@mahgister no problem. So much talk here who can properly synthesize it all? So far I’d say nobody. Who has the time?
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.
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@amir_asr if you were paying attention you would have seen that I said both you and @soundfield were acting like children and I would not buy speakers where pictures arent available as arent measurements. Why would I talk against my own products? You really need to get your head out of...the sand | ||
I apologize mapman
i get your post wrong then... I am a bit less serene and calm than you... 😊
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@mahgister I didn’t say you were anti science. Why did you infer that?
Also of course I know here is more to it than a handful of electrical metrics. I am saying that it’s not a competition with a winner and a loser. You can do things your way and Amir his and others will each judge the value of the science presented. That’s how science works. | ||
mapman your reasonning is based on a sophism here... Amir is not SCIENCE incarnated...Discussing with him as i did with rigorous argument from hearing theories or from acoutic is not being against science...And it is not being against Amir...It is being against an erroneous application of electrical measure in psycho-acoustic.. You dont realize that electrical measures are not the only scientific facts here?
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The best way to fool ourself is when we want TO WIN A POINT in a discussion or in an experiment AT ALL COST.. Why ? because the discussion or the experiment could be based on an entire set of biases or hypothesis that are false... Then the experiment protocol can even be perfect and without any defect in his protocol and can even give more truthful and proven results reinforcing the faulty biases or hypothesis or the discussed point... It is classical case with the faulty hypothesis of the Ptolemaic epicycles which were more predictively precise than Copernic own computation on the basis of his theory at the times... Then here you have, epicycles, a perfect clear concept, which is computable and useful for computations, perfect experiment, perfect protocol of observation validated by more and more precise measure from observation and to go on with new observations, simple we add new epicycles to represent exactly and perfectly the more precise observations.. ... A winner game no ? 😊 But a completely false hypothesis about the center of the solar system... With his less well measured results it is Copernic who will win , time will defeat the exact epicycles by Ockham razor and improving application to measures and simplifying them making now more easy the observation with the Copernician hypothesis.. Do you catch why Feyman think as i described not as you simplify it grossly for your needs and to win an argument in this discussion ? You must read philosophy of science, if you dont you will even be able to set experimental protocol right but you risk to go more deeply in a false PARADIGM ( it is easy to search for many examples in the medical field and in psycho-acoustic history) ... Read not only Popper about falsification , read Kuhn about paradigm change and better, read Feyerabend book "AGAINST METHOD " and his RADICAL discussion with Imre Lakatos.. This is the same with Amir Ptolemaic measuring delusion imposed as the only basis for ascribing hearing qualitites to an audio system...He confirm his own bias or hypothesis more and more with electrical new and better measures which are not EVEN WRONG... It is not the electrical measures- Earth but the Ears/brain psycho-acoustic- SUN the center of the acoustic- solar system... Those using electrical measures are BESIDE the essential psycho-acoustic point, and they cannot describe what is "listening" and, what do we listen to when listening to a sound and how ?
Electrical Fourier analysis is not PSYCHO ACOUSTIC science...Only a part of it...
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It was pretty easy. You use the same letters of alphabet when writing. | ||
@amir_asr Yes I am AJ. How did you know? I can prove I am not him. You can’t prove that you didnt run the audio externally through whatever listening device you used through another analyzer. There is no way to verify this, unless someone was watching you do it. You absolutely could cheat that test. Nothing is monitoring the output sound. | ||
No. If you are going to comment on a "too long post" maybe read it first. Did you even see what I wrote about how the Opera experiment scenario exemplified much of Feynman’s advice? It's much richer than just "blind experiment." I’m not running experiments on fundamental physics. But as I said, when it comes to my own tests and I want to be more cautious, I adopt methods that align with Feynman’s cautions about "fooling yourself" (and like I showed, presenting my method and data to others for critique). You either can’t admit how this fits well with Feynman’s words...or you just don’t understand Feynman (or the scientific method). You keep talking about big theories, and how some biases are bad some good, but show NO instances where you have taken Feynman’s advice in terms of your method - that is the steps you took in your steps to ensure you weren’t fooling yourself.
