Why is science just a starting point and not an end point?
Measurements are useful to verify specifications and identify any underlying issues that might be a concern. Test tones are used to show how equipment performs below audible levels but how music performs at listening levels is the deciding criteria. In that regard science fails miserably.
Of course, one could make judgements and opinions of the sound - that’s a starting point, not an end point.
Good post....
Not only we can interpret the sound of this amplifier experience but we will interpret it differently in different conditions...The fact that electronic design can produce good amplifier does not means that there is ONE only good amplifier for ALL ears at ALL ages and with different histories...
And in perception what one will call illusion for one will be reality for another one...Any perception is a mix of illusion and reality....The eye/brain create the perception of space for example....
It is simple to understand that through any perception we relate not only to what "seems" a static EXTERNAL object but we participate to an experience that create in a way many aspects of the phenomenon for us.... It is relevant for ALL phenomenon but to different degree...
A table is a table in a room different for each one of us, even if we all accept that this is the same table, but a table is not a table in the same way that a wave is a sound interpreted and translated in a specific qualitative experience by the ears/brain at some moment the qualitative diffreence between the experience of an object and a sound could be more intimate and personal....
Nevermind the good correlation between the electronical design and the relation to the way the ears perceive the results, the experience itself cannot be accounted for by numbers and measures only....Even adding acoustical and psychoacoustical laws to electronical design...
In this debate objectivist versus subjectivist is for sure children play and not a wise division.... Because in perception that make no sense nor in science....
But the way human ears INTERPRET and PERCEIVE the sound experience in a
specific room with specific gear is different for each of us...
It is the reason why in the publicity of the marketing of electronical
equalizer company recommend it to make any consumers free to use it for
different kind of music, different room, different TASTES....
I met a reviewer that claimed he didn't like bass.
Quite often people have preferences for flaws in equipment that isn't neutral. A great example is SETs which have a variety of flaws that interact nicely with human perceptual rules. Tubes exist OTOH because many solid state amps have brightness and harshness due to improper application of loop feedback.
That's different from from saying that we can't measure what's going on. We can. But designers (particularly in high end audio) aren't always coming from an engineering background (or they probably would not be building SETs...) and to further muck things up some designers simply don't have the will (or are constrained by their employers) to make something that is actually neutral to the ear.
Quite often people have preferences for flaws in equipment that isn’t neutral.
Precisely what is interpreted like a flaw by an engineer can be a positive for a listener... It is because here there is 2 level of experience that ask to be correlated in the best way possible :the design engineering one and the listening experience...But the correlation process is dynamical measurement process between many dimensions and between many parameters in each dimensions, not a static definitive process once and for all under all aspects...
Even neutral is an asymptotic point or direction not a fixed reality....
That’s different from from saying that we can’t measure what’s going on
You explained very well in the case of amplifiers some CORRELATION between harmonics level and perception and the trade-off choices laid in front of the engineer...
But the perceptive experience is related to acoustic and to many other dimensions with all different parameters .... Audio is a field related to many, many scientific fields and subfields and you know that way better than me...
Then there is scientific rational rules to use but no simple TRUTH reducing human experience to only rules and replacing all POSSIBLE experiments by only one.... Sometimes a simple experiment speak volume in an imprevisible way....
This is the reason why there is improvement coming from all directions....
Science will alway be the starting point and human experience and freedom the endpoint...
Save for those who put their hope in the replacement of man by machines and the replacement of freedom by laws...But reading you i know that you are not one...
Human ears don’t interpret and perceive sound the brain does.
For sure you are right .... But
When i walk it is ME who walk, not my legs or only my brain...
In the same way I interpret the sound to be music for me because my ears and brain act as one...
In a word "distinguishing" does not mean "separating"....
« If i understand your ears can think and your brain listen ?»-Groucho Marx 🤓
« If there is millions of neurons in the guts we can think of the guts to have a brain of their own, it is the same for any organs even the ears, then we can say that the brain is all over the body, and we can say that the body is INTO the brain»-Anonymus Smith
Science has to be applied. That’s what engineers do.
Science has to be created and studied with thinking experiments and perceptions... Any application come after that and will exclude something and include something else in it, it is a trade-off exhange...It is an art with freedom...
Engineers applied some rules derived from science but there is a trade-off at each walking pace, then engineering is like medecine an art also....
Great engineers are artist not just scientific mind... They are able to improvise and able to navigate all trade-off choices....
It is the reason why Henri Poincaré whom was at the same time one of the greatest mathematician and physicist of his century was proud MAINLY to be an engineer first and last... He was consulted as so in a great mine disaster for which he did the complete analysis...Science applications not only mimic art but are an art in itself....Leonardo Da VInci amalgamate the two like Michel- Angelo....
