Toward a Theory To Increase Mutual Understanding and Predictability

caesar

Well-Known Member
May 30, 2010
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Ron, as others have addressed the creation chain very well, and have shown that these categories are a marketing segmentation approach, and most participating in the thread have coalesced on this.

Yet let me bring a psychological perspective of subjective experiences to the discussion to help address the title of your post - a way to increase mutual understanding. The ideas below expressed are a high level summary based on actual, well-accepted research, so it's not and not just some BS...

It has been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. This is also true when it comes to putting words around subjective experiences of audio... Objective stimuli in the world create subjective stimuli in the mind. We hear a system and we use words to describe them. Using these "audiophile" words, we think that our fellow audiophile is having the same subjective experience inside their skull. But it's not really true, as one can tell from the arguments and virtually different systems and rooms) that everyone has...

A word like “real” "natural", "slam", "presence" are abstract words filled with ambiguity. They really are nothing more or less than words that anyone can use to indicate anything we please. The problem is that people seem pleased to use this or that word to indicate a host of different things, which has created a tremendous terminological mess…

A lot of the mess stems from one's prior experiences with a system/ product – or a lack thereof. As an example, if someone lacks the machinery for a sexual orgasm, then our experience of orgasm is one that this person will never know - no matter how much we talk about it, or dance about it.

Experiences of fine tequilas, string quartets in world class venues, caring deeds, ice cream, and high end audio are rich, complex, multidimensional, and impalpable. Because “Real” or "natural" is also an experience, it can only be approximately defined by its antecedents and by its relation to other experiences. "Spicy" means something different to a person used to eating South Indian cuisine every day than to a mom buying potato chips labeled as "spicy" in the supermarket for the super bowl party. That’s why I can’t stand reviewers like “worthless to the fan” Robert Harley who never compare, but just proclaim something as “BEST!” because some new detail he heard tickled his analytical preference. (Note: I am not attacking him as a person, but criticizing him for the value of his work to the audiophile community. I am not saying he's a worthless human being, just that his work is completely useless to the fan... I'm sure he's a great guy in real life with great family and friends and an upstanding member of his community.)

I'm also sure Harley's manufacturer friends and advertisers love to get a headline that they got the very "BEST" product on the market, but the "BEST" claim is pathetic and useless to the stressed-out audio fan traveling around to hear things on different continents in order to find a great piece of gear.

Without knowledge of the how an experience of piece of gear compares to another one he may be familiar with and narrowing things down, that an audio fan has to travel and spend precious time and hard-earned money to find some piece of gear that he hoped will put him in a state of flow where he connects with the music and all problems melt away.

Of course, the reality is that piece of gear proclaimed as "best" is only in Harley's imagination. Something like magico q7 and Berkeley Reference SAC "disappears" only in his mind and a handful of people who share his preferences. But to many fans, this gear sticks out and disrupts the musical experience as a colonoscopy done by a jittery intern who forgot to call the anesthesia :) ... of course, that painful experience could have been avoided if Harley did a good job comparing the experiences and let the fans decide if that experience is worth pursuing ...every time he writes about something as "BEST", his work screams "self-serving hyperbole" and "marketese" to fans.

Coming back to some theory, once we have an experience - hear a component that does something very new or very different – like speed and inner detail of a horn, or an electrostatic midrange amplified by tubes, we cannot simply set it aside and see the world as we would have seen it had the experience never happened. Our experiences instantly become the lens through which we view (or the filter we hear through, if you would) all past, present, and future. And like and lens or filter, they color our perspective as well.

Additionally, we are only human , so distorted views of reality are made possible by the fact that experiences are ambiguous -that is, they can be credibly viewed in many ways, some of which are more positive than others. Different moods, auditioning circumstances, people we like or don’t like, preconceived notions, prior good meals , great "intimate relations", or rude taxi drivers,etc… all can play part in impacting what we perceive when we listen.

Furthermore, to complicate things even further, our remembrance of things past is imperfect, thus comparing our new understanding of “real” with our memory of our old "real" is a risky way to determine whether two subjective experiences are really different...

But just because there are challenges posed to us by human nature, doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Instead, we should work even harder to overcome them...

