Take a look here and listen what this physicist had to say about high end design he created himself...Compare it to the simplistic case of Amir dogma about the measures he use and the idea of what is human hearing impact in audio...And why we must ALL OF US renounce to our hearing history and obey his simplistic protocol of measures as hearing truth...
Measures dont convey all there is to say about an audio system in real acoustic conditions...
There is plenty of articles and videos here...This guy, Dr. Hans R.E. van Maanen, is a real scientist not a cult leader deciding what people will hear and must hear in audio...
There is what he say in an interview about listening tests :
«Many designers look at the figures, based on measurement signals. They do not
use music ?
“Correct, they don’t have ears on their head. No problem but let people who do have ears listen to your product. Hire people with a background in music. Don’t drive me mad with those so-called ‘scientific’ listening tests. Very tiring and very unreliable. I listen to music I know very well and during extensive periods of time. Then you discover things. You won’t find those with short-time AB comparisons. Also, human memory has its limitations.”»
https://www.temporalcoherence.nl/cms/en/reviews
Hans van Maanen design high end audio, amplifiers and speakers...
Read his bio and decide if this scientist is an ignorant as Amir toss it away in no time...
His bio resume :
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It seems measuring amplifiers in real dynamic musical input conditions is necessary:
Tone burst response of amplifiers to determine some properties of their
dynamic behaviour
Author: Dr. Hans R.E. van Maanen (Temporal Coherence)
Date of issue: 14 February 2018
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A major issue with amplifiers is their difference in perceived quality, which often does not relate to the specifications. The question is why? One major aspect, in our view, is the dynamic response of an amplifier. When measurements are made to obtain thespecifications, it is common to use signals with a constant amplitude (e.g. to measure the
frequency response or the distortion figures) or with a gradual change of the amplitude (e.g. to determine the distortion as a function of the output power). However, music is highly dynamic, meaning that the signal strength can vary rapidly. How an amplifier reacts to such rapid changes is hardly, if ever, subject of analysis, but it could be of prime importance for the perceived quality. Note that there is no generally accepted specification for this aspect, even though it is trivial that the behaviour under dynamic conditions is of crucial importance
for the perceived sound, and thus the quality, of the amplifier.
The above mentioned neglect is probably caused by the common misunderstanding that the response of an amplifier is fully determined by its frequency response and its distortion figure. This, however, is incorrect, as has been shown in ref. 1. This would only be the case when the amplifier is a linear and time-independent system. It is neither. So it is necessary to study the behaviour of amplifiers under more realistic conditions. An option for this is to use tone-burst signals as these include a rapid change at the beginning and at the end of the
tone-burst. Although it is, of course, still quite far from the complexity of music, it can reveal undesirable properties of amplifiers.
The rest of the article is there :
https://www.temporalcoherence.nl/cms/images/docs/DynamicResponseAmplifiers.pdf
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In a word: human hearing is neither linear nor time-invariant...
Measures based on Fourier linear and time invariant tools cannot be qualified as describing real human hearing impressions nor to predict them...( They are not even enough to capture all amplifiers design essential specs for the human hearings as described by Dr. Hans Van Maanen in an article on fourier conditions on his site )
Then Amir verifying gear specs of brand named and falsifying them "may be" useful, yes or pehaps...
But his attacks on experimented trained listeners impressions as non valid goes too far...
It is one thing to measure and another thing to claim that this set of linear and time invariant measures will predict audio qualitative impression...
I summon 4 physicists to express that on different perspective... Papers are there to be read...
No one can accuse me to insult him doing so...
But i am able to read... And my conclusion is Amir goes to great lenght to disqualify any trained listeners because of his linear and time invariant set of measures which can in no way predict qualitative hearing impressions...
Measures dont convey all there is to say about the qualitative perceptive impressions of an audio system in real acoustic conditions, especially linear and time invariant set of measures because human hearing power is non linear and time dependant...
By the way disqualifying listeners with blind test protocols is preposterous, because the qualitative impressions must be verified by long term listening of trained listeners as musicians, acousticians or experiment audiophiles... Short term memory testing on subtle on selected acoustic factors are not enough at all... Blind tests is almost useless to test components because long term memory and long term listenings are necessary... I conclude that Amir use these blind test protocols to deconsider any serious listenings tests...Then only his set of linear and time dependant measures can be valid and any "subjective" expert listenings contradicting them is eliminated at the start...
But Audio is not based on gear measures or gear impressions, it is based on psycho-acoustic real life long term memory trained listenings experiments and on a set of measures able to capture all aspects of the non linear and time dependant human hearings impressions.. ... As any acoustician knows already or any good amplifier designer ...
By the way in audio as in philosophy, ad hominem attack disqualify anyone from the debate...
Period...
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Some of you ask why so much hostility toward Amir and ASR. Take the situation with Erin. Erin was kicked off of ASR because of violating a core principle of ASR prohibiting financial gain. In the justification Amir explained Erin had been warned multiple times, while at the same time allowed to remain for almost a year after the first warning. Such a nice guy was Amir to allow a core ASR principle to be violated for almost a year. Anybody else granted such generosity?
Much more likely, Erin was seen as useful to ASR until he became viable competition. That type of self serving behavior contrasted with ASR routine claims of being an honest broker do not wash. Situational ethics on full display.
