So our hearing has non-linear processing. So what.

you are determined to dominate this thread

@mahgister ,

I will be honest with you. I find your attitude appalling. Your anger because Amir (and others) refuse to bend to your way of thinking, that you are not presenting in a coherent manner, is off-putting and if there was a mute button I would have long ago used it. You are not trying to communicate or discuss, you are trying to impose.

So our hearing has non-linear processing. So what. No one appears to dispute that. It appears to be quite common where our senses are concerned. Seems pretty common in industry too.

You are screaming at Amir, but I have you provided a concrete example of how what he is doing is wrong or will lead to improper conclusions? Not screaming at him this is wrong, but exactly what is wrong, why it is wrong, and very important, how wrong he is. Is he off by 5%? 10? 75%? You are very confident what he is doing is wrong, so you should be able to confidently tell him, how inaccurate the work he is doing is. To put it colloquially, put your money where your mouth is.

I went back and read those papers and some of the links I searched. Do you know what frequencies they were measuring and what times they were using? I assumed based on your dissertation that the times would be very small, and the frequencies high. The frequencies were small, 100’s of Hz, and the times were large, many milliseconds. I don’t know all the math, but if we are testing to 20KHz, I don’t think timing of milliseconds is going to be an issue even if there are small technical problems.

I said I was done with this and I should be, but you are determined to dominate this thread.

 

Magnasco and Oppenheim said this :

«The significant increase in timing acuity unaccompanied by a
drop in the total acuity for a pulse with considerably larger
variances in timing and frequency indicates that either the
precision of human time-frequency perception operates in a realm
distant from the true uncertainty bound, or such a bound does not
exist for the auditory system»...

«Such results add to the growing body of
evidence that human auditory processing is adapted for natural
sounds. Not only then is auditory processing inherently nonlinear,
these nonlinearities are seemingly used to improve perceptual acuity to sounds that correspond to the physics of natural sound
production.»... «Lastly, our
observations about time-reversal symmetry breaking and the
temporal precision of the auditory system suggest further research
into this ecologically-relevant domain.»

Reducing this as you did to a mere underestimating time and frequency relation in a linear model is FALSE...

By the way when we speak of measures in science, ESTIMATION of measures results must be BOUNDED in a set... This set SIZE is ascribed by the theory , here Fourier theory... Magnasco and Oppenheim state that the results of their experiments exceed more than 10 times the uncertainty limit of the Fourier principle... What this means ? The results of the experiment does not suggest a mere error of estimation INSIDE the bounded set PRESCRIBED by the linear Fourier theory... but the experiments suggested an information extracted by the ears/brain so high OUT OF the accepted set of possible values prescribed by the mathematical Fourier theory... The conclusion of the article is then we need an ecological based hearing theory and further experiments in this direction...

The qualities we hear are not MERE ILLUSIONS.. They correspond to LEARNED and taught by evolution real informative events related to sound sources and sound production in evolutive history...

Sorry for your complete miunderstanding.. ..

No discussion is possible without GOOD FAITH...

And Van Maanen is not a mere seller...Anybody reading his articles and biography cannot buy that... You are a seller ...

The test simply states that our prediction of simultaneous detection of frequency and its timing is too conservative.

Is this conclusion from one of Magnasco and Openheim sound as a mere underestimation about bound relations between frequencies and time ?

«Early last century a number of auditory phenomena,
such as residue pitch and missing fundamentals, started
to indicate that the traditional view of the hearing process
as a form of spectral analysis had to be revised. In 1951,
Licklider [25] set the foundation for the temporal theories
of pitch perception, in which the detailed pattern of action
potentials in the auditory nerve is used [26,27], as opposed
to spectral or place theories, in which the overall amplitude
of the activity pattern is evaluated without detailed
access to phase information. The ground-breaking work
of Ronken [21] and Moore [22] found violations of
uncertainty-like products and argued for them to be evi-
dence in favor of temporal models. However, this line of
work was hampered fourfold, by lack of the formal
foundation in time-frequency distributions we have today,
by concentrating on frequency discrimination alone, by
technical difficulties in the generation of the stimuli,
and not the least by lack of understanding of cochlear
dynamics, since the active cochlear processes had not yet
been discovered. Perhaps because of these reasons this
ground-breaking work did not percolate into the commun-
ity at large, and as a result most sound analysis and
processing tools today continue to use models based on
spectral theories. We believe it is time to revisit this
issue.
We have conducted the first direct psychoacoustical test
of the Fourier uncertainty principle in human hearing, by
measuring simultaneous temporal and frequency discrimi-
nation. Our data indicate that human subjects often beat the
bound prescribed by the uncertainty theorem, by factors in
excess of 10. This is sometimes accomplished by an
increase in frequency acuity, but by and large it is temporal
acuity that is increased and largely responsible for these
gains. Our data further indicate subject acuity is just as
good for a notelike amplitude envelope as for the Gaussian,
even though theoretically the uncertainty product is
increased for such waveforms. Our study directly rules
out many of the simpler models of early auditory process-
ing, often used as input to the higher-order stages in models
of higher auditory function. Of the plethora of time-
frequency distributions and auditory processing models
that have been studied, only a few stand a chance of both
matching the performance of human subjects and be
plausibly implementable in the neural hardware of the
auditory
system
(e.g.,
Refs.
[6,7,12,27]),
with the reassignment method having the best comparative tempo-
ral acuity. Elucidation of which mechanism underlies our
subjects’ auditory hyperacuity is likely to have wide-
ranging applications, both in fields where matching human
performance is an issue, such as speech recognition, as
well as those more removed, such as radar, sonar, and radio »

is this experiment after of a long history of past experiments in the same direction looked like as Amir falsely claim as just a mere underestimation of some linear factors bounds in Fourier models between frequency and time  or more as a revolution in hearing theory out of Fourier models based theory ?

Only gullible unable to read people will go with Amir interpretation here...

I never contested the usefulness of your measures..

I contested what you implicitly suggested that your measures set are ENOUGH to spoke about All aspects of  design qualities...Debunking gear claims from the market is not the same as EVALUATING gear on musical aspects of their design ...

You know full well this fact because your crusade seems to be debunking not only audiophiles deluded by cables but human hearing itself... The measures we used must always be interpreted not only in a material design context but also for their MEANINGS in relation to human hearings as taught by psycho-acoustic..

Minimizing the real lesson of Magnasco and Oppenhein experiments as a mere underestimation about frequency and time reveal your agenda... I know that you are very intelligent then distorting this experiment results to make a point reveal a very SUBJECTIVE back tought that has nothing to do with science...

The results of this experiment is not about an error of estimation about frequencies and time it is about the necessary transformation of hearing theory out of the Fourier frequencies modelling based theory because it is UNEXPLANABLE in a linear and time independant  Fourier context .. Any other conclusion reveal bad faith...Sorry to say so... You never adress directly this article in the first two days of our discussion , now you spoke of it  MINIMIZING and distorting his meaning and results... Why ?

Anybody able to read a text can verify that what i said is true...

...

I don’t know why this keeps getting repeated. No attempt is made to measure everything about a piece of audio gear. We measure just enough to find out how well engineered the audio device is.

You get it in the reverse direction...

The Oppenmheim Magnasco experiments is ONLY ONE of a set that investigate the limits of any Fourier modelling of human hearings in the lasy 60 years ..

This paper never pretended nor justify the rejection of linear measure in the design process.. This paper as you say never negate the benefit of linear measuring methods in GEAR DESIGN , it demonstrated that linear Fourier frequency based methods cannot explain hearing  ... And you are wrong in minimizing toward a caricature the results : they does not only say that our estimation of frequency and its timing is too conservative, this is  a MARKETING DISTORTING EUPHEMISM you use sorry to minimize the real impact of the discovery...  we do not read the same paper, the paper say that this  relation BETWEEN FREQUENCIES AND TIME IS NON LINEAR AND NOT EXPLANABLE BY FOURIER MODELLING AT ALL...The fundamental teachings then  was that no Fourier modelling can explain human hearings and the linear Fourier context where your measure set applies for gear specs cannot REPLACE  human listening even as said Van Maanen  demonstrated in  gear design , especially if gear design must be based on psycho-acoustic...

And if you read Van Maanen as someone who sold gear your are not of good faith sorry,  because he spoke as a scientist... it is evident when we read his papers... you accuse him of what you do ; selling your measures method and minimizing an important discovery about human hearings and his potential impact on design ...

 Anybody reading the articles i posted can verify... Only gullible people will not see how you just distorted the experiments results and interpretation .. Sorry... I learned how to read...

First, I had already read and knew about the Oppenheim and Magnasco paper.  It made the rounds when it first came out.  Many jump to conclusion thinking that paper gives the subjectivist ticket to ignore measurements.  Reality was, as I have explained repeatedly, it has no relationship to measurements let alone going that far.  The test simply states that our prediction of simultaneous detection of frequency and its timing is too conservative.  That for special type of signal at least, our higher order brain function is able to tease out more performance.

I had not seen the Van Maanen paper before but once you mentioned I did.  What is in there is mostly marketing of high-end audio with some contrived simulations that have little relevance to the point you or he are trying to make.

No one is against blind test... but blind test is not a cure... Nor replace any training...  By the  way i use some form of blind test in my room tuning  even sometimes  by accident...

And we must distinguish between unconscious biases and consciously acquired biases as an acoustician and a musician training for years... I am not against Amir measures as informative...

I am against ideological uninformed stance about human hearings for the benefit of a very limited set of measures which can detect if a design is faulty at best not inform us about his ultimate sound quality ...

I dissociate useful Amir information from his limited understanding of human hearings because he sell his tools and methods and for doing so say that all people trusting their ears are deluded...

For example i trained myself tuning my room... it was not perfect, but i learned basic facts... And there is no comparison at all between before and after my one year full time acoustic experiments... is this perfect as a job ? not at all... but it cost me nothing and i learned about all acoustic concepts by EXPERIMENTING... i know what means this acoustic ratio for example not by theory or by an equation not even by a mere computing ( ASW/LV) but by specific practice in a small room with his acoustic content ... Not by reading an equation... in the process i learned how to trust my hearings even if it is an inmperfect tool and a biased one... Who dare to mock me because it was imperfect ?

