Have we lost civility and respect on Audio forums?
I think we have. I have seen many discussion on audio forums and how nasty they can become when you have people disagreeing. Seems like there are a lot more know it alls now. I been in 20 years and I can still learn. But I also know I know quite a bit. Like cables can enhance the sound and higher end well designed gear can truly be ear candy special. Is this just on audio forums or the internet period.
By the way i already answered to that partly with a scientific article about aural memory i posted for you somewhere above ...
A.M. is distributed in the brain on many levels and layers in many different parts of the brain ... Guess why ?
Aural memory is a complex phenomenon , not a simple retrieval measured set of bits stored on a disc...
In human the gesturing body/brain produce sounds as much as much as he perceive and memorize them as meaningful , we assimilated then aural qualities as felt created events and interpreted aural meanings with all the body and associate sounds with gestures and other perceptions and conditions in the environment ...
It is why there is more about sound perceptive qualities detection, interpretation,memorization and retrieval than mere measures in Hertz and decibel detected by the ears/brain and verified in a double blind test ...
Anyway ... as you said you cannot made head and tails of my posts and you tuned out ..😊
I am too stupid or too bright for you , or the two at the same time ... I dont know ..
Now to understand why aural memory is a complex problem not as simple as your blind test experiments, read this article and go back to me and explain to me what this means ... Then we will discuss science not blind testing of audiophiles ...
«Phys.org)—For the first time, physicists have found that humans can discriminate a sound’s frequency (related to a note’s pitch) and timing (whether a note comes before or after another note) more than 10 times better than the limit imposed by the Fourier uncertainty principle. ....
The results have implications for how we understand the way that the brain processes sound, a question that has interested scientists for a long time. In the early 1970s, scientists found hints that human hearing could violate the uncertainty principle, but the scientific understanding and technical capabilities were not advanced enough to enable a thorough investigation. As a result, most of today’s sound analysis models are based on old theories that may now be revisited in order to capture the precision of human hearing.
"In seminars, I like demonstrating how much information is conveyed in sound by playing the sound from the scene in Casablanca where Ilsa pleads, "Play it once, Sam," Sam feigns ignorance, Ilsa insists," Magnasco said. "You can recognize the text being spoken, but you can also recognize the volume of the utterance, the emotional stance of both speakers, the identity of the speakers including the speaker’s accent (Ingrid’s faint Swedish, though her character is Norwegian, which I am told Norwegians can distinguish; Sam’s AAVE [African American Vernacular English]), the distance to the speaker (Ilsa whispers but she’s closer, Sam loudly feigns ignorance but he’s in the back), the position of the speaker (in your house you know when someone’s calling you from another room, in which room they are!), the orientation of the speaker (looking at you or away from you), an impression of the room (large, small, carpeted).
"The issue is that many fields, both basic and commercial, in sound analysis try to reconstruct only one of these, and for that they may use crude models of early hearing that transmit enough information for their purposes. But the problem is that when your analysis is a pipeline, whatever information is lost on a given stage can never be recovered later. So if you try to do very fancy analysis of, let’s say, vocal inflections of a lyric soprano, you just cannot do it with cruder models."
By ruling out many of the simpler models of auditory processing, the new results may help guide researchers to identify the true mechanism that underlies human auditory hyperacuity. Understanding this mechanism could have wide-ranging applications in areas such as speech recognition; sound analysis and processing; and radar, sonar, and radio astronomy.
"You could use fancier methods in radar or sonar to try to analyze details beyond uncertainty, since you control the pinging waveform; in fact, bats do," Magnasco said.
Building on the current results, the researchers are now investigating how human hearing is more finely tuned toward natural sounds, and also studying the temporal factor in hearing.
"Such increases in performance cannot occur in general without some assumptions," Magnasco said. "For instance, if you’re testing accuracy vs. resolution, you need to assume all signals are well separated. We have indications that the hearing system is highly attuned to the sounds you actually hear in nature, as opposed to abstract time-series; this comes under the rubric of ’ecological theories of perception’ in which you try to understand the space of natural objects being analyzed in an ecologically relevant setting, and has been hugely successful in vision. Many sounds in nature are produced by an abrupt transfer of energy followed by slow, damped decay, and hence have broken time-reversal symmetry. We just tested that subjects do much better in discriminating timing and frequency in the forward version than in the time-reversed version (manuscript submitted). Therefore the nervous system uses specific information on the physics of sound production to extract information from the sensory stream.
