Audio Science Review = Rebuttal and Further Thoughts

@noske You should read the terms and conditions for this site.

It is a private enterprise and they owe you or me zero explanation for their actions.

if this bothers you then move on back to ASR where they do the same thing.

My opinion - this is not a site where anyone would wish to spend much time constructing thoughtful and educational posts given that thread was deleted without explanation or consultation.

Has anyone else posted their virtual system yet, WITH measurements?

Looking forward to discussing :)

 

@jerryg123

It is a private enterprise and they owe you or me zero explanation for their actions.

Bit like Facebook, then, I guess.

Oh, wait...

@noske no a bit like ASR!

Meta, FB, Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram. All private platforms. 

Bit like Facebook, then, I guess.

Oh, wait...

I guess so @noske, I never go on The Face Book or any of the rubbish sites listed above.

No interest, do not care and I am an independent thinker and do not need influencers or Amir to make a decision.

It was his minions that got the other posts shut down.

@noske My opinion - this is not a site where anyone would wish to spend much time constructing thoughtful and educational posts given that thread was deleted without explanation or consultation.

I believe the thread was shut down due to your snide and sarcastic comment about me. It was headed that way anyway because some people like to name call and act like 8 year olds.

@russ69 +1

@russ69

I believe the thread was shut down due to your snide and sarcastic comment about me.

Please share with the community what that comment was, and the context.

Given the over 1,300 comments on that thread, it must have been quite an achievement should your belief be correct.

Russ69 said: "I was very lucky. As a young audiophile, I visited every stereo shop in SoCal listening for the shop that had the best sound. I found it at Woodland Stereo, the shop that helped Arnie develop the Servo Static and other loudspeakers..."

Noske said: "This is tremendous information that you share. I, and perhaps other contributors on this thread, thankyou for sharing your profound epiphany at having found someone with a physics education after having visited every stereo shop in SoCal."

@russ69 Yes, I was congratulating and thanking you for sharing with the community about you finding that.

Our versions differ. Mine is the correct transcript.  
 

I didn’t need a DBT to hear the difference, they were head and shoulders above the rest. Arnie had the education (Physics)

This is tremendous information that you share.

I, and perhaps other contributors on this thread, thankyou for sharing your profound epiphany at having found someone with a physics education after having visited every stereo shop in SoCal.

 

Here

@noske 

 

 

10-18-2022 at 02:24am 

@kota1 

we are all willing to help here, start a new thread, post your concerns, we are there for you bro, no worries :)

Sounds like you work for the government.

Look at my post, warm, inviting helpful, your reply was snide and sarcastic @russ69  is spot on in his assessment

@russ69 It could have been the increasingly difficult remarks or my request to remove trolls like Amir and or crymeanaudioriver (my opinion, maybe not yours).. 

The moderator has been very responsive to me.  I will ask to have the site relisted in Tech Talk.  It can't do any harm now that discussion is closed.

@kota1 

Sounds like you work for the government.

Look at my post, warm, inviting helpful, your reply was snide

Monty Python never made much of an impact in America.  Too nuanced, perhaps.

 

@noske 

my offer stands, just post your system, pics, and measurements in your profile page, NP.

Monty Python never made much of an impact in America.  Too nuanced, perhaps.

Speak for yourself. I and mine found them to be hilarious. 

All the best,
Nonoise

@prof 

thyname

I'm not "teaming up" with anyone.

I am scratching my head… why don’t you participate in forums with like minded people with the same beliefs and ideology like ASR?

I do.  I've been a member quite a while at ASR.

However, I find the direction of interest in gear too constrained for me at ASR, and I enjoy discussing the subjective aspects of they hobby - exchanging notes on what things sound like etc.  That doesn't go down so well over there. (I mentioned that in the other ASR thread).

For instance if you look at my long running (and quite popular) thread on Agon in which I report my impressions of lots of speakers, that would go down mostly with a thud at ASR, because it's all subjective.  No data.

So ASR satisfies one aspect of my approach, places like Agon satisfy another. 

 

 

Great answer.

ASR is indeed a specialist site with many knowledgeable posters.

A bit like the Steve Hoffman Music Forum it also seems to antagonise a few people who find some folks on there a bit standoffish or even plain rude. 

Anyway, it's far better I believe to view such forums for what they are, a source of valuable information for interested parties. Such people often do not suffer fools gladly in my opinion, and there's little reason why they should.