What is the best ? Training our ears and learning how to listen...or buying and learning nothing ?

You speak about ears cup of headphone ...

After loosing my acoustic room i was sad... I embarked in a 6 months of listenings experiments on my hybrid AKG K340 headphone.. The main problem was the complex ear cup control... This headphone is one of the most complex design and one of the best... i opened it and put mechanichal control for vibrations, erase the protective plastic grid that was there not for the S.Q. but for protection , i experimented with the right volume for the dual chamber of the shell with the thickness of the pads, i equalized them a bit with a large band equalization , i discovered the right amplifier for it ... And wow! my sadness disapeared after this 6 months... This headphone is speaker like and project according to the recording process a soundfield out of the head and i could no more detect any defect as in my first day listening.. Not bad for a used 100 bucks headphone... All my other 9 headphones even modified sound artificial and headphone like...

Without my trust in my ears whay did i could have done ? NOTHING ... I would have criticized the headphone design as some reviewers did without bothering themselves to understand the design to begin with and serve it well ... i even read the Dr. Gorike patent... 😊

i trust my ears not because it is perfect but because i work with it...I used measures when i need them... i dont trust measures as truth about hearings sorry...

Many people cannot understand that the human ears USE frequencies SELECTIVELY and filters them to perceive OBJECTIVE QUALITIES, speech, music, natural sounds , and these qualities INFORM US A LOT about our surroundings they are evolutive affordance for our survival but the human hearings is not frequencies based in a linear way , it is timing based in a time dependant way... What we hears from an audio system is complex and cannot be replaced by limited linear measures set...

Thanks for your respectful answer ...

@mahgister Fair enough. Having also worked on studies of human subjects in later careers in technology, I can assure you that subject reports are clouded by an enormous range of biases, expectations, timing effects, etc. Amir goes into the problem of performing even simple tests to distinguish systems and how challenging it is, so I have strong doubts about the subjectivist-style claims and how intellectually honest those folks are!

I just don’t see any downside to leaning heavily into objective tests. I’ve only seen poorly-designed tests (often headphone tests are impacted by problems with the ear cups, for instance) that were problematic.

Anyway, I learned some new stuff today! Always a good day...

I forgot to say that you missed a point about Van Maanen...

A key point he mentions is that sinusoidal signal sweeps don’t fully characterize the frequency response of, say, an amplifier, because of some theoretical requirements.

He said as a physicist that a sinusoidal continuous signal dont act on the circuits of amplifier as a Sudden variable  dynamic burst of music , then as you said the frequency response of a circuit cannot be predicted adequately under this kind of linear continuous signals... He then designed his circuits in a way for them to be able to reacted and be more linearly predictable under REAL MUSICAL BURST...

Correct me if i am wrong... it is what i remember...

Thanks for you interest...

For sure you know better than me to analyse what he want to do...

bUt human hearings is sensible to some harmonics positively and not to some others so much positively  for example...  The tonal perception is heavily influenced by harmonics , Van Maanen explain in his paper how the fact that human hearing is time dependant help him to design in a better set of trade-off his own circuits..

I read it because of these application from the Oppenheim and Magnasco experiments revealing after 60 years of investigation that human herings cannot be reduced to spectral analysis alone  nor to any linear Fourier inspired theory ... van Maanen used that in his design trade off and you are best equipped than me to understand HOW PRECISELY he did it...

i used his articles as contradiction of the claim by Amir that linear measures of gear are enough... Amplifier must stay in linear control but the direction toward a better sound is possible only if we understood the non linear way hearing perceive sounds..

Reducing noise and and controlling distortion not only reducing them is always a goal ...  But it is half of the task ... The other half of the  task is designing  circuits more susceptible to please and inform the human hearings who do not work as a Fourier engine at all... The Fourier engine must serve hearings not reduce hearings to its mere linear workings in a time independant way... Ears perceived real physical invariants in the real world and analyse them non linearly in a time dependant way, no fourier approach can explain it ..¯ Van Maanen is conscious of that and use it as inspiration for his  complex design... Why did he call his design "TIME COHERENCY " ? you know enough about electronics to connect the dots better than me here  ... 😊

One thing is sure Van Maanen nor Magnasco and Oppenheim will mock people trusting their hearing acquired biases and training as deluded... They are in science first  not first  in marketing of gear or marketing of tools...

Thanks very much for your interests ...

@mahgister Actually, I just read a bunch of van Mannen for fun. Luckily I have both a BSEE and MSEE in information theory and signal analysis, thus feel somewhat competent to comment a bit (though I prefer a much more reserved approach to science and engineering). A key point he mentions is that sinusoidal signal sweeps don’t fully characterize the frequency response of, say, an amplifier, because of some theoretical requirements. Linearity is one of those requirements and there are all kinds of nonlinear things going on in real systems. Indeed, the effects of nonlinear transfer functions can be quite interesting and require very interesting mathematical tools. But, really, it’s what we call distortion.

So, if an amplifier designer is trying to create a great amplifier, what should she do? She could test using sinusoids and try to reduce distortion and noise in her design or she could do....what...exactly? van Mannen has concerns about feedback topologies as well, but still, other than trading-off options, she still will want to test using the best tools she has in an effort to reduce noise and distortion.

I am not against "transparent" design...But mass market minimal design standards cannot be high end craftmanship...

But i cannot accept that some use these set of measures to disparage human hearings are passively subject of illusions, some will reduced all human hearing abilities as illusions of only subjective nature with no objective informative content useful for new design , not only to create "colorful" tubes amp but better gear in the larger sense by using human ears as a guide... This stance about linear measure of circuits with no need of the designer ears guiding rudder contradict basic psycho-acoustics... We analyse sound non linearly and we live in a time dependant dimension for this analysis and frequecies dont tell all the story... This means something for design theory...

I cannot repeat what Van Maanen taught , i am not competent and it will be too long..

There is materials physical and sensible invariants , information , behind sound experience not just abstract waves analysed for frequencies spectrum , and amplitude phase and duration and distortion, and not just subjective delusions, these physical invariants go deeper in hearing theory than just frequency based circuits analysis and told us something about human hyperacuity as Magnasco and Oppenheim called it... These materials invariant of qualitative information content are not measured by the tools Amir used, they exist for the ears who perceived them in his time dependant domain and extract from them in a non linear way much qualitative information ...

Thanks for your kind balanced answer...

Read this if you want to guess what these qualities perceived by human hearings are...I read the author thesis..,

Listening and hearing are not DECEPTIVE activity as claim those who want complete faith in their very limited set of measures as the ABSOLUTE METER for "musicality " in gear design...I dont go with ideology sorry... Not in audio not in any subject...I think alone with books and scientists not sellers ...Psycho-acoustic use measures to elucidate hearings very deep matter not to reduce it to mere subjective illusions for the benefit of some limited set of gear measures sold as TRUTH..

In a word there is a deep relation between sound perception and the production of sound by the body, negating this powerful informative feed back circle and claiming that a short set of linear measures can settle audio gear quality forever without any need to listenings , because it is merely delusions, this is not science, this is ideology, and had nothing to do with psycho-acoustic... Amir Measure are useful... Nobody oppose that.. But selling them as the last words with no need for qualitative listenings is going too much farther... Audiophiles are no more deluded than people of ASR with their toy tools.. And blind test do not replace listening training with acoustic and musician training or the trained ears of a designer ...

Classyfying all people in audiophiles subjectivists  all  in error  and ASR objectivist as living is truth , is marketing fetichism not psycho-acoustic... 

...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267327268_The_Body-Image_Theory_of_Sound_An_Ecological_Approach_to_Speech_and_Music

@mahgister Well, I just skimmed that response a bit but, yes, it certainly is possible to build audio reproduction systems that have colored sound that some people might prefer (tube and vinyl aficionados rejoice!), but in reality these were always stopgaps towards perfect fidelity due to the limitations of the devices. But some folks prefer them, so be it.

But with the advent of better technologies and the theories that guide their use, we can build remarkably transparent systems for low cost these days, so the limitations of those other approaches become more obvious. There is some research that shows that hypersonic sounds (>20kHz) might cause some brain activity changes, but it’s unclear whether that is definitive for providing perceptually-relevant high-frequency components that would enhance our temporal experience of music, etc.

If you want to know what people want from speakers, you just need to study them and come up with a crowd-sourced preference curve, for instance. And lo, we have one.

But in any case, I remain perplexed what you hope to gain by pushing this line? If you have a desire to research how to color sounds to enhance audio enjoyment, please do the work. I will be interested (if it’s well-written and coherent). Nothing you mention has any bearing on testing whether audio devices are high quality from the standard of low noise and distortion. It is orthogonal to those goals.

Psycho-acoustic science and basic facts DECONSTRUCT not only audiophile subjectivist focus on gear but also deconstruct and demolish objectivist techno babble...

But it seems that people cannot think out of binary opposition...

The basic facts about hearings cannot be reduced to mere "illusions" without any bearing on qualitative design, no more than measures in the large sense of the world can be dismissed by subjectivist...

Listenings is not an illusory experience which must be dismissed by blind test...It is an ability that must be trained in acoustic environment ...

Measures are revelatory and necessary for design and pleasure BUT THEY MUST BE interpreted in the rightfull hearing theory context..

By the way faith in some restricted set of measures interpreted in the Fourier context is only that : technological misplaced faith... But there is difference between technology driven by the right hearing theory and technology even negating hearing perceptive abilities asking to be trained and used in design itself... This is the Van Maanen main point...

Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture.

@mahgister I just noticed this thread from my weekly Audiogon roundup. I am actually familiar with Gibson and his ecological approach from grad work in cognitive science. I took a moment to check out some of the papers related to your unnecessarily long and murky posts here, as well.

