Some immesurable inadequacy in the power supply. Re-wire the house. If the electricians bill doesn't make it sound better nothing will.
Tim
Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break
- Thread starter Jeff Fritz
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Some immesurable inadequacy in the power supply. Re-wire the house. If the electricians bill doesn't make it sound better nothing will.
Tim
In this world of political correctness and reducing everyone and everything to the same level, the lowest common denominator where critical thinking is unknown and critical judgment is offensive, it's cultural heresy to say one thing is better than another. And so I merely observe that what passes for music for some is intensely disturbing noise to others. There's truth in the old saying "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" but it doesn't stop at birth, it continues on throughout the life of the individual. Reversions in an individual, backward evolution or devolution do also occur, they are not unknown. The "evolution" as you put it is IMO real. For some it ends at the level of development where the deafening ranting raving screaming screeching of an infant or the tantrum of a two year old accompanied to the droning thump thump thump of its mother's beating heart heard while suckling at her breast is their preferred music, in fact their only music. While for others even the most thoughtful and complex arrangements of harmonies, dissonances, complexities of melody, rhythm, the tonalities of instruments evolved over centuries and crafted through family secrets handed down for generations and in some cases now lost in time possibly forever undergo intense scrutiny, are the subject of endless comparisons of even their most subtle nuances. And so as it is unacceptable to differentiate the relative value of even these extreme distinctions, it's all lumped together in places like this in one huge formless batch called "music" mentioned as a pure abstraction. Were the popular contemporary notion of what usually passes for music today all there was, I for one would consider a boom box unjustifiable technological overkill. Not worth the cost, weight, or inconvenience. Many others must agree. Their preferred equipment that is entirely satisfactory to them is a portable mp3 player with ear buds. How grateful I am to them to not impose their preferences on my sensibilities.
That depends on what your idea of fun is. To some people, their idea of fun is to parade around naked in a hotel room carrying a naked woman on their back being photographed with a smart phone so that the experience can be shared with the entire world on the internet. If it doesn't bother them, it doesn't bother me but that's not what I live for.
When the solution to a problem doesn't work because it overlooks critical aspects of the problem, doesn't understand them, doesn't see them, fails to address them, then the part of problem the solution does address no matter how well executed, no matter to what extreme it is taken still isn't going to work satisfactorily. That's where the technology that is the basis of the high end audio industry is today IMO. When you have failed products that don't solve the problem you said they were going to solve, then redefine the problem so that it's something you can do and hope your prospective customers won't notice.
If your name is Amy Winehouse or are of her ilk. Lot's of people it seems could hardly wait for their eulogy to be read. Their only disapppointment, they couldn't hear it when it was. Frankly that's not my cup of tea either. But then I enjoy life too much to treat it carelessly. I also enjoy hearing and seeing. It's why I don't look up directly at the sun and I don't expose myself to what is literally ear shattering noise.
Just a random observation: Through the years I have met very few people that fall completely into or are totally "subjective" or "objective". However, by and large there seem to be more subjective-leaning types in audio, perhaps because of the knowledge needed to understand specifications including their value and limitations. There are always a few, usually beginner types, who go only by specifications, but most of us techies seem to figure out measurements don't tell all (usually by our very first design when the simulations clash with reality) though there are always more measurements we can take. Another part of the problem is that the measurements are hard to take and require sophisticated and expensive equipment plus knowledge of how to use it. And, no matter how good the instrument, someone will always claim they can hear what the instrument cannot due to some limitation in the instrument or the test methodology. Since it is impossible to prove a negative, the techies retreat to their corner in bafflement and frustration. I must note that listening tests have at times led to better, more-inclusive measurements and the identification of sonic attributes first identified by listeners. However, we've all had cases when say a blind test has yielded negative results and the results discarded for one reason or another, often the ambiguous "there must be something wrong with the test, I don't know what, figure it out".
I have been surprised both ways through the years in my personal listening experiences, that is in hearing what I thought I could not, and not hearing what I thought I could.
Also interesting is that much of the time I have found fellow musicians poor subjects for audio tests. There are exceptions, of course, but many musicians tend to focus so much on the music itself they totally ignore the sound of the gear. "Yeah, those Magnepans sound nicer than the Bose minis, but did you hear that awful chord in the second movement?"
I have been surprised both ways through the years in my personal listening experiences, that is in hearing what I thought I could not, and not hearing what I thought I could.
Also interesting is that much of the time I have found fellow musicians poor subjects for audio tests. There are exceptions, of course, but many musicians tend to focus so much on the music itself they totally ignore the sound of the gear. "Yeah, those Magnepans sound nicer than the Bose minis, but did you hear that awful chord in the second movement?"
My system does not sound radically different from day to day, unless I make radical changes! I also accept that some days I am not prepared or wanting to listen to music.
It is why you must have a systematic approach to system evaluation, and forget the immediate wow effect due just to changes. IMHO, statistics is a keyword in subjective evaluation - very short listening tests are inappropriate. Long term auditions are needed. It is why I am keeping a Dartzeel NHB108 and an ARC REF150 in my system for about six weeks.
Unless your system and listening reside in a temperature, humidity and barometric pressure controlled stable environment, both its sound and your perception of it change in small ways all the time. One can argue that in most cases the differences are very small except that in many cases so are the differences ascribed to different components. That doesn't mean one can't become accustomed to and familiar with the sound of one's own system, but it does make longitudinal assessment of "differences" much harder. I still make those assessments for myself, but I don't try to fool myself about it. After all, it's only my money that I'm spending.
