Hey, jitter, no offense but maybe you should consider not being a goofball for 2019. Good luck.
The invention of measurements and perception
This is going to be pretty airy-fairy. Sorry.
Let’s talk about how measurements get invented, and how this limits us.
One of the great works of engineering, science, and data is finding signals in the noise. What matters? Why? How much?
My background is in computer science, and a little in electrical engineering. So the question of what to measure to make systems (audio and computer) "better" is always on my mind.
What’s often missing in measurements is "pleasure" or "satisfaction."
I believe in math. I believe in statistics, but I also understand the limitations. That is, we can measure an attribute, like "interrupts per second" or "inflamatory markers" or Total Harmonic Distortion plus noise (THD+N)
However, measuring them, and understanding outcome and desirability are VERY different. Those companies who can do this excel at creating business value. For instance, like it or not, Bose and Harman excel (in their own ways) at finding this out. What some one will pay for, vs. how low a distortion figure is measured is VERY different.
What is my point?
Specs are good, I like specs, I like measurements, and they keep makers from cheating (more or less) but there must be a link between measurements and listener preferences before we can attribute desirability, listener preference, or economic viability.
What is that link? That link is you. That link is you listening in a chair, free of ideas like price, reviews or buzz. That link is you listening for no one but yourself and buying what you want to listen to the most.
E
Let’s talk about how measurements get invented, and how this limits us.
One of the great works of engineering, science, and data is finding signals in the noise. What matters? Why? How much?
My background is in computer science, and a little in electrical engineering. So the question of what to measure to make systems (audio and computer) "better" is always on my mind.
What’s often missing in measurements is "pleasure" or "satisfaction."
I believe in math. I believe in statistics, but I also understand the limitations. That is, we can measure an attribute, like "interrupts per second" or "inflamatory markers" or Total Harmonic Distortion plus noise (THD+N)
However, measuring them, and understanding outcome and desirability are VERY different. Those companies who can do this excel at creating business value. For instance, like it or not, Bose and Harman excel (in their own ways) at finding this out. What some one will pay for, vs. how low a distortion figure is measured is VERY different.
What is my point?
Specs are good, I like specs, I like measurements, and they keep makers from cheating (more or less) but there must be a link between measurements and listener preferences before we can attribute desirability, listener preference, or economic viability.
What is that link? That link is you. That link is you listening in a chair, free of ideas like price, reviews or buzz. That link is you listening for no one but yourself and buying what you want to listen to the most.
E
175 responses Add your response
I must agree that the supposed aim of this whole site is what drives a person to like something, sometimes more than another option. I taught statistics and experimental psychology... and nothing irks me more than someone who quotes chapter and verse about something which has to be experienced to be appreciated. As an EE, I designed test equipment, which was usually limited to 50 KHz in the specs. Much of the time, it was not the sound which was being measured, but noise patterns (atomic submarine prop noise, for example). The equipment was "state of the art" and cost more than most high end systems... yet, as an audio source for listening to music, would fail most miserably. Yup. Because it wasn't designed to PLEASE the user, just generate data for decision making. I must say your post was a breath of fresh air, Erik! |
I taught statistics and experimental psychology... This is a field in which measures are constantly evolving and being added to. I'm afraid that in audio our measures are decades old and have not been updated, just cheaper to collect. What I mean is, we can do better, but the will and effort isn't universally taken very far. I'll give you an example. I once replaced tweeter caps in a Focal speaker. The sound was really good, but for the first 48 hours I was having weird surround sound effects. I thought I could hear things happening behind me and to the right. Eventually the problem went away. Could I express this as a measure of standard measures like uF, ESR or something else? Probably not. But with some effort and time and money I might have been able to come up with a time / phase based explanation for the effects I was hearing. I didn't have any of it. My point is, we perceive something, then we find a way to measure it, then we use that measurement to tell us something. That doesn't mean all perception has been measured. Best, E |