I don’t think ecological perception critiques about spectral analysis are relevant to musical reproduction devices. They certainly are interesting in terms of explaining human listening experiences where expectations and environmental affordances certainly play a part in how the brain perceives the sounds emanating from a device. But if the goal is just to successfully reproduce audio with minimum noise and distortion, and with maximum fidelity to the original recording, I see nothing to suggest that following the guidance of sampling theory will not result in exactly the kinds of "transparent" or "uncolored" devices that are available today. Gibson then gets to critique how the human hears/understands the purity of the emerging sounds, and reconciles them with all the affordances of space, room, materials, mood, and much else.

There are edge cases where general psycho-acoustics can be influential, like using compression techniques that de-emphasize parts of the spectrum. We would prefer to de-emphasize only where the results have low impact on human listening, for instance. Phantom center images, Dolby Atmos, etc. certainly are another area where there are great research opportunities, too, for the ecological perception-focused researcher.

In any case, I have learned a great deal on ASR and recommend it highly. It provides an excellent counterpoint to vague assertions and hush-voiced listening reviews. Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture. We see that playing out here!

I beg your pardon but all my posts which are a rational discussion with Amir were not about subjectivits and objectivists, which is a MEANINGLESS debate let to itself most of the times; but more about the relation between measuring context and hearing theories, mainly Fourier inspired theory of hearings and ecological theory of hearings...I debate him about PSYCHO-ACOUSTIC not about his objectivism techno ideology as most audiophile subjectivist do WITH NO SUCCESS because they dont adress the fundamentals behind measures and behind hearings..

i like to be understood... Dont take it personal...

This thread, like many others, seems to boil down to the ’subjective’ vs. ’objective’ arguments, and which are better?

IOW, nothing new here.

Very easy answer...Point me the thread where someone debate Amir about the Fourier /ecological theory of hearing in psycho-acoustics and the relation with his opinion ?

It is easy to answer by insulting someone... More easy to escape by saying what he said is "COMMON PLACE"... It is not common place dude... You confuse generality with specfic deep philosophical points about hearing and your limited opinion..

You are right about one thing : i have an ego yes and a quick temper , but i can recognize when i am wrong... And i dont mix common place fact with DEEP question in psycho-acoustics..

And i learned how to apologize after insulting people... Ask your mother..

You will not answer me on this debate anyway , you are not able to do so anyway it seems..

I wish you the best and forget my verbose posts in the future...

I did not insult you, I pushed back on your self flattery, As to the rest of your post, I’ll opt for the much quoted Mark Twain quip on the matter, and abstain. I had all this of this debate ~50 years back, ain’t nothing new here.

...

If someone is not enough wise to separate my heavy syntax from my arguments from hearing theory aspects and call my posts "repetitious verbosity" this reflect more his limited mind process than my "verbosity"..

Just a question if i want to know if you get the point : What is the relation bettwen a Gibson ecological perspective on sound hearing impressions and a Fourier inspired one ?

And what is the relation of this with Amir opinions about measures and my opinion , and what are the relation of all this to design ; and WHY AM I WRONG OR RIGHT, in spite of my VERBOSITY ?

If you brain work, answer or DEBATE  before insulting me...If you cannot BABBLE a RATIONAL  answer go into the cells of hell reserved to your kind...

I dont insult anyone, if i did it because of my quick temper  or by misunderstanding  i APOLOGIZE but i answer to insults IMMEDIATELY ...

I wait for your answer and in details bright mind ...

Repetitious verbosity != DEEP

Here you were more than right and i am totally with you...We think the same...

Thanks...

@mahgister

No worries.

Just the point being that cult behavior is bad anywhere.

If you add Bidenism  disease   to Trumpism disease, i apologize to you ...

But refrain yourself to insult Amir, i did not partake any of  his ideas about measurements meanings at all , as my long posts here demonstrated, not by insults, but by DEEP ARGUMENTS...

 Then you were right about my  ignorant political disagreement with you, but i am afraid that your post about Amir reflect ignorance more than lucidity... 

Insulting is not a good way to debate sonmeone and put him in a corner...

Thats my point...

Again i apologize for my misreading of your political standpoint...

@mahgister

You're not defending anyone; you're just showing your ignorance.

For citing person B for being wrong about something does not make person A right.

I will defend Amir here...

Crazy people are here too...

What about Bidenism ?

Are you living on the cyclops planet ?

Pick a book and quit the news...

Amir has taught me nothing about audio but his site and its "pinball wizards" (deaf, dumb and broke kids) have taught me a lot about cult psychology. When one person has a crazy idea (say, in audio reproduction, measurements matter more than how something actually sounds, or everything audible is measurable by today's instruments), they are challenged by peers and the crazy idea gets rejected and the species evolves in a pro-survival direction. But when they surround themselves with other crazy people, there’s no challenge and the idea lives on because they feel social acceptance based on that idea. This phenomenon is massively dangerous and just a small version of the same idea destroying the US democracy and eventually possibly the world, namely Trumpism.

Why did i posted about hearing theories?

Because Amir when he gives us his gear measuments reviews , so useful it can be, and they are, implicitly state that all of what we can say about "audible qualities" of the gear is once for all contained in the limited set of measures he use critically ...

This is false, on many counts which one is evident for may people already: no measurements can replace listenings analysis... Even Amir use listening analysis even if biased by his faith in his measures results, he use at least as he said blind test...

But this measures dogma is false on a much deeper level , because there is an evident needs for anyone adding to any set of measures the complementary listening tests analysis , this DOGMA is false ALSO AND MORE DEEPLY on the account of the necessary HEARING THEORY CONTEXT where any set of measurements must be INTERPRETED... We must display this hearing theory context where this set of measures are interpreted as meaningful ..

It is not enough to measure distortion or any other design factors if we are not conscious of the hearing theory context where the "audible musical qualities and sound qualities" are rightfully defined OR NOT ...

The only one argument Amir offered me is : Dont listen Oppenheim and Magnasco , or Van Maanen or J. J. Gibson (who anyway he does not even know)... He say instead come to ASR...😊 But the discussion between Amir and me is here...

But anyway i already came to visit ASR which is an interesting informative site where luminaries as Floyd Toole came too..

The problem is not the information level of ASR... It is the ideology by zealots who harass others from different perspectives , as with audiogon , the ideology by subjectivists zealots insulting Amir...

As i said objectivist as subjectivist focus on gear not on PSYCHO-ACOUSTIC... Two tribes with the same blind spot...

But even if subjectivist may be ignorant they intuitively know that listening pay more than measuring when we pick gear or choose to tune our room as i did...i prefer to learn acoustic listenings than consult measures for an "upgrade"...Measuring is NECESSARY... Listenings is MORE THAN NECESSARY...

Anyway, rightful VERIFIED hearing theory indicate human HYPERACUITY is related to evolution and as J. J. Gibson demonstrated in visual perception , not to Fourier analysis of elementary ABSTRACT factor and their computing by the brain so much as to physical invariants relating the hearing producing body to the sound sources qualities ... The production of sound is based on PERCEPTION... And the perception is TRAINED by the production of sounds... Not by abstract measures in the Fourier context... Any musician know this...

Then audible musical qualities and sound qualities , they are REAL, not illusions, they reflect real qualities in the vibrating sound sources, and by evolution our own body was TUNED to perceive them in a productive and active way...

It is in this active and productive way we must design components of gear measuring what is necessary to PLEASE the human ears and the musicians needs, not the opposite’ submitting hunman ears to the technological babble coming from Abstracted concepts from Fourier linear and time independant models... Designer must use Fourier but overpass Fourier limited frequency domain and linear perspective by recognizing the non linear way and the time dependant way the ears identifies and qualifies the sound sources... It is in substance what Hans Van Maanen said in all his articles...And many other amplifiers designer using tubes and S.S. design too...

Mass market design standards are the floor not the ceilings of creative design... Hearing theory is the only context where any measurements deliver its meanings...

In psycho-acoustic physics and engineering is the slave of neurology and psychology not the reverse...

Amir cannot refute my post...

Marketing his site and expertise is Ok , he is an expert, and  it is an interesting site; but thats all... Sound qualities EXIST, they are not mere illusions, and no measures described them better than hearings experience, because in psycho-acoustic , as the word psycho indicate, the measures serve the act of hearing experience not the reverse... Psycho-acoustician dont design amplifier they taught to engineers how to design them in a more "musical" way...

Mass market is not high end design, and high end designers are not all fraudsters despising any measures or pretending to something without proof...

There is high designer here in Audiogon, as Van Maanen is in Netherlands... They also use psycho-acoustic measures too not only electronic components measures ...

i will stop here apologizing for my long clumsy posts in a language i master very badly on a multidisciplinary subject very deep...As asked Amir : what are your  competence ? i own none ...I only know how to read in French and in English... Alas! i never spoke or wrote english and my vocabulary is from  philosophical and science books... No fluid syntax by me then  and a kimited abstract vocabulary and a bad reading of humor or inability to catch  between the line meanings sometimes ...  😊

Anyway Amir cannot object and did not objected anything to my main point about the hearing theory context ( non linearity and Hearing time DEPENDANCY and his meaning for interpretating measures and design ) ... All his arguments where beside the main point, good arguments sometimes or rectifications ( Magnasco and Oppenheim for example is not NOVELTY, it only confirm the limits of Fourier context analysis of hearing aLREADY KNOWN FOR 60 years and Amir is right here saying that it is not really novelty information it is a CONFIRMATION indeed ) but when he say that Van Maanen get it wrong, i smile, sorry, Van Maanen know his stuff and cannot be described as "amateur" about circuits design among other things ... A physicist working in fluid theory with expertise in electronics  and as an acoustician designing his own amplifiers and speakers brand based on non linear and time dependant theory of hearing as hobby is not an audiogon subjectivist, you know what i mean ? 😉

Hilde45 is right , my posts are way too long, but at least they had a content...

Thanks to all...

Thanks...

You see the power of measurements to quantify audible issues? You see how the theory you read in that one paper does not at all related to any of this? You see how you should challenge the one designer to produce proper measurements of his amplifier and controlled listening tests showing some benefit in his design approach?

I have read the papers you keep quoting. I will say once again, they have no bearing whatsoever on the topic we are discussion. Go ahead and quote where Oppenheim and Magnasco say anything about audio measurements being obsoleted by that experiment. You won’t find it.

