Dear @mahgister : Which was your target and your sound /music reference that permits you be satisfied ? in other words: against what you already made evaluation/comparisons to be sure you are satisfied.
R.
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My target is also my starting point : ears/brain training ....It is a learning spirals around acoustic concepts and my way to work on them : timbre, dynamic, transients, crosstalk, listener envelopment, listener position, Balance ratio between reflection/diffusion/absorption, I used tuned resonators, foldable screen, and all devices homemade...The only cost was time and a dedicated room ... Acoustics concepts and basic experiments in my room for one year full time ... When acoustic of the room is relatively under your controls, inspired by experiments grounded in basic acoustics, you reach this minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold ...This threshold though is so amazing when you live through that there is no comparison between before and after ...For sure you can pay high cost and reach the maximum acoustical satisfaction threshold using the same method of mechanical,electrical and acoustical workings controls...... It is possible to go with better results than mine as with more sophisticated materials instead of homemade , with electronical tool also instead of only homemade mechanical tuned resonators , but it was enough for me ...😊 I know enough now to understand why most people had no idea of the huge impact of a dedicated controlled room ... Because of that they try costlier upgrade and sometimes stay frustrated ... They dont own a dedicated room and lact the heavy amount of time for learning alas! But nothing replace acoustics concepts experience, sorry ... I am satisfied with my musical/sound experience because it is basically good and cost little but it cost me a big amount of time to go there ... i am retired ... If not i would had never go there because of the cost in time ... One thing is sure it is not my " taste" who guide me so much as the learning curve in acoustics ...What i learned can be applied on any system at any price ... Add to acoustics the importance of vibrations/resonance controls and electrical noise floor level importance , this was enough for me to reach my sonic minimally satisfying acoustic threshold ... This threshold is related to a balance ratio between all acoustics factors at play ... These results had no relation with any "taste" because they were obtained by methods of learning and experiment which are independant of the gear price tag or design ...Taste there is because i had tastes too ,( uninformed biases), but there is no taste at last as much as a new acquired set of informed biases from acoustics learning which cannot be call mere "tastes"... ... The definition of timbre in acoustic for example had at least 5 parameters, knowing them help to understand how to work for improving them for a better perception of the recorded timbre quality with your system then optimized ...You need your ears training to modify these parameters and play with them but the end result is a better objective timbre experience, it is not the results of a the owner " taste" when he justify his buying of a piece of gear for example ...😊 When you damp speakers box and play with the mechanical tuning of the speakers to control vibrations and resonance , you need ears to fine tune the results , calling it "taste" is not even wrong ...Because timbre perception is the result of training not so much of " taste" ... If someone design an amplifier, i will better trust the engineer who will use acoustics knowledge not only his taste but a trained set of biases , as harmonics perceptive interpretation by the brain as atmasphere , or the non linear time dimension of the brain for Dr. Van Maanen in his design , or the destructive stereo crosstalk effect on the brain as Dr. Choueiri in his design filters ... Etc .. Taste there is for sure but this is not mere taste; but acoustics ...Taste is a marketing concept, or an argument used by subjectivist opposing to objectivist in an audiophile war ...I am neither subjectivist nor objectivist, because this distinction loose his meaning when you are grounded in psycho-acoustics concepts and not focussed on the gear market ...
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@mahgister It’s curios that not only in your last post but in any other you don’t reffer to LIVE MUSIC. You post about experiments/tests/audiophile adjectives and the like but not live MUSIC. No pun intented.
All people, some conscious of it and other not, " know " about acoustic concepts some way or the other and at different knowledge levels designers or not reviewers or not. Every one know about " acoustic perception " ( example ) even if never read it about in so specific way as you.
" When acoustic of the room is relatively under your controls, inspired by experiments grounded in basic acoustics, you reach this minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold. "
That minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold has a " flavor " as all the experiemnets have a specific flavor and when we don’t like that flavor then we follow experimenting till arrive that threshold and flavor means TASTE even that you don’t like the word and even with all your explanations about.