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Every body has a brain. Some are unfortunate and may have medical conditions. That”s not their fault. Others have a brain and value learning. Others do not. One’s values help determine how and what is learned. Amir is laser tuned on scientific measurements. You on philosophy, embedding and now psycho acoustics and how that affects what one hears. It’s all good. The point is you and Amir both WANT to learn and you each have your way. Good. Yay! Bravo! Do your thing! The problem is some have perfectly good brains but have been conditioned to devalue learning including in science and other fields . All the while reaping the benefits of what other smart people learned and they didn’t . Think about it! Learning is a core value in some cultures In others increasingly learning is the enemy! We all are human and have our biases and limitations. Some learn to learn and others fight it tooth and nail and want to rely on “instincts” only. I respect that As long as one is not trying to obstruct others from doing their thing their way however that may add value. End schpiell…. That’s all.
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It is comical to see Amir arguing about acuity test,... And bragging about it... Acuity is useless to perceive a bird song if you dont have the concept of bird nor the concept of song... You will perceive noise not a "bird song"... i think Amir never had a course in philosophy... Even elementary... It is a pity... Because science without philosophical basic make no sense at all... Anything perceived by the ears/brain must be recognized, it is why acoustician and musician train their ears/brain to acquire the right set of BIASES... Acuity as sensitivity to hertz scale and decibels scale alone cannot replace TRAINING...Without this training it is not surprizing that someone in love with electrical tools claim that electrical measures are the only valid predictive way to assess audio hearing qualities... About this matterc the two most influential philosopher of the last century are Merleau_Ponty, and the mathematician turned philosopher Husserl... But i know for sure that someone unable to read a simple paper as the paper of Magnasco and Oppenheim will not be able to read Husserl... it is not like reading cartoons or cartesian graphs or electrical graphs at all ...
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You wrote too long post prof... 😊 How about the techno cultist bias equatiing a set of electrical measures designed to verify the well behaviour of circuits and components as the ONLY VALID PREDICTION about the STATUS and VALUE of audible qualities as described in psycho-acoustic experiments and in ecological hearing theories as more than just Fourier maps made of linearly related abstract concepts as frequencies, amplitude, phase and duration ? All these abstract mathematical factors are not able alone to explain and describe why and how the brain work in his time dependant domain ( rise and decay not decay and then rise ) and with his non linear QUALITATIVE and evaluating perception ? No bias here ? Are you able to read an article ? Read Magnasco and Oppenheim experiment and explain the meaning , we will se if you understand it...
It is not always our bias who fool us, it is some adopted bias we borrow from someone else... by the way we cannot suppress ALL of our biases... We can only became conscious of some of them... our personal history is the history of our biases for the best or for the worst.... You read Feynman as if when he spoke he was a schoolboy thinking only about a blind test ... Biases are not all bad, we must train our mind and perception with the right set of biases... Biases can be acquired... Acoustician for example and musician are trained "golden ears"...
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What theory? Two files that are presented as 24 bit/96 kHz while in reality one has a true dynamic range of 16 bits, can NOT be analyzed with any tool I have. A smart signal processing person made sure of that. BTW, a digital scope has at best 12 bits of resolution (most are 8 bits). Yet you think that can be used to detect high-res music at 24 bits vs 16 bit audio? So no, you don't get to waive your hands and claim this and that. Learn the real theory, and the capabilities of the measurement devices, and then we can at least have a conversation. Bottom line: no analyzer of any sort was used in any of my testing. You don't have any evidence to the contrary other than your incredulity that someone like me could pass such tests. Well, tough. I did pass them and I explain the science and signal processing of each. | ||
There is a proctor: it is called a computer. In comparing files, a computer program randomizes trials, keeps the results and summarizes and reports them at the end. As to verification, I showed you video where I explain precisely how I passed the test and how you too -- assuming you have critical listening abilities -- can do the same. Furthermore, newer versions of the ABX comparator has a cryptographic hash which makes it impossible to doctor the results:
You run the above result against a signature check program and it will give thumbs up/down as to whether the results are hand modified. So no, you have many ways to build confidence on such results and I have given you reasons above. Ultimately though, if we are going to doubt each other's ethics, then we can't go anywhere. I could accuse you of being AJ for example. You could jump up and down 1000 times and I can still say you are him. What are you going to do then? Accept that you could be AJ? If these results can be gamed so easily, why don't you, AJ or whoever show us that? If you can't, then you don't know how they can be games and therefore, all you have is FUD, not facts. | ||
Again, I’m thankful to rodman99999 for providing the longer quotes from Feynman which serve so well to support the point I’d been making (as well as Amir). Let’s take this section: FEYNMAN: It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it.
