Some thoughts on ASR and the reviews


I’ve briefly taken a look at some online reviews for budget Tekton speakers from ASR and Youtube. Both are based on Klippel quasi-anechoic measurements to achieve "in-room" simulations.

As an amateur speaker designer, and lover of graphs and data I have some thoughts. I mostly hope this helps the entire A’gon community get a little more perspective into how a speaker builder would think about the data.

Of course, I’ve only skimmed the data I’ve seen, I’m no expert, and have no eyes or ears on actual Tekton speakers. Please take this as purely an academic exercise based on limited and incomplete knowledge.

1. Speaker pricing.

One ASR review spends an amazing amount of time and effort analyzing the ~$800 US Tekton M-Lore. That price compares very favorably with a full Seas A26 kit from Madisound, around $1,700. I mean, not sure these inexpensive speakers deserve quite the nit-picking done here.

2. Measuring mid-woofers is hard.

The standard practice for analyzing speakers is called "quasi-anechoic." That is, we pretend to do so in a room free of reflections or boundaries. You do this with very close measurements (within 1/2") of the components, blended together. There are a couple of ways this can be incomplete though.

a - Midwoofers measure much worse this way than in a truly anechoic room. The 7" Scanspeak Revelators are good examples of this. The close mic response is deceptively bad but the 1m in-room measurements smooth out a lot of problems. If you took the close-mic measurements (as seen in the spec sheet) as correct you’d make the wrong crossover.

b - Baffle step - As popularized and researched by the late, great Jeff Bagby, the effects of the baffle on the output need to be included in any whole speaker/room simulation, which of course also means the speaker should have this built in when it is not a near-wall speaker. I don’t know enough about the Klippel simulation, but if this is not included you’ll get a bass-lite expereinced compared to real life. The effects of baffle compensation is to have more bass, but an overall lower sensitivity rating.

For both of those reasons, an actual in-room measurement is critical to assessing actual speaker behavior. We may not all have the same room, but this is a great way to see the actual mid-woofer response as well as the effects of any baffle step compensation.

Looking at the quasi anechoic measurements done by ASR and Erin it _seems_ that these speakers are not compensated, which may be OK if close-wall placement is expected.

In either event, you really want to see the actual in-room response, not just the simulated response before passing judgement. If I had to critique based strictly on the measurements and simulations, I’d 100% wonder if a better design wouldn’t be to trade sensitivity for more bass, and the in-room response would tell me that.

3. Crossover point and dispersion

One of the most important choices a speaker designer has is picking the -3 or -6 dB point for the high and low pass filters. A lot of things have to be balanced and traded off, including cost of crossover parts.

Both of the reviews, above, seem to imply a crossover point that is too high for a smooth transition from the woofer to the tweeters. No speaker can avoid rolling off the treble as you go off-axis, but the best at this do so very evenly. This gives the best off-axis performance and offers up great imaging and wide sweet spots. You’d think this was a budget speaker problem, but it is not. Look at reviews for B&W’s D series speakers, and many Focal models as examples of expensive, well received speakers that don’t excel at this.

Speakers which DO typically excel here include Revel and Magico. This is by no means a story that you should buy Revel because B&W sucks, at all. Buy what you like. I’m just pointing out that this limited dispersion problem is not at all unique to Tekton. And in fact many other Tekton speakers don’t suffer this particular set of challenges.

In the case of the M-Lore, the tweeter has really amazingly good dynamic range. If I was the designer I’d definitely want to ask if I could lower the crossover 1 kHz, which would give up a little power handling but improve the off-axis response.  One big reason not to is crossover costs.  I may have to add more parts to flatten the tweeter response well enough to extend it's useful range.  In other words, a higher crossover point may hide tweeter deficiencies.  Again, Tekton is NOT alone if they did this calculus.

I’ve probably made a lot of omissions here, but I hope this helps readers think about speaker performance and costs in a more complete manner. The listening tests always matter more than the measurements, so finding reviewers with trustworthy ears is really more important than taste-makers who let the tools, which may not be properly used, judge the experience.

erik_squires

Showing 50 responses by mahgister

😁😊

I am very glad to read someone wise and polite.

Wiser than me at least...

Thanks for the advice...

I like discussion about deep matter but silent contemplation will be better than uninvited answers to unasked questions.

My best to you sincerely ...

 

@mahgister , Get out of the house and pay a daily visit/walk the dog to some coffee shop near your house, preferably one where intellectuals, university professors, students, spiritual kooks, etc show up. Talk about some of these things in real life, listen to some music on your headphones, take your books, play some chess, start talking to the pretty ladies who show up at such places, etc...i.e., get youself entertained out of the house.

An online forum filled with grouchy old men may not be the right place/medium for the type of conversations circling in your head.

Replace the information in the 4 articles above and explain something to us...

Why mocking the positive content of a poster?

Why deciding for all that i am a big ego with no content ?

Why mocking people instead of thinking ?

Is this  sarcastic post against someone without even understanding the matter submitted to discussion  your own glorious post ? 😊

"We all wait for your glorious easy next post ..."

So, you are the spokesperson for this community 🙄.

Thanks.

 

What is the relation between Fourier Map and Timbre perception?

Enlighten us if you know everything and post only to criticize ?

We all wait ? Go and explain it because for you it is a well known dead horse ..

a clue : you must not only read the 4 articles but understood the link between them ..

We all wait for your glorious easy  next post ...

because for you i stuck a dead horse anyway ...

😊

Pretty sure this horse is dead, rotten and skeletonized at this point.

Probably time to quit beating it.

What we measure when we hear a music piece is only a Fourier map of the sonic event. the "waves" associated with the sound qualia. The sound qualia is not interpreted yet by the ears/brain/body.

This sonic fundamental event is a "timbre" among other acoustics factors revealing to our consciousness the qualitative information coming from this vibrating sound source states ( empty full, peirced with holes, in wood , in metal the list goes on ).The sound source in vibration can be a ripe fruit or a violin anything .

But also the timbre affect our own emotional and physical body in precise location which are universal among cultures independant of the music styles we are all affected in the same way as humans in our own body. See the artcles.

What is the relation of this with Amir ideology ?

For Amir the Fourier maps of the "waves" tell all the story and with his few set of electrical measures all the audio story is told about sound qualia...listening is delusional and illusory to the point any claims by an audiophile is pure hallucination with no objective value ...

This techno cultism evacuate any qualitative information and emotions as secondary and superfluous to evaluate sound , a tool overcome our body/brain /ears value ...

The 4 articles above which are pure science research , not audio magazine marketing, contradict this ideology which is techno cultism reduction of man power and his control in the case of Amir to sell something in the case of big corporations to control humanity ...

i stay short to spare the patience of some ... 😊

Guess what your own brain body will detect if on a sound vibrating element in the chain of the physical events implied by the sound experience i put a piece of shungite or alternatively a piece of quartz ?

A qualitative new state informing us of a change in the audio system not measured by Amir but existing objectively though for anyone brave enough to do experiments ...

The subjective and the objective are not completely separable in the sound phenomena ...if we did it for the sake of science or for our pleasure we loose something : the object of acoustics science.😊

 

 

 

Audiophiles needs to understand a bit acoustics, objectivists as subjectivists to stay less ignorant and understand what to do to improve greatly any system at any price without upgrading blindly when it is not necessary ...

It all still boils down to that oh-so-common Achilles heel of N = 1. For listening pleasure, that’s all any audiophile needs.

I just solved a problem with ricevs here in a gentleman manner but clearly ...

 

 

Sorry but what if someone attacked you publicly about your character?

Will you invade his private mailbox?

I never attacked people but i answer directly immediately and where the post was : publicly .. ...

It is my own way to never entertain grudges and makes thing clear...😊

It is why just today , my problem with Hilde was so well solved i could thank him for an information he gave which is useful to all including me ... Only petty mind keep grudges... I am not such ...

 

Then learn this :

I pay people with what they gave me : kindness and a less soft reply but always a rational one if they attack any person here even when it is not me ...

