Euphoric index of Audio Performance

[garylkoh]

I totally disagree with the whole "shadow" bit, but that's for another thread... Please pity an old fart and tell me what EAM means? (Did not see it defined in this thread, and it does not correspond to my known audio TLAs...)

Don, are you going to be at RMAF? If you are, remind me to give you a demonstration one quiet evening.

 

[NorthStar]

In reference to Amir's original first post; it's like falling in love with a beautiful woman.
Can you make it last? That is the entire essence of life itself!

Some people change girlfriends like they do with cars every year, others hang on to them for as long as they live!

In our Audio hobby, we have fluctuations and transformations; we grow older, our musical tastes evolve, our gear (electronics) might change often as well, and it's all about making it last with a renewed passion.
We have to; it's part of the process of perfecting living among all the things we like and appreciate discovering...

 

[Old Listener]

While your first post is interesting and so are a number of the other posts in the thread, the obvious is being ignored. The language audiophiles use to describe differences doesn't lend itself to reproducible results. Neither do the experimental methods most audiophiles use in detecting differences and declaring that improvements have been made.

Speaking personally I know that a single moment can translate to a "wow" experience even if the rest of the experience is not any different. Such was the case when I visited Mike Lavigne and we were playing tape. As we were talking all of a sudden a transient came that was startling in fidelity and quality. It made you say "wow, that was nice."

I think that it is possible to have such a "wow" experience when nothing has been changed in your system. Coming back to a favorite recording after a long rest period sometimes produces that result for me. On the other hand, I will get obsessed with a recording and play it daily for weeks savoring the sound as well as the performance. Then the recording will suddenly cease to produce a "wow" experience.

I don't doubt that hearing differences caused by technical differences can produce "wow" experiences as well.

> But maybe there is an EAM that is > 1 and hence the reason people feel more of a difference.

In place of your formula

Perceptual Difference = EAM * Technical Difference

I'd offer

Perceptual Difference = EAM * (1 + Technical Difference)**LAE

LAE = large audiophile exponent. It varies with the audiophile.

Differences can be perceived without any technical difference being present and small technical differences are magnified.

Bill

 

[cjfrbw]

I think as many have pointed out that the mind pays attention to different things at different times dependent on bio-rythmns, acclimatization, satiety, stimulation and a sheer desire for novelty. The equation would have to include a lot more variables, and a lot of audiophiles would even argue that euphoria is a narrow interpretation of what the wide wonderful world of music intends, it intends intense communications of many kinds of feelings and emotions.
Also, the perceptual apparatus is so plastic. Vision allows us to go from light to dark and accommodate, but only after an initial shock. Sometimes, I think novelty in audio is simply "accommodation shock" announcing itself as novelty or improvement, after which things aren't that much different i.e. small technical differences that can be initially heard if ever so slightly between cables, tweaks etc.
Something that stuns in one instance of perceptual susceptibility can be entirely boring the next. True and permanent "eurekas" are a lot less common than the audio press or sales apparatus would suggest, but there are a lot of stunts, sort of like showroom TVs blazing bright blue to get one's attention during sales.

 

[terryj]

it's like falling in love with a beautiful woman.
Can you make it last?

No.

But she says 'really dear, it's not important'.

 

[microstrip]

(...) I think that it is possible to have such a "wow" experience when nothing has been changed in your system. Coming back to a favorite recording after a long rest period sometimes produces that result for me. On the other hand, I will get obsessed with a recording and play it daily for weeks savoring the sound as well as the performance. Then the recording will suddenly cease to produce a "wow" experience. (...)

I am going to pick this comment as a starter to expose my view. We should separate two types of "wow" experience - those caused by a casual mood or musical content and those caused by a high quality sound reproduction experience.

