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.
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.
My initial read on the comment paper is that at sufficiently high sampling rates for the FFT, the effect goes away, though the authors are using a windowing Fourier x-form that I am not fully familiar with or the implications of the free gamma parameter that they set to the variance of the initial pulse.
There's a rich literature on using accumulation methods in image processing to overcome Fourier uncertainty and one implication might be that it's not so much a nonlinear effect but just stimuli accumulation in our cochlea and the neural systems that process the data.
I'll do a bit more digging but it looks increasingly like (a) might be untrue and (b) might also be untrue in my new syllogism.
"If you all just learned how to properly test equipment so that only the fidelity is being evaluated, then these arguments would all go away. Instead, you keep doing faulty testing, with all manner of mistakes and biases and arrive at conclusions that are not supported by any science or engineering."
What a nasty, arrogant condescending piece of work you are.
Here is John Atkinson commenting on objective performance of Topping Pre90:
The Pre90 preamplifier's measured performance is simply superb. The fact that that performance can be achieved in such a small chassis and for such a low price suggests that Topping has some serious audio engineering talent in-house.—John Atkinson
On another Topping product:
The Topping DM7's measured performance is superb, even without taking its affordable price into account.—John Atkinson
@deep_333 That's correct. I dislike nearly all other Topping DACs (I've heard 3 older ones). This unit has been extensively praised by reviewers and owners. This is the one two of my friends use, one is a spendthrift with limited funds and the other a very wealthy audiophile who probably has a dozen DACs he plays with.
I especially enjoyed the D70s openness listening to complex acoustic orchestral and opera. No problem with heavy metal that my wife listens to occasionally. I understand you finding some other D model inferior. It could be. I am using a very high end audio system to evaluate it's potential. It will probably be used in my second system for occasional use for CDs and streaming.
I would like to see Majidimehr design/build a dac from scratch though... show us all what a genius he is with his unfathomable bachelors degree n all (instead of dumping rudimentary output from a AP kit all day...that a 12 year old could be taught to do).
I hate the audio hardware business so you are never going to see me get involved in it. I did grew up with electronics as my hobby and put myself through college repairing all manners of electronics from audio to RF radios.
DAC design is not hard anyway as the IC companies provide full reference designs. What is hard is the implementation to keep noise down. That, is hard and I tip my hat at likes of Topping, SMSL, Schiit, etc. for having that hands on knowledge (I hired experts for that when I was managing engineering at Sony and others). Check out this review of Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II DAC and Streamer
It got the worst rating from me not just for performance, but for having DAC filter selections that did nothing!
Same problem was found by stereophile months earlier in their review and they still had not bothered to fix it! There must have been a shortage of 12 year olds where they work per your statement to run this simple test and find the bug.
I imagine, they went through changing the settings in the UI and picked the one that sounded best to them, not realizing that all the time nothing was changing in the unit!!!
As you see it is a gorgeous looking device with proper form factor, running Android.
This is how well it performed:
Now compare its FFT performance on top right to that of Mytek:
You see all that power supply and interference noise in Mytek? This is what happens when there is a shortage of 12 year olds that know how to run Audio Precision!
If it is just one boring bird squealing to a single string in a simplistic manner, one may not catch stuff like that about the ASR Topping miracle. These Chifi engineers are fairly sharp though and maybe they’ve learned a thing or two (progressed over time, wouldn’t know until a newer dac is compared)..
A few years ago, Schiit decided to take measurements seriously, put aside their lousy audio measurement and buy an Audio Precision analyzer like I have. In less than a year, they managed to produce superb performance and price as good as Chinese companies. Here is one of many examples, the Schiit Midgard:
As you see, it garnered the highest award from me (the golfing panther). The product like many others was sent to me by the company.
They are not alone. Here is JDS Labs doing the same. Of course Benchmark Audio has been there longer than many producing excellent products.
As a consumer, you need to celebrate the fact that companies are working hard to produce the most transparent audio products they can without charging you a premium. Not go on some racist tangent that if it is Chinese, it can't be that good or that they must have learned something from others. Topping has been and continues to be the only company that includes in its manuals complete set of measurements. They did this before I started reviewing anything.
But this is audio where religion and beliefs dominate more than actual facts.
I borrowed a Topping D whatever it was with the balanced outs (their top model kinda from a couple of years ago). When you played dense tracks is when it started to fall apart, in comparison to my other dacs...(technics, denafrips...or even the Schiit Yggdrasil).
I tested two Schiit Yggdrasils, finding design errors in them. Company disputed that so a third person volunteered his unit. In doing so, he told me he had bought a Topping and it did not sound as good. He gave me the model number and precise tracks he had used for that testing, and the fact that he had used Stax headphones. I own Stax headphones, and said Topping DAC and same music in high-res (what he had used).
First thing I had to do was match levels as out of box levels were not the same, invalidating any such listening test. After I did that, the two DACs sounded identical in AB tests. The Topping cost 10% of the Yggdrasils.
I was also told that the Yggdrasils needs to warm up. So I left it on for days, measuring it along the way. Its performance never changed.
