Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

The big brains who ask me to stop talking disagreeing with the weak and unsustainable arguments of Amir about the Maggies and why he measured and how he measured , the big brains who answer Amir by ad hominem attack against him ( true or not i dont give a damn about ad hominem attacks in a deep conversation ) DID NOT ANSWERED HIM AT ALL ON THE CRUX OF THE MATTER AND FROM PSYCHO-ACOUSTIC and ARE UNABLE TO DO anything save hating in short posts😊... You like them enjoy them..

My posts are perhaps long and not well written but at least i argued about the essentials and Amir did not ANSWER well on that and he could not...

Any measures in audio answer questions in the context of some hearing theory... PERIOD...

Enjoy the empty arguing of the empty harassing brains... I do not...

They cannot read a two pages aerticles and understanding it...

They believe so idiots they are that my discussion putting Amir in a corner did bad service to audiophiles.. Their insults for sure do great and better services to audiophiles in their childish minds...

Not one of them is able to answer Amir save to say a childish non motivated answer OR A PERSONAL ATTACK ; we listen we dont measure THEY SAID... then why and how ? they cannot answer that save to say they will buy an upgrade... Consumerism idiocy replace arguments..

Amir is wrong on what he claim about listenings but at least he is polite...

i am fed up by idiots...Not by Amir... I can demonstrate why he is wrong... Idiots cannot..

«The mathematical demonstration about why some people are stupid fail miserably🤓 »--Groucho Marx

«But the schematic depiction of stupidity  motives succeeded greatly»--Chico Marx 😎

«Is not because the mathematical theory of stupidity  dont work, but an ecological theory of stupidity  work well ?---Harpo Marx 🧐

«You know what i means»--Yogi Berra

Enjoy, the 50 pages book is free and shortened here:

An ecological theory of stupidity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla

The fact that my posts were clumsy stylistically and too long is not the crux of the matter at all in this debate...

@mahgister calling everyone idiots isn’t helping get people to listen to your repeated long winded exclamations. You aren’t listening to why people are tuning you out.

First i respect you and never call you a name because you are RATIONAL... This must be clear..I called idiots the one who ask me to shut and go... You are not one...Then putting in my mouth the false fact that i called everyone idiots is a claim i dont like... You can apologize...

Second i answered your last post because you say that you can RATIONNALLY argue SUCCESSFULLY agaisnt Amir position..And put him in a corner where he will only be able to babble only ad hominem attacks with no more a rational argument .. I did it...

Third i ask you on what basis you arguments will be better than mine ?

Now you say :

I already explained with my donut analogy. You can look at and test food for composition all you want but taste will always be subjective. And tasting food is the whole reason it’s made. We don’t make donuts to watch them and study them.

Then basically your ANALOGY is only that an analogy... It is USELESS to argue against Amir with ONLY this analogy...

In my too long posts, i used10 articles and i appeal to the logical epistemological FACT that no MEASUREMENTS tools can be read in acoustic OUT OF A CONTEXT : a hearing theory...

i put Amir in a corner because save by ad hominem attack against Van Maanen, and childish simplification of the result of Oppenheim and Magnasco experiment and without adressing their CONCLUSION and the MEANING of this experiment in the context of hearing theory , he could not logically sustain the idea that his measurements can PREDICT qualitative perceptions from the human hearing as described in the ecological hearing theory which anyway encompass the Fourier hearing theory and correct it...

And you think that my long posts explaining this complex subject with Amir and criticizing Amir is useless and your Analogy is enough to put him in a corner ?😊

Thanks for not asking me to shut up and go cas the idiots who ask for it ... Your analogy is not an argument and Amir will live well with it... But he cannot OPPOSE any argument against ecological hearing theory and he cannot oppose any argument to Magnasco and Oppenhein analysis of human hyperacuity and his meanings for understanding the power and limits of linear Fourier measures set in psycho-acoustic...

Why do you think my posts were long ?  No one can resume a complex matter and arguments in few words and analogy... I dont harass people... I think... Some others harass people here and they ORDER  me to go...

If you think anyone can repeat shortly a one line analogy and win a debate ...You are naive...

it is not AN ARGUMENT...It is a only  that an  analogy Amir will smile at, he will not babble without words save ad hominem arguments with a mere analogy ...

By the way my style can appear rude sometimes by me i APOLOGIZE when i am wrong... i Stay polite... But i dont accept to be bully by idiots.. You are not one for anybody who read my post correctly...

my very best and total respect to you...

Here you use against me an argument that miss the point i made in my posts and reveal that you did not have understood them..

The point i made with the ecological theory of hearing, which is a real theory of hearing, not something i invented for this debate, the point this theory make is precisely what you just said and this theory is based on what you just said without explaing it in the precise hearing/measures scientific context ... But you dont explain why your point is right,, the ecological hearing theory, begiinning with Magnasco and Oppenheim experiment precisely do it, and i explain why this is so here in my long posts..

Then i NEVER oppose to your Analogy, an anology is not an argument... All my posts if you had read them EXPLAIN why your analogy is CORRECT... Then why not reading my posts ?

Yes they are too long, but these posts were not HERE for all to read, i WAS DISCUSSING AND CORRECTING AMIR faulty theory about his measures and the relation with hearing theory...I discussed with Amir disagreeing with him... Nobody here is in the obligation to read my posts TO AMIR... And no idiot can order me to stop and go...

Those who did not understand the discussion goal ask me to stop and go ...

@mahgister your points are valid to state. I’m not as savvy on audio science. I admit that. I also admit that science is really important with audio gear. Just as it is with medicine and improving peoples vision for example.

My analogy isn’t scientific but is based in fact. You cannot strip out the subjectivity of audio. Just like you can’t do it with food or anything to do with taste. You can’t measure taste. You can’t quantify it but it is there. And in some cases it doesn’t translate from culture to culture. One dish might be revered in some culture and detested in another. The environment the experience and the way the food is prepared all matters. Same goes for audio. It doesn’t occur in a vacuum.

As a human being i appreciate politeness...

Even in a rude discussion...

I appreciate everyone especially those with who i disagree if they are respectufull...Because i am able to learn from them...

The irony is i disagree with Amir And i agree with some point that some idiot make but are not able to articulate...This idiot ask me to shut up and go, unable to realize that i am on  the same side as him : listening cannot EXACTLY correspond with measures..

If it was the case it will be a solution for the central problem in psycho-acoustic..

It is not the case now in this science .. Amir dont know it...He pretend he know it...

Good day to all...

Your point is good...

I never contested the usefulness of measures or of others opinions with or without measures...

Measures set are useful information and we all welcome them ( if we have a brain able to read them for what they are) ...

The point on which i disgree with Amir is not his measures set usefulness,  is exclusively  about extending a set of measures as synonymous with sound perceived qualities because this set of measures is ANYWAY limited and based on an uncomplete hearing theory : the Fourier frequencies based theory... ...

This time i go by myself...

My best to you mapman

I have a little Fosi integrated Amp in one of my setups that I have posted about here in that it cost a pittance and turned out to be a huge overperformer driving my older kef ls50s very well which is not a trivial task. I have had some highly touted much costlier amps fail miserably at that in the past. I saw a review of a Fosi amp on asr site. Amir measured it and gave it a thumbs up. So we both agreed at least about Fosi amps in general. No minds changed

You are right and i welcome all Amir information...

my disagreement with him is not about his free measuring verification but about hearing theories and the relation between measures and audible qualities evaluation...

I still can’t figure out why so many people get bent out of shape with Amir. I see the measurements as one part of the equation. Then I check peoples reviews and use that as the other part of the equation. He’s doing all this for free and all he gets his headaches from people who don’t like when he posts scientific information that might be less than flattering to a piece of equipment. So what’s the big deal?

It  is my experience too... Thanks for your post .

..

"Why?" You haven’t covered the "what." You said people shouldn’t use measurements to assess fidelity of amplifiers.

Why putting in my mouth what i never said... You are in complete lack of arguments about my main point in hearing theory ?

I never said that measures dont matter, i said measures cannot replace listening , nor in evaluation nor in design process...

I showed you that your own expert witness in two occasions used tones and measurements. And that the disconnected sine waves in his paper has zero resemblance to any music. How come he can do it but you complain about me?

Another distortion of what i said and of what Van Maanen said...You repeat that without being able to refute my point about hearing theories are you too frustrated?

ANY DESIGNER USE SINE WAVE PULSE ...Van Maanen too... But he use also real music bursts ... Is it too much difficult to understand why he use the two?

You are so frustrated you invented contradictions which had no relation with hearing theories and Fourier methods and the qualitative aspects of hearings .. ... Anybody can read Van Maanen articles ...

Really, it is the holy grail audiophile claim that "something that measures bad sounds good." As to shout "science doesn’t matter."

Another falsities you put in my mouth ... Are you just a marketer now or have you retain some scientific biases ?

Are you speaking to ME or to a crowd?

I spoke ONLY about science here, Magnasco and Oppenheim and Van Maanen are scientists not marketers, and Gibson is a science genius in the psychology of the visual field..