Look, I was following this dialogue with you trying to discover something that I did not do it even that I arrived at least to that satisfaction threshold with no discover success that could be my fault. For all those and with all respect I don’t need any following response by you about. I think you already shared very clar and with wider explanations your point. Thank’s for that but for me is enough to read more of the same.
R.
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Live music does not sound like a recording unless its made in the same venue. Your listening position would have to be the same as that of the microphones if you were lucky enough to be in the same venue. If you are looking for this sort of reference, then you are probably going to have to make a recording of your own and put on LP or digital format. Otherwise hearing live music won't tell you much about a recording or how its supposed to sound. |
First i dont mention live music because at my age i had been at some live events multiple times ... And the sound of a real piano is familiar to me for my children memory because we had one ... I used piano timbre and dynamic as a meter for tuning my room for the timbre aspect ... For other spatial aspects i used opera well recorded etc ... Second there is no understanding of acoustic concepts with no experiments ... why ? because acoustics concepts cannot be understood mathematically only but by the listening body modifying his position and modifying the physical content and controls of the room ... Simple ... You dont oppose to me any valid argument to my claim that in audio , taste there is for sure but it is not and never has been about taste if we want to understand how fine tuning the relation between any system at any price and the room and the ears ... It is not as you said already to me necessary to reply ... 😁 Taste there is, taste it is not ....
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Live music cannot be equivalent to a recorded music piece... Because the recorded playback system translate the recording trade-off process taken by the sound engineer location of mics and types into the acoustic content and control of the listener room ... The best possible road here will be to use , apart from a very well engineered system for timbre reproduction , a DSP as the BACCH filters to recreate all the spatial dimensions of sound qualities information which are lost with crosstalk destructive effect on the ears/ brain ... |
@rauliruegas You left out part of my comment, which invalidates your complaint. The full text was
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@mahgister : " i dont mention live music because at my age i had been at some live events multiple times ... And the sound of a real piano is familiar to me for my children memory because we had one ... I used piano timbre and dynamic as a meter for tuning my room.."
Your answer to my question means to me that " that’s it " that I posted and that I was looking for because almost never you speak/post about live MUSIC that’s my reference on tests/comparisons and obviously is the most critical an important part of my taste.
In the other way I don’t like to talk with stupid people but with gentlemans as you.
R. |
@mahgister : Thank’s appreciated but is not about perspective but a different issue ( please re-read my latests posts to you ) .
R. |
Musical means acoustically right ...Because here we speak about sounds not about music per se ... Something can be musically right , as the Furtwangler interpretation of the Bruckner symphony under bombs in 1945 Berlin and be acoustically wrong or defectuous or lacking ... If you suppress the word acoustic , the meaning is a common place like : " i like it because it is my taste as an argument of a 5 years old arguing with his mother " ... |
I am with @decooney
For me, the key to his definition is the inclusion of "non-fatiguing, " which is conjoined, necessarily, with the other qualities on his list. |
The problem with "non fatiguing" as the main definition of the adjective "musical" or of the name musicality , is that in audio threads most of the time refering to a gear system as "non fatiguing" are refering to a gear system or to some gear pieces as being the cause of a fatiguing state ... Then defining "musical" by electrical specs of the gear pairing and coupling or by the tendency of a dac or from some speakers to create tinnitus or fatigue , or some S.S. badly designed amplifier etc all these non musical characteristics dont come from acoustical parameters of the embedded gear but mostly from the bad design or the bad synergy ... It is a consequence of the marketing that so much people are more bent toward the gear specs and coupling , the necessary synergy , than forgetting to add to that necessary synergy all the acoustics parameters included in the musicality experience of sound ... Then it is not even wrong to say so that a system which is fatiguing cannot be "musical" ... But the truth is "musical" cannot be really understood out of the complex set of acoustic parameters if we want an enghlitened positive definition and not only a negative one as in : musical means a non fatiguing system ... it is not even wrong and more importantly it is not enough at all for the definition of "musicality" ... As an example of an other characteristic as non fatiguing which may contribute to the definition of "musical" in acoustic , we know from this science and by simple experiments that all stereo system are flawed by