Fourier theory is not part of the design of any amplifier. Nor is Fourier theory what the paper is about that you keep posting

I never said a such non sensical thing about Fourier being part of the material design of an amplifier... They are the background theory for the hearing based frequency theory... i always spoke myself about hearing theory and the impact on design QUALITATIVE INTERPRETATION and the predictive relation between perceived "musicality" of the gear and some sets of LINEAR measures IN THE MASS MARKET INDUSTRY which are not enough to predict "musicality" of the gear because the human hearings work non linearly in the time dependant domain Simple.... I only said that some set of measures are interpretated in the LINEAR context with Fourier theory as a frequency based Hearing theory in the background interpretative context instead of a time dependant theory...By the way going in the time domain with your measures interpreted in a linear context, DOES NOT MEANS YOU WORK IN THE TIME DEPENDANT DOMAIN of hearing theory...The CRUX is not the time domain symmetricality in itself ( laws of nature can be read mathematically in a time independant way ) but it non symmetrical direction, then time dependant one, in a non linear way for human EARS/brain workings..

And again, much of our audio measurements is done in time domain with no usage of Fourier transforms. They are not bound by any uncertainty principal because they don’t attempt to quantify either time or frequency. When we use Fourier transforms, it is to decompose a signal, i.e. its distortion products. We don’t intend or rely on its frequency resolution.

All your measures being interpretated linearly OUT OF THE SPECIFICS NEEDS from a hearing theory based on what MAagnasco and Oppenheim and Van Maanen asked for, cannot have then any concluding value for interpreting them as "good sound" in a psycho-acoustic sense and i a predictive way... A good standard design dont means a "musical" pleasurable sound quality... You then really means only "good sound" as an attribution in a mass marketing standardized designing sense of the words... ... What you call "good sound" then with your set of measures has nothing to do with real "perceived sound qualities" in a psycho-acoustic SUBJECTIVE sense.... Then objectivists claiming the opposite are wrong...If anyone claim the opposite then it is because someone want to IMPOSE what must be a "good sound" with a hearing theory which is linear and TIME INDEPENDANT...

But now we have no debate TOGETHER you said it very clearly : Your set of measures cannot be claimed as to have any PREDICTIVE PERCEIVED SOUND QUALITY VALUES out of the numbers revealing some aspect of distortions and jitter, etc ...The fact that you equate it with good sound QUALITIES is purely an abuse of words; you means good standard design... Then Probability of a good sound with no predictive attribute .. As you say you LISTEN with behind your head the measures biases you had taken BUT you submit yourself to blind test...perfect then...

Then i had no more point of disagreement with you... It is the objectivists around you reading your reviews who EXTRAPOLATE and ATTACK subjectivism claiming to some "musicality" and grow in a cult using some specialized set of measures as PREDICTIVE instead of being only : minimal or optimal standards with no predictive value for "musicality"...Which quality is "unreal" or "illusory" anyway for them ......You are more "neutral" than this circle around you and you do a job thats all... And effectively you cannot be faulted for the rudeness and wrong interpretations of others.. yOu stay silent and give your reviews... Anybody can interpret your verdict as predictive of "good sound" or not... It is up to them... And up to a blind test... 😊

Thanks for the discussion... I learned a lot... i am not qualified in any way, i am not an engineer, but i know how to read... And Hans Van Maanen is more than qualified here... I read his very simple and very clear articles among others.....magnasco and Oppenheim experiments are after 60 years the culmination of a trend growing in hearing theories : Human hearing must be based on an Ecological theory of hearing as exist an ecological theory of visual perception by J. J. Gibson and based on the AFFORDANCES given by natural sound analyased in a non linear way in the time dependant domain by the ears/brain... I suppose you know this book :

wikipedia:

«James Jerome Gibson (/ˈɡɪbsən/; January 27, 1904 – December 11, 1979) was an American psychologist and is considered to be one of the most important contributors to the field of visual perception. Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system actively constructs conscious visual perception, and instead promoted ecological psychology, in which the mind directly perceives environmental stimuli without additional cognitive construction or processing.^{[1 »}

he wrote one of the most influential book about visual perception research in the century...

All my observations about the non linear and time dependant dimension of hearings and their future impact on gear design must be interpreted in  this book context ... Van Maanen use this hearing theory to design his amplifiers ande speakers... This is the reason why i used it...

Then no i am not qualified, J. J. Gibson and Magnasco and Oppenheim and Van Maanen are qualified more than necessary...

Keep for yourself your theory that all there is to say about sound qualities is relative to your limited set of measures...

I don’t have to keep what I have not stated.

DEBUNK THIS ONE AMIR :

This physicist is Dr. Hans R.E. van Maanen, His hobbies are listening to music (mostly classical), developing high-end audio systems

«Although the Fourier theory has been well established since the second half of the 19th century,it is surprising that so little attention is given nowadays to the conditions, required to apply the linear theory. It has been applied unreluctantly to electronics and human hearing, even though neither fulfill either of these requirements. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that the results are inconsistent with listening experiences. »

https://www.temporalcoherence.nl/cms/images/docs/FourierConditions.pdf

«The effects in time domain of non-linear behaviour in combination with memory effects could explain why e.g. amplifiers with similar properties regarding frequency response and distortion
levels, sound different. It is to be expected that ten (10) different designs will produce ten different responses to music signals and thus receive a different perceptual qualification.»

This physicist seems to know better than Amir ... 😊

By the way he say the same thing that Oppenheim and Magnasco :

«Although it is outside the scope of this paper, it should be noted that human hearing is likely to be neither linear nor time-invariant,...»

https://www.temporalcoherence.nl/cms/images/docs/FourierConditions.pdf

Instead of AD HOMINEM ATTACK about the physiciss i cited ( as they know nothing in high end audio) debunk this last one who say the same as the one you attack as ignorant in Audio matter....

Are you serious? ANSWER about time domain and the Fourier uncertainty  and the impossibility to reduce human hearing to Fourier tools and frequencies analysis..TIME domain is fundame4ntal and the relation between hearing and natural sounds impose a time symmetry breaking and the brain non linear tools...

I speak about human hearings and abilities, i cited his article and you answer that his protocols in cable listening is not good...😊He is a physicist then i aqm not surprized that his protocols for cables measuring and hearings may be criticized... This dont invalidate all of what he say about the capacities of human hearings...

What about what he say about hearings ?

What about Oppenheim aqnd Magnasco article about human hearings in the time domain ?

I DONT SPEAK ABOUT CABLES PROTOCOLS...

I speak about citing these articles of 4 different physicists, about the impossibility with simple electrical me3asures of gear components TO PREDICT QUALITATIVE HEARING IMPRESSION IN THE TIME DOMAIN .... The ears is non linear...

it is impossible as you claim to correlate human perception of qualities in a linear correlation with your measures of gear... thats is the point... You can debunk gear specs by falsifying them , but pretending to inmpose your TOOLS over human listening experience is DOGMATIC cultist ideology not science...

And what about the human ability to beat the Fourier uncertainty in the time domain ?

Kunchur has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to matters related to audio.  His expertise is in physics and has nothing to do with this domain.  I have done a full video on his last paper with totally incorrect test protocols:

Scientific Proof of Measurable Difference in Audio Cables? Paper Review

You dont get it Amir...

No one with a brain had problem with your measurements information...

Everybody with a brain has problem with your dogmatic stance about human hearing abilities limitations in relation to audio experience and your claim that only electrical measurement tell the story to be told about listenings acoustic qualities of gear ...

have you read what i posted ?

So once again, measurements are your friend, not your enemy. Don’t try to convince yourself otherwise with an argument like that.

Now the nail in the coffin of Amir debunking audiophiles hearings by DOGMA with his electrical linear modelling tools used to verify the gear specs:

This dude is a physicist i will not reproduce all 33 pages of his article of 2023 , Amir can read it himself...He wrote also about human hearings beating the Fourier uncertainty limits... There is a section dedicated to audio application which is very interesting...

Only a short extract where this physicist seems to think the opposite of Amir about the "super" hearing abilities of human :

«Claims that differences in upstream components
(e.g., source or amplifier) can be heard even when the
system is bottle-necked by a mediocre downstream
component (e.g., speaker) shouldn’t seem surprising—
given that the NEP ( neurals excitation pattern) can resolve 1 part in 10 at the 40 power » Millind N. Kunchur

http://file:///C:/Users/Utilisateur/Downloads/SSRN-id4437822.pdf

The conclusion of another interesting article by a physicist:

The result presented here has relevance for the perfor-
mance requirements of audio components and digital en-
coding schemes. It is known that the bandwidth require-
ment for sonically transparent audio reproduction is higher
than the 20 kHz: in the coding of digital audio it has been
noted [57] that listeners show a preference for a 96 kHz
sampling rate over the CD (digital compact disk) standard
of 44.1 (i.e., a 22 kHz Nyquist frequency). It is sometimes
thought that this may be due to the less drastically sloped
cutoff of the digital filter and the reduced disturbances in-
troduced in the audible pass band. The present work shows
that the bandwidth requirement into the ultrasonic range
is more fundamental and not just due to artifacts of dig-
ital filtering. It is also commonly conjectured in the au-
dio literature that the time-domain response of a system
(e.g., temporal smearing caused by capacitive and other
energy-storage mechanisms in cables) is a key factor in
determining the transparency of reproduction (see, for ex-
ample, [58]). However a search of the literature revealed
an absence of a controlled blind experiment comparable to
the one conducted here. The present work thus contributes
toward a better fundamental understanding and provides a
quantitative measure for audio-reproduction standards.»

......................................................

Temporal Resolution of Hearing Probed by
Bandwidth Restriction
Milind N. Kunchur
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA.

«The effects in time domain of non-linear behaviour in combination with memory effects could explain why e.g. amplifiers with similar properties regarding frequency response and distortion
levels, sound different. It is to be expected that ten (10) different designs will produce ten different responses to music signals and thus receive a different perceptual qualification.»