Then why speaking to ME : "science does not matter" as if i was the most idiotic here...

I NEVER said that "something that measure bad will sound good"...This is the opposite of your claim about measure... what i wrote and try to demonstrate is that because hearing cannot be explained by Fourier method which are used for the best in material design , trained listenings is always necessary as evaluation and in the design process , as was necessary to implement in the design process the right Fourier conditions to be able to predict a well behave working by each designed parts...

In a word good measures are not LINEARLY linked to good sounds.. And bad measures are not linearly linked to bad sounds... Why ? because no set of measures is COMPLETE and perfect concerning all aspests of design ... And because we dont understand completely the relation between our tools and hearing...

You miss that essential part in Van Maanen articles ?

I actually think it is possible to show pathological cases where the above is true but folks are not even trying. So trusting they are that people will just believe the salesman/engineer and give them the ticket to produce less peformant amplifiers while charging so much more for them! It is such inverted logic and remarkable that it works with people.

Fortunately this is changing. We are making that change. We are taking some control of our destiny and driving toward proper, transparent audio gear that can be shown to be so.

 

Sorry but you spoke as a seller yourself more and more it seems ... You market your own methodology as truth...You did not bother to answer my hearing theory explanations which are a refutation of your HUBRIS and claims that your idea of "transparency" is all there is in audio listening evaluation  and all come from your  limited set of measures... Your listening test and blind test are there only to debunk any opposition..

But the evaluation by listening is necessary even for parts and complete systems... And a sine wave trhough an audio system dont tell all the story there is to tell to the ears... Music matter...

i will not wait for future answers... You never adressed my objections and anybody can read them and see for himsdelf that you are unable to contradict my points..And now you did not speak to me personnally but you speak for an IMAGINARY crowd ...

i learned a lot trying to explain these things to you...

But when you explain to someone a truth that contradict his way of living, nothing will convince him... i like to discuss too much😊... I miss my students after my retirement ... But it is no more possible to go further, you cannot and dont want to understand... For you Van Maanen is a seller and Oppenheim and Magnasco experiment is a mere  anecdote... You are not interested in hearings theory, you play with toys...

Thanks for the discussion ..

my best to you...

Do you play idiot or do you think i am an idiot ?...

Stop...

The point is not about Van Maanen specific design value...

The point of the discussion is about the non linear relation between measures and listening evaluation FOR ANY PRODUCT... We dont speak about the market for your method... We speak about the meanings of Magnasco and Oppenheim crucial experiments implications which experiment you dismiss without any shame and falsely  as anecdotal  ... You could not object anything to my interpretation and you play theater with me now... I will not go further... I am not a clown in a piece written by you where you pretend not to understand for the gallery and put in front of all some points missing completely the main argument...

The center of my argument is the articles of Magnasco and Oppenheim... Their conclusion falsify your claims that a limited set of linear measured will always predict Qualitative musical qualities... Your set of measures is not complete and being well and useful for the standard design needs but they never will replace trained hearings ... PERIOD...

@mahgister

ANY DEESIGNER USE SINE WAVE PULSE ...Van Maanen too... But he use also real music busts ... Is it too much difficult to understand why ?

There is nothing there to understand. You have no information on what music was used. How the testing was done. Who were the listeners. What was compared to what. You are asking me to believe in something that even you don’t know about.

😊 i cannot joke about that here ...

Groucho Marx will stay silent on this one ...

Well said thanks again...

“No one can dispute a well made measurement. The issue it’s validity.”
I would say, with respect to WHAT is being measured, it’s: validity, application, meaning, relevance and relationship to a narrowly defined comparison or to any  ineffable, unmeasurable or variable purpose. Especially in the area of human perception, ethics and values; “measurements” are often meaningless, or maybe less than meaningful.

Prof this is my post above reduced to the essential part :

«Then this quote means this : for being able to not fool himself a man must LEARN when it is right to trust himself and not others and vice versa when it is right to trust others not himself..Not knowing that TIMING MOMENT explain why we are the easiest person to fool... "

This is my exact sentence above...

Any hypothesis/experiment must be created by ourself and with trust in ourself to BEGIN WITH , then dont fool yourself, think if it is about time to go with your trust in yourself or to go with some trust in other advice, ideas, hypothesis or new experiment... The hard task is KNOWING if it is the time to trust you or others... If someone dont learn that he will always fool himself because we are the easiest to fool when we dont know better and never learn to listen the TIMING signs around us ...

I did not contradict Feynman claim AT ALL about the fact that human fool easily themselves...

You use this in a Barnum simplistic way to criticize Rodman about his ideas...

I dont like the way "objectivist" mind or tool obsessed people use this sentence OUT OF ANY CONTEXT...

Feynman never intended his public to doubt themselves or loose confidence in themselves or stop to trust themselves...He means that we fool ourselves any time if we dont LEARN if it is the time to trust only ourselves or the time  trust an other... THIS TIMING  MUST BE LEARNED THE HARD WAY...It is the reason why people fool themselves easily , they did not learn this timing  lesson...Feynman dont means common place fact he means serious thinking by his sentence ..

Any other interpretation is meaningless because instead of being a serious advice it will be reduced to a simplistic evident  common place fact as a Barnum motto : a sucker is born every day... A genius is born everyday too mr. Barnum ..

We can fool ourself in two way : trust only in ourself but also trust only in others... The difficulty is to learn if the moment is right to trust ourself only or right to trust instead another advice.. Anyway it takes more faith in ourself to listen other that to go always in our own way... But there is no creativity without absolute faith in ourself...

We are the easiest person to fool because we dont know why it is time to go alone or to listen others... Simple...

You cannot fool wise man... Why ?

And wise man dont fool themselves .. Why?

They had learned to listen to the MOMENT, but also to others and to themselves , what is this MOMENT about in my life, hypothesis, experiment etc is for, ?

Why are we the easiest to fool ourselves ?

Because we dont want to learn and listen the MOMENT ...What this moment is for ?

Any other interpretation is trivial... A common place fact...

Feynman was not in the gear debunking market and his advice is not for a customer 😊 and he learned how to trust himself or his fellow physicists when it was the right time to do as a bull or the time to listen as a owl...If you dont learn that your fool yourself ALL THE TIME...

i dont see how my interpretation diminish his sentence... Why wise men never fool themselves ? It is because  they listen not only themselves and others they had learn how to listen and READ the MOMENT in time...

The best example ever of someone who never fooled himself and was never fooled by others  is Salomon judgement about the two mothers and the only one baby... What did Salomon did ?

Instead of fooling himself in picking what seems to be  the more trustful mother by questioning them but risking to be fooled by the most crafty of them; he decided  suddenly to cut the baby in two and look at the mothers face  and spontaneous reaction ..." Give him the baby Majesty said one "... The real mother for sure...

Salomon did not fool himself ever, he listen the MOMENT and acted the right way letting the moment speak instead of deciding the mothers quarelling speech..

Feynman is like Salomon character in physics not a Barnum character especially if we read the story of his path integrals ...

«Let not fool ourself, there is no difference between you and me, we must just pick the right one at the right time »--Groucho Marx 🤓

That’s literally NOT what Feynman said. He wasn’t saying "doubt others" and "trust yourself. His point was very specifically about YOU...the person with the hypothesis/experimenter.

Try actually addressing SPECIFICALLY what Feynman said in that quote:

FEYNMAN: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself

Why would that be the first principle? What are ways we can fool ourselves, mahgister?

and you are the easiest person to fool.

Why is Feynman so concerned to point out that YOU are the easiest person to fool (that is, fooling ourself)? WHY are we the easiest person to fool? What do you think Feynman means by that, and why it is so important to account for it in our method?

 

Now a nail in the Amir coffin...

Magnasco and Oppenheim experiment demonstrated the nature of non linear human hearing and how the ears beat the uncertainty Fourier principle or the Gabor bounds and then why we need more an ecological theory of hearing than a hearing theory inspired By Fourier linear frequencies based methods ... the consequence of all this is that a set of linear measure used in design for the control and the good behavior of components CANNOT predicted a good sound experience only by the lecture of the number measured.. Amir for sure negated this fact and never adressed the fact that any measures must be interpreted in some hearing theory context to be meaningful and also compared with the set of all possible measures not only with the Amir  limited chosen sets..

But there is more to say ...

But what are the consequence of the non linear structure of the ears in the ways audio signals are treated by the ears ?

It turns out that a small amount of noise can improve the way the signals will be perceived... Yes you read it here and well...

Then "tweakers" and audiophile experimenting with cables can rejoice...😊

Good cable are not those measured by Amir after all...

All there is to tell to the ears is not in the perfection of a linearly PERFECT measured signals in the design process , not for the human ears..

it seems that the design process as said Van Maanen is more about noise and signals degradation CONTROLS than about inexistant linear perfection... Van Maanen called these controls the " Often disregarded Conditions for the correct
Application of Fourier Theory"... Amir claim his set of linear measures is perfect to tell all the story, no need for conditions for the correct application of Fourier theory ... As he said, Van Maanen is a fraudster trying to sell his amplifier... Amir him dont try to sell his method...😊

https://agilescientific.com/blog/2014/6/9/the-nonlinear-ear.html

read this short article :

In the beginning i trusted his good faith...

