Why Some Audiophiles Fear Measurements

A lot of the issues with measurements are knowing what and how to measure, and how to interpret the results. I spent maybe a decade or two doing various sound things quite a while ago, and learned that engineers do not know it all but can measure most of it, and audiophiles know some but measure almost nothing. I have measured significant differences that nobody could find in a DBT, and now and then listening tests have led to new measurements and/or techniques that have found New Things in audio. However, in my experience there are far more things claimed as audible than actually found in e.g. DBT. I have more often found I can measure things that are not heard, like ps jitter and spurs < -100 dBc, phase noise < - 115 dBm/Hz, etc.

And sometimes correlating measurements to hearing is not straightforward, particularly when things interact in ways perhaps not seen in the lab. Examples include phono cartridge/preamp interaction, amp/speaker interactions and room/speaker interactions -- I am sure anybody here can generate a long list of similar cases. Guess you can add "where" to "what" and "how"...

My 0.000001 cents - Don

I forgot to state the obvious. Many people just don't like math and science.

...or those who do (judging by HS boys; I suspect many audiophiles are not much different, for better or worse).

Gregadd said:

Many people just don't like math and science.

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Thats why Obama is trying to put more money into education. Once we as a nation become better at math and science, you can expect a baby boom in new audiophiles. Its all about the music.

Gregadd said:

I forgot to state the obvious. Many people just don't like math and science.

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That is true. What is also true is how much fun math and science are when they apply to something you care about!

I remember a story I read in a book once about math. Someone goes to a math professor and asks why he should care about the value of pi. He grabs a bunch of marbles and tells him that if he threw them down the stairs in front of them, the probability of where each one might go depends on value of pi! Who would think that something that tells you about circumference of a circle can be used this way.

I can't tell you how much fun it is to find a real life application for dense math. I wrote a program to to monitor an outdoor smoker and for fun, wanted to see if it can predict when the food will be ready based on its past temperatures. I hit my old statistics books from college and quickly landed on Polynomial Regression. Oh what fun it was to learn it all over again and implementing it in my program. And then sit there and tell my wife dinner will be ready at 5:30 in the afternoon! Same math btw is used for analyzing financial data of companies.

I have had to go through the same relearning in the last 20 years as I have dug into audio/video and its signal processing.

I think that is the biggest issue with education system we have. Not enough professors like the above, telling what math is really good to know versus stuff that only warms the heart of a mathematician. We leave college not knowing what needle in the haystack is useful in real life.

I usually stick a meat thermometer in to tell if it is ready.. I find when I use polynomial regression my meat tends to be a little over cooked

Steve Williams said:

I usually stick a meat thermometer in to tell if it is ready.. I find when I use polynomial regression my meat tends to be a little over cooked

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A meat thermometer is good too, but I just stick a fork in it. If hasn't hit the right density yet, I open another beer. Not to be too subjective, but this is way better than polynomial regression.

P

The equiv. of what you two just said in audio land is to buy and iPod dock for your music enjoyment and be done with it.

Some of us are anal about other things than audio/video .

Kids don't like math but they love science. If you generate some static electricity and shock them or make their hair stand up, you have their attention. Then you can explain why. See Bill Nye The Science Guy.

amirm said:

The equiv. of what you two just said in audio land is to buy and iPod dock for your music enjoyment and be done with it.

Some of us are anal about other things than audio/video .

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Very close. The equivalent of what Steve said is buy and iPod dock and be done with it. The equivalent of what I said is "trust your ears, drink your beers." To bring it all back to the What's Best ethos, I drink really good beer.

P

Steve Williams said:

Why have I heard speaker systems in great rooms which measure terrific but does nothing for my ears? Also I have heard systems that measure just OK but sound terrific. I have also heard several systems in the the same day all of which measure terrific but only one sounded good to me

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"Measure terrific" is too general. What was measured? And at what resolution? Very few people understand measurements well enough to conclude anything useful. Unless you own your own $10k AP analyzer as Amir does, all you have to go by are incomplete and possibly misleading vendor specs. Also, some people prefer gear that is colored. There's nothing wrong with that, but then you're out of the realm of measuring at all.

--Ethan

Ethan Winer said:

Also, some people prefer gear that is colored.

--Ethan

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I would change the "some" to "most" ! And that is based upon visiting hundreds of rooms of "high end" audio enthusiasts. And, as Ethan says, there is certainly nothing wrong with that.

