Your analogy has a very relative level of validity, but at the end WINE TASTING is not acoustic... A piece of gear well designed by electrical measures is not wine...No more than the measures of piece of gear replace the ears/brain working metaphorically described as "tasting" ...
Why ?
Taste more than touch or more than hearing or seeing is related to our INDIVIDUAL UNIQUE BIO CHEMISTRY AND METABOLISM...Taste is subjective completely... Wine taster are trained to identify wine component and describe them ( soil composition and chemistry of the plant ) not to suppress our individual preferences in wine born from our own personal metabolism chemistry...
Because we can use our ears/brain to see by echolocation if we become blind...If hearing was intimate and individualized as taste we will not be able to trust it OBJECTIVELY... And we will not be able to train the new blind objectively in a course designed to do it WITHOUT ERRORS ... WE SEE WITH OUR EARS...
Also the acoustic conditions in a room are OBJECTIVE factors we can control to please or displease OBJECTIVELY any musician trained to recognize accurate timbre experience..
Also our survival as species trained us to RECOGNIZE objective speech sound in all condition in an optimal way... Why ? because our survival can depend on reflex based on ONE WORD COMMAND...This recognition obey objective working of the brain in objective natural condition...
Also acoustic physical concepts can be measured, and each qualitative attribute of sounds can be studied objectively and can be described objectively even when they are SUBJECTIVELY evaluated in psycho-acoustic ...Psycho-acoustic is based on subject-object optimal correlation...
Hi Chayro,
Sensory Evaluation classes in the Wine Industry teach us that the olfactory sense of smell is interpreted; the only one of our senses that is not ’technically’ hard-wired.
Some humans can be ’trained’ to distinguish up to 1,000 different smells.
Each humans mouth, nose etc. are different. For example when we would place and old 3-ring binder life-saver on our tongues and place a small drop of blue dye in the middle hole we could count the taste buds in the center of the life-saver-shaped hole. Those who had lots of little taste buds were ’super tasters’ and medium amounts ’tasters’ and those with few big blotchy ones were called ’non-tasters’. Each of them totally valid for the person whose tongue we were looking at.
We tried different taste sensation like bitterness from caffeine, or sweetness from sugar. Each taste was sensed from a different area of our mouth.
The lesson we learned was we are all physiologically different. What tastes good to you may not taste good to me; so make sure you put at least 3-different wines on the table to try and please everyone!
You can see where this is going, if you like a wine reviewers taste then you will like his wines, no matter how he measures his taste in the wine, you both have a similar set of physiological taste buds and olfactory sensory apparatus.
So it’s not too hard to understand that audio senses are also interpreted to some degree based on lots of physical inputs and from most importantly life experiences. We could never understand why the teachers promoted the old school European wines over the fruit forward California ones, until we had enough tastes under our belts to gain a base-line of understanding from which our sensory evaluation could take place.
Thus no matter how many types of audio equipment one may listen to or measure, if you don’t have the same taste in sound as the reviewer then it matters not because like it or not sound is an interpreted experience.
Trust me we put super expensive, super highly revered wines next to those that were not, and it was always the same thing, 30% liked, 30% did not like, %40 didn’t care that much.
If you put 30 people in a sound testing environment, good math and statistics will tell you the same spread will recur over and over, cost is irrelevant, and personal choice is all that matters.
So, find a reviewer that has your taste in sound and follow them.
Cheers Mate
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Giving more information about the specs of designed gear components is a good job to do and in some case falsifying market claims too...it gives consumers new information to pounder about before purchasing among other infrormations source as reviewers or users...
Thanks to Amir...
But the bucks stop here...
Deducing from the gear specs measured by tools designed to measure electronic components , deducing from that the sound quality which will be experienced by a user in the natural ecological niche of his room by his specfic acquired hearing abilities and limitations is PREPOSTEROUS as a claim ...Attacking some ignorant audiophile and claiming to debunk them with blind test is one thing, but claiming that there is a linear predictible relation between measured electrical components and what we will experience in a specific room with specific ears is completely a different matter... Conflating the two is PURE TECHNOLOGICAL ideology not science...
What we hear and decode is determined by psycho-acoustical theories, not by measuring piece of gear specs about their design ...Techno babble is not science...
This is the last paragraphs of an article who say it all by two physicists...I underline some aspects of this important article...Which related future new hearing theories on the model of "ecological theory of the visual fields by Gibson... And also relate the hearing abilities to natural vibrating sound sources qualities and their long natural history of perception by humans... We dont hear only mere spectral envelopes or even time envelope, we hear QUALITIES of REAL vibrating sound sources we are trained to recognize by profession and by natural evolution in ecological real acoustical environment...... Any psycho-acoustic theory of hearing must be based on these facts....Imagine the complexity of this task and now compare that to someone saying that measuring this dac or this amplifier with simple electrical tools designed to measure gear components will tell all there is to tell about the hearing and listening experience... Listening as hearing does not reduce to simplistic electrical measurements sorry... We dont even have a general accepted theory of hearing...There is debates about many theories... As illustrated by the revolutionary nature of th3e experiments conducted by these two physicists...
«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.
"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.
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)."
A last word:
As i said objectivists and subjectivists are not even wrong, They are beside the real problem in audio which is a psycho-acoustic problem and an acoustic one...They focus on GEAR not on ACOUSTIC experience... They are the children of gear maketing publicity , objectivists as subjectivists... No acoustician nor any mature audiophile focus on gear piece , they focus on acoustic embeddings of the system... ( and less importantly but very necessary they focus on the mechanical and electrical embeddings of the system in the house/room )..
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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...
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Measurements of gear versus listening the gear...
We need the two....
The problem is Amir school and the subjectivist audiophile insist the two of them on the gear "magical qualities"; by virtue of their optimal standards measurement with Amir who swear only by that, and by virtue of the listening personal subjective experience with the Subjectivist who swear only by that ...