Bob Carver accepted the amplifier challenge from Stereophile, many years ago, and won. He showed that he could duplicate the sound of an expensive amplifier
There was a time when one could look at a contributor’s profile and see, not only all of that person’s posts in the various threads, but also the tally of total number of posts according to category (“analog”, “digital”, “misc”, etc.); posts in threads either initiated, or participated in. When participating in or following a discussion where the topic was, or turned to, the issue of objectivity (science) vs subjectivity I would find it interesting to look at a poster’s post tally according to category after trying to guess which category would have the most, or the least, number of posts. Not always, but the OVERWHELMING majority of the time the objectivist would have very few and usually zero posts in the “music” category, or passing mention of that general topic in posts in other categories. Not sure that one can make general assumptions, but likely that there is something to extrapolate from this curious factoid.
Mahgister, your legs may be doing the walking but your brain is controlling the show. So many things happen when you walk that you are totally unaware of. Your arms swing and the muscle attached to your pelvis tighten to keep the opposite side from falling when you pick your legs up. Same is true of hearing.
@frogman, I seriously doubt people who dislike music spend serious money on stereo systems. Music preferences are purely subjective and a matter of taste. Stereo systems are not. If you want to improve the performance of your system an objective approach will get your there faster at much less expense.
No one said anything about “dislike”. Of course one has to like music to some degree to bother with stereo. Not a question of “dislike”, but rather the level of involvement in one pursuit vs the other.
**** ......Stereo systems are not (subjective) ****
Really? Then why such varied ideas as to what “good sound” is?
**** If you want to improve the performance of your system an objective approach will get your there faster at much less expense. ****
Mahgister, your legs may be doing the walking but your brain is controlling the show. So many things happen when you walk that you are totally unaware of. Your arms swing and the muscle attached to your pelvis tighten to keep the opposite side from falling when you pick your legs up. Same is true of hearing.
You completely missed my point and answered back with a common place fact....
« If there is millions of neurons in the guts we can think of the guts to have a brain of their own, it is the same for any organs even the ears, then we can say that the brain is all over the body, and we can say that the body is INTO the brain»-Anonymus Smith
To understand read Wilder Penfield...
And you completely missed the point of frogman and answered in the same way with a common place fact...
music is NOT sound.....music is a spiritual life.... Sound is not.....
In this case it is not "bad faith" from you, it is plain to see that your nose is glued on the floor....
Technically every way we judge audio or video is based on measurements it's just the manner of our own organic instrumentation vs. mechanical (and we are able to even visualize and contemplate the mechanical instrumentation due to our organic senses).
I've been hanging around this site, for 11 years now, as well as watching the debates, between those of the most esteemed theorists of various scientific fields of endeavor, for several decades, regardless of the facts that have been established, through experimentation and testing, over those decades.
SADLY, I can confidently assert: NO!
Someone, somewhere, as I recall, with much more insight than me: said, "If any man be ignorant, let him remain ignorant." I'm guessing that means; unfortunately, it's their choice and you can't do anything about it.
seems to me that a person can simply use all available tools (personal experience, scientific measurements, moving speakers around/"room treatment", interminable forum debates, insane guys they know) when determining what playback equipment they want to use
Why is science just a starting point and not an end point?
How music performs at listening levels is the deciding criteria. In that regard science fails miserably.
These two statements in the opening thread, are pre-concieved, and sound like the answers are formed already. And they should read, to get audio techs to answer and give the other side.
"Is science just a starting point and not an end point?"
"How music performs at listening levels is the deciding criteria. In that regard does science fails miserably" Cheers George
Science is a starting point because it is a method or process not an end result. Science is a method of understanding the world from a certain perspective or point of view. Science can tell us for example that the Shroud of Turin is so many years old, made from what kind of fabric, by what process, what pigments were or were not used, and so on. Science cannot tell us whether or not Jesus Christ was wrapped in it. That is a conclusion human beings and human beings alone can reach, on the basis of science, or not. To use but one example.
People mess up all the time misunderstanding science. Science can tell us how to build a nuclear warhead. Science cannot tell us whether we should build the damn thing.
Thus it is nutty to invoke science in sound. Science is great for helping people figure out how to build better components. It is great because science does so much to eliminate the effects of value judgments. But then when the component is built how do we decide if it is any good or not? On the basis of value judgments.
That is why science will always be a beginning and never the end.
I was trained as a scientist and practiced professionally as one for ten years. I have used the methods and approaches for my entire life in all aspects of my career and life. Science is the starting point and it is like peeling the layers of an onion… you learn about one layer after another, towards full knowledge at greater levels of detail.
If high end audio had a large multidisciplinary group of scientists that were not working for profit and we’re publishing their results for the last fifty years we would have research documenting all component characteristic and be able predict several levels below where general knowledge is today. Many companies have drilled down many layers.. typically in the design processes and material science. But they do not make it public knowledge for obvious reasons.
