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. 

chayro
Post removed 

@rodman99999

AS IF I owe you anything, by way of rebuttal?

It’s up to you how much you care to be taken seriously.

Continually avoiding a major point made against your argument to instead rant out insults, however good it makes you feel, won’t help you be taken seriously, though.

ASR promotes zealotry.

One can hyperfocus on accuracy of reproduction, thats one aspect. Or one can focus on the experience.

Either approach can be fulfilling. 

@amir-

       If I understood your last post correctly: you own Lyngdorf  gear.

       Nice stuff, not to mention: a good looking listening/media room.

       Having been in the loop so long: you've got to remember Peter & Boz's TacT venture.

        I'm still using the old Tact RCS 2.2Xaaa (with a number personally addressed mods/updates, of course).

The Lyngdrorf was a loaner from a member so got returned.  I did however purchase the TacT TCS 8 channel system.  Nothing transformed my audio system and ideas more than that processor.  My jaw fell on the floor in the way it seemingly removed the walls from my listening room!

Alas, the story did not end well.  After spending $10K on the processor, I spent another $5K to upgrade it.  I didn't get to use it for a couple of years and when I went back to turn it on a couple of channels were flakey.  As a last resort, I tried to update the firmware from the image on the website.  The firmware completely bricked the system by causing it to get stuck in the start up screen!

I sent an email to Boz (or did I talk to him?).  As soon as I told me I upgraded the firmware he demanded to know why! I told him the issue and he said you should not have upgraded the firmware.  I told him that he had the firmware on his website.  How was I supposed to know I was not going to use it? 

I then asked him if there is a fix.  He said no.  I asked how that could be.  Wouldn't  he have a way to force a factory reset or something?  He said no. That was that and to this day, I have this gorgeous looking but broken door stop.  :(

@amir_asr You may notice that I did NOT call your system a ’lousy audio system’...I wonder why?? I could have stated that having a big screen TV between the speakers and having your gear placed on your auntie’s dining room side board cabinet is not exactly anything but...laughable! But, for some reason i did not say that before, however since you want to play that card....;0)

It is only laughable if you have gotten your knowledge of acoustics from stuff you read online and lay intuition.  Due to precedence effect, the on-axis sound, and not the reflections rule predominantly what you hear.  And this is naturally not impacted by the room (above transition frequencies).  What reflection there is, gets attenuated due to much longer path length of that front wall.

Now, if you have a speaker that has screwed up directivity/off-axis response, these reflections than change the tonality of on-axis sound. This is why our speaker measurements include such information:

Notice how smooth the back-wall reflections are and how similar they are to on axis.  The only ones that deviate are the ceiling and floor ones.  For that reason, I have a special rug that is very thick and is designed to absorb down to that frequency.  Yes, not every acoustic product needs to look like a child blanket hung on a wall!

Back to this speaker, see how nice the sum of early window reflections are (in blue) relative to on-axis response (in black):

This is nearly textbook perfect.  You can see it in the predicted in-room response which includes all the reflections you think are "bad:"

This matches top class studio monitors used to produce content:

Perceptually, your brain adapts to the room above transition after a short period.  It learns that the room reflections are a constant secondary data that adds little to the primary sound.  So it starts to filter them.  For this reason, a specific speaker sounds similar when placed in many different rooms.  The speaker dominates, not the room.

If the speaker has really awful off-axis response however, the brain thinks that it is bringing more to the table so adaptation doesn't occur as much.  For those speakers, which you should have avoided, you may want to put more absorption on the walls.

 

BTW, Amir, do you really think as an ex-pro musician and music teacher, plus being in the a’phile hobby for over forty years( dates me), that I cannot set up a couple of subwoofers in my system? Instead, i need to have an artificial tool to aid me...get a clue

As a musician, you hear sounds from a different vantage point than listeners.  So that doesn't train you as an audiophile anyway.  That aside, physics of sound don't stop in your room because you learned to play an instrument.  That physics says that at frequencies below transition the modal density is low so you can get pretty narrow resonances at multiple frequencies.  There is no way, no how you can just use your ears to tease them out let alone correcting them.  Even the best acousticians in the world measure and then correct using DSP.  No number of subs, or acoustic bandages is going to remove the need for this.  Your room is ringing at some frequencies regardless of any manual tuning you have done.

Get a DSP and a measurement mike and be ready to transform the sound of your room and arrive at your next stage in audiophile life.  Don't keep chasing the next cable, tube amp, etc.  And oh, get speakers that have proper directivity or your acoustic life will be very difficult.