Objectivists - what REALLY makes your blood boil?

jkeny · Dec 19, 2014

I started to write a longish post & realised that it was so off topic that I should start a separate thread But it is exactly along the lines of this part of Atmasphere's post - Hence I called it "Objectivists - what might be wrong with this label/viewpoint!!"

The physics, math, simulations should all be regarded in the light of human perceptual rules, not the other way around. We can change our approach to design, but we can't do anything to change our ears except damage them. The human ear is the most important aspect of audio, and one routinely ignored by 'objectivists' that have not studied the results of human physiological research that has gone on in the last 30-40 years. When I encounter the attitude that we know everything there is to know about audio and engineering, I have to breath deeply and count to 10... the fact is that while we do know a lot on the engineering side, our knowledge of the human brain and how it processes sound information coming from the ear is so poor as to be vestigial- But it is evident that using our engineering, the more we make the designs work with our perceptual rules the better the systems sound.

I am sceptical about many things in audio but the more I find out/hear the less sceptical I have become (the more I know, the more I know I don't know).
It is probably a combination of :
- being exposed to better playback equipment,
- better trained hearing as a result
- more research as a consequence

Some things I have direct experience of & can't explain and/or measure - some of which I would have denied in the past, could have an effect
- the audible effect of silver wire in teflon (don't know if the teflon is the important factor or the silver wire?)
- Many changes on the PC side both hardware & software & their audible effect
- USB cables
- DSD
- the huge importance of PS stability in digital audio (seemingly the need for far more stability than what is considered "good engineering")

Just some things that others have reported produce audible advantages (whom I trust) but I have no direct experience of yet:
- massive capacitance directly at PS pins of digital DAC chips (see PS point above)

bonzo75 · Dec 19, 2014

edorr said:
He is a Rand inspired libertarian, and his disastrous decision to support the gramm leach bliley and more importantly the Commodity Futures Modernization led directly to the financial crisis. This decision was inspired by Randian free market fundamentalism, and the insane assumption that markets always know best and self-regulate. He admitted as much (his mistake) himself.

We're drifting very far off toipic here though. Better declare a truce and call it quits.

There is no topic here, really. It's not a hifi thread

edorr · Dec 19, 2014

bonzo75 said:
There is no topic here, really. It's not a hifi thread

It's a philosophy thread.

FrantzM · Dec 19, 2014

jkeny said:
I started to write a longish post & realised that it was so off topic that I should start a separate thread But it is exactly along the lines of this part of Atmasphere's post - Hence I called it "Objectivists - what might be wrong with this label/viewpoint!!"

I am sceptical about many things in audio but the more I find out/hear the less sceptical I have become (the more I know, the more I know I don't know).
It is probably a combination of :
- being exposed to better playback equipment,
- better trained hearing as a result
- more research as a consequence

Some things I have direct experience of & can't explain and/or measure - some of which I would have denied in the past, could have an effect
- the audible effect of silver wire in teflon (don't know if the teflon is the important factor or the silver wire?)
- Many changes on the PC side both hardware & software & their audible effect
- USB cables
- DSD
- the huge importance of PS stability in digital audio (seemingly far more stable than what is considered "good engineering")

Just some things that others have reported produce audible advantages (whom I trust) but I have no direct experience of yet:
- massive capacitance directly at PS pins of digital DAC chips (see PS point above)

John

Interesting post. There are a few things for which I have no clear explanations too yet can hear the difference it makes in my systems.. Power Quality for example ... The crux of the matter remains the veracity of our perceptions: We are sometimes (too often as a matter of fact) led to perceive things that are not even there! How do you reconciliate for example the disappearance of the perception when knowledge is removed. e.g people thinking they hear analog when it is in fact a needle drop. One can brush these away but it points to the unreliability and inaccuracy of our perceptions. Shouting : Believe your ears is one of those mantra with not much validation.

I do sincerely believe that there is much to learn in Audio and follow the works of people who actually study the psychoacoustics side of things very seriously e.g the people at Harman (Sean Olive, Welti, Devantier , Toole, etc), Siegfried Linkwitz , Dr Earl Geddes to name a few but and to me that is most interesting , their findings are regularly rejected by the other side. In the beginning some of these people did post in the WBF they have all stopped to .. What should we make of this when at the same time the SPL of dubious products are rising?