As for the Audiogon forum, it was only after reading a post by yourself on instrument timbre and texture that I decided to join. I hadn't encountered anything written by any reviewer like the descriptions of tonal colours you wrote here.

 

Whilst we also have a fair share of rude people here, I would in no way like to imply that they are experts in anything else. However, as in life, sometimes we must learn to take the rough with the smooth.

Oh the fun we all used to have exchanging witty repartee with geoffkait...

Not.

@cd318

Thanks!

I’ve realized no forum will be everything to everyone. I get what I can from ASR and don’t expect it will satisfy all my needs. Same for AGon (and the other forums I visit).

There are inflexible thinkers in all forums. Fortunately I find they are in a minority, and many appreciate the nuance between the extremes. In fact when one of the more inflexible members at ASR needles me for my subjective reports or love of vinyl, and implies I’m there to troll, I point out that my "likes" ratio to my posts are much higher than his (almost 6,000 likes). So there is clearly a significant number of people at ASR who value my participation and the viewpoint I bring. Sometimes I have to remember that when things get rancorous.

@holmz 

 

I suppose so.
But AG is a business, and they can run it and their forum any way that they see fit.

if it was a forum with the stated purpose of audio with fair and varied representation, then they would not likely trim the outline voices.

Yes, I expect you are right there.

Nasty little bugger from Down Under!

@jerryg123 - which one are you referring to as the nasty little bugger?

 

I am somewhat perplexed as to how another forum can generate such vexation.

@holmz sorry. Guy was calling American  idiots. 

noske

689 posts

10-18-2022 at 02:04pm

@kota1

Sounds like you work for the government.

Look at my post, warm, inviting helpful, your reply was snide

Monty Python never made much of an impact in America. Too nuanced, perhaps.

 

@jerryg123

I’m from Oz but went to high school in US. Humour can pretty different (we follow UK and US and our own which is often dry/sarcastic) so I wouldn’t consider it an insult from @noske. At least not one worth that response. Otoh US humour is often overstated, so maybe you are just doing that. 😀

@noske

Please share with the community what that comment was, and the context.

Given the over 1,300 comments on that thread, it must have been quite an achievement should your belief be correct.

Haha dial back that devastating wit, destroyer of threads. If you are from Oz, I know it’s entirely normal. In fact, we are sarcastic with people we like, we are extra polite to people we can’t abide. I’m extra polite with Amir, for example.

another nasty lil bugger. 

Don't worry mate, I'll be extra polite to you from now on. 😂

@jerryg123 - well @noske did not overtly call Americans idiots… it was a nuanced comment.

There is something that I find off putting with having a laugh track to tell one when the funny parts happened.

The movie Kenny, about a fellow working for the porta-potty company “Spash Down”, is a good example of nuanced humour.

 

@kota1 

my offer stands, just post your system, pics, and measurements in your profile page, NP.

Directed at another poster I know, but I'm having no luck with that virtual system thing showing up. Tried stock Chrome on Windows and it still appears momentarily on refresh than vanishes.

@holmz I have moved on, have you? Get along little dogies get along.

 

holmz I have moved on, have you?

Yeah literally we have moved on!

@noske is about 9 hours ahead of your time zone, and I am an even 1/2 day ahead.

 

Don’t care. 

@crymeanaudioriver

Current limiting occurs in amps without specific current limiting circuits too. As an example, a heating up power transformer coil may in effect serve as a current limiter. Another example is insufficiently sized capacitive power bank.

The article, nor I differentiated what was current limiting, however, I believe the two examples you gave are not. This comes back to the math above.  Some EE's could probably jump in on that.

Some amplifiers employ dedicated current limiting circuits. For instance, distribution amplifiers - the ones powering loudspeakers in restaurants and such - tend to have them. This is usually advertised as “soft clipping” feature.

It makes more business sense to sacrifice some audio quality if a restaurant employee accidentally turned up the volume too much, rather than to blow up, or to significantly degrade longevity, of the amp and speakers.

Other amplifiers may only have emergency current limiters, perhaps the simplest of which is a fuse in amp power rails. Yet others, while having a power cable fuse, rely upon “natural” current limiters, like the ones I originally described, to protect the amp and speakers.

Look at the curves of THD vs output power characteristics of amplifiers, and you’ll see that typically, there is a rise in THD (and by extension in IM) long before the amp clips. The degree of such deterioration is typically frequency-dependent too.

Even I know that is about how the amplifier is designed and feedback. The feedback goes down as the frequency goes up. Going back to the math I learned today, as the feedback goes down, the stability will improve.

