Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

[GaryProtein]

EXACTLY.

Nothing beats reading what you wrote.

 

[Mike]

With all the talk about typos I went looking for a document that described the dangers of blind spell checking. I could not find it. Here is a different one.
Ode to My Spell Checker.”

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marks four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word and weight for it to say
Weather eye yam wrong oar write.
It shows me strait a weigh as soon as a mist ache is maid.
It nose bee fore two long and eye can put the error rite.
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it,
I am shore your pleased to no.
Its letter perfect awl the way.
My checker told me sew.

Did anyone else read that in a pirate's voice?

 

[terryj]

Holy! LOL!

Is Bathurst a V8 supercars race? The guy who scared the bejeezus out of us flying us around in a modded C63 AMG was Tim Slade. He said he races in that category.

Yep, the V8 supercars.

We are maybe five-eight kms away from the track as the crow flies, we have the big hill of the track between us. On race morning we go out and have a cuppa, sit quietly until 'Ah, that's it, the race has started.' There is this godalmighty roar as the flag drops, and that we can hear it from this far away is kinda awe inspiring in it's own way!

The track is actually a normal residential street, I guess there must be special laws passed that allow at certain times that those speed limits be waived!

Here's a nascar driver getting a lap of the track, interestingly enough from the chopper view of the track we live in a direct line over the P of the view!!

He hams it up a bit for fun I am sure, but it is a very different type of track than at nascar. The hill the course is on is very deceptive, it does not show up on tv just how long and steep the hill is on the going up or the down.

 

[opus111]

Yes and on further thought there might be a bit of a suprise there, in that, a solid state $700 amp, using non audiophile components, had a sweet midrange, indistinguishable from arguably the salient point of the $5K tube amp "sound", the midrange. Thats a bit big to think about IMO. Remarkable.

I agree - learning of that result was in many ways a game changer for my design philosophy. I realised I don't have to use 'audiophile approved components' to get decent sound. To me it says 'audiophile' components are probably almost entirely placebos.

 

[Robh3606]

Hello Gregadd

Sorry I didn't mean to insult you but you have to read a lot more carefully. Here is footnote 4 where I guess that no bass quote came from.

Footnote 4: One of the pairs of loudspeakers was the Infinity RS-1B, but with the Conrad-Johnson or Carver amplifiers driving the midrange/treble panels only.—John Atkinson

So it's clear they used more than one pair of speakers. And finaly a quote from the text

The Final Achievement

After this last bit of tweaking, where Bob was able to reinstate his 70dB null while driving a very difficult load, we now had what sounded like two absolutely identical amplifiers. No matter what speakers we used, every "difference" we thought we had isolated turned out to be there, in equal quantity, when we swapped amplifiers.

Rob

 

[Gregadd]

No matter what speakers we used, every "difference" we thought we had isolated turned out to be there, in equal quantity, when we swapped amplifiers.

Give me a little help. it says "every" difference" we thought we had isolated turned out to be there, in equal quantity when we swapped amplifiers ." if the differences remained then they are not identical.

 

[Gregadd]

With respect to the Carver challenge. While carver may have proved that he could easily duplicate the sound of certain high endamps. He also inadveretnly proved there was in fact a difference to be matched. Unlike ABX challenges that maintain there is no difference.Iindeeed he validated the golden ears. They knew the amplifier sounded different they just did not know why.

From a consumer standpoint: Carver makes two tube amplifiers. When asked why he would not imitiate those two amps and sell it a reduced price. His response was (I'm paraphasing) Then I would nothave that 'tube glow."

 

[DonH50]

Give me a little help. it says "every" difference" we thought we had isolated turned out to be there, in equal quantity when we swapped amplifiers ." if the differences remained then they are not identical.

Whenever they thought they had identified a difference, upon returning to the other amplifier they found the difference was not there. Bad grammar but the meaning seems pretty clear.

 

[DonH50]

With respect to the Carver challenge. While carver may have proved that he could easily duplicate the sound of certain high endamps. He also inadveretnly proved there was in fact a difference to be matched. Unlike ABX challenges that maintain there is no difference.Iindeeed he validated the golden ears. They knew the amplifier sounded different they just did not know why.

Many tests have proven you can hear differences among amplifiers if they are large enough differences. However, within a certain range, the differences tend to be far less than what people expect. For example, a number of SS amps sound virtually identical when operated well within their power bands and with speakers that are not overly taxing loads. Ditto tube amps, but I would not expect the tube and SS amps to sound identical into a speaker. Bob was trying to prove he could match the sound of the big CJ tube amp with a SS amp design.

All IMO, IME, FWIWFM, YMMV, blah blah blah - Don

 

[audioarcher]

I don't think large scale ABX testing can tell us the whole story. This may have been discussed in this thread already but here's my take. Human perception is only able to take in so much information at one time. Be it visual,auditory or whatever. So if we can agree on that then it seems to me that the more familiar you are with a recording or whatever else you are sensing the more detail you can remember about it. I think that might even extend to the more familiar you are with the sound of your system the easier it is to notice differences with it. That combined with being very familiar with how a certain recording sounds on your system should highlight any changes made. In a large ABX test it is very unlikely that all the participants are very familiar with the music being played. Let alone be familiar with the particular pressing/mastering of said music.