Again, I duplicated his listening tests to the letter, except that I was careful to match levels when he had not done.
If you all just learned how to properly test equipment so that only the fidelity is being evaluated, then these arguments would all go away. Instead, you keep doing faulty testing, with all manner of mistakes and biases and arrive at conclusions that are not supported by any science or engineering.
Why does Topping have so many DACs both in the past and currently? Because they sound different from one another. They are designing different sounding DACs with different designs and parts. But why? To stay relevant in this rapidly changing market where new is better? Or perhaps honestly attempting to make better and better DACs?
I borrowed a Topping D whatever it was with the balanced outs (their top model kinda from a couple of years ago). When you played dense tracks is when it started to fall apart, in comparison to my other dacs...(technics, denafrips...or even the Schiit Yggdrasil).
If it is just one boring bird squealing to a single string in a simplistic manner, one may not catch stuff like that about the ASR Topping miracle. These Chifi engineers are fairly sharp though and maybe they’ve learned a thing or two (progressed over time, wouldn’t know until a newer dac is compared)..
I would like to see Majidimehr design/build a dac from scratch though... show us all what a genius he is with his unfathomable bachelors degree n all (instead of dumping rudimentary output from a AP kit all day...that a 12 year old could be taught to do).
Why does Topping have so many DACs both in the past and currently? Because they sound different from one another. They are designing different sounding DACs with different designs and parts. But why? To stay relevant in this rapidly changing market where new is better? Or perhaps honestly attempting to make better and better DACs? Whatever the reason, my friends and I have found one of their DACs to be a superior quality one at now ridiculously low price as a discontinued item. No, the D70s is not as good as the Lampizators but is sells for 50X+ less than my Poseidon. It only revealed how excellent it was using a $5000 CD transport. Another inexpensive transport the Shanling ET3 was an inadequate match and there is a large number of satisfied listeners who are very happy with this top loading transport.
Audio equipment designers have their own sound preferences. If the equipment owner cares about the sound quality (so many determine purchases based on price, appearance and other factors as well prior to or irrelevant to sound reproduction), they desire to match it. It becomes infinitely more complicated with a system approach with multiple separate components are involved as well as the room acoustics and the ancillary connecting equipment.
I have found that even bending the upper fold of my left ear reveals greater air and presence on the left side of my hearing than it's current curvature. Imagine all the permutations of listeners with their different aural physical structures and nervous systems. While measurements can help in determining distortion and other performance aspects of equipment, they are generally inadequate alone to help build an audio system without just one manufacturer designing a specific "sound" preference for a full component line,
ASR is a poor example for choosing audio equipment to create a high quality listening experience. It can point to adequacies and inadequacies of a single component, sometimes relative to a few other components. Dismissing entire sectors of equipment (cabling, fuses, anti-vibration devices, etc) negates essential components except for all in one systems (speakers with built in integrated equipment).
So many great comments in this forum on hearing. I am a part time musician and recording engineer who has the advantage of also being an "audiophile." My audiophilia is limited (despite my recent funding of end game speakers, amps and DAC/pre-amp). I don't swap equipment often and sell what I don't intend to use again. Without DSP, a critical component is the room acoustics and is still inadequately considered by most audiophiles (I know of many who swap equipment on a quite regular basis).
@rgs Well, 2800+ comments on my two older forums on ASR should adequately provide all the information on Amir plus in this forum he can't help himself to utterly prove who and what he is.
I have a friend that participated in a formal listening test when Infiniti (I think) introduced a new line of speakers after a period of dormancy. If I remember correctly they used shorts bursts of music in mono over a fairly long period. He commented on both the complexity and the tedium. I think he was the only one who was completely consistent in his preference. He was flown, picked up in a limo and lodging and meals were provided. I dont this he was paid for his participation.
(d) There are no experimental results that demonstrate there exist audio systems that show (c). The easy way to do demonstrate (c) is with an ABX test with proper controls.
There's no universal agreement that an ABX test is the ideal way to test for anything.
Have you ever participated in a real ABX test - the kind conducted by real researchers and that involve multiple subjects? I'm guessing not, based on your apparent belief that an ABX test is an "easy way to demonstrate."
In real life, meaningful ABX tests aren't easy or pleasant. That's part of why audiophiles have such little use for them.
Since summarizing has great power, I'll just update my previous efforts to build a syllogism:
(a) Human hearing surpasses the ability of linear Fourier systems to resolve micro-phenonema in timing/frequency.
(b) Since FFT measurements use linear Fourier systems they may present measurements of audio systems that do not show these micro-phenomena.
(c) Therefore, using human hearing to design audio systems may achieve improved results over the measurements or, conversely, if there are aspects of existing systems that exceed the measurements those may be heard by human listeners.
Now, (b) is contested by Amir along several lines of argumentation per above, but what is not yet contested is that:
(d) There are no experimental results that demonstrate there exist audio systems that show (c). The easy way to do demonstrate (c) is with an ABX test with proper controls.