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@soundfield I am seeing libel and slander thrown around all the time. Read up on some legal precedent. I am not in the living room of MKR and have no way of verifying your relationship with him. Not one thing I said on this thread is fact. They are my stated opinions and a lot of other people thought the search was bs on asr. This is a forum not a news corporation saying the voting machines were tampered with. It’s my feeling and suspicion.
As I stated earlier no way I’d buy your speakers based on how you behave here and I’m not supporting Amir anymore. You both are what’s wrong with audio companies and dealers. The above is my opinion.
@texbychoice not only that but Amir himself profits from it by constantly promoting revel products. How do I know this? Well I once early on before I knew better was interested in his company and thought maybe I’d grab a pair of revels from him. He does exactly what he forbids others from doing. Allegedly.
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Am i the only one to defend psycho-acoustic and trained listenings over linear and time-independant set of measures ?
https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=15002.
Subjective and Objective Evaluation of the Acoustic Vacuum-Tube Amplifiers
The subjective and objective evaluation of five high-quality vacuum-tube audio power amplifiers is presented in the paper. As the reference, a professional transistor amplifier has been used. The subjective evaluation has been done by a team of judges, as well as using a computer-based psychoacoustic model in accordance with PAQM protocol. The amplifers’ sound quality assessed by the listeners is consistent with the one evaluated with the use of the psychoacoustic model. It was found that the best sound quality is obtained by vacuum-tube amplifiers, the worse – by the reference amplifier. The results of subjective evaluation are inconsistent with quality assessed by measurement of objective parameters: all amplifiers have comparable quality but transistor amplifier is the best one due to the lowest THD+N level.
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Is my life better because of Amir and ASR?
Absolutely not.
Next...
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I'm willing to bet a dollar that John Atkinson didn't trash that Luxman tube amp because, like David Manley, he understands that such distortion levels (a) may not matter (audible or inaudible) to the human ear; and/or (b) may sound pleasing to the human ear. There's a big assumption in the ASR conclusion that the Lux is a bad amplifier--just as there's a big assumption in the ASR conclusions that some other amplifiers are deserved of a golfing pink panther.
And as @mahgister as adroitly pointed out, is this science? The assumption calls into question the use of label "science review".
Personally, I'd love to walk into a room with a pair of 100dB speakers and hear that little Lux churning out a half watt of sound!
Mr. Atkinson's write-ups just sound more scientific and don't have schtick. I prefer them. Others may prefer ASR. It's free country. I just hope ASR helps people on their audiophile journey. It doesn't work for me though.
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@jbhiller I agree with you. It occurred to me that the speaker that Amir used to listen to the little Luxman amp was entirely inappropriate as well. This reminds me of the poor review that Jason Victor Serinus wrote of the Jadis JA200mk2 amps for Stereophile, wherein he mismatched the amps with his virtually impossible to drive Wilson Alexia’s! Instead of blaming a mismatch of gear, which frankly was obvious to anyone with any experience in this hobby, he places blame on the amp/victim.
Ever since this review, I read JVS’s reviews with a grain of salt and suspect he really is somewhat unqualified to be in his position.
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When Amir proposes his set of measures, basic linear and time independant measures, as falsification of marketer specs design, then i had no problem...
When he disparaged any trained listeners to be meaningless in favor of his set of measures only to be confirm by his own listenings and listenings protocols putting all experienced listeners in the trashbin, proposing short term blind test instead of long term listening test, but more than that ignoring psycho-acoustic basic science about non linear and time dependant Ears/brain decoding and pushing his simplistic electrical sets of measures over the head of anyone, this is not even technology over science it is worst, it is ideologically motivated stances...I will not speculate about his motives i dont like ad hominem attacks...
The 4 physicist i summoned he disparaged two BEFORE reading them as ignorant...Two of them are author of the papers about hearing beating the Fourier uncertainty, he never adressed these two experiments...And the last one Hans Van Maanen, he disparaged him on the spot, but not only is a working physicist but he design amplifiers and speaker which are based on his studies of the non linear working in the time dependant dimension of the hears/brain... This dude is not phony, it is simple to read his papers...He know much more about audio than Amir who play with technological and computer tools but did not created his own components design as Van Maanen around psycho-acoustic fundamental facts in hearing theory...
By the way Van Maanen asked and praised long term trained listeners to improve audio design, especially musicians, acoustician and trained music lovers ... He did not favor blind test as a cure for all needs which are always anyway used for very limited and special utility in a narrow phase of the design window or for marketer fun and publicity ... An amplifier is not a drug , we dont test it the same way with blind guinea pigs with their short memory window...
And as @mahgister as adroitly pointed out, is this science? The assumption calls into question the use of label "science review".
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@laoman
It took me 2 minutes to find the following quotes:
However, the vast majority of DACs will sound the same.
[...]
So what is it Amir? There are 2 possibilities
1) You are not telling the truth or
2) You have no idea what your supporters post on your forum.
It is option 3: you have forgotten what you claimed and what I objected to. Here it is again
. What I find absurd is to say that equipment that measures the same sounds the same. So many on Amir's site have said this."
Nothing you quoted says those DACs measure the same. Indeed no two audio products measure the same! There are always differences. The question then becomes matter of audibility. On ASR people have varying views on that point. Most vocal members believe after certain level of performance, transparency is achieved so better measurements while nice and welcome, won't improve the sound of the audio product.
