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.
@amir_asr Not really. It seems to be personal annoyance and a vendetta against Erin to be honest. Why are other YouTube reviews and comparisons allowed? This one being a prime example. It’s a top list and still remains. How many discussions in the speaker category are one product against another? I am going to venture and say it’s a large percentage. People want to compare. Top lists exist for a reason. I gleaned new information from that video as Erin talked about dispersion et al. I do however give you credit for calling out @soundfield because they really wont put up any measurements, which is what you said. | |
You dont understand what i spoke about relating theory of hearing with the elemental elements linked to Acoustic historical analysis in the frequency domain...( frequencies, amplitude, phase, duration... These primitive of sound measured in the linear and time independant context of the Fourier paradigm CANNOT define what musicality is in life and in gear design... because human hearings hyperacuity live and move in an ecological real environment not in a laboratory...
tHe most important factor you did not understand at all is the time dependant nature of hearing... The way we recognize TIMBRE by his attack first and his decay and not only the spectral envelope but the time envelope, this recognition is a real WHOLE irreductible information which RECOGNIZED by the human ears cannot be reduced to primitive as frequencies, amplitude, phase, duration... Why ? because the ears recognize the soud source vibrating as an information wholeness a QUALITY which say something about the sounding sources , a drum, a speech part, a flowing river or a bird... All this event cannot be recognized by analysis and reduction to , frequencies, phase, duration amplitude etc...
It is why the musical qualities related to a musical instrument or to a recorded sound are whole without separated parts, QUALITIES...
I never doubt your good faith...
Then i will remind you that if always thank you MULTIPLE TIMES for your FALSIFICATION of mass market product gear, it is because the set of measures you used made this VERIFICATION and make possible to begin with some predictions about the excellence or not of the basic design... I never contested that... Then you cannot put in my mouth a falsehood : i never say that your measures set is meaningless ... IS IT CLEAR ?
The only thing i criticized is this extension of your set of measures to the level where supposedly ALL MUSICAL QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTIC of the audio system and his design , and not only of separate component would be all there is to do to and to know to create OPTIMAL high end DESIGN...Some zealots around you use this modest fact, the analysing of mass market product by the numbers, to bash all Audiophiles listening...
Now i will explain my point about hearing theories , accordingly to Magnasco and Oppenheim and the opinion of Van Maanen about NEW MORE MUSICAL AMPLIFIER OR SPEAKER DESIGN... or how to apply Magnasco And Oppenheim experiments which is only confirmation of facts well known by others scientists already as you know...
first a liitle bit of history about J. J. Gibson ECOLOGICAL theory of visual perception : "Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system actively constructs conscious visual perception, and instead promoted ecological psychology, in which the mind directly perceives environmental stimuli without additional cognitive construction or processing." ..
Before Gibson the visual creation of images was imagined more as an algorythmic computing way ( which computing is not excluded by Gibson ) not as the way the seeing DYNAMICALLY MOVING body insert himself in his environment , where what is there around him , THE AFFORDANCES , determine, conditione, constraint, limit and motivate his possible behaviour ... my quotes are from Wiki because the resume is useful for me:
"The question driving Gibson’s research on perception was "how do we see the world as we do?". This instigated his empirical research, the environment, and how the individual experiences said environment.[10] There were two primary ways in which James J. Gibson reformed the way psychology views perception. The first is that the templates of our stimulation are affected by a moving organism. This was shown through his research on optic arrays. Secondly, he formulated the idea of three-dimensional space being conceptual. To Gibson, perception is a compilation of the person’s environment and how the person interacts with it.
Much of Gibson’s work on perception derives from his time spent in the U.S. Army Air Force. Here, he delved into thoughts on how imperative perception is on daily functions.[10] His work may be the first to show a distinct difference between types of perception. Form perception, on one hand, is a display of two static displays, whereas object perception, involves one of the displays to be in motion.... His basic work rejected the perspective that perception in and of itself is meaningless, he instead argued meaning is independent of the perceiver. He claimed that the environment decides perception, and that meaning is in what the environment "affords" the observer...
In his later work (such as, for example, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979)), Gibson became more philosophical and criticised cognitivism in the same way he had attacked behaviorism before. Gibson argued strongly in favour of direct perception and direct realism (as pioneered by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid), as opposed to cognitivist indirect realism. He termed his new approach ecological psychology. He also rejected the information processing view of cognition. Gibson is increasingly influential on many contemporary movements in psychology, particularly those considered to be post-cognitivist.[11] One of the most important statements in this book is that Gibson maintains that the optical information of an image is not an impression of form and color, but rather of invariants. A fixated form of an object only specifies certain invariants of the object, not its solid form...
i think you have enough about Gibson to have a GIST of his approach...
now think about what Magnasco And Oppenheim has said :
""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).