I think a nice example of how this can work is the infamous Opera Experiment that purported to detect faster-than-light neutrinos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly The team of physicists upon finding the anomoly in their results knew how momentous it would be, and so they checked and double checked their findilngs looking for any way things could have gone wrong. They re-ran the experiment, getting the same results, and when months of doing everything they could to find errors was finished, the announced the results. However, being good scientists they understood the extraordinary nature of the results and presented it to other scientists saying basically "Look, we got these unexpected results. We’ve done everything we can to trace possible biases, influences or technical issues in our experiment...but we are presenting the results so you can double check our work, and hopefully replicate the results." Various possible flaws were suggested, and then the Opera scientists later...just as Feynman would council - reported some possible flaws in their experiment they’d discovered. Further investigation confirmed the flaws and that combined with others failing to replicate the results, dis-confirmed the initial "discovery." Just as science should work - for either disconfirmation or confirmation. Along those lines, in a much more modest level, I’ve tried to hew to these general principles when I’ve wanted to be more sure or rigorous about my conclusions. For example I was curious about my Benchmark SS preamp I’d just bought vs my CJ tube preamp, in which the sonic differences seemed pretty obvious. Well...most here would say "of course they’d be obvious." However, having done a variety of blind testing over the years - AC cables, video cables, DACs/CDPs, music servers - I’m familiar with how "obvious" sonic differences can feel under the influence of sighted bias - e.g., when you know what it is you are listening to. I’ve had "obvious" sonic differences vanish when I wasn’t allowed to know which was which. It’s very educational. It was entirely possible that I could be perceiving a sonic difference because of my perception being swayed by those wonderful "warm, glowing tubes...of course it’s going to sound different!" So, again, as Feynman would advise: the first rule is not to fool yourself as you are the easiest person to fool. And since I know sighted bias is a big variable, I attempted a blind test to reduce the possibility of "fooling myself." I took various other steps to reduce "fooling myself" - ensuring there wasn’t a way I could tell which preamp was being switched to, ensuring the switching was randomized, trying to ensure the levels were matched so as to account for loudness bias, etc. When I did my best...once again in concert with what Feynman would advise...I presented the results for other people to critique: As Feynman advised, I made sure to add as much detail about my method as I could, INCLUDING areas where I thought flaws could arise. And then I answered every question, I could about my method, took some suggestions to double check certain aspects and looked at how others assessed the results. It wasn’t a scientific-level of rigor, but I think it was in the spirit of the scientific mindset/approach in the sense of all the above. So I think I get fairly close to walking-the-walk in such instances with some of my own testing. I wonder if rodman or others can show any of their audio tests havea similar level of steps put in place to "not fool yourself" as well as presenting the results looking for others to critique? This, btw, is also generally what Amir does. He presents his results with plenty of detail about his METHOD and RESULTS so there is plenty of information given on which people can critique the method or results. It's not just "I put this in my system and I heard X, trust me!" It's "here, YOU can look for yourself at my DATA to see if I'm wrong." He presents it to the more general public on his youtube channel, and in the ASR forum in which he knows there are plenty of technically informed people who can help catch problems. And this is what goes on at ASR all the time. | ||
Mapman you dont seems to realize that anybody with a brain can only welcome the measures set Amir gave and say thanks... No problem here...Because i have a brain i thank Amir ...For the 17th time... But you seems to forget that Amir dont present them as only useful measures faisification and verification but as AUDIBLE TRUTH and more than that the ONLY AUDIBLE TRUTH , anything else being subjective illusions with no value ...
Thats the problem... A falsehood submitted as truth to promote an ideology and a site.. Just saying ...
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So what we have is people standing up for individual choice and saying I don’t care about measurements, I’ll do it my way. Ok fine! That’s how it should be. But then you have a guy who tries to scientifically measure things and that’s his way. He also has a website to publish the info and many choose to value that because they value science. But now the guy who chooses science is chastised for doing it his way He can do more than most anyone in this area and collect technical data that can help people make decisions but the “libertarians” can’t handle THAT guy deciding for himself how to do things because they don’t like the way he does things. His different view especially if based on science makes him the enemy This is a common phenomena that we witness everyday on the internet, talk shows etc. people expect the right for themselves to be free and do it their way but not the people they disagree with. That’s being a hypocrite with a capital H . The fact is many who want freedom for themselves can’t handle when others who are different want the same freedom. They think they are right and other guy wrong so he becomes the enemy and must be stopped. Take note. Hypocritical libertarians vilifying others with different values are everywhere. Politicians know this and take full advantage. Just saying. Just having different values on how to value hifi gear is enough to get people triggered Yes Amir believes in his way and tries to convince others he is right. But I don’t see any name calling, back handed personal insults or other personal slurs coming from him . Yes he thinks he is right and tries to validate his stance. Nothing wrong with that . You can also argue an eye for an eye, but the personal attacks appear to be one way. The unhappy libertarians attack armed with slurs, insults and no regard for misinformation. It’s so sad and petty. Grow up people. We can all do better. Maybe be a true libertarian who value the freedom of all decent hard working people, not just themselves. Narcissism seems to come into play here and that is always bad for everyone else in the end. Do you really “Know Your Enemy”? When the enemy is science we have a big big problem.
