Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

Nothing transformed my audio system and ideas more than that processor.  My jaw fell on the floor in the way it seemingly removed the walls from my listening room!

What kind of subjective audio-foolery statement is that?

Does that say more about the processor or more about your room?

What is unfortunate is I agree with you far more often than not, but you like so many here let your ego get the better of you and you let that drive a need to be right to the point that you make poor use of the available science, drawing conclusions that are beyond what the science is able to reliably claim.

Why these continued personal remarks?  Why not stick to the technical topic and leave it at that?  Every one of you is doing this.  How do you not sit back and realize that is bad in the context of trying to prove a technical point?  Who cares what you think of me personally?  They can't use that to get better performance out of the system.  State the technical point and don't keep getting personal this way.  It is like you all copy each other's style.

If what I say is right and you agree with it, leave well enough alone.  Don't detract from the technical point on which there is consensus between us with comments like this.  

But no I did not "make poor use of available science."  You did that by putting forward a research that had to do with ability of professionals getting their jobs accomplished, wanting people to think it had something to do with enjoyment of music.  The study had nothing to do with the topic of interest in this forum.  You either didn't know what the research was about, or if you did, misrepresented it as such. 

It is clear you thought you knew more than me so by mere mention of the paper you expected me to fold.  This is what I call "ego."  After all, you would have quoted the paper if you wanted to have a proper discussion.

 

Refreshing post with knowledge and common sense...

Thanks..

I could quote more and reference his book, but in summary, nothing is perfect, use what you want (at first lateral reflection). That use what you want is critical, as not all listeners, or even audiophiles listen with the same goals and may not even listen with the same goals all the time. In a music space targeted at casual listening or for the more casual listeners in the household, a space with more side wall reflections has a high likelihood of being preferred. For those who are into critical listening, muting the sidewall reflections can sharpen perceived imaging leading to a higher preference. Are you a casual or critical listener Amir?

but even if you are right about what you say here... In a good small room with balanced ratio between reflective/absorbing/and diffusive surfaces and volumes especially with a room under mechanical control with resonators ( i used them in specific location ) , the preference between musical casual listening and critical listening make no sense at all... We can distinguish these two categories of specfic characterized atmosphere, yes, but we can ALSO CREATED each one of THEM but more importantly we can make them converge in an OPTIMAL dedicated SMALL ROOM ACOUSTIC...This is the goal...Opposing them is erroneous even if it could exist as acoustic conditions...You know that for sure, i only add this precision for Amir... 😊

I learned that by experiments not only by reading Toole ... By the way the concept of a dedicated acoustic room do not coincide with acoustic treatment in a living room AT ALL...Small room acoustic of living room is not small room acoustuic of dedicated Sopeakers/room ....

A dedicated acoustic room , like an anechoic room, is a completely dedicated room too, but a non anechoic one, dedicated to some specfic audio system and to some specific speakers properties, dedicated to specific speakers/ears properties in a specific room with his specific , geometry or form, topology or apertures, and with his specific acoustic material content...This type of room is designed by a owner for his own structural ears filters by him...

No one teach a recipe to devise this dedicated acoustic room... There is no recipe... YOu do it by experiment and adressing all problems and solving them...

Small room acoustic is a very specific acoustic domain of studies which is relatively NEW...It does not really exist few decades ago save for acoustic recipe generalities...

 

Does that say more about the processor or more about your room?

Says it about everyone's room unless you have a massive space where transition frequencies get so low as to not matter.  Few have such spaces.  But partially yes.  My listening room at the time was small so the effect was more dramatic than in my larger space now.

To expand, wavelengths of sound below 100 Hz get massive as to make any velocity based absorber to appear to not even be there.  Yes, if you slapped 50 of them around your room, it will make some difference but you will not get neutral response.  EQ is a must.  No question about it.  

@amir_asr just stop with the holier than thou attitude. You’re not some all knowing savant. 
 

I have a good understanding of acoustic treatments. Like eq they remove the room from the equation. Yes engineers and producers want a dead environment so they can isolate vocals etc. A psi avaa or minidsp or bass traps all have the same goal. They are just different paths to that goal. Room treatments are ugly but they aren’t some snake oil product. They work. I’ve seen them work just like I’ve see room equipment on Dutch and Dutch 7cs work. 

amir_asr

Why these continued personal remarks?  Why not stick to the technical topic and leave it at that?  Every one of you is doing this.  How do you not sit back and realize that is bad ...

If you think you're being treated unfairly, take your complaint to the moderators. They'll delete posts that don't meet the guidelines. You well know that because you've had so many of your own posts deleted in this thread.

Small room dedicated acoustic for specfic system/room/ears cannot be done and automatized by many DSP with no room passive treatment and no mechanical acoustic control... E.Q. is not enough at all... Correcting some specific frequency response is not enough ...

The only way to automatize this for an optimal result without adressing the hard task to tune the room,  is using Dr. Choueri measuring tools and filters refined DSP  BACCH for creating optimal virtual room...

it is the only upgrade i need...

😊

I know you've all been waiting on the edges of your seats...the lady down the street with the cat? Its a female.

For Amir with my dedicated room and my 600 bucks system i am a deluded audiophile...😊

Who is deluded here with a 15 000 bucks perhaps useless electronic piece ? because as someone said wisely :

Does that say more about the processor or more about your room?

And he want to advise me about audiophile fraudster designers ...😋

And he wanted to advise me about hearing theory too...😋

And he want to advise me about small room acoustic too and he never did one ...😋

He stop babbling to me because i cited too much papers contradicting his perspective which is using electronics measures of design to specificy psycho-acoustic qualitative experience or negating them if he cannot make them correspond to his techno babbling ...