A meat thermometer is essential for the just right doneness of a choice fillet. In audio, our auditory sense is so much more advanced over measuring devises one must wonder why some have to measure things audio at all. The internet is full of excited reports of pampering DACs... Short circuit paths, few parts.

muralman1 said:

A meat thermometer is essential for the just right doneness of a choice fillet. In audio, our auditory sense is so much more advanced over measuring devises one must wonder why some have to measure things audio at all. The internet is full of excited reports of pampering DACs... Short circuit paths, few parts.

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If you're unsure about the temperature your BBQ, Stovetop element or oven generates, then yes. Other than that it's about timing and experience.

John

amir hit it right, it is the poor level of teaching that is the problem.

Most of us would have kids by now? If so, then you would ne totally aware of the following phenomenon with very young kids...

"WHY?"

At a young age all people are very curious. They DO want to 'know'.

Fast forward to teenagers...'who gives a f*ck...' so what happened between two and twelve?? And, it is not totally the educational systems fault, how many of US would have answered the 'why' with dunno, or be quiet or whatever??

Just this last weekend I visited my daughter who is a ski instructor at the smow, she had just sat an exam and she was discussing some of the questions with another person, and one of the things they had to know was to do with loads and fulcrums (I guess to do with poles and skis, dunno. I'd always tried to answer the girls questions of 'what use is this stuff we are learning' with practical examples, well here was one they would have learned at school, and forgotten immediately as 'useless'...and it turns up in a skiing exam of all places!

So I quickly refreshed her mind about wheelbarrows (fulcrum, load effort) and then see saw (load fulcrum effort) etc etc. Amir's example, or even gregs, is the missing link in the education, practical use of what is being taught. Gregs earlier point (or was it nicholas in another thread??) about 'just studying in order to pass' is very true from this perspective.

Any new government push to 'improve education' never get's to the bottom of things, all they usually get is 'new toilet blocks' (essential of course to increasing understanding...) or more teachers trained in exactly the same way as the last ineffective teacher.

Do they even KNOW what are the barriers to comprehension???

audioguy said:

I would change the "some" to "most" ! And that is based upon visiting hundreds of rooms of "high end" audio enthusiasts. And, as Ethan says, there is certainly nothing wrong with that.

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I wonder about this. I mean I take your points that often hi end gear is or can be coloured, and that (seemingly) people seem to enjoy/prefer it, and fully take the point that personal taste is sacred, but often I wonder if it is only what people are used to rather than truly prefer it?

We often see the argumenst rage over 'accuracy vs musicality', recently here too IIRC. A lot have the view that they do not necessarily go together (I can't understand how they do not, but trhat is by the by) but what is almost impossible to happen is that with the throw of a 'magic switch' their very own speakers or equipment can go from a state of 'inaccurate' to 'more accurate'. Then, and only then, can they make comments about which they prefer, the rest is all conjecture and belief.

And, it can take time to get used to a new state of affairs. Not a five minute audition with two tracks...

So my question is 'could coloured be 'preferred' simply due to familiarity' rather than an actual preference??

Drug dealers learn the metric system. Why ? Thier life depends on it.

terryj said:

So my question is 'could coloured be 'preferred' simply due to familiarity' rather than an actual preference??

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Undoubtedly, that is a huge factor. What does your wife's voice sound like? Do you think it sounds the same in every room of your house or anywhere else? Of course, it does because (1) you know what it sounds like from experience and (2) you quickly adapt to the imposed acoustical colorations because of (1).

You have to know what your wifes voice sounds like. Your life depends on it.

Been divorced for 15 years and I can still hear her voice!

John

Gregadd said:

You have to know what your wifes voice sounds like. Your life depends on it.

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John72953 said:

Been divorced for 15 years and I can still hear her voice!

John

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So Kal, what do you think of the idea regarding the 'I prefer these speakers which measure more poor;y than those speakers'?

In other words, the usual conclusion is that 'accuracy' can get in the way of 'musicality' based on that logic.

My response is something like 'but take YOUR speakers and compare THEM when less accurate to more accurate'. Not THIS inaccurate speaker vs THAT accurate speaker.

Because, often, the decision on whether or not a speaker is accurate relies on one or two very simple measurements, often given by the manufacturer themselves. Massaged and glossed over often.

So don't compare an apple with a banana, compare an apple with a different variety of apple, see which tastes nicer.

That will (surely?) lead us closer to the heart of this question 'which is better, accurate or inaccurate?'

YOUR speakers in both of those states. That removes all the variables like driver layout, driver choice, driver topology (ribbons vs cones) etc etc.