This is your only warning: I'm a professional writer. I can deconstruct the most cumbersome run-on sentences and get to their meaning, though I often find they don't say what was meant. In this case, I think you said what you meant, and I agree. Much of the "high end" spends incredible sums of energy and money addressing insignificant problems they can affect, while passing on the problems that could have the greatest effect.
Tim
I hear that argument all the time but never find it fitting the camp. I see the members here paying a lot of attention to speakers. I also counted the percentage of people who have some sort of room treatment around 2/3. Assuming these are the buckets that you feel needs to have money spent on it, then folks are already doing that. In some ways, I find them spending more money an attention to these things than people in the other camp. Do you not agree?
I do. I wasn't thinking of What's Best membership as much as I was the industry. We don't really need another five figure DAC that accomplishes little more than a reduction of already inaudible (present company accepted
) jitter, nearly as much as we need more living-space friendly speaker designs with reasonably even response over a broad axis, requiring less room treatment, mated to sub(s) (if it can be done with one, all the better) with electronic correction solutions built-in. And while they're at it, make it active and eliminate the stack of space heaters in the corner. Excellent sound for less -- less intrusive, less consumptive, less fussy...if not less expensive -- instead of massive margins for incremental improvements of the insignificant.I actually think we have a very high percentage of very enlightened audiophiles here. A fair chunk of the industry does not appear to be targeting them.
Tim
Don,
I also share your first statement.
Considering the second - musicians listener abilities - it has been addressed in studies several times and F. Toole summarizes it in its book "Sound Reproduction". From "Ando et al. (2000) found that musicians judge reflections to be about seven times greater than ordinary listeners, meaning that they derive a satisfying amount of spaciousness from reflections at a much lower sound level than ordinary folk: “Musicians prefer weaker amplitudes than listeners do " to "musicians supply valuable opinions but unsuited for measurement" From EIA-J, 1979, we find many interesting views (that I am omitting) in this book.
It would be nice to know how many of this people develop room treatments based on real measurements of their rooms and how many do it based in listening, advice or faith.
The Toole quote micro offered seems to be pretty specific, Tom. It addresses musicians' perceptions of spaciousness and preferred listening (volume) levels. It seems that they are satisfied with, to paraphrase in audiophile language, a much smaller sound stage and prefer to listen at lower levels. But these quotes from Toole -- who knows what they really mean, we have no context -- say nothing of musicians' perception of timbre, tonality, texture, detail... This, I suspect, is where their experience would matter. A flute player, with years of experience would be able to identify individual types of flutes, and individual techniques - and that is what he would pay attention to - while the audiophile would recognize "flute" in an expansive sound stage.
Which is more valuable in judging the quality of reproduction? The ability to differentiate between two womens' voices (or even the same woman with or without a cold?), or the ability to hear that it is a recording of a woman's voice in a big space?
Tim
"This is your only warning"
I'm glad I'm only getting one warning. I think I should alert you to the fact that I'm in training to set a new world record for the longest gramatically correct sentence in the English language. If you can remember what I wrote at the beginning of my sentence by the time you get to reading the end of it, I've got a lot more work to do.
I don't see any dichotomy between being objective and being subjective about studying sound and sound reproducing systems. Since the sounds we hear are like all other sensory stimuli our reaction to our environment it is subjective. But it is also entirely reasonable to try to analyze those stimuli to understand what makes one seem different from another. Since the original promise of high fidelity was to exactly reproduce the auditory experience of hearing music (the real thing, not the already artifical recreation of it) the scientific method for studying it seems pretty straightforward. Study the physics of the stimuli, acousics and study the ability to perceive and remember the stimuli, psychoacoustics. Combining sufficient knowledge of the two sciences, the criteria for reproducing the stimuli with sufficient accuracy to recreate the sujective reaction to it are established. The engineering to meet those criteria and the testing to determine that they have been met are also indicated. And therein lies the rub. The scientific knowledge base for both is entirely inadequate. Read a book on acoustics and you may be even more confused by the end of it than you were before you started. What you'll get mostly is an incoherent tapestry of parameters that are arcane, sometimes self contradictory, often limited to certain cases while not applicable to others, and fail to impart a true understanding of either sound or how sound interacts with rooms. At the other end, knowledge of psychoacoustics is also inadequate. Even something as simple as how the brain determines directionality isn't understood. In that example the proof of inadequacy is easy. Binaural recording meets every one of the three criteria usually specified and yet the system is a failure. More complex aspects of perception of music are also not understood. How do spatial and temporal variables affect the perception of tonality or perceived power of the source for example. So people called objectivists have a long way to go before any engineering criteria or test data will be of real use.
On the other hand so called subjectivists have no more insight than objecivists do. They seem to grope endlessly trying anything and everything they can find, think of, imagine. They come up with the wildest most preposterous theories to explain the rationale behind what they do. In a sense when they start espousing their latest pet explanations they are attempting to be scientists without science. Their arguments quickly get very tiresome for me. One of the most amusing however who is an endless source of hilarity is May Belt in England. She'll advise you for example to water the plants in your listening room with unfluoridated water. She reminds me of a commune called "The University of the Trees" in Hollister California I once read about a long time ago. They believed that if you worshiped their small pyramids it would keep you healthy and your car's engine in tune. Anyone want to buy some "tees" to lift their wires off the floor?
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Tom,
Once again we would have to go through the objectives of sound reproduction before addressing your question. As it seems we disagree fundamentally on it - I stick with the perceptual reality, you with just the physical reality - I apologize, but I could never explain it in way you could understand.
BTW, all these general questions are raised in section 2.5 Measuring the ability to reproduce the art of the book I often refer to. But many chapters are needed to answer to it. It is why the book is called Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms .
PS Curiously the WBF spell checker insists that the word psychoacoustics does not exist or is wrongly spelled. Forum bias?
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