Then i set the highest bar for the debate :

In what context any set of measures make sense ?

In a hearing theory context ...

I cited Oppenheim and Magnasco to set the right hearing context theory with their important experiment after 60 years of acoustician thinking around this who goes in the same direction as these two physicists ..

Because the ears/brain are non linear and work in a time dependant DIRECTION,not on a mere frequencies basis in a time independant linear way as our tools works...

We cannot equate linear time independant measure which are good to create a well working circuits as being equally the perfect norm for "musicality" evaluation,

I explained in detail, even using the many articles of a competent physicists and acoustician and designer , Hans Van Maanen , who explain clearly all that matter,

He disparaged the Magnasco and Oppenheim experiments as non significative save to be a mere usual treshold hearing experiment throwing the baby of the essential non linear working of the brain out of Gabor bounds with the bath waters of hearing trivial thesholds relative measures,

he treated Van Maanen in an ad hominem attack as a vulgar seller , knowing perfectly that anybody who is able to understand science will know that his papers are serious thinking...

Especially his paper titled : "Often disregarded Conditions for the correct
Application of Fourier Theory"..

After that the nail in the coffin , i pointed to the fact that the ears/brain working non linearly in his own time dependant domain , the level of resolution of the perceived signals cannot be enhanced LINEARLY by perfect linear INCREASE in the signals, but INSTEAD can be enhanced in some case with the right amount and right type of noise, then the signal to noise ratio behaviour cannot be measured better than by hearings experiments as with Magnasco and Oppenheim .

To no avail...he never adressed any of the main point i gave...

Anybody reading his answers will read him as a marketer who drawn the fish of hearing theory in the water of marketing bad faith...

There is one thing i did not understand at all...

i know there is plenty of competent people on ASR, and scientifically inclined professionnaly or by taste, if one of them read my discussion with Amir, and his bad faith answers smearing any valid point in the noise of blind test and his limited set of measures with ad nauseam examples from his reviews instead of arguing AGAINST my point... And the complete distortion of the main point with ad hominem attack against three competent physicists, my question is : why Amir is not ashamed and in fear that some competent member of ASR read his techno babble as it is : MARKETING of TOYS...Anyone can see that he never adressed the hearing theory context where any set of measures can be evaluated ?

Explain that to me... I discuss always in good faith and i will be ashamed to miss an argument EXCEPT if i dont understand the subject matter by my own fault...

is Amir completely ignorant ? or is Amir without shame ?

i dont know which one of this alternative is the good one...

I never discussed ONLY to win an argument, i discussed to learn first .. I spoke a very bad English because i never spoke english in my life... And i read only the limited clumsy abstract limited vocabulary of scientists and philosophers not great novelists... i read the great John Cowper Powys for example in translation ( too slow to read for me in english because of my lack of concrete vocabulary ), but in french i learned how to read multidisciplinary analysis methods and taught it... My knowledge is limited but i can read anything and compared it to anything...i can even think about for example the relation between non commutative geometry and the musical scale perception and the laws of physical and qualitative invariants behind it and put this in relation with the hearing theory and the time dependant domain in speech and in music.. I did not adressed these questions with Amir because he was unable to adress the basic in good faith, i even can explain why meanings arise in symmetry breaking in linguistic levels as in music ... in short i know nothing but i know how to read people who know something as Alain Connes in mathematics the father of non commutative modern geometry or Gustave Guillaume in linguistic, the greatest linguist over Chomsky himself or Akpan J. Essien in acoustic ( he is unknown by the way ) etc ...

Amir know how to sell something and he know how to use his toys tools... Thats all for me...And he know how to "boss" people around him...

I learned a lot discussing with Amir...

The problem is he cannot nor want to learn anything from anybody even physicists and acoustician... he sell marketing points...

But without discussing about his false  "theory" of hearing, i will never had learn so much about what is at stake in  hearings theory...

We cannot discuss with stupid people, but we can learn from ideological people... For example discussing with a marxist you must learn Marx economy theory..

If discussing with a neo liberal economist i would learn about the chicago school hidden roots...Bernard Mandeville the genius behind Adam Smith for example ...

Discussing with A chomskyan linguist we learn about other roads... ( Gustave Guillaume genius for me ) etc

Anybody welcome a set of measures and we thank him for that ...Nobody buy his ideological stance about their meanings ...Save naive techno babbling minds for sure.. 😊

Simple...

It is not the gear listenings or measuring who rule audio, it is the psycho-acoustic knowledge behind it... it is why the division between subjectivist and objectivist, created by techno babbling objectivist to begin with had no scientific meaning at all... It is marketing of the measuring toys against marketing the gear... It is marketing in the two cases... Amir against the designers, debunking them with his erroneous hearing theory , industrial one or craftmanship one...

it is simple to figure out why he is wrong...he dont know that hearing theory contradict his claims... And he believe blind test as some marketer use them too replace hearing knowledge and training...

Does he listen and perceive classical music nuances and meanings ? If he did he will know the difference between sound and music and the way they interpenetrate one another through human hearings paradoxical powers history in the recursive relation between productive sound ability and the way we perceive them ( non linearly and in a time dependant domain ) ...

No measures mean something out of his context of application and out of his interpretative context ... i learned it in the book of Benoit Mandelbrot about fractals and a complete redefinition of geometrical concepts first published in french, not in english, in autumn 1976... I read my first Mandelbrot article in the french pleiade about science in 1975 and here Mandelbrot described his idea about modelization of phone signals errors in phone lines , the first sketch of fractal geometry and the reason i bought his book the first day he was delivered in north America in french.. I read it in ectasy... Suddenly i realized i did not understand anything about space at all before reading it.... one of the best books i read in my list of books... now fractals geometry is everywhere... i like geometry... 😊

As Alain Connes suggested we can " listen" number theory rythms and we can "see" music shapes ...he is totally right... By the way this is not "poetry" but mathematical facts...

I am sorry mapman you miss the points...

Ideology here means: someone who use tools to measure, which is a good thing , no one refuse information; but when this person impose his measures out of any Interpretation context, and here the context to interpret measures is not only the behaviour of well designed material components but their relation to sounds qualities, this is the domain of hearing theory...Or psycho-acoustic... No objectivist or subjectivist exist in psycho-acoustic sorry only experiments protocols about hearing...

Imposing a limited set of measures to replace hearing theories and perceived sound qualities when the measuring context ( Fourier linear and time independant tool with a  frequencies based hearing theory ) is put under the rug is technological ideology contradicting psycho-acoustic facts : Human hearing work in a non linear way in the time dependant domain constrained by his evolutive history with speech and musical produced sounds and natural sounds QUALITATIVE perception ..

you did not read my posts... 😊 You did not pass the exam...

I know my posts they are too long and with too much articles...😊

Second, I really do not detect an ideology other than Amir is only interested in facts not opinions.

You explain it better than me for everyone...

Thanks.. 😊

“Insects have been measured to be superior to cattle for human consumption. If you don’t eat the Insects, it is because you have not “trained your palette ” to like what measures best. So your “opinion” of what is pleasing to your palette is not only vulgar, but dismissed. You are obviously nothing more than a plebe”

 

just the facts. That seems to be Amir

You are right for sure...

It is way more deeper if we speak about sounds and music though ...

No measurements win the race because of its validity ALONE...

The measurements must be evaluated in their CONTEXT of application and in their LIMITED bounds of application.. Thats my point discussing hearing theories and what means linear measures for a non linear Ears/brain , and what means out of the design process , measured numbers of material designs which are interpreted in a time independant way for a time dependant unrelated qualitative phenomenon ..

Amir said: no need for that, trust the tools and forget your ears save for a blind test...

Acuity in hearings for him is not recognizing nuances in soprano voice expression here, for him it is only hertz and decibels... Then the Amir ears are untrained by non amplified classical or persian or Indian or African or Chinese or japan music... he trained his ears with studio and computers... He call that training ears in resolution and acuity ... He dont know that even in perception the ears/brain to perceive something as meaningful and not only as audible noise in background  must have the different experience of different  musical contexts because without concepts we dont perceive things in a qualitative way  ...

We reduce them to hertz and decibels... We are then NOT EVEN WRONG... Amir is not even wrong because he miss the question to begin with... He gives an answer to a question he never ask,...

What is technology in relation to science ?

it is answers for question we never asked... or it is a possible new question for an answer we never imagined.. 😊

An example : Mankind discovered fire by accident... It was an answer for a question about cooking we never asked for...

No one can dispute a well made measurement. The issue it’s validity.

The model for Tesla was Goethe... His mentor... He get the idea about his electric motor at 25 years old reciting Faust ...Goethe is on par with Darwin as a natural scientist... Jay Gould say it in his own words not me...

In general yes...