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Your analogy has a very relative level of validity, but at the end WINE TASTING is not acoustic... A piece of gear well designed by electrical measures is not wine...No more than the measures of piece of gear replace the ears/brain working metaphorically described as "tasting" ... Why ? Taste more than touch or more than hearing or seeing is related to our INDIVIDUAL UNIQUE BIO CHEMISTRY AND METABOLISM...Taste is subjective completely... Wine taster are trained to identify wine component and describe them ( soil composition and chemistry of the plant ) not to suppress our individual preferences in wine born from our own personal metabolism chemistry... Because we can use our ears/brain to see by echolocation if we become blind...If hearing was intimate and individualized as taste we will not be able to trust it OBJECTIVELY... And we will not be able to train the new blind objectively in a course designed to do it WITHOUT ERRORS ... WE SEE WITH OUR EARS... Also the acoustic conditions in a room are OBJECTIVE factors we can control to please or displease OBJECTIVELY any musician trained to recognize accurate timbre experience.. Also our survival as species trained us to RECOGNIZE objective speech sound in all condition in an optimal way... Why ? because our survival can depend on reflex based on ONE WORD COMMAND...This recognition obey objective working of the brain in objective natural condition... Also acoustic physical concepts can be measured, and each qualitative attribute of sounds can be studied objectively and can be described objectively even when they are SUBJECTIVELY evaluated in psycho-acoustic ...Psycho-acoustic is based on subject-object optimal correlation...
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Yeah @amir_asr your posted results for the listening test are meaningless and unverifiable. No way to know you did that unless it was proctored like @soundfield says | ||
Pick a component to test an upgrade , in your own system room, let say an amplifier... Let say you are not a fool you read the specsof the seller before buying to know if this amp, will pair well with your dac and speakers... Let say you are not a fool and you read before buying Amir measures just to be sure that the specs about this amp are confirmed by an independant tester... Let say you know well your dac, your speakers and room and your old amp working BEFORE replacing by the amp you just bought ... Let say you know the definition of timbre in acoustic... Let say that not only you know this definition of timbre but you are able to improve it or degrade it by just playing with the materials passive treatment in your room and the ratio absorbtion/diffusion and their optimal location and the timing of the reflective surfaces... For those who dont know HOW COMPLEX the acoustic definition and perception of timbre is here the main factors : "For example, J. F. Schouten (1968, 42) describes the "elusive attributes of timbre" as "determined by at least five major acoustic parameters", which Robert Erickson finds, "scaled to the concerns of much contemporary music":[4]
Now let say that because you played 1 year non stop in your room , you know how to experiment to modify all these factors as a piano tuner tune a piano...It is not perfect at all but you can perceive the different factors effects...
it is not finished yet ...
Timbre expression is ONLY ONE FACTOR inside the soundfield...
There is FOUR others factors of the soundfield itself... Most people know only two of these factors...
And remember this : NOBODY CAN PERCEIVE SOMETHING CLEARLY WITHOUT A CONCEPT FOR THIS PERCEIVED PHENOMENON... this is true for any type of phenomenin, for example light phenomenon in a prism as in the Goethe Newton debate... It is the same in acoustic... WE NEED THE RIGHT CONCEPTS FOR A CLEAR AND NON CONFUSED PERCEPTION ... Only UNINFORMED people think that the perception of audible phenomenon is only conditioned by acuity test in hertz and decibels quantities and level ... This is pure ignorance of psycho-acoustic... This is why hearing impauirment research is based not only on linear time independant Fourier theory of hearing but also on ECOLOGICAL theory of hearing...Experiments as those put together By Magnasco and Oppenheim indicated precisely that...
Not let say that the FOUR factor of the soundfield are:
---- DIFFERENTIATING IMAGING....It is the way sound sources are differentiated one from another laterally and in detph... Only knowing that is not enough because to understand it we must be able to create it and modify it in a room...