Discussion here must be rational with no character attack . Period .

By the way i dont have rivals...

Read the four articles above and if you dont fall off your chair because it is important matter i will be surprized...

I dont consider anyone here as rivals but as friends...

The problem is some people dont like "intellectuals" or suffer from inferiority complex it seems... And are not interested by deep science ..

Hearing theories values and aspects are deep science and matter for all audiophiles...

This was my point linking together these 4 articles especially in this thread matter ...

Instead of thanks some attacked my character ...😊 and it was not Amir who always was a gentleman ...

 

 

@mahgister , Why don’t you and this other son of some eternal mother, hilde, etc (all your apparent rivals) resolve your differences in private messages? Might be easier that way...

 

Ok you seem reading your last post a person of good faith...

I perhaps reacted too much...

But you wrote yourself in your ego bubble...😊

My discussion here was not about how to improve our system as you said nor about tweaks , this thread is about Amir ideology and ASR ...

Mahgister,

I don’t need to read articles about sound to know how to listen. I know how to tweak my system and room pretty darn well

Then you missed the point about my posts and artcles claiming that i was pretentious..

I just gave my opinion about why Amir is wrong grounded in acoustics hearing theory...

My articles are pure science not audio magazine articles about tweaks ..

 

I really don’t care that Amir and the like believe the way they do. I don’t NEED to prove him wrong.

Your claim here is contradicted by your own post just before criticizing my "ego" where you explained why you are not OK with Amir ideas...

The problem is your argument are simplistic repeated already by other people other than you before ..

My arguments are deeper grounded in science articles and in hearing theory then other people than you can be interested by the thread matter if you pretend now to be not interested by them ...

Then why attacking my alleged  "arrogance" or pretentious ego?  if my goal was not so much contradicting Amir  because  he dont discuss with me in this thread anyway , but my intention was to communicate to all people here new facts in acoustics very recent one you dont know yourself , neither Amir nor anyone here ...

I had the right to communicate objective discoveries without being attacked by someone who claim that i spoke by arrogance or only  for my "ego" satisfaction...

For what reason do you speak yourself ?  As Amir you are an expert with a site and something you sell ( your service) no ?

Me i spoke and dont sell anything , i spoke here as an ordinary educated audiophile ... No other motives... You cannot say that...

What are we wanting with the behavior and feelings that we put out. Are we defending ourself or are we being of service?.

Now before questioning my motivation why not questioning your own attack on my ego alleged pretentious claims?

Are you yourself so high in wisdom that you can decide for all people  in this thread which arguments benefit to all and which arguments does not benefit to all  ?

I dont think so...

I decided myself that new scientific facts matter and must be known, especially if they can be used as  rational argument against an ideology dominating the world right now :

manterialism and nominalism and techno-cultism and transhumanism ...

Then the new facts i asked people to read and  studies in the 4 articles above had nothing to do with your non sensical "peace and love" discourse after your attack on my "ego" ... What was your true motives ?😊

You seems a good person then i overeacted perhaps but i dont regret my reaction because it seems you must learn yourself a lesson here...

`"I am not alone to own an "ego" ...At least i dont sell anything to anyone here unlike you and Amir , i only want to discuss in good faith ...

I will repeat also that even if it was tough discussion with Amir he was  a gentleman by the way and never attacked my personality and character...

i am happy to say at the end that you seems also a gentleman at last ...

Thanks for the clarification but myself too i needed to clarify .....

 

my sincere wish for the best to you ...

 

 

 

 

 

Now guru ricevs the subject matter of this thread is not about cables measures...

It is about ASR ideology, which is grounded in an erroneous theory of hearing...

My suggested articles and comment here are around these articles under my posts  which express if you dont know it , and you dont know it yet by the way , they express and explain  an ACOUSTICS revolution about hearing theory...

Then guru ricevs if you are not only a big humble ego only giving character lesson to others, but also a small proud ego about your own audio understanding, read that and EXPLAIN TO ME AND TO AMIR why these articles facts matter and how they destruct the ASR Amir ideology about audio OR NOT ...

if you are not able to do that but only able to talk about tweaks and cables and attacking others character because they take too much place with a false loving attitude,

Then shut your mouth about my character ..

did you get it ?

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.academia.edu/63847071/The_Body_Image_Theory_of_Sound_An_Ecological_Approach_to_Speech_and_Music

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377699983_Bodily_maps_of_musical_sensations_across_cultures

https://physicsworld.com/a/human-hearing-is-highly-nonlinear/

 

Sorry but your post is a poison wrapped in sugar...

A character attack with lies:

First :

Who actually replies to Mahgister?.....not many. Who is he talking to?......himself.

Have you read all my posts contributions since a year here , concrete contributions ?

In musics, classical and jazz ?

In acoustics which is not room acoustic , but the science of hearing , the matter that interested me ...

many people answered and thank me here or in private mail...

I discussed 7 days with Amir here , in complete disagrement and he never attacked my character as such as you just did doing what you accuse me of doing : patronizing other behind a false good faith ...

 

Then you lied about me and caricatured me ...

Then you used your 5 cents psychology to patronize me... You did with me what you say i did... But in the post i wrote above which you mocked i stated acoustics facts perhaps above your head i dont know... Then here you come and you patronize a "beta" me as the "alpha" you wanted to be with a sugar like guru mantra of false love attitude declaration.. True love is gesture not lesson because who claim to teach others here ? You, not me who discuss arguments from others and not their character stating acoustics facts and important articles you NEVER READ...

 

On a public forum we cannot be alpha to another.....we are all equals. We are each others parent and child but we cannot lay down "behavior modification techniques" like a parent to a child.

We are not parent and child to one another, we are adults and more than mature one...Your claim is absurd as ridiculous pop psychology...

You are so pretentious , you are your own caricature and lying dont seems to pose a problem to you. How can you say that about me : have you read all my posts and discussions? have you read the private posts of people thanking me ?

I already talked a lot about concrete methods to create a good system... ( By the way just few post above i suggested a CONCRETE EXPERIMENT with shungite and quartz) But the last years i was more interested by hearing theory...Are you so ignorant to think that "tweaks" only matter and not acoustics which is not room acoustics ? You suppose no one is interested by hearing theory ?

And now YOU DECIDE WHAT PEOPLE HERE NEED and you declare that my post are useless..

I would love to hear some simply stated words from Maghister about some things that would actually improve my sound or my happiness. I don’t want to hear the word "acoustics" said over and over. I want some real knowledge that I can implement so I have larger goosebumps when listening. That is what I want......a better stereo.....and most peopel here...that is what they want.

Your post is a caricature and a character attack...Your own ego is so big it is comic to read you speaking of the ego of others...

i will stop here because you have no arguments... Save you dont like someone different from you claiming anything over your head as hearing theories facts...

You yourself present yourself as an audio guru with a site...

I am here to discuss with adults about acoustics and music...( not child-parenmt)

I am of good faith even if my posts may be clumsy ( english is not my language)

You never spoke to me nor answered my arguments or articles, you do your show to show others here your own importance by attacking a character a bit too large for your taste it seems ... Despicable ..And pathetic...

 

«Your ego is too big mine is really small»-- Groucho Marx 🤓

 
 

 

 

Put your feet in my shoes...

He mocked my post as pretentious non sense...Lacking jokes...

How this sentence sound to your ears if you are the target :

Your first sentence seems to come from: "I am an advanced college Physics teacher and I will tell all you kindergartners what is real. You are all too young and ignorant to understand but someday after you get your Doctorate you will then know that I speak truth."

 

I dont liked it ...Is it  such " astonishing interpretation" for your working brain ?😊

And few trolls here this week mocked already my words count posts length and syntax instead of adressing my arguments..

And if you are interested more to character targetting yourself than by the CONTENT of what is acoustics in this thread and in my post stay out of the discussion...

 

I will give you a point though : i probably overreacted as usual but i am fed up this week in particular by few idiots attacking my posts WITH NO ARGUMENTS...