The idea that science is either a starting point, or an ending point is misguided. Science is a tool for us to organize our thoughts and derive models to help explain the universe we live in.
You observe something, you make hypothesis, you try them out and see if they work.
Science is not metrics. It is not quality assurance. It is the process that very much includes human experience, explains some of it, and then looks for the next opportunity to enhance our understanding.
It is neither supreme to nor independent of human experience.
To everyone who thinks measurements for audio gear which were widely adopted over 50 years ago equals science, that there is your problem. Science generated those measurements, but it does not say that should be their end point, the last measurements for all time.
The fields of room acoustics and head related transfer functions IMHO show just how much more there was left after that. I believe that the field of audio equipment measurement and explanation is still pregnant with opportunity for science to continue expanding and for that expansion to reach the hobby press, but it has not happened yet.
Those measurements, codified half a century ago are not the start and end of audio science. Those who apply them as the only standard of quality are not scientists. They are technicians.
Science is a methodology that allows you to detect patterns in data.
Once the patterns are validated and determined useful, then the science gets applied. Engineers trained to apply science to solve problems do that. Then others benefit from the fruit of their labors.
Let's take a trip back to 7th grade... the scientific method is:
Make an observation.
Ask a question.
Form a hypothesis, or testable explanation.
Make a prediction based on the hypothesis.
Test the prediction.
Iterate: use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions
Science cannot take a look through a telescope or have a bias opinion or distort facts to prove false theories. Those are human activities.
In term of sound, you can test for distortion, frequency response, rolloff, stored energy, and many other things that can indicate you have a problem. The missing elements are time and perception or space between the sound that isn't measurable.
So... to me science isn't letting you down it's your expectation of science.
"science isn't letting you down it's your expectation of science"
Surely science should be able to show where sound is being corrupted or deviating from a source? Science cannot predict how humans perceive sound, but it should be able to measure the performance of equipment!
Scientific methods can be used to measure all sorts of performance criteria- volts, amps, volume, etc. Human beings however listen and rate performance based on their own personal evaluations of all of these combined. Scientific methods can be used to try and determine things like the weighting a particular listener gives each measurement, but it would be an inference based on their actual choices. This is all a long-winded explanation because you said, "science cannot predict how humans perceive sound" which is correct. But you then finish the sentence with, "but should be able to measure the performance of equipment!"
But science can. The discipline you seek is called logic or deductive reasoning. In it you will learn to avoid combining unrelated clauses as if they lead to a conclusion. They don't. They are unrelated. They lead to naught.
Science and its application in Engineering provides people many good quality choices for their hifis. Even a way to sort through the complexity and figure out what is most likely to work best. But its always up to you which fruits of science and engineering you will choose to own. Good sound is not that hard, expensive to obtain, or rare anymore. That’s progress! But one also must consider what other features matter most to them. Especially with digital streaming where so many new opportunities and ways to enjoy good sounding music come into play. Many choices, many features, more complexity, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
OR you can remain in the stone age and discount all that new and confusing technology. Nothing wrong with that either. To each their own. YMM always V.
... but [science] should be able to measure the performance of equipment!
That would be very useful ... sadly it's biggest contribution currently is to make the hard-of-hearing believe that the rest of us are as ill equipped to judge sound based on hearing as they are.
" Science is a methodology that allows you to detect patterns in data."
"Science" is organized knowledge, not a methodology. "Scientific method" is the underlying methodology which results in the creation of scientific knowledge
Detecting patterns in data is a component of "data analysis", and of recent the term "data scientist" has been coined to described individuals who study data analytics.
" Once the patterns are validated and determined useful, then the science gets applied."
Rather, once a hypothesis which is developed to explain an observation is tested to be correct, it becomes part of what we consider accepted science.
I have yet to see a single self appointed "person of science" on this forum follow scientific method. Rather, most believe that an observation is false when they lack the knowledge to develop a hypothesis. That is antithecal to science and accepted scientific practice.
I had used psycho-acoustic science in audio with greater profit and impact than i would ever think possible...
There is no "science" by the way.... Save for a very general accepted methodology uniting all fields ... There is only "sciences" in the plural with each one field cumulating a big amount of data unrelated to all the other field for the most part...
«History of science IS science» Goethe dixit 150 years before Thomas Kuhn....
This explain why most here underestimated psycho acoustic science impact for audio and read only impedance measures and other electronic market design guide...
This is the same problem with mechanical control of vibrations which is a problem almost on par in importance with the design of the system part themselves ...
Samething with the underestimated necessity of the electrical floor noise control...
I just finish my last improvement...
I damped my springs grid for peanuts one week ago and with a result which is very powerful and i affirm it, on par or almost probably with other very costly product....