Not boiling but wondering some.

Keep up with such honest and level post.

jkeny · Dec 19, 2014

Thanks Frantz
My major problem with Harmon is the use of a single speaker for their tests (am I correct that this is still what they do?) seemingly because they admit that to use stereo is too confounding & they claim the results of single speaker listening can be correlated to stereo listening. I think this is erroneous on a couple of levels.

One factor I recently was made to think about - Fletcher Munson curves - the thresholds are set with mono signals aren't they? What implications does a 2D audio space have with regard to these JNDs?

Yes, on the one hand we have perceptions & their malleability & on the other hand we have measurements & their relevance to our actual perceptions. My thread goes into more detail about this & blind tests.

bonzo75 · Dec 19, 2014

edorr said:
It's a philosophy thread.

I do agree on Gramm Leach Bliley though, it also created the Enron Loophole, and his wife was the chairperson of CFTC and went over to join Enron's board

edorr · Dec 19, 2014

bonzo75 said:
I do agree on Gramm Leach Bliley though, it also created the Enron Loophole, and his wife was the chairperson of CFTC and went over to join Enron's board

Politicians are just morons without ideas, going with the flow and focus groups. But Greenspan actually believed his own crap. Nothing more dangerous than a highly intelligent person in a position of influence being fundamentally wrong on an immensely important issue. The prime example of this is Karl Marx.

bonzo75 · Dec 19, 2014

edorr said:
Politicians are just morons without ideas, going with the flow and focus groups. But Greenspan actually believed his own crap. Nothing more dangerous than a highly intelligent person in a position of influence being fundamentally wrong on an immensely important issue. The prime example of this is Karl Marx.

Highly intelligent people believe their own crap, that is also the problem in hifi. They stop believing their ears at some point.

Atmasphere · Dec 19, 2014

jkeny said:
Some things I have direct experience of & can't explain and/or measure - some of which I would have denied in the past, could have an effect
- the audible effect of silver wire in teflon (don't know if the teflon is the important factor or the silver wire?)

Just some things that others have reported produce audible advantages (whom I trust) but I have no direct experience of yet:
- massive capacitance directly at PS pins of digital DAC chips (see PS point above)

Teflon is one of the better dielectrics available. Any wire can be viewed from a point of view as a capacitor; thus Teflon might be a good move. But to extrude it on to wire requires a high temperature so its usually done with silver or silver-plated wire.

They've known for a long time to bypass digital chips at the power supply pins/ Taught us that in school...

jkeny said:
One factor I recently was made to think about - Fletcher Munson curves - the thresholds are set with mono signals aren't they? What implications does a 2D audio space have with regard to these JNDs?

Yes, on the one hand we have perceptions & their malleability & on the other hand we have measurements & their relevance to our actual perceptions. My thread goes into more detail about this & blind tests.

The Fletcher Munson curves are based on the fact that human hearing is tuned to bird and insect song frequencies. Of that former we have the understanding that this is an issue, to the latter we have an understanding of why (survival, in case its not obvious; birds are the first warning system of a predator in the vicinity).

Geardaddy · Dec 19, 2014

I personally enjoy this sort of thread. Well, what makes my blood boil? An objectivist with objectively crappy sound that even a child or pay person would wrinkle their nose at. Despite this "reality," they still manage to remain on their audio thrones passing judgement left and right.

esldude · Dec 19, 2014

jkeny said:
Thanks Frantz
My major problem with Harmon is the use of a single speaker for their tests (am I correct that this is still what they do?) seemingly because they admit that to use stereo is too confounding & they claim the results of single speaker listening can be correlated to stereo listening. I think this is erroneous on a couple of levels.

One factor I recently was made to think about - Fletcher Munson curves - the thresholds are set with mono signals aren't they? What implications does a 2D audio space have with regard to these JNDs?

Yes, on the one hand we have perceptions & their malleability & on the other hand we have measurements & their relevance to our actual perceptions. My thread goes into more detail about this & blind tests.