"We are also studying with these same methods the notion of simultaneity of sounds. If we’re listening to a flute-piano piece, we will have a distinct perception if the flute ’arrives late’ into a phrase and lags the piano, even though flute and piano produce extended sounds, much longer than the accuracy with which we perceive their alignment. In general, for many sounds we have a clear idea of one single ’time’ associated to the sound, many times, in our minds, having to do with what action we would take to generate the sound ourselves (strike, blow, etc)." »
We also know, based on a large body of research that humans can not accurately compare an aural memory to real time sound. Not even close. And we know through other studies that it is a cause for humans, all humans, to misidentify differences in sound where none exist.
What is really dumb is to think that they continually miss real audible phenomena that is only detected by audiophiles under non controlled conditions.
It almost sounds like you’re living with absolute certainty that we know everything there is to know.
It is worse than that. He insists that he knows all there is to know:
I know, as much as it can be known that basic cables are audibly transparent ... I know as much as something can be known that power cords make no actual difference ...
It’s not possible to have a real conversation with someone who believes they know it all.
EDIT - And then look at what he just claims literally in the post below:
“Dude, I came from a different engineering discipline (nothing to do with audio) where folks could die if we make a coupla innocent li’l mistakes. Hence, extreme levels of rigor was required and we couldn’t afford to do any kind of fake parade like you.”
wow you are so cool. I am in awe…
”In fact, i was hinting on some phenomena we’ve studied in another discipline for other applications (nothing do do with audio), which clearly should have some implication for audio. Some apparently celebrated speaker designers i’ve spoken to had never heard of it (got real glazy eyed when i brought it up).”
what you misidentified as a Doppler effect is wave interference. It’s about as basic as it gets. If there really are speaker designers that are unaware of it stay the hell away from their products. It’s pretty basic stuff in speaker design. It doesn’t just happen with sound in the ultrasonic range. Nor does it just happen with tones that are close in frequency. It’s an issue with multi-driver integration. The overlapping wave forms can do the same thing. It’s also something we live with, well most audiophiles live with because of the interaction between two speakers. It’s called comb filtering. Again this is audio 101. Jeez it used to be how people tuned guitars.
“I am guessing internet warrior Scott had never heard of it either. But, here he is, pretending to be the instantaneous expert.”
and you would be guessing wrong. I never claimed to be any kind of expert either. But if knowing about wave interactions where you set the bar…
I understood by your own post claims that you are an expert in cable transparency and an advocate of blind tests as the main solution to all subjectivist audiophiles superstitions ... No ?
“Dude, I came from a different engineering discipline (nothing to do with audio) where folks could die if we make a coupla innocent li’l mistakes. Hence, extreme levels of rigor was required and we couldn’t afford to do any kind of fake parade like you.”
wow you are so cool. I am in awe…
”In fact, i was hinting on some phenomena we’ve studied in another discipline for other applications (nothing do do with audio), which clearly should have some implication for audio. Some apparently celebrated speaker designers i’ve spoken to had never heard of it (got real glazy eyed when i brought it up).”
what you misidentified as a Doppler effect is wave interference. It’s about as basic as it gets. If there really are speaker designers that are unaware of it stay the hell away from their products. It’s pretty basic stuff in speaker design. It doesn’t just happen with sound in the ultrasonic range. Nor does it just happen with tones that are close in frequency. It’s an issue with multi-driver integration. The overlapping wave forms can do the same thing. It’s also something we live with, well most audiophiles live with because of the interaction between two speakers. It’s called comb filtering. Again this is audio 101. Jeez it used to be how people tuned guitars.
