Natural Sound

[hopkins]

Easy. Different goals and values, some say preferences and tastes.

How do you explain it?

Not to repeat myself, but… In light of the topic of your thread, it is easy to conceive that people having the same goals (and similar experience of live sound) could choose different systems because no system comes close to reproducing that experience of live sound (and this is where preferences for lesser evils come in to play).

Once you accept that, then what is the point of insisting on live music as a reference? You could simply state what you enjoy listening to.

 

[microstrip]

(...) I was curious about your claim that he never referred to live music (...)

Sorry, when did I claim it?

 

[PeterA]

Not to repeat myself, but… In light of the topic of your thread, it is easy to conceive that people having the same goals (and similar experience of live sound) could choose different systems because no system comes close to reproducing that experience of live sound (and this is where preferences for lesser evils come in to play).

Once you accept that, then what is the point of insisting on live music as a reference? You could simply state what you enjoy listening to.

I enjoy my system, and my enjoyment is based on how natural is the experience of listening to music in my room.

I think where we differ is accepting your premise that “no system comes close to reproducing the experience of live sound”. I simply don’t accept your premise based on my own experience listening to a few specific systems and live music. You might respond that it is a matter of degree, and to that I would agree.

 

[PeterA]

Sorry, when did I claim it?

You wrote this: “ In many of his (Lamm’s) interviews I have read he never addressed using live music as a reference.

 

[microstrip]

You wrote this: “ In many of his (Lamm’s) interviews I have read he never addressed using live music as a reference.

You are partially quoting. The sentence had a start:

" Vladimir Lamm called "natural" a type of amplified sound that followed a particular type of hearing mechanism of the human ear that he had studied and developed. In many of his interviews I have read he never addressed using live music as a reference."


For me it was clear , but thanks, I will edit to make it clear:
“ In many of his (Lamm’s) interviews I have read he never addressed using live music as his reference."

As I said many times, IMO using live music as reference is essentially a marketing claim, but can be helpful to develop individual preferences and can be gratifying to listeners.

 

[PeterA]

You are partially quoting. The sentence had a start:

" Vladimir Lamm called "natural" a type of amplified sound that followed a particular type of hearing mechanism of the human ear that he had studied and developed. In many of his interviews I have read he never addressed using live music as a reference."


For me it was clear , but thanks, I will edit to make it clear:
“ In many of his (Lamm’s) interviews I have read he never addressed using live music as his reference."

As I said many times, IMO using live music as reference is essentially a marketing claim, but can be helpful to develop individual preferences and can be gratifying to listeners.

Well, clearly you and I disagree on this topic. Tim, Al, Brad, I, and others all mention listening to live music as a reference and guide informing choices. And we are not trying to market anything.

Vladimir Lamm did clearly mention live music in his interviews. He may not have mentioned it as a guide for him during his design process and maybe that is what you mean, but he certainly mentioned the importance of listening to live music as a reference or guide for listeners when assessing audio gear. He clearly mentions it in the interview I quoted.

 

[tima]

" Vladimir Lamm called "natural" a type of amplified sound that followed a particular type of hearing mechanism of the human ear that he had studied and developed. In many of his interviews I have read he never addressed using live music as a reference."

There is more to the history of Vladimir Lamm's development process than what you read in interviews. That "particular type of hearing mechanism" that formed the basis of his designs was the human hearing mechanism reacting to live music.

Lamm used live music as a reference for creating his theories, for testing his theories, the models built on them and for the assessment of audio equipment. These facts are not marketing claims and if they are used as marketing claims it because they are true.

As Chief Design Engineer of Research and Development at the Lvov Radio & Electronics factory in the Soviet Union, Lamm had both the resources and large pools of test subjects for conducting hundreds of blind and double-blind listening experiments. From these he accumulated massive amounts of data about what happens when people hear certain sounds, including a complex sound like live music. With data in hand he used differential equations to develop scientific models that described mathematically what he calls "the human hearing mechanism." He converted those equations into electro-mechanical models and implemented them in specific circuit topologies.

Lamm then tested his circuit designs with hundreds of human listening subjects to demonstrate that, given human physiology, only a few combinations of audio circuitry will work for us as listeners. We cannot change how we perceive sound or music, even in the face of what passes for good specs. "As humans," Lamm observes, "we are created in a certain way. (This is what Ralph Karsten calls "the rules of human hearing".) We perceive sound on various levels: conscious as well as subconscious or intuitive. We perceive sound not just with our ears, but with the whole body." From his research he developed a set of theoretical ideals against which he evaluates any amplifier. He called these constructs the Absolute Linearity of a System -- a sort of unified field theory of amplifier design that explains how an amplifier should measure if it is to reproduce sound congruent with the way people naturally perceive it.