If several audiophiles share the same experiences, such as attending shows or presentations, their taste may not always agree 100 percent, but they will be more effective in communicating in what the others mean if they get together, analyze experiences, and specify the language to help extract the most important features of the experiences so we can analyze them and communicate them later... Practically, except for small groups of people, this will never happen. So arguments will go on...

But , fortunately, there is a solution to find that common ground you bring up in the post title...

It's interesting to note that studies show that in general, women aren't as good negotiators as men. Delving into the reasons, women ask less questions to understand the situation to drive the ultimate outcome. Likewise in our little audiophile world, instead of relying on categories or stereotypes, I believe that by respectfully asking questions to probe into others' experience to get a clear understanding of what others want or believe helps increase mutual understanding.

Found this article by Jason Victor Sirinius... Here's a guy who gets that high end audio is an experience (and obviously John Atkinson gets it, as he commissioned Serinius to write it):

https://www.stereophile.com/content/reviewers-art

This work is NOT EASY, by any means, as most guys who do this work SUCK. But gives an ideal to strive for...
 

morricab

Well-Known Member
Apr 25, 2014
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Found this article by Jason Victor Sirinius... Here's a guy who gets that high end audio is an experience (and obviously John Atkinson gets it, as he commissioned Serinius to write it):

https://www.stereophile.com/content/reviewers-art

This work is NOT EASY, by any means, as most guys who do this work SUCK. But gives an ideal to strive for...

What I found as a reviewer is that it can be difficult to remain internally consistent and focused on how your observations fit into the larger picture of your knowledge space. I think I was relatively good at this and as a result it made my reviews more useful for those who "bought in" to my overall philosophy, which was that, recording allowing, the sound should be as close to live unamplified music as possible. This was the original view from HP at TAS and while they stuck with this it made the magazine relevant to a large number of audiophiles...now that JV and RH have ditched this concept completely it is a bunch of useless ad copy.


In order to maintain some semblance of understanding what "live unamplified music" sounds like, requires the reviewer to be a frequent goer of concerts and IMO, seated in a way that allows the perspective of presence from a performance to be readily experienced...just like the relatively close mic'ing of a good recording provides. If you always sit in the back of the hall, you will probably conclude that live is less dynamic than what can be produced from playback. Since recordings are mostly made up close then it stands to reason that the live experience, if one wants comparison, should also be relatively up close and present. I think most miss this point.
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
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Live concerts are a good metric to compare to, with one caveat: That no PA system is used. Entirely acoustic.

This obviously limits those to small venues and small audiences.

I have attended plenty of PA-driven concerts, only to go home and listen to the CD tracks afterwards and conclude that the CD tracks sound a lot better than the live performance. The mic positions is critical, so every recording sounds different. Very few recording studios provide a realistic, live image in the studio. Bluecoast is one exception.

Back to the OP:

1) recreate the sound of an original musical event,

2) reproduce exactly what is on the master tape, and

3) create a sound subjectively pleasing to the audiophile.

The first two are certainly industry goals, and not mutually exclusive I would argue, along with:

1) Offer the customer the latest technology on the treadmill
2) Make money
3) Improve other companies products by modding and add-on devices

Making a product that is "pleasing" is also sometimes a goal, as in the case of tube buffers, cables that soften the sound by filtering etc.., but rarely the goal of high-tech companies IMO. Most of those are trying to achieve a balance of good measurements and live, accurate sound. Pleasing just comes when you achieve these IME.

Audiophiles themselves can also have various different motivations, such as:

1) Finding components with the best published measurements
2) Finding "eye-candy" that can serve for bragging rights
3) Tweaking until the cows come home to make incremental improvements (rather than fixing the real limiters)
4) Critical listening for the sake of critical listening
5) Going down the garden path of cable tuning or finding the right jitter signature that is "pleasing"

Frankly, I hate to see any of these. They make the job of the manufacturer much harder.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Al M.

VIP/Donor
Sep 10, 2013
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Greater Boston
Live concerts are a good metric to compare to, with one caveat: That no PA system is used. Entirely acoustic.

This obviously limits those to small venues and small audiences.

Large orchestra? Providing loud sound in large venues?
 

Empirical Audio

Industry Expert
Oct 12, 2017
1,169
207
150
Great Pacific Northwest
www.empiricalaudio.com
Large orchestra? Providing loud sound in large venues?

Large orchestras usually don't have PA system anyway, so I'm talking about all others.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

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