I am naive, i thought he could discuss "objectively" about the difference and complementarity between Fourier hearing based theory and ecologically based hearing theory, he did not even understand the basic problem to begin with ...

You cannot discuss science and experience with someone who want to "market" you his products.., the poster who want me to shut my mouth and quit, was wrong to ask me that, but he had a point i must admit ... I am naive...

By the way the only serious people to discuss with are those ready to admit they were wrong when they are...And all begin with ourself limitations and our own admission...

I never pretend that my room was perfect... But it beat everything i listen to in any living room with any system.. At no cost it was enough for me even imperfect because i did not use measuring tools but ears.. Anyway i used 100 Helmholtz resonators manually adjusted , how do you do this electronically ? It did not work the same at all... And peanuts costs means there is no market fraud here, only acoustic learnings..

 

@texbychoice Didn’t even really catch that. Good eye. It’s a very subjective statement and one that isn’t even backed by Amir’s precious data. How the heck do you buy a processor and then spend that much money only to brick it? I’ve never heard of a product or company being so crappy. He must really not be hurting if he just doesn’t care about a $15,000 loss. Time to ask for more donations.

My best friend in my teens was a completely savage male cat that will go only with me in the house...

he even attacked any other humans if they touch him...

He sleeped with me...

this documentary is interesting for me..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QadUonunflw

 

I know you've all been waiting on the edges of your seats...the lady down the street with the cat? Its a female.

The graph on its own cannot, but we also know the speakers and with enough accuracy the speaker placement as I noted we had your system image. Look at that graph, now go do a bunch of measurements on your speakers and their relationships to the walls and your room dimensions, calculate 1/2 and 1/4 wavelengths then start relating multiples of those numbers to your graphs. Science, not conjecture.

All of of that would be conjecture. Folks looked a picture without even those dimensions and declared this and that. Even if I gave you those measurements, walls are not built out of concrete so distances don’t automatically convert to modal frequencies. My ceiling is sloped making any such back of the envelop computation impossible. We measure because that is the proper science, not looking at a 1/3 octave smoothed graph meant for overall target curve and claiming you see the modal response there. You absolutely do not. You have to take into account perceptual effects of room reflections and that requires careful filtering of the results.

Regardless, I did not put forward my room as a laboratory or best example of a listening room. It was space I had, I put wonderful speakers in it, put in appropriate furnishings as to keep it nice looking and function, applied EQ and got wonderful sound and enjoyment out of it. Science backs all of this.

Some people want to make it their life project to screw around with their room acoustics. That is not me. I have function and aesthetic needs that they do not have.

Claiming that people should go and absorb reflections as you claimed is simply wrong advice for huge swath of audiophiles. It is misinformation that leads to people agonizing the sound of their room, wasting a ton of money and often arrive at too dead of the room.

In terms of throwing out those "professionals", I would have to throw you out as well for your insistence on only your way when your luminaries don’t even say what you claim.

The luminaries not only say what I say, if you knew them personally as I do, but do as I say. Here is Dr. Toole’s California room (he is selling and moving to Canada):

Does this look like it has a bunch of crap acoustic products all over as you claimed people should put in their living spaces? It doesn’t right?It even has a TV in the middle!

Just like my room, standard furnishing is used to provide adequate overall absorption so that the room is not too live. That’s all. He uses multiple subs with advanced DSP (soundfield management) to get excellent bass across multiple seats. This is science. This is science in practice. This is science that doesn’t uglify your room to create great satisfaction.

@mahgister

 

"Doubting is not self doubting first and using blind test as childish thinking from Amir indicate, it is doubting what is taught and experimenting with it to LEARN IT OR TO REFUTE IT by experience and trust in ourself ."

That’s literally NOT what Feynman said. He wasn’t saying "doubt others" and "trust yourself.  His point was very specifically about YOU...the person with the hypothesis/experimenter.

Try actually addressing SPECIFICALLY what Feynman said in that quote:

FEYNMAN: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself

Why would that be the first principle? What are ways we can fool ourselves, mahgister?

and you are the easiest person to fool.

Why is Feynman so concerned to point out that YOU are the easiest person to fool (that is, fooling ourself)? WHY are we the easiest person to fool? What do you think Feynman means by that, and why it is so important to account for it in our method?

 

 

 

 

 

A living room is not a dedicated small acoustic room ... Toole dont need to experiment with acoustic in his living room, but that does not means that living room are ideal for musical soundfield... Some buy 15,000 costlier electronic piece... Some other experiment with room acoustic at no cost..

But how do you know that my acoustic room was screwed because it was only dedicated to my ears nothing else ? I dont need esthetic... for sure... i need immersiveness a good ratio between sound sources and my listening position..Speakers which disapear for ever and dont exist at all... We can tune a room for any relatively well design speakers of any type by the way and we can optimize them for our ears .. I cannot do that in a living room...😊 For sure we can have a good sound in a living room modulo some wise installation... but there is level of immersiveness...A living room cannot be a dedicated acoustic roomno more than a dedicated acoustic room could be an anechoic chamber..

You may be satisfy by a living room...i was not...my basic system is 600 bucks not 50,000 bucks...