No good quality electronics doesnt infer low noise and distortion. What is the level of noise and distortion that separates good from bad? What many dont seem to understand is that you can have components with higher levels of noise and distortion but that perform better in other areas which some deem to be of more significance. How then would you explain the resurgence of vinyl and tubed electronics?
Having seen and heard a lot over the years, I would assert that low noise and distortion systems all tend to sound very similar, as one would expect.
But what fun is everything sounding the same? Not any more than everything tasting the same. Everyone tosses in their own special sauce/seasoning to make things "better".
I find the same with home hifi sound. You start with low noise and distortion electronics then the world is your oyster from there. Toss in a pair of, for example, Sonus Faber speakers or apply some custom DSP or EQ to sweeten the pot. Maybe both!
Once you start with a solid foundation (good quality electronics which infers low noise and distortion), all kinds of good things can happen from there. So many choices at all price points for good performing gear!!
Otherwise, your options may be limited.
At least that’s how I tend to go about it in a practical manner these days,
BTW, the person who did that is a musician. As a rule, musicians are not audiophiles. My piano teacher wouldn’t know a tweeter from a woofer. If this study applied to audio reproduction, then all musicians would have been diehard audiophiles but they are not.
Musicians are also better at hearing room reflections than general population. Again, that doesn’t make them want to buy fancy audio systems.
- I am a hobbyist musician. I am fairly certain that i have a couple of rigs that can beat the snot out of whatever you’ve got in the garage (Revel Salon n all).
- I have pro musician friends with very legit hifi rigs.
- W.r.t the famous ones, Lisa Gerard, Bjork, Sting, Prince, etc all have/had very high caliber hifi rigs.
Were you hanging out with punk rocker kids screaming into some 100 dollar PA kit at the bar before you made your assessment?
BTW, the person who did that is a musician. As a rule, musicians are not audiophiles. My piano teacher wouldn’t know a tweeter from a woofer.
Once again musicians are brought up as if their preferences or technical understanding of audio playback hardware reveals some universal truth about audiophiles.
Being a musician is relevant how? Showing your bias and prevarication again.
If this study applied to audio reproduction, then all musicians would have been diehard audiophiles but they are not.
Nonsense statement again. Sweeping generalization based on nothing.
Musicians are also better at hearing room reflections than general population. Again, that doesn’t make them want to buy fancy audio systems.
Do you have data to back up that opinion? How many musicians have you surveyed regarding their audio systems?
"I hear you but where do you draw the line? I listen to all speakers and headphones I review. I also listen to every headphone amplifier and portable DAC+HP amp I review. As you go further upstream, I listen less and less."
These 2 statements say enough for me to continue to disregard ASR
@audition__audioThe last post from Amir was pretty wild. The assertion that we can accurately measure what we hear isnt taken seriously be anyone I trust or would go to for advice. Seems so obvious.
+1 totally agree. I've never been to his site and based on all his replies in this thread never will. Will he care? No. Do I care? No
Not a universal opinion on the PSM156. Imagine if he did listen to the PSM156 and gave this review...
In my system with PSM156, using 3 different power cables feeding it, it restricted dynamics, sweetened and mellowed out the presentation to the degree I couldn’t live with it. I tried their Ultimate cable and didn’t like it - brittle up top, thinner sounding although with higher res than the Classic. Running amps into Puritan was garbage. Even the dac and preamp sounded pinched. I’m exaggerating for illustration purposes but you get the idea. I sold it and don’t miss it one bit. Direct on dedicated line now. Some people love this power conditioner, I didn’t.
There were a lot of measurements reported, but no mention made of how it sounded. The review concluded that ""there is no indication or logic that would tell us that it can make an audible improvement".
There are many reviews online about the impact of the PSM 156 and I can personally vouch for the audible improvement it has on an audio system. The above review was not helpful - I bought a PSM 156 despite this review.
Here is a novel suggestion for Amir - why not listen to its effect in a highly resolving audio system, then try to figure out what that effect is and see if you can measure it? Oh, and listen to music - complex musical passages - and not just test tones.
If you keep your head buried in the sand you will never hear the truth.
The last post from Amir was pretty wild. The assertion that we can accurately measure what we hear isnt taken seriously be anyone I trust or would go to for advice. Seems so obvious.
Hey laoman, I actually wasn’t expecting anything - my post may have seem to have been made in polite response to amir’s request (he had stopped responding to any of my posts since my mention of his cognitive dissonance last year), but it was actually for the benefit of all his less experienced followers who may not have been fully indoctrinated. I hope my post doesn’t get lost in the mix - I think it offers an answer to the question audiophiles have asked for decades now, why they hear what cannot be measured.
It is also beyond argument that human hearing can exceed the Fourier limit of uncertainty, at times by a factor of ten.
BTW, the person who did that is a musician. As a rule, musicians are not audiophiles. My piano teacher wouldn't know a tweeter from a woofer. If this study applied to audio reproduction, then all musicians would have been diehard audiophiles but they are not.