It is not only about stability. It could be, for instance, about sheer non-linearity of solid-state amplification devices. The more they swing, the higher the level of distortions that then need to be kept in check by the feedback.

This is indeed one of the mechanisms explaining the phenomenon of some of the amps distorting significantly more while they are connected to a speaker compared to when they are connected to a dummy resistive load.

I think you made that up. That does not make sense.

Logic is simple here. Reactive loads at certain times may require significantly more current provided by the amp. To provide this current, the solid-state amplification devices need to swing wider, which increases the level of distortions.

However, just like with the discussion of THD and IM, we need to take into account that the amp-speaker system can “ring” for some time, instead of turning into a self-supporting generator. Some of the replies in the thread below describe precisely such occurrences.

Which brings us back to the 99.9% of the time it does not happen. "Ring for some time"? You mean unstable. Again, even I know that. Perhaps you should not be the person trying to lecture me on this.

I take “unstable”,  under certain conditions, at its classic Control Theory definition: self-generating under certain conditions. Ringing is different: it is a process that a stable amplifier, excited by a change in input, goes through while arriving to equilibrium.

For purely linear time-independent systems, there are equivalence theorems: you can usually see discussions of “poles” of transfer function or of functions related to it, which would characterize both phenomena through one mathematical framework.

For realistic systems, with meaningful nonlinearities, these equivalence theorems do not hold. So, you can have a stable amplifier ringing significantly more than the linear theory would predict, or vice versa.

However, some of the replies highlight the fact that in some other  market segments, including that of affluent audiophiles, larger speakers employing exotic transducers and much more sophisticated crossovers are more prevalent, and thus the events of ringing and self-generation are much more probable.

This is conjecture on your part.

I guess we could ask opinions of bona fide audiophiles on Audiogon. Are you and your fellow hobbyists more likely to own speakers employing exotic transducers and more sophisticated crossovers, compared to general public?

Going back to the math I learned today, if the designer knows the transfer function, they can estimate with high probability if the amp will be unstable.  You may want to read this:

https://d1.amobbs.com/bbs_upload782111/files_28/ourdev_548669.pdf

I saw this article - “Simple Self-Oscillating Class D Amplifier with Full Output Filter Control” by Bruno Putzeys  -  some years back. What can I say? Bruno is a competent amps designer.

Still, look at the diagrams in Chapter 2.3. If you replace the purely resistive load, depicted as the rightmost element, with a realistic crossover of a three-way speaker, you’ll realize that the effective output filter may be quite different from the original filter depicted.

It can be indeed immaterial, as the change in amp characteristics would remain within inaudibility corridor. Or it may become material, changing the frequency response and distortion profile of the combined system enough to be noticeable.

I had to read it 3 times, but this is very interesting too.
https://linearaudio.net/sites/linearaudio.net/files/volume1bp.pdf     That pokes holes in all the so called arguments about feedback.

Saw this before too. Once again, Bruno is a competent amps designer. The discussion covers suitably enough nonlinear systems theory too, even though time-dependent aspects are simplified away.

Personally, I like amps with balanced amount of feedback. Both on engineering merits, and on the way they sound. So, I’m with Bruno on this one.

The communication part is letting the patient think they had influence when they had none.

In my book, this is called “deception”.

When someone quotes another poster, it is normal, as one would also do here, to cut out what the replyer considers extraneous content w.r.t. their reply. That is not redacting, that is editing.  I have not seen nor experienced ASR "redact" anything, though they will suggest less harsh language.

Removing the original post, like ASR sometimes does, may leave out the context in which a certain statement, quoted by another member, was made. Then, a reply to that statement may employ all kinds of rhetorical tricks, for instance moving the goalposts.

Nope, topic at hand is relevance of the testing Amir does on specifically power amplifiers to the subjective perception of audible distortions contributed by amp A vs amp B when connected to a specific speaker.

Except we come back to 99.9% or more of amplifier / speaker combinations will not have stability problems, ASR does not test tube amplifiers often, and based on my research, however, limited, that even audiophile speakers do not commonly have extreme characteristics, then there will be no change, at the amplifier level, with almost all speakers.

Here we’d need to ask our bona fide audiophiles. Do you believe the issue of an amp synergy with a speaker was only important in 0.1% of pairing cases you personally experienced?

My position, as is the position of majority of ASR members with practical experience in designing and repairing power amplifiers who cared to express their opinions, is that the testing Amir has been conducting is marketed as more definitive than it shall be based on scientific understanding of the limited nature of the tests.