And your claim reflected complete misunderstanding of acoustic : it is the ratio that matter, the ratio of reflected /absorbing /diffusing surfaces and volumes...This ratio exist already in ANY room ,but is different in any room , with or without acoustic tuning; the acoustic controls will only change it for the best and for your own ears filters...it is an INCREMENTAL process that take TIME... it is why a professional acoustician will charge you 100,000 bucks and it will be esthetical and more perfect than mine...but mine was astoundingly better after compared to before... At banana costs..

And this ratio between diffusion/absorbtion/reflection change from one room to another function of geometry, topology acoustic content and dimensions and time and timing and this ratio must be adapted to your ears..

I just go on ASR and read a discussion between a designer speaking about the non linear nature of the ears then he adressed that by the way he used second and third harmonics in his design , and ignorant and arrogant people attacked him immediately because as yourself they think that the ears process sound linearly ... It is incredible to be so ignorant about hearing theory and pretend to be a specialist...Their ears only like NO DISTORTION it seems ... very comical... the psycho-acoustic of their ears is different from us ordinary mortals...they have "golden ears" affected by distortion negatively... Us the great majority of human kind we are affected positively if the design is good... it was comical to read...

The soundfield we listen to for you come from gear with no distortion at all in a room with preferably no ACOUSTIC installation .... It is incredible for me it reflect ignorance about the psycho-acoustic basics, the soundfield is created mainly by the speakers/controlled Room/ ears acoustic TRINITY...And amplifier designer know that the ears listen non linearly then some harmonics matter more than others.. Consult non linear in wikipedia to guess why...

You are completely deluded by the gear design being so called "transparent" with no distortion, hypnotized by a set of linear measures who masked your complete ignorance of what human ears hears and how it decode it non linearly, meaning distortion at some levels are positive reinforcement at other level negative... And the fact that the ears live in a time dependant domain KILL all your pretense to reduce what we hear ONLY AND MAINLY to linear set of Fourier measures on the electronic chips...We need room acoustic too... Or a Choueri dac filtering system based on our personal ears filters measured to eliminate the room acoustic problem ... Guess why Choueri measure EACH PAIR OF EARS ?

i prefer Audiogon... Even if ASR is informative because all participants are not arrogant as many there ...

By the way:

Did i invent the ears non linearity working to win an argument ?

Did i invent the crucial observations about natural sounds qualities from ecological theory of hearings to complement Foourier theory of hearings and the advantage of this ecological theory suggesting different set of experiments  in research about hearing impairment for example  ?

Did i invent the concept that the laws of acoustic being the same UNIVERSALLY ; in Great Hall, audio studio, living room and small dedicated acoustic room, their APPLICATION differ completely ? They are specialized acoustic research field...Guess why ?

Did i invent that the way the ears process sound in his time dependant way had an impact on what we call "musical qualities" especially if by ignorance we reduce them to some narrow set of measures on some piece of gear  ?

Did i invent the concept that there is only one center and one focus  for  audio design and audio experience : acoustic and psycho-acoustic, not ONLY AND  MAINLY  the gear market of those who measure it as you, or those who design it ( with wise level of distortion for the benefit of our hearings) ?

I invent nothing of that , they are facts...

 

Some people want to make it their life project to screw around with their room acoustics. That is not me. I have function and aesthetic needs that they do not have.

Claiming that people should go and absorb reflections as you claimed is simply wrong advice for huge swath of audiophiles. It is misinformation that leads to people agonizing the sound of their room, wasting a ton of money and often arrive at too dead of the room.

 

 

“Why these continued personal remarks?  Why not stick to the technical topic and leave it at that?  Every one of you is doing this.  How do you not sit back and realize that is bad ...”

 

Because of your attitude and attacks on anyone that disagrees with you.

Your elitist, snobby, insulting and personal attacks on people.

 

As I said, this is how I perceive @amir_asr both from the way he runs his site and his, often lengthy and/or contemptuous posts: 

 

“Insects have been measured to be superior to cattle for human consumption. {insert copy/pasted 2000 line post with “proof of claims” here}

If you don’t eat the Insects, it is because you have not “trained your palette ” to like what measures best. So your “opinion” of what is pleasing to your palette is not only vulgar, but dismissed. You are obviously nothing more than a plebe”

just the facts. That seems to be Amir. 

 

And he will make 1000 line posts that are, maybe, tangentially, relevant.  The old, “if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit” routine, coupled with his insulting, belittling and “excommunicate the bourgeois” postings attacking any who refuse his “wisdom from on high” just makes my skin crawl.

Prof this is my post above reduced to the essential part :

«Then this quote means this : for being able to not fool himself a man must LEARN when it is right to trust himself and not others and vice versa when it is right to trust others not himself..Not knowing that TIMING MOMENT explain why we are the easiest person to fool... "

This is my exact sentence above...

Any hypothesis/experiment must be created by ourself and with trust in ourself to BEGIN WITH , then dont fool yourself, think if it is about time to go with your trust in yourself or to go with some trust in other advice, ideas, hypothesis or new experiment... The hard task is KNOWING if it is the time to trust you or others... If someone dont learn that he will always fool himself because we are the easiest to fool when we dont know better and never learn to listen the TIMING signs around us ...

I did not contradict Feynman claim AT ALL about the fact that human fool easily themselves...

You use this in a Barnum simplistic way to criticize Rodman about his ideas...

I dont like the way "objectivist" mind or tool obsessed people use this sentence OUT OF ANY CONTEXT...

Feynman never intended his public to doubt themselves or loose confidence in themselves or stop to trust themselves...He means that we fool ourselves any time if we dont LEARN if it is the time to trust only ourselves or the time  trust an other... THIS TIMING  MUST BE LEARNED THE HARD WAY...It is the reason why people fool themselves easily , they did not learn this timing  lesson...Feynman dont means common place fact he means serious thinking by his sentence ..

