ACTUAL MUSICAL SOUND VS. MEASUREMENTS
Is it just me or am I the only one that has had it with overly pushy audiophiles that push measurements as the end all be all. I’m not talking about healthy discussions on measurements but obnoxious ones that talk down to you because of the measurements of your system or equipment is not perfect for them? All cables and cords are snake oil to them if it doesn’t register on their meters? Am I the only that feels this way?
@acman3 I meant identify her by the numbers alone - being interested in that way didn’t come into it. |
This subject has been rattling around my brain all day. It occurred to me that the preference of many for vinyl over streaming/CDs gives us a steer towards there being more to assessing sound quality than just measurements. By all objective metrics, the digital formats should be superior to vinyl. Yet, many people prefer listening to vinyl records. I have made comparisons between the formats using a Linn Klimax DSM/3 and a Linn Klimax LP12 with Urika II. My preference was strongly for the sound of vinyl, despite the turntable falling short of Linn’s best. Granted not every LP is perfect, but generally the LP12 has a touch of magic that the DSM/3 lacks. I’d argue that this is fair indication that measurement doesn’t tell us everything. Don’t try to tell me that my preference for the LP12 is the result of confirmation bias. This test is repeatable. Also, it would have been much more convenient for me if I’d preferred the DSM/3. That would have saved me considerable expense. Ideally, I would have used a wider range of players. For my purposes that is not necessary and I’ll leave it for others to do. Of course, my preference is the result of subjective judgement. Isn’t that the nature of qualitative assessment and why quantitative measurement can only go far?
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@acman3 @mclinnguy Thank you for your kind comments. Although she was quite ill last year, she’s now relatively well thanks to ongoing targeted therapy. On the bright side, she had 17 years in remission to do amazing things and see her boys grow up. With a bit of luck, she’ll be around for a good while yet. Sad to see Linda Nolan just passed away with breast cancer. |
If you’ll allow me another analogy, I think back to the seventies and eighties when I found myself in the world of business. Without any formal training and very little guidance, I had to invent my own way of doing things. I had studied physics at university so I naturally fell into using numbers and accounting to control and shape the organisation. I looked for mathematical relationships in the figures as if I was doing physical science. This approach was successful up to a point, but the real world is irreducible, messy and unpredictable. Organisations have both a hard and a soft side. Numbers and accounting aren’t a panacea. You have to leave room for the individuality, intuitiveness and creativity of people. To give their best they need a degree of autonomy and freedom so that the organisation can respond to complexity. Similarly in hifi, the quantitative engineering approach is the essential foundation on which everything is built, Yet it is not the whole story because there is a need for qualitative thinking to get the complete picture. There has to be a balance between control and freedom or the scientific and the artistic.
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