My point for an ecological theory of hearing based on NON linear structure of the ears/brain and the TIME DEPENDANT domain where the hearing body MOVES...my point is this one :
" Studies of audition have been constrainted by sensation based theory of perception and the supposed PRIMITIVES of sound they suggest.physical description of sounds are those suggested by the Fourier transform : frequencies, amplitude, phase duration.. Traditional explanations from psycho-physics takes these primitives physical dimensions as their primitive elemental stimulis and used them to motivated the identification of elemental sensations.From this perspective more complex perceptions must depend on the integration of elemental sensations, but often sensations seems inadequate to simulate complex events ( whole qualitative perceived recognized event ) Thus traditional approaches argue that there is often a paucity of information in available stimulis and then that veridical perception must depend on REPRESENTATIONs of the world based largely on memory, unconscious inference or problem solving ( Fourier computations etc ) ... »
Then as described Manasco and Oppenheim and many acousticians before them Hearing theory cannot be based on the frequency domain inspired by Fourier Linear method where
because the ears brain non linearly insert the moving hearing body in his time dependant domain where the WHOLE sound event, with all his perceived qualities not the separated abstracted parts, (his amplitude, his frequencies , his phase and his duration) are the REAL INVARIANTS... Then in natural sounds environment, with speech and musical sounds, the Sound sources in vibration are related to the hearing by sensible holistic invariants very different than those in the Fourier time indepedant and linear domain... These holistic invariants are qualities of the vibrating soud sources, another individuals or a drum or a flowing river etc... these holistic invariants expressing qualities are in the time dependant domain of the ears perceptive way ...
How this apply to amplifier design ?
This is explained in Van Maanen articles i will not repeat here... Suffice to say that the human hearing must not be conditioned by the way we measure linear design of circuits, but we must use these circuits by improving them to approximate by more sophisticated design in the time dependant domain , by feedback control and by using distortion levels control in the harmonic scale to please the human ears .... The design must serve the listening ears... Not the reverse, the design must not be considered "perfect" on the basis only of his numbers... Van Maanen here explaint it all ...But i cannot resume all his articles...
Now you know why if your set of measures is welcome and helpful , your claims that we are able to predict with these set of measures AS IT IS NOW IN YOUR TOOL BOX all there is to say about gear "musicality" qualities , it is WRONG... ( your tools are linear tool in the time independant domain, and remember that if you go in the time domain in your analysis , you go there LINEARLY as Fourier theory make it possible, not as the ears goes non linearly in his OWN time dependant domain )
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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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Amir has taught me nothing about audio but his site and its "pinball wizards" (deaf, dumb and broke kids) have taught me a lot about cult psychology. When one person has a crazy idea (say, in audio reproduction, measurements matter more than how something actually sounds, or everything audible is measurable by today's instruments), they are challenged by peers and the crazy idea gets rejected and the species evolves in a pro-survival direction. But when they surround themselves with other crazy people, there’s no challenge and the idea lives on because they feel social acceptance based on that idea. This phenomenon is massively dangerous and just a small version of the same idea destroying the US democracy and eventually possibly the world, namely Trumpism.
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I will defend Amir here... Crazy people are here too... What about Bidenism ? Are you living on the cyclops planet ? Pick a book and quit the news...
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If you add Bidenism disease to Trumpism disease, i apologize to you ... But refrain yourself to insult Amir, i did not partake any of his ideas about measurements meanings at all , as my long posts here demonstrated, not by insults, but by DEEP ARGUMENTS... Then you were right about my ignorant political disagreement with you, but i am afraid that your post about Amir reflect ignorance more than lucidity... Insulting is not a good way to debate sonmeone and put him in a corner... Thats my point... Again i apologize for my misreading of your political standpoint...
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@hayas,
I am perhaps not surprised, but also disappointed in the animosity towards audio science review. As I stated earlier in this thread, I learned more there than every other site combined. There are blowhards there like everywhere else, and I got the odd abuse for asking a question some thought was dumb, but I took my lumps, pushed back as appropriate and moved on. Many were helpful even putting what I could tell was significant time into their replies. I had picked up a lot of bad audio habits over the years (decades), and i was fully loaded with all kinds of information but no way to put it all together into something useful. Whether from dealers, audio sites, etc. any time I had asked for recommendation or ideas, I was always inundated with what, but rarely why. Like a kid in a candy shop, perhaps my fault I did not asked enough why questions, I bought all kinds of stuff based on recommendations and professional reviews. Frankly, I was mainly wasting my money. I didn't get a lot of what recommendations at ASR, other than this is probably good enough, but I got a lot of why discussions and why questions and why explanations. I had to sort through the chafe as the aforementioned blowhards like to be heard, but there were enough people who really knew their subject. Perhaps the best case in point would be speaker setup. I could point to 3 or 4 guides on how to set up speakers in a room. I am sure they all have some correct aspects. I am also sure that they are all fundamentally wrong enough or too simple to result in anything but barely acceptable results. Not one of them beyond some rough discussion of bass response explains much about why, and if you don't know why, then how do you adapt? I think I have posted enough on this subject, people will think what they want to think, but I will repeat something someone else said earlier. I think the attitudes demonstrated are hiding a lot insecurity. I was probably there at one point. Takes a big person to admit they were wrong. | |
If someone is not enough wise to separate my heavy syntax from my arguments from hearing theory aspects and call my posts "repetitious verbosity" this reflect more his limited mind process than my "verbosity".. Just a question if i want to know if you get the point : What is the relation bettwen a Gibson ecological perspective on sound hearing impressions and a Fourier inspired one ? And what is the relation of this with Amir opinions about measures and my opinion , and what are the relation of all this to design ; and WHY AM I WRONG OR RIGHT, in spite of my VERBOSITY ? If you brain work, answer or DEBATE before insulting me...If you cannot BABBLE a RATIONAL answer go into the cells of hell reserved to your kind... I dont insult anyone, if i did it because of my quick temper or by misunderstanding i APOLOGIZE but i answer to insults IMMEDIATELY ... I wait for your answer and in details bright mind ...