Musicians are also better at hearing room reflections than general population. Again, that doesn't make them want to buy fancy audio systems.
I, for one, would love to read one day about your having invented a measuring machine that exceeds the Fourier uncertainty principle.
A "measuring machine" can be built to mimic human hearing and produce the same results as that study. But this has nothing to do with measuring audio equipment. There, we are not trying to analyze human hearing but the transparency of a piece of equipment.
The audio equipment is NOT attempting to analyze what it is hearing. Nor is its measurements. As such, none of this study applies to analysis of audio gear, or its measurements.
There is only one specific case in audio where we want to show both timing and frequency. That is the waterfall/CSD plot. I include that in every one of my speaker measurements. Take this review of Genelec 8361A (a superb studio monitor):
Notice how the frequency and time are presented at the same time. Depending on the number of points used, we can make either X axis higher resolution, or Y, or balance the two. Depending on what phenomenon we are are interested in, we optimize one or the other. As a general rule, I highly recommend people to not look at this specific measurement as it can vary that way.
Outside of this one example (whose information you can extract from others), there are no other audio measurements where we are trying to simultaneously look at time and frequency resolution. It is always the latter that we care about meaning we can highly optimize for frequency resolution, blowing away human acuity by a mile. Look at the review of this Schiit Vidar 2 Amplifier:
And this multitone test that uses FFT:
Your ear has no prayer of hearing those tine spikes. It simply hears them as background noise, reducing practical dynamic range. This is because I have used whopping 256,000 points to make that measurement allowing incredible resolution that is able to show those spikes. The test signal keeps repeating so we don't care about its timing.
There is absolutely nothing in there about audio measurements in general, or it being worse than the human hearing. You have cut and paste unrelated things.
As i have explained, many audio measurements are done without any Fourier analysis. SINAD, SNR, THD+N vs frequency, frequency response, etc. are all done simply by measuring voltages and levels. No transform of any kind.
When we do use Fourier transform in measurements, we can choose any length and arrive at frequency resolution far better than human hearing. When doing so, we are not at all interested in timing as the input is constant.
As @markwd has properly explained, the main usefulness of this study is in developing models of human hearing and how they need to take into account its non-linearity in this regard. It is not in any way, shape or form about the usefulness of audio equipment measurements.
I explained all of this in detail before. Please don't keep repeating the same thing by copying stuff from the article, which by the way, is NOT the paper itself.
@kevnWell, very expansive but we actually can develop systems to do such measurements using precisely the same approach that nature uses: nonlinear systems. It's not terrifically mysterious; we do it all the time in optical systems that shift frequencies just like the heterodyning that is described in the paper. I will admit that the mathematics is quite challenging based on experience. Being nonlinear we sometimes have to use things like spectral analysis (wow, strangely familiar) to look at solution families.
But the problem is that no one has actually successfully applied any of this to designing audio equipment! Or at least no one has demonstrated that to be the case!
Now amir, I trust there still is enough of the rationalist in you to back down in the face of a freshly discovered truth. From previous exchanges, I know well how cleverly you hunker down to prevaricate, conflate and, as nonoise puts it so well, use sophistry of language, graphs, readings, and…well, measurements, to deflect, twist and palter your way out of critical discourse, so I now put it to you plainly: belief forms such a vital part of our inner system of existence, its collapse can sometimes create such drastic change which a mind may not be able to accept. In the face of an unacceptable new truth, one of three things can happen - the first results in such a blow to the original belief, the individual in question in unable to reconcile the fresh truth with a way forward, and decides to end it all in suicide. In the second outcome, the individual succumbs to denial, hunkers down in aggressive statement after restatement of his/her belief and the false processes that validate that belief. But there is a third.
Now, it is beyond argument that linear testing equipment cannot accurately measure frequency simultaneously with time past a certain limit.
It is also beyond argument that human hearing can exceed the Fourier limit of uncertainty, at times by a factor of ten.
This puts everything you have arrogantly stood for since you started asr into the bin of falsehood.
Your measurements will always have their place, to inform and educate, but every imperious and contemptuous statement you ever made of those who have depended on their basic hearing, never mind developed listening skills; everything you did with your measurements to support your beliefs; every single listening test you have ever done; everything statement you ever made in conclusion of your tests; everything….has been false.
I hope I know you well enough that you will not succumb to the first outcome of collapsed belief, given the immensity of this new truth.
And you may well, all history considered, hunker down and irrelevantly once again refer to linear measurements to argue against logical concepts of uncertainty that involve non linearity.
Or you could chose the third outcome, which is one of acceptance - to graciously admit there are some things you may not have considered, in your religious fervour to be always proven right; that you are human, just like the rest of us, and might have made a rare but egregious mistake; and that you ask to take some time out to consider the weight of true science and the logic you are fighting against. This third outcome will be welcomed, even if there will be many aggrieved audiophiles who bore the weight of your contempt or indoctrination all these years. The third outcome will be welcomed for the simple fact you are intelligent, and you do fight for your beliefs (even if too arrogantly), but mostly for the fact that you do make good contribution to all audiophiles with your measurements as a good, if not brilliant technician. And my deeper hope is that you could actually grow to serve science, in all its amazing duality of rationalism andempiricism.