their perceived crosstalk interaction as two speakers then two sources impeded the brain creation and retrieval of all spatial characteristics of the sound ... Musical in acoustic can then among other acoustics parameter means using some set of filters to correct this : as with BACCH filters of Dr, Choueiri which will then made any stereo system at any price more "musical" ... There is many others aspects of what is "musical" in acoustic experience ... "Pleasant " for example is not a "taste" experience but more an acoustic one related to the way any system/room can deliver in a balance way the 5 characteristics of any "timbre" perception and make them "natural" not artificial ... "Engaging" conditions for a system/room/ ears is related to the ratio Listener envelopment (LV) and the sound source width( ASW) and also to immersiveness which is the way the acoustic recorded conditions are translated by the system/room/ears in the listener room ... Am i on the scene with the musician or is the musicians are in my room in front of me ? In the the two case the listener is immersed in a different way in the music ... Immersiveness is acoustically more complex to set than imaging differentiation and soundstage dimensions alone and encompass them ... Then there is an acquired and trained "taste" for good acoustic experience and conditions and qualities , but acoustic is not about taste "per se" ... Taste there is, taste it is not ... Musical at the end is not gear related ( even if some gear piece are well designed to be more "musical" ) but acoustically defined ... |
Music is processed by the limbic system of the brain. But if there is something wrong (like distortion) the processing is unconsciously moved to the cerebral cortex. There is a tipping point for this. When this occurs the presentation loses some of its emotional impact, the toe tapping, that sort of thing. So to me, "musical" has always been about keeping that engaging quality. |
Very well said... This reveal why pure subjective characterisation of what is "musical" may become meaningless pleonasm if we do not identify also what are the acoustics and psycho-acoustics conditions that may impede or increase the emotional and gesturing body impact of the musician as well as of the listener ... The fingers of the violonist moves and our body parts moves with him ... In a word, we may become analytic , critical, and distant from the music , the moment the sound loose for us and for our specific ears/brain characteristics the refined balance, what you called the tipping point , between all acoustic factors implied , some distortion or some harmonics, or some level of noise, or some excess of reflection or excess of absorption in a room or a bad timing between direct and reflected waves etc ... For sure there is always a subjective relative acquired taste in the definition of "musical" ; for example for me nothing is less musical than a rock concert at high decibels levels...For others it will be an epiphany of musical collective trance ... But if music can participate to collective trance i dont think that music as contemplation and healing is associated with the collective hysteria of a crowd at high decibels levels ...Something work no more here for my limbic musical brain and my cortex want my legs to go near the silence ....For others it is the opposite, their limbic system is happy with a collective noisy crowd... Acoustics define music as meaningful sound first and last , and it goes far more deep than our taste for a specific set of frequencies and decibels ... For example all the details of information communicated through the meaningful sound of a sentence spoken and articulated and rythimically throw in a certain way ...this set of information could fill a book about a character deciphered by an attentive experienced listener or by our unconscious limbic system while our cortex sleep awake ...😊
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Dear @atmasphere : " But if there is something wrong (like distortion) ". Not necessary " wrong/ distortion " , our brain react mainly to our life experiences and our behavior to stimulus ( MUSIC reproduction ) result on several kind of those life experiences ( concious or inconcious ) emotions/memories. All of us have different kind of overall life experiences that constitute our specific knowledge levels on specific different kind of stimulus. Each one of us are accustom to different kind of beat in the MUSIC different COLOR this COLOR is the flavor of MUSIC we like it's each one of us TASTE. So when during a test audio item at my place through my specific/unique test proccess the iten under test goes out of that COLOR/TASTE the first attemp of my brain is to react in negative way and then I need to follow testing for more time to look if my brain behavior could change because even that does not match with my taste this makes me to check out if I can improve " something " in my room/sistem.
I already posted in this thread that all that " picture " of phsyco-acoustics and the like ( concious or inconcious ) it came/comes intrinsecally in our life experiences/memories. Our posts in this thread is a result to all those individual subjective experiences. The next article is a wide explanation about and if you or any other gentleman read it you can read that the word " experiences/subjective is repeated a lot of times as the Amygdala and Cortex too. Very interesting:
Each one of us TASTE came/comes from " there " from that brain truly complex whole proccess.