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Very easy answer...Point me the thread where someone debate Amir about the Fourier /ecological theory of hearing in psycho-acoustics and the relation with his opinion ? It is easy to answer by insulting someone... More easy to escape by saying what he said is "COMMON PLACE"... It is not common place dude... You confuse generality with specfic deep philosophical points about hearing and your limited opinion.. You are right about one thing : i have an ego yes and a quick temper , but i can recognize when i am wrong... And i dont mix common place fact with DEEP question in psycho-acoustics.. And i learned how to apologize after insulting people... Ask your mother.. You will not answer me on this debate anyway , you are not able to do so anyway it seems.. I wish you the best and forget my verbose posts in the future...
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This thread, like many others, seems to boil down to the ’subjective’ vs. ’objective’ arguments, and which are better? IOW, nothing new here.
@othercrazycanuck You say that you bought all kinds of gear based on professional reviews and recommendations. Did you not consider listening to the gear first for yourself, before a purchase? IME, to spend $$ on any gear before first having the chance to listen is really the ONLY way to know if the piece under consideration fits into your listening biases! ( and we all have listening biases, which is why i fall into the subjective camp). Perhaps being in an area/locale that is removed from the ability to actually source these pieces for yourself, would lead to acquisitions based on someone else’s reviews or recommendations, but I think then relying on purely measurements posted by anyone would also lead to major disappointment. | |
I beg your pardon but all my posts which are a rational discussion with Amir were not about subjectivits and objectivists, which is a MEANINGLESS debate let to itself most of the times; but more about the relation between measuring context and hearing theories, mainly Fourier inspired theory of hearings and ecological theory of hearings...I debate him about PSYCHO-ACOUSTIC not about his objectivism techno ideology as most audiophile subjectivist do WITH NO SUCCESS because they dont adress the fundamentals behind measures and behind hearings.. i like to be understood... Dont take it personal...
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@daveyf, of course I listen. I guess I gave the impression I did not. I listened at stores, I listened to what other people said, I even did in home trials. Funny thing the brain though, it often tells you what you want to hear, and I think in a strange joke of mother nature on audiophiles, the harder you listen, the more your brain tells you what you want to hear. Looking back on my journey, I think I convinced myself of a lot of stuff that was not true. That is why I was always looking for the next upgrade. I was not doing a lot of anything though I thought I was. No one can tell you whether/how your system, room and/or ears will respond to some new addition. There are simply too many variables. When I thought I knew everything but really knew nothing, this is what I believed too. Now that I have a good foundation of how things work, including the metaphorical me, and by me I mean our hearing, I have a pretty good idea, if I can get enough information, to know how the system (including all the pieces) will respond and what that means for the sound I will hear. I no longer feel I am on the merry-go-round, lots of movement but always ending up in the same place. Now I am walking a line to where I want to go. It is not always straight, but I keep moving forward, not in a circle.
