Do the best audio designers put their ears before the numbers.

Not since the days of Peter Walker would any designer say they don't even bother to listen to their design, but I doubt there's even a single one today that relies entirely upon their own hearing. 

Listening is usually only mentioned as a last minute check that some horrible miscalculation hasn't occurred, eg with crossover design etc. Measurement matters, it always did previously, and even more now. 

Advances in measurement techniques and our understanding of how to best apply them will eventually render listening whilst designing altogether superfluous, if it already hasn't done so.
Time is money and the days of designing exclusively by ear have long gone.

Products with serious anomalies will be ruthlessly exposed in today's market. No sane designer will risk that. Even Rega, reluctant as ever to publish data, have had to weather a few storms regarding turntable speed issues. 

Gradually there should be an increasing amount of homogeneity between different designs and products as measurements such as drive unit dispersion increasingly begin to coincide.

Hopefully one day similar loudspeakers will be used to make recordings all over world, thereby ensuring a degree of consistency as the BBC attempted with their designs. Until then some inconsistencies will unfortunately remain.

Audio design has always been a science and not an interpretive art form. The designer's primary task is to build a product which faithfully reproduces the signal fed to it all the way from the microphone to the finished audio file/pressing.

The decision to apply selective EQ/gain is usually up to the listener and not the designer.

In fact the only current exception I can think of is Russell Kaufman who also believes loudspeaker damping causes more harm than good. Apparently, although Kaufman still puts his listening impressions first he also relies upon hours and hours of measurement. 

'At Russell K, we’ve conducted thousands of hours of research into the effect that different crossover types have on the sound from 6db (gentle roll off) to 24db (very steep roll off). We’ve discovered that it’s the combination of drive units mechanical roll off and the crossover working in harmony that produces the best sound.'

http://www.russellk.co.uk/the_concept.php

@jl35

’there is a Nelson Pass interview on youtube, maybe with Steve Guttenberg, where he talks about the combination of measurements and listening...’


Yes, but I think everyone says that. They understand that the consumers want the assurance that the product has been listened to, at least once. What they don’t say is that they trust their ears more.



@teo_audio

’The ear is king for the vast number of high end audio designers.’

I seriously doubt that. How many of them can still hear flat up til 16kHz? I doubt whether I can.

How many of them can identify cables, amplifiers, digital sources etc whilst simply blindfolded, nevermind abx controlled?

You know the answer to that as well as I do, none. Not a single one of them.

You also know that testing equipment can. Every time. Obviously.

Would you like to test yourself against something like the Klippel analyser system?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.teufelaudio.com/the-klippel-analyser-system/amp/


It’s also worth bearing in mind when Edison conducted his live versus recorded tone tests a century ago the sighted audience could not tell the difference between a vocalist and a shellac recording!

https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2015/05/is-it-live-or-is-it-edison/


’The reason for this.. is we don’t know exactly how the ear works and thus we don’t know how to place what the ear hears across the engineering measurements as a form of comparison and weighting of each in the comparison.’

Or if everyone hears the same. No, we don’t, but that’s just another good reason to carefully examine all the data, isn’t it?

The goal is to create accuracy of playback. How it’s later interpreted is beyond the control of the designer and isn’t the issue here.


As far as I can see the only excuse for not replying upon the technology available is if you don’t have access to it.

Thankfully the software is gradually becoming more readily available and sometimes alternatives can be found.

The sheer cost of an anechoic chamber prohibits access and means many designers will test and measure their loudspeakers suspended outdoors.

It’s an act of humanity to present the consumer with the best chance to experience whatever was on the recording. The rest (setup, room, hearing etc) is under the control of the listener.

You’d want to, at the least, give them a fair chance, wouldn’t you?