I know from my own experience that if I go listen to an unfamiliar system playing unfamiliar music it may sound good but I can tell much more about it with music I am familiar with. This is why I think large scale ABX testing fails to reveal some things that may be audible in the right circumstances. It would be interesting to see the results of a test that took this into consideration.

 

[Gregadd]

Hello Gregadd

Sorry I didn't mean to insult you but you have to read a lot more carefully. Here is footnote 4 where I guess that no bass quote came from.

From JA
The situation with the Carver Stereophile Challenges is complicated. The original challenge in 1985 (before I joined the magazine) involved blind testing the prototype Carver amplifier against a pair of Conrad-Johnson monoblocks on just the treble and midrange panels of Infinity RS1B loudspeakers. (The Infinity speakers used powered woofers.) The report on this Challenge can be found at http://www.stereophile.com/content/carver-challenge . And yes, it did appear that the final version of the Carver amplifier sounded like the C-Js - but only in the midrange and above.For the rematch at the beginning of 1987, I insisted that the amplifiers be compared full-range, using Celestion SL600 speakers. I measured the null as mentioned above with the amplifiers driving these speakers, and the maximum null was indeed just 36dB and then only in the midrange. Bob Carver subsequently said in an interview - see http://www.stereophile.com/content/b...himself-page-3 - that 36dB was certainly not enough to guarantee that the amplifiers would be indistinguishable. We did a series of blind tests at that time and Bob Carver agreed that J. Gordon Holt _could_ distinguish the amplifiers by ear, contrary to what you say. I did take part in these tests, but when it came time to score my tests, Bob Carver couldn't remember what amplifier I had been listening to in each trial. This was all reported in the April 1987 issue of Stereophile - that article will be posted in our on-line archives next year, 25 years after the event.

So it's clear they used more than one pair of speakers. And finaly a quote from the text

Rob

So it would appear you are quoting from the original challenge and I form the second. It would also appear that even if different speakers were used the decision was based on the Infinity speakers.

 

[Gregadd]

Many tests have proven you can hear differences among amplifiers if they are large enough differences. However, within a certain range, the differences tend to be far less than what people expect. For example, a number of SS amps sound virtually identical when operated well within their power bands and with speakers that are not overly taxing loads. Ditto tube amps, but I would not expect the tube and SS amps to sound identical into a speaker. Bob was trying to prove he could match the sound of the big CJ tube amp with a SS amp design.

All IMO, IME, FWIWFM, YMMV, blah blah blah - Don

I thought that was what I was saying.

 

[Gregadd]

Whenever they thought they had identified a difference, upon returning to the other amplifier they found the difference was not there. Bad grammar but the meaning seems pretty clear.

Give me a little help. it says "every" difference" we thought we had isolated turned out to be there, in equal quantity when we swapped amplifiers ." if the differences remained then they are not identical.

They say the exact opposite. In my profession such errors have provoked U.S. Supreme Court litigation and cost companies millions of dollars.
I just could not help it when someone suggested: " have to read a lot more carefully..."

 

[Robh3606]

It would also appear that even if different speakers were used the decision was based on the Infinity speakers.

OK maybe I should read more carefully exactly where does it say that in the original challenge??

Another quote for clarification on the last one.

We wanted Bob to fail. We wanted to hear a difference. Among other things, it would have reassured us that our ears really are among the best in the business, despite “70-dB nulls.”

There were times when we were sure that we had heard such a difference. But, I repeat, each time we’d put the other amplifier in, listen to the same musical passage again, and hear exactly the same thing. According to the rules of the game, Bob had won.

Where is there a link to the second challenge?? That's the one JA was involved with?? He wasn't with the magazine during the original.

Rob

 

[treitz3]

I'd be interested in that myself.

Tom

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

You need to pull some quotes. In context. Just saying "they said the opposite" without any evidence is as meaningless as shouting "I know you are but what am I."

Tim

 

[Gregadd]

You need to pull some quotes. In context. Just saying "they said the opposite" without any evidence is as meaningless as shouting "I know you are but what am I."

Tim

I posted this many times:

We did a series of blind tests at that time and Bob Carver agreed that J. Gordon Holt _could_ distinguish the amplifiers by ear, contrary to what you say. I did take part in these tests, but when it came time to score my tests, Bob Carver couldn't remember what amplifier I had been listening to in each trial. This was all reported in the April 1987 issue of Stereophile - that article will be posted in our on-line archives next year, 25 years after the event.

 

[Gregadd]

I'd be interested in that myself.

Tom

Stereoeditor is a member of WBF. If you doubt anyhting he said please challenge him. Ask him for the link I take him at his word. As I would you.
gregadd

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I posted this many times:

Sorry if I missed it before, but I still don't see the context. This is a contradiction of the results of the Carver challenge. Where does it come from? What is the context?

Tim

 

[Gregadd]

Sorry if I missed it before, but I still don't see the context. This is a contradiction of the results of the Carver challenge. Where does it come from? What is the context?

Tim

It's not a contradiction it It is from the renatch.