“I am guessing internet warrior Scott had never heard of it either. But, here he is, pretending to be the instantaneous expert.”
and you would be guessing wrong. I never claimed to be any kind of expert either. But if knowing about wave interactions where you set the bar…
Ah yes, indeed....Scott’s got Chat GPT and some AI support these days at his fingertips...He will do a ctrl C, ctrl V, paste some crap and there he will be on a forum, looking like an instantaneous genius for the poor old Audiogon crowd.
So, how do we catch Scott’s fake parade boys?
Hmmm, aha....i suppose we could ask him to develop a concurrent run CFD model feeding its output into a FEM tool for modeling some events in an acoustic chamber, for instance. We would like to study the damage susceptibility of some electronic components from vibration input derived from an acoustic envelope, typical of launch environments (in such a test chamber)..... Now, some masochistic aerospace PhD will cry all day, sweat blood for a year and come up with something. But, now... Scott’s bluff would get caught. Chat GPT would bail on Scott real quick there boys. 😁 bwaaahahahaha
“I understood by your own post claims that you are an expert in cable transparency”
That is *your* misunderstanding. It does not take any kind of expertise to understand cable transparency.
”and an advocate of blind tests as the main solution to all subjectivist audiophiles superstitions ... No ?”
I am an advocate of blind protocols in any testing for differences or preferences. Has nothing to do with subjectivism vs objectivism. Terms which are mostly misused to identify with audiophiles that accept science in audio vs those who reject it. But even more so than that I am an advocate of time synchronized quick switching comparisons. Both are vital for getting reliable results. How other audiophiles choose to do their comparisons is on them.
“Ah yes, indeed....Scott’s got Chat GPT and some AI support these days at his fingertips...”
Are you really so bedazzled by a very basic understanding of wave interaction that you would think it is so unreachable that my comments which were right off the top of my head would require Chat GPT or some AI to access? Ok….. that really is a low bar. That’s hilarious.
The two side subjectivist and objectivist are not divided between scientists on one side and superstitious dudes on the other side ...😁
This division exist because some people trust first and often more their own hearing habits and personal histories in listening to create their own audio system than only measured specs ...
The other side trust mostly if not only and completely the electrical measures specs of the pieces of gear over their own ears to create their own audio system ...They ask for double blind test precisely for this reason about any perceived change for any claims about sound qualities ...
The fact that you mischaracterized the real distinctions between the two groups by reducing one side to supertitious or self deception and the other side to be scientific , reveal your own partiality and misunderstanding ..
i myself identify with no side... the two sides may be beside the main acoustics points and matter for different reasons pertaining to their own divergent biases...
I trust my ears but i learned that we can trust it only by acoustics experiments ...then i am neither a subjectivist nor an objectivist...
But it is more wise to trust his common sense and ears when buying something than only confide in measured specs after blind test ...
Nobody is against blind test but this is an impractical way to design an audio system in his acoustic environment by the way ...
but it is useful if our mission in life is to mock and debunk an owner of a costly cable for sure ... 😊
Then you speak as an ideologue or a propagandist... Common sense is my preference ...And psycho-acoustics where subjectivity and objectivity are correlated and studied as not separable...
I am an advocate of blind protocols in any testing for differences or preferences. Has nothing to do with subjectivism vs objectivism. Terms which are mostly misused to identify with audiophiles that accept science in audio vs those who reject it. But even more so than that I am an advocate of time synchronized quick switching comparisons. Both are vital for getting reliable results. How other audiophiles choose to do their comparisons is on them.
It’s true 90% of what gets posted here is opinion and everybody has one.
That’s pretty much the case with high end audio in general. Some opinions carry more weight than others and people may battle along the way to wear the crown of hifi know-it-all..
That’s perfectly OK if done civilly. Opinions from credible sources can be valuable if one does all their homework properly.
But behaving like a yahoo in order to win some silly hifi argument is simply petty in my eyes. With all the problems in the world, people want to fight about their luxurious hifis? Please, give everyone a break!
For those who value concrete facts, other sites that focus more on actually measuring the performance of gear will add a lot of value. If that matters to you, you might even save quite a bit of money and time along the way.
But even more so than that I am an advocate of time synchronized quick switching comparisons. Both are vital for getting reliable results. How other audiophiles choose to do their comparisons is on them.