I am used to discuss and i never attacked character when someone gave arguments... And by the way my arguments go in the same direction than ricevs then why mocking my post ?

I dont patronize people character here i discuss their arguments then i dont tolerate character targetting ...Not my character nor other character... Period...

 

By the way read the articles i posted above before commenting about my "character" They are the content, not my character ... ...Or will you go back with another post without content about my character ? This answer of mine to ricevs dont concern you ...

 

There is not even a scintilla of "mocking", "bullying" nor "attacking" in @ricevs post.

How can anybody interpret the post this way is really astonishing.

 

Now to answer your only one argument it seems :

I just say, "you need to listen to know anything"

This will not do at all ...😊

This debate between objectivist and subjectivist was going on for years...

And you attacked me ad hominem because i used too much words...It seems you are the joke ...

If you try to think for an hour without joking, you will understand that to settle this question once for all we need to understand what is hearing and what hearing is about ...

Then read the articles i gave in my posts above instead of attacking my character ...

By the way even if we are in complete disaccord Amir never attacked my character for the 7 days we discussed together few months ago...

I prefer his character to your character it seems even if we think the same about the importance of trusting and training our ears... ...😊

 

« Dont forget that my goddess love your goddess »-- Groucho Marx 🤓

I am sorry but i said acoustics elementary facts as they are...Which FUNDAMENTAL fact is precisely contradicted by many ASR objectivist if you are able to understand what my sentence imply .

I put above others post with many articles of science who explained it all and justify my short last post...

Mocking my writing will not help...Others already did it by the way...

What i learned i learned it in my 2 years experiments room ...

And if you think i am pretentious being short and on the point with this sentence which only express fundamental acoustics truth :

«It is proven by acoustics that we hear qualia corresponding to physical invariant properties of any vibrating sound source...»

What i must think after your mocking of my few sentences about your sentence

:

Let us be still and listen and feel the divine Mother loving us.....right now and forever.......then send that love out to all our childrem (everyone on the entire planet).

When you throw a pot you think the flower you throw after is a gift coming from your divinity ? 😊

I dont like to be bullied and i dont bully but i am ready to be corrected and i corrected when i can... ( my knowledge is limited)

Grow and if something is WRONG in my first sentence CORRECT me without mocking my posts lenght or lack of humor .,.. I dont joke all the time get used to it...I already posted jokes above...It is enough ...

There is an acoustic revolution right now and the articles i posted are proof about it... You dont read them and will not because their lack of jokes and

Just too dang many words

?

And i will correct you :

My post is not a joke and i am not beautiful...

And i dont need to prove anything... I like helping in this debate which is very important... Acoustics is a matter that interest me because my main subject is philosophy in general...

The articles i posted here are for ONE or TWO person who will be interested. I always posted supposing my readers are intelligent and of good faith...i like discussion more than jokes...

 

 

 
 

 

 

It is proven by acoustics that we hear qualia corresponding to physical invariant properties of any vibrating sound source...

Sound is not mere vibrations in the air but real qualia in the vibrating sound source perceived with and through the vibrations in the air...

Ears/brains is not only and more than just a Fourier computer...

Now imagine someone defining sound qualities with a few electrical measures of separated pieces of gear in no room and for no ears...😊

Music is not abstract ratios but concrete "timbre" perception by the brain/body...

Then making claims about hearing without knowing what is hearing and equating it always and mostly as potential delusions in the context of marketing a site, tools and products is at best if not fraud pure ideology but certainly not sciences...

In audio psychoacoustics rules design not the reverse... Tools are tools not truths... Interpretation  linking chains set is the core acting mind guiding gesture ...

Amir anyway sells his "site" ASR as "science" ...The zealots takes it as gold coin. Then anyone using his ears out of a double blind test with ABX is mocked there as a deaf bat..🦇

Imagine if i dare to suggest to the zealots my experiment to them using a piece of shungite and of quartz to demonstrate the impact of the materials on our perception of qualia in the vibrating sound source ... They will call me "tin foil hat" if they stay polite...😁 ( Amir by the way is always polite by contrast )

They equal hearing theory with Fourier maps at best at worst it is a deluded sense easy to fool then not truthfull at all for them . Period...

 

 

As in this cartoon measures understanding is backward and hearing understanding is forward... 😉

Acoustics is their regulated correlation. Ears is gold and measures are silver.

 

 

I forgot to say that the cartoon above is draught by the genius of Tom Gauld ...

https://www.tomgauld.com/

 

 

not all ASR posters, some who I admire

I concur with you ...

ASR may be and is an excellent informative site...

This is not the problem...

The ideology is the problem...

There is excellent discussion on ASR , for examples about Helmholtz resonators which are completely ignored on audiogon...

I dont reject ASR but the ideology and the ignorant clowns...

If someone dont understand a bit about hearing theory anyway he cannot understand nor music nor audio at all ... 😊

Acoustics rules audio and the gear design not the reverse...

And electrical tools are only that : tools not acoustic truths...

I already did that pointing how you used your small set of measures of some gear design taken separately from any system and from any room synergy as the only acoustics truth , as if they could invalidate any hearing experience of the system/room impression derived from all acoustics parameters at play...

Your accusation of delusion and your attribution of failure to human hearing which is anyway the ground of any acoustics meanings in favor of some aspects of the measured specs of separate gear pieces is only an ideological stance... The fact that your tools are well designed on a scientific standpoint dont imply that the conclusion you want to impose are the acoustics truth and are scientific... They are not at all ... :)

Sciences as i wrote it is always in the plural mode with an "s". I want to distinguish it from the scientism related to any techno-cult. Here in audio many sciences are implied together not just one, the one you wanted to pick ... 😊

And the ears/brain/body of the acoustician, musician, designer, audiophile is king not servant of your ideology...

 

 

Feel free to challenge me on anything science related. Happy to provide as much detail as you can handle. :)

 

 

I think Amir is a nice guy...😊

But the dude who tried to convert me to his "church" was a nice guy too...

Someone generally who try to "sell" something must be nice anyway...

 

I get a kick out of ASR. This Amir person (I have no idea who he is) is a gifted linguist and deploys semantics rather artfully. I love statements like: "We follow establish(ed) audio science and engineering. And rely on what we can prove." Well, that’s a loaded statement that can best be defined as a "loaded statement fallacy", which begs the authority of what the writer considers "established" to the extent that any denial implies that the responder does not follow established audio science and thus cannot prove the validity of their response.

And all this emphasis put on a small set of measurements chosen by Amir among all possible measurements as what matter the most and only that with the accusation of delusion about any hearing act, contradict all we know about acoustics science and hearing theory...

Techno cultism ideology is not science. And perceived sound source qualias are not bits and quarks... They are acoustical meanings pointing to the vibrating sound source  qualities... The system/room is a vibrating whole.... Not a sum of very partially  and very uncompletely measured parts...

Common sense and basic acoustics knowledge is enough. 😊

I concur with botrytis...

No need to measurements ideology dogmas...Thanks Amir for your measures service its helping , but keep techno cultist ideology for yourself. 😊

God spare us double blind test with ABX ! Simple blind test will do good enough for any acoustics tuning ...

 

My system /room is created imperfect to serve perfectly my imperfect hearing....😁

Art is wed to science

but nobody will ever know which one is the mother

and which one the  father here

because they reincarnate together for eternity

and change sex... 😊

We are their children though....

A few measurements are insufficient perhaps, but very useful.

Only ignorants will contradict that...😊

 

But only ignorant will use this to dismiss any listeners impressions.. As some objectivist do systematically ...

Photography indeed is an art too, it is the eye of human who do the job and the negative treatment or DSP used artistically by the users...

And yes painting is very hard. This is why i admired painters as much as musicians...

I like Vinci and Turner... And i am very fond of naive and primitive art....

 

Now to be fair we know very well how "halo effect" in psychology really works...

If a product as a stradivarius is surrounded by an aura of holy S. Q. because of his price tag and historical meaning, acousticians will use blind test to study the relation between perception evaluation and the biases associated with it for example in a study of the stradivarius materials composition compared to modern violins.....