It is not easy to separate them every time, but I usually associate some specific details of the recording and system to the sound type "wow" and then start looking for them in future listening. As I am the type of listener who enjoys spaciousness, fluidity, easiness and music coming from "black backgrounds", most of my clues come from these aspects that I usually associate to live experiments in good concert halls or some particular imaging information of a recording. This provides me with long lasting references for listening experiments.

Although it would be a much more meaningful test, I find very difficult to use the perception of the quality of the performance as an indicator of sound quality - although I am conscious that some systems allow me to enjoy it much more than others.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

We should separate two types of "wow" experience - those caused by a casual mood or musical content and those caused by a high quality sound reproduction experience.

We should. How do you propose we do that? Your spacial ques come out of your experience listening in the concert hall. When you hear them on a recording, how do you differentiate between those cues being delivered by the skill of the recording engineer, good, fundamental system/room performance enhanced by auditory memory and elevated mood/focus, or some extraordinary systemic breakthrough?

This is not only a great place to enter the discussion, this is the very heart of the subjectivist's challenge.

Tim

 

[fas42]

how do you differentiate between those cues being delivered by the skill of the recording engineer, good, fundamental system/room performance enhanced by auditory memory and elevated mood/focus, or some extraordinary systemic breakthrough?

This is not only a great place to enter the discussion, this is the very heart of the subjectivist's challenge.

Tim

I wouldn't call one of the options as being "extraordinary systemic breakthrough", I would rather call it a system that has reached a crucial level of capability of minimising degradation of playback. And there is a very easy way to distinguish this factor from the others you mention, and that is the ability of the system to generate the "wow" experience on indifferent or even "poor" recordings ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

One of the big debates in audio comes from someone making a small change and then saying it was night and day improvement. This often results in demands of double blind and the rest of the story is predictable.

As a technical matter, we tend to think everything is linear in scale. But I think that is a mistake when it comes to an emotional context. Take a car that does that 0 to 6 in 9 seconds or 7 seconds. I have had both and the one that does it at 7 has far better throttle response and much more enjoyable ride.

I recently used another analogy of diet coke to regular coke. Given the advances in sugar-free ingredients, the diet drink is not that far off from the regular. Yet if you are not used to diet drinks, the regular formula tastes "1000 times better."

Understanding this factor when it comes to audio may be the key to solving some of the debate.

Speaking personally I know that a single moment can translate to a "wow" experience even if the rest of the experience is not any different. Such was the case when I visited Mike Lavigne and we were playing tape. As we were talking all of a sudden a transient came that was startling in fidelity and quality. It made you say "wow, that was nice."

I have had similar experiences in digital. A well recorded music that has incredible dynamics. Or smooth decay. The latter is probably very low in amplitude difference vs a lesser reproduction. Yet hearing that smoothness is worth a lot more than its -80db or whatever levels represented.

If I took a system and eliminated 40 Hz to DC from it, numerically I have done little relative to 20 to 20 KHz response. But I am sure we all agree that loss of bass will be solidly noticed and a big negative. So clearly at some level, we can agree that the enjoyment scale here is not linear.

I am terming this the Euphoric Audio Multiplier (EAM). Question is, do we agree such a multiplier exists? And if so, what determines its amplitude?

If this theory is valid, it could explain some experiences such as differences heard between cables. We know numerically there can never be a big difference. The circuit theory says that can't be the case. But maybe there is an EAM that is > 1 and hence the reason people feel more of a difference.

Thoughts? Comments? Experiences? Doubts?

And this seems like a great place to jump in with my point of view. It should come as no surprise to anyone with the possible exception of newbies, that if a very small measurable change to a system is made, and the lover of that system declares it to be "night and day," alarms sound in my head and I conclude, awaiting further decent evidence, that the change is small, amplified by the psychology. Many audiophiles want so deeply to believe in the transformative power of very minor electronics upgrades that no meaningful "euphoric index" could ever be established unless it could somehow be made measurable and repeatable. You want the lover/the purchaser/the audiophile in question to guage the improvement he hears from his beloved new component, gleaming in it's own little spotlight, with its substantial price tag still burned into the forefront of his consciousness? Fun, but ultimately no more meaningful than saying it is more "musical."