This is the third time I have corrected some factual statement you made that was completely wrong. Please don't keep making stuff like this. You are doing disservice to your fellow audiophiles who subscribe to audio science/engineering.
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@mahgister
When he disparaged any trained listeners to be meaningless in favor of his set of measures only to be confirm by his own listenings and listenings protocols putting all experienced listeners in the trashbin,....
Nothing remotely like this was stated. I have said the opposite and will say it again: properly run listening test is superior to measurements.
And no, what I say is not my views. It is the consensus view of audio science. That a listening test must be controlled to have value. Otherwise it is just noise. BTW, you don’t get to self-claim to be trained. As I showed earlier, audio reviewers who I am sure you would claim to be trained, can’t tell the performance of a speaker reliability in blind tests!
Watch this video I did on what a proper training means:
https://youtu.be/0KX2yk-9ygk
The rest of your posts I am afraid are too verbose for me to read and respond do. So please don’t take lack of response as agreement with anything you are posting. or refusing to answer. I just can’t keep up with you. :)
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@amir_asr ...Nothing remotely like this was stated. I have said the opposite and will say it again: properly run listening test is superior to measurements.
Amir, can you share what constitutes a "properly run listening test" from your perspective? What characteristics are you listening for, specifically?
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You play with words here..
Proper listening tests are LONG TERM MEMORY TESTS using musicians, acoustician or trained music lovers...( not sellers and reviewers as you say)
Short term memory test are good for SUPERFICIAL debunking ...The basic of psycho-acoustic is not founded on blind test , they are SECONDARY tool...
Why long term memory for test ? Because hearing is better in long term memory span than seeing, it is the opposite for seeing which is better in the short memory window...
And BECAUSE Human hearing IS based on time dependant evaluation and non linear means , time independant measuring linear tools as fourier tools cannot capture his tracking and resolution power adequately... It is the reason why the main tool of acoustician cannot be blind test and it is the reason why Fourier modelling does not describe human hearings.. ...As Oppenheim and Magnasco demonstrated in their experiment where human hearings beat uncertainty of Fourier method and the Gabor limit...
You use blind test to confirm your biases about your own limited set of measures linear and time independant one...ThaTS ALL...
This physicist here contradict most of your claims in these videos:
And he designed his OWN components speakers and amplifiers.. Will you claim he is incompetent ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW74J7CxqDo
Instead of answering my points about the importance of this discoveries by Oppenhein and Magnasco about the non linear and dependant time ears/brain working and his relation to our perception of audio qualities and the way the perceptive abilities of humans beat the Fourier barrier uncertainty you said that my physicists were phony...
In the same way you attacked AD HOMINEM 2 of these physicists and now you attacked me for being "verbose" as your LAST argument...
Listen this one demolishing your approach in twenty minutes..
Debunk him...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW74J7CxqDo
Nothing remotely like this was stated. I have said the opposite and will say it again: properly run listening test is superior to measurements.
And no, what I say is not my views. It is the consensus view of audio science. That a listening test must be controlled to have value. Otherwise it is just noise. BTW, you don’t get to self-claim to be trained. As I showed earlier, audio reviewers who I am sure you would claim to be trained, can’t tell the performance of a speaker reliability in blind tests!
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@mahgister
Proper listeningt tests are LONG TERM MEMORY TESTS using musicians, acouswtician or trained music lovers...
That is a myth and insult to many audiophiles who don't consider themselves any of those.
Nothing about a controlled test says you have to do short term testing. You think a cable sounds different? Spend a month listening to it and another month listening to another. As long as you don't know which cable is which when listening, and repeat the test enough to know you are not guessing, you are performing a valid test.
Now, we encourage you to not rely on long term memory as it is an extremely lossy system and sharply reduces your acuity when it comes to hearing small impairments/differences. This is backed by medical science (look up echoic memory), and controlled listening tests. Please see this summary of an AES paper on this topic:
AES Paper Digest: Sensitivity and Reliability of ABX Blind Testing
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/aes-paper-digest-sensitivity-and-reliability-of-abx-blind-testing.186/
The results were that the Long Island group [Audiophile/Take Home Group] was unable to identify the distortion in either of their tests. SMWTMS's listeners also failed the "take home" test scoring 11 correct out of 18 which fails to be significant at the 5% confidence level. However, using the A/B/X test, the SMWTMS not only proved audibility of the distortion within 45 minutes, but they went on to correctly identify a lower amount. The A/B/X test was proven to be more sensitive than long-term listening for this task.
I have done a ton of such tests. The longer the switching time, the more sensitivity I lose. Again, this is due to our short term memory being almost lossless compared to the highly lossy long term listening.
Once more though, you are welcome to take as long as you want in comparing products blind.
As to you putting your fait in certain group of people, that again is false. I showed example of how audio reviewers did so poorly in blind tests of speakers.
As to Musicians, while they hearing does get trained in certain areas (e.g. detection of reflections in a room), they do no better than general public when it comes to matters related to audio fidelity. If they did better, then they would mostly be audiophiles which they decidedly are not. My piano teacher for example just gives me blank looks when I talk about anything related to audio fidelity! Musicians listen to music from a spot in the performance venue that is different than us as listeners anyway.
As to those "trained music lovers," when tested in any kind of blind test, they do very poorly. Most would not dare taking the same tests that I have taken and passed. It is entirely too convenient to declare yourself as trained with no proof point whatsover.