Any other interpretation is meaningless because instead of being a serious advice it will be reduced to a simplistic evident  common place fact as a Barnum motto : a sucker is born every day... A genius is born everyday too mr. Barnum ..

We can fool ourself in two way : trust only in ourself but also trust only in others... The difficulty is to learn if the moment is right to trust ourself only or right to trust instead another advice.. Anyway it takes more faith in ourself to listen other that to go always in our own way... But there is no creativity without absolute faith in ourself...

We are the easiest person to fool because we dont know why it is time to go alone or to listen others... Simple...

You cannot fool wise man... Why ?

And wise man dont fool themselves .. Why?

They had learned to listen to the MOMENT, but also to others and to themselves , what is this MOMENT about in my life, hypothesis, experiment etc is for, ?

Why are we the easiest to fool ourselves ?

Because we dont want to learn and listen the MOMENT ...What this moment is for ?

Any other interpretation is trivial... A common place fact...

Feynman was not in the gear debunking market and his advice is not for a customer 😊 and he learned how to trust himself or his fellow physicists when it was the right time to do as a bull or the time to listen as a owl...If you dont learn that your fool yourself ALL THE TIME...

i dont see how my interpretation diminish his sentence... Why wise men never fool themselves ? It is because  they listen not only themselves and others they had learn how to listen and READ the MOMENT in time...

 

The best example ever of someone who never fooled himself and was never fooled by others  is Salomon judgement about the two mothers and the only one baby... What did Salomon did ?

Instead of fooling himself in picking what seems to be  the more trustful mother by questioning them but risking to be fooled by the most crafty of them; he decided  suddenly to cut the baby in two and look at the mothers face  and spontaneous reaction ..." Give him the baby Majesty said one "... The real mother for sure...

Salomon did not fool himself ever, he listen the MOMENT and acted the right way letting the moment speak instead of deciding the mothers quarelling speech..

Feynman is like Salomon character in physics not a Barnum character especially if we read the story of his path integrals ...

 

«Let not fool ourself, there is no difference between you and me, we must just pick the right one at the right time »--Groucho Marx 🤓

 

That’s literally NOT what Feynman said. He wasn’t saying "doubt others" and "trust yourself. His point was very specifically about YOU...the person with the hypothesis/experimenter.

Try actually addressing SPECIFICALLY what Feynman said in that quote:

FEYNMAN: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself

Why would that be the first principle? What are ways we can fool ourselves, mahgister?

and you are the easiest person to fool.

Why is Feynman so concerned to point out that YOU are the easiest person to fool (that is, fooling ourself)? WHY are we the easiest person to fool? What do you think Feynman means by that, and why it is so important to account for it in our method?

 

Because of your attitude and attacks on anyone that disagrees with you.

Your elitist, snobby, insulting and personal attacks on people.

 

Amir came in to a thread in which there were already plenty of personal attacks on him and disparagement of his forum.   He was very measured given how many other people could react.  You seem to ge ignoring the amount of ad hominem and insults sent at Amir, as if HE is the egoist insulting people.  Don't forget to look in your own backyard before casting stones, IMO.

 

@amir_asr 

Snake oil?  No way.  Benefits of Room EQ is proven conclusively.  There is no snake oil involved.

You don't even grasp the irony of your own gushing subjective words or spending $15K on an audio toy that ended up being useless.  The very behavior routinely ridiculed on ASR.

This is all becoming hilarious reading the contortions you perform to always arrive at the same place - everything you do is right and nobody else knows anything.

@prof HE IS THE EGOIST 

I have never claimed to know more than anyone on here, yet he has never, not one time, admitted to being wrong, or to knowing something to a lesser extent. That is by very definition bloviation. He attacks people by calling them audiophiles or subjectivists without knowing their true opinions. He continually says he answers a question and points to answers that sidestep really responding. That is gaslighting. You are obscuring the truth but omitting a lot of the stuff he does. 

Amir has good ideas some of the time. He has good insight some of the time. He is right some of the time. He is hubristic all of the time. He said this just above "The luminaries not only say what I say, if you knew them personally as I do, but do as I say." WOW cool. He knows people and calls them luminaries. Just say experts in their field. 

If I have learned one thing it's that people who claim to be one thing, and say they are the most of some form, and have the strongest ethics. Are usually the opposite. Look at Bill Cosby, Brian Williams, Ellen. They all portray one thing and do another. I am not saying Amir is a rapist. What I am saying is I do not believe him to be as ethical as he states nor do I think he operates a huge online forum out of the goodness of his nature. He does it for clout and money. 

You don't even grasp the irony of your own gushing subjective words or spending $15K on an audio toy that ended up being useless.  The very behavior routinely ridiculed on ASR.

That's not the same and you know it.

You know very well that "snake oil" is a reference to products that do not do what they are claimed to do. 

That TacT Amir owned did what it claims to do: perform audible corrections to the sound.

That something breaks doesn't make it "snake oil."

That's just a disingenuous attempt at some "gotcha."

Seriously...and you guys are up Amir's butt for the style of HIS posts?

 

 

@prof Pretty sure when they said snake oil they were referring to the price tag and how it probably doesn’t do anything better and the fact that it bricked on a firmware upgrade. I’ve never even had any product do that, and if it did I could revert back to the old FW. Amir states snake oil are cables that claim to improve sound when they cost $1000. Now it's a hard pill to swallow that this eq piece works that much better than say a mini dsp or Dirac unit. Or even a Trinnov which can be had for 1/15th and 1/3 the price respectively. 