I, for one, would love to read one day about your having invented a measuring machine that exceeds the Fourier uncertainty principle.
@amir_asr “Please point out in the link where it says audio measurements are not able to keep up with the human ear:”
nice to hear from you once again, amir. Here we go, highlighted in bold below -
“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. Not surprisingly, some of the subjects with the best listening precision were musicians, but even non-musicians could exceed the uncertainty limit. The results rule out the majority of auditory processing brain algorithms that have been proposed, since only a few models can match this impressive human performance.
The researchers, Jacob Oppenheim and Marcelo Magnasco at Rockefeller University in New York, have published their study on the first direct test of the Fourier uncertainty principle in human hearing in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.
The Fourier uncertainty principle states that a time-frequency tradeoff exists for sound signals, so that the shorter the duration of a sound, the larger the spread of different types of frequencies is required to represent the sound. Conversely, sounds with tight clusters of frequencies must have longer durations. The uncertainty principle limits the precision of the simultaneous measurement of the duration and frequency of a sound.”
ive put as much of it into context as possible. The first highlight determines that human hearing can outperform up to ten times, the limit set by the uncertainty principle. The second highlight in bold simply describes that the accuracy of simultaneous measurement of both frequency and timing is limited by the Fourier uncertainty principle. If you study the context of the first statement in relation to the second, it is clear that measurements currently cannot explain what is heard by the human ear. As with the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty at the subatomic scale, the smaller, or more nuanced particles or sound information gets, there is a limit to what we can currently measure, because all our current measuring instruments are linear, meaning they operate sequentially, or in discrete packets.
At the subatomic scale, and its equivalent in relation to music in its every nuance, it’s impossible to tie down the location of any particle (or specific frequency) in relation to its speed (or timing) because of the absolutely continuous nature of movement. We can do so in relation to a car, or even a golf ball, because there are so many points in the huge space of a car or that golfball to tie a location to at any one moment in time. But, the moment we get into scales of that single unrelenting point, there is no possible way to rationally address its location with its movement, because even before the instant of the instant we have identified its location, it will have moved. There would be range of points, a range of uncertainty, as to where that point could be, hence the limit. It is only when we get to broader strokes, bigger items, grander scales, that the limit doesn’t apply, obviously, since the measurement of precise location can be sloppy, it will still be somewhere in the space of the object. Now, it could be said that Fourier uncovered the principle of uncertainty before Heisenberg, who then formulated it in relation to quantum mechanics and popularised it. But the vital matter is that any kind of measurement currently known to us is still limited by the uncertainty principle.
The uncertainty principle applies in acoustics and music, and not merely audio signals, in the deepest complexity and greatest nuance that music is. As such, when someone says they hear something that measurements do not indicate, they may not be blindly led by confirmation bias - because human hearing is non-linear, meaning we hear in continuum and not by way of sequential little jumps, we are able to detect nuance that no instrument can, being limited by linearity. At the scales of what we are discussing, of the tiniest moments of transition in relation to singular frequencies, the human ear still understands frequency simultaneously with timing in ways no instrument can measure or record.
(1) There is no ABX test that shows that a measurably transparent audio system is distinguishable from another based on additional properties related to nonlinear perception capabilities.
(2) I still think you are misunderstanding the thrust of the paper: they are arguing that a way of modeling human hearing in the past has been to isomorphically map it to a linear frequency breakdown of the signal that is spatially spread within the cochlea (see Kunchur, etc. for additional details). The difficulties of this are that tapering of the cochlea (at least) leads to nonlinear phenomena. The FUP is a mathematical idealization that limits the simultaneous resolution of time and frequency for a linear system and they use it to explain how nonlinear systems can overcome this resolution in this case.
(3) Per my previous points about simulation as the gold standard, here’s the skeleton of your argument:
(a) Human hearing surpasses the ability of linear Fourier systems to resolve micro-phenonema in timing/frequency.
(b) Since FFT measurements use linear Fourier systems they may present measurements of audio systems that do not include this micro-phenomena.
(c) Therefore, using human hearing to design audio systems may achieve improved results over the FFT results shown by measurements.
(d) And, in conclusion, show me any such realizations via ABX tests that demonstrate that a designer was successfully able to tune a system to, in fact, achieve (c).
(e) But, per my previous posts, there is the opportunity to also improve the measurement apparatus to account for the discrepancy or to develop an impactful theory about how nonlinear cochlear phenomena might add to the music listening experience. These do not exist and therefore there is no path yet.
@markwd “Well, fair enough, but you have not demonstrated that human hearing exceeds those measurements for music listening purposes!”
I’ve not needed to demonstrate anything, markwd, it was already demonstrated in the test I’ve been trying to bring your attention to the past three days ; )
@markwd “If we had just one great ABX test that showed me wrong, I would be thrilled because that would pave the way to something new.”
do have another read of it -https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html - and I’d say you either haven’t read the article or are being hypocritical about your claim of being thrilled, because it would clearly puts all audio measurements into rightful context.