By the sound of your statement, it looks like you never went and listened to Darko’s interview with Paul Barton, did you? Your way of quick switching is just a parlor trick, whereas the one you said I made up was actually done by the real experts.
I have to give you credit for sticking to your guns. That’s some real obstinance.
“ Your way of quick switching is just a parlor trick, whereas the one you said I made up was actually done by the real experts.”
Real experts know that the gold standard for scientific studies isn’t a “parlor trick” and understand why time synchronized quick switching comparisons are mandatory for comparisons. Since you seem to actually acknowledge
Toole and Olive as actual legitimate science why don’t you read u on what they have to say about it. I’ll give you a hint, there is a reason HK spent 7 figures on their speaker shuffler to do DBT comparisons. Do some real research for a change
Speaking for myself, I feel that I’ve gained respect for the experiences and opinions of other audiophiles by participating in these forums. I came in with my biases, expressed my doubts about some of the claims I read, and through further discourse have become more aware of the limits of my personal experience. Some of the stuff I will never be willing to invest in due to the very high prices, so I’ll never be able to get the extended experience to better understand what it might have to offer. I’d still like to see more concrete evidence about exactly what these ultra high end things do, but I’m far less inclined to quickly write off their value for those who are able and willing to pay. I feel I better understand my position in the spectrum of audiophile experience and expertise, and as a result I’m happily satisfied that while my choices do not reflect what is absolutely best, maybe not even the best I could afford if I was better informed, they are what fulfill my desires to a substantial degree while fitting within my means. I keep participating to become better informed. Over time it seems to be paying off because I've never had a system I enjoy as much as what I now have.
I think the same ... I call my actual experience with well embedded low cost system : a minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold passed ...
With costlier gear someone with acoustics knowledge may hope for a maximal acoustical satisfaction threshold...
i prefer to spoke about these two threshold experience than speaking about low-fi, mid-fi or Hi-fi Why ?
Because nevermind the gear price, anybody aiming for the best acoustic experience must adress , not only gear synergy , but acoustical refine control of the speakers/room , mechanical controls of vibrations/resonance, electrical control over the noise floor levels of the house-room-gear and also about EMI RFI controls... And even other secondary aspects ...
For subjectivist all is about taste which is not even wrong because acoustics factors are first and last objective parameters not tastes ...
For objectivist all is about electrical measures over taste... But if audio is not taste, taste there is in audio ...It is called ears/brain trained or untrained biases , innate or/and acquired biases... Biases are not bad or good by the way ...😊 We are not in the obligation to negate them in a blind test ...We can use them constructively in our own learning audio journey...If someone sell a product or design a product blins test are useful in the process ...
It is why i prefer psycho-acoustics basic to these two arguing opposite sides...
I believe our ears can be trained by acoustic experiments...And music education...
We can learn as much with a low cost system than someone with a high cost system...Or not... Learning is an attitude...
Musical ectasy with good sound in a minimal or in a maximal acoustical threshold is possible... We must learn the basic to be happy and not push ourself in frustration race of purchase...
Speaking for myself, I feel that I’ve gained respect for the experiences and opinions of other audiophiles by participating in these forums. I came in with my biases, expressed my doubts about some of the claims I read, and through further discourse have become more aware of the limits of my personal experience. Some of the stuff I will never be willing to invest in due to the very high prices, so I’ll never be able to get the extended experience to better understand what it might have to offer. I’d still like to see more concrete evidence about exactly what these ultra high end things do, but I’m far less inclined to quickly write off their value for those who are able and willing to pay. I feel I better understand my position in the spectrum of audiophile experience and expertise, and as a result I’m happily satisfied that while my choices do not reflect what is absolutely best, maybe not even the best I could afford if I was better informed, they are what fulfill my desires to a substantial degree while fitting within my means. I keep participating to become better informed. Over time it seems to be paying off because I’ve never had a system I enjoy as much as what I now have.
It’s so much safer to try to discredit someone who challenges your beliefs than to even try to have a real conversation with them ... And that is why it is impossible for you to have a real conversation with me on these issues in audio. You have to protect your emotional investment.
"Ad hominem ...Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself."