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Oh we can. If I told you that my music sounds warmer when I wear read socks vs blue you are going to go along with that? You won't opine that this can't be possible? That we could measure the effect of red vs blue socks and show conclusively that there is no difference? Or use knowledge of acoustics that says what light sees as far as color, doesn't matter when it comes to sound? What if I insisted that I can hear the difference? What if I started to sell red socks saying it makes your music sound warmer, more like real instruments and less "digital?" What then? I am still good to go and you will defend me if someone shows up with all of the above science and engineering to show these socks can't possibly make a difference? You see the problem? Some of you have let your guard down so much that you know believe anything can make a difference in sound. You don't realize how trivial it is for your brain to manufacture differences where there is none in the sound waves. You not only go along with these faulty tests and conclusions and come to these forums encouraging people to do the same. And damage is done. You don't live the rest of your life this way. Don't do it for audio. Know the limits of your audio testing. It is not like you are born with knowledge of your brain and perils of ad-hoc subjective testing. | |
You believe in that science but when it comes to audio, all of a sudden we know nothing. But let me ask you this: do you worry about dark matter with respect to performance of your car? Do you know dark energy is what pushes your car ahead instead of a know chemical reaction? If the answer is no, why on earth do you believe that putting a battery connected to one end of an audio cable makes it sound better? I mean are you not at all moved that when I measure this Audioquest cable, that I can't even detect a difference down to many decimal places with with the battery on or off? Seeing how these companies don't present a single listening test research showing efficacy is not a concern to you? That any and all things must make a difference to somebody as to then keep the floodgates open to all of them? Are you not concerned that some of these things do the opposite that is claimed? Here is a Nordost flat cable noise immunity test: Compare that to cheap generic cable (watch the top right graph): This cable not only costs a lot more, it is also a pain in the neck to use as high-end cables are almost always are: Why can't you leave any room for independent evaluation of products showing issues like these? You don't take medication without such, why do you spend incredible amount of money on these audio tweaks this way? Doesn't it make sense that it is pretty easy to make money by making a fancy looking cable and selling it for thousands of dollars? Just like a magic trick, isn't reasonable that your senses can be fooled enough to make a sale? | |
What? I thought it was your group that says "I trust my ear so you must trust what I say." That is definition of asking someone to trust you blindly. We on the other hand believe in bringing independent proof. We do that with not only measurements but proper knowledge of electronic design and sciences around perception. You want to throw all of that out ask us to believe what someone perceives through faulty listening tests. This fits what you see above to the letter. You really think engineers don't know what a wire does? Or what a rack does for equipment performance? That they need audiophiles to tell them there are differences that can't be explained? | |
Trust your senses, plural, and you will definitely fall in the ditch of wasting money and effort instead of sitting back and enjoying music. What you should do is do what you preach: trust your ear and only your ear. If any other senses are involved, then you are not assessing the sound of something. Learn how to do a proper listening test that has only one variable (what is being tested) and do it to rule out chance (i.e. repeat a dozen times) and by all means you can trust your ears. Yes, there is a bit of work involved in that. But I assure you it is less than attempting to convince people to abandon common sense and audio science/engineering. If you can't be bothered at all, then there are people like me who do the legwork for you and present you very useful information to base your audio purchases on. Huge number of your fellow audiophiles are doing exactly that and are better for it. Think hard as to what they know that you don't. Surely they know your method. | |
That’s right. Your theory is that this and that makes a difference in sound. We put the very same person in a listening test, while keeping their lying eyes out of the equation and all of a sudden that difference disappears like fart in the wind. What then happens is that you deny the results of these experiments. You much rather not know it seems. But again, people are realizing the gig is up here and adopting a much more rational method to judging audio gear. They are saving huge amount of money and getting much more performant systems to boot. | |
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.
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You read my posts but you did not understood how an ecological hearing theory based not on Fourier context and just frequencies based , but enlarging it, can explain how "sound qualities REALLY EXIST and are not artefacts of an "impure " electronic design ? as Amir claim...
You read my posts then you read the link between Oppenheim and Magnasco experiments and the physicist and designer of audio Hans Van Maanen , but you did not understand how the human hearings which cannot be understood in the Fourier context where the elementary ABSTRACT factors of sounds are linearly related in a TIME INDEPENDANT domain, you did not understand how the non linear time dependant domain where EVOLUTION trained our non linear working ears/brain can help us to DESIGN BETTER CIRCUITS to serve the human hearings FIrst and last ? then you never read any paper of Hans Van Maanen ... nor you understood at all the signifiance of the Oppenheim and Magnasco remarks about the necessity to change hearings theory paradigms by enlarging the Fourier inspired many theories by a time dependant and non linear one ?
You read my posts and you think that audio goal must be only to give the lowest noise possible and a minimum distortion ,without even kowing how distortion works differently on different harmonics affecting our hearings differently as used by some tube amplifiers designers ?
You read my posts and you dont understood how ecological theory critiques of spectral analysis can be relevant to the design of reproducting device? You cannot imagine as Amir claim that qualities perceived by the ears/brain are not only mere illusion but INFORMATIVE process with meanings ? Then they must be used in the design process said the Physicist and designer Van maanen.. You dont undetrstand that fact ?
You read my posts and you cannot imagine how any measures set MUST be interpreted in the context of a hearing theory and could not be interpreted correctly out of THE RIGHT HEARING THEORY, which is not linear and not time independant as the Fourier theory , but non linear and time dependant as Magnasco and Oppenheim , and the DESIGNER Hans van Maanen demonstrated it in his many papers...
In a sentence : No successful design can be really good if the basic needs of human hearings are not adressed correctly or NEGATED as meaningless in the name of transparent electronics ...
The way Amir conducted is measuring set do not adress the needs of human hearings at all... He does not even bother with this problem of measures interpretation and QUALITIES... For him they are artefacts to be elimnated from the design process , not used in it as Van Maanen demonstrated ...But being in ASR is enough for you , no need to read and think by yourself ... All audiophiles are deluded but you at ASR are not ?