@markwd“All those dynamics would dance again and the mad scientists who brought the systems to life would be celebrated for rightly finding a path towards a new audio Xanadu”
those ‘mad’ scientists have been doing it for years already; giving us such an amazing variety of analogue and digital playback equipment, the mind boggles. We do already have an audio Xanadu! If only you’d set your rational side of measurement and signal fidelity aside for a moment to take all the wonders of high fidelity into your amazing empirical and non-linear ears!
@markwd “I'm certainly indoctrinated in the epistemic humility to be as careful as possible in assessing ideas, my own and those of others who hope but have not fully honed those hopes with the calm clarity of rationality.”
oh, that’s more than clear to me and everyone else here; and I’m glad you referred to it as epistemic, and not scientific, humility. Perhaps you could extend that humility to the other half of science you’ve so neglected - empirical humility is just as, if not more important than epistemic, or rational humility.
@markwd “I’ll note also that I think you may be misinterpreting the Fourier uncertainty principle in this particular context as I and Amir have mentioned to @mahgisterin several contexts. The authors are showing that if you used Fourier analysis as a model for human hearing there are limits to its applicability because there is likely nonlinear bucketing that allows for discrimination of time/frequency in excess of what a linear system is capable of.”
in fact, markwd, i would wager you have not understood the Fourier uncertainty principle in totality. The Fourier uncertainty principle cannotapply as a model for human hearing for the simple reason it is merely there to explain the limitation of signal measurements, not the limitations of human hearing - ie - measuring equipment, being linear, cannot exceed the limits of the uncertainty principle; human hearing, being non-linear, constantly does.
@markwd “The speculation is that the fine acuity is derived from evolutionary pressures and the mechanics of it are due to the shape of the cochlea”
yes, the very shape which is believed to be the reason why human hearing surpasses the Fourier uncertainty principle; you’re preaching to the choir but to promote falsehood, not the truth - that is, measurements cannot match the human ability to hear the nuance of both frequency and timing simultaneously, at the levels of resolution music is about.
@markwd “…but I can change "edge" to "newly found" to remove any stigma the term invokes!”
while you’re at it, you will want to remove the ‘little’ as well, there is nothing little about something that puts the measurement vs hearing issue to rest than this. Markwd, clarity of communication is everything 😔
Markwd, for more, please refer to my coming reply to amir’s question to me.
I like to summarize online discussions to try to tease out what the central points and realizations are. Often they amount to the collective desires of the participants to simply participate, which is understandable. I read the Roon community for specific details on new Roon Ready certifications, the fate of MQA, and technical details about using MUSE. I read ASR for reviews of new (and old) products and how they objectively perform, as well as new insights about the science and engineering of audio systems.
Here at Audiogon, however, I just check in after I get a Friday summary list and really don't see much new information at all. We have committed listeners who tell long narratives about how trusted friends told them about a product, or how everyone should try some new cables, and how listening convinced them of this or that. But what we don't get is any real or actionable information beyond "If you liked Nordblost's Mjolgurniator III, just wait until you can trade up to MRT's Fusionator 3000!"
I've yet to discover something novel beyond the brief deep-dive that I participated in above (and was prompted by the prolific and occasionally challenging @mahgister) concerning how exactly listening and measurements might have a divergence...at least currently.
Now I might be biased slightly towards novel and actionable information that has some depth to it based on my background and passions, but I am curious what other contributors get out of all this bashing and clashing, promoting and diminishing?
I'm curious why folks argue and contribute here besides the obvious commercial interests of dealers cultivating sales (a bit of a sad and fundamentally small market to be captive to, alas)? I'm developing a book on the topic, so any insights/confessions/realizations are of interest to me!
"Rather than paint with such a broad brush that it precludes the reader from gaining any actual knowledge and understanding. Why not give specific examples of Amir's rude behaviour and clarify what actions violate "basic manners"?
With all due respect, both others and I have given many examples of Amir's rude, condescending behaviour in this thread and in others. Read the whole of this thread for examples.
@laomanyou state that Amir cannot help himself, and is "such a rude and objectionable person" and he should "learn some basic manners."
Rather than paint with such a broad brush that it precludes the reader from gaining any actual knowledge and understanding. Why not give specific examples of Amir's rude behaviour and clarify what actions violate "basic manners"?
If your goal is to encourage better communication from Amir, would your post not benefit from actual examples? Would Amir not be more open to persuasion (about his communication style) if you were able to provide clear examples of this behaviour?
Please note that I am not suggesting you are wrong (or right) in your assessment, I am just noting that as a reader, it is impossible to gain any value in such generic and broad statements. One last point, disagreeing with others is not an example of rudness. Providing evidence for one's claims or to challenge another person's claims is not inherently rude. The manner a person communicates can be rude and lack basic manners even if said person agrees with you.
@ricevs, I am not clear if you are saying that the AC outlet cover makes a difference. If so, seeing how these are cheap, did you go through listening tests to pick one?