----Then the other factor is the MAGNITUDE from smaller to bigger of SOUNDSTAGING THREE DIMENSIONS encompassing all imaging sound sources...
-----Then the most ignored and the most misunderstood factor of the soundfield : the EXTENT HOLOGRAPHIC VOLUME of each sound sources... This include the dynamical details of the micro intonation inside EACH sound source...
----- IMMERSIVENESS or the ratio between the three factors above of the soundfield and the listener , it is the ratio sound source and listener envelopment called ASW/LV ..
This factor could be only an abstract fiction for someone unable to create it in a room , and this factor is perfectly described in acoustic experiments by precise disposition about the reflective timing of the waves and their direction ratio...
How did i know this extent holographic volume concept for example ? it is because i experimented with it in my room in experiments for one years with an oriented grid of Helmholtz resonators not only material passive treatment ...And luckily the only headphone i know able to give a "gist" or a "taste" of it is my modified AKG K340 created by a genius in acoustic and never surpassed as a hybrid headphone... ( Kennerton try to create one but quit the research because of cost and complexities)
Now let say that Amir brag about his small set of linear measures of amplifier or dac or even speakers...
I already criticized the IMPOSSIBILITY to extend from this small set of linear measures, created to verify the well behaviour of circuits in dac and amplifier , the impossibility to extend this set of Fourier measures about abstract concepts as , frequencies, amplitude, phase and duration , to EXTRAPOLATE them to audible CONCRETE QUALITIES be it musical, or speech qualities or natural sound perception by humans because the ears brain work not in independant time direction at all, but he works in his time dependant way ( then the brain perceive rise and decay he does not do well if we reverse the time direction in decay and rise as we can do with Fourier linear mapping of the audible territory ) he does not work linearly, which imply that a stimulus at some decibel level or at some hertz level WILL NEVER BE PERCEIVED as a simple increase of this stimulus by the same amount by the ears brain which will perceive them in a NON LINEARLY way ...
Now let say that Amir, who always want proof and in reality the only proof he understand are the simple measures his tool give him, let say that Amir claim he has proof that his linear set of measures warrant ALL ASPECTS of sound qualities; how Amir can PROVE to us that his measures will be able to predict not only the 5 factors of timbre but the 4 factors of the soundfield ?
Anybody in his right mind know that extrapolating from the frequencies response of speakers and analysing their axis wave forms, cannot predict their exact behaviour in different living room for different ears or in an acoustic room, we must listen to them to know...But for dac and amplifier the way they will help to create the 5 factors of timbre and the 4 factors of the soundfield by looking at measures, ( these meassures are designed to describe the well behaviour of circuits or component in a Fourier linear way making each component behaviour so predictible that it will pair well ELECTRICALLY with another component), these measures HAd NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EARS /BRAIN BEHAVIOUR PERCEIVING THESE FACTORS NON LINEARLY In his own time domain IN A LIVING ROOM OR IN AN ACOUSTIC ROOM...
Amir market his reviews as the ONLY ONE which we can trust, ( i trust them ) and he market his set of measures as ACOUSTIC truth which is erroneous and i did not trust this claim at all ... Why ?
Because the measured electric field of some component or circuit does not by themselves simply equate =the acoustically measured Fourier field IN A ROOM and this acousticcaly analysed Fourier field in a ROOM does not equate = the psycho-acoustic working of the brain non linearly and in his time dependant domain... Do you catch WHY IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REDUCE QUALITIES AS WHOLE TO ABSTRACT MEASURED NUMBERS or abstract concepts linearly related... So good ansd useful the Fourier maps are they are not the audible perceived ears/brain teritory... Psycho-acoustic science is not a science setlled yet and reducible to physical acoustic and electricity... We can correlate some measures wiith perceived quality as in the psycho-acoustic experiment of Magnasco and Oppenheim, but this experiment prove that all claims by Amir equating electrical measures with audible qualities is a TECHNOLOGICAL ABUSE motivated by marketing imperatives not science...