Interesting thought. Should we start rating designers as to how much they know about art? And if they don’t, dismiss their work out of hand?

Tesla was a great amateur of Art, poetry among other thing... Edison not at all... Guess who was the real genius ?

I dont remember any great designer who is not able to relate his design idea to art experience and history...

i dont speak about techno worker, i speak about genius in science...

Do you know who created the philosophical basis of set theory ?

A mystic of the 6th century...Cantor was a theologian and take all the basis of set theory from a mystic... Ask me i will explain it to you in details...People here will kill me if i explain it from my own impulse... 😊 the "salt" and "pepper" of this affair is about the convergence of Fourier series... 😁

i will never trust an audio designer who dont love music at heart... Sorry...

You prefer blind test, i prefer musical training...

Ask Furtwangler to pass a blind test about musical sounds if you dare...say to him in his old age with a slight lost in hertz resolution and decibels perception that he can no more perceive musical timing and details... he directed till the end and was never rival by anyone..

« The ears see way more than they hears»-- Acoustical paradox from a blind kid who is also a bike amateur

i discussed with Amir...I thank him 15 times for his measures information by the way... Nobody can accuse me to be anti-Amir...

i provided many arguments with dozen of articles about the relation between measures and hearing theory as a context to interpret measures..*I will not repeat this because others will kill me...😊

Amir never answered to my point, use many times ad hominem arguments, dismiss anything in false pretense or go beside central point..VERIFY BY READING MY DISCUSSION...

Read my posts... I never insulted but gave a consistent argument..

I lost my respect for his "scientific" status at the end ... he play with measuring toys and give us useful measures Thats all...It is a marketer not a scientist... A scientist use method , theory and context for interpretation..not only measuring instruments.. Hearing theory is the center here... the center of design, the center of research, the context where all measures are evaluated.. Sounds are not physical abstracted Fourier waves, these waves must be interpreted by the ears brain... And sound qualities in nature are not reducible to Fourier reconstruction tool... because the ears/brain ask for more... I will stop here: we need an ecological theory of hearing to encompass the Fourier theory of hearing..

By the way the separation between subjectivist and objectivist was created by market designer or techno babbling people about the gear electronics measures ... The central subject of audio is not design, it is psycho-acoustic , because all design is based on this science not only on electronics circuits ... There is no subjectivist or objectivist in acoustic science... iT is MEANINGLESS completely stupid distinction...In acoustic any measures is interpreted in hearing context and any subject submiited to strict experiment controls.. Blind test are used yes but not to sell a limited set of measures as replacement for  hearing truth...

I’m curious if you give equal time to your "anti-bullying" crusade. It’s been my experience both in participating in, and watching many discussions, that in threads in which someone is voicing reasons for skepticism about an audio claim, that in forums that trend towards "subjectivism" all sorts of catty vitriol is thrown at the skeptic and virtually NONE of it is called out because the subjective stance is simply assumed as the default. Therefore "anyone voicing skepticism about what people might be hearing or not" is just a trolling muckraker. In fact, it’s often the "objectivist" who actually says "I’m open to believing what you believe, and here is the type of evidence that would convince me." It’s often the highly subjective-based audiophiles who have an essentially unfalsifiable belief "I can hear it, even if you can’t measure it" and they take any questioning of this as a personal affront, and then often hurl ad hominem back at the objectivist. Because in the subjective world, there is no actual other way to settle things. If the subjectivist claims to hear something, and someone else says "no, I don’t hear any such thing" then the subjectivist comes back with the usual "well then either your gear isn’t resolving enough or your ears aren’t resolving enough." That’s already played out in this thread, as it *always* does. The objectivist says "like any human I’m capable of error in my perception, so here are the ways I want to account for that fallibility in my method of evaluating audio gear and claims." Whereas the subjectivist tends to just take his own perception as The Gold Standard, all other methods of inference are subservient to the truth of their own perceptual abilities. And so, again, any statement by a skeptic that implies "I didn’t hear what I KNOW I heard" isn’t taken in the proper scientific mindset, but as a personal affront and hence name calling or derision is thrown back. And there is a complete blind spot - only the "objectivist/skeptic" is called out for making ’arrogant claims,’ where in the subjective context people make strong claims all the time and no-one blinks. Say "These new X cables I bought made a great difference to the sound of my system" and it’s "amen!" Someone like Amir says "X cables will not change the sound compared to low priced cables" and then it’s a pile on for making arrogant claims. But the claim that the cables DO make a difference (in such conditions as Amir would deny) is just as strong an opposite claim! But that slips through unnoticed, due to the operating bias of a forum. This thread started off with plenty of derision thrown at Amir and ASR before Amir ever showed up. So I’m wondering: How often do you direct your attention to the derision, ad hominem etc that come from the subjective-oriented side, those who constantly snipe at Amir or other people who propound the relevance of measurements and science to objective and subjective claims in audio?

 

😊

The room where is system is does not have the right balance at all between reflective/absorbing/diffusive materials...the soundfield cannot be optimal... 

Anyway after my arguments unanswered... there is no discussion only bashing opposite sides...

Why people are so unable to think? because they trust gear, toys, anything but not what matter : concepts BEFORE experiments... Concepts AFTER experiments...

I like acoustic because we hear qualities and they inform us about the world and people...

Hearing is more deep than touch... Because with ears we touch inside things and at distance...

I tuned my room by ear...

Material balanced treatment and active control with Helmholtz tuned resonators..

my soundfield were filling the room with immersiveness..

All is wrong because i used my ears... 😊

he may think timbre is a frequencies spectrum i guess we can measure instead of listening to it... I bet...

Only slow thinkwer will interpret Feynman Quote

FEYNMAN: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

as if an individual could fool himself everytime he trust himself and then must put his trust externally ...

The best way to fool himself for an individual and miss the Nobel prize is believing all that is taught everywhere ... Perhaps to Kuhn and Popper you must add Feyerabend for philosophy of science course...

Doubting is not self doubting first and using blind test as childish thinking from  Amir indicate, it is doubting what is taught and experimenting with it to LEARN IT OR TO REFUTE IT by experience and trust in ourself ... We cannot do that all the time  for sure , trust in others must be there as trust in ourself, but interpreting this quote out of context as never believing in our own ears and eyes is a more damaging attitude than trusting our ability to train ourself and trust ourself first not others even when we learn...

Tesla opposed his teachers at university who taught him that his electric motor idea was impossible... he did not trusted them but himself and created it after by solving all problems...

individuality and creativity is the root of science and philosophy NOT SELF DOUBT...Science is not the market arena of a circus...Barnum is not a genius in philosophy of science...And if a sucker is born everyday on earth, a genius is born everyday on earth too...

Loosing confidence in ourself and trusting others is the Key road to technocratic totalitarism, scientism, and any deep delusion created by the techno babbling people ...The death of thinking.,.

quote means something in a context :

when Feynmann created his solutions ad hoc to particules paths integrals...In spite of others advices ...

Then this quote means this : for being able to not fool himself a man must LEARN when it is right to trust himself and not others and vice versa when it is right to trust others not ouself...Not knowing that  TIMING MOMENT explain why we are the easiest person to fool...

The quote is not a quote of a marketers as Amir or from a car or audio seller,or from Barnum saying a suckers is born everyday, A favorite quote of official "debunkers" sheeps objectivist crowds, it is from a scientist doubting himself and others BECAUSE he look for truth FOR HIMSELF first ...

Feynman for sure never recommend obedience to authorities as Amir or alleged authorities ask for , instead of trust in yourself...Thats is certain...

Prof you miss Feyerabend teachings in the philosophy of science course... 😊

Small room acoustic is not great Hall acoustic, or even studio recording acoustic.. These three are three completely different acoustic environtment for the goal we want to achieve...

These are completely different acoustical field of experience...You are wrong here, because you confuse small room acoustic and studio acoustic and great Hall acoustic ... Sorry .. Same physical acoustical Laws but completely different applications...Do you need a blind test to catch the deep difference in contextual applications ?

if i did not have adressed my small room by balance control of first reflection and diffusion and absorption, if i had not used a grid of Helmholtz resonators but only your DSP my room soundfield instead of being my greatest sound experience, so imperfect it was ,would have been horrible...

I am sure of two things just inspecting your room in a photo...Your sound potential clarity and transparency will be better than mine BECAUSE OF SUPERIOR COMPONENTS DESIGN at way higher cost , especially the speakers compared to mine...but your soundfield is probably not filling the room in a balanced way with for example in the opera recording of Kurt Weill TEST IT WITH HIS :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR33bL5aNTk&t=1196s

here the soundfield in my small room all along the album go from beside my ears as with headphone to all around me IN THE ROOM , behind and in front of the speakers, at different times , and distributed all around at some times, it is relative to each album moments...My SPEAKERS DISAPEARED TOTALLY...  This recording is TOP recording for sure by a genius ... I know you dont listen classical but we must begin someday... 😊In my room the soundfield of my 600 bucks system will beat yours  if i look at the atrocious way you treat your room acoustic ...And your speakers are better than mine with better frequencies responses.. bUt a soundfield is not created ONLY by frequencies responses, it is created by interaction with the room and the specific EARS of the owner... We dont have the same ears filters and structure and training history ,did you know that ? 😊

i am not an acoustician , i just experimented 7 days each week non stop for one year, because it was fun and it was my hobby being retired ..i learned a lot PRACTICALLY not only by reading equation by specialist and calling it done with a DSP , i experimented too ... By the way i used japanese research among books and papers,for example also Toole recommending using first reflection positively in SMALL ROOM about reflection and immersiveness to guide my experiments...