R.
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Human hearing perceptual rules are the same from one person to the next regardless of taste. It is this fact that deciBels can be used to show sound pressure (since the ear hears sound on a logarithmic scale). The Fletcher-Munson curve is another example of a human hearing perceptual rule and isn't governed by taste. The human hearing masking principle made mp3 files possible. The range of human hearing is 20Hz-20KHz and so on. These things are not governed by taste. Its easy to conflate taste with hearing perception. They are not the same; otherwise a person could decide that don't like deciBels and could chose to hear on a linear scale. If you look at my post about distortion and how the ear perceives it then you will see that my comment has nothing to do with taste. |
@atmasphere : All human beings bornwith similar but different organism " characteristics " that are in each one DNA and those " characteristics " include hearing perception. Through the years human being goes changing day by day mental and physical according to what he is " exposed "/surrounded just from the begin. All those " exposed " stimulus work in his organism as a sculptore-man that day by day is modulating all the organism in " thousands " of shapes. Through the years each one of us had/has a different learning paths at different levels that are critical in that whole modeling, including hearing perception characteristic and whole all organism intrisecal limitations . During that " modeling " proccess human being does not cares about SPL or frequency range: we all learn with out taking care of ears frequency range or each one ears sensitivity. All what we learned ( experiences, every kind/memories. ) and still learn during our life ( just from the begin ) and in the case of MUSIC reproduction are what determine what we like it the more, what we really don't like, what we like in lower way but that we like, etc, etc. That " we like " involved all those learned experiences in those different paths we already " runned " and that's why we have not only a kind of " flavor " we like but " several " ones with different gradation and from there came each one of us TASTES that are not altered because we know the ears frequency range. All what you know concious or inconcious/informed or uninformed help you to that " like " flavors gradation and it's that way because EVERYTHING already" lives " inside you thank's to what you " runned " in your specific life roads. Nothing it's at random and ceratinly taste neither. Our response to different stimulus has a way long " history "
R.
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Nobody said that "taste", (innate individual specific ears filters for example or acquired trained perceptive biases) is not important , individual taste can and must play a role in what is perceived as "musical" but in a psycho-acoustics perspective not the main role ...Psycho-acoustics as science EXTRACT the essence of what constitute a musical timbre perception from a set of many subjects , and do not use one particular "taste" ... For example in timbre experiments, perceptive abilities and evaluation of taste and of innate biases are made then tastes there is but psycho-acoustics is not reducible to taste and is not only about taste ... Psycho-acoustics maps are necessary precisely because each individual hearing differ a bit from all others , each hearing individual is a specific territory, then we need an encompassing map including all of what is common to all humans hearings specificities... ( the fact that the Fourier possible set of linear maps for example are not the territory even if these maps are necessary is for another discussion 😁) Timbre present objective acoustical characteristics ,at least 5 , with specific measurable controlable parameters; but without a set of human perceiving subjects , each one with his own trained or untrained biases , there is no experience of timbre and no precise concepts either only noise ... Timbre exist no more without biased human ears ...But this does not means that timbre, interpreted as musical or not musical, is only defined by "tastes" , it is also defined by the set of measurables and controlled parameters which are proposed to the set of perceiving subjects in the experiments ... The acoustic map is common to all even if the hearing territory differ a bit in each case ... Then if someone design an amplifier he can use these psycho-acoustic results in his design to make it more "musical" and not only his mere personal taste ... Taste there is for sure, but it is not mere taste here this is all about ......😊 Musicality is an acoustic concept and experience not a mere taste ... |
Actually, yes, every human cares about the frequency and the SPL! This is why alarms and bells are at the frequencies they are- because our hearing is more sensitive at those frequencies. Its also why musical instruments are designed the way they are and thus explains why it does not matter if its classical or gothic metal; the energy distribution across the range of hearing will be very similar. Taste and the rules of human hearing are two different things. If we share the former its by luck but we all share the latter worldwide. |
I will only add that our brain care a lot , not necessarily our ego though 😁, about frequencies and SPL because with the HTRF functions differentials our 2 ears can localize the source of sound in space , very useful when you hunt to give meat to your children for millions of years ... And precisely to complete atmasphere right comment , taste and general rules of hearings are correlated specifically in hearing aids technology ... Taste there is, but acoustic and musicality is not first and last about taste ... Then defining musicality by tastes only is a hidden vicious circle....or said in another way a common place useless fact ...Or using the title of a very known book who spoke about some physical theory impossible to verify, it is "not even wrong "... |
@atmasphere " During that " modeling " proccess human being does not cares about SPL or frequency range: we all learn .."