This does not means that human hearing is not faithful this means that he must be supervised when the "Holy value and price tag" play a role and put under controls and trained anyway...

This in no way can be used as an argument to devaluate all hearing abilities and mocking them as "golden ears" and militate to replace listenings evaluation by electrical small set of measures of the gear design and systematic double blind test in regular day to day audiophiles decisions and optimization process ...

Thanks very much Amir for your measures service review indeed ... But we dont need the ideology which some ASR people stick to ...

 

Now if i was wrong here stating that Human hearing is generally very trustful this article will be wrong relating to this discovery explained very well here :

https://physicsworld.com/a/human-hearing-is-highly-nonlinear/

«People can simultaneously identify the pitch and timing of a sound signal much more precisely than allowed by conventional linear analysis. That is the conclusion of a study of human subjects done by physicists in the US. The findings are not just of theoretical interest but could potentially lead to better software for speech recognition and sonar.

Human hearing is remarkably good at isolating sounds, allowing us to pick out individual voices in a crowded room, for example. However, the neural algorithms that our brains use to analyse sound are still not properly understood. Most researchers had assumed that the brain decomposes the signals and treats them as the sum of their parts – a process that can be likened to Fourier analysis, which decomposes an arbitrary waveform into pure sine waves.

However, the information available from Fourier analysis is bound by an uncertainty relation called the Gabor limit. This says that you cannot know the timing of a sound and its frequency – or pitch – beyond a certain degree of accuracy. The more accurate the measurement of the timing of a sound, the less accurate the measurement of its pitch and vice versa......

Oppenheim and Magnasco discovered that the accuracy with which the volunteers determined pitch and timing simultaneously was usually much better, on average, than the Gabor limit. In one case, subjects beat the Gabor limit for the product of frequency and time uncertainty by a factor of 50, clearly implying their brains were using a nonlinear algorithm.»

 

 

 

This means that the eras/brain work in his own time domain and in a non linear way. The Fourier maps are not enough to understand human hearings. They are only a part of the complete unknown process which is mysterious in all his ramifications.

 

 

 

«My ears lie sometimes and my wife too but they are trainable and truthful at the end of my day»--Groucho Marx 🤓

For sure what i call a vibrating sound source may be the "timbre" of a musical instrument for example. A musician hear perfectly well and can classify immediately the different qualias and qualities pertaining to the physical invariants behind any of these vibrating sound sources (violin) ... He can detect the wood qualities the strings qualities and the micro dynamic gestures of the players too .

A system/room vibrate as a whole any listener can detect the quality of it ... If i put diverse acoustics content in this room even a single straw located at the right place a difference will be audible... I know because when i tuned my 100 resonators the length and size of ONE neck matter and make a difference ...

Ignorant who know nothing about acoustics and who never design a Helmholtz resonators will call me a liar and will ask for a double blind test,...😊

It is why to evaluate a system the room conditions matter a lot more than the THD of the amplifier for the final perceived exam ...😊

Now if you want to know how much information can be read in the vibrating sound sources immediate environment read this and you will fall of your chair :

Extracting audio from visual information

Algorithm recovers speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag filmed through soundproof glass.
 
 
https://news.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-from-vibrations-0804
 
«“When sound hits an object, it causes the object to vibrate,” says Abe Davis, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and first author on the new paper. “The motion of this vibration creates a very subtle visual signal that’s usually invisible to the naked eye. People didn’t realize that this information was there.”»................
 
«“We’re recovering sounds from objects,” he says. “That gives us a lot of information about the sound that’s going on around the object, but it also gives us a lot of information about the object itself, because different objects are going to respond to sound in different ways.” In ongoing work, the researchers have begun trying to determine material and structural properties of objects from their visible response to short bursts of sound.»
 
 
Then people contemptuously bragging about a few electrical measures of some pieces of design claiming that it is all we need to know if a system will sound good it will sound good for them in ALL specific environment for ALL ears and ALL brain/body, this is pure ideology to market and sell some tools . Thats all ... A good design for sure will stay a good design in all conditions for all owner but it will need an optimization process to make it shine. All audiophiles interested by "tweaks" in mechanical, electrical and acoustical conditions know what i means.
 
The ears/brain decode vibrating sound source Qualias associated with physical invariant properties of the vibrating sound source in acoustic environmental conditions in very specific and competent way and these acoustic content of an environment , being Nature or a listening room matter a lot for the optimization of any design.
 
A system/room cannot be evaluated by a mere subjectively selected choice of small set of electrical measures among all the electrical measures possible, among all the mechanical measures possibles, among all the acoustical measures possible and even with all the psychoacousticals measures possible, it will lack the qualia experience by a conscious feeling body associated with the physical invariant of the vibrating sound sources.
 
Then we must create a system/room for a listener characteristics, few electrical measures of the design pieces will not do and measuring speakers will not be enough to complete the optimization process.
 
Ok enough said... Read the articles... 😁
 
English is not my language. I apologize for my clumsy sentences. I never spoke english where i live and read in english only philosophy or science. 😊
 
( There is no concrete vocabulary in these books, no humor, no popular or slang expression and most scientists and philosophers are not great writers then if i can wrote top poetry in french, in english i am lagging a lot 😉😊 but you are lucky i wrote the shortest possible posts here in English because of that , imagine what it could be if my english was top litterature, my posts will be unbearable as short novel)
 
«I dont speak english»-- Groucho Marx 🤓

 

 

Remember that human hearing dont decode sound qualia and information ONLY and MERELY by computing air waves and the waves signals but also and mainly "read" the physical invariant behind any vibrating sound sources as a qualia belonging to the vibrating sound sources physical invariant ( like in the design of a drum )  and touching also our physical and emotional body, as demonstrated in the book of Essien and the two independent research articles above :

an ecological theory of sound needs also a body-image theory of sound..

«The definition of sound in physics as vibrations in an elastic medium establishes a link between the sound source and the organism. Thus, it satisfies an essential psychophysical prerequisite for a theory of perception. However,
over the past 170 years since Ohm’s law (1843), and some 137 years since Helmholtz’s resonance theory (1877), psychoacoustic procedures founded on air vibration have shrouded music and speech in mystery. Ecological theories have fallen short, not only of Gestalt invariance, but also of the link between the distal object and the organism. This paper approaches auditory analysis from the standpoint of sound production. It argues that although air vibration produces sound, sound is not air vibration; and that exploitation of features of air vibration
can hardly (if ever) lead to accurate understanding of the principle of the auditory mechanism in speech or music perception. Evidence is provided in support of the definition of sound as the vibratory image of the sonorous body.
It establishes isomorphism between characteristics of a sonorous body and auditory attributes of sound. Wherefore, a body is different from the sound it produces in much the same way as steam is different from ice ─
two different forms of the same entity. The data under consideration offer succinct insights into the way the auditory mechanism extracts from sound wave invariants for use in speech or music regardless of chaotic production and acoustic variability.»

This comes from this acoustician article and book :

https://www.academia.edu/63847071/The_Body_Image_Theory_of_Sound_An_Ecological_Approach_to_Speech_and_Music

This 2 new researchs confirm Akpan J, Essien book thesis:

Timbral effects on consonance disentangle psychoacoustic mechanisms and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z

Bodily maps of musical sensations across cultures

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377699983_Bodily_maps_of_musical_sensations_across_cultures

I concur with

Thanks for your kind words...

I know they cannot understand because they are in a cult or brainwashed. They dont want to read and study and debate about the articles i put here..

They dont want to understand, some defend their site ideology and they sell their services doing so then they had no interest to look farther than their ideology ...

But ad hominem arguments are useless it is why we must used articles of research and their conclusion to make a point ...

i posted my articles to help those who may be interested in astounding facts about acoustics ...If i can help one person this will be useful.

i did not posted all i could it will be too long...😊

 

By the way i want to be clear... For me ASR is useful site...It is the ideology behind their measurements which is simplistic...

I thank Amir for his measures verification but the ideology is useless and childish...

