The difference between me and some subjectivists is I'm glad to change my opinion in the face of compelling new evidence. Others, not so much.
That is actually a pretty funny claim, I must agree. Is there any evidence for it?
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Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break
- Thread starter Jeff Fritz
- Start date
That is actually a pretty funny claim, I must agree. Is there any evidence for it?
Nothing terribly respectable, Bob. I'm a marketing guy with a long career starting as an advertising copywriter and working my way up through Creative director jobs and various marketing management roles. Peaked as an SVP in corporate marketing and B of A in its heyday, then left to consult, doing brand development for 8 years. All of that petered out with the great recession, but I finally landed a job in my field again a bit over a year ago...writing again! It's no big deal -- web development, sales support, internal communications. But I spend most of my days writing again for the first time in quite a few years. It's great. Happy to have it.
Tim
There is the paradox Tom. If you can't hear the difference why should it matter? That is the drumbeat to which consumerists march. You know what? I agree! If you can't tell, go with what costs less. Period. Just don't tell others what they can or cannot hear because hearing and processing the stimuli is NOT universal. Fertile ground for snake oil salesmen? Sure. Fertile ground for agenda driven zealots pushing their own brand of BS as well.
We have to make a differentiation here. Are you making an amp or are you buying one for listening pleasure? If you're making amps you had better get your figures right even if just for QC purposes. If you are buying one for pleasure, do you need to know why a Denon sounds different from a Yamaha to choose the one you like? Is there an audible difference between 100wpc and 110 wpc at listening levels where the devices are operating within rated range? So is it the wattage published you follow or your ears?
Like the Carver challenge, I'll wager it is the tonal balance. So Bob voiced his amp to sound like an amp people liked more than his stock amp. Fantastic. I mean that sincerely. It didn't kill Jadis and Bob is now making Tube amps that he likes. Beyond the academics, what did it matter?
From the article:
It just strikes me as unlikely that (a) the amplifiers were audibly different to start with, and (b) if they were, by tweaking a few pots, you could match two amplifiers of different topologies at all frequencies and volume levels to 70dB, while picking up RF etc. with pots hanging off the circuit board. If I was some sort of maverick trying to prove a point about the audio industry I might, instead, try to pull off the trick of humouring the journalists about their "golden ears" and let them come round to the conclusion themselves that there was no practical performance difference between the amps. If you believe the story you are going along with the idea that people have golden ears and can pick up and distinguish between tiny levels of distortion (I'm not convinced myself) and that amplifier designers have the power to give an amplifier 'a sound' while it also appears neutral in tests.
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Oh, the existence of the pots is not the nonsense, but your statetement implying that he stuck them on the amp to inspire expectation bias was. They were there, as you've quoted (always a better choice than memory, filtered through hope), put there to bring the distortion levels of the 01 up to those of the reference amp. And they achieved that goal. This completely changes the story from a clever deception to a $700 amp being forced down to the level of a 5-figure audiophile darling. One story is nonsense. The other happened.
Tim
Tim
It's a good story, and everyone comes out of it smelling of roses: Bob Carver could dine out on it forever more, and the journalists have the sensitivity of their "golden ears" confirmed. The manufacturer of the audiophile amp doesn't come out of it too badly either, as the quality of their amp comes down to their 'choice' of musical distortion components, not a lack of distortion - anyone can make a distortionless amp (is the implication).
The point that the test was not blind is also a significant issue, as it surely throws the 'objectivity' of the whole episode into question. You would normally be quite dismissive of a non-blind listening test..?
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You stress the word "on"... The story is that they were "wired into" the amp. Not built-in, but "wired" i.e. using pieces of wire.
Tim,
We can agree on your designation of the Stereophile article - a story. It is just that, a well written epic narrative, nothing else. It could destroy some existing myths at the time, but was not a victory for science, as it was not documented technically and relied on the expertise of a single man and on the judgement of a few. We still can not know if the similarity of the sound was due only to the 70 dB null or something else that Bob Carver did to the amplifier. It was never repeated, an obvious problem to any one pretending to have an objective view, and the results obtained using old tube electronics rule out any extrapolation to modern electronics. IMHO the main conclusion is that Bob Carver is an electronic genius, and could achieve something that people considered not possible.