What is the common factor between the two factions at war to define "good sound quality" : it is the the gear design and branded name , measured and verified and officially stamped by pope Amir or promoted, as listened to, by subjective audiophile reviewers...
Myself i know that what define "good sound quality experience" for sure ask for rightfully designed gear to begin with for sure but it is ESSENTIALLY acoustic and psycho acoustic speakers/room specific relation ... Nothing else.... Sorry for the measuring fads or for the costlier brand products obsession of some audiophiles... They are not even wrong, they are deluded by an half truth, out of acoustic experience and experiments...
«It is not the tissu nor the way it is woven so much as the way you dress a specific body»-- Groucho Marx learning craft 🤓
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To answer specifically the OP question...
Only Dr. Gorike an acoustician change my mind about headphones...
Measurements by Amir or positive reviews could not...They can be useful and indicative in some case but NEVER decisive especially separately ...
Why ? Because as for my speakers and amplifier and dac only the relation between them matter FOR the end goal of their integration to my room by acoustic...
In the same way the headphone synergetical association with dac and amplifier matter too but the acoustic properties of the headphone matter even more...
Anyway the only way to BYPASS room acoustic or headphones with no acoustic content in the shell is to try Dr. Choueri BACCH filters for "virtual toom acoustic" the most revol;utionay dac ever... Read about it, it is amazing that this revolution is not well known ... ...Then once acoustic is done right we dont need measurements or subjective reviews anymore and we dont need upgrades...
«In audio cooking, acoustic is the steak and the experience , the gear is the cooking itself with the spicing»--Groucho Marx learning his craft 🤓
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I think this verification of industry standards is the positive side of Amir...You are right...But i dont think that better measurements alone is enough to reach very good audiophile optimal listening experience ...
But people are short sightened by their ideology be it technology or any other one, and objectivist as subjectivist are deluding themselves when they isolate from one another ...People love to hate someone or something... Thats explain much of everything on the actual earth situation if we add the power greed for control by some... ...
In audio if we come back to the subject matter, they all forget acoustic as the main powerful factor...Astounding when we know that audiophile experience is only EXPLAINED at the end by psycho-acoustic...Even change in electronic design are ultimately guided by acoustic results...
I’d say so. Don’ follow Amir and ASR very close but my system belongs to ASR’s absolute favorites and gives me a listening quality few will ever experience. Most I think he should get some thanks for fighting the industry. A little more Amir in you would do you all good!
«Purchasing is never rational most of the times ; and most of the times irrational especially when we buy a bride » -- Groucho Marx puchasing his amplifier 🤓
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Biases are not only mere impediments, except when we must control them for the sake of objective measurements and other science or engineering goals...
Biases are at the same time the source of our motivation and the expression of our motivation...
Many people dont seems to understand that, biases are COMPLEX phenomenon...As Placebos are...And Placebos are not only mere deception or illusions, but phenomenon that must be controlled for example in drugs trials... But doctors and mothers USE them positively... If not they are incompetent doctors and not much loving mothers...In the same way we can use our hearing biases positively in acoustic if we are conscious of them to begin with and play with them in listenings experiments ...
Electronical measurements are no more the optimal road to explain and describe audio qualities than subjective listenings...
It is incredible that people cannot understand that we must LEARN HOW TO LISTEN... And the only way is through acoustic experiments not by changing gear...
If it was the case people owning 50 heaphones and 50 amplifiers and 50 dac will be listening experts , but they are not... They simply know more about branded name products as salesman ...
it seems people enjoy too much disagreeing to understand why subjectivist and objectivist miss the main point about audio experience and this for exactly the same reason...Their focus is on the gear ...
I wrote that knowing that tomorrow people will make the same preposterous arguments pitting subjectivist against objectivist, like the egg big end groupie against the small end groupie In Gulliver travels...
«The sound source qualities did not exist before the act of conscious hearing because the qualities related to the sound source, for example the ripeness of a fruit observed by tapping on it cannot exist and be perceived if we do not LEARN how to listen to the fruits on a table market...We must learn HOW TO LISTEN »-- Anonymus Acoustician
«All men must learn the hard way how to listen to their non binary partner or to their wife »-- Groucho Marx 🤓
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You are right...
The two attitude are useful, they are meaningless when they argue against the other( by psycho-acoustic principle number one)...
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Ignorant dont know what means "psycho-acoustic" concepts...
Then they pit themselves one against the others with half truths worst than lies...
Simple...
The more aggressive they are, and there is aggressive minds in the two side, the more ignorant they are...
Search for the word "psycho-acoustic"...And the feud will be over for those with a brain...
By the most basic psycho-acoustic principle there is an ORDER : the listening subject matter more and come first over the measurements of any kind, be it acoustic or electronical or mechanical...Especially in small room acoustic which is an art based on science...
Once this is said thinking that because we like listening to a piece of gear it is enough to go from it to higher quality sound experience is illusory and without foundation at the end... We must also know and understand why we like it...It is a process called learning how to listen...Buying gear dont replace acoustic experiments...Buying pacoustic panels is not enough at all... Sorry to spell this unconvenient truth...
«There is no subject nor any object before the act of thinking» Anonymus philosopher
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The "quality of our music reproduction equipment" can be effectively measured and evaluate in small room varying acoustic conditions...The gear dont manifest his quality directly to our brain bypassing the relations of the drivers speakers/room/ears...Then "taste" is then as you just say a meaningless subjective revendication as in a children case saying to his mother, i dont like pea soup but only chicken soup...Children must learn how to eat and why and must learn to use their taste..
Taste is a subjective right with no meaning outside ourself...Claiming it valid is simply refusing to learn about our own limitations and to learn how to listen...
Crocodile taste and love only rotten meat...Mankind may and must learn cooking and the art of listening ...
You probably dont even know how is the real potential S.Q. or defects of your system because they are not experienced in an optimally dedicated acoustic room conditions...Then our "taste" is a passive seating position, an abdication ... Some solve it by upgrades, but purchasing is most of the time also a passive attitude...It is the reason why some people to cure frustrations own tons of audio materials....I know because i purchase 10 headphones before learning the lesson...
Taste must be educated, we are not crocodile...We must go active with simple listening experiments to learn about concept as reberberation time, timbre, dynamic, transients, immersiveness , sound sources differentiation and dimensions and many other concepts in experimenting with them ....
In psycho-acoustic it is a principle to vary measures, electronical one or mechanical or acoustical one, to experience specific changes and their meaning correlation in relation to our biases and taste...
My acoustic room for example was optimal for me, it cannot be for everyone...Because my head diameter and my ears geometry, and my gear and speakers and acoustic content in my room differ from yours, it isnot my taste the explanation here but acoustic ... acoustician dont create small room acoustic or great Hall acoustic with their "taste" but with their experiences... What other reason?
Because small room acoustic of audiophile dont use time and timing waves or reflected waves and reverberation in the same way as in a great Hall and the gear and room must be adapted to one another for specific ears, and a great Hall is designed for a seating crowd...
Subjective is the origin, objective is a conquest...What is really beautiful is being able to relate consciously the two sides of the journey ...
If we accept that the quality of our music reproduction equipment cannot be MEASURED, then we simply declared it ART or TASTE.
The beauty is (and feeding our hobby), that is it now is totally subjective, since TASTE is the DEFINITION OF SUBJECTIVE. Therefore, I hereby declare that my $400 Onky with my speakers and my $100 CD player is the BEST SYSTEM IN THE WORLD irrespective of price.
Now if ONE person here questions that, he/she does NOT get the point of what ’taste’ is. It is SOLELEY ’in the eye of the beholder’. Even if you may argue that there thousands who disagree, I am stil right. Subjective is Beautiful.
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The whole point about learning HOW TO LISTEN with acoustic is just that : we learn in the process that we can trust our ears for the realization of our audio dreams...
In acoustic biases induced by the gear and specific ears/brain is not something to be eliminated as in the market testing of products or as in the design with engineering standards, but something that can motivate us to create the speakers/room to our liking FOR OUR EARS which will do the tuning ...We can and must educate our biases not erase them......
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Electronic measurements of gear did not correlate linearly and perfectly well with listenings impressions...
Paradoxically, any designer must use very precise set of recognized standards measurements as general starting point but they use after that their alchemical electrical art... But it is an art, a craft, not a mere learned technological recipe .... They learned to put complex parameters together and figure out by experience how playing with them to make miracles happen..
Nelson Pass or Atmasphere for example are artists too not just engineers..
But there is a more exact correlation between acoustic and psycho-acoustic measurements and subjective experience... Exemple : Smyth realizer or virtual room acoustic with Dr. Choueri are based on acoustic and psycho-acoustic measurements ...
Then subjectivist and objectivist see half of the truth and are blind to the other half... They forget that the gear components must be acoustically embedded in a room to be LISTENED TO OPTIMALLY...
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You are right and it is pretty evident, especially because he can do very well paid job with his experience... Measuring is his hobby..
i dont like objectivist at all... But it is useless to be mean...
As i said, subjectivist and objectivist do the same mistake focussing on gear, as if the most important factor was secondary : ACOUSTIC...
He just confirmed what I already thought. I’ve been away from a Audio for a long time and could not believe what was going on when I got back. He does it as a public service. There’s nothing in it for him. He reviews equipment that people sent him and he takes donations to buy more equipment to review. He certainly is not getting rich doing what he’s doing. I am absolutely sure that the amount of aggravation is not worth the amount of money that people send him.
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I like your post..because of these points in your post :
It changed my opinion on DACs. There is very little difference.
--Dac is a mature technology now and it made no sense to pay too much for a dac relatively to the other components...It is my opinion and experience...
I also differ from ASR’s view on room acoustics and loudspeakers. There are big differences in data and perceptions, where ASR insists that research suggests, that people don’t care.
-- Subjectivist or objectivist focussing on gear miss the more powerful impact of acoustuic and psycho-acoustic basic in a room...
But you are wrong here:
The ears are very bad sensors compared to the eyes
Hearing give us insight inside resonant sound sources and information about their composition, even when not visible...( is it metal,copper or iron, or wood, it is empty orc d3ense, is there a hole, is this fruit ripe or not by tapping on it etc)
We can replace sight with echolocalization exactly as bat and dolphin do... There is even school that taught this for blind people...
Hearing is the FIRST sense which put us in contact with the world through the mother womb, and the LAST sense to disapear... And In coma hearing work not sight ...
And about "information processing" :
«For the first time, physicists have found that humans can discriminate a sound’s frequency (related to a note’s pitch) and timing (whether a note comes before or after another note) more than 10 times better than the limit imposed by the Fourier uncertainty principle.»
https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html
Also, " sounds communicate to the brain far more quickly than sights. Light travels faster than sound, but its pathway to the conscious brain is much slower. “While vision maxes out at 15 to 25 events per second, hearing is based on events that occur thousands of times per second.”
«Nowhere are the limitations of the eye relative to the ear more apparent than when comparing frame rate, measured in frames per second (FPS), to the precedence effect. If 10 still images were flashed in one second (10 FPS), people can distinguish between the photos. Once a rate of 12 FPS is exceeded, though, it’s more likely the person will perceive motion rather than images.
A comparable measure in hearing occurs with the precedence effect. If two sounds occur back to back with a sufficiently small amount of time between them, humans hear a single auditory image. For this to occur, though, the time interval may have to be as low as 10 milliseconds. Additionally, it’s still possible to hear ascension or descension in the sound — it just appears as a single tone.»
About illusion:
«Everyone has been fooled by optical illusions. Something similar is possible when listening to audio, but this occurrence is much rarer. In fact, it takes a bit of visual trickery to fool the human ear via the McGurk Effect.
To put it simply, the McGurk Effect occurs when a listener hears a word but sees different visual cues. If the word “bar” is spoken while someone’s lips move as if making an “F” sound, for instance, the listener typically will “hear” the word “far” instead.
This means that, just like the eye, the human ear can be fooled, but it takes a little visual help to pull it off.»
https://backtracks-blog.com/when-hearing-is-better-than-seeing-the-power-of-the-ear-exposed/
Also the short time visual memory is better than hearing short time memory...No comparison here...but it is the reverse completely for long term hearing memory compared to visual long term memory...there is no comparison either here...
It is way better to loose sight than hearing, guess why?
You can communicate if you are not deaf and replace sight to some extent with echolocalization, but you cannot replace hearing for communication and navigation... As said the mathematician Euler losing sight, it is a good thing for my concentration...Ask Beethoven his opinion ? Ask Ray Charles who gave his money to a deaf childs , not a blind one; and to the journalist who made the documentary very surprized by this, and who ask WHY ? Ray answered laughing, being blind is no problem at all...
Last thing :
Audio people think that to learn how to listen we must change the components and listening to the results... This is very deceptive and push people to meaningless strings of upgrades... and they will NEVER learn how to listen sounds in this exclusive way... We learn to hear when we LISTEN using acoustic concepts in simple basic experiments...No other way... As Musician learn how to listen by playing ...
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Very good points.... Thanks
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As i already said, Objectivist measurements are good for the industry and for the consumer to know, and subjectivist reviews very good and revelatory to analyse...
Some in the two group of people quarrel around the same GEAR component, the measurements against subjective listening or subjective listenings against measurements...They all focus on the subjective OR objectively measured properties deemed FOR THEM the more important of THE GEAR components ...
BUT Room acoustic and psycho-acoustic disposition or headphone shell acoustic tell the story to be HEARD at the end ....
Because no component at any price can do his best in bad acoustic conditions... Period... No speakers can beat his room...The room acoustic constraint and determine the gear potential and optimal S.Q. at the end ... Not the price tag and Brand name, nor the electrical measurements alone...
Then it is not the component choice that matter the most AT THE END but their electrical, acoustical and mechanical embeddings, most of the times which are more powerful in impact than any upgrades ...
Quarrel reflect futile ignorance and focus on gear choice excluding acoustic ...it is more important the room than the speakers ... Why ? Because we pick the speakers for the specific room needs we already have anyway ...Most of us cannot invest 100,000 bucks in a room acoustically designed for the specfic speakers we want...Then acoustic knowledge matter most for us than dac, amplifier and speakers brand name choice separately or put together...
Saying the opposite is marketing by measurements or by subjective listenings...In the two case it is a marketing analysis official or unofficial publicity...
Acoustic is science and art, not marketing analysis, be it objectivist or subjectivist...
Quarrel is meaningless...
«Quarrel make fools » -- Groucho Marx 🤓
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I interpreted these two point differently than you...
It does not invalidate your points for sure, but it reveal other perspective...
For me the "working conditions" are not ONLY the electrical context of a house and a room , or the electrical characteristics of complementary coupled components but the more important and underestimated acoustic and psycho-acoustic context of a specific room/speakers relation , being it a living room or a dedicated acoustic room with all the variations between these two...
I interpret the second point as meaning that the human hearing process "qualitative recognized wholes" in the time domain in a way that some electrical tools are not designed to receive and decipher as the ears/brain...We do not listen to speakers, dac or amplifier but to musical chords in a room...
The way human ears decipher an orchestral melody in a room is not measurable by simple electric tools as you know...
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.4611.pdf
" We do not measure devices in the working conditions they are to be used"
There’s a lot of discussion to be had about the scope of a standard suite of measurements, such as including ultrasonics to see potential IMD, how long peak power should last, highly variable loads, etc. But generally, the measurements Amir, Erin, and others on the site use are quite a bit more exacting and stressful to the equipment than listening to music, so I don’t think this is a very compelling objection. At any rate, scope of measurements is discussed at length and quite vociferously at ASR, with many differences of opinion.
" we still do not have a "human weighting" for the results"
I’m not sure what this means. Certainly, the human ear cannot detect a vast array of signals that can be detected with even cheap measuring equipment (REW and a $40 microphone). So another topic with a lot of discussion is the "audible threshold" at which signal artifacts can be safely ignored. You’ll find a post at ASR suggesting pretty useful loose and strict thresholds for noise.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/audibility-thresholds-of-amp-and-dac-measurements.5734/
Both of these dialogues provide examples of concepts I’ve learned more about by reading at ASR. I’m at a loss as to why people here wouldn’t feel the same way. To me it just seems incurious.
Of course, if you believe human hearing goes beyond what has been shown in controlled experiment, that’s your prerogative, but if you espouse that at ASR, it will get unpleasant for you. Usually the invective is directed (appropriately) at the idea, rather than the poster, but alas, not always.
Have fun on the internet!
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The problem is not Amir dedication, it is as someone just said above some"evangelists" attitude and character ... Stupid people and opinionated one exist in subjectivist crowd too not only with objectivist despising audiophiles...
I did not understand why people are so focussed on one aspect of audio forgetting the other...
Psycho-acoustic is the heart of audio, here subjective hearing is correlated with objective acoustic disposition .... Nothing else is...Not branded name, not price tag, not electrical measurements, PSYCHO-ACOUSTIC is the heart ... Learn its basic or be fooled... It is the ONLY thing i learned in audio... The rest is secondary details in electrical, mechanical and acoustical embeddings of the system ...
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There is one thing i like about Amir investigation...
It debunk the myth and magic marketing LINEAR link between S.Q. and price tag...There is none...
For example in dac... Dac is a mature technology, and we can now afford a very good one at relatively low price...
And in my acoustic experiments i discovered that improving acoustic is way more powerful than upgrading cables or dac or amplifier and sometimes even speakers...( if you have basic good one to begin with for sure)
By the way i am neither objectivist or subjectivist, no more than Gulliver was egg small ender or big ender...
Acoustic is key for me...But how can we criticize someone giving to us more information to digest ? I will not...
«I measure temperature in my ears before listening»--Groucho Marx audiophile 🤓
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My point about electrical measures is simple : they are INFORMATION we must take as information, often very useful ...
Amir give us much more information about the design of a component , then we can only thanks him for his " knowledge" ...
My other point is : Information is not knowledge...
In audio as in any field the difference between information and knowledge is simple and explicitly given by the great mathematician of this century : Alexander Grothendieck : " an information may add something to us but did not change us, knowledge change us "... ( in his book " the Key of dreams") 😊
In audio, acoustic knowledge and basic psycho-acoustic experiments change us IMMEDIATELY, because they make us TOUCH and FEEL what is timbre for example or dynamic or transients or immersivenes, sound sources apparent localizations, or the listener envelopment and the sound source ratio etc , by experiments varying acoustic conditions in our room.
These experiences not only add something as a mere information, as information about the design of a component can do, but when put in place in some order transform our hearing being completely and without coming back , we begin to be conscious of new aspect of us in relation to the sound and to the soundfield that we could not even imagine before it ...
This why i said that we must learn how to listen, it is not given by purchasing 20 amplifiers or 30 headphones...It is information we gain by purchasing brand names not knowledge... We can buy information not knowledge... We can buy a book but we cannot buy the understanding experience of the book...
This is why Acoustic is the heart of audio... Not electronic design by itself alone...Anyway revolution in electronic design also often comes from psycho-acoustic principles, facts or discoveries : Smyth realizer or Dr. Choueri BACCH filters among many others... I remember atmasphere explaing here 1 year ago very interestingly how his psycho-acoustic knowledge inspired him for the better design of his tube amplifiers for example...
« Sorry for your theory but my wife’s information is already knowledge»--Groucho Marx 🤓
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All debates with no arguments attacking valid information and facts are useless...
General accusation are only mirror reflecting opinionated people...
We need measurements as we need our ears...
But we need to focus less on the gear , their measures or the listening impressions and more about the way to learn how to listen in controlled acoustic conditions ...I dont means blind test here, i spoke about small room acoustic...
Because at the end any audio system must be judged in a specific room...
The optimal room transform a system in a way no upgrade can...
For sure all people cannot embark in acoustic experiments journey... Headphone can be a solution then... Or i recommend Dr. Choueri BACCH filters system...
But the only way to learn how to listen and understand sound is acoustic experiments as the only way to learn how to listen and understand music is playing an instrument...
Perceiving something without the clear concept about what is about to be perceived, hide and distort the phenomenon to be understood... To describe something even to ourself we need concept and the corresponding word...Without it the phenomenon most of the times did not exist or is unoberseved or confusely sensed...
Listening is not then about innate "taste" except in the marketing litterature...
We are all limited...i was able to design my own acoustic room but i did not play an instrument... 😂
😊
The desire to learn and the orientation of attention can compensate for our limitations for sure...
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The problem is not Amir, but some of the extremism and opinionated "disciples" so to speak...
It is the samething here with people who think sound is only about their uneducated "tastes" and nothing else......Extremism is on the two sides...
There will be no quarrel at all if people were able to understand basic psycho-acoustic ...
Human hearing is very complex and we cannot say that if it is not measurable by oscilloscope and others electrical tools it does not exist as a perception ...
Spoken sounds and musical sounds are qualities "wholeness" entities extended in a time/timing ten of milliseconds region, the way we perceived them is studied in psycho-acoustic and cannot be analysed in the more simple way we measured electrical thresholds in gear design...
Human perception is primary in acoustic...
Acoustician who designed the architecture of great music hall in the past were doing it as an art and craft using their ears not a mere mechanical mathematical formula...
For sure A.I. could soon replace them...But my point is, so much useful electrical measures of the gear could be, they cannot replaced acoustic and trained ears...
Even those who measure and think they can hear only what they electrically measure from the gear , as those who claim to perceive gear differences and claiming that one "taste" better by virtue of their "taste"; All those, most of them, never trained their listenings and hearings with acoustic...They then ignore that we cannot perceive some phenomena at the treshold limit of our OWN hearing without creating the conditions for the phenomena to be perceived and manifested first ... Is it illusion or placebo, sometimes yes, sometimes no...The main thing is experimenting by ourself...
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You put in my mouth what i never said,,,
It seems extremists in subjective and objective schools will never understand anything out of their blindness spot...
I ONLY said what i said, not that my three past dac sounded the same...
I mean the difference which are there is not huge and does not compare to other embeddings controls especially acoustic one...
I said confirming Amir on this point that dac technology is mature technology and we can have very good dac at low price... Once this is said i LISTEN to deetermine my choice or the need for a change...
@Mahgister
"For example in dac... Dac is a mature technology, and we can now afford a very good one at relatively low price..."
See, this is where the comment breaks down. You can get a very good measuring one, but it may not sound that good. However ASR minions will argue that all Dacs that measure the same sound the same.
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Your post is an example of despise that innerve everybody here...
You talk about what "neutrinos" coming from a cable? And you mock subjectivist hearing them...
It is very easy to mock subjectivist extremist views...
I dont like extremist of the subjectivist or objectivist kind...
Why ?
Because they focus on gear "magical " properties , MEASURED OR NOT....
The measuring crowd argue against the listening crowds that some qualitative phenomena cannot be there and the other side insulted claim and argue they are there...
Myself i dont focus on the GEAR....As this two sides did...
Audio is about acoustic and psycho-acoustic AT THE END...
Then i was able to tune my room to my likings with a result so astonishing that i learned this fact : there is no relation between before and after...
Is my small room could be deemed PERFECT acoustically like a great acoustic Hall designed by a pro? no...
Is my small room designed and tuned for my ears and biases ? Yes
Small room acoustic is not great Hall acoustic...( For example time and timing play in a different way for the ears reverberation can be used positively Etc )
i then learned why subjectivist and objectivist miss the boat in their respective living room...
In audio the most important component is a dedicated acoustic room... This is my truth... And for the immature dude who will say that my hearing is not perfect, i will answer for sure my hearing is not perfect ...But i was able to tune 100 Helmholtz resonators around my room distributed on critical spot by ears , and i did it in my imperfect way as a piano tuner tune a piano... It takes me 1 complete year of fun each day... End results : extraordinary at NO COST...It is not perfect precisely because my ears is not perfect but for me it was way better than no acoustic tuning ... There is NO COMPARISON ON ANY ACOUSTIC FACTORS between before and after..
The lesson : the gear is SECONDARY....
The hearing biases are not there to be ELIMINATED in the small owner’s room but to be used positively AS A SET OF BIASES TOOL to tune the room for the owner ears...This room is not a HALL for the crowds it is for me...( great hall acoustic is not small room acoustic, the same acoustic principles are used in a different way here)
if someone dont want to study basic acoustics and learned a lot by experiments; i recommend Dr. Choeri BACCH filters... It will be the same as my room but on a level of perfection reducing it to nothing to be compared.... My imperfect ears cannot beat DSP wisely used in a revolutionary psycho-acoustic design...
As in my room the sound from speakers ( or from your headphone) will be there in 3-D perfectly localized without timbre degradation... A feat i can only grossly and imperfctly approximate in my small room...
I am neither a subjectivist nor an objectivist extremist IDEOLOGUE quarelling as childs ...
i dont focus on gear, measured or not, i focus on acoustic...
The key to the best world system is acoustic and psycho-acoustic ...Ask Dr. Choueri... He dont mind the brand name of speakers, amplifier or turntable or Dac and their measures or their reviews...What matters first and last is the properties of the ears/brain experience as described in psycho-acoustic, or as used in an imperfect way in your room...Pick any good basic system and put it on his top level with acoustic... This is the way...I dont mind if you choose it by ears or by the numbers...I dont mind extremists...
Yeah but what about the neutrinos? Nobody checks for them. I have a cable with special shielding .....and I’m starting a go fund me account......
They will be called No trino cables.
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Darwin is not the problem, most Darwinists are...
Freud is not a problem, most Freudians are...
Marx books are not a problem, most marxists are ...
Etc...
Amir hobby to put useful information and his own opinion is a service then Amir is not the problem, some rude ideologue Objectivists may be the problem...As are some impolite and rude subjectivists ...
Someone as me experimenting for himself, is not the problem , gullible people passive consumers thinking that a cable is the key to audio, are not even wrong, because in spite of some difference beween cables it is never a main factor in audio...
I concur with this post :
To be clear, measurements are valuable, but do not characterize everything. Amir providing measurements as a service is fine, The issue is the uncontrolled vitriol of the hard core followers.
I concur with this post too :
Back at the beginning of this thread I asked if the OP uses an auto tuner to tune their instrument or do they do it by ear? The OP responded both ways. That is the interesting point. Many of us have the ears, the fine hearing to tune an instrument, or a stereo, but still need the assurance of measurements. Being an engineer I also tend to want confirmation by measurement of what I am hearing- although less so these days as I have learned to trust what I hear more. At some point the best learn to work without a net.
A remarkable memory from years ago: I knew a musician with great hearing. He came over to my house and with a single tuning fork he tuned our piano. It sounded better than ever. Even something as basic as tuning an instrument by a skilled musician can sound better than just adjusting the strings (or tube length) to a set and measured frequency. Something about the feel of the instrument in a master’s hands that is superior to measurements. A good example was some decades ago a renowned flautist was being interviewed after giving a concert. The reporter, in jest handed the flautist a plastic recorder to see if he could play it. The master played an amazing tune on that plastic toy. Very impressive.
Measurements go only so far. The feel, the emotional response of the music and the memories make a human connection that no analyzer can quantify.
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Audio recording reproduction is related for sure to the gear design...But it is relative to the room acoustic potentials too...
We can use this analogy between piano and tuning though , because a small specific room coupled to specific speakers and gear is not a perfectly designed DSP system as in Dr. Choueri perfect design compared to it... The gear coupled to the room is like an imperfect out of tune instrument... It resemble an instrument to be tuned for the ears pleasure, because the different distribution of the pressure zones of the room are like the cord of a piano must be controlled and acted upon to compensate for the gear limitations and the owner hearing limitations using measures and listenings to improve it or "tuned" it ... Small room acoustic is not Great Hall acoustic, different acoustic architecture completely because of the difference in reverberation time positive and negative part among other things...
The acoustician , or here the improvised acoustician, the room’s owner, may and can tune it like a piano tuner tune a piano indeed ... Imperfect results are not bad results if they astonishingly improve the experience at no cost...
Electronical Reproduction of a recording and small room acoustic translation are two different things..
They fuse together in the revolutionary design of BACCH filters system for example in a virtual room processing technology...It will be my ONLY upgrade one day...
But when i was alone in my room i tuned it, as imperfctly it may be at the end , it was astonishing for my ears, and with them... With succees FOR ME and for my experience AT NO COST ... And i learned a lot in the process...
Audio is about psycho-acoustic first and last, not about the gear market nor it is about the welcome falsification of the market claims by Amir , so useful it can be and it is...
But before anyone draws an analogy to audio reproduction, pianos are instruments, not reproduction.:)
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Recording with microphones choices and locations is an acoustic problem with INEVITABLE trade-off choices ( bad recordings exist) .... Transfering acoustic recording choices of the recording engineer trade-off art into ANOTHER acoustic environment : our room; is another problem in acoustic ...( bad room acoustic exist)
The fact that the gear components, digital as analogue, work, conveying recorded information ( recorded as a SPECIFIC set of choices) between this translation of one set of acoustic choices by the recording engineer and the other set of acoustic choices in my room; in this acoustic translation the end results has not so much to do with the gear choice alone , as subjectivist or objectivist think in their opinionated focus on gear, but has way much to do with acoustic control over speakers/ears/room ...( i supposed the components are relatively well match and good for sure)
That is my experience...
Saying that dac choice matter or amplifier or speakers choice matter is only spewing common place evidence that cannot nullify my observation but displacing the main problem of audio, room acoustic, to a secondary one : which gear to purchase... Because nothing can replace acoustic disposition of the room... Except Dr. Choueri filters... That is my opinion...
«In acoustic if the timbre perceiving experience is not good, nothing is good. Spatial soundfield localization is second .» anonymus acoustician
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Then we understand each other...
I never claimed that my room was perfect,... But a tuned set of one hundred Helmholtz resonators located in specific spots ( an other acoustic devices) around and near ears and speakers was my own mechanical equalizer... Not perfect AT ALL... But astonishing if compared to my room with no passive acoustic treatment and especially with no mechanical large band equalisation ... Someone can use EQ but it cannot do the job i did with my resonators mechanically adjustable and vice versa my mechanical equalizer cannot do the job of an electronical equalizer ... When there is astonishing improvements for someone though , even if it is imperfect, i will not call that "a circle of confusion" ...
I spoke a lot about the BACCH because it is a revolution not much well known that can make headphone sound as speakers and can make a sounfield for speakers in your living room as in a virtual acoustic room... We dont need anything else...
It is the hard designed proof of what i claimed : psycho acoustic is the heart of audio, not market gear claims, nor falsifications of these claims...Thinking otherwise is entering in "a circle of confusion" : quarrel between opposite extremist side...
@mahgister i prefer to make everything as accurate as possible in the reproduction chain and THEN EQ (or BACCH, as you’ve mentioned a dozen times) to taste. If your electronics are adding fixed EQ or distortion, if your speakers aren’t flat with even dispersion you are in the circle of confusion. Certainly we can season at the end, but if you don’t start with fidelity to the original, you are nowhere, and varying masters will cause no end of trouble.
I’ve not heard BACCH. I do use convolution filters I created from REW (something I learned at ASR!). They make a huge difference, especially if you start in the right place. You can’t solve for poor dispersion with EQ. You can’t correct distortions, or FR varying with weird loads in the electronics.
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i take this from Wikipedia...The book is free on the internet...it is the best book ever written on this "delicate" and deep subject... Cipolla add to this matter of definition a clarity nobody can negate...
«This second essay, "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" ("Le leggi fondamentali della stupidità umana", 1976),[3][4][5] by Cipolla , an italian economist, explores the controversial subject of stupidity. Stupid people are seen as a group, more powerful by far than major organizations such as the Mafia and the military-industrial complex, which without regulations, leaders, or manifesto nonetheless manages to operate to great effect and with incredible coordination.[citation needed]
These are Cipolla’s five fundamental laws of stupidity:
- Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
- The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
- A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
- Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
- A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
Corollary: a stupid person is more dangerous than a pillager.
By creating a graph of Cipolla’s two factors, we obtain four groups of people.
Helpless people contribute to society but are taken advantage of by it; Intelligent people contribute to society and leverage their contributions into personal benefits; Stupid people are counterproductive to both their and others’ interests; Bandits pursue their own self-interest even when this poses a net detriment to societal welfare. An additional category of ineffectual people either exists in its own right or can be considered to be in the center of the graph.
As is evident from the third law, Cipolla identifies two factors to consider when exploring human behavior:
- Benefits and losses that an individual causes to themself.
- Benefits and losses that an individual causes to others.
Cipolla further refines his definition of "bandits" and "naïve people" by noting that members of these groups can either add to or detract from the general welfare, depending on the relative gains (or losses) that they cause themselves and society. A bandit may enrich himself more or less than he impoverishes society, and a naïve person may enrich society more or less than he impoverishes himself and/or allows himself to be impoverished.
Graphically, this idea is represented by a line of slope -1, which bisects the second and fourth quadrants and intersects the y-axis at the origin. The naive people to the left of this line are thus "semi-stupid" because their conduct creates/allows a net drain of societal welfare; some bandits may fit this description as well, although many bandits such as sociopaths, psychopaths, and non-pathological "jerks" and amoralists may act with full knowledge of the net negative consequences to a society that they neither identify with nor care about.»
«Non-stupid people are an imperfect and inconsistent group. Sometimes we act intelligently, sometimes we are abused, or selfish villains… And sometimes we are a bit of both. The stupid, in comparison, are models of consistency, acting at all times with unwavering idiocy.
However, constant stupidity is the only thing constant about stupidity. That’s what makes stupid people so dangerous. Explains Cipolla.
Essentially stupid people are dangerous and harmful because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior. An intelligent person can understand the logic of a bandit. The actions of the bandit follow a pattern of rationality: a wicked rationality indeed, but always rational. The bandit wants an advantage for his account.
Since he is not smart enough to find ways to get the plus as well as provide you with a plus, he will produce his plus by making a minus appear on your account. It’s all bad, but it’s rational and if you’re rational, you can predict it. You can predict the actions of a bandit, his evil maneuvers and therefore you can build your defenses.
With a stupid person, all this is absolutely impossible, as the third fundamental law explains. The stupid person will harass you without any reason, without any advantage, without any plan, at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if, when, where, how and why he or she will attack you. Facing a stupid individual, you are completely at his mercy.»
https://bonpote.com/en/the-5-basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/
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😊
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...
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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...
😁😊
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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 ...
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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...
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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.
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It will be my pleasure... You can contradict me with an argument... I like to think...
Two heads win over one...
Thanks
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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 🤓
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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?
The central problem in audio science and experience are first and last psycho-acoustic problem...Not gear analysis problem...
Psycho-acoustic use human subjectivity as a TOOL but also as en END , because psycho-acoustic study hearing as a real phenomenon not as a tool for gear debunking matter...
Debunking as Amir does the audio industry claims by verifying them is a welcome enterprise... As i said and i had no problem with that it is a service for all ...
But going further , as some Amir followers does, using techno-materialism to claim that qualities dont exist in a real world but are only "illusions" created by the brain is a simplistic stance, which is not true at all... Perceived qualities, even if illusions exist too, are real and all the craft of acoustic is based on trained acoustic experience and experiments...
The goal of audio experience is then training our perception , not mainly and only to debunk illusions, but to train ourself in acoustic environment,...
Sound sources put in vibration reveal their real qualities to our ears/brain IF WE TRAIN IT : Their densities, their composition ( wood, skin, metal, iron glaqss etc) their inside ( empty or full with single hole or multiple one of different size or not , with apertures etc ) their qualities as fruit ripeness or not or weight of the object as a delicate woman walk sounds impressions or a big dude etc... We can even echolocate our navigation as bats and dolphins do, many blind peiople teach it in the world... The voices analysis of the answers incoming from a person to another reveal much to consciousness as to unconsciousness...In musical and acoustic context the analysis of "timbre" perception experience by a subject imply 5 factors among which there is not only spectral envelope but also time envelope etc and these factors are not determined by the mere electrical characteristic of the gear, but by specific acoustic conditions in the room and location of the listener , his training status, and specific ears structure etc ....
Then we cannot reduce all listenings impressions to be illusions because they dont appear in some electrical tool ... Subjectivity in acoustic is not treated as something to be ALWAYS eliminated but something that must be put under control and trained... Biases in psycho-acoustic are not only negative factor to be erased if not controlled for some study sake but also they positive motivations the scientist must understand for their own sake in other kind of studies for example in hearing aids technology ...
The vibrating sound sources are then real and their qualities perceived are real too...The vibrating pattern in the air is decoded by the brain in a way science is in the ongoing process to understand... The story is not completed...
How someone can analyse with electrical tools the complex frequencies spectral distribution in space and time of a qualitative information perceived by some brain ? It is possible for some aspects of the experience, but it is not possible for all aspects for a specific listener...
It is impossible using electrical tools used in electronical design check-up or reparation to assess that what is perceived and does not appear is only illusions...Some acoustic phenomenan are room dependant and gear dependant and specific trained ear dependant, it is not a pretense for owning "golden ears" , it is a description of the complex facts of the matter which some people arrogantly simplify.. ...
Then it is only ideology not science and real experience who make people arrogant enough to reject any perceiving experience not measured by electrical tools as illusions...
But read me right, when Amir verify with his tools the designer claims he does a great service ... When people reading him goes further accusing everyone of FALSEHOOD who learn how to hear a difference in any sound qualitative phenomena related to acoustic complex specific conditions ( speakers/room/ears coupled together ) they goes too far...
I will repeat myself here: subjectivist and objectivist put the focus on the gear as the market has conditioned them for decades to do ... This is not even wrong to do it, this is misleadinng and created quarrel between two opposite sides who fail to see the main problem : how to learn to listen in acoustic experimental conditions homemade or in a LABORATORY... The gear choice picked by listening taste or by measured standards is SECONDARY...Learning acoustic and basic psycho-acoustic is the tool and the goal...
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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 😎
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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 🤓
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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😎
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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......
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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).
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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...
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A headful of delusions does not particularly appear to stop many people from living long lives.
The propagation of mass delusion has been a keen weapon in the hands of those who would seek to exploit and abuse us, has it not?
This argument about the social symbolic dimension and manipulation of masses, as in the marketing of gear design, has nothing to do with my point : the brain can be manipulated YES FOR SURE, this does not invalidate my point... Our perceptions especially trained to recognize natural sounds, and speech , and musical meanings, and recreate soundfield with REAL ILLUSION OF SPACE, the way the brain must work optimally in sound recognition it is also what make us a survival species... Debunking is not the crux of the matter in acoustic sorry... In a word you use a sophistic argument here : the brain can de deluded, in some gear evaluation the brain can proved to be deluded, then the sound recognition is founded on illusory ground... it is the opposite, hearing is more difficult to delude than visual perception , especially trained ears,...The basis of acoustic is not short term memory debunking method sorry...We survive thanks to our brain social ability transmitted to identify in our long term trained memory natural sounds and speech WITHOUT MUCH FAILS... Then our brain dont only passively obey physics it interpret and use physics for his own sake in all kind of optimization and recognition processes ... Speech sound are not explanable by physical laws nor musical sound...Newton is not a linguist not even an acoustician... Even Helmholtz hearing theory is not proven to be the last word in hearing science...Psycho-acoustic NEVER reduce to physics because neurophysiology dont reduce to the actual known physics too...We need more...
As a POETIC and philosophical aside, materialism is already dead... Matter is music not the reverse... People dont recognize it now because technology increase in power right now and deceive us on a great scale, but technology is not all science ( A.I. etc ) ... 😊
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 🤓
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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 🤓
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