I will only state that you have no provided any concrete examples of where this is the case, not even strong potential examples, though I have accepted tube amplifiers could be most at risk here.

Based on my understanding of issues involved, I decided to avoid speakers with passive crossovers, and only used active studio monitors in my living room and office systems since about 2008.

This year, I finally decided to extend to Atmos setup, and having so many quality active speakers in the living room became untenable. Some of them had to be passive.

So, I ordered and tried out some of the highly ranked by ASR D-class amplifiers. The results were disappointing. I had to either sell or return them.

That got me deeper interested in power amplifiers and passive speakers again, and I advanced my thinking on audibility of distortions of such setups.

As a result, I ordered some amplifiers that Amir deemed marginal. Yet in the context of my setup they worked noticeably better than the highly recommended ones.

You are pushing me out of my comfort zone, but I will respond with what I know, what I read, and my newfound knowledge of the math of stability and feedback. Looks like those math courses were not single minded!  I read in one technical article that the electrical simulation models using resistors, inductors, and capacitors are both realistic and valid models of real speakers including the movement of the cones.  As these are all linear elements, at least for the purposes of our discussion, then they can be simplified to magnitude and phase.  Hence we are right back to our stability discussion and 99.9% it does not matter. Audiophiles may be interested. It does not mean their interest is relevant.

For small signals and to a degree, yes, this approximation works well enough for practical amps and speakers. Larger signals reveal nonlinearities, both in amps and speakers, and the divergence between the model-predicted behavior of the system and its real-life behavior may become large enough to be perceived as audible distortions, whereas theoretically there should be none.

Indeed, thermal drift of a transducer coil resistance value due, to ,say, a loud music passage, is a factor that a good amplifier must somehow compensate for.
This is not the purpose of the amplifier. How would it know it was the transducer coil, and not some other element.  This would be the job of the speaker designer to compensate for.

This statement of mine requires qualification. Amplifiers embedded into some studio monitors, into some active subwoofers, as well as those found in some mobile phones and laptops, routinely compensate for thermal and other drifts of transducers.

I agree that compensating for such drifts in arbitrary pre-made speakers is far more challenging. To some degree, amps with current-based feedback attempt doing that, yet with mixed results.

I recall once seeing an amp with two sets of speaker outputs: one with voltage-based, and another with current-based feedback. As I understood, this approach wasn’t hugely successful.

One of the cases is simply running our of amp’s power supply current capacity. A music passage may be such that at some point all the bags will be moving towards the boxer, overwhelming him with the combined impulse.

Testing power output at different frequencies and 8,4,2 ohms would cover your argument. Again, even I know what. Using a reactive load that is not the same as your speaker is not going to provide easy guidance.

Well, theory of linear time-invariant systems predicts that such easy guidance would be valid. The amount of energy stored in the speaker system won’t exceed the amount of energy supplied by the amp during a characteristic system cycle.

Yet both amp and speaker may not obey that theory in certain regimes. Let’s say there is some hysteresis or ratcheting effect going on in the speaker, causing it to store energy over several characteristic cycles. Let’s say in a non-linearly-behaving transducer suspension elements.

Releasing such stored energy back into the amp output connectors may indeed overwhelm an amp perfectly tested on one-half and maybe even one-quarter of normal resistance loads. Will it actually ever happen? Maybe, or maybe not. Better be tested in my opinion.

This type of deficient behavior may be exhibited on some music passages by certain class A, A/B, and especially class D amplifiers, with their open loop bandwidth insufficient to deal with such combination of the speaker and music passage.
I feel this statement is made up. I don't think it based in theory or reality.

On the contrary. I have reasons to believe that this is exactly the behavior exhibited by the class D amplifiers I was disappointed with.

What is the characteristic reaction time of a classic class-D amplifier? It is one divided by half of its switching frequency, because it needs two cycles to produce required charge at the output.

Switching frequency tends to range between 400 and 800 KHz in modern class-D amplifiers. Thus the reaction time is between 2.5 and 5 microseconds.

A class A or A/B amp reaction time could be tens of nanoseconds. Let’s say 50 nanoseconds, which is 50 times shorter than the best class-D amplifier reaction time.

On a purely resistive load, this doesn’t make much difference. The amp input voltage may appreciably change only once in 5.2 microseconds, assuming the input is driven by 192 KHz sound source. Unpredictable back flow of current from the load is not present.

