Most audio marketing is lying to you. Here’s how to spot it

There’s hardly a consumer tech sphere out there that’s more rife with more difficult-to-understand coverage for the average reader than audio. It can be a confusing slog for those trolling forums and reviews to make heads or tails of the flowery-sounding jargon within, so how do you avoid the noise? How do you find helpful discussions of audio quality out there?

You need to develop a filter for bullshit. And that’s a much taller task than you might think — especially since AI chatbots have happily slurped up the immense corpus of garbage spewed about audio gear everywhere, and regurgitate it on demand for unsuspecting headphone shoppers.

What exactly is “bullshit” in audio marketing?

You know they’re trying to sell you something, right?

Money is a very potent motivator to be a little loose with ethics now and again, but bullshit isn’t necessarily a calculated evil. Most of the time, it’s unintentional or a product of poor understanding. BS can still be well-meaning, mistaken, or simply confusing material even though it’s not all an intentional lie. And while not all bullshitters are actively trying to mislead you — believing in BS can train you to reject facts when you see them. Learning to recognise manure-grade text will help you to avoid nonsense when it arises.

For our purposes, we’ll run with the following definitions to guide us:

Bullshit — (n.) A deceptive misrepresentation, regardless of intent, that leads to belief of something other than the truth.

Bullshit — (v.) To misrepresent something, regardless of intent, that leads to the belief of something other than the truth.

Editor’s note: I strongly encourage you to check out “On Bullshit” by Harry Frankfurt, and “Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World” by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West.

Even factual statements can become bullshit when key context is missing — as marketers sometimes use facts to obscure the truth. For example, preying upon the widely-held misconception that “bigger number = better” in certain audio contexts where you couldn’t possibly hear the difference. If you spend enough time looking at online forums or reviews, you can easily find users inventing their own ideas about their favorite audio products, and very few people pushing back because it often takes far more effort to disprove even obvious BS than to state it.

Remember, what you say might not always be interpreted correctly.

This is why there’s a value in both objective data collected about products, and human reviewers with the experience and expertise to write about this stuff on a case-by-case basis. It’s not easy to know what’s right for you if you don’t have someone dealing in facts and figures in your corner. It’s also worth gaining some literacy regarding measurements and other forms of data surrounding audio quality, as this’ll help you make sense of information that can’t be fudged. Heck, you could even help your friends avoid making huge mistakes with their money, too.

Loading poll

What to ignore

So if you want to be immune to crap marketing, there are a few things you need to understand up front. We’ve covered these topics in-depth before, so the following is just a synopsis of each.

Appeals to luxury

Did you know that there’s no correlation between price and sound quality? Because there isn’t — and I’m not the only person to collect that data. There is no correlation between frequency response and price, nor is there a correlation between projected mean opinion scores and product price. Spending more money won’t necessarily get you better sound quality; so don’t listen to anyone telling you that spending a little more on a higher-tier item necessarily means better sound. Similarly, a newer product that advertises a “more premium listening experience” unless they’re actually talking about an upgrade to how comfortable the headphones are, their durability, or maintenance options.

There is zero relationship between price and performance, so you should be looking for what you like instead.

It’s always a good feeling to get something nice, but newer isn’t always better. Just ask anyone who’s into whisky. Often, the best choice for you won’t be all that expensive, so don’t go chasing that dragon unless there’s something specific you’re looking to gain. Ignore any language that wants you to associate something with luxury or the idea that this is something rich people buy (so you should, too).

Flowery language

Big numbers

Digital audio has come a long way since the early days of the MP3. In fact, different algorithms and encodings have done so well that most people don’t really notice or care that they’re listening to “lossy” music, especially when listening over wireless headphones. If you’re okay with Spotify’s audio quality — or really, any streaming service’s default settings — congratulations: you don’t care about lossless either.

The mean rating given to each codec is indicated by the middle point of each vertical I-shaped line segment. Each I-shaped segment represents the 95% confidence interval of the mean rating (using bootstrap analysis) for each codec.

You might see wild claims and huge numbers associated with audio quality, but you’re not often going to be listening to music in a format that takes advantage of those bitrates and depths. At publish, you’re definitely not getting it over wireless headphones. If you see headphones or earbuds billed as supporting 24-bit or 392kHz sample rates over wireless, you should immediately put it out of your head as something to care about. Even if you were listening to music files properly made with those specs, it’s extremely unlikely you’ll be able to hear the difference once you exceed CD-quality. 16-bit audio is just fine, and you don’t really need a sample rate above 44.1kHz for consumer applications. Beyond that, and you’re chasing ever-more imperceptible gains that may even be limited by your hardware.

“Upgrade” components

Unless you need a certain piece of hardware to achieve a certain function, there’s no benefit to spending more on ancillary components like cables, charging bricks, or USB cables. The job of any piece of audio gear is to get a signal to something that makes sound. Contemporary audio gear is often so easy to drive that you can usually avoid getting an amp or DAC. Cables, too, can be pretty crappy and still work perfectly fine. Heck, I was able to power my speakers with no sweat with nothing but bent-up zinc coathangers.

You do not need to buy cables at a ridiculous price. No bespoke power cable, USB cable, speaker wire, or headphone cable will improve performance unless what you were using to start with was broken or the wrong component for the job. You do not need to buy your own telephone pole, either. You don’t need a magic box that “improves” audio by being somewhat near your gear. You don’t need cable risers, or sacks of pebbles you can tape to your amplifier either.

Coathangers and audio cables of the same specs work similarly well. Don’t overpay for these.

The caveat here is that sometimes there are accessories — like charging bricks — your product absolutely needs to function properly. But the idea that upgrading these components will help you in a manner befitting the price is almost always bullshit.

Flashy certifications

To lend products a veneer of legitimacy, some companies bandy about myriad badges and certifications that look impressive. For example, the Discord certification is a desirable logo to associate with a product. However, that may lead people to erroneously believe that anything not certified doesn’t work with that service. That’s false, and the company itself doesn’t even claim that: it’s just that there are only so many headsets they’ve tested, and fewer that have paid for the licensing. That’s all. The existence of this badge doesn’t mean that your un-badged headset won’t work.

This is one of those things that’s only a problem because people tend to project meaning where none exists. It can be tempting to take something to its logical extremes, but often things like badges and certifications only mean what’s on the label.

What to look for instead

Very little out of a press release is going to be relevant to the vast majority of people — even specifications sheets without context can be horse hockey of some flavor. You should mainly be looking for features you’ve identified that you need, the price, compatibility concerns, and maybe dimensions to figure out whether or not the product will fit your use.

Look to unbiased reviews and specialist outlets that actually use and measure the products before you buy them. While you may not always agree with reviewers’ assessments, there’s a lot of information that they supply that’s useful. Unless it’s ChatGPT you’re asking, then it’s definitely bullshit.