Blind test had nothing to do directly with a training of the ears in music , or in acoustic implicating an incremental thousand listening experiments all INTERRELATED to give at the end an acoustic room , not a perfect one, but an incredible one able to give me all factors of a good musical experience... An acoustic concept as holography, listener envelopment or timbre cannot be perceived only for the reason young ears are able to take an audiologist test...The young person must learn the concept before perceiving the complex object , being it timbre or holography, acuity is not enough at all... These concept must be understood by EXPERINMENTS in a room and then to be under the control of the ears/brain imposing the right acoustic constraints to create them or controlling them... A room is like the varying lense of microscope, it is the variation of the acoustic conditions that make you able to FOCUS on the right aspect of the phenomenon... Then imposing blind test to an acoustician or a musician is a valid test in experimental psycho-acoustic , but the way Amir use this valid test is a kind of abuse against people And his bragging about audiology test resemble a teen bragging...... Not science... When i did my room acoustic and tuning i was already old, and my ears was not the same as 40 years ago... But my ears are healthy for a man of my age and i learned and created the room acoustic so imperfect it was, i created it FOR ME , not as a MODEL IDEAL room for all ears and PERFECT... But so imperfect it can be i can aussure you that there is no relation with the same speakers inside the room between before and after the completion of the process... This was the goal... LEARNING ACOUSTIC was the goal too... And in this i learned why audio is based on psycho-acoustic , not on the electrical measures of Amir...
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Umm, where did I claim that? Plus its a fools errand to seek negative proof, not mine. I'm far more interested in you demonstrating that you can, especially with someone else running the test. Sans any view of the signal analyzers of course 😉.
Ok, so you confirm those are indeed signal analyzers, Oscilloscopes etc that could theoretically real time analyze and identify signals, visibly. Cool.
Well, there is no way for us to know that definitively now, is there? That's why you didn't grade your own Math tests in school (and score 100% all the time!). It's good to have independent oversight. | ||
Hi Chayro, Sensory Evaluation classes in the Wine Industry teach us that the olfactory sense of smell is interpreted; the only one of our senses that is not 'technically' hard-wired. Some humans can be 'trained' to distinguish up to 1,000 different smells. Each humans mouth, nose etc. are different. For example when we would place and old 3-ring binder life-saver on our tongues and place a small drop of blue dye in the middle hole we could count the taste buds in the center of the life-saver-shaped hole. Those who had lots of little taste buds were 'super tasters' and medium amounts 'tasters' and those with few big blotchy ones were called 'non-tasters'. Each of them totally valid for the person whose tongue we were looking at. We tried different taste sensation like bitterness from caffeine, or sweetness from sugar. Each taste was sensed from a different area of our mouth. The lesson we learned was we are all physiologically different. What tastes good to you may not taste good to me; so make sure you put at least 3-different wines on the table to try and please everyone! You can see where this is going, if you like a wine reviewers taste then you will like his wines, no matter how he measures his taste in the wine, you both have a similar set of physiological taste buds and olfactory sensory apparatus. So it's not too hard to understand that audio senses are also interpreted to some degree based on lots of physical inputs and from most importantly life experiences. We could never understand why the teachers promoted the old school European wines over the fruit forward California ones, until we had enough tastes under our belts to gain a base-line of understanding from which our sensory evaluation could take place. Thus no matter how many types of audio equipment one may listen to or measure, if you don't have the same taste in sound as the reviewer then it matters not because like it or not sound is an interpreted experience. Trust me we put super expensive, super highly revered wines next to those that were not, and it was always the same thing, 30% liked, 30% did not like, %40 didn't care that much. If you put 30 people in a sound testing environment, good math and statistics will tell you the same spread will recur over and over, cost is irrelevant, and personal choice is all that matters. So, find a reviewer that has your taste in sound and follow them.