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@somethingsomethingaudio
@texbychoice not only that but Amir himself profits from it by constantly promoting revel products. How do I know this? Well I once early on before I knew better was interested in his company and thought maybe I’d grab a pair of revels from him. He does exactly what he forbids others from doing. Allegedly.
I do zero promotion of Revel speakers. Every year, a handful of people reach out to me asking if we can sell them Revel speakers. I quote them a price. Half the time they get it from us, half the time they go and buy it elsewhere. My company's business is NOT retail audio. We make our living designing million dollar whole house (or commercial building) lighting, security, shades, etc. Our clients are not audiophiles and the most they want is a whole house sound with invisible or nearly so speakers throughout their house/estate.
I run AudioScienceReview.com as a separate venture that has nothing to do with Madrona. Every review of a product that may bring even appearance of conflict of interest comes with a clearly note:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/revel-c763l-in-ceiling-speaker-review.42029/
Note: our company, Madrona Digital, is a dealer for Revel speakers. So feel free to read any level of bias in subjective comments from me.
And this was my conclusion:
"Many are thinking about using these speakers for Atmos height speakers. I don't see them being optimal in this configuration given the narrow usable angle."
You think that is going to result in more sales? I don't think so
Yon keep throwing these innuendos all you want. At the end of the day, I conduct myself with highest level of ethical conduct I know how. That you think money speaks more than anything else should be reason to avoid the work of many others who chase the same. It is not a motivator for me as I have repeatedly explained.
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@mahgister
I'm curious: what happened to the photos of your virtual system on Audiogon?
The...uh...very interesting layout of your tweaks?
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speaking of which, @prof, I was curious about your system…
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@soundfield
Exactly! There was a perfect opportunity to clearly state that most of your measurements fall well below audibility thresholds AND, even if they are perceptible, there is no clear evidence one is preferred over another.
And how do you know if some product falls in the "most" category or the other? By measuring!!! You don't just sniff the box, look at the price or reputation and decide that. You measure. Then you know.
Of course you are just waiving your hand on that "most" bit. You have no background in psychoacousts, measurements or even electronic design. You have never participated in a single blind test presented to you. So what you are spitting out are just claims.
Here is the good news though: superlative measured results cost next to nothing. So if you are purchasing something new, there is no reason to settle for "just enough fidelity." You can get to what I call provably transparent. There, we compare the measurements to threshold of hearing (which is determined by listening tests). If the equipment has less noise and distortion than this, then those factors are simply not in play and we can prove it!
The moment you go above that level, then it becomes shades of gray which requires interpretation. A skill that our soundfield friend does not remotely have.
You do ZERO valid listening tests. Yet you not only "Rank', but routinely "Not recommend" products based solely on measurements with zero listening test correlation.
I have post numerous blind tests that I have passed. We ask people to run blind, level matched tests. And when they do, backed by training and skill they have, across countless such challenges, you jump up and down claiming they must have cheated. Well, you are dead wrong and have no proof of it. In the video I post on listener training, I actually explained how I passed Archimago high res challenge. Ah, you don't like the fact that I knew what impairment to look for. Well, that is how a proper listening test is done. We want listeners to know what to listen for. We don't want to stick our head in the sand by removing that skill and hoping to get negative outcome, the reality be damned.
Yes, it is inconvenient for likes of you to see someone like me disprove your ideas of inaudibility. Tough. Next time learn the topic itself and not just repeat talking points that nothing can sound better than something else.
Finally, I looked at your website. There is no measurements of any speakers except for one random one with no documentation. Surely you don't claim that speaker measurements are of no use, are you? You are not that deep into subjectivity, are you?
Then I saw this bit of absurdity on your home page:
"Our products reflect the philosophy that loudspeakers should strive to sound like the real thing. "Hi Fidelity" once meant exactly that. If you know what live acoustic music sounds like, you will appreciate our products."
Oh really? How does a speaker convert a microphone recorded content into the sound of the real thing? Magic? You have some scientific research to link to that states anything remotely like this? Or is it that when it comes to selling speakers, you are just as bad as the next guy in ignoring audio science and engineering?
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Distortion level detection is not what the human ears do well ...We do not perceive distortion in itself we perceive natural and musical sounds WE RECOGNiZE...
This is precisely the problem...
You use blind test to confirm your linear measuring tool and design in the symmetrical time domain... The problem is human hearing dont work in this way and in this time dimension, human hearing is non linear and time dependant , he is sensible to natural sounds, and music not to distorsion "per se" as an electrical measuring tool ...We dont listen sine wave function in real life...
We dont speak the same language...
The physicist Hans Van Maanen explain it completely i dont expect you will read it... You are on your technological blind crusade...
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They were no mere "tweaks" as you sarcastically claim..
They were mostly a balance between absorbtion/reflection/and diffusion materials for my room..
I used a grid of Helmholtz resonators of my own making and my own method to increase and inmprove my speakers soundfield performance ... It was not perfect but there was no comparison between before and after...
Then instead of mocking my experiments successful for me in acoustic at no costs, why not answering me about the Magnasco and Oppenheim experiments about hearing and the uncertainty limit and his implication for audio improvement...
Why not answering the articles and video of Dr, Hans Van Maanen?
