi where we have countless appreciation threads to promote groupthink (except the HD650 ). In that sense I'm glad you decided to post in that thread so your argument can be analyzed for what it is. Your post in this thread though is simply the same fanboy crybaby stuff we've seen on Head-Fi. You should disassociate your person from any piece of audio equipment or brand to prevent any crybaby outbursts in the future. You might find this terrible terrible forum easier to bear after you do so.

As far as that thread goes, I actually agree that it's mostly silly "Grado Hate". No one (reliable) has actually got their hands on a GS2000e so we can't really speak to its sound quality. In fact, perhaps you should put your money where your mouth is and buy one outright and give us your expert review compared to all of these other TOTL 'phones you own. Then perhaps you could send it to @Marvey for an additional review/measurement/analysis. As I recall, The Prophet Marv has even had some favorable comments to say about the Grado flagships in the past so I think his Excellence might even go easy on them. If your assumption turns out to be correct and the new Grado flagship turns out to be the JohnGrado-That-Was-Promised, you would have the chance to prove the evil SBAF "collective" wrong and therein have infinite gloating power for all of time. We've been proven wrong before with other products that we were predisoposed to hate. It's never happened with a Grado though. Think of it....you could gain eternal fame comrade! Or you could continue your behavior and gain eternal fame in the "How to Win Friends" subforum. Up to you.

 

You are confusing "too" with "two," which is damn funny in the context of a post accusing others of ignorance!

In all seriousness though, I will give you some props for having the chutzpah to defend grados on these boards. They probably do get maligned to an excessive degree at times, and this place is far more interesting when folks aren't all on the same bandwagon. I say zip up your flame suit and stick to your guns.

 

I love the *hypobole* of that sentence.

 

...A philosophy that you did not apply to SBAF!


As a frightfully polite Englishman, I have to say that I never saw much wrong in the Grado thread.

As a frightfully polite Englishman, I detest marketing hype, particularly when applied to a product that is not much cop anyway.

I don't have experience of Grado. There was a pair on the counter when I was (not that long ago) buying my first pair of serious-listening headphones. I didn't scream and take them off, but I didn't buy them either. I now don't even remember much about them except that they were there.

From what I gather, very much second-hand, from others, Grado is a company that started with a decent product and went down hill from there. That is a situation that is always going to attract less-than-polite comment. Why would a manufacturer do that?

From what I gather, they sell quite a lot too. That also makes them way open to all sorts of comment, positive and negative.

 

OK, thanks for the explanation. I just need to reset my expectations when here as opposed to HF. Not in any negative way, but different.

 

There's a lot of sarcasm in the above paragraph that I'm not even going to attempt to decode, but I do have a question. I'm asking with all good intent here, no subtext, is SBAF all about objective measurements and much less about subjective "like vs. dislike"? This is very probably the wrong thread to get into the philosophy of "it measures poorly, but I still like it" discussion, but is there such a thread here? Or even room for that kind of discussion? I've seen discussion about about how f'ing stupid people are for buying into certain cables, for example, and then I read about rigs here with other ridiculously expensive cables. I'm not trying to get into a cable discussion, it's just confusing to understand what in bounds and what's out of bounds. By definition, a close groups of friends is a clique (n. A small exclusive group of friends or associates), and it can be very hard to integrate with a clique coming from the outside.

As the original posted stated " But we're not interested in a site that resembles a YouTube video's comments section.", but sometimes if feels a lot more like the comments section of news site (very polarized, comments that are absolute, and very intolerant of anyone else opinion).

You mention groupthink, and I assume you are referring to work of Irving, as I have heard the term used in other contexts. Again, with all good intentions for this question, isn't there a bit of negative groupthink here for certain topics? Again, just waxing philosophical here, not pointing fingers or being accusatory. Given this thread is about the tone and tenor of SBAF, and my (ironically, as pointed out above) negativity about the site, I just wanted to change the my tone to more positive and inquisitive, rather than whiney.

 

:I

 

A lot of people seem to get this wrong about us, but no, we are not "all about" objective measurements at all. We are markedly different from Hydrogen Audio or Sound Science in that regard. There are even some of us who buy into expensive USB descrewinators, exclusive DHT amps from the 1930's, and even magik RCA cables in between our super special 4-figure turntables. There's plenty of room for interpretation and divergent opinion and so called "subjective" impressions. Perhaps you should browse a bit more before concluding on that matter.

I'm sorry that that's your initial experience. As far as reading comments on the Internet as "absolute"....perhaps the problem is yours for interpreting them as such.

Any social "clique" will have a certain degree of groupthink. Yes, the pervading wisdom on our forum is that Grado (as well as many others, which is important to note) make shitty shitty products that not only sound headache inducing but also are overpriced and made for Brooklyn yuppies rather than ever so sophisticated and intelligent audiophiles such as ourselves. We've yet to be proven wrong here, but like I said, we're open to the possibility. If you seek to separate yourself from all negative groupthink phenomena, then you should engage on a solitary 7 year spirit quest through the wilderness to find your Katra. Or you could take the easy route and just find a forum that promotes your preferred brand of pro-Grado groupthink I suppose.

 

Tolerance of different opinions as long as it doesn't involve negative comments towards Grado (or any other manufacturer, EVER!), then it's hate speech and should result in an instant ban. Yes yes.

On a serious note: If our goal was to be tolerant, we SHOULD accept negative comments toward essentially anything audio related on this forum. Including negative comments towards any manufacturer. Idk...

 

Ok, but should we tolerate negative comments about... negative comments?!

 

Positively!