I finished my last diffusive device control at no cost...With a more powerful impact than my other devices save the Helmholtz diffusers...
Improving with minimal scientific facts then my 500 system which now sound too much good to be described and believed...
Many self appointed scientists here ignored not only the hypothesis /observation experiment i used myself for most of my embeddings controls, but they confused it with placebo delusion by ideological ignorance of acoustic and other fields...
Basic elementary facts were my only guide.....And the hearing human system described by experimental psycho-acoustic science....
My 500 bucks system is enough for me after comparison with anything i listened to ever in my life...It is not the best at all, but only one of the best ever in quality price/ratio and it is enough for me....
Think about that...... No need of marketing conditioning of consumers by reviewers or maketers for those able to think.....And using their ears .....
I hope to give hope to newcomers and catalyze creativity....I dont want to promote branded name products....All people did it....And reading that costly products were the solution never helped me....Creativity and the simplest science fact are more useful....
Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms It's LITERALLY about what you are referring to and explains many of the ways sound character has been correlated to subjective impressions, and how listener preferences can be largely predicted based on that research. So your thesis is simply wrong out of the gate. Read the book, it helps answer your question, if you really want the answers.
Test tones also shows how equipment performs at listening levels
No they don’t. Some of us do have hearing that is both sensitive and reliable enough that we don’t need to a scope to tell us if we heard something or not.
but how music performs at listening levels is the deciding criteria. In that regard science fails miserably.
That’s your opinion
Some of us do have hearing that is both sensitive and reliable enough that we don’t need to a scope to tell us if we heard something or not.
That’s is really wishful thinking and believing your hearing is better than a bat.
All "good equipment" is designed and made using the "Laws of EE" (Electronic Engineering), and the measuring and test gear that designers use to do it with.
"If" they don’t like what they hear or measure after it’s designed and built, good ones will go back again and again and redesign things in the circuit, and re-test, but do it again using all the same EE laws and test equipment, there’s no voodoo involved.
IF THEY DON"T DO IT, DON’T GO NEAR WHAT THEY ARE SELLING, BECAUSE THEY ARE SELLING YOU VOODOO!!!
I've mentioned elsewhere, on the 'GoN: If the world's best inventors, throughout human history, hadn't ignored, "scientists", naysayers and scoffers (such as some of those, above): we'd still be living in a relative Stone Age, with respect to technology.
ie: When the steam locomotive was invented: the day's best, "scientists" claimed man couldn't survive speeds in excess of 20 MPH!
Interesting, that most of the electrical theories their ilk espouses, came from the same century (the 1800's).
Good science is a very high bar. A theory must be proven universally true. That is why science is always a long way behind conjecture.
Name a single scientist fact that will not be proven at least partially untrue in the future. Not possible.
For example. You know that there is no such thing as gravity right? There is no force whereby one object attracts another. What we thought was gravity is a distortion of the fabric of space-time caused by mass.
Science is a very low bar. It describes the world in our current, and somewhat limited, understanding thereof.
Look at Prof's post above then read the book mentioned. Nobody's hearing is reliable enough.
My audio system is there solely to please me; more exact, to please my hearing. If it pleases me, it is performing as it should. There is no higher judge than my ear as to what pleases my ear.
You need test tones and a scope to know if your system pleases you? If that is the case, you are missing the point.
Science never really fails, although sometimes is takes can take indirect path. The question is why isn't it being utilized to test equipment? My point is this; if research into space can continuously reveal the most amazing facts, why is it impossible to analyze audio equipment and show how it performs at listening levels; excluding the sub-audible
noise path?
You know that there is no such thing as gravity right?
Pauly, take a 10 pound weight and raise it to your eye level. Position the object directly above your right big toe. Release the object. Now tell me there's no such thing as gravity? The explanation of gravity has changed and probably will continue to be refined, but the phenomena exist independent of human understanding.
This is the reason the measures controls of "psycho-acoustic science" which science is not physical acoustic, are not about the measuring results apparatus "per se" but about the CORRELATION between measures of all kind in acoustic physics, neurological and measures and reaction time and psychological human hearing...
I used for examble the reflective acoustic measures and numbers and their relation and their timing with the reverberation time in MY room with MY ears to create a no cost diffusive surfaces and reflecting one to modify and completely recreate the sound imaging in my room not only between speakers....
Without the experiments made in psycho acoustic laboratory in Japan, i would have never been able to think that it was possible...
Science ? YES but which one?
Heraring ? YES but with listening experiments yes, guessing only NO....
Then those who when they speak science speak about electriucal measures ONLY are ignorant...
Those who negate the measures used in psycho-acoustic laboratory are also guilty of ignorance...
Like in politics and like in school-yards, warring is acting like binary minded apes, sorry....
I refuse to be labeled by idiotic names.... Either political one or audio one like "subjectivist" or "objectivist"....
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