That modeling start even before we comes out to the sun ligth. SPL is something that just " happens " and that we learn rigth from the start in inconcious way and then we follow growing up and follow learning about even if no one tell us what means that SPL our ears goes the " modeling " proccess and been aware of different SPLs with out knowing this technically, same with frequency range. All those is only learning, our ears determine the different SPLs we can tolerate even with no explanation: is part of the orgabism capacities. We don't need to know about the term SPL to know which is the levels we can tolerate in different " scenarios ".
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@rauliruegas If I make this out correctly, you're not saying anything different from what I was.
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@atmasphere : Each one taste ( you can name it: flavor, color, " I like " or whatever. ) is as I already pointed out a result of each one of us life experiences inside what we were or are ssurrounded in each one of us different life stages. We don't live in a lonely island but the other way around we life full of other human beings during our life and we go to the kindergarden, school, high school, university, we know internet and have cel phone from we were child, we watch TV or Netfilx, we travel, go to the zoo, we swim in a pool but time to time we go to the sea, we know Dentist, a motocycle, F1 cars, mountains, trees, etc, etc, we attenedded to libraries, and talk with " thousand " of people during our life, .
Maybe we never attended to a concert but even that we know what we like we know the kind of sounds that puts us in alert or that we don't like and the Amygdala is our guide.
Everuthing including hearing rules ( as you said. ) developed and continue developing our whole behavior.
Flavor, TASTE, I like it, is part of that whole human being behavior..
I already told that everything concious or not is part of our lifwe experiences and the great Amygdala..........!!!!!! I name it TASTE and as I said you or any other gentleman can name it with different word but the genesis is exactly the same.
Do it you a favor in favor of this dialogue: stay away of all what technically you learned, stay out of Audio and try to look in a more universal way. I take it in this way and that's why I said : I don't care, life teach me all what I'm interested or not interested.
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They are inherited as is inherited for example the specific geometry of our pinnae and other inner ears factors conditioning our tastes and our tastes are learned at the same time as a top maestro biases cumulating history ...All hearing biases could be innate on some aspect and learned on some other... As psychoustics investigate taste and personal hearing histories in a statistical way using objective controls parameters determined by acoustics experimental history then acoustics is able to let emerge the general principle and controls parameters behind human hearings evaluation of information and perceived qualities... Taste there is as Raul said, but this is not about mere taste as atmasphere claim rightfully too ... The two are right then, but if we spoke about "musicality" as a quality , reducing it to relative hearing human tastes, be it acquired or innated , is common place not very significative fact ...it become interesting when psychoacoustics investigate it statistically to isolate fundamental factors and parameters for audio industry for example or hearing aids etc ... But at the end so useful are Fourier maps they do not explain hearing because no map so good it is can be confused with the territory of human hearing which is non linear and has created by evolution his own time domain ... We do not have a unanimous single hearing theory explaining it all ...We have a powerful technology yes, but technology is not science , only a tool ...
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Musical - it has to be an umbrella that covers a whole raft of performance parameters and requires they be within acceptable limits. I think pace, rhythm, and timing come under the musical umbrella but also tonality and timbre. Since it’s hard to describe a “shrill” or bright sounding product that causes listener fatigue as being musical, then high frequency performance is in there too.
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Exactly!