And - you’ve made a circular argument to boot! That’s another logical fallacy:
"Circular reasoning ... also known as circular logic) is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with."
And now you claim:
I don’t believe I know it all.
C’mon. You’ve insisted you know all there is to know on some audio matters.
I know, as much as it can be known that basic cables are audibly transparent ... I know as much as something can be known that power cords make no actual difference ...
Real conversation is possible when we recognize that our mutual conceptions could be and are usually "beliefs" ...
Using double blind test to protect your belief in a set of electrical measures as the ONLY measure of truth is not science. it is techno-cultism...
I already used simple blind test many times... I did not need to submit to a double blind test to convince you ... My system/room convince me and it is enough ... There is only one person here accusing others of "irrational beliefs" and asking before any discussion to double blind test standard... Everybody who did not do it is irrational and superstitious gullible consumers for you..
Do you see that we are not the only one with a "belief" here ? All the others here live with a set of perception which are well founded or not, deceptive or not, anyway they "perceive" it as real for them ...Their perceptions can be falsified by themselves without need for your double blind public test... They may use simple blind test for a cable for themselves... As i did... It is enough for someone who want to create his system experience...
Your belief that all audio phenomenon must be reduced to a known set of electrical measures cannot be falsified ..it is not science but techno-cultism...
Do you get the difference... Nobody here saying that their cables make a difference try to convince you, they only state their experience as a fact for them , right or wrong ... The refusal of their experience as only that, a subjective testimony, by you in the name of an unfalsifiable limited set of electrical measures and in the name of a future impractical double blind test is like religious propaganda ...It is the reverse attitude of high price cables marketers publicity... I hate publicity and dogmas be it from ideologues in techno cultism or from marketers...
Myself i will keep simple blind test as a useful tool with no public objectivist official protocol as enough for my needs ...I am not into scientist faith, i am in the simple journey to create minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold ...And by the way i modified all my low cost cables myself ...
“Real conversations” between people with opposing beliefs can not happen if either party is unwilling to even consider the possibility that they may be wrong.
I think the difference is most people don’t want their beliefs to be challenged even if they are wrong. As I have said before, if the basic cables I use actually are not audibly transparent I really do want to know. But it’s going to take verifiable objective evidence to persuade me. Not anecdotal evidence, “trust me” testimonials or arguments from authority. If something as basic as verifiable evidence is too high a bar to clear that should be a huge red flag.
So if you hear a difference with your basic cables compared to others out there, you won't believe your own ears until you find a way to measure it? Must suck to be you.
@wharfyi remember when that happened to you. My daughter punched a hole in the cone of my Gato FM6 speaker when she was 2. lol 😂 I lost my mind that day. We had the biggest kid adult daddy daughter argument in the world that day. She won’t even go near my set up anymore. lol. But I agree I post a thread like this. I get people calling me a shill. Saying I’m hurting in sales etc. look we let you try before you buy at INFIGO cables. It’s crazy some of the disrespectful stuff people say. Like we are 5 year olds who can tell a difference in how smthg sounds. Lol 😂 Folks will take a thread and turn it into world war 6 if you let them.
@calvinj-"My daughter punched a hole in the cone of my Gato FM6 speaker when she was 2. lol 😂 I lost my mind that day."
Ouch! I hope you were able to repair it.
I suspect others on the A'gon chat board can share stories of pets, family, friends, and others who did "something" that caused understandably apoplectic responses.
Someone I private messaged with here described the nastier A'gon members as angry adults posting from their parents' basements. I got a big chuckle from that.
“So if you hear a difference with your basic cables compared to others out there, you won’t believe your own ears until you find a way to measure it?”
If I can reliably identify a difference under controlled listening I would believe I heard a difference. By the way, I did not say all cables sound the same. Some are actually colored.
If you could not reliably identify a difference between your cables and basic cables under controlled listening tests would you believe your ears?