Tim

PS: What might be more powerful would be a discussion around what categories of system changes make big differences, which ones are incremental, but measurable, repeatable and verifyable, and which ones, while they seem to loom large for some, measure very small and are lost on many. If we could get there, then we could begin to at least undestand what things need to be scrutinized and which ones are given.

 

[microstrip]

We should. How do you propose we do that? Your spacial ques come out of your experience listening in the concert hall. When you hear them on a recording, how do you differentiate between those cues being delivered by the skill of the recording engineer, good, fundamental system/room performance enhanced by auditory memory and elevated mood/focus, or some extraordinary systemic breakthrough?

This is not only a great place to enter the discussion, this is the very heart of the subjectivist's challenge.

Tim

Some where in all this you have to believe on the people who did the recording. If your system (as an whole including the room) SYSTEMATICALLY delivers the same queues you have live you are in the good way. I do not mind if it was an extra ambiance microphone, or a post-production added ambiance - for me (listener) what counts is the final result, although I am aware that some techniques are much better than others. Statistics is the keyword in this hobby - single experiments have little meaning, but a large number of single experiments can be meaningful if you are able to connect them in your mind.

Very rarely I enjoy sessions at shows - but the few times I really appreciated them, it was just because of a few moments of what Amir describes, caused by the recreation of some life aspect with astonishing believability.

 

[RogerD]

And this seems like a great place to jump in with my point of view. It should come as no surprise to anyone with the possible exception of newbies, that if a very small measurable change to a system is made, and the lover of that system declares it to be "night and day," alarms sound in my head and I conclude, awaiting further decent evidence, that the change is small, amplified by the psychology. Many audiophiles want so deeply to believe in the transformative power of very minor electronics upgrades that no meaningful "euphoric index" could ever be established unless it could somehow be made measurable and repeatable. You want the lover/the purchaser/the audiophile in question to guage the improvement he hears from his beloved new component, gleaming in it's own little spotlight, with its substantial price tag still burned into the forefront of his consciousness? Fun, but ultimately no more meaningful than saying it is more "musical."

Tim

PS: What might be more powerful would be a discussion around what categories of system changes make big differences, which ones are incremental, but measurable, repeatable and verifyable, and which ones, while they seem to loom large for some, measure very small and are lost on many. If we could get there, then we could begin to at least undestand what things need to be scrutinized and which ones are given.

Oh god there are pages and pages and pages about this that has been written on WBF. I really doubt if the secret elixir was found and drank,so many would realise that the fountain of perfect musical reproduction had been found.

Simply put if your hiking and you hear a mountain lion roar,are you going to question if it's real or not? I think that's a Wow moment. Give the human mind and experience some credit here. Past sonic experience with our systems certainly is a guide to current improvements.

Btw, there is a tuba blast in the London recording(Freni,Pavarotti) of Puccini's Madame Butterfly, Last night it had such a guttural quality it was a wow moment. No it wasn't a mountain lion,but it sure got my attention and it was marvelous too.

 

[jazdoc]

And this seems like a great place to jump in with my point of view. It should come as no surprise to anyone with the possible exception of newbies, that if a very small measurable change to a system is made, and the lover of that system declares it to be "night and day," alarms sound in my head and I conclude, awaiting further decent evidence, that the change is small, amplified by the psychology. Many audiophiles want so deeply to believe in the transformative power of very minor electronics upgrades that no meaningful "euphoric index" could ever be established unless it could somehow be made measurable and repeatable. You want the lover/the purchaser/the audiophile in question to guage the improvement he hears from his beloved new component, gleaming in it's own little spotlight, with its substantial price tag still burned into the forefront of his consciousness? Fun, but ultimately no more meaningful than saying it is more "musical."