I dont think so...
It is incredible that almost nobody from ASR can read the articles i put and understand them...Why ? Because the idea that qualities perceived by human hearings can help designing better audio will destruct the techno babble ideology of reducing any sound qualities perceived by a trained ears to some imagined ghosts...
All psycho-acoustic for you CANNOT have no relation to amplifier design for example ? All amplifier designh is set ONCE FOR ALL if Amir measure it good ?
For you low noise floor and no distortion are the ONLY the ideal ? No need for the amplifier designer for example tu USE distortion and control it for the needs of human hearings instead of always eliminate it for the sake of a measure ideology which is not even based on the right hearing theory ?
It is completely preposterous if it is what you means...
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Psycho-acoustic science and basic facts DECONSTRUCT not only audiophile subjectivist focus on gear but also deconstruct and demolish objectivist techno babble... But it seems that people cannot think out of binary opposition...
The basic facts about hearings cannot be reduced to mere "illusions" without any bearing on qualitative design, no more than measures in the large sense of the world can be dismissed by subjectivist... Listenings is not an illusory experience which must be dismissed by blind test...It is an ability that must be trained in acoustic environment ... Measures are revelatory and necessary for design and pleasure BUT THEY MUST BE interpreted in the rightfull hearing theory context..
By the way faith in some restricted set of measures interpreted in the Fourier context is only that : technological misplaced faith... But there is difference between technology driven by the right hearing theory and technology even negating hearing perceptive abilities asking to be trained and used in design itself... This is the Van Maanen main point...
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It is incredible that almost nobody from ASR can read the articles i put and understand them...Why ? Because the idea that qualities perceived by human hearings can help designing better audio will destruct the techno babble ideology of reducing any sound qualities perceived by a trained ears to some imagined ghosts... I don't claim to be from anywhere, but I can tell you lump me in as I showed that two of your claims were flawed. Sometimes we are the only people that are right. Sometimes we are the one that is wrong. If you assume you are the former, then you will always be the latter.
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@mahgister Well, I just skimmed that response a bit but, yes, it certainly is possible to build audio reproduction systems that have colored sound that some people might prefer (tube and vinyl aficionados rejoice!), but in reality these were always stopgaps towards perfect fidelity due to the limitations of the devices. But some folks prefer them, so be it. But with the advent of better technologies and the theories that guide their use, we can build remarkably transparent systems for low cost these days, so the limitations of those other approaches become more obvious. There is some research that shows that hypersonic sounds (>20kHz) might cause some brain activity changes, but it's unclear whether that is definitive for providing perceptually-relevant high-frequency components that would enhance our temporal experience of music, etc. If you want to know what people want from speakers, you just need to study them and come up with a crowd-sourced preference curve, for instance. And lo, we have one. But in any case, I remain perplexed what you hope to gain by pushing this line? If you have a desire to research how to color sounds to enhance audio enjoyment, please do the work. I will be interested (if it's well-written and coherent). Nothing you mention has any bearing on testing whether audio devices are high quality from the standard of low noise and distortion. It is orthogonal to those goals. | |
@othercrazycanuck So I understand your prior post, you say you did listen to gear before you bought it, presumably you liked what you heard, then you bought it. After some amount of time, you began to dislike what you bought, is this the case? Seems like you may have also been swayed by the reviews and recommendations as well. You want us to believe that what you heard initially that pleased you, somehow changed after you took the piece home. This you attribute to your brain being fooled initially by..what?? I do know of many folk in this hobby, who actually are never satisfied with what they acquire to reproduce their music...they keep the piece for a short time, and then sell it on- always on the 'upgrade' trail. Not only is this a vey costly endeavor, but also I believe one that is sure to deliver long term dissatisfaction with the hobby. Personally, I buy gear that works for my ear, and IF something comes along in the future that is 'very significantly' better to my ears, I will entertain the upgrade, but I am not churning and burning gear...like many.
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I am not against "transparent" design...But mass market minimal design standards cannot be high end craftmanship... But i cannot accept that some use these set of measures to disparage human hearings are passively subject of illusions, some will reduced all human hearing abilities as illusions of only subjective nature with no objective informative content useful for new design , not only to create "colorful" tubes amp but better gear in the larger sense by using human ears as a guide... This stance about linear measure of circuits with no need of the designer ears guiding rudder contradict basic psycho-acoustics... We analyse sound non linearly and we live in a time dependant dimension for this analysis and frequecies dont tell all the story... This means something for design theory... I cannot repeat what Van Maanen taught , i am not competent and it will be too long.. There is materials physical and sensible invariants , information , behind sound experience not just abstract waves analysed for frequencies spectrum , and amplitude phase and duration and distortion, and not just subjective delusions, these physical invariants go deeper in hearing theory than just frequency based circuits analysis and told us something about human hyperacuity as Magnasco and Oppenheim called it... These materials invariant of qualitative information content are not measured by the tools Amir used, they exist for the ears who perceived them in his time dependant domain and extract from them in a non linear way much qualitative information ...