Double blind test is a circus, everybody had biases, trained positive one and negative one so what? Placebo effect as invoked by ASR people is ridiculous to debunk the claim of trained acoustician as the claim of an ignorant audiophile... Etc ...

I am not against double blind test they are regularly used in acoustics experiments...but when used to debunk what someone say in regular life it is contemptuous and come from an ideology not from acoustic science specific research in specific context...

 

@mahgister My friend. Why are you still arguing with people who clearly don’t want to share your opinions? I’m sure you’ve jeard that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Do yourself a favor and let it go. Listen to some music. Cheers.

Then prof why in front of everybody here using an argument as : "I dont want to follow you down the rabbit hole"

And refusing to discuss sound perception, hearing theory, and what we can perceive as human ?

The absence of answer from you and the qualification of my posts by the expression "rabbit hole" is ad hominem argument...

It does not seems that it matter for you to appear as an ideologue ...

Because repeating Amir mantra is ideology not science ..

the science is these articles and the book i just presented with this last one i present again because it is very important one :

Human hearing beats the Fourier uncertainty principle

https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html

 

Prove me you are able to read a 2 pages scientific article and answer my question : why the human hearing is able to beat the Fourier uncertainty, explain me why, and i will conclude that you are able to  read a simple scientific  article...

 

It seems the "rabbit hole" where you disapear suddenly is your techno-cultist simplistic ideology about hearing ...😊

 

But wait a minute is Akpan J. essien right about sound ?

Yes he is...

This article confirm completely his book thesis which i had by the way ...

Human perceive sound source with their body and as meaningful because they are able to detect QUALIA related to the sound source state ...

Then prof read that :

Pythagoras was wrong: There are no universal musical harmonies, study finds

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-pythagoras-wrong-universal-musical-harmonies.html

 

 
 

 

 

Prof when 2 person discuss together one argument must be opposed by another arguments..

Then one must ground his argument in science facts ( research acoustic papers) not mantras about the debunking of cables with measuring tools..

No thinking about acoustic perception can be done if we dont define the acoustic context  and what is hearing...

Buying an electrical tool from Walmart is not an argument ... 😊

Now another article to educate ...and those who want to understand:

 

 

The Body-Image Theory of Sound: An Ecological Approach to Speech and Music

this article is free to read here :

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267327268_The_Body-Image_Theory_of_Sound_An_Ecological_Approach_to_Speech_and_Music


Abstract
The definition of sound in physics as vibrations in an elastic medium establishes a link between the sound source and the organism. Thus, it satisfies an essential psychophysical prerequisite for a theory of perception. However,
over the past 170 years since Ohm’s law (1843), and some 137 years since Helmholtz’s resonance theory (1877),psychoacoustic procedures founded on air vibration have shrouded music and speech in mystery. Ecological
theories have fallen short, not only of Gestalt invariance, but also of the link between the distal object and the organism. This paper approaches auditory analysis from the standpoint of sound production. It argues that
although air vibration produces sound, sound is not air vibration; and that exploitation of features of air vibration can hardly (if ever) lead to accurate understanding of the principle of the auditory mechanism in speech or music
perception. Evidence is provided in support of the definition of sound as the vibratory image of the sonorous body. It establishes isomorphism between characteristics of a sonorous body and auditory attributes of sound.
Wherefore, a body is different from the sound it produces in much the same way as steam is different from ice ─ two different forms of the same entity. The data under consideration offer succinct insights into the way the
auditory mechanism extracts from sound wave invariants for use in speech or music regardless of chaotic production and acoustic variability. Implications for future research in speech, music and all aspects of auditory analysis are discussed

 

I wrote about a specific cable to illustrate how measurements can speak to how something "sounds." Please read more carefully.

And yourself when you quoted me have you understand what i had written?

this is what i said, «For sure we can tell by measurements that certain sonic claims MAY BE false ( not are always false as you wrote) this does not means that all audible characteristics of sounds perceived meanings are measurable by few electrical tool ...» Do you get it ?

 

 

i did not contradict the usefulness of measure, i discarded your claim about their dogmatic use in all case as meaning that what is audible is always measured or measurable..

You accuse me of what you did : you misread my answer...😊

And sorry, beyond that I’m not too inclined to follow you down your rabbit holes. Been there, done that.

You are not ashamed to describe as "rabbit hole" my arguments which are grounded in many acoustics research papers and a book you had not even read ?

You think repeating mantra as biases, double blind test, measures of electrical specs of gear, etc is enough to hide your ignorance about acoustics experience ?

People who actually understand measurements can tell quite a bit about how a product will sound.  The fact you can't doesn't change that.

 

You dont understand that a piece of gear with good specs does not  means that this piece will worl the same coupled to other pieces of gear and in different room...

This is why claiming that we can judge completely the sound quality of a piece of gear ONLY  with few electrical measures to verify his design on some aspects (not all of them ) is non sense or marketing publicity for an ideology or for a site who need badly some specific way to describe audio experience and reduce it to electrical design ...

A spec of light here :

This is where Amir is so completely wrong. We do not know how to measure the things in the audio chain which some of our ears perceive as the most vital in reproduction.

It is simple read a book about acoustics you will discover some or like me tune your own room .. 😊

Then if you do that you will discover the power of your own techno-cultism bias ...😉

This is what many audiophiles just seem to be utterly ignorant about: the power of bias.

So...by measurements you can tell certain sonic claims are false, and also that if you replace a cheap cable with the Nordost cable, it won't have any sonic consequences.  You can know it will SOUND the same...from the measurements.

Prof are you a sophist?

For sure we can tell by measurements that certain sonic claims MAY BE  false ( not are always false as you wrote) this does not means that all audible characteristics of sounds perceived meanings are measurable by few electrical tool ...

Are you unable to read the two0 scientific article i just put here?

I had three other one to close the door behind your techno cultist electrical  tool  sophism put as science in replacement of acoustics ...

 Are you unable to read scientific article?

 

I base my decisions for audio gear only by how they connect me to the music emotionally. I realize this is just flowery nonsense for tech-heads. I don’t care how a product measures as long as it connects me to the music. I envy a person who sits in a car, listening to what many may consider a substandard car stereo but is enjoying the heck out of the song. The car stereo is connecting the listener to the emotion of the music. It’s that emotional connection I want. I could care less about measurements. Let qualified engineers do that. I am NOT qualified nor do I pretend to be. Amir is just black&white on audio. He doesn’t have or express any emotion to connect himself to any music. He reminds me of a robot or AI who has zero emotional connection to gear. He probably has a serious case of alexithymia.

 

When you say that what matter is your own connection on an emotional level to music, an ASR member or Amir can then criticize your subjective listening experience as pure deluded subjective arbitrary sensations...

They do it regularly...

They dont understand acoustics at all ...😁

They promote a techno-cultic ideology centered around few tools for verifying a small set of specs.. Thats all... It is useful but thats all ...

Their ideology though is meaningless ...

They then will dismiss your emotional Bodily sensations as hallucinations, placebo effects, and at the end completely meaningless..

They can do this because they are stupendously ignorant about hearing theory and specifically ecological hearing theory...

If they had read philosophy of science and psychology the name J. J. Gibson will ring a bell in their head...😁

 

 

Now read this FREE article a very serious study in acoustics science demonstrating the universal meaning in the human emotional body of music...

«Our main finding was that the topographies of music-induced
bodily sensations vary according to the emotional and structural
features of music while being consistent across participants and musical exemplars from Western and East Asian cultures. We
observed close correspondence between music-induced subjective
emotions and bodily sensations, suggesting that bodily responses
might be a key pathway in the elicitation and differentiation of
music-induced emotions (27). Given the cultural consistency of
these effects, the results suggest similar embodiment of musical
emotions across distant cultures and point toward a biological
component in music- induced bodily sensations.»