With a realistic load, which could include a complex network of resistive, inductive, capacitive, and non-linear components, situation is different. Now the amplifier needs to react not only to the changes in input voltage, but also to changes caused by the back flow of current.

A class A or A/B amp might do up to 50 adjustments through the feedback loop while the class D amplifier will only do one. Depending on the nature of music and characteristics of the speaker it may or may not matter, w.r.t. audible distortions.

An example of an undesirable process that class A or A/B amp may deal better with is ringing of tweeter, at a frequency significantly higher than 20 KHz. While not audible by itself, it may cause intermodulation distortions while contributing to the back flow of current.

A class A or A/B feedback loop may be fast enough to dampen such ringing quickly. A class D amplifier may not even “notice” it, or may otherwise react to such back flow of current in a way not conducing to the quick dampening of undesirable tweeter ringing.

Audibly, such deficiency may manifest itself as a lack of transparency, and timing errors, especially in music produced by dozens of instruments playing at once.

This is how I subjectively perceived those class-D amps driving my passive studio monitors. Highly accurate on slow-evolving parts of music, especially loud ones. Sounding strange and unconvincing on tightly placed lower volume transients.

Mr. Hooper/Prof and Martin are the most interesting members of ASR I've read.  I've only skimmed the surface of topics (perhaps two dozen) because so many do not interest me as in very low priced new gear (I'm quite happy with my system).  I definitely don't characterize them as miscreants.  They suffer minor abuse by other members for their "subjective" views, not using blind testing or measurements to determine their preferences.  I doubt Martin uses measurements at all from the remarks he made about speakers as he has owned speakers which generally have minimal specs and often no published measurements.  

Why is @amir_asr still bugging us on Audiogon on my other forum on lack of published manufacturer measurements/tests?   He has such great contempt for us (particularly me) on Audiogon.  He just ascribed my character to be mean and rotten to my friends yet he does not know me.  

 

They suffer minor abuse by other members for their "subjective" views, not using blind testing or measurements to determine their preferences. 

 

The ironic thing  is I'm one of the very, very few ASR members who has actually posted detailed reports of (my) blind tests.

@prof

The ironic thing is I’m one of the very, very few ASR members who has actually posted detailed reports of (my) blind tests.

That is amusing actually, I wonder why that is ... 🤔

@axo1989

That is amusing actually, I wonder why that is ... 🤔

I think it’s understandable to a degree. For one thing, doing blind tests can be a hassle, sometimes totally impractical (speakers especially). And generally speaking I think the members there can and do rely on the relevant tests having been done by other parties. For instance all the research by Toole/Olive/Harman Kardon et al, for selecting the relevant measurements in speakers. And also they can look to measurements of DACs and amplifiers to see that distortion levels are below known thresholds of audibility. So in many cases they don’t really need to perform their own blind tests, depending on what approach they take to buying equipment.

On the other hand, it is fairly galling to be disparaged as some pure subjectivist-in-sheep’s-clothing by folks there who haven’t really "put up or shut up" themselves in terms of personally having experience blind testing.

Generally speaking I don’t like to run from one forum to another, in order to bash the other. And clearly I’ve written a bunch in support of ASR here. Any critiques I raise here about ASR I’ve raised plenty of times on ASR.

Having been involved in many a philosophical debate, where you really have to have all your ducks in order because every assumption is going to need justification, I can’t help notice a tendency among *some* on ASR that I’ve seen elsewhere when people are appealing to science. It’s the mistake that "because I am citing the science" I am therefore "on the side of the facts" which means "my argument is sound whereas yours is bereft of The Facts."

One may as well say that because I’m standing on a stack of study papers, my claims are scientifically true. There is a self-blindness to the interpretation one is making from the science to the claims of any argument. Often a pretty glaring gap there. Citing purported facts isn’t good enough; what matters is whether the inference you are making from those facts to the claims in your argument are reasonable and sound. And it’s in there that you see people who claim to be of a scientific mindset making starkly anti-scientific leaps of inference! (That includes taking confident positions from studies with ridiculously small sample sizes, when it suits their prejudice).

As I’ve argued on ASR many times, I see some people arguing in a bubble, not really looking at how the implications of their position plays outside of the ASR bubble. For instance, the rejection of the worth of subjective descriptions, reports, reviews as utterly worthless and unreliable. I’ve argued that you simply can not take that too far because you will hit contradiction and absurdity, given the general reliability of our senses in navigating the world. There’s clearly some of a pure engineering mind-set who have never actually had to work in the "real world" where one must communicate about sound without appeal to instruments and measurements - an example being my own profession working in sound post production for film and TV. We communicate successfully all day long via subjective descriptions of sound, to pass information, guide and alter the sound to an agreed upon result. The proposition that purely subjective impressions and descriptions are Totally Unreliable simply can not explain this success, or offer anything practical in it’s place.