In large measure I agree because our auditory systems are profoundly sensitive to change. Change is different, not necessarily better. When we change something in our systems, we are focused on the change, often to the exclusion of what has not changed; hence the multiplier effect of size of change relative to our perception of change.

One other factor that tends to increase the apparent magnitude of change is how even many of the best stereo systems pale in comparison to the real thing. If you are reproducing at 10% of 'truth' and improve your system to 15% of 'truth' while your system improvement has been 50%, you've only moved on the absolute scale 5%.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Simply put if your hiking and you hear a mountain lion roar,are you going to question if it's real or not? I think that's a Wow moment.

Simply put back to you, some people hear the roar of a mountain lion in the gentle purr of a kitten.

If I understood correctly, Amir is proposing that perhaps there is an emotional multiplier, this well-named euphonic effect, that can make very small differences seem large. Of course there is, but it varies wildly from person to person. The problem, and perhaps it's only mine, is that putting the word "index" in there, seems to suggest that these wildly varying experiences could be categorized and compared in a way that would impart some kind of meaning that would translate from one who hears the lion to one who hears the kitten. That's not going to happen. I wish I could "Give the human mind and experience some credit here," But there are at least a couple of people in this community and many in the broader audiophile community who hear sabre-toothed tigers when, to my ears, the kitten is stone dead. Euphonic index has a very nice ring to it, but regardless of what you call it, I'm going to need some verification.

YMMV

Tim

 

[amirm]

I am going to pick this comment as a starter to expose my view. We should separate two types of "wow" experience - those caused by a casual mood or musical content and those caused by a high quality sound reproduction experience.

To be clear, my interest was in cases where there is verifiable technical improvement. The situation where you hear the same recording twice and the second time you go "wow" is not part of this context although that itself merits its own thread in the context of some research Bob Stuart had made.

Giving context, my original post was prompted by someone getting a Macintosh amp with double the power relative to his emotiva and came and commented about the improvements. Then someone post that he only had a "3db" improvement and such a thing should have never triggered a big "wow" moment. Question is, was that objection valid? We know there were two difference: different amp and doubling of the power.

 

[RogerD]

Simply put back to you, some people hear the roar of a mountain lion in the gentle purr of a kitten.

regardless of what you call it, I'm going to need some verification.

YMMV
Tim

On the backroads in Elko Nevada you never know what might be around the corner!

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

To be clear, my interest was in cases where there is verifiable technical improvement. The situation where you hear the same recording twice and the second time you go "wow" is not part of this context although that itself merits its own thread in the context of some research Bob Stuart had made.

Giving context, my original post was prompted by someone getting a Macintosh amp with double the power relative to his emotiva and came and commented about the improvements. Then someone post that he only had a "3db" improvement and such a thing should have never triggered a big "wow" moment. Question is, was that objection valid? We know there were two difference: different amp and doubling of the power.

Even assuming (and this is a big assumption) that the Emotiva and the Mac had identical specs other than their power ratings and sounded very much alike (see how careful I am to qualify "amps sound alike?") otherwise, I'm not sure this is an emotional multiplier (a very nice term for expectation bias, I think ). I think we need to file this one in the "all very small numerical differences in specifications are not created equal."

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the aforementioned Emotiva owner was listening to pretty dynamic music pretty loud, and that the peaks of that dynamic music were pushing that Emotiva into the low levels of clipping where there is no obvious grunge, but there is audible harshness in the critical upper midrange, softening of attack transients, compression of peaks, etc. Now said Emotiva owner buys a big, beautiful, expensive Mac. Gawd it sounds good. Is it because it's a Mac? Is it because it cost a lot? Probably not. But it might be because that extra 3 db (perceived as doubling the volume), gave him the perceived loudness he wanted without pushing the limits of his amp, resulting in a whole lot of goodness that has nothing to do with volume. Suddenly there is clarity where he hadn't really even noticed a lack of it. There is a sense of speed and dynamic response that is heightened. There is that evasive quality of "ease," that is difficult to nail down, but pretty addictive. If you're operating anywhere close to the edge, and many audiophiles are, more power will do all of the above.