This physicist seems to know better than Amir ... 😊

By the way he say the same thing that Oppenheim and Magnasco :

«Although it is outside the scope of this paper, it should be noted that human hearing is likely to be neither linear nor time-invariant,...»

https://www.temporalcoherence.nl/cms/images/docs/FourierConditions.pdf

His bio resume :

I will not post for a fifth times the article proving that we cannot deduce from gear measurement tools what human hearing is about and able to do... We can debunk cables or gear alleged specs yes with the tools Amir use or help a room acoustic embeddings nothing else, especially not predicting the perceived quality of an audio system with electrical measurements of gear specs...

It takes few minutes to understand this article neither Amir nor prof make a comment.... They answered to insults but not to science it seems ... 😊

I am the only one i think in this debate to argue with a HARD psycho-acoustic science argument , no technological babble about hearing and measures and blind testing "golden ears" and debunking them etc ...

The problem is that Amir cannot at all prove any relation AT THE END between gear measures and listening experience... He will never be able to prove it because it is impossible to do it with his tools... The ears dont work as our tools works...Period... If it was not the case the article of these two physicists will be proven wrong...

here simple remarks about Fourier method conditions of application by a Physicist, Hans Van Maanen:

«Although the Fourier theory has been well established since the second half of the 19th century,it is surprising that so little attention is given nowadays to the conditions, required to apply the linear theory. It has been applied unreluctantly to electronics and human hearing, even though neither fulfill either of these requirements. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that the results are inconsistent with listening experiences. »

https://www.temporalcoherence.nl/cms/images/docs/FourierConditions.pdf

Now imagine Amir with his linear modelling gear measuring tools saying to us WHAT WE MUST HEAR...

Amir thanks for debunking gear, but stay there; dont try to judge people from your DOGMA and tool prejudice and stop  debunking people  hearings experience, history or even alleged  "golden ears"   ... You cannot do it with your tools if someone read any science ...

My claim studying this article above is not FIRST AND LAST   to justify subjectivist trusting only their "taste" hearing for gear, NOT AT ALL,  it is about deconstructing the DOGMATIC techno babble inference used by Amir to predict on the electrical measures in the linear and symmetrical time domain modeling what humans will hear from their non linear and non symmetrical time domain historical standpoint of observation and to infirm the Amir conclusion about what they cannot hear on the basis of these electrical tools used for verifying gear specs...

Amir and prof where is your answer ? Do you have a better hearing theory unknown to physicists Oppenheim and Magnasco ? Do you think they will take hearing claims of ASR seriously ? 😊

Who read this article ? It is not a review in stereophile, or technological babble about hearing, it is a pure scientific article in the frontiers between physics and psycho-acoustic ?

As i said multiples times, i am not subjectivist nor an objectivist because i focus on acoustic and psycho-acoustic not on gear pieces...I tuned my room WITHOUT need for a blind test... Acoustician used measuring tools for rapid efficient practicalities but their ears works also to the beginning till the end... There is a reason why...

Quarelling will not solve this...Nor insults...

Objectivist as subjectivist tribes focus on gear, one tribe  use electrical tools mainly the other his ears... But it is NOT THE GEAR electrical properties measured or not , verified or not, which is the key in audio; Psycho-acoustic basic knowledge in a room is the crux and key of audio improvement... Nothing else...

But for sure my sympathy goes to those who learn how to listen with their EARS... so useful measures of gear can be useful information, they dont say as much as Amir claim they said  about all the aspects of  sound qualities for a human ears...

Psycho-acoustic hearing facts will solve this debate...

Read my article...I posted it 4 times waiting an answer...To no avail...

Amir did not answered it nor prof... Are they not scientists?

We will see...

😊😊

Amir and prof if you read this article what does it means for the possibility you claimed erroneously as a FACT : the reduction of the non linear non symmetrical time domain ears/brain way to extract information to simple electrical linear modeling tool in the symmetrical physical time domain ?

Do you think it is possible ?

No it is not.... Human ears/brain non linearities structure and internal "tools" beat the Gabor limit if not in resolution in precision in the time domain......

Then why claiming that your tools can decide what is perceived and what is not "a priori" by someone listening chorus music in an acoustically controlled room ?

How can you claim A PRIORI, with your simple measuring specs  tools designed for gear standars verification, that  no change will be perceived at all by changing some materials parameter, some gear component, or some acoustical modifications ?

How can you claim this using electrical tool working in the electrical linear modeling symmetrical domain, if the ears is able to extract "precise tracking" information and change in the non symmetrical time domain ?

Here is the original non vulgarized article beginning :

«Human Time-Frequency Acuity Beats the Fourier Uncertainty Principle
Jacob N. Oppenheim and Marcelo O. Magnasco∗
Laboratory of Mathematical Physics, Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10065
(Dated: March 13, 2015)

The time-frequency uncertainty principle states that the product of the temporal and frequency
extents of a signal cannot be smaller than 1/(4π). We study human ability to simultaneously
judge the frequency and the timing of a sound. Our subjects often exceeded the uncertainty limit,
sometimes by more than tenfold, mostly through remarkable timing acuity. Our results establish a
lower bound for the nonlinearity and complexity of the algorithms employed by our brains in parsing
transient sounds, rule out simple “linear filter” models of early auditory processing, and highlight
timing acuity as a central feature in auditory object processing.
PACS numbers: 43.60.+d,43.66.+y,87.19.L-
Fourier transformation turns signals “inside out”, in
the sense that low frequencies dictate what happens at
long times, while high frequencies create fine temporal
detail. This property is demonstrated by Fourier’s un-
certainty theorem, which states that considering the ab-
solute value squared of a signal x(t) as a probability dis-
tribution in time,
P (t) = |x(t)|2
∫ ∞
−∞ |x(t′)|2dt′ (1)
and the absolute value squared of its Fourier transform
˜x(f ) as a distribution in frequency,
P (f ) = |˜x(f )|2
∫ ∞
−∞ |˜x(f ′)|2df ′ (2)
then the product of the standard deviations
∆t = √var(t) and ∆f = √var(f ) (3)
is bounded from below [1]:
∆t∆f ≥ 1
4π (4)
whence it is inferred that short signals require many fre-
quencies for their representation.
The theorem refers to the original signal and its Fourier
transform. In time-frequency analysis one attempts to
describe a signal in the two-dimensional time-frequency
plane, akin to a musical score where time is the horizontal
axis and frequency the vertical axis. Here the uncertainty
principle begets the Gabor limit [1, 2]. This remapping
emphasizes the uncertainties as a property of the trans-
form itself, rather than the the signal. In time-frequency
analysis, it has been proven that linear operators can-
not exceed the uncertainty bound [2]. Nonlinearity does
not by itself confer any acuity advantage, and in fact
most nonlinearities are merely distortions and thus dele-
terious. However, by the above theorem, any carefully-
crafted analysis that can beat this limit must necessarily
be nonlinear. For instance, precise frequency informa-
tion can be obtained about a sine wave by measuring
the time between two adjacent zeros of the waveform,
a clearly nonlinear operation. The nonlinear distribu-
tions can be classified in families according to their de-
gree of nonlinearity or history-dependence, such as the
quadratic (Cohen’s class) distributions like Wigner-Ville
[3] and Choi-Williams [4], and higher-order ones, such
as multi-tapered spectral derivatives [5, 6], the Hilbert-
Huang distribution [7], and the reassigned spectrograms
[8–12]. To understand how they differ we need to make
an important distinction between resolution and preci-
sion. Resolution refers to our ability to distinguis two
objects, while precision refers to our ability to track the
parameters of a single object, given prior knowledge it is
only one component. This distinction is well-established
in optics, where it is known the wavelength of light limits
resolution: two glass beads cannot be resolved as different
in a microscope if they are closer together than a wave-
length. Precision is not limited, since a single bead can be
tracked with nanometer accuracy. All the above distribu-
tions achieve higher precision than the Gabor limit when
applied to isolated signal components, yet give interfer-
ing results when two signals are closer together than an
uncertainty envelope. Our experimental test is designed
to directly measure precision, not resolution.
A key goal in neuroscience is to establish which algo-
rithms the brain uses to process perceptual information.
Psychophysics, by establishing tight bounds on the per-
formance of our senses,may rule out entire families of
perceptual algorithms as candidates when they cannot
achieve the expected performance [13, 14].
We shall show below that human subjects can discrim-
inate better, and occasionally much better, than the un-
certainty bounds. This categorically rules out any first
order operators, such as the standard sonogram, from
consideration, and puts a stringent bound on the perfor-
mance of any candidate algorithm, demonstrating that
the nonlinearities in the cochlea constitute are integral
to the precision of auditory processing.»..........

«A key goal in neuroscience is to establish which algo-
rithms the brain uses to process perceptual information.
Psychophysics, by establishing tight bounds on the per-
formance of our senses,may rule out entire families of
perceptual algorithms as candidates when they cannot
achieve the expected performance [13, 14].
We shall show below that human subjects can discrim-
inate better, and occasionally much better, than the un-
certainty bounds. This categorically rules out any first
order operators, such as the standard sonogram, from
consideration, and puts a stringent bound on the perfor-
mance of any candidate algorithm, demonstrating that
the nonlinearities in the cochlea constitute are integral
to the precision of auditory processing.

The conclusion of this article :

«We have conducted the first direct psychoacoustical
test of the Fourier uncertainty principle in human hear-
ing, by measuring simultaneous temporal and Our data indicate that human subjects
often beat the bound prescribed by the uncertainty the-
orem, by factors in excess of 10. This is sometimes ac-
complished by an increase in frequency acuity, but by and
large it is temporal acuity that is increased and largely
responsible for these gains. Our data further indicate
subject acuity is just as good for a note-like amplitude
envelope as for the Gaussian, even though theoretically
the uncertainty product is increased for such waveforms.
Our study directly rules out many of the simpler models
of early auditory processing, often used as input to the
higher-order stages in models of higher auditory function.
Of the plethora of time-frequency distributions and au-
ditory processing models that have been studied, only a
few stand a chance of both matching the perfrequency
discrimination. formance of
human subjects and be plausibly implementable in the
neural hardware of the auditory system(e.g.[6, 7, 12, 28],
with the reassignment method having the best compara-
tive temporal acuity. Elucidation of which mechanism
underlies our subjects auditory hyper acuity is likely
to have wide-ranging applications, both in fields where
matching human performance is an issue, such as speech
recognition, as well as those more removed, such as radar,
sonar and radio astronomy.»