«We conclude that music induces consistent bodily sensations and
emotions across the studied Western and East Asian cultures.
These subjective feelings were similarly associated with acoustic
and structural features of music in both cultures. These results
demonstrate similar embodiment of music-induced emotions in
geographically distant cultures and suggest that music-induced
emotions transcend cultural boundaries due to cross-culturally
shared emotional connotations of specific musical cues. We argue
that bodily experience, which may arise from skeletomuscular
activity and changes in the physiological state of the body, plays a critical role in the elicitation and differentiation of music-induced emotions.»

 

 

«Emotions, bodily sensations and movement are integral parts of musical experiences. Yet,it remains unknown i) whether emotional connotations and structural features of music elicit discrete bodily sensations and ii) whether these sensations are culturally consistent.We addressed these questions in a cross- cultural study with Western (European andNorth American, n = 903) and East Asian (Chinese, n = 1035). We precented participants with silhouettes of human bodies and asked them to indicate the bodily regions whose activity they felt changing while listening to Western and Asian musical pieces with varying emotional and acoustic qualities. The resulting bodily sensation maps
(BSMs) varied as a function of the emotional qualities of the songs, particularly in the limb, chest, and head regions. Music-induced emotions and corresponding BSMs were replicable across Western and East Asian subjects. The BSMs clustered similarly across cultures, and cluster structures were similar for BSMs and self-reports of emotional experience. The acoustic and structural features of music were consistently associated with the emotion ratings and music-induced bodily sensations across cultures. These results highlight the importance of subjective bodily experience in music-induced emotions and demonstrate consistent associations between musical features, music-induced
emotions, and bodily sensations across distant cultures.»

Bodily maps of musical sensations across cultures

Authors:

 

@mahgister

Behind the ’apparently scientific’ facade some of these guys are posing under, it is largely a utilitarian life for these ASR types (eat, plug cables into audio precision kit, garbage in/garbage out, look at graph, go to sleep, think about Sean Olive for more street cred, etc). Don’t waste your breath trying to talk about anything that flows into the "metaphysical" realms with this utilitarian crew... 😁

 

 

I only spoke about science, acoustics science with them...

And they dont understand acoustics at all ...

many ASR people act as someone who sees nails everywhere because they own a hammer...

ASR sell this little set of measures as the ONLY solution to qualitative audio experience...

This techno-cultism has then anything to do about science...it is an ideology...They are not even conscious that we need an hearing theory background to define concepts...

For example what is "timbre" and what are we perceiving when we perceive a "timbre"... The subject is so complex i discovered only one book , a doctorate thesis, about this phenomenon... And i read this book and used it when i argued with another engineer here 3 or 4 years ago...

In an extraordinary set of events i just read two scientific papers few weeks ago that confirmed the ecological theory of hearing i begun to understand reading this book ... It is an acoustic revolution ...

i spoke about that in the thread "sound as a mystical experience" ...It is pure acoustics i spoke about not mystics experience even if sound has healing and spiritual effect...

I never dare to speak "metaphysics" as you said with them, if they dont understand what timbre is and the acoustics primacy in audio how will you begin to understand metaphysics ?

Prof once said to me that the astrology Kepler and Newton studied all their life is bogus matter for deluded people... I asked him what studies he has done of astrology ... he answered none... I myself bought near 100 books and studied Indian as western astrology as a hobby and i know what is meaningful and what is meaningless in astrology ...

I did the same in linguistic...I read my first linguistic book 40 years ago ( a doctorate thesis about the greatest linguist since Panini a french , Gustave Guillaume)

I did the same in mathematics... ( i studied Logic and Set theory and number theory )

As for acoustics...( i wanted to set my system/ room, it takes me 2 years full time and some narrow mind dare to claim that i need a double blind test with ABX , this is comical because when you tune a room you use simple blind test all the time, it is a tool not an ideological circus )

Now i did the same for economy... ( the root of the market idea is not from Adam Smith nor the classes concept from Marx )

Most people think for example that Capitalism and Marxism are economic theory... They are not... They are techno cultist specific way to allocate products and services in an open centralized way (Marxism) or in relation to market price and money supply control ( hidden centralization controls as with Blackrock nowadays) ... Capitalism and Marxism are ideology not economical science ... As Nazism theory of race is a techno cultist ideology not biological science.... Those who think that these 2 techno cultists ideologies are part and center of the real economy which is an ethical science are like our friend for which owning a hammer means that all is nails...

By the way i learned about the originator of the market idea , Bernard Mandeville from an Hayek conference 70 years ago where he called Mandeville genius "our master to us all" Guess why ? He knows a bit about economy with 8 Nobel prize among his disciples...

 

 

Ok i spoke too much ...

 

Thanks for your kind word ...

 

 

😊

 

By the way "distortion" is not just a defect... ( measured in THD ) 😁

It may be a quality...

Some musician use it for expression and poetic diction too ...

Then distortion as in speech transmission index (STI) which predicts speech intelligibility based on reverberation, background noise, and signal distortion refer to many things not one . Then distortion means a lot of things...

But mainly distortion is not only and merely a negative impediment or a deformation of an electric signals it is also an acoustic phenomenon related among other factors to the reverberation time in a room ..It can be also an added musical effect....

In my experience above, the right balance between quartz and shungite on the cables increase the auditory perception of the signals as, if i may borrow a metaphor, like a more thicker and refined line in a drawing improve the visual (acoustic) meanings perception ...

Here too in my definition of distortion, which is more than just the signals/noise ratio, it is about a  POSITIVE qualia, a physical invariant linked to speech detection or to musicality ...A surplus of information that cannot be always disqualified as an impediment...

I am a bit far from ASR ideology here ...😊

Science is complex, techno cultism is simplistic... It is a faith based on the idolatry of tools instead of the wholeness of the phenomenon which include the subjective perception not just as a mere impediment but also as a trustful interpreter because there is always two sides on the acoustic coin...

 

Some are not here to exhange about audio experience. But they are here to sell gear or worst their own ideology...

They cannot be convinced , they dont think , they used their tools. Period. 😊

 

The perception of timbre is not a deluded perception of some subjective coloration or the extraction of a ratio from a pure Fourier map... It is the recognition of a physical set of invariants in the vibrating sound source or affecting it ... ( Pythagorean purely mathematical description of acoustic information as ratio is debunked by late science and the new ecological theory of acoustic)

A qualia it is was we detected...Something Galilee exclude from science 5 centuries ago because it is not easily reducible to the primary qualities..But science progress.. 😊

 

For the simplest example of a perceived physical invariant from the vibrating sound source : you tap a fruit to inform yourself if this vibrating source will communicate to you one of these two information by some physical invariant : is the fruit ripe or not ...

 

Then now suppose in an experiment where i put quartz piece on a cable...

And suppose that i put a shungite piece after on this cable in a second experiment ...

Is it possible that my Ears/brain could detect something affecting one of the vibrating sound source (the cables with or without the minerals on it ) ? 😋

 

As you can see i can propose one of the hundred of experiments i devised for myself ...

I can predict that the shungite will compress the sound and the quartz will not... 😊

Is it measurable? Probably but not by Amir tools...With your ears you could do it ...

 

 

@mahgister

 

You miss the point. Everything you wrote is moot unless it is the case, for any example, that we really are able to detect a sonic difference. The most reliable method of doing this is listening tests controlling for biases. And we have learned a lot about thresholds in human hearing. There are measurable levels of differences and distortions that you will not detect, just as you will not detect with your senses X-rays.

@terry9

See above.

In scientific terms you are putting the cart before the horse: assuming your sighted impressions to have delivered The Truth, and then inferring from that, well if it’s not showing up in measurements then it’s the measurements that are inaccurate or incomplete...rather than the possibility it is your perception that is inaccurate.

 

 

You are so enthralled with your techno-cultist ideology that you dont even see my point...

Sounds are acoustics meanings not bits. ( the set of bits only CONVEY acoustics meanings from a recording room to another listening room)

The ears-brain is tuned to recognize concrete acoustics meanings..In speech and in my room listening music..

The numbers of factors implied is huge... You cannot predict with few electrical measurements what i will hear...

You then call what i will hear "illusions" forgetting that the acoustics meanings perceived vary much with the training...