Better yet, since for all I know your cables may actually be audibly colored. If I took an original hi res file and the same file that has been run through a basic cable a pro DAC using a stock Uber thin power cord, another basic cable, a pro ADC with a basic power cord, run that to a basic CPU/ server powered by a stock power cord through yet another basic cable and repeated that cycle ten times. So in the end the recording has been run through 30 basic cables, 10 basic CPUs/servers, 10 pro DACs, 10 pro ADCs powered by 30 stock power cords all run through basic power strips. If you could not reliably tell the difference between that 10th generation hi res file that has been through all those allegedly highly colored stages and the original file would you believe your ears?
”It must suck to be you.”
Hate to disappoint you but life is good. But more to the point, I am enjoying audio far far more now than I ever did when I bought into all the BS and was wasting enormous amounts of money on “state of the art high end” cables and power conditioners that only provided a buyers euphoria and no real improvement in sound. Once I got off that merry go round and started focusing on things that matter, using basic understanding of measured performance and correlations between that and personal preferences, and pursuing cutting edge technology both the quality of sound and the enjoyment of my system went up by leaps and bounds.
@wharfyyou are so right. I had to order another driver. They were special made. 800$. I had to spend 200 getting it repaired. But it is as good as new. Some of them are angry. Mad to be mad. Mad cause you spent a lot on your system. Mad because we won’t let them tell us how stupid we are for doing it! Just mad. Just nasty. Wouldn’t dare talk this tough in person. Lol. Funny.
He is not a troll ... He said it himself in a post above ... Stop calling everybody who dissent with you trolling ...
He was only someone who was credulous enough to buy anything very costly and did not take it lightly when he discovered the hard way that price tags dont equate acoustics knowledge ...Read his posts ...
Then if i read him correctly he embarked in a crusade even against his will against audiophiles and audiophile market products putting all of them in the same bag ...Like a children reacting to a negative experience always in the same way without any discerning ability ...
Now he does not even believe his ears if he is not doubly blind ...Amazing human !
The very interesting part of his audio life , the BACCH filters , he dont spoke about it much here , too busy to impose double blind test to any cables owners and repeating the same song ...
He is not nasty but polite as much as most of us by the way ...Blindly opinionated is not being nasty ...
We must stay civil and polite ... Arguments matter ... Name calling is childish ...
If i criticize in one sentence his saying i will say that it is complete misunderstanding of science to impose in any one listening room the same standard protocol on the listener than in a laboratory... The way we listen music is necessarily in a relaxed way in our own subjective world ... Meaningful acoustic experience of someone relaxing in his room cannot be negated as such because it is "unscientific" ...
Sound experience can be objectively parametrized and it is, thanks to great engineers and physicist , but it stay also a pure subjective experience ...
It is not taste, but taste there is ....😁
😊
«Ridicule kill everyone but kill "scientists" in a special way »-- Anonymus Nobel looser 🧐
Why do you people keep feeding this SW troll. He is a nasty little fellow.
@wharfy@jacobsdad2000im done. I tried to get away from him but he has an apple AirTag on my posts. I’m done. I wonder what he has in his system or if he even has a system.
“im done. I tried to get away from him but he has an apple AirTag on my posts. I’m done. I wonder what he has in his system or if he even has a system.”
honestly, I don’t even know what an Apple AirTag is. As for my system… I am in China working until the end of February. When I get back I am diving into a major rebuild of my dedicated stereo room. After that I am looking at possibly doing one major upgrade with the Trinnov Waveforming technology. It should all be done sometime in late April. I expect the results to be state of the art.
I live in Las Vegas. If you find yourself in our little town you would be welcome to come hear for yourself whether or not it is state of the art.
A subjectivist judges sound quality based on their personal preferences. The same way someone would judge food or art. If one finds the sound to their liking and then declares that to be good that is subjectivism.
An objectivist judges sound quality on accuracy to some reference. Maybe the recording or maybe live sound.
So we had people like Harry Pearson who cared nothing about measurements or science but was an objectivist because he felt there was an objective reference, “the absolute sound” the sound of live acoustic music, against which the accuracy of audio playback could be judged.
Then you have people like Floyd Toole and Sean Olive who strictly evaluated sound quality in their research using proper time synchronized quick switching double blind tests but are subjectivists. All of their studies were based on listener preferences. All scoring of their tests were done with subjective ratings.