You resort to ad hominem mocking me as arguments ? Do you think when i post these photos that i was afraid of idiots mocking me on apperance ? 😊
my room was unesthetical but very revelatory about the power of acoustic treatment and control...
other interesting post of you ?
Loosing my house and room, i was sad but i modified akg K340 headphone and i am very happy listening music again thanks to Dr.Gorike for this amazin successful hybrid headphone..
@mahgister
I’m curious: what happened to the photos of your virtual system on Audiogon?
The...uh...very interesting layout of your tweaks?
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@amir_asr You continue to ignore my questions surrounding why Erin’s video thread was closed and locked? Please don’t reply with you didn’t take down the video. I never insinuated that. I want to know why you closed a thread you detailed yourself.
As for the monetizing your business, my point was when I first found your website and liked the reviews I found Madrona and saw that you carry them. If I’ve done that others have. You mean to tell me you have never earned a single penny from a commercial or residential contract for your brick and mortar business that was referred by ASR. I find that highly improbable.
If you don’t care about money which I again don’t believe or one millisecond, and it’s not a motivator then why do you care if a video from YouTube is on your website. It only gives you more users and traffic. Puzzling.
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@mahgister
I'm sorry to hear of the circumstances that led to the change in your system!
I'm glad you can still enjoy audio.
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We dont listen sine wave function in real life...
Well, if you did, you think your system will refuse to play it? It doesn't know the difference between that sine wave or music, right? So if it screws up sine wave, it reasons that it also screws up music. BTW, I test with many other signals. I already showed you multitone:
If you listen to this signal, it will actually sound like organ music. You see that "bad stuff?" Measurements are telling you that they are stomping on your low level detail.
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@audphile1
FWIW, my system:
Joseph Audio Perspective 2 Graphene speakers
Thiel 2.7 Speakers.
(I’ve owned or used plenty of speakers, from MBL, to various ,Audio Physic, Von Schweikert, Waveform, Hales, Harbeth, Spendor and many others, but I’ve pruned down my collection).
Conrad Johnson Premier 12 monoblocks
CJ Premier 16LS2 preamp
Benchmark LA4 preamp
Benchmark DAC2L
Bluenode music server (ripped lossless CDs/Tidal)
Transrotor Fat Bob S turntable/Acoustic Solid 12" arm/Benz Micro Ebony L cartridge. JE Audio HP10 phono stage.
Degritter Ultra Sonic record cleaner.
Listening room was re-constructed with the input of a professional acoustician. Sounds amazing.
Hope that helps your curiosity :-)
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"You mean to tell me you have never earned a single penny from a commercial or residential contract for your brick and mortar business that was referred by ASR. I find that highly improbable."
We are not "brick and mortar." Madrona is has an office space and we rarely if ever meet with customers there. Our typical customer is an ultra high net worth individual who has no idea what or who ASR is. Or care one bit about this hobby. I don't recall a single instance of someone from ASR asking us to handle their custom project. Part of the reason is that Madrona just doesn't do smaller projects.
There are some customers of Madrona by the way who also read and appreciate ASR. But they predate my creation of ASR Forum. There may also be customers we have gotten as a result of my reputation/ASR work but without my personal knowledge.
2-channel audio is just not our thing at Madrona. It is a cut-throat business and something we don't know how to do so we don't go after it. Kudos to other companies who know how to make a living out of it. We sell one lighting system and the cost can be as much as $100,000! We know how to do that. We don't know how how to sell a Wilson speaker for the same amount.
I suggest you cut back on these accusations. It is totally improper to keep making things up that has to do with my reputation based on what is "improbable" to you. Not everyone does things in this industry because they want to make money. Learn that and move on.
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If you don’t care about money which I again don’t believe or one millisecond, and it’s not a motivator then why do you care if a video from YouTube is on your website. It only gives you more users and traffic. Puzzling.
I don't care about the traffic or more users at the cost of setting a precedence that you can use our audience for commercial purposes. You seem to not understand the concept of having core principles that you stick to. I suggest you move on.
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@prof nice setup! I had Benchmark DAC 3 HGC it was nice but I liked the Bricasti M3 better.
Guess you’ll be upgrading the CJ tubed monos to the Topping amp at some point. That would be a logical progression. Topping is high end, as transparent as it gets, and probably mops the floor with CJs when it comes to measurements…
I’m just kidding…chillax….
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@audphile1
I’ve tried SS amps in my system over the years, most recently the Bryston 4B3, and I have always ultimately preferred my CJs.
I enjoy the slightly cleaner sound of my Benchmark SS preamp sometimes vs the CJ tube preamp...but then again often prefer the CJ preamp. (I actually did a blind test between them, just out of curiosity).
My view is that ultimately the level of distortion we are talking about in, say, my CJ tube amps vs a Topping or Benchmark amp, are quite low. There’s no "incredible revelation of detail" from some of the best measuring solid state amplification even compared to my old tube amps. With the tube amps it’s more of a slightly different presentation of details, vs one being "way more revealing" than another.
Of course being an audiophile means obsessing over the tiniest sonic differences. That’s what makes us kooks vs the general public :-)
So I use the tube amps because even if the audible difference is very subtle in the big picture, it’s a subtlety that is subjectively significant for me.