Thank you again for detailed answer. On this statement:
If you research ALL the reviews on Topping D90s and all the reviews on the Tambaqui.....you will then be able to interpolate how they sound versus each other even if no one had them both together (with incredible accuracy).
But you didn't research all of those reviews, correct?
Let's say you had. Wouldn't that then violate your statement that started this conversation?
YOU CANNOT KNOW WHAT SOMETHING SOUNDS LIKE WITHOUT LISTENING.
You hadn't done this listening test yet you were confident to tell me:
You should have seriously listened to the Tambaqui when you had it there......would have blown your Topping to kindom come.
Clearly you are going by some other factor other than your own listening test experience. Isn't it logical to assume then that you don't need to always listen and you can use other evidence to make assessments of fidelity?
@amir_asrI see similarities with your repetitive appearances here and those of Tekton's owner Eric Alexander. Not too long ago Eric came on this forum to defend his own and his products reputations. He was warned many times that he was effectively shooting himself in the foot with his abrasive style and argumentative nature. He eventually learned something and ceased his antics. Eric I'm sure would admit that he was hurting himself and had become more self aware as a result of the advice given here.
Amir, here is some advice to you. Be quiet. Look inside yourself. Become self aware. You are hurting yourself and your brand by making your inane repetitive statements here. Like Eric, you are driving people away. But you can't see that can you? You simply can't overcome your elephantine ego. You can do better, but you are unable to overcome your transparent self center. It's okay to be wrong. I'm embarassed for you. Talk to someone you trust and who is able to speak the truth to you. They will agree with what I've said. You can do it. Sorry for my harshness. Peace and happiness.
Everything makes a difference. I listen to everything I can afford. I (currently) have little money. I cannot A/B expensive AC sockets.....my friends do. What I do is eliminate them as much as I can for the best sound possible. I hardwire a cable into my inverter and at the other end use a good connector into the compoent. The IEC plugs at the component end are the chinese Viborg ones. I cannot afford to try the Furutechs or I would. The AC inlets on my equipment are the Furutech $27 ones. I prefer those to the NCF Rodium version. I hardwire my speaker wire into the speaker and clamp the other end to wires to the wires coming out of the amp.....all connectors suck. The best sounding speaker post I have heard is the WBT copper Nextgens. On and on......I do everything I can.....I listen to every single thing I can afford to listen to. My friend with the Apogees can afford more....so does more. He has one of those burn in machines and burns in all his AC connectors, all cords, capacitors, etc. for hundreds of hours. Everything makes a difference.
There is something called "common knowledge" If you are in a beach town but don’t know where the beach is, you ask someone on the street and they point a direction and say.....3 blocks that way. You are probably going to get to the beach by following their instructions 90% of the time. They may be direction challenged or just plain ignorant. But if you ask 3 people and they all said the same thing then you are likely to get to the beach 99% of the time. Same with audio. My friend with the Apogees researches and researchs for hours and hours before deciding to buy something. He has so much info from several people who have heard these things and are reliable enough to trust that he has NEVER ever been let down by his purchases. He does not trust one persons review or mention. He would never trust what someone says about sound quality if they have not listened to it (someone like you.....you have no knowledge for you do not listen). The common knowledge he gathers is reliable and turns out to be true when he gets the piece of gear and puts it into his system. So, when he speaks about it it has even more clout....for he has added his own experience. But he already KNEW how it would sound because HE TRUSTS others experience and TRUSTS his own experience. You do not trust your self or anyone. This is your problem. You think hearing is fallable and you HAVE to have to do blind tests to know anything. This is pure BS. Blind tests....as I stated before are for the deaf.
My aural memory lasts for decades. If I use a particular test piece over and over again I will remember how that piece sounded for years and years. When I play that exact recording on my latest stereo I know if my audio reproduction is a good as back then or not. Example one: Back in the late 80s I used the Stereophile test disc #1 music cuts as one of my main test recordings. Then I put it away and did not listen to it for awhile......but in the late 90s pulled it out and played it on my stereo. Where is the air on the triangle? How come the guy that is singing in hebrew sounds veiled and ugly? I say to myself. This is not how it sounded years ago! I had this 3 way speaker at the time......so I decided to remove the midrange a prop it up on top of the speaker and unwound the inductor on the woofer so it would go to up to 300hz instead of 150....so it would fill in the loss that the midrange would have because it has not on a baffle or in a box. After setting it up......it sounded the same tonally.....so my tweaking was good. However, the sound was now WAY frickin better (first time hearing an open baffle midrange besides electrostats or maggies). The triangle was floating in air.....the decay lasted way longer.....the guys voice singing was now beautiful......Was is as good as years before when I played it on my super modified Quad electrostats? Not quite......but dang good. It was my aural memory of the recording that got me to try and improve my system so it would match my memory. This happened again to me just a month ago when I set up my new open baffle two way speaker. This time is was an over 40 year old memory of an album I had not heard for that long (La Folia de la Espana) that got me to tweak my speaker more. Now it sounds almost as good as I remember the record sounding back in the early 80s (playing a CD now)
If you research ALL the reviews on Topping D90s and all the reviews on the Tambaqui.....you will then be able to interpolate how they sound versus each other even if no one had them both together (with incredible accuracy). For instance....lets say one reviewer said his $4K Dac was way better than the Topping.....then you see another review where someone compares that $4K DAC with the Tambaqui. If you trust those people (which, of course, you would not) then you have some real information....that when combined with all the comments from everyone you read gives you a common knowledge about those relative pieces. You will KNOW something about them without actual listening. When you get something in and have your own experience and then talk about it versus whatever and post it somewhere then you add to the common knowledge about these things. If you do not trust yourself or anyone then you just go to Amirs site and buy the best measuring thing that you want. Very simple. You trust no one (just measurements) and end up with good but never great sound. If you want great sound....you need to investigate first and gather common knowledge and then listen for yourself to confirm.