And yet many would label Harry Pearson as the poster child for subjectivism in audio and would consider Toole and Olive to be poster children for objectivism in audio.
...and I’m going to be totally rude and inconsiderate, ignoring all the fine (and the not-so-much) discussion and dis’ing that has occurred since pg. 2, 12/10, 8:14pm to reply to:
@2psyop , and Yes, I agree with you as well. There isn’t ever an adequate excuse for rude and inconsiderate behaviors. But there ’they’ are....🤷♂️
One can dial back the millennia to the one-celled organisms that started this whole morass, when 2 competed for some bit of nutrient where the ’winner’ not only got the bit from the other and consumed its’ competition in some unconscious sort of spite....
There’s been an awful lot of it, wayyyy beyond the warp and weft of this dialog...
A subjectivist use ONLY his ears to decide that a system is good or bad... the objectivist will not say that in this way, they will state that the subjectivist listen with his biases and tastes to pick up gear...
An objectivist will pick up gear by the electrical measured specs mainly, but a subjectivist will not agree to this bias favoring the measuring tool over the ears trained or untrained biases...
Then Scottwheel your description of the objectivist and subjectivisdt is at the same time very good but beside the point and beside the quarrels in opposite audio forums as audiogon and ASR ...
You definition is very good because by the choice of names of professionals you associated with the two sides , you picked very wise people with divergent attitude but convergent goal ...Psychoacoustics is a science used by them all and this science fly over these marketing and ideological postures of these two sides as manifested in opposite audio forum as audiogon and ASR for example ... It is why your definition is very good but also miss the point which can explain the fanatical quarrel roots itself : the choice of pieces of gear based on listening biases or on electrical specs ...
A living room is not an acoustic laboratory ... In the laboratory Toole select subject as himself with their ears and biases and study them objectively trying to eliminate the biases gradually by blind tests or other methods of selection...In a living room the listener is not tested and very relax in familiar condition ...
Psychoacoustics tell us that the best listening conditions are those of the living room or any familiar acoustic environment ...Not the laboratory , the living room in relaxation is better for memory, (true memory or fabricated) or for acuity ( true acuity or fabricated one ) ... Acuity under deep relaxation of the body may be increased way over any test condition... This is why psychoacoustic use statistical method and not blind test of individuals to eliminate exception and study the average listener as representative of humans in general...
But listeners are not laboratory rats...For the most part they identify with the subjectivist attitude not with the analysis of a dial nor with statistical elimination of biases or statistical studies of the biases untrained or trained as with musicians ...
Then as you capture well ,with your description of some individuality carefully chosen by you , the subjectivist and objectivist separation, as such you missed the occasion to put the emphasis on this quarrel derived from the marketing imperatives of gear choices; which quarrel is an ARTIFICIAL and IMPOSED distinction that makes no sense in psycho-acoustics nor in acoustics ...on that we understand then each other you and me ...
Your description so good it was as i said omit the source of this separation : marketing methods to sell the gear ... And your very good description of these intelligent and wise exceptional professionals mask and hide in an involontary way the root origin of these battling crowds of ignorant subjectivist and objectivist fanatics , which mock one another all day long in the name of taste or in the name of their electrical reading tools and in the name of double blind test ( i myself as most people designing their system/room use simple blind test ) ...
We must become conscious and wise....We must go over these ideological separation in the crowd and act more as the personnalities you had wisely picked ...😊
A subjectivist judges sound quality based on their personal preferences. The same way someone would judge food or art. If one finds the sound to their liking and then declares that to be good that is subjectivism.
An objectivist judges sound quality on accuracy to some reference. Maybe the recording or maybe live sound.
So we had people like Harry Pearson who cared nothing about measurements or science but was an objectivist because he felt there was an objective reference, “the absolute sound” the sound of live acoustic music, against which the accuracy of audio playback could be judged.
Then you have people like Floyd Toole and Sean Olive who strictly evaluated sound quality in their research using proper time synchronized quick switching double blind tests but are subjectivists. All of their studies were based on listener preferences. All scoring of their tests were done with subjective ratings.
And yet many would label Harry Pearson as the poster child for subjectivism in audio and would consider Toole and Olive to be poster children for objectivism in audio.