That’s what I mean about the way many people "argue in a bubble" where they think a conclusion makes sense just when applied to their particular area of interest in a hobby, while not examining it’s implications in the rest of the real world.

 

What timing.  Sure enough, after writing the above, I'm going through just this same debate on ASR once again, where someone there has declared subjective impressions as meaningless and useless.  

Blind tests are a hassle, and there’s nothing remotely sexy about them.

The ones I’ve done involved switching between different masterings and bitrates as well as CD v Minidisc v MP3 player have demonstrated just how similar they all were.

My Sony MP3 was indistinguishable from my Marantz CD player.

A shocking discovery!

One that I had to repeat a few times as I could not accept the evidence of my own ears at first. It didn’t make sense then and I’m not sure it makes much sense now.

My mind keeps insisting that the Marantz CD6000ki must outperform a sub £100 Sony MP3 player.

It really should.

But it doesn’t.

Talking of CD, at the last show I went to, a fortnight ago, it was nearly all steaming and vinyl, hardly a CD player in sight.

How times change.

It would now appear that manufacturers and designers no longer see it necessary to use a compact disc player when they want to demonstrate loudspeakers and amplifiers at their best these days.

It takes some getting used to how things change, especially when you recall all of those endless sound quality comparisons between CD players during the 1990s up til around 2010.

Now it would appear as if all of those differences were largely in our imaginations and have now become as irrelevant as the use of leeches has in healing the sick.

Well cd318, you've just proven either your system or your ears aren't "resolving" enough.

;-)

 

 

prof

3,127 posts

10-20-2022 at 03:34pm 

 

What timing.  Sure enough, after writing the above, I'm going through just this same debate on ASR once again, where someone there has declared subjective impressions as meaningless and useless.  

Because you are making baseless unsubstantiated claims! 😁😀

You should add the following disclaimer after each post and you should be fine: "every opinion expressed herein is  based on unproven unscientific listening sessions and should not be construed as claim on sound quality of any and all components. For information purposes only"

 

thyname, I take it from the smilies your post is parody.

 

For information purposes only"

It would be rejected by these same folks as "non-informative."

It got to the point I had to add this on to my signature on ASR:

Of course...it could always be my imagination.

However, the points I am raising in that thread about the usefulness of subjective description isn’t baseless, it’s essentially irrefutable (because from the proposition they claim, they can’t explain how my work in sound post production gets done, or offer any practical alternative). Which is why you see people ignore it and go ad hominem instead of addressing the point.

 

Well @prof I am sorry. You are wrong 😆. You have said it yourself: if you share any listening experience that is not backed by either measurements or double blind ABX tests certified by a panel of independent third party individuals (preferably both). you are simply making baseless claims. Such obnoxious behavior will not be tolerated 😉

thyname, if you are trying to catch me in self-contradiction, you haven’t really understood what I’ve been writing.

Here it is again:

There is "noise" in our perceptual system - forms of bias that influence our perception, which can also lead us to hear things that aren’t there.

But...as I always point out on ASR...that does NOT mean that our perception is therefore wholly unreliable and useless. Clearly it can’t mean that, since we use our perception successfully to get us through the day, hearing included. So we have to acknowledge that our senses and perception is to some significant degree, reliable.

But, just as you can’t go too far towards "our perception is wholly unreliable" you also can’t go too far towards "our perception is wholly RELIABLE." Because we know our perception is fallible to some degree. We can be fooled.

Clearly some middle-ground has to be found between the two, to make sense.

And the line will be drawn depending on how reliable you want your conclusion to be. So, as I’ve given in the example of cooking: taking adding salt to make a dish taste more salty. if you want to be REALLY sure that the amount of salt IS detectable by your taste buds as "more salty," then you could take a scientific approach to control the variables involved including bias. So you could use measurements of chemical properties and blind testing to weed out what could be mere bias (e.g. "I added more salt, and my expectation leads me to ’taste it as more salty’), and establish more reliable thresholds where the salt is detectable in a dish.