erik_squires My point is, we perceive something, then we find a way to measure it, then we use that measurement to tell us something. That doesn’t mean all perception has been measured. >>>>PWB Electronics (The Belts) in UK spent thirty years or so developing audiophile products that do exactly that - change your perception of sound (hearing) but cannot be measured. Some of my products operate via mind-matter interaction and information fields, changing the way you hear sound. I’ve been involved in this sort of thing, things that go bump in the night, for twenty years. The sound you want is in the room the whole time, you just can’t hear it properly. Things are much worse than people realize. |
@erik_squires, since you are a teacher of experimental psychology and you do not see that background too much I thought I would ask you, by any chance are you familiar with the now defunct group PEAR 🍐 Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research? Also, how about Rupert Shekdrake, author of Dogs that Know When their Owners are Coming Home? 🐩 |
I am more struck by the absence of basic measurements of physics in this field. One problem that I have been working on is the extent of vibration especially in headphone cases and speaker enclosures. I have never seen one measurement reported as to how much there is, even though there is more than a passing interest in reducing this problem. Grado have a proprietary plastic they use with their phones to reduce vibrations, Sennheiser uses a polymer (probably sorbothane or something related) in some of its high end phones, we use spike under speakers and sorbothane footers and yet I have never seen a single measurement showing how much such things actually reduce vibration, let alone the more difficult measurement of whether people hear the effects. It is not enough to merely wave around some theoretical explanation of a phenomenon, that is only speculation. You need evidence as to how these things actually work and as many here note that usually translates to measuring something. |
Oopsy, Daisy, it was brucenitroxpro! @brucenitroxpro - the questions I asked of erik_squires were intended for you. Can you please respond. Since you are a teacher of experimental psychology and you do not see that background too much I thought I would ask you, by any chance are you familiar with the now defunct group PEAR 🍐 Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research? Also, how about Rupert Shekdrake, author of Dogs that Know When their Owners are Coming Home? 🐩 By the way, I used to work in submarines and heard some good stories. |
I was going to leave this subject alone, feeling we had covered it well enough, but then this appeared in my feed: https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2019/01/06/border-patrol-dac-revisited-audio-fur/ Lots there I agree with, and I have barely started reading. In particular: - Perception and a specific measurement are not correlated until they are correlated - Stereophile has a trend / fashion to sell. Their version of "neutral" is not really neutral. |
@erik_squires If you can find a copy of the Radiotron Designer's Handbook, 3rd Edition (published in the 1930s) its pretty evident that we've known for the last 80 years that the various harmonics are treated very differently by the human ear. Yet somehow after all this time, THD is all we get. |
To Hayakawa's maxims- The word is not the thing The map is not the territory The flag is not the nation Let us add: The measurement is not the music. It's correlation as a visually rendered reference so we can see deduce and predict what and how we think sound will behave. It doesn't explain everything. All the best, Nonoise |
mapman"none have anything remotely resembling flat response like a good microphone" Ears are not supposed to have flat response each ear is different. |
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kosst_amojan Brains are vastly more similar than they are different. It’s the individual’s delusional inventions of self that tend to differ more radically.Will you please explain this? Are you actually suggesting that most people are delusional? |
Stereophile has a trend / fashion to sell. Their version of "neutral" is not really neutral Stereophile understands that people hear differently and desire different things. So they have the people, reviewers in this case... who like certain directions in sonics, - review the items that exist in that direction. Simple enough. |
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kosst_amojan Brains are vastly more similar than they are different. It’s the individual’s delusional inventions of self that tend to differ more radically.If you truly believe that so many here suffer from delusions - which are indicators of mental illness - but that you somehow have some special clarity into controversies that evade others because of their illness, then I really can't help you at all. Good luck to you. |