It is curious that people spend so much time debating small details and possible interpretations of this challenge, ignoring its limitations and that it is just an important mark in audio history, nothing else. As the theory and science of the final implementation were never published, we can only go on guessing and debating. We spent more than two decades doing it, I have no reason to think people will not do the same for the next twenty years.
I would. And I'm not saying the Carver test proves anything. What I'm saying is that your descriptions of it, right up to and including
Are odd fantasies designed to dismiss that in which, it seems, you would prefer not to believe. And they still leave me wondering if you've actually read the article rather than selected internet quotes and comments. If you have read it, I can't imagine how you could come to the conclusion stated just above. It is wild speculation unsupported by...no that's too soft...denied by the actual record.
If you really need to dismiss the Carver Challenge that badly, search for and read the repeat of the exercise in which Carver was unable to totally erase the audible differences between two amps. It is no more accurate, but much easier to assume that which couldn't be done once can't be done at all than it is to go through the mental acrobatics of putting feelings and motivations in other people's heads from 30 years on. Give yourself a break.
Tim
We're in complete agreement. And yes, in fact Carver failed to repeat the performance in a second try. As I said above, nothing was proven by the Carver challenge. Or, as you've said, it was not a victory for science, just an interesting story, well-told.
Tim
It would really be cool if Bob Carver would come on this forum and tell us his side of the story and what he did or didn’t accomplish and what it all really meant (and why he is strictly designing with tubes now) and put all of those old Carver trick bones to rest once and for all.
It depends on your level of scepticism I guess. Mine goes right up to not believing in the actual existence of true "golden ears", so any story that unquestioningly accepts them should be examined carefully, in my opinion. The article was written by the Stereophile people, so their account may not be entirely accurate technically. And if I was writing such an article, I too would apparently magnanimously suggest that Bob had 'got one over on me' while also making sure that my own credentials were not called into doubt - I've been listening to politicians for too long I think!
I'm happy to accept that tube amplifiers are inferior to solid state, and that they do sound worse, but I question the need to go to 70dB down in the null before no one can hear the difference. So I'm sceptical both that it's possible to modify a solid state amp to exactly duplicate the shortcomings of the tube amplifier using a few pots (if that's what he did), and at the same time sceptical that the journalists were hearing differences right down to the -70dB point. (Maybe just adding a 2 ohm resistor in series with the output would be good enough)
By accepting the Carver Challenge story at face value you buy into this sort of thing, from the Stereophile review of the Conrad Johnson Premier 4 (the alleged reference amplifier):
You appear to accept that higher levels of distortion, reduced top end, lack of bass etc. that are inherent in tube amplifiers, actually improves the sound. I don't!
I think only "objectivists" have found it to perhaps be "black and white". What it has always shown me is
1) Bob Carver is a hell of an amplifier designer (shouldn't be news to anyone)
2) a talented engineer can do lots of things to change the way an amp sounds
3) human perception (and expectation) is a funny thing
That's the one I have trouble with. A DSP engineer, yes, but to me any deviation from "straight wire with gain" in the amp is a problem. I don't want my amplifier to have "a sound" at all.
In order to situate the Carver challenge in time you should also read these lines from the Premier Four review written by Anthony H. Cordesman in 1984 :
The best transistor equipment tends to be surprising in the highs. Even when it does not produce long-term listening fatigue, it tends to provide detail that you literally never heard before—in a concert hall, in a studio, or standing next to a musician. Certain aspects of the highs are emphasized relative to others, passages of music acquire unusual high frequency emphasis, a triangle will triple in size, the cymbals change character, or the female voice acquires new sibilants.
This can be fascinating—and even musical—but far too often it is not natural. Audiophiles raised on electronic sound may not be as impressed by the virtue of the natural highs heard on tube equipment—since they may have grown up listening to nothing but transistor equipment—but the best tube units have highs that do not surprise you when you come back from listening to live music.
and J. Gordon Holt also in 1984
Perhaps, then, the main reason why the vacuum tube persists in audio (when the transistor has replaced it in every other area of electronics) is that it continues to provide the kind of listening pleasure that every audiophile envisioned in his mind's ear when he got into audio in the first place. I can't think of a better reason
Aren't most of us looking for it?
The best transistor equipment tends to be surprising in the highs. