Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?
It’s easy to make snide remarks like “yes- I do the opposite of what he says.” And in some respects I agree, but if you do that, this is just going to be taken down. So I’m asking a serious question. Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything? For me, I would say 2 things. I am a conservatory-trained musician and I do trust my ears. But ASR has reminded me to double check my opinions on a piece of gear to make sure I’m not imagining improvements. Not to get into double blind testing, but just to keep in mind that the brain can be fooled and make doubly sure that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. The second is power conditioning. I went from an expensive box back to my wiremold and I really don’t think I can hear a difference. I think that now that I understand the engineering behind AC use in an audio component, I am not convinced that power conditioning affects the component output. I think.
So please resist the urge to pile on. I think this could be a worthwhile discussion if that’s possible anymore. I hope it is.
I’m disappointed nobody responded to this observation. Do you guys agree that Amir is right about power cables? |
alanhuth
He didn't change my mind about power cables. I already knew enough electronics engineering to know that if safe and sensibly designed, they can't affect properly designed audio kit performance. What @amir_asr has also shown (if you read further than the headlines) is that even he sometimes hears a difference when he changes things, but that the perception is unreliable and an effect of perceptual heuristics. |
@mahgister I just noticed this thread from my weekly Audiogon roundup. I am actually familiar with Gibson and his ecological approach from grad work in cognitive science. I took a moment to check out some of the papers related to your unnecessarily long and murky posts here, as well. I don't think ecological perception critiques about spectral analysis are relevant to musical reproduction devices. They certainly are interesting in terms of explaining human listening experiences where expectations and environmental affordances certainly play a part in how the brain perceives the sounds emanating from a device. But if the goal is just to successfully reproduce audio with minimum noise and distortion, and with maximum fidelity to the original recording, I see nothing to suggest that following the guidance of sampling theory will not result in exactly the kinds of "transparent" or "uncolored" devices that are available today. Gibson then gets to critique how the human hears/understands the purity of the emerging sounds, and reconciles them with all the affordances of space, room, materials, mood, and much else. There are edge cases where general psycho-acoustics can be influential, like using compression techniques that de-emphasize parts of the spectrum. We would prefer to de-emphasize only where the results have low impact on human listening, for instance. Phantom center images, Dolby Atmos, etc. certainly are another area where there are great research opportunities, too, for the ecological perception-focused researcher. In any case, I have learned a great deal on ASR and recommend it highly. It provides an excellent counterpoint to vague assertions and hush-voiced listening reviews. Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture. We see that playing out here! |
In any case, I have learned a great deal on ASR and recommend it highly. It provides an excellent counterpoint to vague assertions and hush-voiced listening reviews. Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture. We see that playing out here!
And not just here. There’s unlikely to be a single person connected with audio playback who has not by now heard of ASR. Both Amir and ASR get regularly namechecked by virtually every other YouTube channel these days.
Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture.
Yes, education and enlightenment is a key role of all online exchanges. It’s far too easy for any newcomer to get bamboozled by all the misdirection of clever terminology and paraphernalia involved in this hobby of ours. That old Not the 9 O’ Clock News sketch with Griff Rhys Jones and Rowan Atkinson tormenting the hapless Mel Smith on his first visit to a HiFi shop isn’t entirely irrelevant today.
|