Thanks for your kind balanced answer... Read this if you want to guess what these qualities perceived by human hearings are...I read the author thesis.., Listening and hearing are not DECEPTIVE activity as claim those who want complete faith in their very limited set of measures as the ABSOLUTE METER for "musicality " in gear design...I dont go with ideology sorry... Not in audio not in any subject...I think alone with books and scientists not sellers ...Psycho-acoustic use measures to elucidate hearings very deep matter not to reduce it to mere subjective illusions for the benefit of some limited set of gear measures sold as TRUTH..
In a word there is a deep relation between sound perception and the production of sound by the body, negating this powerful informative feed back circle and claiming that a short set of linear measures can settle audio gear quality forever without any need to listenings , because it is merely delusions, this is not science, this is ideology, and had nothing to do with psycho-acoustic... Amir Measure are useful... Nobody oppose that.. But selling them as the last words with no need for qualitative listenings is going too much farther... Audiophiles are no more deluded than people of ASR with their toy tools.. And blind test do not replace listening training with acoustic and musician training or the trained ears of a designer ... Classyfying all people in audiophiles subjectivists all in error and ASR objectivist as living is truth , is marketing fetichism not psycho-acoustic... ...
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@mahgister Actually, I just read a bunch of van Mannen for fun. Luckily I have both a BSEE and MSEE in information theory and signal analysis, thus feel somewhat competent to comment a bit (though I prefer a much more reserved approach to science and engineering). A key point he mentions is that sinusoidal signal sweeps don't fully characterize the frequency response of, say, an amplifier, because of some theoretical requirements. Linearity is one of those requirements and there are all kinds of nonlinear things going on in real systems. Indeed, the effects of nonlinear transfer functions can be quite interesting and require very interesting mathematical tools. But, really, it's what we call distortion. So, if an amplifier designer is trying to create a great amplifier, what should she do? She could test using sinusoids and try to reduce distortion and noise in her design or she could do....what...exactly? van Mannen has concerns about feedback topologies as well, but still, other than trading-off options, she still will want to test using the best tools she has in an effort to reduce noise and distortion. | |
Thanks for you interest... For sure you know better than me to analyse what he want to do... bUt human hearings is sensible to some harmonics positively and not to some others so much positively for example... The tonal perception is heavily influenced by harmonics , Van Maanen explain in his paper how the fact that human hearing is time dependant help him to design in a better set of trade-off his own circuits.. I read it because of these application from the Oppenheim and Magnasco experiments revealing after 60 years of investigation that human herings cannot be reduced to spectral analysis alone nor to any linear Fourier inspired theory ... van Maanen used that in his design trade off and you are best equipped than me to understand HOW PRECISELY he did it... i used his articles as contradiction of the claim by Amir that linear measures of gear are enough... Amplifier must stay in linear control but the direction toward a better sound is possible only if we understood the non linear way hearing perceive sounds.. Reducing noise and and controlling distortion not only reducing them is always a goal ... But it is half of the task ... The other half of the task is designing circuits more susceptible to please and inform the human hearings who do not work as a Fourier engine at all... The Fourier engine must serve hearings not reduce hearings to its mere linear workings in a time independant way... Ears perceived real physical invariants in the real world and analyse them non linearly in a time dependant way, no fourier approach can explain it ..¯ Van Maanen is conscious of that and use it as inspiration for his complex design... Why did he call his design "TIME COHERENCY " ? you know enough about electronics to connect the dots better than me here ... 😊 One thing is sure Van Maanen nor Magnasco and Oppenheim will mock people trusting their hearing acquired biases and training as deluded... They are in science first not first in marketing of gear or marketing of tools...
Thanks very much for your interests ...
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I forgot to say that you missed a point about Van Maanen...