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.4611.pdf

Human Time-Frequency Acuity Beats the Fourier Uncertainty Principle

It seems Amir nor Prof read the article i posted twice...Not one proved to me that they read it and UNDERSTAND IT...Here i put it, in an easy and clear way to read vulgarized, for the third time with my helping comments...Are they not scientist ?

Or they did not understand it to begin with ?

Too much techno babble ideology biases instead of psycho-acoustic science in their mind ?😊

SCIENCE IS NOT TECHNOLOGY...This article is psycho-acoustic pure science, not debunking propaganda from objectivist claiming what is impossible : deducing from their time symmetrical linear electrical modeling tools how the human ears works, and what we WILL HEAR and what we can never hear by simply adding measured decibels levels or substracting them , and what information the ears will catch or not ... 😊

First: repairing or falsifying designed components to verify or put back the components to their their standards norms is one thing...

Assuming that ALL of what human may be able to hear between components coupled together in a room will be COMPLETELY determined by these electrical standards for each separate component, and claiming that, is missing the fact that they must be COUPLED together and their audible sums cannot be predicted COMPLETELY in each room for all human ears,...

Why ?

Because hearing dont live only and merely in the time symmetric linear frequencies range kingdom of the electrical gear measuring tools modeling ...Ears/brain works non linearly...

Our brain beat the Fourier uncertainty barrier up to 13 times in one case of psycho-acoustic experience in a laboratory...

We extract information in one privileged direction of time , because of the brain habit with the sound of the natural world.

As the two physicist in this article put it said it : « Many sounds in nature are produced by an abrupt transfer of energy followed by slow, damped decay, and hence have broken time-reversal symmetry.»

«There’s a theorem that asserts uncertainty is only obeyed by linear operators (like the linear operators of quantum mechanics). Now there’s five decades of careful documentation of just how nastily nonlinear the cochlea is, but it is not evident how any of the cochlea’s nonlinearities contributes to enhancing time-frequency acuity. We now know our results imply that some of those nonlinearities have the purpose of sharpening acuity beyond the naïve linear limits.»

You begin to catch why the ears/brain HEAR something extracting it from the time domain which cannot be there in your linear symmetrical modeling electrical measures of gear design ?

All your electrical measures refer to hearing models which are obsolete anyway... And anyway electrical measures of gear has nothing to do with psycho-acoustic measures in a laboratory able to test hearing information extracting abilities in the time domain ...

«The results have implications for how we understand the way that the brain processes sound, a question that has interested scientists for a long time. In the early 1970s, scientists found hints that human hearing could violate the uncertainty principle, but the scientific understanding and technical capabilities were not advanced enough to enable a thorough investigation. As a result, most of today’s sound analysis models are based on old theories that may now be revisited in order to capture the precision of human hearing.»

now try to imagine the wealth of information which is extracted from simple speech (or from musical event coupled to acoustic soundfield) and try to imagine HOW THIS INFORMATION EXTRACTED BY THE HUMAN EARS/BRAIN CANNOT BE PREDICTED BY ELECTRICAL LINEAR SIMPLE GEAR DESIGN TOOLS ; listen this two physicists :

«"In seminars, I like demonstrating how much information is conveyed in sound by playing the sound from the scene in Casablanca where Ilsa pleads, "Play it once, Sam," Sam feigns ignorance, Ilsa insists," Magnasco said. "You can recognize the text being spoken, but you can also recognize the volume of the utterance, the emotional stance of both speakers, the identity of the speakers including the speaker’s accent (Ingrid’s faint Swedish, though her character is Norwegian, which I am told Norwegians can distinguish; Sam’s AAVE [African American Vernacular English]), the distance to the speaker (Ilsa whispers but she’s closer, Sam loudly feigns ignorance but he’s in the back), the position of the speaker (in your house you know when someone’s calling you from another room, in which room they are!), the orientation of the speaker (looking at you or away from you), an impression of the room (large, small, carpeted).

"The issue is that many fields, both basic and commercial, in sound analysis try to reconstruct only one of these, and for that they may use crude models of early hearing that transmit enough information for their purposes. But the problem is that when your analysis is a pipeline, whatever information is lost on a given stage can never be recovered later. So if you try to do very fancy analysis of, let’s say, vocal inflections of a lyric soprano, you just cannot do it with cruder models."

By ruling out many of the simpler models of auditory processing, the new results may help guide researchers to identify the true mechanism that underlies human auditory hyperacuity. Understanding this mechanism could have wide-ranging applications in areas such as speech recognition; sound analysis and processing; and radar, sonar, and radio astronomy.

"You could use fancier methods in radar or sonar to try to analyze details beyond uncertainty, since you control the pinging waveform; in fact, bats do," Magnasco said.»

Do you catch now why it is impossible to predict ,with linear modeling electrical tools designed for measuring circuits performance , what humans will hear from audio system parts coupled together in different acoustic settings environment ?

now read that ATTENTIVELY :

«Building on the current results, the researchers are now investigating how human hearing is more finely tuned toward natural sounds, and also studying the temporal factor in hearing.

"Such increases in performance cannot occur in general without some assumptions," Magnasco said. "For instance, if you’re testing accuracy vs. resolution, you need to assume all signals are well separated. We have indications that the hearing system is highly attuned to the sounds you actually hear in nature, as opposed to abstract time-series; this comes under the rubric of ’ecological theories of perception’ in which you try to understand the space of natural objects being analyzed in an ecologically relevant setting, and has been hugely successful in vision. Many sounds in nature are produced by an abrupt transfer of energy followed by slow, damped decay, and hence have broken time-reversal symmetry. We just tested that subjects do much better in discriminating timing and frequency in the forward version than in the time-reversed version (manuscript submitted). Therefore the nervous system uses specific information on the physics of sound production to extract information from the sensory stream.

"We are also studying with these same methods the notion of simultaneity of sounds. If we’re listening to a flute-piano piece, we will have a distinct perception if the flute ’arrives late’ into a phrase and lags the piano, even though flute and piano produce extended sounds, much longer than the accuracy with which we perceive their alignment. In general, for many sounds we have a clear idea of one single ’time’ associated to the sound, many times, in our minds, having to do with what action we would take to generate the sound ourselves (strike, blow, etc)."»

is this article have been read by Amir or prof?

Are they able to understand why their simplistic assumptions about hearing PREDICTED on the basis of verified gear electrical standards cannot be used to predict how, and why, and when , a musician or an acoustician or any ordinary people will hear in some determined room acoustic environment coupled to an audio system ?

It is not a question about an alleged claim they accuse audiophiles to assert: their "golden ears"... A description used as an insult is not a scientific claim...

Here two physicist explain from their psycho-acoustic experiments conclusions how the human ears extract information from the time region where and WHEN there is, as in natural sounds environment, a broken time symmetry dimnension, and then why the human ears/brain BEAT THE FOURIER UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE UP TO 13 TIMES...

It is important to observe here that this fact about the symmetry breaking et the perception in the time domain is also related to the way human are able to PRODUCE sound sources vibration and not only perceive them...

Simplified version:

https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html

Unsimplified original version:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.4611

As i said : thanks Amir to debunk gear specs claims, but do not pretend to do MORE...Insulting people even uneducated one is not a sign of high education, as demonstrated by those who you provoked because of the mortal sin of using their ears  and who insult you in return...Insults beget insults...

As i said objectivist and subjectivist are twin brothers born from the same gear market conditioning mass publicity claims focussing on the gear piece...

Psycho-acoustic and room acoustic experiments is the heart of audio...

The heart of audio is not tasted "branded name" gear for "golden ears" or measured numbers verified at specs gear for pretended to be " unbiased" objectivist ears reading electrical graphs ...

Will it be necessary to have an answer to post these articles a fourth time ?

«Science is what you eat, technology is what you shit, the balanced  recycling is called knowledge»--Groucho Marx 🤓

re you certain of this?

Could it not be that the job of the brain is to ensure our survival and a strict adherence to the laws of physical reality is not necessarily a key requisite?

No not at all... Psycho-acoustic is based not only on physics but on neurophysiology of perception and social behaviour ... It is ridiculous to say that the brain adhere PASSIVELY to physical reality in sound recognition , because the brain PICK and FILTER physical reality through MEANINGS and project them in a symbolic world of his own, for example music perception and speech......You called it illusion in a derogatory manner, but all illusions are not equal ... What do you think a rainbow is ? a pure physical phenomenon ? a mere illusion ? ... Not at all... It takes a human brain to perceive these colors and not these other one and they are REAL ILLUSION for us and useful illusion ....Your measures compared to rainbows may become illusionary reality and biases of a sterile nature, because hearing is more complex than what you describe and less prone to deception than what you think ... But hearing must be trained by experience not by debunking methods.. We must learn how to listen...In acoustic and in music...

And sound perception is not merely only AN OBJECTIVE phenomenon but a phenomenon based on subjective relation to our social speech recognition power and through it to the subjectivity multidimensional aspects and to the way the brain treat time perception OUT OF THE PHYSICAL TIME DIMENSION...Musical time for example is not reducible to physical thermodynamical and metronomical time ... Ask Furtwangler ...

And Who is this person who speak to me, i can sense it very deeply and it is a subjective perception through hearing not at all based on mere physical reality.........Yes we may be deceived times to times , but in history we were not generally deceived , we survived thanks to this power of social recognition ...

« It is very simple : we can see with our ears but we cannot hear with our eyes» --Groucho Marx becoming blind 🤓

Debunking cable makers is Ok for me thanks for the work and information ... The same is true for any falsified specs of any piece of gear , thanks Amir...