Cheers Mate | ||
I see where you got confused. Almost all of the ASR video content has the analyzer in the background. None of these tests were run during that video. Every test I have been showing predate my youtube channel by 5 or more years (see the dates in ABX tests and the ones for videos). In the video, I am just showing the results, not running them then. This should have been quite obvious. As such, your claim that I had an analyzer running at the same time of the ABX testing is totally false. | ||
This is a bunch of nebulous claims. I don’t know what you have seen. What was hard about it. Or how it generated worst results than sighted. Such claims have been examined. For example audiophiles claim they need long term testing vs short. Clark led such a study for his local audiophile group by creating a black box that generated X amount of distortion. Audiophiles took these home but could not hear the distortion. Yet, another group with an ABX box and quick switching, not only detected that difference but eve a lower one! See my digest of that paper here. AES Paper Digest: Sensitivity and Reliability of ABX Blind Testing
See how I provide specifics to back what I say? Why do you think mere claims should be sufficient otherwise? | ||
Meaning what exactly? When someone here says DAC A sounds great and DAC B sounds like crap, how is that not a claim made under his test conditions? Heck, you don't even know his test conditions. At least with ABX tests, we have a protocol and way of documenting the results as I have been showing. If you are saying someone can create a test where you can't tell the difference even if an audible difference exists, that is a truism. This is why we have specification such as ITU BS1116 on what a proper test is. The issue is that audiophiles as a whole are terrible as a group in detecting small differences. This is why @soundfield is so confident that anyone saying or even showing the result of passing such tests must be lying or cheating. As I have explained, we have a responsibility to create a proper test and give listeners every chance to pass a test, not work hard to make sure they don't. Before you say ABX tests make it hard, well, I am showing you that I can pass them. So that is not a valid excuse if you are really hearing what you are claiming. Really, audiophiles routinely claim that making a tweak to their system makes a night and day difference. So much so that the wife in the kitchen hears it as well. If so, it should be walk in the part to pass the same in ABX test. If you can't with identical stimulus do that, then you need to learn why your sighted test was faulty. Don't go looking for problems in such a blind test. | ||
What the audiologist does is exactly that: whether a signal can be detected under the conditions of the test. They even play noise and then a tone to see if you can hear one over the other. Seems like you have neither taken an audiologist test, nor an ABX. As to multiple trials, that is exactly what I showed. Each row represents a randomization of the samples and you are asked the question again:
Above, the test was repeated 19 times and I got 17 right making the probability that I was guessing less than 0.0%. As to multiple listeners, that is if we want to establish detection thresholds for a population. In the case of a personal challenge, if you pass a test like above, it is a significant factor that calls for standing up and paying attention. This is orthogonal to what an ABX test is. So no, there is no confusion here. @kevn said he passed the test of high-res vs CD but provided no evidence whatsoever. And the test that he said he did run, is not about high-res vs CD. For my part, I took whatever challenges were common at the time and ran the in a proper program to see if I could tell the difference. Have you taken an ABX test and if so, can you post the outcome of any? | ||
@soundfield
Nope. I presented him two speaker frequency response measurements and asked him if he gets nothing out of them and that was his answer. Here is the post again (cant get the link, it is just a few posts above yours):
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Well, a good test would have both positive and negative controls. Training also. | ||
And flat FR is sometimes boring. Virtually useless and perhaps harmful for deciding which sounds better.
He must be talking about an amplifier or DAC. Loudspeakers have an infinite number of FRs radiating 3 dimensionally, not "A" flat FR. Speaking of which, your Salon2s have good on/off axis FR and full bandwidth, no subs needed. You game for a blind test vs some garage speakers at PAF '24? I don't have a pair of large remote turntables and AVA ABX remote box, etc, etc, nor do any blind listening tests, so have no fear, they'll do just fine. | ||
Only if you promise to be one of the everyone. It wouldn’t be my first large scale/show blind test, only the first where participants would be aware. | ||
Practice what you preach. Are you incapable of feeling shame for what amounts to a contrived (and poorly constructed) analogy in your rebuttal? Practically everything you came up with reeks with desperation in an attempt to draw parallels of what passes for the rigors of testing in audio reproduction (if there really is such a thing) to what can be accomplished in ensuring accuracy in watches and the way they are measured, not to mention what even the highest standards of watch accuracy are and how they're determined. Have fun with your scopes. All the best, | ||
Wise and right on the target...