They did the tests both with one and two speakers. One speaker was the more accurate and revealing way to do it. I also don't know they only use one speaker, it depends upon what they are testing for I believe. They didn't just say two speakers are confusing so we will use one. Further imagine as a theoretical construct you have developed the one perfect speaker that transmits what it is fed with full fidelity. Is the fidelity different with two speakers? Two perfect speakers would seem to be fine for stereo. I am not certain, but I do believe they in some testing let listeners pick the best mono speaker, then re-did the testing in stereo and while the choices were not as clear cut each time the same speaker preference in mono was chosen most often in stereo. That would seem to validate the use of mono testing for speakers.

jkeny · Dec 19, 2014

Atmasphere said:
Teflon is one of the better dielectrics available. Any wire can be viewed from a point of view as a capacitor; thus Teflon might be a good move. But to extrude it on to wire requires a high temperature so its usually done with silver or silver-plated wire.

Sure, I understand the dielectric/capacitor aspect of the insulation surrounding wire but I have yet to figure if it's this or the bare silver wire that makes the audible difference I've heard

They've known for a long time to bypass digital chips at the power supply pins/ Taught us that in school...

Ah, I'm not talking about simple bypassing with 0.1uF ceramic caps - I'm talking about the use of significant uFs even Farads of capacitance right at the supply pins - this is why I said beyond what's considered "good engineering"

The Fletcher Munson curves are based on the fact that human hearing is tuned to bird and insect song frequencies. Of that former we have the understanding that this is an issue, to the latter we have an understanding of why (survival, in case its not obvious; birds are the first warning system of a predator in the vicinity).

But what I'm talking about is something that was pointed out to me - when considering a -90dB noise & we spread this over a 2D space, the noise density at any particular point must be lower than -90dB i.e there is an FFT-like gain effect. So what implications does this have for noise measurements that we see specified in datasheets?

jkeny · Dec 19, 2014

esldude said:
They did the tests both with one and two speakers. One speaker was the more accurate and revealing way to do it. I also don't know they only use one speaker, it depends upon what they are testing for I believe. They didn't just say two speakers are confusing so we will use one. Further imagine as a theoretical construct you have developed the one perfect speaker that transmits what it is fed with full fidelity. Is the fidelity different with two speakers? Two perfect speakers would seem to be fine for stereo. I am not certain, but I do believe they in some testing let listeners pick the best mono speaker, then re-did the testing in stereo and while the choices were not as clear cut each time the same speaker preference in mono was chosen most often in stereo. That would seem to validate the use of mono testing for speakers.

Hmm, those two phrases "more accurate" & "revealing" - I thought I read their reasons being that it was easier to do single box testing as room interactions made it much more difficult (not a good reason, in my opinion) & I also read that they correlated the ranking of single speakers to the same speakers when used in stereo mode (I would like to see this revisited & tested some more to be convinced of it's validity).

Atmasphere · Dec 19, 2014

jkeny said:
But what I'm talking about is something that was pointed out to me - when considering a -90dB noise & we spread this over a 2D space, the noise density at any particular point must be lower than -90dB i.e there is an FFT-like gain effect. So what implications does this have for noise measurements that we see specified in datasheets?

Did you mean 2D or 3D? Either way its a good question- I have to think about that, but off the top of my head I would guess "not a lot"... as that sort of thing is all relative, and has a lot to do with the loudspeakers you have, more efficient ones being the area where such things can get pesky.

thedudeabides · Dec 19, 2014

Geardaddy said:
they still manage to remain on their audio thrones passing judgement left and right.

With all due respect, who are "they"?

Some specifics might be beneficial to understand your perspective.

Johnny Vinyl · Dec 19, 2014

Let's take in a different direction....you know what makes my blood boil?

People who insist that Crepes are thin pancakes.

thedudeabides · Dec 19, 2014

You're a funny guy.

Johnny Vinyl · Dec 19, 2014

thedudeabides said:
You're a funny guy.

I try!

edorr · Dec 19, 2014

Johnny Vinyl said:
Let's take in a different direction....you know what makes my blood boil?

People who insist that Crepes are thin pancakes.

I share your outrage. Anyone asking for "thin pancakes Suzettes flambées au Grand Marnier" should be shot on sight.

Steve Williams · Dec 19, 2014

thedudeabides said:
With all due respect, who are "they"?

Some specifics might be beneficial to understand your perspective.

As I read his list he was referring to objectivists

Objectivists - what REALLY makes your blood boil?

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