Suddenly everybody’s a brain specialist or neuroscientist. What’s up with that? The interaction of the environment with the brain, at far as audiophiles are concerned, anyway, has been thoroughly and sufficiently explained by PWB over the course of the past thirty years. You can throw away all those Psychology Todays and Journals of Hearing Science you’ve been hoarding, guys. And can I suggest a check-up from the neck up? 😛 |
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You know what guys, you're sounding very very old. Today is the last day of the CES 2019 and the young brains there have moved so far beyond this discussion and frankly Stereophile magazine’s view of technology it’s not even close. Stereophile in fact is so stuck it could only send one reporter to the show. They can’t even see that the paradigm has shifted and exploding with new innovations. While some of you are debating (still) the perceptions of sound the world has walked right on by you and on to the next chapter (chapters). I guess that’s what happens when you are a part of a world pre-internet and pre advanced teaching and technology. Calling each other mentally ill while your arguments are obsolete and irrelevant as far as this generation goes I guess is insane. It’s at least reserved for the unaware. There’s nothing wrong with playing in a world of aged information, old people do that. But when you think you have something to still teach this fast pace technology world your fooling yourselves. You guys are still playing with mu-metal and sorbothane while the modern world is designing products to work with fields not trying to kill them. When you kill a field you also remove part of the music signal. When you dampen you do the same thing. When you house your electronic parts in a heavy chassis, same thing. Your talking about problems that don’t even exist in modern technology. My friend from Kansas said it very well "carry on my wayward son". Do you guys ever wonder why HEA shows are almost all old folks now? It’s not because the young have not figured it out yet. Michael Green |
I hate to judge before all the facts are in but it appears from what you say the young Turks at CES are more interested in pro audio than high end audio or audiophiles. Which makes sense, really. Young dudes and dudettes can’t even identify countries on a map of the world these days, much less grasp the physics behind vibration isolation or magnetic field absorption. The signal, by the way, is not a magnetic field so your example of mu metal is a little bit lame, Michael. However the signal is *distorted* by magnetic fields, hence the mu metal. Capish? |
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Here is the CES website for those interested in what the CES has been and is today. And here is NAMM, which is usually about 10 or so days after CES. http://www.namm.org/thenammshow/2019 The CES is the home show and NAMM the pro. It looks as though High End Audio, because of it’s decline in numbers, won’t be featured in either of the two bigger shows. That’s not official but with HEA only having 28 display rooms this year at the CES the rumor is the more tech driven shows won’t likely be the home any more for High End Audio displaying. I hope that’s not the case because HEA without being able to piggy back on one of the bigger shows will loose even more exposure in the US. Michael Green |
"That's a very generous interpretation." Very generous! With the exception of some reviewing Stereophile sells ads. All magazines do. The discernment is up to the readers, but since the internet truth finding is easier. Stereophile only has so many rooms, setups, ears and review deadlines to judge with. Those who experience are the real tellers of audio and we don't find many of them posting because of trolling, but their experiences are what give us insight beyond our own. I would say it takes about 6 months (again being generous) to see who the experienced guys are here, or on any forum. Once you spot those guys It's easier to get real (factual) opinions from. Even those I may differ with, reading their experiences is valuable. Michael |
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Three things to try at home before passing judgement on what affects perception of sound and what doesn’t. 1. Remove all telephone books from the house or apartment and listen again. 2. Remove all cell phones from the house and listen again. 3. Remove all old newspapers and magazines from the house and listen again. 4. Take as many CDs and or LPs as you can carry outside and listen again. You be the judge. You are the decider. |