Amir saying that room eq is valid but most acoustic treatment isnt is bogus!

Let me ask you, do you think everything he says is gospel? It seems you are up his butt for different reasons.

Snake oil refer to any deception AND self deception, deception and self deception are TWINS... as Feynman said the easiest person to fool is ourself for this REASON... ..

Buying a 15,000 bucks piece that did not do  the job intended is not less ridiculous that buying am amplifier who did not sound as we asked for ...

i dont see the difference Prof...

By the way i described how today i read  on ASR attacks on a well known designer  ( i will not name him because i dont want to drain him in the swamp of this debate ) because he used his knowledge about the non linear way the ears perceive sound to design his amplifier using harmonic distortion in a wise psycho-acoustical way... Few people as  "wise" and less "wise"  as amir attacked him about any aspects of his work, and i say attack , because they suggested multiple times that this "distortion" business is if  it is not fraud it is for  useless deluded ignorance of audiophiles..

The designer was a gentleman and answer them politely... I had the EXACT same discussion here with Amir about the way the ears hear, NON LINEARLY IN HIS OWN TIME DOMAIN... Then no one can equate a limited of linear measures in the time independfant domain with AUDIBLE MUSICAL PERCEIVED QUALITIES. Claiming otherwise is not psycho-acoustic knowledge but ignorance...

No set of measures about audible qualities can be reduced to measures about the linear well behaviour of circuits ... Oppenheim and Magnsco experiment demonstrated why... they even suggested why we do more experiments in the context of ecological hearing theory...

Amir answered with ad hominem attack against Van Maanen and reduce the lesson of Oppenheim and Magnasco to be trivial experiment about mere hearing acuity limits , forgetting how the experience illustrate non linear behaviour of the ears in his time domain... This is BAD FAITH motivated by his business : selling his set of measures as ABSOLUTE truth about musical qualities...

 

Now prof, if some of the ASR crowds treat a well respected designer this way, contesting him ,and asking for PROOF , and almost insulting him; imagine how they will treat me ?

they will never listen to me a second and they will not be polite at all..

I listened politely to Amir thanks him 15 times. oppose my arguments, but instead of answering, he use any means but NEGATE the central problem in hearing theory as it never existed..

i lost complete trust in Amir...

i am naive but one thing i know : i learned how to analyse any text scientific or not... i know what is a valid argument or when someone drown the fish..

 

 

That’s not the same and you know it.

You know very well that "snake oil" is a reference to products that do not do what they are claimed to do.

That TacT Amir owned did what it claims to do: perform audible corrections to the sound.

That something breaks doesn’t make it "snake oil."

That’s just a disingenuous attempt at some "gotcha."

Seriously...and you guys are up Amir’s butt for the style of HIS posts?

@mahgister 

He means that we fool ourselves any time if we dont LEARN if it is the time to trust only ourselves or the time  trust an other...

We are the easiest person to fool because we dont know why it is time to go alone or to listen others... Simple...

 

No, you wrote in utterly vague circles, never landing on his actual point. 

His point clearly had to do with what separates the scientific endeavour from everyday level inferences.

When Fynman says "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."

That is clearly a warning about the influence of human BIAS in distorting and guidling our conclusions.   "You are the easist person to fool" is a reference to how easy it is for us to filter explanations and evidence to fit our desires or biases.  In fact, we are easy to fool through various pitfalls in thought, even when we are trying to not be biased.  When YOU are the one doing the testing YOUR actions and interpretations will have a blind spot of your own bias.

He admonishes us therefore The first principle is that you must not fool yourself,"  which means we have to incorporate guardrails against fooling ourslef in to our methods of inquiry.

This is so obvious it's just hard to believe folks like you and rodman can't just state what he meant.

Since our biases form such an obvious, first problem in interpreting results, this is why there are various methods of mitigating the influence of bias in scientific testing.  It's why for instance many therapeutic trials are done blind, double and even triple blinded.

It's why you want to have a hypothesis that is testable by other parties, looking to prove your hypothesis wrong, themselves using safeguards against their own bias effects.

This has OBVIOUS implications for testing audio claims.  If for instance sighted bias is a known confounding variable - a prime way of FOOLING YOURSELF - then Feynman's admonishment clearly indicates you should find a way to rule out that way of FOOLING YOURSELF.   Job ONE of the approach he is advocating!

This is why most of the scientific level of research on human perception in general, and much that is available on the perception of audio gear (e.g. the research often cited by Floyd Toole) is done with controls for those variables so the FOOLING YOURSELF part is mitigated as much as possible.

Of course neither you nor anyone else no this forum needs to do scientific-level rigorous research in order to enjoy the hobby or buy whatever you want.  But if someone is invoking Feynman in a thread that clearly entails the relevance of science to audio, then at least get what he was saying.  You can ignore it...but at least understand it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

@prof do you run an alt Amir account because you sound rude just like him LOL

Saying "anyone" on this forum needs to do scientific research is baseless and overstated. I do scientific research. I don't do things without research and some sort of basis in reality. 

@somethingsomethingaudio 

 

@prof Pretty sure when they said snake oil they were referring to the price tag and how it probably doesn’t do anything better and the fact that it bricked on a firmware upgrade.

No, when Amir pointed out the Tact was not snake oil, textbychoice implied it was as Amir spent "$15K on an audio toy that ended up being useless.'"