Familiar listening condition in a relaxed mood with our biases and listening in artificial controlled conditions imposed on us trying to eliminate some biases ... In the two cases we use the ears/brain biases blind or not...
As i said in my post ...
I am not against double blind test, this would be stupid ... But they are impractical most of the times for most people ... Simple blind test is enough ...
No objectivist pick his gear by double blind test first... They read the electrical specs first ... They did not most of the times anyway double blind testing of their choices when the electrical specs are good, they bought it ..😊
You misread my post and truncate my sentence of his context : the context was THE GEAR CHOICES PICKING UP CONDITIONS...This is what separate these two groups..Not the acceptation or not of double blind test which is only here a rhetorical and ideological posture impractical to do anyway ...
No objectivist go buying an amplifier blinding his eyes in a store to pick it up ...Do you ?
he read the electrical specs and trust that first ... He listen after ...
I think that you are an "objectivist" fanatic by the way you read my neutral and conciliating answer to you and trying to distort it for the sake of your double blind test obsession ... ...
Sorry but for me objectivism made no sense no more than subjectivist taste as the main ways to create a system room with satisfaction using acoustics basic and simple blind test and ears training in simple acoustic experiment ...
Are you here for wise discussion as your last post suggested to me or are you here to impose double blind testing as the only way to pick the gear or testing it on all people here ?
Even Toole do not pick his personal system for his living room AFTER a double blind test ...He pick it as any sane individual by listening to it , reading the specs and thinking about his room acoustic content, geometry, topology and dimensions ...
I am pretty sure that he will not come here nullifying any person testimony as meaningless if not put on double blind test ... He is a human first not a scientist doing statistical studies 24 hours on 24 hours ...
Sound qualities can be defined by parameters but in these set of parameters, they are biases coming from personal history , Toscanini biases are not on the same nature than Toole biases or mine ... We use these biases, generally not in a laboratory to define what is human hearing in a general way, but for the enjoyment in a relax way or for our work habits with our EXCEPTIONAL way each of us to hear sound , deceived or not, with all the shade of grey between reality and illusion which is the "meaning" territory ...
Eliminating all biases , which is impossible anyway, may be at the end also eliminitating meanings , the ears is not a microphone but a subjective part of ourself, not a tool ...
Why is it impossible to eliminate all biases ?
Because the way we listen is with all part of ourself, we decipher sound as meanings for us with our biases acquired from the womb till today...
Only ignorant think that it is possible to listen without biases... Eliminating one bias as sight is one thing , eliminating all internal biases is impossible by the definition of what hearing is ..
We listen with our biases...
You are obsessed by the elimination of biases... I am not... I am interested by the training of my biases... As any musicians ...Occasional simple blind test is enough ...
Keep your double blind test as obsession , i will use my simple blind test occasionnally as test , and i will enjoy my biases ...
“A subjectivist use ONLY his ears to decide that a system is good or bad... “
listening with ONLY your ears means doing it blind. Some subjectivists do that and some don’t.
It’s always the extremists of any persuasion that cause the problems. The more people moderate and learn to respect and perhaps even learn from others who happen to not think exactly the same way about something, the better off we will all be.
I think narcissism or perhaps just mere selfishness tends to be the driving force. If you care about others, you will respect them and value their opinions. If they act like a yahoo, then all all bets are off. Everyone just be civil! IS that too much to ask? Apparently so. As was pointed out above, conflict is a natural thing that is a part of Homo Sapiens as well as most every other species on the earth that battles for survival. But Homo Sapiens have the ability to learn and maybe evolve? Or maybe not so much. The jury is still out apparently.
BTW I think any constructive common interest or hobby like the pursuit of good sound tends to bring otherwise disparate people more together than the norm. That is a good thing! Just not all the way all the time.
Sports and sports fans are another good example of how otherwise disparate groups can be brought together.
All it takes sometimes is just one common interest. The more the merrier. Don’t let the politician’s divide you!
There is another camp…the listen and measure crowd…. best example i know expressed in a commercial product is Charlie’s measure / listen switch on the QB-9
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