But I certainly think it’s a great thing for people like Amir to get measurements out there so an audiophile who wishes to can use that information. An audiophile who is seeking accuracy isn’t going to choose my tube amps over a Topping, and knowing measurements can help ensure he knows what he’s getting.
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Amir, can you share what constitutes a "properly run listening test" from your perspective? What characteristics are you listening for, specifically?
It wildly varies depending on class of product. On say, a power tweak, I listen for any difference regardless of what it is. If I can distinguish it from not using the tweak, then that is major news by itself.
For testing of distortion, it is best to hear it exaggerated first, and then dial it back. So if you have a low power/high distortion amplifier, first crank it way up and hear the distortion clearly. Then back down the volume control and see at what point that same artifact is no longer there.
For things like speakers, single speaker testing doesn't make sense. Ultimately we don't know how a recoding is supposed to sound like. Research relies on paring at least 4 speakers together and compare them. That way, the bad speaker will stand out as an exception to the rest. Such tests are outside of the means of most audiophiles but a few have tried as I linked to yesterday.
In all cases, deep knowledge of what you are testing, including measurements, is a great help to focus your listening tests. This is very important in hearing lossy compression artifacts for example.
Back to speaker (and headphone listening), selection of content is paramount. You want broad spectrum content that is mostly invariant. That is, it doesn't keep changing. That way you can do comparisons without the content itself changing on you. This is incredibly helpful when I am developing EQ filters to correct response errors. I want to be able to turn the filter on and off and hear the effect. But if the content changes from dumbs to vocals and then the piano, I can't do this.
Something very useful in testing lower powered amplifiers and speakers/headphones is to have a mix of bass and high frequencies. This way, when the bass notes come and demand power, you can listen to not only how they get distorted by the impact on the rest of the spectrum (e.g. brightness as a result of too much harmonic distortion).
Another key is to stick to the same set of tracks and only use them no matter how tired you get listening to them! You learn what parts of them are revealing, saving you time and effort. Throwing a new random piece of music at every new piece of audio you are testing as some reviewers do, is just wrong.
Hopefully this at least partially answers your question. :)
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@prof measurements together with proper listening tests - I have zero issues with that. But I won’t be beating a dead horse.
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Per usual you not pick the one thing I didn’t mean literally. I didn’t mean brick and mortar in the sense you sell speakers out of a store front I meant more it’s a physical service and product you sell. Still I’m dubious you’ve never made money off it. You did buy your own admission say that you sell speakers from traffic you get on your website.
@amir_asr I’ve lost count at this point how many times you’ve avoided answering me. Last time I will ask. Why did you close down the thread for the top 5 if you don’t care about money? A thread you torpedoed. It was going fine until you said you “hate” clickbait titles which is a laughable label.
@soundfield I’ve got an idea. You send Amir a set of speakers to measure and he submits to a listening test. Trade.
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@amir_asr, precisely.
As to Musicians, while they hearing does get trained in certain areas (e.g. detection of reflections in a room), they do no better than general public when it comes to matters related to audio fidelity. If they did better, then they would mostly be audiophiles which they decidedly are not. My piano teacher for example just gives me blank looks when I talk about anything related to audio fidelity! Musicians listen to music from a spot in the performance venue that is different than us as listeners anyway.
As first hand personal experience (son / musician / music lover) proves this to be factual. For I’ve tested his audio fidelity limitations and my conclusion always stands … Clearly one who enjoys better fidelity playback however, in the pursuit (insert various levels) which we / all strive for is of very little interest or concern.
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You have no background in psychoacousts, measurements or even electronic design.
The moment you go above that level, then it becomes shades of gray which requires interpretation. A skill that our soundfield friend does not remotely have.
This is laughable projection, everyone on internet can read your "skill" here: https://www.avsforum.com/threads/establishing-differences-by-the-10-volume-method.1136745/
It's comedy gold Amir:
amirm · #2 · Apr 7, 2009
The comparison was then conducted without knowing which input is which, sitting in front of the headphone amp and toggling back and forth. When necessary, I would go back and re-listen. Once I found which one sounded worse, I would then repeat the exercise by randomizing the inputs and seeing if I could still identify which one was worse. My success rate was 100% in the second test (i.e. could always verify that the first result was not by chance). This testing was repeated a number of times comparing the different sources against each other and the ML.
I did not level match anything. However, once I found one source was worse than the other, I would then turn up the volume to counter any effect there. Indeed, doing so would close the gap some but it never changed the outcome. Note that the elevated level clearly made that source sound louder than the other. So the advantage was put on the losing side.
Your projections are fun stuff ;-). You have never ever posted a blind test not administered by yourself. That's why I'm proposing you do one at PAF, administered by others, then posted on Youtube.
Instant classic 😄
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I’ve got an idea. You send Amir a set of speakers to measure and he submits to a listening test. Trade.
Erin is a LOT closer, has Klippel NFS and is far more knowledgeable, especially since he has experienced my speakers himself and would thus not be utterly confused by the variable directivity and diffuse, delayed indirect radiation measurements, as Amir would. Amir is too much of an egomaniac to ask someone he knows who understands exactly what I'm doing, JJ..Amir developed Blue Screen as an MS middle manager. He has no clue about this stuff. See my link above.
Btw, I do full measurements myself and anyone who has bought my speakers has access if/when needed.
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Yes, he did change my mind, about power cables. He proved, using signal subtraction, that the signals generated by devices from different power cords are identical. Any difference you heard is confirmation bias, as the signals feeding the amplifier are IDENTICAL.