By the way it is related EXPERIMENTALLY , in each case differently, to the specific ACOUSTIC GEOMETRY (form) AND TOPOLOGY (doors+window) AND TO THE MATERIAL specific CONTENT OF THE ROOM and his acoustic properties (wood do not act as fabric clothes or animal skin etc) and it is then related after all that to TIME AND TIMING hearing and measures it is not related to your OPINION AT ALL and to your toys so useful it can be as a tool...

Contrary of what you said mocking those who informed themselves on the net ALL TOP RESEARCH PAPERS ARE ALL ACCESSIBLE FREE ON THE INTERNET for anybody with a brain...

I just argued with you about your ignorance in ecological hearing theory to balance Fourier theory and their relation to measures evaluation of qualities of sound reading among other papers an unpublished master thesis and papers i discover on the internet..

😊

In a nutshell, the most preferred treatment was no treatment

You are wrong here, because you confuse small room acoustic and studio acoustic and great Hall acoustic ... Sorry .. Same physical acoustical Laws completely different applications which must be discovered by some human ears of an acoustician and applied differently in each different acoustical environment...

If i had listened to you my small room would have been what it was in the beginning , horrible and atrocious, before i used my balance treatment with the right ratio and location between reflection/diffusion /absorption and before i used my MANY Helmholtz resonators mechanically adjustable and tuned resonators HOMEMADE distributed at critical location...... All that by my EARS..

No cost...I used garbage in my basement and i bought some tubes and cheap materials..

i am very proud of my room at the time...

i lost it...

And after 6 months of experiments and the right headphone i recreated a three D. room filling soundstage OUT OF THE HEAD, if the recording is good as in many CLASSICAL recording ... Studio recording did not gave the same spatial impressions..

Your friend is right and it is MY EXPERIENCE not by applying DSP but by experimenting:

The second issue not readily evident in the room response though there are some indications is the strong reflections from the very close side walls that will arrive both close in time and relatively high in power compared to the direct response. Yes it is correct that your speakers are well designed with smooth off axis response hence this won’t cause any weird tonal issues making assumptions about your wall materials, but back to the precedence effect, it will affect imaging, and while side wall reflections can make the image seem more expansive and the result pleasurable, when the wall is that close the result is invariably negative. You may not trust audiophile listening reports, but in similar situations, almost without exception where an audiophile was required to place their speakers near side walls, the addition of appropriate acoustic panels resulted in a significant perceived improvement. Anecdotally, you will not find a large professional studio with speakers placed that close to a side wall without use of acoustic treatments.

I won’t say it is universal, but it is almost universal that treatment of first reflections in a small rooms is recommended by professionals. Unfortunately, there has not been extensive research on this topic to draw on and what does exist is mainly around speech intelligibility, however, Brett Leonard in his PhD dissertation did some excellent work showing effects of a rather early intense reflections on perception and even the variability of that perception across music genres. Your position does not appear to be based on the fundamental science, available research, or professional recommendation.

Small room dedicated acoustic for specfic system/room/ears cannot be done and automatized by many DSP with no room passive treatment and no mechanical acoustic control... E.Q. is not enough at all... Correcting some specific frequency response is not enough ...

The only way to automatize this for an optimal result without adressing the hard task to tune the room,  is using Dr. Choueri measuring tools and filters refined DSP  BACCH for creating optimal virtual room...

it is the only upgrade i need...

😊

Refreshing post with knowledge and common sense...

Thanks..

I could quote more and reference his book, but in summary, nothing is perfect, use what you want (at first lateral reflection). That use what you want is critical, as not all listeners, or even audiophiles listen with the same goals and may not even listen with the same goals all the time. In a music space targeted at casual listening or for the more casual listeners in the household, a space with more side wall reflections has a high likelihood of being preferred. For those who are into critical listening, muting the sidewall reflections can sharpen perceived imaging leading to a higher preference. Are you a casual or critical listener Amir?

but even if you are right about what you say here... In a good small room with balanced ratio between reflective/absorbing/and diffusive surfaces and volumes especially with a room under mechanical control with resonators ( i used them in specific location ) , the preference between musical casual listening and critical listening make no sense at all... We can distinguish these two categories of specfic characterized atmosphere, yes, but we can ALSO CREATED each one of THEM but more importantly we can make them converge in an OPTIMAL dedicated SMALL ROOM ACOUSTIC...This is the goal...Opposing them is erroneous even if it could exist as acoustic conditions...You know that for sure, i only add this precision for Amir... 😊

I learned that by experiments not only by reading Toole ... By the way the concept of a dedicated acoustic room do not coincide with acoustic treatment in a living room AT ALL...Small room acoustic of living room is not small room acoustuic of dedicated Sopeakers/room ....

A dedicated acoustic room , like an anechoic room, is a completely dedicated room too, but a non anechoic one, dedicated to some specfic audio system and to some specific speakers properties, dedicated to specific speakers/ears properties in a specific room with his specific , geometry or form, topology or apertures, and with his specific acoustic material content...This type of room is designed by a owner for his own structural ears filters by him...

No one teach a recipe to devise this dedicated acoustic room... There is no recipe... YOu do it by experiment and adressing all problems and solving them...

Small room acoustic is a very specific acoustic domain of studies which is relatively NEW...It does not really exist few decades ago save for acoustic recipe generalities...

For Amir with my dedicated room and my 600 bucks system i am a deluded audiophile...😊

Who is deluded here with a 15 000 bucks perhaps useless electronic piece ? because as someone said wisely :

Does that say more about the processor or more about your room?

And he want to advise me about audiophile fraudster designers ...😋

And he wanted to advise me about hearing theory too...😋

And he want to advise me about small room acoustic too and he never did one ...😋

He stop babbling to me because i cited too much papers contradicting his perspective which is using electronics measures of design to specificy psycho-acoustic qualitative experience or negating them if he cannot make them correspond to his techno babbling ...

I am naive, i thought he could discuss "objectively" about the difference and complementarity between Fourier hearing based theory and ecologically based hearing theory, he did not even understand the basic problem to begin with ...

You cannot discuss science and experience with someone who want to "market" you his products.., the poster who want me to shut my mouth and quit, was wrong to ask me that, but he had a point i must admit ... I am naive...

By the way the only serious people to discuss with are those ready to admit they were wrong when they are...And all begin with ourself limitations and our own admission...

I never pretend that my room was perfect... But it beat everything i listen to in any living room with any system.. At no cost it was enough for me even imperfect because i did not use measuring tools but ears.. Anyway i used 100 Helmholtz resonators manually adjusted , how do you do this electronically ? It did not work the same at all... And peanuts costs means there is no market fraud here, only acoustic learnings..

@texbychoice Didn’t even really catch that. Good eye. It’s a very subjective statement and one that isn’t even backed by Amir’s precious data. How the heck do you buy a processor and then spend that much money only to brick it? I’ve never heard of a product or company being so crappy. He must really not be hurting if he just doesn’t care about a $15,000 loss. Time to ask for more donations.

My best friend in my teens was a completely savage male cat that will go only with me in the house...

he even attacked any other humans if they touch him...

He sleeped with me...

this documentary is interesting for me..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QadUonunflw

I know you've all been waiting on the edges of your seats...the lady down the street with the cat? Its a female.

A living room is not a dedicated small acoustic room ... Toole dont need to experiment with acoustic in his living room, but that does not means that living room are ideal for musical soundfield... Some buy 15,000 costlier electronic piece... Some other experiment with room acoustic at no cost..

But how do you know that my acoustic room was screwed because it was only dedicated to my ears nothing else ? I dont need esthetic... for sure... i need immersiveness a good ratio between sound sources and my listening position..Speakers which disapear for ever and dont exist at all... We can tune a room for any relatively well design speakers of any type by the way and we can optimize them for our ears .. I cannot do that in a living room...😊 For sure we can have a good sound in a living room modulo some wise installation... but there is level of immersiveness...A living room cannot be a dedicated acoustic roomno more than a dedicated acoustic room could be an anechoic chamber..

You may be satisfy by a living room...i was not...my basic system is 600 bucks not 50,000 bucks...

And your claim reflected complete misunderstanding of acoustic : it is the ratio that matter, the ratio of reflected /absorbing /diffusing surfaces and volumes...This ratio exist already in ANY room ,but is different in any room , with or without acoustic tuning; the acoustic controls will only change it for the best and for your own ears filters...it is an INCREMENTAL process that take TIME... it is why a professional acoustician will charge you 100,000 bucks and it will be esthetical and more perfect than mine...but mine was astoundingly better after compared to before... At banana costs..

And this ratio between diffusion/absorbtion/reflection change from one room to another function of geometry, topology acoustic content and dimensions and time and timing and this ratio must be adapted to your ears..

I just go on ASR and read a discussion between a designer speaking about the non linear nature of the ears then he adressed that by the way he used second and third harmonics in his design , and ignorant and arrogant people attacked him immediately because as yourself they think that the ears process sound linearly ... It is incredible to be so ignorant about hearing theory and pretend to be a specialist...Their ears only like NO DISTORTION it seems ... very comical... the psycho-acoustic of their ears is different from us ordinary mortals...they have "golden ears" affected by distortion negatively... Us the great majority of human kind we are affected positively if the design is good... it was comical to read...

The soundfield we listen to for you come from gear with no distortion at all in a room with preferably no ACOUSTIC installation .... It is incredible for me it reflect ignorance about the psycho-acoustic basics, the soundfield is created mainly by the speakers/controlled Room/ ears acoustic TRINITY...And amplifier designer know that the ears listen non linearly then some harmonics matter more than others.. Consult non linear in wikipedia to guess why...

You are completely deluded by the gear design being so called "transparent" with no distortion, hypnotized by a set of linear measures who masked your complete ignorance of what human ears hears and how it decode it non linearly, meaning distortion at some levels are positive reinforcement at other level negative... And the fact that the ears live in a time dependant domain KILL all your pretense to reduce what we hear ONLY AND MAINLY to linear set of Fourier measures on the electronic chips...We need room acoustic too... Or a Choueri dac filtering system based on our personal ears filters measured to eliminate the room acoustic problem ... Guess why Choueri measure EACH PAIR OF EARS ?

i prefer Audiogon... Even if ASR is informative because all participants are not arrogant as many there ...

By the way:

Did i invent the ears non linearity working to win an argument ?

Did i invent the crucial observations about natural sounds qualities from ecological theory of hearings to complement Foourier theory of hearings and the advantage of this ecological theory suggesting different set of experiments  in research about hearing impairment for example  ?

Did i invent the concept that the laws of acoustic being the same UNIVERSALLY ; in Great Hall, audio studio, living room and small dedicated acoustic room, their APPLICATION differ completely ? They are specialized acoustic research field...Guess why ?

Did i invent that the way the ears process sound in his time dependant way had an impact on what we call "musical qualities" especially if by ignorance we reduce them to some narrow set of measures on some piece of gear  ?

Did i invent the concept that there is only one center and one focus  for  audio design and audio experience : acoustic and psycho-acoustic, not ONLY AND  MAINLY  the gear market of those who measure it as you, or those who design it ( with wise level of distortion for the benefit of our hearings) ?

I invent nothing of that , they are facts...

Some people want to make it their life project to screw around with their room acoustics. That is not me. I have function and aesthetic needs that they do not have.

Claiming that people should go and absorb reflections as you claimed is simply wrong advice for huge swath of audiophiles. It is misinformation that leads to people agonizing the sound of their room, wasting a ton of money and often arrive at too dead of the room.

Snake oil refer to any deception AND self deception, deception and self deception are TWINS... as Feynman said the easiest person to fool is ourself for this REASON... ..

Buying a 15,000 bucks piece that did not do  the job intended is not less ridiculous that buying am amplifier who did not sound as we asked for ...

i dont see the difference Prof...

By the way i described how today i read  on ASR attacks on a well known designer  ( i will not name him because i dont want to drain him in the swamp of this debate ) because he used his knowledge about the non linear way the ears perceive sound to design his amplifier using harmonic distortion in a wise psycho-acoustical way... Few people as  "wise" and less "wise"  as amir attacked him about any aspects of his work, and i say attack , because they suggested multiple times that this "distortion" business is if  it is not fraud it is for  useless deluded ignorance of audiophiles..

The designer was a gentleman and answer them politely... I had the EXACT same discussion here with Amir about the way the ears hear, NON LINEARLY IN HIS OWN TIME DOMAIN... Then no one can equate a limited of linear measures in the time independfant domain with AUDIBLE MUSICAL PERCEIVED QUALITIES. Claiming otherwise is not psycho-acoustic knowledge but ignorance...

No set of measures about audible qualities can be reduced to measures about the linear well behaviour of circuits ... Oppenheim and Magnsco experiment demonstrated why... they even suggested why we do more experiments in the context of ecological hearing theory...

Amir answered with ad hominem attack against Van Maanen and reduce the lesson of Oppenheim and Magnasco to be trivial experiment about mere hearing acuity limits , forgetting how the experience illustrate non linear behaviour of the ears in his time domain... This is BAD FAITH motivated by his business : selling his set of measures as ABSOLUTE truth about musical qualities...

Now prof, if some of the ASR crowds treat a well respected designer this way, contesting him ,and asking for PROOF , and almost insulting him; imagine how they will treat me ?

they will never listen to me a second and they will not be polite at all..

I listened politely to Amir thanks him 15 times. oppose my arguments, but instead of answering, he use any means but NEGATE the central problem in hearing theory as it never existed..

i lost complete trust in Amir...

i am naive but one thing i know : i learned how to analyse any text scientific or not... i know what is a valid argument or when someone drown the fish..

That’s not the same and you know it.

You know very well that "snake oil" is a reference to products that do not do what they are claimed to do.

That TacT Amir owned did what it claims to do: perform audible corrections to the sound.

That something breaks doesn’t make it "snake oil."

That’s just a disingenuous attempt at some "gotcha."

Seriously...and you guys are up Amir’s butt for the style of HIS posts?

Yes, it is hard to believe that seeking the straw in our eyes you never seek the beam in your own eyes...

As Feynman really means , FOR you ,is you fool ourself by believing that all biases are equal...

What are Rodman and me our common biases : we confide and trust our ears experience and history, it is the straw in our eyes...

This straw sometimes must be takes off by blind test or the ears must be better trained yes anybody can contest common place evidence...Because not only blind test, but training can replace past erroneous biases with better useful new acquired biases...For sure...

What are the beam in your eyes, the biases you dont see and fool you completely ?

It is from the psycho-acoustic history, and from the Oppenheim and Magnasco experiment which confirmed it, the non linear working of the ears/brain and his working in his OWN TIME DOMAIN , not in a symmetrical independant time domain as ALL linear Fourier tools..

The Oppenheim and Magnasco demonstrated, as many others psycho-acousticians demonstrated and thought it before , that the ears/brain PERCEIVE aspects of sounds in his own acquired evolutive way... it is in this way that we created speech in the same gesture than music in a rythmic, melodic unidirectionality of time ...ears/brain work in this time breaking symmetry and caused it... The ears brain dont perceive sounds linearly what does it means:

it means that higher harmonics are not evaluated by the ears in the same way with the same tonality nor with the same perceived value, it means that " Like vision, hearing — which is to say, the ear–brain system — has a nonlinear response to stimuli. This means that increasing the stimulus by, say, 10%, does not necessarily increase the response by 10%. Instead, it depends on the power and bandwidth of the signal, and on the response of the system itself." it means even more , it means that in an ecological theory of hearing :

"under some circumstances, most importantly in the presence of a detection threshold, adding noise increases the signal-to-noise ratio.

I’ll just let you read that last sentence again.

Add noise to increase S:N? It might seem bizarre, and downright wrong, but it’s actually a fairly simple idea. If a signal is below the detection threshold, then adding a small Goldilocks amount of noise can make the signal ’peep’ above the threshold, allowing it to be detected."

https://agilescientific.com/blog/2014/6/9/the-nonlinear-ear.html

Then All the Fourier linear and TIME INDEPENDANT tools and methods applied so well to the good predictive beahaviour of the designed electronic components so efficient they are, cannot alone by themselves be able to EXPLAIN the ears/brain way of processing sounds as evolution tuned up for natural sounds perception and emission or production in some recursive loop oriented in his own time domain and making us sensible MORE to the burst of a sound and to his decay than to the inverse direction :decay and burst... It is the time symmetry breaking and the creation of his own time domain by the ears/brain...

But for a set of Fourier linear maps, in a time independant way, the direction not only does not matter, but the basic abstract factors as frequencies, amplitude, and phase and duration, must be linearly ordered and interlinked , and are linearly related under the Gabor limits...But Oppenheim And Magnasco demonstrated with SELECTED MUSICIANS WITH TRAINED AND ACQUIRED MUSICAL BIASES, that the ears/brain can beat the Gabor limits or the Fourier uncertainty limits even thirteen times in some case...

Then what is the BEAM in the eyes of the Amir sect: it is the erroneous equation determining with  very small set of linear tools , the Fourier tools used to design gear and electronic components which must well behave linearly in a time independant way, which are now  dogmatically used to characterise all audible qualities  as pertaining to gear "transparency" or to be illusions or artefacts of the deluded brain biases... This dogma is the BEAM in your eyes...It induce a BIAS which you are not conscious of and this bias reduce all Musical qualities perceived by audiophiles or the average people as REAL  MUSICAL QUALITIES,  to be mere illusions of the brain, or mere artefacts, or the biase we must eliminate...

It is this bias acuired by  trained musicians which biases  you want to eliminate that what SELECTED and  used by Oppenheimer and Magnasco, selecting trained musicians to demonstrate how the ears/brain beat the Fourier uncertainty limit by working non linearly and in his own time domain,with this ACQUIRED BIAS as a DETECTING TOOL  for a privileged or biased or favored direction in time , which is the BASIS OF THE ECOLOGICAl theory of hearing, A THEORY BADLY NEEDED IN PSYCHO-ACOUSTIC SCIENCE TO COMPLEMENT THE FOURIER FREQUENCIES BASED THEORY...

Do you understand now why Feynman say that the easiest person to fool is ourself ?

It is because we dont know at what MOMENT in our life, the biases we express would be positive for the results of an experiment or negative for this experiment, or positive for hypothesis or negative for the hypothesis, as Salomon did with his judgement with the two mothers, or as Christ expressed it with the beam and the straw, we must chose the right set of biases or became conscious of them...Sometimes we must listen to ourself not to Amir and sometimes Amir is right... We must learn this timing in our life , if not, we will fool oursself each time...

Then Feynman was not speaking about ELIMINATING all biases indistinctly , which act is impossible generally, and a trivial Barnum like saying,  he ask us to choose the right set of biases...

Biases are inevitable as you know... Think about it then...We must select the right one at the right time...

In his dogmatic marketing for his site and to sell his methods of DEBUNKING, Amir is not interested to replace his biases about the way the ears/brain works, this Fourier based tools and frequency based theory of hearing, the way he used it, is  wrong...The ears/brain perceiving musical qualities dont work as a Fourier computer linearly and in the independant time domain ...These musical qualities are real for a trained ears of an acoustician and a musician or for any self trained person able to tune his room they are not biases we must eliminate IN ALL CASES... But it is not the way  Amir see it as a propagandist of his tools/toys...

No, you wrote in utterly vague circles, never landing on his actual point.

His point clearly had to do with what separates the scientific endeavour from everyday level inferences.

When Fynman says "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."

That is clearly a warning about the influence of human BIAS in distorting and guidling our conclusions. "You are the easist person to fool" is a reference to how easy it is for us to filter explanations and evidence to fit our desires or biases. In fact, we are easy to fool through various pitfalls in thought, even when we are trying to not be biased. When YOU are the one doing the testing YOUR actions and interpretations will have a blind spot of your own bias.

He admonishes us therefore The first principle is that you must not fool yourself," which means we have to incorporate guardrails against fooling ourslef in to our methods of inquiry.

This is so obvious it’s just hard to believe folks like you and rodman can’t just state what he meant.

Since our biases form such an obvious, first problem in interpreting results, this is why there are various methods of mitigating the influence of bias in scientific testing. It’s why for instance many therapeutic trials are done blind, double and even triple blinded.

It’s why you want to have a hypothesis that is testable by other parties, looking to prove your hypothesis wrong, themselves using safeguards against their own bias effects.

This has OBVIOUS implications for testing audio claims. If for instance sighted bias is a known confounding variable - a prime way of FOOLING YOURSELF - then Feynman’s admonishment clearly indicates you should find a way to rule out that way of FOOLING YOURSELF. Job ONE of the approach he is advocating!

This is why most of the scientific level of research on human perception in general, and much that is available on the perception of audio gear (e.g. the research often cited by Floyd Toole) is done with controls for those variables so the FOOLING YOURSELF part is mitigated as much as possible.

Of course neither you nor anyone else no this forum needs to do scientific-level rigorous research in order to enjoy the hobby or buy whatever you want. But if someone is invoking Feynman in a thread that clearly entails the relevance of science to audio, then at least get what he was saying. You can ignore it...but at least understand it.

 

 

 

 

Amir said this :

Our mission at ASR Forum is to see if a product is well engineered or not.

It will be perfectly weel if it was the case...

But ASR impose through a fanatics kernel of techno babble groupies of him what are the NORM of engineering that will produce REAL sound qualities, the so called "transparency" with no distortions... To do so they negate the ears/brain real working ways , non linear and time dependant, and they bashed and attacked a well known competent  designer using basic psycho-acoustic facts about the way we perceived harmonics signals and accused him bluntly to create BAD DESIGN to please deluded audiophiles...Incredible arrogance coupled to complete ignorance...

Amir called this dogmatic ignorance about psycho-acoustic , science...

And me, who tuned my room using my ears learning concretely acoustic, i am supposed to be the deluded one...😊

No one deny there is information on ASR and useful one...No one deny there is balanced mind people on ASR not only Amir groupies ...

No one can deny there is also  a basic dogmatic ignorance of elementary psycho-acoustic pushed as SCIENCE, because they use some set of  measuring tools..

By the way, i did not used only material treatment with the right ratio for reflective/absorbing/diffusive surface and volume, i created my own large band MECHANICHAL equaliser with one hundred distributed tuned Helmholtz resonators all around critical spots in the room... I used equalization in my own way with SUCCESS...No cost...

Am i deluded ? Yes for Amir...

He read Toole book but never apply it... He trust only tools not his ears...

He think the brain /ears work like a Fourier computer...

He really claim all the phisicists i used to explain all my points were deluded, incompetent or they are as Van Maanen gear seller...

Bad faith at his top expression...

Not a SINGLE argument to counter the fact that we need a non linear and time dependant theory of hearing for interpreting sound qualities real meanings in an ecological theory of hearing and to MEASURE the limits of our Fourier tools themselves  ... it is WHY any acoustician know that the Fourier hearing theory need to be complemented by an ecological hearing Theory... Amir does not know how to spell e-c-o-l-o-g-i-ca-l ... 😊 He never wrote this word to counter it with an argument...

read all his posts...

He sell his tools and site ideology...nothing else...

I will add this :

As Einstein famously said :

Here prof is right...

Stop with the cheap attempts to pigeonhole rather than produce intelligent arguments.

Prof is right here too...

Not once, ever, in this thread or anywhere else have I even implied "Amir is always right, everyone else is wrong."

Someone saying that small room acoustic is not good or something to even consider is so ignorant, apart from hearing theory ignorance, that i am speechless.😁

i know nothing... I experimented a bit ...But i am able to read Toole book or some others and think by myself... Toole did not have the time and taste to transform his living room in an acoustic laboratory; it was his work day job, and he must be married, you know what i means ?

But this does not means that passive materials treatment with a good ratio between diffusion/reflection/absorbtion and timing , large band mechanical controls of the room with Helmholtz principles and a bit of frequencies refined electronical equalization are not ALL complementary...They may give so astounding results that no acoustician is an obsessed upgrading fools.. They know how to extract the best sounds from any relatively good gear...

A journalist asked to perhaps the greatest pianist of the century why he does not have a piano in his living room, he answered with humor, no mechanics keep their tools in the living room...I dont think Toole was different... And he know very well the difference between great hall acoustic, and studio acoustic, and living room acoustic and acoustically dedicated small listening room .. Same physical laws , but completely different applications..

Incredible that some people after reading dont understand that everyone welcome his set of measures... At least me...Even more, ASR present  also some informative discussion...

I thank Amir 16 times for that... Who among you thank him 16 times ?

But his ideology about measures, supported by some zealots,  stating on the basis of mainly the small set of linear measures taken by him did not make any sense for PREDICTING AUDIBLE MUISICAL qualities of components then are useful to verify official specs, some engineering design problems and help for synergetic pairings... THATS ALL... The word qualitative "musical" did not have  even meaning for him...

You must trust your ears to pick a component or judging it...You must trust measures to pass over the worst design and coupled it optimally with other components.. Is it a mystery to understand ?

I explained why this is so with basic psycho-acoustic... Amir had not ansd cannot contradict me... he only distorted the 10 articles i suggest, use ad hominem attacks against 2 physicists... And never adress the problem of the link between gear measures and deesign and the hearing theory context...

i attacked his good faith ONLY after his behaviour convince me , he did not understand what is at stake or does not want to...

There is very knowleadgeable people in Audio here and on any audio sites ASR included..

But there is there and here too techno babble ignorant who use technology without understanding his relation to psycho-acoustic basic...

Simple...

Great post! thanks

The basis of a debate is good faith,,,

Good faith means you are able to repeat the opposite side arguments as they stated it...No ad hominem attacks and no caricature...

Here a caricature with an appeal to an affective reaction instead of a rational thinking...

Bottom like, get speakers that are well designed, do some EQ for low frequencies where acoustic products have little prayer of fixing issues there, put standard furnishing if this is an everyday room, and start enjoying your music.

What about Helmholtz resonators for taming the bass ?

What is a well designed speakers ? Is Tannoy dual concentric bad design ? They sound way less good in my living room than my Mission Cyrus in a better acoustic environment.. Guess why ?