Tim

 

[microstrip]

(...) Let's assume for the sake of argument that the aforementioned Emotiva owner was listening to pretty dynamic music pretty loud, and that the peaks of that dynamic music were pushing that Emotiva into the low levels of clipping where there is no obvious grunge, but there is audible harshness in the critical upper midrange, softening of attack transients, compression of peaks, etc. Now said Emotiva owner buys a big, beautiful, expensive Mac. Gawd it sounds good. Is it because it's a Mac? Is it because it cost a lot? Probably not. But it might be because that extra 3 db (perceived as doubling the volume), gave him the perceived loudness he wanted without pushing the limits of his amp, resulting in a whole lot of goodness that has nothing to do with volume. Suddenly there is clarity where he hadn't really even noticed a lack of it. There is a sense of speed and dynamic response that is heightened. There is that evasive quality of "ease," that is difficult to nail down, but pretty addictive. If you're operating anywhere close to the edge, and many audiophiles are, more power will do all of the above.

Tim

Tim,
It seems me you are out of the scope of the situation that has been described initially. We are looking for situations as described by Amir, in which the perception of the sound is so extraordinary that the usual rules do not apply. You are just describing a classical situation of amplifier saturation, progressive clipping and headroom limits.

As far as I understand the Euphoric Audio Multiplier should only apply to small differences - if it is applied to large differences it would overload the system!

BTW, in my experience these situations can happen in a wide range of prices, not only in super systems. Also the EAM is not related to the expectation bias!

 

[DonH50]

Point: At midrange it takes 10 dB extra to power to provide a perceived doubling in volume. 3 dB is detectable by most people (the threshold appears to be around 1 dB or so).

Once upon a time a friend and I made a significant (and measurable) improvement in the sound of a Hafler power amp by substantially boosting the power supply capacitance. The sonic improvement was better bass, and square-wave and pulse measurements did indeed show much better long('ish)-term transient handling.

My opinion is that most if not all audible differences are measurable, especially given that most high-grade instruments resolve much better than our ears, but setting up the right measurement can be very painful if not impractical (at least for the vast majority of us).

I certainly do not think the "wanna hear it" factor can be discounted... If I swap my Emotiva for a ML, I am expecting to hear something better, even if I tell myself it ain't so. Of course, there are also those cases where a swap to less performance is perceived as better despite the clearly audible and measurably performance loss. Switching to a tube amp is my favorite example; I love the sound of tubes while recognizing my tube amps have almost never been as accurate as my SS amps. If I like the sound, warts and all, who cares?

 

[garylkoh]

I think that Amir might have been very careful in choosing his words. If I may paraphrase the Wikipedia definition of Euphoria....

"Euphoria is a musically recognized as a mental and emotional state defined as as a profound sense of well-being. It defines the emotion that is an intense state of transcendental happiness combined with an overwhelming sense of contentment. Euphoria is generally considered by objectivists as an unmeasurable exaggerated physical and mental state that is induced by the use of hyper-expensive cables, flooby dust or audiophile tweaks that is not typically achieved in the normal course of system building. However, some natural behaviors, such as activities resulting in orgasm, love and the triumph of an athelete can induce brief states of euphoria. Euphoria has been cited during certain religious or spiritual rituals, and live music. Euphoria can also be the result of psychological disorder. Such disorders include cable directionality, cyclothymic personality, head injury and vinyl addiction."

Purchase of Genesis loudspeakers and Absolute Fidelity power cords have been shown to cause Euphoria associated with wallet amputation. Side effects may include dog-house sleeping and grovelling at the feet of spouse.

 

[DonH50]

Ah, the old "cashectomy" operation, I get it. But, worth it in the end (ahem). - Don (duckin' and runnin')