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@amir_asr If you think Purite Audio and Siberg and others arent on your site so they can promote their product, you are delusional. How is that different? Purite is constantly commenting negatively on gear he doesnt stock for gear he does. Siberg is an actual company and they are in essence promoting their design in plain sight. How is that different?
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Thanks prof...
I must apologize to you because i thought that your questions was a sarcasmm
My only excuse was that someone, a seller of "tweaks" who did not like my homemade no cost experiments mock my for many days...
I take off the photos because i add a new system... More economical... But more performant because my speakers so good they were did not go under 30 herts as my actual headphone... I was very sad loosing my room and house and quit audiogon, because i did not have anything to spoke about...
I came back after my 6 monhths of optimization of the K340... I as astounded and no more sad.,..
T?hanks for your kind words... We may differ of opinion but you are a gentleman...
@mahgister
I'm sorry to hear of the circumstances that led to the change in your system!
I'm glad you can still enjoy audio.
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@amir_asr
"Ultimately we don't know how a recording is supposed to sound like."
Such an unprepossessing sentence and yet one that threatens to undermine the entire audiophile industry.
If anyone is so affected I apologize for drawing attention to it.
@mahgister
I'm also sorry to hear of your loss.
I hope it wasn't as traumatic as it sounds.
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Per usual you not pick the one thing I didn’t mean literally. I didn’t mean brick and mortar in the sense you sell speakers out of a store front I meant more it’s a physical service and product you sell. Still I’m dubious you’ve never made money off it. You did buy your own admission say that you sell speakers from traffic you get on your website.
There is no "per usual" here. You are taking shots at my reputation with reckless abandon. Reason is obvious: you are projecting. That if you were in my shoes you would put making money ahead of serving a community with high ethics. Makes sense. Many people are hungry for money that way and let that cloud their judgements.
But I am the exception. I have been fortunate enough to have had a successful career and the rewards I seek through this work are not monetary. When walking around Pacific Audio Fest a week ago, I could believe the number of people who a) recognized me and b) said how helpful my work has been in the way it has opened their eye to truth in audio. They have saved money and getting better performance to boot.
If I wanted to make money from my activities, I could flip a couple of switches and easily bring in $100K in revenue without even trying. ASR forum has 2+ million visitors a month which is three times more than stereophile.com! ASR youtube channel has 40K subscribers. I am choosing to not go there to keep the type of accusations you are making at bay. It doesn't work when someone has a different agenda though so here we are.
And no, I did not say "I sell speakers from traffic of ASR." I said in a handful of occasions, people have come to us to buy some speakers. The few dollars there are a drop in the bucket of what Madrona makes. And frankly, it is business that my team rather not have. The opportunity cost of handling sales of a speaker is quite high for us. They do it because I ask them.
@amir_asr I’ve lost count at this point how many times you’ve avoided answering me. Last time I will ask. Why did you close down the thread for the top 5 if you don’t care about money? A thread you torpedoed. It was going fine until you said you “hate” clickbait titles which is a laughable label.
I have answered you multiple times. The thread was open long past the time I said it was a clickbait. As to it being laughable, all of a sudden you don't care about people making money from their videos. As long as you think you can score a point in an argument, all is well now. So think what you want. I am not here to keep answering people who don't want to listen.
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Amir you are completely lost...😊
Discussing with you enlightened me a lot ... I must thank you for that sincerely...
But you dont understand the relation between psycho-acoustic of human hearing and amplifier design nor the relation with music...If i can see that myself being in no way a specialist in this audio matter anybody reading a true scientist as Hans Van Maanen will see it in an hour.. I posts many articles and even an hour video of him...
If you dare to listen the video and read the papers of Hans Van Maanen , he will explain it better than me...
We dont listen sine wave function in real life...
Well, if you did, you think your system will refuse to play it? It doesn’t know the difference between that sine wave or music, right? So if it screws up sine wave, it reasons that it also screws up music.
The system will not react the same to sine wave or to a variable dynamic strong burst of music sorry...You forgot that you implicitly supposed that the tools you use with the Fourier method as background for hearing theory are truthful to human hearings but tthis is FALSE and they are not truthful to human hearings ... Hans Van Maanen dont design amplifier the way you measure them he explain way... Study it if you look for truth... But if you read it your ASR is dead as it was with the measurements you used as SCRIPTURES absolute truth... If i can understand it in one hour anybody can... Any ASR member reading Hans Van Maanen will be lost for you...
But the most important is that the tool you use to measure a design are not appropriate to the human hearings pasycho-acoustic basic science and not even appropriate to amplifier design...
You must listen and read Hans Van Maanen... He is not a clown if you read his bio and what he do....
his explanations are so clear anybody can read it , even you... You are lost in tour technology... This physicist will explain it to you or to anybody of ASR reading my post if he dare to read Van Maanen... I am no more surprized now about the reason why you did not comment about this extraordinary experiments by Oppenhein and Magnasco...
i learned a lot researching about your post and methods and why uour are completely wrong...
i will not repeat Hans Van Maanen... anybody reading him and what you claim will debunk you easily if he was well versed in audio.... I dont think you will read my "verbose" arguments,... You have a blind spot easy to identify:
Electronic audio components mus be designed for human EARS not for the measuring tools practice... WHY ? Because your tools and the way you use it put you the head down and the feet over for PRECISE PSYCHO_ACOUSTIC FACT you dont rexcognize, because recognizing them will destruct your ASR site...you act as a sellers not as a scientist... You did not responded to psycho-acoustics arguments and you cannot see the link with amplifier design and the FLAWS related to your fourier tools and linear time dependant measure in a domain , where non linearities and time dependant RULE....