But the fact you can get more certain, reliable information that way DOES NOT entail that normal sighted cooking tests are wholly unreliable and useless. Why not? Because we know adding salt CAN quite plausibly increase the taste of saltiness. So in a practical sense, experimenting with our recipe isn’t producing scientific level certainties (caveats about the word "certain" in science...), but it’s still reasonable given the inherent plausibility that introducing ingredients will change the taste.

But the reasonableness will always rest on the plausibility of what we are doing. That is where "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" comes in to help out. If for instance someone claimed to be practicing a homeopathic version of cooking, where adding a thimble of water that "once had a molecule of salt" but now has no detectable salt molecules is still claimed to make the dish taste "more salty..." then that’s a whole different ballgame. That claim should rightly be held with suspicion, and if those practitioners are claiming the dish tastes ’more salty’ after adding their homeopathic ’salt,’ it’s reasonable to presume in the absence of rigorous testing that it’s more likely their imagination.

I apply just this type of reasoning in audio. Yes there is noise in the system of our subjective perception. But we can still sift reliable-enough information out of the system, where there are ACTUALLY THINGS TO HEAR.

Different speaker designs, for instance we know from both engineering and studies of human hearing, to sound audibly different from one another.

My work in post production sound is in the same category: we are hearing and altering sounds in ways that are utterly uncontroversial in terms of audibility.

But some claims fall in to the "controversial" category based on their dubious plausibility, pointed out by relevant experts (or even identifiable as dubious simply by applying critical thinking to the claim). Plenty of audiophile beliefs fall in to such categories. So if an audiophile wants to describe the sound of speakers, like I’ve said, I’m all ears. If he wants to say an expensive USB cable altered the sound over a cheaper functioning, properly spec’d USB cable, based on the claims made by the marketing, then I am justified in wanting stronger evidence than an anecdote.

And, like I’ve said, NO audiophile needs to justify his purchase or engage in measurements or controlled testing. To each his own. I’m just describing the reasons for MY skepticism in the face of some claims rather than others.

The problem with some at ASR, like the fellow I was currently having an exchange with, is that I argue they go too far in the direction of "subjective reports are utterly worthless and meaningless." The claim makes no exceptions, even for cases where audible differences are entirely plausible and likely (e.g. speakers). That level of generalization is incoherent, unless you acknowledge all the caveats I have argued for above.

I am all for middle ground. It’s just some don’t like that, my way or the highway sort of thing. Not me. And:

NO audiophile needs to justify his purchase or engage in measurements or controlled testing. To each his own.

Yup! Exactly.

But:

But some claims fall in to the "controversial" category based on their dubious plausibility, pointed out by relevant experts (or even identifiable as dubious simply by applying critical thinking to the claim). Plenty of audiophile beliefs fall in to such categories. So if an audiophile wants to describe the sound of speakers, like I’ve said, I’m all ears. If he wants to say an expensive USB cable altered the sound over a cheaper functioning, properly spec’d USB cable, based on the claims made by the marketing, then I am justified in wanting stronger evidence than an anecdote.

Or, you can just ignore those posts. One should not ask people to only post selectively about their subjective findings only on stuff that you believe have merit. They should feel free to post about anything. Then, we, the readers, can sort through the maze of posts, and only read what catches our interests. No?

 

Or, you can just ignore those posts. One should not ask people to only post selectively about their subjective findings only on stuff that you believe have merit. They should feel free to post about anything. Then, we, the readers, can sort through the maze of posts, and only read what catches our interests. No?

Sure that could be someone's approach.

But it's not so simple as that.

After all, you've been in these threads making arguments.  You could have just skipped them, but you didn't.  Why?  Because you see some audiophiles making claims or arguments you disagree with, and you think it's worthwhile to present another viewpoint, presumably. 

It's the same for anything we post in audioforums.  You could see a post that says, say, that Thiel speakers require TONS of power and will ONLY sound good with super high wattage solid state amps.  But if you have reasons to think that claim is false or misleading - e.g. you've heard Thiels sound fantastic with tube amps - then naturally you may want to reply "Hold on, I haven't found that to be the case...here are the reasons why I think Thiel's don't necessarily require the amplification that person claimed."

This is how we hammer ideas around in forums, right?  Exchanging different points of view, giving support for our point of view, which can help someone get a bigger picture of an issue, to decide for themselves which avenues to pursue.

 

 

After all, you've been in these threads making arguments.  You could have just skipped them, but you didn't.  Why? 