He said as a physicist that a sinusoidal continuous signal dont act on the circuits of amplifier as a Sudden variable dynamic burst of music , then as you said the frequency response of a circuit cannot be predicted adequately under this kind of linear continuous signals... He then designed his circuits in a way for them to be able to reacted and be more linearly predictable under REAL MUSICAL BURST... Correct me if i am wrong... it is what i remember... | |
@mahgister Fair enough. Having also worked on studies of human subjects in later careers in technology, I can assure you that subject reports are clouded by an enormous range of biases, expectations, timing effects, etc. Amir goes into the problem of performing even simple tests to distinguish systems and how challenging it is, so I have strong doubts about the subjectivist-style claims and how intellectually honest those folks are! I just don't see any downside to leaning heavily into objective tests. I've only seen poorly-designed tests (often headphone tests are impacted by problems with the ear cups, for instance) that were problematic. Anyway, I learned some new stuff today! Always a good day... | |
No one is against blind test... but blind test is not a cure... Nor replace any training... By the way i use some form of blind test in my room tuning even sometimes by accident... And we must distinguish between unconscious biases and consciously acquired biases as an acoustician and a musician training for years... I am not against Amir measures as informative... I am against ideological uninformed stance about human hearings for the benefit of a very limited set of measures which can detect if a design is faulty at best not inform us about his ultimate sound quality ... I dissociate useful Amir information from his limited understanding of human hearings because he sell his tools and methods and for doing so say that all people trusting their ears are deluded... For example i trained myself tuning my room... it was not perfect, but i learned basic facts... And there is no comparison at all between before and after my one year full time acoustic experiments... is this perfect as a job ? not at all... but it cost me nothing and i learned about all acoustic concepts by EXPERIMENTING... i know what means this acoustic ratio for example not by theory or by an equation not even by a mere computing ( ASW/LV) but by specific practice in a small room with his acoustic content ... Not by reading an equation... in the process i learned how to trust my hearings even if it is an inmperfect tool and a biased one... Who dare to mock me because it was imperfect ? What is the best ? Training our ears and learning how to listen...or buying and learning nothing ? You speak about ears cup of headphone ... After loosing my acoustic room i was sad... I embarked in a 6 months of listenings experiments on my hybrid AKG K340 headphone.. The main problem was the complex ear cup control... This headphone is one of the most complex design and one of the best... i opened it and put mechanichal control for vibrations, erase the protective plastic grid that was there not for the S.Q. but for protection , i experimented with the right volume for the dual chamber of the shell with the thickness of the pads, i equalized them a bit with a large band equalization , i discovered the right amplifier for it ... And wow! my sadness disapeared after this 6 months... This headphone is speaker like and project according to the recording process a soundfield out of the head and i could no more detect any defect as in my first day listening.. Not bad for a used 100 bucks headphone... All my other 9 headphones even modified sound artificial and headphone like... Without my trust in my ears whay did i could have done ? NOTHING ... I would have criticized the headphone design as some reviewers did without bothering themselves to understand the design to begin with and serve it well ... i even read the Dr. Gorike patent... 😊 i trust my ears not because it is perfect but because i work with it...I used measures when i need them... i dont trust measures as truth about hearings sorry... Many people cannot understand that the human ears USE frequencies SELECTIVELY and filters them to perceive OBJECTIVE QUALITIES, speech, music, natural sounds , and these qualities INFORM US A LOT about our surroundings they are evolutive affordance for our survival but the human hearings is not frequencies based in a linear way , it is timing based in a time dependant way... What we hears from an audio system is complex and cannot be replaced by limited linear measures set... Thanks for your respectful answer ...
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@amir_asr Hey sir, I'm with you. But as you well know, you'll never convince some people that an inexpensive wire can possibly sound as good as an expensive one. I'm convinced, but many won't be, can't be. (Speakers, however, are more personal, though measurements even with those can be a guide through the marketing haze.) It's easy to delude ourselves, especially with money invested. More tweaks, more money, etc., had better add up to "better sound -- I can hear the difference" or it's wasted and most people don't want to admit they've been duped by marketing or are fooling themselves. | |
First, I had already read and knew about the Oppenheim and Magnasco paper. It made the rounds when it first came out. Many jump to conclusion thinking that paper gives the subjectivist ticket to ignore measurements. Reality was, as I have explained repeatedly, it has no relationship to measurements let alone going that far. The test simply states that our prediction of simultaneous detection of frequency and its timing is too conservative. That for special type of signal at least, our higher order brain function is able to tease out more performance. I had not seen the Van Maanen paper before but once you mentioned I did. What is in there is mostly marketing of high-end audio with some contrived simulations that have little relevance to the point you or he are trying to make. | |
Thanks a lot. I agree that the band leaders are beyond convincing. I am pleasantly surprised though how many people have changed their views on such tweaks. That did not come because we just said they are useless but because comprehensive set of tests were performed across so many of them, and explanation given as to why that people started to see the logic in it and shifted their views. To be sure, it seemed hopeless for years and decades. Arguing with words wasn't enough. | |