But claiming you will show what i will hear or not with loudness level measures and electrical measures on separate piece of gear is too much of a claim for me...There is other acoustic and psycho-acoustic factors involved to analysed sounds perceptive discrimination IN REAL TIME, not with mere electrical measures ... And no subjects is equal to any other one because biases are not only something to be erased or controlled in blind test but also the results of training and useful to develop for our own acoustic work..

All acoustician own "golden ears" as musician does... They dont read only dials mesuring the speakers design to know if an headphone or a speakers in a room are better for them than an other piece for an optimal TIMBRE rendition experience .. They listen to it in real time acoustic optimal condition if possible...Less well designed speakers in a dedicated room for them may sound and will sound most of the times better than some better designed speakers in a bad room or in a non dedicated room...

"Transparency" impression for example are not only a quality of the design of the gear, but also a quality manifested in real time listening in some acoustic environment with the "transparent" component linked to other less or better transparent component ... Then the experience of "transparency" cannot be deduced by one piece of measured gear, not even by all pieces measured but must be evaluated by some specific pair of ears in specific acoustic conditions at the end... The room must give "transparency" to and help and compensate for the speakers and my ears limitations too... Transparency is not only a POTENTIAL property of a design but the ACTUAL quality perceived in real time listening experience...No reading of measured specs has the last word here...

Time factor not only loudness and spectral envelope but the time envelope play a role IN REAL TIME LISTENING discrimination ... And human hearing is immersed in an ecological natural environment where there exist A DIRECTION IN TIME or as it is said in the article above : "Many sounds in nature are produced by an abrupt transfer of energy followed by slow, damped decay, and hence have broken time-reversal symmetry." Sound quality dont reduce to linear spectral forms analysis...And the way we perceive sounds is also related to the way we produce sound ( ecological theory of sounds perception ) .... Than measuring gear does not reveal the sound quality, at most it can eliminate bad design and reveal potential better one, thanks to Amir for that ... Going further and accusing people to be deluded if they dont act MAINLY on the basis of the measured specs design is going to much farther from acoustic truth... Debunking is not a method for training hearing neither is blind test by itself...Acoustic is...

Perhaps you are a bit biased...😊

What about my last post and article ?

Here a test of basic reading abilities: read this article and explain to me why this article is important in acoustic , and how it matter about our discussion... At least i will see if someone know how to read... Nobody reacted to this article , i posted it twice here FOR A REASON...If nobody does understand why it matter to this preposterous war between ears and electrical tools , i will go back to music..😊

And what about my argument? They are all occupied by punching each other in the most absurd way...

Objectivists and subjectivists are twin brothers born from marketing with their focus on the gear, by ears golden or not, or by measurements...... For me and for science audio experience is about acoustical, electrical and mechanical embeddings not about gear choices...Science in audio is basically acoustic before engineering... And in my room too it is acoustic before engineering... Anybody can pick good gear at relatively low price today... The problem is his embeddings and controls for the ears of the owner because he experience sound in a determined acoustic field : his room......

In audio there is one basic science, which is multi-disciplinary, it is psycho-acoustic, not electrical engineering with blind test which is secondary technology answering mainly market design inquiries, thats all......

There is only ONE WAY to train hearing: it is acoustic experiments... Not blind test of gear... Are you serious? 😊

This is the most absurd discussion I have ever read on Audiogon (and there have been plenty of contenders).

 

There certainly is a lot of absurdity, but there’s also lots of good content as well (much of it from Amir).

Our brain Amir is not primary in the job of "fabricating facts" he put us in relation to reality to begin with, if it was otherwise we will not have survives his tricking  illusions ...And our brain is here to be trained not to read electrical measures as hearing truth...Amir you resemble a marketer selling gear like a twin...Sorry...Why not stay an informant about gear falsification and not to claim  what people will hear based on electrical measures dials ?

And no acoustician work blindfold and in a blind test...Guess why ?

Anybody can acquire hearing training in his own room...

it is ridiculous to reduce what we are hearing to dac specs and blindfold test...

You must debunk market gear claims thanks for the information... thats all all, because  what is added after that is technological cultism...

But thinking that people are passive consumers only and are unable to train themselves to acoustically embed their gear but must listen your measures to buy what they will listen to, if not, their "brain will fabricated reality" is beyond preposterous...

If many subjectivist audiophiles are deluded, i think many objectivists are deluded too... It is funny that i am among the few to see what they linked them to each other in antagonistic ridiculous wars like twins : psycho-acoustic ignorance of hearing and acoustic and obsession with gear components......

I spoke about the acoustic embeddings of a system as primary...

But even electrical embeddings of a system matter a lot...

An anecdote:

I sold my big house and in this big house my audio system was connected to a secondary electrical panel at the second floor, then it was not connected directly on the main electrical panel of the house...

In my actual small one floor house , my system is connected directly on the main panel...

The decreasing of the electrical noise floor level is astonishing... The same gear give a more clearer outline of the sound source and a more transparent soundfield...My Sansui alpha, a very low noise floor  amplifier, as many other good amplifier,  go, metaphorically speaking, from low-fi or mid-fi level to super hi-fi as a costly upgrade formy ears experience...it was astonishing asw if i had another better system...

Acoustic and electrical and mechanical embeddings controls are more important than tasting gear upgrade with our ears, golden one or not, or by measuring their specs and saying that it is the ultimate KEY to audio...Sorry but as useful it can be, verified specs are not the key at all...

Why this is not evident for all ? The key is first acoustic, then electrical and mechanical embeddings control...

This war between people with their ears or tools around the gear components, resulted from the incredible blinders created by one century of gear marketing claims ...The marketers or the designers or the people measuring the gear, never sold us the idea that it is not enough to buy good gear and upgrade it, it is necessary and MORE IMPORTANT to learn how to listen first and doing so by embedding any system in the house/room acoustically, electrically and mechanically...

Acoustic is the queen asleep on the bed , our ears are the prince awakening the princess, the gear are only the 7 working dwarves in the room ...

«Acoustician use blind test time to time on some guinea pigs subjects for psycho-acoustic objective results in some experiments for example, but designing a room, no acoustician blind test himself, because he learn how to listen in doing so » -- Anonymus acoustician😎

Objectivist tools=subjectivist ears =gear component evaluation

Where is acoustic?

We dont hear good speakers at their optimal if we have not designed a room for them... No Speakers sound the same way in different room...

Audiophile experience is not about our "taste" or price tag of components or measured specs...it is about acoustic...

It is incredible how people are completely blinded , the primary matter is under the rug of secondary problem of gear choice and evaluation... Nowadays it is easy to look and pick any components of very good quality at low price...

And the only way to learn how to listen is not measuring gear specs nor listening to it, it is embeddding it in an acoustic space and experiment with varying the acoustic conditions...More fun and more deep  than measuring a design specs  or listening to an amplifier color....

«If there is a war between big egg ender and small egg  ender, crack the egg on the boiler» --Groucho Marx 🤓

There is no controversy...

Measuring gear performance is a good thing, and interesting, especially if someone can falsify audio conmpanies claim...But thats all...Thanks Amir...

But once this is said, we learn how to listen only in OUR ROOM, with acoustic experiments...( not by upgrades according to our "tastes" by the way, )

Tuning a room is a long process, incremental one, and has nothing to do with the comparison of two cables or amplifiers according to our " taste" or according to their specs verified ...

Give me any relatively good system i will make a room able to serve it well... Then gear choice is a secondary matter compared to acoustic and psycho-acoustic...

As Amir said it himself , objectivist and subjectivist focus on gear choice and design, but he did not say  in his zeal to convert subjectivists to gear measures falsification  that  they forget doing so  the hugely more powerful acoustic embeddings in the room... And the best amplifier in the world will not cancel mechanical control of vibrations nor electrical high noise floor of the house nor the acoustical bad content of the room ...

Also in our room listening music we are not in a laboratory...We create an acoustic to serve our neurological hearing biases...we learn basic acoustic in the process...Blind test is accessory as gear choice is acessory ...

There is controversy ONLY if an objectivist want to convert a subjectivist, and only if a subjectivist dont understand that the gear components of his "tasteful choice" so important they are , anyway are secondary to the acoustic embeddings for a full satisfying experience...If not, he will NEVER experience the full potential S.Q. of his gear... Its my experience...

Instead of trying to convert people or instead of refusing to read information measures chart, forget the gear for a month  ; people must think about acoustic to LEARN HOW TO LISTEN and then to learn how to be able to embed their system properly in the electrical, acoustical and mechanical dimension...

Subjectivist and objectivist act sometimes fanatically... No acoustician on earth is a subjectivist or an objectivist...They dont mind about specific gear piece, they tought about their optimal acoustic embeddings...

«Crocodiles had tastes and act accordingly , acoustician had not» -- Anonymus acoustician 😎

«Biases are like savage animals , they must be tamed and controlled, but not erased or negated» -- Anonymus acoustician 😎

Floyd Toole is right...

Measurements are important to reveal major flaws. Listening completes the evaluation. As Dr. Floyd Toole said "Two ears and a brain respond very differently to a complex sound field and are much more analytical, than an omni-directional mic and analyzer." Is Dr. Toole wrong?

P.S.

@mahgister I actually wrote a long post…I know…hypocrite…but bare with me here for 💩 s and giggles…

You are not hypocrite but very kind toward me because my posts are heavier, much long, and less easy for anybody trying to  catch the essence of the matter...Sorry...

Thanks anyway ...😊

The audio research, i think i will pick ( price tag means nothing but i am human ) ...

My position is i appreciate Amir analysis... But as information added i welcome it ..

I dont like for sure to be told lesson about my hearings impression by some  techno-cultist...

And i dont think that suggesting as i did to tune a room by our faillible and biases ears is in any way "fallacious"...it is economical and it is what we may call real learning...

«My perfect mother created his imperfect son because she said there is something more in it»--Groucho Marx 🤓

It will be my pleasure... You can contradict me with an argument... I like to think...

Two heads win over one...

Thanks

i am very kind with any people engaging in discussion...

But my defect was not, like you, insulting as first post to someone who never insulted you and even spoke to you ... i never do that... My personal defect, because i am not perfect, is ANSWERING if someone talk to me the way you did ...Is it difficult to figure out ?