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I would *love* for you to set up such a blind test for everyone who comes to your room there. Are you going to do that and publish the results at the end? Or is it that you don't want to alienate potential buyers of your speakers so that is the last thing you would want to do? | ||
There is no such video. Stop making stuff up AJ. I have never, ever used an analyzer when taking these blind tests. You don't even understand the nature of these tests and whether an analyzer can even help you. Take the Archimago test. That test relies on bit depth of content, not anything that you can analyzer with an audio measurement device. If you don't believe me, go ahead and show the difference using said analyzer. Why is it that you are not complaining about @kevn? Did he or did he not pass the test of high-res vs standard not just by himself, but a few of his friends? You are not going to answer that, are you? | ||
You have the start of a great analogy. Sadly you got the middle and ending quite wrong. Do imagine that this is the watch market except that all that anyone cares about is accuracy of time keeping. Manufacturers learn this and claim that their watches are more accurate than any other watch. Except, unlike the real watch market, they provide no measure of that accuracy. Imagine further that companies realize that since no proof is needed, any all things can be sold under the guise of better accuracy. Companies come to market selling aftermarket watchbands that they say improves fidelity. Ergo, they can charge more for some of these bands than you can buy entire watches. This goes on for a while until a retired engineer, technologies and manager from said watch market says to people on his watch forum that he has highly instrumentation to measure such accuracy. He starts to measure a few watches he has bought and shows how some of very accurate while the others are not even though they cost more money. He publishes that result and next thing you know, watch owners want to know where their watches land. So they start to send him their watches -- some cheap and some very expensive and he tests and publishes them. Soon it becomes obvious that how much you paid for something does NOT at all predict how accurate said watch is. And that the claims made by companies can trivially be shown to be wrong. Watch owners love the clarity the above testing brings to market and increasingly support that activity by visiting the site, sending more product, and helping offset the cost of running this activity. You would think every watch owner would be in favor of this. But no, prior to this development, folks were looking at a watch and without any evidence, claiming that they have found the most accurate watch. But here comes the above testing showing that to be the wrong statement. A logical person would abandon the old ways and join the new. They would not go on another forum and make up accusations that are trivially shown to be wrong. For example, claim gets made that the engineer above doesn't even wear a watch. All he does is look at the graphs of watches. He shows that he not only has a watch, but multiple ones at all price points. No matter. Folks start to get personal with him. They accuse him for being in this thing for money. They can't find any evidence of it but hey, if you make the accusation often enough, maybe it sticks. In a direct one on one exchange, the very same folks don't have any facts to back their assertion of being able to tell how accurate a watch is based on just wearing said watch and measuring how long it takes for an apple to fall from the tree by counting under their breath. No amount of telling them that is not accurate enough to count to fraction of a second gets them to listen. So here we are. We, I and literally tens of thousands of your audiophile friends try to bring more data and science/engineering to the table. You don't like that? No big deal. Just don't make contrived analogies as if that will amount to anything. | ||
So Amir, if you knew all about blind testing at MS, how do you explain this AFTER you retired?
Which version of Amir is to be believed above?
Ah, the video where you are sitting in front of all the electronic analyzers that you used to visually real time analyze the ABX signals? How many tests have you passed not run by Amir? Would you do a proctored one at PAF 2024? Or only doctored?
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40+ years of research into this topic shows that you are highly unlikely, when you don't the identity of those speakers, to prefer one with resonances and all those frequency response errors. Regardless, let's state that your assertion that I responded to is profoundly wrong:
In the hands of anyone with any familiarity with them, they are powerful tools to determine fidelity and tonality of those speakers. And clearly, absolutely clearly, show the design mistakes in one of them. The right response from you would have been that you were talking about electronics and not speakers and headphones. But you are deciding to double down with "I may this" or "I may that." W | ||
@ossicle2brain let’s listen to a magico M9 with a SVS prime, that’s a good combo, right? ignoring measurements puts you at a very expensive disadvantage. | ||
This shows a complete misunderstanding as to the nature of double-blind testing in audio, such as ABX testing. Such tests are not designed to test the listener - that’s the role of an audiologist. The listener isn’t under test at all. What’s being tested is whether two signals can be distinguished under the conditions of the test. That’s why the best blind test programs include multiple listeners and multiple trials. Some might argue that, if a specific listener claims to expect a difference between, say, a hi-res and lo-res signal, that an ABX test with him is "testing the listener." But that’s mistaken. Such a test could only reveal whether that listener could distinguish a difference under the conditions of the test. Again, this why is why multiple tests yield more useful information. It’s rather odd that Amir is so preoccupied with conducting measurements that he sometimes doesn’t bother to listen to the devices he tests, and yet on the other hand issues such proclamations about the tests he’s claimed to have "passed." As an aside, conducting a proper audio double-blind test is tricky business. I've seen it done and it's not as easy as it looks. When they’re well conducted, I’ve found that many differences become harder to distinguish than might be expected. When they are improperly conducted, such a test has no advantage over a sighted test and can yield misleading results. | ||
@kevn here is my take on true narcissism; “I don’t know a topic, therefore no one knows this topic”. there is very little a physics perspective that is not known about EMI, close to 0. You may not know much about it, per your own admission, but physicists do, and asserting that we need to learn more to understand the interactions because you don’t, but others do, is the very definition of narcissism.
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"So you are saying that you learn nothing from measurements of these two speakers?"
Yeah they have different frequency response charts by your methods. I would avoid looking at that before listening so I know I don’t have a bias. And flat FR is sometimes boring. Virtually useless and perhaps harmful for deciding which sounds better. Maybe I like resonances at those fregs. |