I don't know why this keeps getting repeated. No attempt is made to measure everything about a piece of audio gear. We measure just enough to find out how well engineered the audio device is. Anything more is redundant and bad use of resources. To wit, if you go to your doctor and complain about soar throat, he doesn't send you to get an X-ray of your feet! Sure, you could claim that your feet have something to do with your soar throat but he is not going to accept that. By the same token, if I throw a simple sine wave at an amplifier and it generates a lot more distortion that a high-fidelity piece of gear is supposed to produce, the it doesn't matter what claims the company makes otherwise. We already have proof that it is poorly engineered. Take this $13,000 TotalDAC DAC review: Look at the copious amount of noise and distortion to the right of our single 1 kHz tone. I don't care what paper you have read. No high fidelity DAC should produce this much garbage. Or this ultrasonic spray and imaging components: You can't save this DAC by claiming this device has memory and time dependency. A simple sine wave should go in and come out clean. If it cant do that, how is it going to do it with music that has thousands of them? I just tested a tiny dongle DAC for $80: Here is its dashboard: Its distortion spikes are 15 dB better than best case human threshold! This is what it does when you give it 32 tones to output: Stunning, right? Isn't trivial and simple to conclude that TotalDAC is poorly designed and can't rival this $80 dongle? Which paper you have quoted says that we should ignore the noise & distortion in TotalDAC and call it great? Why do we need to worry about time*frequency metric? You see what is going on here? It doesn't take much to show whether any effort was put in to make a device be truly hi-fi. Folks were told to trust the marketing material and testimonials from Joe youtuber/reviewer that performed totally improper listening tests with his eyes. That shouldn't be the way we evaluate audio hardware. | |
You get it in the reverse direction... The Oppenmheim Magnasco experiments is ONLY ONE of a set that investigate the limits of any Fourier modelling of human hearings in the lasy 60 years .. This paper never pretended nor justify the rejection of linear measure in the design process.. This paper as you say never negate the benefit of linear measuring methods in GEAR DESIGN , it demonstrated that linear Fourier frequency based methods cannot explain hearing ... And you are wrong in minimizing toward a caricature the results : they does not only say that our estimation of frequency and its timing is too conservative, this is a MARKETING DISTORTING EUPHEMISM you use sorry to minimize the real impact of the discovery... we do not read the same paper, the paper say that this relation BETWEEN FREQUENCIES AND TIME IS NON LINEAR AND NOT EXPLANABLE BY FOURIER MODELLING AT ALL...The fundamental teachings then was that no Fourier modelling can explain human hearings and the linear Fourier context where your measure set applies for gear specs cannot REPLACE human listening even as said Van Maanen demonstrated in gear design , especially if gear design must be based on psycho-acoustic... And if you read Van Maanen as someone who sold gear your are not of good faith sorry, because he spoke as a scientist... it is evident when we read his papers... you accuse him of what you do ; selling your measures method and minimizing an important discovery about human hearings and his potential impact on design ...
Anybody reading the articles i posted can verify... Only gullible people will not see how you just distorted the experiments results and interpretation .. Sorry... I learned how to read...
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I never contested the usefulness of your measures.. I contested what you implicitly suggested that your measures set are ENOUGH to spoke about All aspects of design qualities...Debunking gear claims from the market is not the same as EVALUATING gear on musical aspects of their design ... You know full well this fact because your crusade seems to be debunking not only audiophiles deluded by cables but human hearing itself... The measures we used must always be interpreted not only in a material design context but also for their MEANINGS in relation to human hearings as taught by psycho-acoustic.. Minimizing the real lesson of Magnasco and Oppenhein experiments as a mere underestimation about frequency and time reveal your agenda... I know that you are very intelligent then distorting this experiment results to make a point reveal a very SUBJECTIVE back tought that has nothing to do with science... The results of this experiment is not about an error of estimation about frequencies and time it is about the necessary transformation of hearing theory out of the Fourier frequencies modelling based theory because it is UNEXPLANABLE in a linear and time independant Fourier context .. Any other conclusion reveal bad faith...Sorry to say so... You never adress directly this article in the first two days of our discussion , now you spoke of it MINIMIZING and distorting his meaning and results... Why ? Anybody able to read a text can verify that what i said is true... ...
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Magnasco and Oppenheim said this : «The significant increase in timing acuity unaccompanied by a «Such results add to the growing body of Reducing this as you did to a mere underestimating time and frequency relation in a linear model is FALSE...
By the way when we speak of measures in science, ESTIMATION of measures results must be BOUNDED in a set... This set SIZE is ascribed by the theory , here Fourier theory... Magnasco and Oppenheim state that the results of their experiments exceed more than 10 times the uncertainty limit of the Fourier principle... What this means ? The results of the experiment does not suggest a mere error of estimation INSIDE the bounded set PRESCRIBED by the linear Fourier theory... but the experiments suggested an information extracted by the ears/brain so high OUT OF the accepted set of possible values prescribed by the mathematical Fourier theory... The conclusion of the article is then we need an ecological based hearing theory and further experiments in this direction... The qualities we hear are not MERE ILLUSIONS.. They correspond to LEARNED and taught by evolution real informative events related to sound sources and sound production in evolutive history...
Sorry for your complete miunderstanding.. .. No discussion is possible without GOOD FAITH... And Van Maanen is not a mere seller...Anybody reading his articles and biography cannot buy that... You are a seller ...
Is this conclusion from one of Magnasco and Openheim sound as a mere underestimation about bound relations between frequencies and time ?
«Early last century a number of auditory phenomena,
is this experiment after of a long history of past experiments in the same direction looked like as Amir falsely claim as just a mere underestimation of some linear factors bounds in Fourier models between frequency and time or more as a revolution in hearing theory out of Fourier models based theory ? Only gullible unable to read people will go with Amir interpretation here... | |