We have all our own tastes order priorities born from the biases acquired or innate and from our own learning history and from our own system/room limits and knowledege ... But it does not change the fact that "musicality" must be defined by trained musicians and acousticians working together in experiments when we learned how to control and vary all parameters in an optimal way ... We learned this way for example how some trained musicians can beat the mathematical computed Fourier limits between time and frequencies perhaps 13 times...Because the ears brain work non linearly and in his own time domain territory trained by evolution for music and speech for social and survival reasons and by professional conscious training ... Taste there is , but it is not about taste when we use the word "musical" ...
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Pleased, until you find something that comes closer to the mark, for example you find out that you can have something be both smoother and more detailed instead of bright and detailed. Tube products tend to sound smoother than solid state. This is literally what has kept tubes in business the last 60 years after being declared 'obsolete'. The economic facts here cannot be denied- this has kept tube producers like JJ in business. So that means there are enough people out there that are hearing the same things about tubes. At that point this becomes easier, because all we have to do is sort out why tubes sound smoother than solid state. And that turns out to be the way they make distortion as opposed to how solid state makes distortion. So we figured, if distortion is the sonic signature of any audio product, then if you built a solid state amp that had a similar distortion product to a tube amp, it should sound like a tube amp. This turned out to be true. So there's more to this than just taste. |
@atmasphere Understood. The ‘distortion product’ isn’t responsible for shaping or determining all of the various parameters that must be satisfied for a product to be considered musical. I don’t think that you are saying that it is, please clarify.
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@atmasphere : E= mc2 : inherited and learned at different levels. Taste still is as I explainesd. It's my take and I don't read yet any argument that really " beats " it.
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@rooze Actually I was saying exactly that. Distortion of any amplifier is also its sonic signature. Do you know of a musical amplifier? It has a musical distortion signature, likely with prominent 2nd and 3rd harmonics. @rauliruegas Perhaps you could explain how deciBels, which are often called "volume units", are the result of taste rather than human hearing rules. 3dB is a doubling of power in an amplifier, but barely audible as a volume increase, are you saying that is something learned?? |
@atmasphere Ok, got it. I will have to think more on this. Example, I’d considered PRAT a key component of ‘musicality’ but it would never have occurred to me that PRAT could be a function of an amp’s distortion product or signature.
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Well, one must consider the wide range of distortion possible in the amplifier, indeed the whole chain… it’s mostly dominated by the transducers… and IF you can hear it includes temporal and transient distortion…. While the dna code we all run is very strong… we are not identical… after all there are…some people with perfect pitch….. perhaps a small allowance for the existance of God… Fatigue free PRAT + |
@atmasphere : You insist on the same " technical " terms and yes volume is comething we learned and it's our taste who defines the kind of volume we like.
You just don't understand the whole explanations I posted or just don't want to understand but everything is already said.
Useless and futile to follow this non-fructifer dialogue and before I be less polite with you: bye, bye and Happy year-end Holidays and for the other gentlemans too.
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"Musicality" in any system vary a bit with variation of the parameters which are numerous, electrical, mechanical and acoustical and also which are related to the gear design and not only to the way we embed it ... Then if the gear amplifier is not "musical" by design with the recognized harmonic pleasing effect missing to begin with , no electrical or mechanical or acoustical work will change it ... I take atmasphere point in this way ...But at the end musicality is the well balanced sums of many factors , which are not of equal importance for everyone at the same degree... Then in this sense taste matter or taste there is for sure ... But at the end musicality is a subjective perception objectively controlled by the various controls we can exercise on the three working dimensions and on the gear design by knowledge and new technology ...Nothing less nothing more...Then in this sense even if taste there is, just mere taste it is not .... Musical is then and adjective which cannot be defined only subjectively nor with only a short set of electrical measures, it ask for psychoacoustics more deep knowledge and objective recognized factors as for the point raised by atamasphere about harmonics and distortion which is only a psychoacoustic fact ... I dont understand why Raul dont accept this elementary fact ... It seems psychoacoustics which is a deep science investigating sound qualities and doing so, transcend the separation between object and subject by putting them together in one or many experiment escape the understanding of some objectivist as well as some subjectivist audiophiles ... Anyway i wish to all a warm christmas... 🎄
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@rauliruegas This isn't what I was talking about nor is what I asked about. The question I asked above has a 'yes' or 'no' answer. |