Hans Van Maanen explain it, and i ask to anybody to read him...
He designed speakers and amplifiers and is a succesful physicist in field related to acoustic mathemahically... You cannot dismiss it as a clown sorry... I am not a scientist but i can read and undertand text...and i am not afraid of equations..
A distortion do not exist if we dont have a reference point to begin with , from which the distortion will be described as a negative pertrubation or as a positive addition, the DIFFERENCE will depend if you use a linear time independant tool as your first and last gesture OR the non linear time dependant ears/brain as your first and last gesture ... Alas! you live in a techno babble where psycho-acoustic facts about human hearings means LESS FOR YOU than the results of your measuring tools... They are these tools USELESS to determine what is GOOD SOUND...I am sure you are desinterested and not motivated by money thyough, but by your ideology...
Thanks to you i understand that better now...
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@amir_asr
"Ultimately we don't know how a recording is supposed to sound like."
Such an unprepossessing sentence and yet one that threatens to undermine the entire audiophile industry.
It is the reality unfortunately. Take video production. It has strict standard for luma and chroma (black and white and color information). Content is created using that standard. So as long as you calibrate your display to the same, you get the identical colors as was seen by people who reproduced the content. This has enabled displays to become incredibly accurate in the last few years.
In sharp contrast, no one knows the tonality of anything produced in creation of music. That brightness in music may be part of it, your may bey our speaker. You don't know. Dr. Toole calls it circle of confusion. I call it "broken architecture." Here is a survey Genelec did of their customers in high end production suites (for film sound):
See the incredible variations? And this is with Genelec speakers where each unit is measured and fully calibrated to neutral when manufactured.
There is some hope here. As long as we all rally around neutral speakers, then we can reduce the level of confusion and lack of consistency. This is slowly happening as even low cost speakers are striving for this now. Sadly, many high-end speakers go their own way with at times abominable tonality.
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@amir_asr Humor me and show me where you answered why you took down the thread? Simply because it’s a YouTube video and you don’t let creators benefit from ASR traffic?
Why is this one allowed then?
And this one
Annnnd this one
How are all of these allowed but that one is not? Just look at how many likes someone defending Erin got compared to yours. Even your own users don’t agree with you on this one. Your feelings got hurt and you took it out on the thread. How objective of you!
I couldn’t care less how much money you make, and I have no interest in running an audio website so no I think me projecting is way off base.
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but the most important is that the tool you use to measure a design are not appropriate to the human hearings pasycho-acoustic basic science and not even appropriate to amplifier design...
That is not what we do with the tool. The tool gives you data. A human interprets it against psychoacoustics research which is based on listening.
And what is the alternative? Not measuring? Then how do you know your listening tests are accurate? Just because you say so? I can get 10 audiophiles and get 10 different answers as to the impressions of a speaker. One guy likes Wilson and the other Magico. How do you know who is right? Answer is that you don't. You are relying on ad-hoc evaluations devoid of the very science you mention.
This is all demonstrated and fully documented in peer review research. So nothing I am telling you is my opinion.
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Why is this one allowed then?
And this one
Annnnd this one
How are all of these allowed but that one is not?
I give members wide latitude to post what they want even if it is linking to monetized content. This is why Erin's content was allowed to be posted and still remains to this day.
You didn't answer me: why are you not posting Erin's video here and discussing it?
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it take me 2 year to design my room and tune it... I was in sonic paradise at no cost..
I loose it and music too in an abrupt way... I was very sad and depressed, but you know it is NOTHING, compared to what fate do to others... Anyway i tell you that because you can know how i was feeling and why without any audio system nor music i did not came back for 10 months...
I came back here, because this fateful loss was a turn of luck... I studied my headphone 6 months non stop , did 6 modifications, and believe it or not it rival my room in his own way and improve on it on bass and high frequencies... The K340 is an electrostatic with a dynamic driver... I even study the patent of Dr. Gorike to understand what i nmust do to improve it...It is the first headphone i love, i dislike all other 9 one ...So much it is the reason why many years ago i come back to speakers but this time experimenting with acoustic...
I was so excited by my sucess with the K340 i came back here ... I like most people here, even if we disagree... I like discussion.. I miss my students...
Thanks for your kindness ...
@mahgister
I’m also sorry to hear of your loss.
I hope it wasn’t as traumatic as it sounds.
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@amir_asr Didnt see the question and I still dont but I, unlike you, will answer. I dont need to post it. The thread has been linked many times on here and this post is about you and your practices.
Can you please point me to you answering me why you took Erin’s post down?WHY ARE THOSE ALLOWED TO REMAIN UP BUT THE TOP 5 NEEDS TO BE SHUT DOWN?
Put up or...I wonder how many times Amir has been wrong ever. I am guessing close to zero.
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Eff it. Here is the video. Would love to hear if others agree with Amir that this is clickbait. I found it informative.
More than happy to give Erin more views.
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