That is an utterly disingenuous spin on Amir's situation with the Tact.  It wasn't snake oil, it worked for it's purpose.  Years after owning it, it became bricked by new firmware (hardly unheard of with computer devices).  Something that actually did what it technically claimed to do, worked, but then got broken in a mishap, then simply isn't what "snake oil" means.  It's just cheap attempts at "you do it too, nyah, nyah" stuff..

 

Let me ask you, do you think everything he says is gospel? It seems you are up his butt for different reasons.

Hardly.  Amir and I have clashed occasionally on his forum, I'm sometimes seen as a "subjectivist in sheep's clothing" on the ASR forum :-)

And did you miss my critique of one of Amir's statements in this very thread?

https://forum.audiogon.com/posts/2582798

I'm not on sides per se - on ASR I will both critique Agon forums and defend them. I'll critique subjective reviews and also defend them.  I'll critique claims on ASR but also defend those I find defensible.  I'm not on a team.   I'm just trying to call 'em as I see 'em.

The reason I jump in to a thread like this isn't because I think Amir and ASR is above criticism.  As Amir keeps pointing out, he gets criticism all the time on ASR.

It's just that sound criticism in threads like these are mixed in with SO much b.s., strawmen, ad hominem.  It really is a bad show for Audiogon forums unfortunately.  And it's not "just because of Amir showing up with an ego!" 

I agree with Amir: all the varieties of "but you have a big ego" are ad hominem: address his arguments, his evidence.  Is he correct, and therefor giving helpful information to audiophiles, or not?   The replies to him have been generally terribly weak on rebutting substance.  (Which is why I find myself often on ASR these days over Agon.  I come to Agon to engage in subjective talk, which I really enjoy).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

@prof audioquest usb cables cost many times what Amazon basics do and do the same job so by your logic the audio quest isn’t snake oil???

@prof 

That is an utterly disingenuous spin on Amir's situation with the Tact.  It wasn't snake oil, it worked for it's purpose. 

Get a grip on reality.  Amir was called out in exactly the same way He and the ASR crowd would attack anyone else doing exactly the same thing. 

So lets agree that his $15K device worked at one time and he verified improved FR with measurements and listening.  Somebody else uses room treatment and verifies improved FR  with measurements and listening.  Or somebody modifies speaker crossovers and verifies improved FR with measurements and listening.  Amir already stated room treatment does not work.  Also on record numerous times crossover component cost or quality make not difference.  Once again, Amir's own words and actions arrive at the same destination - Amir is right, everyone else is wrong.  An WOW, his comment about rubbing elbows with luminaries is arrogance on full display.  Love to hear your defense of that statement.

We have too much time on our hands in our society! What a waste of time, I can’t believe I wasted a half hour reading all this crap. I can’t believe that a bunch of other people did too… yikes! What are we doing to ourselves? If I wasn’t stuck in my wheelchair I’d be up doing something productive.

@somethingsomethingaudio 

I haven't defended Audioquest USB cables.

This one appears to fit the definition of snake oil.  Implausible claims made

for the cable that, predictably, do not bear out when tested:

 

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/audioquest-pearl-usb-cable-review.36448/

 

 

@texbychoice

Alas, the story did not end well. After spending $10K on the processor, I spent another $5K to upgrade it.

The snake in snakeoil bit you in the butt. Wonder what kind of reception the above statements would receive over at ASR?

Your confusion of what is snake oil and what we are at ASR are your problem. You seem to think anything expensive must be snake oil. Do you go around saying that about a BMW?

Our mission at ASR Forum is to see if a product is well engineered or not. If it is, then you as a consumer get to decide if you want to buy it. Many times these products low cost but often, they are very expensive. That cost cannot and must not be held against them because it does cost money to produce some products that are pretty, produced locally, have great support & reputation, resell price, etc. For that reason, except in rare cases, price is not a consider for me.

Here is a review of the Mola Mola Tambaqui USB DAC and Ethernet streamer. it costs a cool $11,500.

In case you are not familiar with my "panther coding," it got the highest award I could give it. Why did I do that, because it is superbly engineered to reduce noise and distortion:

At the time, it shattered all records, landing on top (left) of the SINAD chart:

Here is how I finish the review:

Conclusions
The Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC shows again that just because a DAC is designed from ground up, it need not perform poorly. It is actually the opposite with it performing at the top of the class with respect to distortion and noise.

Since I am not the one paying for it for you to purchase it, it is not my issue to worry about the cost. As such, I am happy to recommend the Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC based on its measured performance and functionality.

While I never use the term "snake oil," members use it to refer to products that a) are expensive and b) don’t meet any of their claims of superiority or effectiveness. Someone mentioned Audioquest USB Cable. This is how that rated:

Panther coding says someone is after your pocketbook than delivering better sound. Here are the manufacturer claims:

See all those mentions of reduced distortion. We can measure that. We do it day in and day out:

Now with AQ cable:

No distortion is reduced whatsoever. Even when measuring to 20X human bandwidth of hearing, nothing is changed as far as noise and distortion:

 

Here are my listening test results:

Audioquest Pearl Listening Test
I plugged my Dan Clark Stealth Headphone into the Hugo 2 DAC and started to listen. The Stealth is a sealed back headphone with the lowest distortion I have measured in a headphone. So if there is a difference, this is the most ideal way to hear it.

I queued up a track with lots of ambiance and delicate sounds and started to play with AudioQuest USB Cable. The sound was as wonderful as I remembered it. I then switched to Generic cable and instantly the sound was louder and there was better clarity all around! This effect quickly faded though in a few seconds indicating typical faulty sighted listening test effect. From then on, I could not detect any difference between the two cables.

