# THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOUND #1: TRUTH & LIES



## MythosDreamLab (Nov 28, 2020)

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOUND: TRUTH & LIES (Installment #1)

Welcome to the first installment. This is where we peel away the technical aspects of car stereo and delve into the inner emotions, motivations, desires in our minds!

I think we are all in agreement when I say, “_Nobody likes being lied to_”. The fact is, we are bombarded with LIES on a daily basis, or at least varying degrees of TRUTH. Our significant others do it, our kids, our friends, relatives, neighbors, entertainers, sports stars, politicians*, the news, the media, the internet, co-workers, the boss, the list goes on and on. It may be a blatant LIE, or other times it is just a slanted, shaded, colored, misrepresented, missing parts or a distorted version of the TRUTH.

Each of us has some inner measuring stick, which we use to determine when a LIE has crossed over that line. Whether from your spouse or a used car salesman, we all have that tipping-point, when the TRUTH becomes more important than the messenger. When a major LIE is presented, when it seriously affects us, when it hurts us, when one loses all confidence in the delivery of the lie – don’t we look for or demand change?

Now, shifting over to car speakers, for most of us here, we tired of the OEM speakers as they slanted, shaded, colored and or distorted the TRUTH (true sound) in such a way, that we were done with all their LIES and wanted to replace them with speakers that more faithfully represented the music in a more TRUTHFUL manner!

It is also about TRUST! It comes down to trusting your speakers’ ability to produce sounds without shading, coloring or distorting the original content (music). When you lose that TRUST, it is definitely time for an upgrade!

When it comes to car stereos, I think we are all seeking the TRUTH, and _"The Truth is Out There"..._

But, the other side of the coin is: Can you handle the TRUTH?

And what if you discover your speakers are cheating on you, cheating you out of great sound, what do you do? Do you dump (replace) them and move on to another? Or does it just boil down to you being willing to accept whatever your speaker “tells you”? Just how important is hearing the truth and how much is it worth to you?

So, which camp are you in:
Are you satisfied that your speakers are telling you enough of the TRUTH that you are happy with them? And, if so, have you found your perfect Zen place and reached musical nirvana!

Or, does your quest for the TRUTH and speakers that don’t lie to you continue? And “grasshopper”, your path to enlightenment continues forward!


_*(All posts that mention anything political will be deleted)_


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## Isaradia (Apr 14, 2020)

everything sounds great, well, until you find out they could be better, unfortunately theyre never good enough after that


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## Dafaseles (Dec 16, 2020)

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. 
There's always an upgrade. 
One man's trash is another man's treasure. 
"Sound quality" has a lot to do with the components you use, and the installation process. The reason I put that in parenthesis is... sound quality is very subjective as well. There's no way to visually measure sound quality because what sounds great and amazing to me, might not sound that great to you. 
Then there is the situation where it sounds great, but you had no idea it could sound that good.... until you hear something that sounds even better to you. Then you find out this person is using a set of speakers that was a fraction of the cost of your setup. 
I like a warmer sound. Some like a bright sound. Some like bass heavy. Some like a perfectly blended transition. Some prefer vinyl. Some prefer CD. Some like their response to be perfectly flat. Some like a little curve. 
It's a hard thing to pinpoint. But I think we all can agree a stock car system doesn't have the attention to detail, the superior installation process, or even components/ crossovers that can accurately reproduce Pip farting on a snare drum. Let alone the complex nature of music. So that, I think, can be measured.


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## Grinder (Dec 18, 2016)

Truth lies in the music, and the truth hertz... 

In the words of @dgage: "_EVERY system has a bottleneck, it is just a matter of whether the bottleneck causes enough of a limit to be worth the expense to alleviate it (and move to another bottleneck)."_


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## Dark Winter (9 mo ago)

A few thoughts:

In my car - and other entertainment devices, for that matter - I'm not looking for truth. I'm looking for it to _sound good_.

The "truth" is that a lot of published recordings are only OK... and they don't really sound that great when played on a system that does, in fact, tell the truth... like the systems found in recording studios.

For creating a piece, however - that's where I would want true reproduction; and that's what good studio monitors do. For this reason, tubes aren't used in that end of the signal chain - the "tube warmth" is actually a kind of distortion, and you really, really, don't want that coming out of your speakers in the studio (however, as an effect of it's own, it's present in everything from guitar amps to reverb and EQ units).

This, by the way, is why I find claims by people selling (and buying!) audiophile gear - especially tube gear - of it being somehow closer to the "true music experience" to be a bit silly... well, if you wanted _that_, don't buy that $100k tube-amp and 8-ft tall speaker setup, just go get a decent set of near-field studio monitors and listen to it the way the mix engineer did. Super expensive "audiophile" cables are likewise _not_ how the music was made: professional studios get their gear from places like Sweetwater, B&H, or even Guitar Center when they're in a pinch... and they _never_ buy anything but the basic power cables! One 14-guage IEC power cable is going to power up your gear just as well as another.

And FWIW, listening to new stuff on vinyl is _not_ closer to the original, as just about everything is recorded, mixed, and mastered with a DAW these days; the closest you can get is actually going to be a file on a drive encoded with lossless compression (or no compression at all). The only exception is if what you are listening to was a) recorded back when analog was the dominant format, b) the record you have was pressed from a low-copy-count master, and/or c) the original recording was either to vinyl with a recording lathe in the studio or the actual studio master was lost or has degraded so far that the vinyl stamping intermediaries are in fact better quality.

🤔


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## MythosDreamLab (Nov 28, 2020)

Dark Winter said:


> A few thoughts:
> 
> In my car - and other entertainment devices, for that matter - I'm not looking for truth. I'm looking for it to _sound good_.
> 
> ...



All True....!


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