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Talk but not walk?

Hi Guys

This isn't meant to start a fight, but it is important to on lookers. As a qualifier, I have my own audio forum where we report on audio issues as we empirically test them. It helps us short cut on theories and developing methods of listening. We have a wide range of systems and they are all over the world adding their experiences to the mix. Some are engineers, some are artist and others are audiophiles both new and old. One question I am almost always asked while I am visiting other forums, from some of my members and also members of the forum I am visiting is, why do so many HEA hobbyist talk theory without any, or very limited, empirical testing or experience?

I have been around empirical testing labs since I was a kid, and one thing that is certain is, you can always tell if someone is talking without walking. Right now on this forum there are easily 20 threads going on where folks are talking theory and there is absolutely no doubt to any of us who have actually done the testing needed, that the guy talking has never done the actual empirical testing themselves. I've seen this happen with HEA reviewers and designers and a ton of hobbyist. My question is this, why?

You would think that this hobby would be about listening and experience, so why are there so many myths created and why, in this hobby in particular, do people claim they know something without ever experimenting or being part of a team of empirical science folks. It's not that hard to setup a real empirical testing ground, so why don't we see this happen?

I'm not asking for peoples credentials, and I'm not asking to be trolled, I'm simply asking why talk and not walk? In many ways HEA is on pause while the rest of audio innovation is moving forward. I'm also not asking you guys to defend HEA, we've all heard it been there done it. What I'm asking is a very simple question in a hobby that is suppose to be based on "doing", why fake it?

thanks, be polite

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net


michaelgreenaudio

Showing 14 responses by glupson

glupson
7,842 posts
 
Two centuries were mentioned not as "for two hundred years" but as "in 20th century and now in 21st century" which is in both centuries. Span of only twenty years, but still multi-century debate.

I think these guys are just fine fighting here. No harm is done. Anything else could escalate and really be not worth it.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
Michael Green,

I can leave you out of, pretty much, anything, but I will have to agree with you. "When you feed it, you become a part of the cycle." Welcome to your own thread. Full of trolls, as you like to say.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
geoffkait,

Yes, it was noticed.

"I bet GK would destroy MG."
I'd put my money on that one, too.

I do not drink coffee.


glupson
7,842 posts
 
I think that Michael Green is correct about his prediction. On the other hand, it is not that hard to predict it. Nothing lasts forever and Internet forums have their natural course, too.

Newsflash, in a few billion years the Earth will be no more.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
"Grumpy old men are not the happy future of HEA."
And happy young people have more to do in their lives than obsess over the tinniest bits of difference in some audio reproduction spectrum. That combined, Michael Green cannot be more right.


Michael Green (once you come back),

Reading a few of your last posts, I realized you might have picked a wrong career. It is too narrow of a spectrum of followers for tuning and tweaking. Being a leader of some new church denomination may be way more lucrative. High End Audio is surely dying, but televangelists are doing well.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
Maybe, High End Audio, whatever that actually means, was invented by people who could not construct more intricate objects. They could only do simple stuff so they needed some way to market it. They decided to call anything more elaborate than their doings "High End Audio" as some way of mocking what they could not achieve.

Just another conspiracy theory.

Taco Bell should have more non-meaty items on the menu and sauce packages should be bigger..

glupson
7,842 posts
 
wolf_garcia,

You are neither first, nor the only one. Taco Bell name was envisioned during one listening session that included Pachelbel's music. The rest is history. Well, even this fact is history now. Multiple ingredients are designed to evoke synesthetic responses. For example, beans should make a diner think of tuba. His fellow diners are then expected to have multiple senses overwhelmed. It is all about the sound of that music that announces impending involvement of other senses.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
Wake up everybody! It has been more than a month. Time to start trolling again.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
Michael Green promised "see you in a month or so". Other threads are pretending to be serious. This one is like a nice wastebasket that does not pretend to be a Chanel bag. It is no worse than others. It is hard to trash any of them.
glupson
7,842 posts
 

Can we also have Audiopoints guys join? I have popcorn ready.

After cables and fuses, this is a refreshing thread. Nobody really expects much but yet it is informative in some way.


Not to belittle anyone's accomplishment, but a regular sociable high-school kid may have a few thousand likes on Facebook. Unless it gets into millions, nothing is impressive these days.

glupson
7,842 posts
 
"Did they just up and disappear off the face of the Earth ???"
Maybe they are busy. Maybe they finally (or again?) started working for Michael Green.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
"Your mama and your mom and your mother are oft found more in the ‘burbs."
How many of them does he have?
glupson
7,842 posts
 
You can make all the adjustments you want and reach perfection. Then you are proud and call a few of your friends to hear it. Once they enter the room, your previous adjustments become, for lack of a better word, incorrect. Now, someone could start accounting for that and making suggestions how to set the room up if you are alone, if there is three of you, if one is very skinny and one is "plump" (the word I try to use since Michael Green mentioned it here a few months ago, so well-placed in one funny exchange), and so on. It does not equal "snake oil" but may equal "chasing your tail". In theory, any change in the room will yield difference in sound. In practice, if that bothers you, it is time to take a walk. A real walk, not "walk/talk" kind of walk.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
"At the end of the day, don’t get stuck on numbers."

Numbers or understanding/developing calculations can help a person be more efficient. It is all really just patterns of interactions. They are numerous so they become inconvenient to predict, unless someone at some point puts them all together and comes up with a formula/algorithm/something that will take all of them into consideration. Until then, if it has not happened yet, we will be sticking planks on the walls and guess where they should be. And then repeat and repeat and repeat until we get the right combination. It may be fun as a hobby but it is very inefficient if someone’s goal is getting the result and not attempting to get the result. Of course, experience may shorten the experimentation, if that is one’s life calling. For those who do not have that much time, nice calculations would be way more useful.

Other fields have gone quite far with such a mathematical approach. I am not sure that room tuning is that high on this civilization’s list of priorities so maybe that is why the current approach seems to be still 15th century.


Having said that, I wrote it yesterday on another thread but it seems to be more suitable here, I just met a person who studied at the college for which Michael Green did some work on a music hall (or something in that sense). It was mentioned ad nauseam earlier in this thread.


Be it what it is, this person, completely unbiased and not particularly interested in anything regarding audiophile topics, is very impressed with acoustics of that place and the sound that is experienced there.

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