Do NOT listen to people claiming expertise based on stuff they have read online.

Do you know that every scholars research is available on the internet ?

Even doctorate thesis in acoustic ?

is this observation include ASR or just audiogon ?

And certainly don’t let them shame you into throwing blankets on the wall or else your system sounds like "crap." They don’t know what they are saying.

You are right here... I will only add, dont let them shame you because you use your ears not only measures and trust your ears to experiment and pick you gear... Because those techno babble measuring zealots they dont know that a set of measures describe SOME ASPECTS ONLY OF the design and cannot alone predict "musical qualities" ...As demonstrated  Amir , they dont even know what hearing theory science is and why a debate exist there and what is at stake..

And for those who use technology to DEBUNK not to design  , so useful it can be, the adjective "musical quality" which can made sense for a craftmanship designer of amplifier using psycho-acoustic concepts about distortion and the non linear working of the ears, this adjective suddenly  is a word devoid of simple numbers meanings on their limited set of dials..Guess why ?

Amir give us something positive... Nobody can deny that... ASR is useful... Once this is said ...

 By Jove! he must return to school in the evening 😉...Learn how to read a text... Learn why philosophical question matter to understand the relation between technology and science...I suggest Feyerabend ...

And learn in psychology course that you can isolate some bias but you cannot erase all biases and you cannot make all biases negative or positive... Biases are not only prejudices they can be the results of training...Biases must be controlled and became conscious not eliminated...

Do you know that placebo effect and nocebo effect can be observed WORKING REALLY and EFFECTIVE exactly as benzodiazepin drug for example  in the same nervous system zone under pet scan imagery ? Then trusting you ears induce in training something positive or very negative if you think you are ONLY the prey of illusions... the ears mut not be believed, it must be trained..  i learned that this week listening the best virologist in the world...

Than those who negate to classical musicians and to acoustician or to well trained mmusic lover any competence in hearing ability are IGNORANT ...They call that hard acquired gift a pretense : "golden ears"

Those who want to shame you because you trust your ears are ignorant ... They ev en dont know how to serach for serious papers on the net it seems.. 😊

Where do you think i get ideas about Helmholtz resonators ?

If you want an extremely cogent synopsis of them for almost nothing, again, buy Dr. Toole’s book.

There is many research paper on the internet ask any students..

By the way what is the relation of a set of measures and hearing theories and why there is a deep debate  in this field ?

Then why nobody can predict Qualities of sound reading some set of few dials  and graphs ?

Tuned resonators are a bad idea for any unskilled audiophiles to dabble in. They are very narrowband and their response can be screwed up easily in construction. Measurements to tease out the specific frequencies you need to deploy them can be difficult (due to multiple axis resonances can occur).

A single PEQ filter can solve the same problem and lower distortion of the speaker to boot.

Net, net: don’t do it.

You spoke to  me as if i was a child and not really there adressing a crowd  and as if i did not do it already with complete success... You are right on one point, it takes me one year of tuning non stop ... It was very fun but very complex... By the way it COST ME NOTHING.... I did it for two reasons :

it was the more fun experience ever in audio ... Upgrading pleasure related to a component dont even compared in fun and upgrading power..

You cannot KNOW IT by reading Toole by the way ,formula are only that : formulas in a book ....This is learned by DOING it...

You are right about a point though, it is so long to do and ask for so many listenings experiments to do it right that i did not recommend it save to someone who want to train his ears and learn dedicated  small room acoustic at all cost and retired because i cannot imagine doing it in the evening after works in a living room  😊..

it was really fun... Each day a new problem arise... Each day i was partially satisfied and frustrated, i searched the timbre problem and how to solve it...It was a slow incremental process like tuning a piano but on one year time ... 

There is also more to say as how to distribute the Hemholtz grid around the room to increase the speakers frequencies response on some band to compensate for the room , because the speakers had his frequencies response and the room too but i will not be able to describe that here...Anyway it is not useful save if someone want to experiment... No speakers is the same and no room either...  The main problem was creating a timbre experience right, the second was at the same time creating the right ratio relating sound sources positions and dimensions and the listener position , it is called ASW/LV... japanese acoustians research was inspiring and useful for me here...

The reason i did not like your attitude  now is because you never spoke to me really, you adressed the crowd reading the posts and you swim to keep your face clean, drowning the fish ... You had no good faith in this discussion ... It is my conclusion... or if you were of goode faith, you are completely ignorant out of your tools manual of use... I dont know.. Anybody reading my posts and your answers can figure it out for himself ...

But listening to people online about acoustic science will absolutely lead to screwing up the sound in your room. Don’t do it. Don’t listen to these people.

it is comical if you realize there is top musicians here, designer engineers and others very informed people about all aspects of audio... i dont put myself in this group ... I only know how to read...And i make a few experiments..

You adress grown up as if they were all children...

Why could you not imagine that some if not many here can read and interpret and experiment with ACCURATE principle and information ?

I know for sure a few things about you :

You are able to read and interpet the dials and maps of your toys tools..Thanks for the information...

You dont know how to create "immersiveness in a room...because it is not a simple recipe precisely with the furniture ... It is related to a complex set of factors you NEVER adress...it is not a sin...Most people cannot adress it in a living room, i never could either...But why then disparaging small room acoustic ? You suffer from tool idolatry perhaps...

You have no cue about hearing theories and their relation to measures interpretation in a fundamental way...Sorry... In all this pages you have been unable to set one argument about that... i am not even sure if you understand the basic problem...

Your site has many good aspects but alas! is insuferable if some dare to post there with a different take on hearing and measures than the groupies around you entertain... I know because i read an thread dialogue between a designer and some of your groupies...This designer was a "saint"... Or a very wise man , unlike me, conscious that debating with someone unable to figure out crucial points is of no interest...

Then thanks for the set of measures...But i will keep friends here, i am not interested by a discussion on ASR as the one i had with you with ZERO argument coming from you about my central point in hearing theory and measures set...

i will read only on ASR some useful information like Dr. Choueri discussion...

My motto was : at peanuts costs...

😉

That’s a hell of an investment. $100k on a measurement system as opposed to $100k on a system. Whatever boat you float….

Are you playing with me ? why deforming my thinking ?

I learned acoustic by studying but experimenting at the same time... You cannot change the fact...by mocking all people here and thinking you are alone with books and articles... and only you can read them...

You proved you know little in acoustic because you never done it yourself... using EQ is not an acoustically "tour de force"...

State for me the fundamental problem in psycho-acoustic and show me your deep understanding ...

You never did it a bit in the last 5 days... 😊

What is even more comical is thinking any of those disciplines teach you anything about acoustic science. My piano teacher doesn’t know a tweeter from a woofer.

What astonish me with your arrogance and despise for audiophiles here, is not what you say, it is the fact you are not even conscious that anybody reading your posts with a brain know you know NOTHING in psycho-aqcoustic save the tools instruction manual of your psycho-aqcoustic costly toys..

you dont impress me and me, apart my acoustic experments, i am a nobody in audio .. I learned how to listen tough... Try to tune your room from your basement plumber and house discarded materials and come back to show me the soundfield results ? We will see if you had digested Toole information as more than ABSTRACT recipe ... I know designer here who i read and i KNOW that they KNOW what they speak about... They dont play boss..

😊😊

You cannot have a clue about Helmholtz resonators because you did not even mention them for the bass problem in a room... You mock those who use material treatment favoring EQ alone... It is ignorance...

By the way what you speak about the specialized use of ONE resonator for the bass control for a precise use in a room  is something already commercialized with success , it had no relation with a distributed grid of one hundred resonators,  from 8 feet high to small one,  and their effect on the pressure zone distribution and their effect on the relation between the speakers and the listener when tuned and located appropriately..

... You cannot learn that ABSTRACTLY you did it or not... with your ears...

I had no results my friend, i had an acoustic room better or not too far from what i look as your room at no cost... but hard work...😊

how i know ?

a soundfield filling the room able to gave to each recording a complete faithful translation..

Why it is faithful ?

because each recording in an ideal audio system must be DIFFERENT... Each one...

What is more valuable than buying the book is experimenting with it by the way ...

By the way you suffer from Alzheimer...

i already said multiple times i have the Toole book.., then when you speak to me speak to me not to an invisible crowd...

stay healthy...

I learned acoustic by studying but experimenting at the same time... I don’t know what you have learned. I can only go by what you can demonstrate here and so far, I have not seen you express anything in this thread indicating any knowledge of the field. Maybe you know it, but I don’t know that you do. You cannot change the fact...by mocking all people here and thinking you are alone with books and articles... and only you can read them... A claim of knowledge is not a fact. Nor have I mucked anyone individually. I discuss the technical point and show measurements, references, and other data to prove them. You have something like that, let’s see it. Start by demonstrating how you know the perceptual effects of lateral reflections. As to the book, it costs so little compared to what people spend on gear/content. I suggest you go and buy it and read that, instead of wasting time here. And yes, that includes reading my posts. The book is that valuable.