That's true. And honestly, I shouldn't. 

prof

3,131 posts

10-20-2022 at 05:18pm 

Or, you can just ignore those posts. One should not ask people to only post selectively about their subjective findings only on stuff that you believe have merit. They should feel free to post about anything. Then, we, the readers, can sort through the maze of posts, and only read what catches our interests. No?

Sure that could be someone's approach.

But it's not so simple as that.

Yes. It's as simple as that. Meaning, I believe everyone should be free to share their experiences in a public forum, subjective or not, and let the readers be the judge. The reader(s) then can determine what interests them and what doesn't. Read & participate in threads of interest, ignore the threads with no interest. 

Agreed!

My problem is the absolute conviction/statements that cables that measure the same, sound the same. That tweaks that address vibration, acoustics and just plain static are worthless, These items especially if they are considered expensive and possibly too profitable to the manufacturer, are snake oil and bogus.

The transition from CD player to digital separates was difficult and I lost "some" money testing out transports, DACs and cabling. In that time, I rediscovered an old CD player that better than my more expensive 2005 EAR Acute which is now ensconced in my 2nd system. I sold the EAR. Eventually, two years later, I acquired fantastic digital separates and a cable which raised my digital playback to the level of my analog playback, still for much less money than my analog playback cost (table, arm, cartridge, vibration platform, SUT, phono-preamp, cabling, VPI and Kirmuss cleaning machines, etc). I’m happy as I have great R2R, DAT, 78 rpm, LP and CD playback sound.

I can share freely here, on What’s Best Forum, Audiocircle, etc. without qualifying every subjective statement I’ve made. I think that’s the point of not liking ASR.

I’ve read many Audiogon forums on CD transports and many posts state that the Cambridge CXC is adequate at $600. I tried one from Cambridge. I let it play for several days and tried it. Of course, I may have received a bad unit, but my neighbor had a boxed one ready for sale and let me compare it. Nope, it was just as mediocre, thin, flat sounding, limited dynamics. I sent mine back and I note that there are so many better CD players, new and recently discontinued, which sound superior just by improving the power caps. I tried a Marantz CD-1 and 5004 units after the caps were upgraded. A little dark sounding and lower in resolution but at least they were pleasant sounding compared to the Cambridge. A Denon DVD DBP 1611UD, just changing the power caps and putting a pigtail for and IEC power cord for a total cost of $200 results in a transport that is clean and clear with great resolution, depth and soundstage What it lacks is some body to the sound and deep bass; otherwise, in a warm, tubey system it should be a real winner.

This is where I provide my subjective experience to evaluating other’s opinion of the same unit and provide inexpensive better sounding alternatives. I don’t expect everyone to try out a $1500 digital cable as I did. It probably won’t have the great appeal for low end equipment users. On the Denon DVD transport which I tried, it was noticeably better but at 7.5 times the cost of the transport, not too practical or cost effective.

 

 

@prof

I think it’s understandable to a degree. For one thing, doing blind tests can be a hassle, sometimes totally impractical (speakers especially). And generally speaking I think the members there can and do rely on the relevant tests having been done by other parties. For instance all the research by Toole/Olive/Harman Kardon et al, for selecting the relevant measurements in speakers. And also they can look to measurements of DACs and amplifiers to see that distortion levels are below known thresholds of audibility. So in many cases they don’t really need to perform their own blind tests, depending on what approach they take to buying equipment.

On the other hand, it is fairly galling to be disparaged as some pure subjectivist-in-sheep’s-clothing by folks there who haven’t really "put up or shut up" themselves in terms of personally having experience blind testing.

Don't read to much into my comment but yes you've covered it. DBT aren't convenient and insisting others do them when you don't yourself is bit disingenuous.

The two reasons they may not be needed are 1) difference is non-existent, and 2) difference is obvious. In-between however we have the uncanny valley.

I can share freely here, on What’s Best Forum, Audiocircle, etc. without qualifying every subjective statement I’ve made. I think that’s the point of not liking ASR.

 

Yes I absolutely see the value in that.

We buy hifi for several reasons, what it sounds like, what it looks like, what it feels like and for some how it measures. Most use a combination with one factor often taking precedence. Discounting hifi based on measurements can be problematic. If you rate components on measurement alone that may be due to an obvious failing.  However today most hifi, above a given price, tends not to have obvious sonic flaws. Measurement orientated sites are obviously ranking products, does a product ranked 1 sound different to a product ranked 500? Can measurements tell you that. When we have metrics measured that are 1000's of times lower than can be heard what is the measurements relevance?