You can fool someone blind about a bit of sound taken out of his usual acoustic environment and calling all human perceptions delusion if something is not measured BEFORE and AFTER...

 

 

But here it is you who put the sophism and put the cart before the horse... In acoustics we trust hearing and measure it to refine hearing aids for example. To do so we need to trust that musicians for example are able to detect really a piece of information that Fourier uncertainty principle will deem impossible to perceive...

( This trust is born not from a debunking circus of ASR but from real statistical studies to probe the limits of hearing and acousticians were astounded by our own ability)

Then instead of suspecting any individual to be deluded, acousticians discovered the opposite of your ideological watchword guru selling point about ASR ideology : namely human hearing has his own non linear way to extract meaningful acoustic information in his own time domain ... Have you even read the article above ? it is not about astrology or ASR ideology and cultist tool debunking, by the way , but about pure science ...

You are in a techno-cultist religion it seems... I prefer science... 😊

You make me smile because i remember you can have opinion about what you had never studied (astrology) ...

To resume my acoustics opinion: i am not a subjectivist because i believe in acoustic training and measurements and i am not an objectivist because accusing people of being deluded if they dont put all their faith in few electrical measures, is not my business as ASR Amir... ( i dont do business i set my room😁 )

«I am always between you brothers because science exist between fields too »-- Groucho Marx  christian epistemology 🤓

Thanks

Amir actually believes that all things coming out of your stereo can be measured and even subtle differences will show up in testing.

Why wouldn’t that be the case?

Remember why we usually create tools, especially measuring tools? Because of the limitations of our own senses! That’s why we build telescopes to see things we can’t with our naked eye, microscopes because our vision is limited in acuity, and we have all manner of instruments that can detect differences we ourselves can not. That goes for measuring audio gear with devices that can detect "subtle changes" in the signal that our ears can not detect. And we know enough about human hearing to look at measurements of amps, or speakers, and note which ACTUAL sonic phenomenon our ears are sensitive to or not.

All this suggests that of course measurements are a good tool for detecting "subtle differences."

 

You are so wrong here ... ( i dont deny the informative value of measurements here but the ideology and ignorance that is implied by what you claimed dogmatically)

But i had already a discussion for 7 days here with Amir and he did not understood anything...😁 And i used physicists and acoustician articles...

 

In a nutshell hearing theories actually pointed toward ecological theory of perception...

Why ?

Because bits are not meanings for a consciousness... And perceived sound experience is not identical with a Fourier map in the Fourier linear time domain.. The ears/brain create his own meanings in his own non linear time domain...

Read about acoustics and replace your electrical techno-cultism tool fetichism with real science ...

read at least this article :

https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html#:~:text=%28Phys.org%29%E2%80%94For%20the%20first%20time%2C%20physicists%20have%20found%20that,the%20limit%20imposed%20by%20the%20Fourier%20uncertainty%20principle.

 

There is actually a revolution in acoustics science ..

Go to the thread of Bolong "sound is a mystic experience " where i posted in the last few pages all articles describing this acoustic revolution and his meanings ...

😊

No one commented anything there save two idiots trolling me ...

Am i the only one interested by real science ?

Most confuse tools user manual with science ...it is the actual new techno cultic religion...promoted by corporate powers over Nations... Read about Blackrock total control of money flows by the way and you will understand why Trudeau and Biden or Trump are toys in higher hands ...

Myself contrary to subjectivist or objectivist sellers of gear i invite people to read science and experiment ... 😎

 

By the way it is evident that it is impossible to take into account  all variables parameters at play in the system/room/ears-brain-body experience of sound , they are electrical (electrical grid noise floor  of the house system room etc) Mechanical (resonances vibrations) acoustical and psychoacoustical... Then to analyse the S.Q. of a piece of gear few electrical measurements are not enough at all ...

The ideological claim that a few measures of a certain types are enough is only that : a seller ideology... Amir sell something ...

Science is way more complex...

Good posts for me prefab

Thanks and welcome...

And about Amir, i must add that to evaluate really a piece of gear we must do it also by listening for sure but listening in the same acoustic under control  conditions and with the same other pieces of gear  we already know for a long time  because precisely "Golden ears" dont exist save as an insult by ignorant ..

If not  evaluated in perfectly well known acoustic conditions, how do you for the first time evaluate a piece of gear in unknown acoustic environment resulting from other pieces of gear you do know know much either ?... The music/sound  must be evaluated with a dedicated acoustic room, a system we know and a music we know...

Measures are welcome, ideology not so welcome...

What is this electromechanical and "acoustical" synthesis/optimization you have done that no one else has been able to do (seemingly)? Can you list the tangible/physical things you did (stuff that went further than the theorycrafting domain)?...I sincerely hope it doesn’t involve a healthy dose of listener self-hypnosis as well! 😬

 

 

As i said in many posts here for 8 years, i experimented...

I described in details my own way to couple/decouple vibrations and decrease resonance in my speakers...It is not transferable for all speakers in all living room ( i had my dedicated room ) but this taught me a lot about mechanical controls of the speakers. The impact of negative resonance and vibrations is staggering and unsuspected by most speakers owners...

I will not describe anew here in a longer post what i described elsewhere...😊

Save if you want the details...

I did the same for electrical noise floor control in my own way.... It is well known that the house/room electrical noise floor level must be under control ...i created my own "tweaks " too (with shungite and copper and quartz) i dont buy anything that cost more than a peanuts butter pot...

i did the same with my two dedicated room... I know basic acoustics by experiments not by buying panels... 😁

In my first room i used a grid of 100 Helmholtz resonators for example mechanically tuned by ears in specific location to modify the pressure zones distribution... The location around listening position and around speaker A and speaker B was important...

i did many others things... But i cannot repeat all this in details here...Some will kill me for the post lenght...And some narrow mind will mock my use of other devices...

 

What i learned is that any relatively low cost system from 1,000 to 20,000 bucks with a minimal synergy quality, then well chosen, when they are embedded in these three working dimensions, mechanical,electrical and acoustical, they can gave their peak optimal working and reach their maximum working point.

This is enough to reach what i called : audiophile minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold...

Any costlier system if it is not well embedded in these three dimensions will be less interesting at worst or at best will be rivalled in S.Q. by a less refined design or less costly one...

Acoustics basic, mechanical and electrical basic knowledge rules audio , not price tags of the gear...

Creativity matter more than money...

And know that acoustics definitions and parameters controls had nothing to do with placebo and self hypnosis...

Timbre is defined by 5 factors at least , modify one in one direction or in the inverse direction and the timbre will change... No placebo here, it is acoustics principles at work... If you modify the reverberation time of your room by modifying the balance between absorption and reflection on some plane you will perceive a change in the experience... If you act in reverse you will perceive another change etc... there is no self hypnosis in experiments...

😊

 

Last thing : is it easy to do and learn ?

No i did it because i am retired... I did it full time for 2 years... Before that i was ignorant and frustrated as many here because i never love any gear system i owned anyway... I modified all my speakers and all my headphones with each time improvement ... But it was not enough ...And i was frustrated by my unability to pay for a very costlier one...I felt my audio system was anything but a stopgap...

When all parameters are balanced in a system/room you are no longer in a stopgap system. because the system work optimally... For sure you may upgrade it... But now it will be very costly to really upgrade and it will be less tempting too because when the S.Q. is optimal we listen music and forgot the sound...

 

All had changed when i learned by experiments how to work in these three dimensions : mechanical,electrical and acoustical...

For sure my speakers are low cost, i modified them with Helmholtz principle and now they are metamorphosed in a good piece of gear ( i hated them so much i never used them for music for 10 years) now they are my choice speakers... 😊

for my headphone i was lucky the laso one i bought was the best design and the more complex one ever make... It was my ninth headphone( i dislike all headphones even after my successfull modificatiopns) But this one is so refined one the only hybrid ever made with a grid of tune Helmholtz resonators inside a dual acoustic chamber, i was lucky to buy it... But it takes me 6 months of experiments to optimize it... it is the AKG K340 ... i even read the Dr. Gorike patent to unsderrstand this headphone ... i will not repeat all here ... 😊

 

The goal of my posts is motivate people to be creative if they had time and room for this... my goal is to inform them that it is not necessary at all to invest ton of money... it is more useful and more fun to study and experiment...