If I or anyone said they owned both the D90 and the Tambaqui and they said the Tambaqui is way better.....you would not believe them. You would ask them if they did a double blind test......and how many people were there to confirm. Even if they said they did a double blind test and there were 20 people who confirmed......you would still not believe them. You would have to have them submit a study to the Amir super critical dept. and have it reiviewed by the head Amirian and then most likely put at the bottom of the stack. This is how stubborn you are. You are not going to do research on listening tests on the D90 or Tambaqui. You would consider it a waste of time. You already KNOW how they sound versus each other (WITHOUT even listening)......To you, they sound the same because they both measure like you want. Very silly childish game you play.
So, no I have not listened to either the Topping or the Tambaqui.....but I have read enough reviews about them that gives me a sense that I KNOW what they sound like relative to each other. This is not rocket science. Like I said, my friend has never bought something he regrets after doing super research. He trusts certain people and their comments. Me too. You neither trust yourself or anyone. Again.....NEVER trust any ONE person......go for the common knowledge. Common knowledge is held in common....amongst many. My freind used to say "it all comes out in the wash" Meaning.....after many cyles of listening and evaluating you know the truth.....the true colors of you cloths and the true sound of something. But first, you have to wash your mind of doubt. You have to let your self experience and know......and know that your mind is not the knower.....your soul is.....You have to get your critical mind out of the way to really listen and really KNOW. I wish you much mindlessness. It is the same as mindfullness.....but devoid of monkey mind ego chatter. Can you dig?
The question is....Do you truly love yourself?....not in an ego way....in a pure Mothers love way. Do you trust yourself? Not in a jilted lovers way.....but in the way a baby fully trusts his mother. Do you purely love and trust others? Or do you need to control and fight and defend your position? Only you can answer for yourself. You know yourself.....exactly how loving and trusting you are at any moment......if you are willing to look. Most do not want to look, for if they looked closely their fear is that they would see how unworthy they are. THIS is the BIG LIE. We are incredible, magnificent angelic beings.....capable of feeling and sharing and radiating all the love and joy of the universe. WE are all living miracles.....Now, LET US CELEBRATE!
I knew that Amir was a cofounder of WBF. If he hadn't left, I'm certain that after years of derogatory statements of opinion as fact, he would be booted off. He is just incendiary to most acute music lovers and listeners. My friends and I tried PS Audio gear (for me the latest CD transport). We disliked all of their products. For less money, I purchased a Jay's Audio CDt3 Mk3-near SOTA quality product at PS Audio price.
My friend with a high end system ($400-$500K) had his 250 watt BHK Signature amp on a YG Sonya 2.3s and I told him (he was an electrical engineer and never performed music and rarely hears live music) it was poor match. He tried at least a dozen amps and currently owns three with only the Moscode 402 AU sounding good.
So, a Mola Mola which I haven't heard, should be better than a PS Audio (whose employees are very nice people, just like Synergistic Research whose products are mostly irrelevant in my system).
Imagine testing a Lampizator Horizon or my Poseidon against a Topping. The best test is hearing the Lampy in a high resolution system. While my Topping D70s sounds great and even my wife (not a musician or audiophile) said it sounds like LPs, my Poseidon sounds even better at 50X the price. It's like her Genesis G80 turbo 3.5 a is superior driving experience to her 2002 Lexus LS 430. Both have a comfortable ride but she stopped driving the Lexus.
There are many paths to great music reproduction of sound and most do not run through Amir and ASR, only a few do. How about testing a Benchmark amp or flavor of the month Topping versus my Westminster Labs REIs? If the latter loses in the test, the test is no way indicative of the huge chasm in quality of sound reproduction in favor of the REIs. I was a tube amp user for 50+ years. The REI amps are better, maybe a reason that the aficionados of them switched from low powered single ended amps and huge behemoth tube and solid state amps. They may or may not be classic Class A amps as uniquely designed minimizing parts and wiring but they are small, cool and drive 1 ohm loads with 800 watts sounding better than the several Class A tube amps I've used and heard. Exquisitely. What the goal of a Class D amp should sound like if it could.
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