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Jea48, No matter how you store them taking CDs or LPs out of the house improves the sound. Quite a bit, actually. Very shocking. What does that Mean? It means CDs and LPs are bad for the sound. Is that ironic? Yes. Is that a contradiction? Not really. But it has nothing to do with resonance or damping or any such thing. The better sound was in the room before, you just couldn’t hear it properly or completely. Of course, we don’t want to talk about this sort of thing too much. 😛 in any case, you would almost certainly be unable to measure any differences with an SPL meter .....or anything else. You can’t fool Mother Nature. That’s why I oft say perception of sound doesn’t necessarily lend itself to measurement. And when I use that term perception of sound I use it synonymously with hearing. There’s no difference. It’s all hearing. |
Addendum, just to drive the point home a little bit more, taking CDs, LPs, newspapers, books - any media - completely out of the dwelling restores the TV picture quality to what it is supposed to be - noiseless, without grain, with solid and saturated colors. I.e., all senses are affected, not just the sense of hearing by deep sixing the media. The superb TV picture was there the whole time but you couldn’t see it properly because of the “noise” produced in your brain by the aforementioned media. The more CDs or LPs you have the deeper the hole you’ve dug for yourself. I hate to be the bearer of bad gnus. 🐂 🐂 🐂 |
Erik, Thank you for your most excellent question, and subsequent persistent follow-up questions! Thank heavens I bothered to read all of them (and even scan a bit of others, uh, posts) before posting or I might have made a codenamegeoff of myself. Whew! Close one! The incredibly rigorous tome that definitely answers all your questions from first principles can be found here: https://archive.org/stream/PrincipiaMathematicaVolumeI/WhiteheadRussell-PrincipiaMathematicaVolumeI_... But that seems a bit much. Made my eyes glaze over. Even with 400 level courses in symbolic logic and philosophy of science. Which I enjoyed. And aced. But still. A mans got to know his limitations. But when you say, " Volta, Watts and Ampere all started from not having a number, to having a number. Those numbers made math and engineering possible. I love numbers, but just because I have a number, does not mean I have a quality associated with it." Actually, in layman’s terms, I have to say we do have a quality associated with it. Volta had the quality of electrical pressure. Ampere has the quality of electrical volume. The Principia goes exhaustively into the logical foundations of these but in plain language it comes down to there being genuine physical realities underlying observation. There is the quality of distance. We may measure it in inches or meters, that part is invented and arbitrary. But the reality of distance, the irreducible quality we are after, that much is not invented. That quality is inherent in the universe. It wasn't invented. It was discovered. How we understand and use measurement, there’s the rub. Measures are tools. Helps to know how to use them. A hammer is a great tool for driving a nail. Not so good for repairing a helicopter. Now some codenamegeoff will pipe up with some helicopter hammer repair story. Whatever. You get the point. Buying a new Herron VTPH 2A recently led to a few conversations with Keith Herron. Keith is a terrific example of the intelligent and appropriate use of measurement. He both listens and measures. One thing he found, people are unbelievably sensitive to frequency response. He found in double-blind testing that he could influence listener preference by changing frequency response as little as 0.03 dB. No that is not a misprint. Three one-hundredths of a decibel! Now you may well wonder why we measure sound pressure in these particular units, why log not linear, etc. Fair enough. But present before the measure was the reality of pressure. Had to be measured one way or another. Come at it from another direction. World famous psychologist Jordan Peterson has hours of lectures available on YouTube. A recurring theme is the Big 5 personality traits: extraversion,agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Fascinating subject, fabulous speaker. Anyway, point is, one could be forgiven for thinking there are a near infinite number of human personality traits. Rigorous statistical analysis of thousands of studies across dozens of nations and cultures demonstrates they are all reducible to only these five. Nature somehow seems to have limited us to these 5 measures of the psychological world. My bet would be we are roughly no more free to invent measures in the physical one. |
Thank you for the kind words. quality associated with it. Clearly, these numbers represent specific physical things. What i meant was, is 4 Volts warm? Is 0.8A precise imaging? Do 30 watts sound hard? Inventing a measure, such as your cholesterol level, is not yet the same as being able to ascribe a quality or desirability to it. Now we clearly use certain limits to describe healthy, at risk, and unhealthy cholesterol levels, but that did not just come into being the moment the cholesterol could be measured. That took a lot more work. Best, E |