Hence my summary of the review:

Conclusions
I know many of us consider these results "as expected" but it is always good to verify how time after time, very accurate measurements show no difference between generic/cheap and premium cables. That premium is not a lot in the case of AudioQuest Pearl USB cable. So if you want to get it, there is no major harm done. Just don’t expect any audible improvements from it.

I can’t recommend the Audioquest Pearl Cable if you are buying it for audio performance.

The TACT processor was expensive because such home theater processors have always been expensive. You can’t get them with balanced output for less than a few thousand dollars. High-end ones comparable to Tact today cost even more. Here is Trinnov Altitude 16 Review. It got a "good" rating from me even though it cost $17,000:

See? Not hard to understand what we do. Go and spend proper time on ASR and you would know. If you don’t, ask me questions.

Yes everyone ask Amir questions. So he can deflect. 

@texbychoice 

So lets agree that his $15K device worked at one time and he verified improved FR with measurements and listening.

Great.  So it's not a snake oil product.  And yet you'd quoted Amir saying it wasn't a snake oil product and implied it may as well have been.  That's the sneaky part I was getting at.

As to Amir's views on crossover parts - he's either right or wrong.  You don't decide this by continually calling him arrogant.  He walks the walk - puts up objective evidence for his claims.  Anyone is welcome to do likewise in debating any of his claims.   As for room treatment, again...you can take his claims to task...or not.  But  all the stuff about "ego" is a sideshow, and one only concentrates on that if they don't have a substantive argument against the claims.

I believe Amir linked to an ASR thread in which his arguments about room treatment are being critiqued in various ways, by people adducing technical claims, measured evidence etc.  So, maybe read on it, make up your own mind.

My own room has forms of room treatment, and I enjoy experimenting with it to achieve various goals.

 

Saying "anyone" on this forum needs to do scientific research is baseless and overstated. I do scientific research. I don't do things without research and some sort of basis in reality

Ah, what are examples of that scientific research?  Hopefully it is about audio since you brought it up here but do tell.

@amir_asr No it’s not about audio. I will tell, if you do tell why you closed Erin’s thread and allow others to remain up, and why you spam this forum with your ASR forum posts which lead to your "donation" requests. Do tell.

It's truly astonishing you are still here. Since you want to sell ASR and not deal with this, why are you wasting your time on this, unless you want to cross promote. This thread will keep getting longer an longer and people will see more and more of who you truly are. A dbag.

@prof Go on gearspace.com and ask if they use room treatment and to what effect. There are loads of examples of bass traps and treatments flattening out room modes introduced by the room. Same as any eq software. one is physical one is digital. Why is this so hard to prove? Ive see room correction work with my own two eyes with a D&D system and with room treatments 

@amir_asr 

Amir, what of the fact that all along, you have only been measuring just the electrical half of electromagnetism. Can you explain the loss of logic in basing your entire belief system on that?

 

kevin

@amir_asr 

 

I hope you will take this to heart what I am going to write here, and why your approach is too dogmatic and hence stuck with no potential to move forward.

Last night you argued vehemently that reflections in a room MUST be better, that it MUST essentially be more pleasant, but, using the research that allowed you to reach that conclusion, you must also accept there is reduced clarity of the image (as the research indicates) and that at least for first lateral reflections there is no right answer for all rooms and all people.

Stated another way, you vehemently argued that a less accurate approach would absolutely result in a better listening experience, to the point of claiming that anyone who suggested doing otherwise was incompetent. Your words, not mine. Paraphrased but still your words.

Today, you posted this:

The Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC shows again that just because a DAC is designed from ground up, it need not perform poorly. It is actually the opposite with it performing at the top of the class with respect to distortion and noise.

Effectively you are stating that the only correct way to design a DAC (or any piece of electronics really) is for it to perfectly reproduce / amplify a signal. Do you not see the issue?  On one issue you are advocating, literally insisting on a provably inferior technical solution, while on another issue, you are insisting the only correct way is a perfect technical solution, and you leave absolutely no room, except at best cursory, that a non-perfect solution could be more pleasant. It is a irreconcilable position.

I understand what has likely lead to this point in time. Both scurrilous marketing coupled with a group of audiophiles insisting that equipment has properties beyond the understanding of science. You know that is not the case. I know that is not the case. Many know that is not the case. So what is the possible benefit of measuring yet another DAC, or now yet another amplifier that performs well beyond any ability of humans to detect the faults?  There is not. It does nothing to advance the science or art beyond identifying new price points. That is at best consumer protection, not science. Ditto for exercises in debunking product claims. While valid it is not science, it is consumer protection.

 

So I will challenge you. Turn the ship. Stop proving 1+1 = 2. Use your reach and platform to do something useful for the industry, both for your followers and detractors, and put effort into understanding or debunking as the case may be, the audibility, and audible impact, negative or positive of less than perfect signal construction and amplification. Just like that those less than technically perfect reflections can create a superior experience, it is possible that less than perfect on the electrical side can do the same. It is already done on the music creation side for improved preference so the evidence is there to support it conceptually (even if not on all music).

Are you up to the challenge?

@amir_asr ​​​​@prof 

Your confusion of what is snake oil and what we are at ASR are your problem. You seem to think anything expensive must be snake oil. Do you go around saying that about a BMW?

ASR routinely labels anything "expensive" as snake oil when there is a cheap ASR endorsed option, regardless of real or perceived performance difference.  Individuals that opt to spend hundreds or thousands on an item they find pleasing for whatever reason, ASR also routinely ridicules as audio-fools. 