 Some people with very costly system think i am deluded... but those who are deluded are those ignoring what is acoustics...

I am more interested by hearing theory than by reviews of gear ...

 

my best to you...

I apologize if i cannot repeat all i ever wrote here ... but the principle is the more important... Each one will use the same principles in his own way...

 

 

 

 

 

In addition, when I measure something, the data speaks for itself. There is little of "me" involved in that.

You do not seems conscious that the choice of tool, the choices of the set of measures, the choice of interpretation among all tools and possible measures, and possible interpretations is "subjective" choice...😊

Techno-cultist act as this confusing scientism with science...but i will no go further about techno-cultism here in audio forum... 😉

 

 

What you do Amir is not science, if you dont want to abuse the use of this concept it is verifying with some limited set of measures the specs of a piece of gear...But alas! you go further and claim that this is objective review then "pure science" this is untrue and misleading...Because a piece of gear and an audio system work differently in different mechanical,electrical,and acoustical and psychoacoustical contexts... Nothing of what you do is purely objective...

Audiophile gave their subjective impressions and they sell their own gear choice as solution or their upgrade as solutions...This is misleading too ...

 

 

These two groups, subjectivist and objectivists, sell gear and sell their products of choice, be it a set of tool or their beloved piece of gear as solutions (outside of any specific under control acoustic context as if this obsession with the gear design will resume audio experience by itself)

These 2 groups in fact presented pieces of gear as it could be the solution ,on the contrary they should have presented really any pieces of gear as component for an acoustic problem, a problem that cannot be solved anyway either by mere tools or by adding new components . Acoustics parameters controls matter. They supposed "ears/brain/system/room" existence as one so that experience and experimentation could be possible......

 

What i do with my pieces of gear linked as one system in my dedicated room, looking for electrical,mechanical and acoustical basic knowledge is creating my own system...

I mislead no one recommending at each and everyone to study acoustics then they will understand that "timbre" is not a colored illusion for example and they will understand how to use the electrical,mechanical and acoustics parameters to improve their experience. 😊

I dont sell gear as reviewers and i dont sell my site or my favorite tool...😁

I recommend creativity and acoustics experiments. 😎

 

thanks for your kind words...

I am glad i am not alone in the cracks where truth wait between the bricks of the jailing house...

You are lucky that i never spoke english in my life... I only had read english in science books and philosophy. I know very few concrete words and no slang...

In french i would have been much more clear and much more long and proficient with hues of meanings and humor...😊

 

By the way welcome on audiogon...

😊

 

 

Arguing is useless When people are bent on hate or had no recognized common ground...

-----It appear stupid to my eyes because audio experience is a perception personal subjective experience which must be trained and educated not by gear purchase but by acoustics experiments and concepts...

-----It appear stupid to me because audio experience result also from a set of acoustical measurable of parameters between the system /room/ears. This acoustics and psychoacouistics set of measures are so impactful that the electrical specs of the gear even the speakers specs matter less for the qualitative end result ...

Then Amir techno-cultist ideology and sarcasms about "golden ears" and the audiogoners hate toward him personnaly is preposterous, as useless, as in politics the hate between Biden or Trump, or left/right, big eggs /small eggs it neglect the hidden cause and real control of the parasitic minds watchwords put on the social fabric and reflecting the techno-cultist control of Finances, medecine,politics, even the lost of science and mind by big corporation criminality.

All is very clear since Bernard Mandeville work on social fabric controls and René Girard analysis of violence.

 

«Brain grow or shrink,they never stay put»--Groucho Marx neurologist🤓

Oh no.  A Golden Ear has spoken.  Whatever will Amir do...?  ;-)

 

Insulting people will not help...Using the dismissing epiteth

 "golden ear" about audiophiles and music lovers here  will not help...

We assist everywhere in the world  to the  increasing dismissing attitude toward human  ability in favor of the techno-cult religion rising...

 

 ASR reviews are useful as are useful "golden ears" opinions because we are all human...

It is stupid to relinquish any tool measuring information...

But it is no less stupid to use only one type of measures about the gear without taking into account  our own trained hearing in a complex acoustic environment  ... ( i created my own room then i am trained enough to hear what i need for designing my room/system)

Take the despising expression "golden ear" where it belong where no one could look for it ...

Thanks for Amir reviews.... But i will let his ideology where it belong...

Acoustics and psychoacoustics rules audio not ideology of the "subjective" or  alleged "objective" kind ...

I myself are interested in hearing theories as basis for audio... Not on any tool in particular... Guess why ? 😊

 

I concur with your opinion.

I discussed enough for 10 days here with Amir and his acoustics knowledge is around DSP not basic concepts distinguishing human hearing from Fourier Maps...He does not even to understand them because they are qualitative concepts based on real human hearing abilities in the field. These concepts are useless for his reductionist ideology.

it is a man who sincerely convey an ideology as pure truth.

This ideology begun to destruct human lives in a visible manner now : it is techno cultism conflated with and then replacing science...Most people dont have the basic knowledge necessary to see this...

Intelligence does not means wisdom ...

Knowledge cannot be reduced to science save by ideologue like Popper . I prefer real scientist from formation to political propagandists as Polanyi and Goethe were .

i will stop here but techno cultism is a plague and the introduction of A.I. will make this way worse...It is easy for engineers to put into people head that inside of this statistical blackbox of A.I. trained is an intelligence superior to man. Especially with the prodigious improvement of many basic fields. We will become the tools of A.I. it is already the case. A.I. will less align on us than us on it . Narrow materialist mind will call that the progress and the future. Now guess on who are aligned the big corporations hubris for power ? No not on science as Polanyi or Goethe, but on techno cultism as religion with A.I. as God all that to control free human spirit and bent it to the will of the few.

 

So ASR is definitely influencing this hobby in the Internet era, and as with who lives in the biggest houses and drives the newest cars in my city, it’s helping tip the balance of power and influence in this hobby for the interested public and new generations of audiophiles from artists, musicians, designers and pretty much anyone with good listening skills to… engineers and computer algorithms. This makes me sad. If you were to spend anytime on ASR, you would gather that ears need not apply, their days and role in the hifi buying decision process are… over. No, seriously, if it can’t be measured by this or that analyzer, it can’t have value. Period. Now Amir may not say or think that, but the bulk of the discussion on his site adheres pretty closely to this line.

Amir has gently poked fun at one of my posts on ASR regarding some character of sound of Schiit Mani 2 phono preamp, probably something about soundstage… while others have been extraordinarily sarcastic and blatantly dismissive of any subjective comment I might make comparing the sound attributes of say, one DAC compared to another when they both measure “perfectly”.............

In summary, I do think measurements are critically important and a great place to start your audio reproduction journey. To that end, sites like ASR provide a valuable service. I do also think there are elements of this hobby and equipment design that are both not fully quantified or measurable, yet, and where art and subjective listening add real value. My concern is that absolutist worship of measurement over listening will lead many to miss out on some of the more pleasurable elements of fun, enjoyment, and discovery this hobby has to offer. I am definitely for less arguing and more listening.

 

Wise advice!

I thoroughly appreciate what ASR does to cover the "measurables", even if what Amir measures is not something I can hear.  Conversely, I can hear that which Amir cannot measure.  And many times I've been confounded by a disconnect between measurements and hearing. 

Beautiful 10k square wave.  Sounded dull and lifeless with the 3.6R.  Then connected an Eico HF-89, and suddenly there was sparkle, life, slam, soundstage, and air.  Yet the two amps measured nearly the same.  Conclusion, measurements and listening are both useful tools.  If two pieces of gear sound the same, then I'll pick the one with better measurements.  I'll always pick the one with the better sound, regardless of measurements.