And yes sometimes my "ego" takes the place but i am conscious of that and i am able to recognize it when someone is POLITE and we are discussing...

I never breed grudges... Then i thank you for your last words and i wish you the best possible day to come...

I apologize for my long posts and thank you in advance for going over them...

my very best to you...

Before INSULTING it never cross your mind that all people here are not as high in intelligence as you seems to think about you? Then why insulting an "idiot" like me ?

Then insulting as first words of dialogue is perhaps a symptom of some other problem in your temper?

If you had no arguments save the number of words in my posts, i will go on...

I am pretty sure your high I.Q. can make you able to pass over them...

Especially if you cannot oppose any argument...

By the way yiddish nor english are my first language, i apologize for my syntax and limited vocabulary... For the rest skip my posts... Temper tantrum are a bit childish ...

And i presume you are the opposite?

Are you intelligent enough to give me an argument?

Or insulting is your way of being ?

How do we call dude who post one line insult as first dialogue ?

I hope you feel better...

An insult with no argument to begin with is called : schmegegge...

If there was a nudnik championship, you’d be undefeated.

In the times we lives in, it is not only in audio that people want to kill the messenger...

In France it is astonishing to watch rigtht now ... 😊

In Us most messengers were killed long ago...

Very good example...

Small room acoustic is very complex because of the control negatively or positively of reverberation time and the wave direct and reflected ratio...In my case also the control of the zone pressure distribution i modified and in my case i used a grid of Helmholtz resonators..

I take one year full time in experiments each day... Reading acoustic article to extract some idea for a new or better experiment... it cost me the price of the garbage in my basement...

But learning how to listen is a full time job...Nothing was more fun though...No upgrade can be so fun and astonishing...

But i will never do it again because i learned already how to do it , but it will not spare me the listening time... Passive material treatment is relatively easy... But mechanical control not so much...

Now i am happy with my TOP headphone, probably one of the most complex ever designed ( there is very complex headphone design nowadays)... I asked a Kennerton guy  few months ago about hybrid headphone in their future design planification research... He said to me they abandonned the idea because it is too costly to do it right and too complex to do it well at the first shot , and margin of profit too slim ... Then i own the only successful hybrid headphone ...I will die with it...The soundfield is speaker like and recording dependant...

It’s absolutely critical to try things and find out what works for you. But it means you have to try stuff. Sometimes the resulting configuration ends up looking funny and being totally unconventional. But if the months go by and you remain happy with it, that’s what matters

My latest funny looking setup involves angled gobos placed at the first reflection points on the side walls and then more gobos behind me to either side. Here at work I had learned about absorbing first reflections on sidewalls, but then replacing them with delayed reflections by bouncing sound off the back wall toward the first reflection points. A panel or TubeTrap that absorbs highs on one side and reflects them on the other will let you do this. My impression is that it sounds fantastic! But wouldn’t have know had I not tried it. Just absorbing or diffusing first reflections is not nearly as pleasing to me. If my room was wider this might not be necessary, actually I know it’s not as important because I was set up in a wide room at one point and it sounded great. The narrow room was a relative letdown.

You make a good point relating this quarrel about imposing a perspective over the other valid perspective...

The two perspective are valid in their own terms but it seems i am, if not the only one, one among very few, pointing why the two groups, subjectivist and objectivists, are wrong TOGETHER, focussing together on the gear component...

Audio is not first about the gear market hyper magical claims validity or about their debunking by verified measures versus claims ( which is a good thing to know for sure thanks to Amir hobby devotion )..

Audio is about first and last psycho-acoustic complex field and about speakers/room acoustic...It is not about upgrades with market publicity claims and subsequent debunking articles... My two dreamed revolutionary piece of gear by the way were created by acoustician , Dr.Gorike for my headphone, and Dr.Choueri for the dac...( i own only the headphone, the dac must wait for now 🤣😊😉 )

Then for me acoustic rule the game...Not electric engineers...

Especially nowadays when anybody can buy a basically good system at relatively low price in a mature audio industry ... The claims of the gear marketers and their falsification by Amir is interesting but SECONDARY completely for audio real experience which is related completely to mastery of acoustic basic...HERE WE LEARN HOW TO LISTEN...Nowhere else..

And to tune a room at low cost we need EARS....No debunking of hearing is needed here... Because here we learn how to listen with acoustic experiments in a room designed for our SPECIFIC BIASES...Small room acoustic is for a specific owner not for a crowd...And who had the money to invest 100,000 for an acoustical pro job ?

I respect much and more Amir effort and appreciate his findings because they can be useful but i dislike many of his groupies imposing on us meaningless claims, about my hearings so called limits which are sterile common place useless facts, among rightful facts about measured technicalities ... I dislike people here insulting Amir too by the way ...

Once this is said , audio purchase cannot be made by the chart inspection of any measures, we must take a listen too, and a room cannot be designed by an acoustician pro, save if you are very rich, then your hearing biases are your main tools.... They served me well and my system was astounding for me at peanuts costs ( not perfect but with no comparison at all between before and after)...People who pay many , many ten thousand dollars for their gear dont like to read that, i dont know why ? Sorry but acoustic matter not the price tag...😁😊

If i know how to modify the ASW/LV ratio to please me in my room , i dont need arrogant people to say that i need to be blind tested...

So imperfect it was no other system i listened to at any price beat my room soundfield,  and those who own systems that rival or beat speakers/room  rest assured did not pay just 10 times more than mine but  way much more...it was enough for me... Especially at under 1000 bucks price...

@mahgister

I dont understand why people are so polarized... With agressivity...

This is a good point. I saw an old polarizing topic revisited in the news recently. Remember the old meme that was going around with the dress, about whether the dress was white and gold or black and blue? It really got people upset because their perception was obvious to them, and others claiming to see something completely different almost feels like a blatant lie. It’s a challenge to basic reality that’s plainly evident. It feels frustrating. (As for that one, I never took a side because the photo looked odd, like the color and contrast was intentionally ambiguous so I felt like I was being set up.)

I feel some of this frustration with stereo interaural crosstalk screwing up the tone with center panned images. I just went to the Pacific Audiofest and heard a bunch of otherwise very exquisite systems just completely ignoring this problem, with everybody acting like there’s nothing wrong. I hear it so clearly that it’s mind boggling to me. It’s a huge flaw in terms of what I expect from a high end system. How can people put up with this in something that’s had so much effort and expense put in to it to approach perfection?

I think it’s kind of like the dress. They don’t interpret the comb filtering the same way I do, so it comes across completely different perceptually to them, perhaps as a sense of depth, 3D dimensionality. I just move off center when I want to hear the center panned vocals or instrumentals sound better. This works for everybody because now I’m not taking up the "prime" center seats at the show.

 

I dont understand why people are so polarized... With agressivity...

Amir do a free service that is and will be welcome...Dont kill the messenger...

Some of his disciples did not do the job he did, take is measures as absolute truth about hearing and audio , and quarrel about cables...These i like much less than Amir...

I dont like people who will judge me to be an idiot or a fool because i have faith in my hearing history and the way i will use or not my biases... it is like idiots saying to the patient doctor that he will die anyway because the pill is only sugar, and the placebo effect is not a drug... Do you catch how some stupid people are fool even when they are right ?

Blind test is for industrial marketer and for Amir needs, they are not designed to be used for listener in their acoustic room tuning process or with their gear...It can be fun and i did it with a friend young...But a fun test is not debunking work... Amir will do it and we will thank him for the information it gives us... But we will be free in our living room...Why? Because biases are not only negative door for auditory illusions created by the market; they are also our positive tools and motivation and these biases we must tame them by acoustic experiments, not erase them by looking at numbers or conclusion  from an electrical graph...Acoustician listen a room they dont look electrical graphs..

Audio is simplistic matter only for gear centered mind, audio is in truth very complex psycho-acoustic and acoustic field of research..

For me the two side here are fooled by the gear market strategy in the same way : they focus on gear POWER design and dont experiment with acoustic... They buy panels and call it job done... For me it is job not done at all... It is my perspective...

By the way difference between cables are dwarfed by acoustic impact...There is some difference and it was easy to spot by me when i pick two cables long ago to choose from...But this difference they are so small and subtle people never bothered with them in the past... Amir is right about costly cords, it is scam even if there is minuscule differences because it put the focus of people on the gear minutiae and then fool them about acoustic and audio...

Expression of hate in the two side are for me expression of the SAME IGNORANCE... We must learn how to listen and this learning history has nothing to do with what most reviewers do, changing the gear... Nothing... Psycho-acoustic cocepts are not electrical design concepts...

Now going back to Amir,

he does only his job as a hobby...

And it is useful...( i dont like though some objectivist rude behaviour at all , Amir on the other hand is polite by the way)

Myself i dont focus on gear as marketing do in audio and as Amir analyse in his own way...it is certainly useful to read other opinion...

I myself  focus on acoustic and psycho-acoustic...Because it is relatively easy to pick basically good gear anyway, but way more difficult to figure out acoustic...And room acoustic impact at least on the same level than the most beneficial gear upgrade at high cost...

If someone can demonstrate to me that the heart of audio is not psycho-acoustic ... I bet i will quit audiogon...

😁😊

😊

i dont understand the GARP reaction ....Posting a definition can be useful... No ?

If you have a better definition of "stupidity" than this Italian economist, please enlighten us...

In a philosophical note, this definition remind me of the definition given in the form of a prayer by Christ : " Then Jesus said, ’Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing. ’

Then observe that the Italian economist definition is the same definition given by Christ on the cross, speaking of people doing something helpful to no one and not even to themselves, and doing something detrimental to others and to themselves too , if we think about it...

"Idiots" dont know what they are doing basically...

I am astonished by the convergence between these two minds, the Christ and Cipolla... Are  you not  either ?

It will be hard  in my opinion, to improve on Cipolla definition of stupidity as described in a shortest way by Christ before him ...if someone can improve on this definition i want to listen to him ?

The book is free and in open source by the way...

i apologize , i like philosophy too much...

And sometimes something must be said in a clear way...

Thanks...