Interesting you bring up a car analogy, ridiculed many times on ASR.  Again the irony and hypocrisy is staggering.  

@somethingsomethingaudio 

 

Sure, I'm aware there are all sorts of places where room treatment will be touted.  Amir is going against the grain of what many people think, including likely some at gearspace.  I don't know if he's right. But he does reference technical arguments and studies in support of his argument, so if someone wants to argue the other point, hopefully they can marshal stronger evidence.  Rather than just "Amir is a meanie" type stuff.

 

@prof I am not referencing all sorts of places. I am referencing pretty much any recording studio, mastering desk, mixing rooms. They all use treatment. These are the people who edit, produce and fine tune all the audio, vocals and sound effects you’re playing through your system. They arent prone to the same flash of high end stuff. Running commercial cable snakes and generic power cords. They do use room eq in addition to treatment. What youre saying is based on one guy, who has no experience in any of those fields knows better and they are misinformed?

I am trying to find a link but The Disney Concert Hall is a great example of this. They designed the seats to mimic the human body's density so that when the seats are empty it still sounds consistent with a full house. A lot of effort went into the project with materials and wood so that it was acoustically great. I guess you better go tell them with Amir that they made a big mistake. 

@texbychoice 

ASR routinely labels anything "expensive" as snake oil when there is a cheap ASR endorsed option, regardless of real or perceived performance difference. 

 

That's not true.  Sure many at ASR roll their eyes at the extreme high end gear prices.   But generally the term "snake oil" is used on ASR to refer to products that don't do what they claim to do, not "just because it's expensive."  I think you are mixing up the fact someone may occasionally use the term "snake oil" while talking about very expensive gear.  But it's not "because it's an expensive system."  It's when people are paying lots of money on the belief that is getting them the "better sound" promised by a product.  For instance someone referenced the million dollar Estelon based system at Axpona and used the term "snake oil" but that was in pointing out things like the $330,000 cost of the cabling!  It's not "snake oil just because it's expensive."  It's snake oil "because they are charging people huge prices on the basis of claiming audibly superior performance" over cheaper cable, and many at ASR are technically proficient enough to explain why the claims are nonsense (and point out how they are virtually never actually demonstrated in any rigorous manner, either by measurements or controlled listening tests...it's all about the usual audiophile anecdotes).

@prof They absolutely do dismiss expensive stuff. Here is one. Amir shows it does the same thing as the less expensive versions, and therefore doesnt recommend it. Explain to me how that is not exactly what youre saying???

@somethingsomethingaudio

I’m hardly unaware of the use of room treatment.

I work in pro audio. Post production sound. I work out of purpose built mixing studios that cost millions of dollars, some of which goes to the acoustic design/treatments in the room.

I had a professional acoustician help design my own room, and so it contains various room treatments, as I indicated.

So when you write this:

What youre saying is based on one guy, who has no experience in any of those fields knows better and they are misinformed?

I don’t know what you mean. I’m not basing everything I believe on Amir or "saying" room treatments don’t work. I have a general idea of the concepts involved, but I’m not an engineer, or scientist or acoustician, therefore I stay in my lane and watch the technical claims go back and forth. Like I said, Amir provides references to back up his arguments, says he is simply pointing to what the best information we have seems to indicate, and why. If someone wants to challenge it...bring an A game, with robust evidence. There are numerous challenges to Amir’s argument over on ASR. (So no, it’s very far from a hive-minded cult leader thing).

Here is a comment calling it snake oil

I’m keeping score on the thread. You get a point if you offer up information that helps people.

Hate to say it but Amir is slaughtering all at this point. Not liking someone’s style is a swing and miss. No style points either. Just telling it like I see it using my own measures for things that add value and things that do not. No doubt many will disagree and that’s all alright.

And in a previous post @prof here is Amir calling treatment "crap"

Does this look like it has a bunch of crap acoustic products all over as you claimed people should put in their living spaces? It doesn’t right?It even has a TV in the middle!

Just like my room, standard furnishing is used to provide adequate overall absorption so that the room is not too live. That’s all. He uses multiple subs with advanced DSP (soundfield management) to get excellent bass across multiple seats. This is science. This is science in practice. This is science that doesn’t uglify your room to create great satisfaction.

@mapman @prof 

Show me the science where it states that room treatment is bogus, and people dont need it to help with the eq in their room? All they need is a box that does it for them. That does indeed work, but so does acoustic treatment. I agree with Amir that eq software can do wonders. 100% in agreement. I am in complete disagreement that treatment is crap. 

@amir_asr No it’s not about audio. 

Got it.  For a minute I thought you were saying you were doing research in audio.  Wasn't likely given your history of posts but thought to ask.

@somethingsomethingaudio 

What is that link supposed to prove?

That poster, Triliza, was responding to a technically dubious claim made for USB cables.   He rightly pointed out there is lots of nonsense in regard to expensive cables, for instance as an example for digital transmission, there will be no visible difference  between a properly spec'd cheap HDMI cable or a $1,000 HDMI cable.

He is correct.

He simply asked for some more reliable, rigorous evidence for a company's claim than had been provided, since that would help distinguish truthful claims from snake oil claims.

That's all perfectly reasonable.  And it was not, btw, an instance of calling anything snake oil JUST because it was expensive.  It has to do with the CLAIMS FOR THE PRODUCT, whether the claims are B.S. or not.  If they are not, as Amir said, then of course anyone can spend whatever he wants, but it's good to at least know what you are actually getting.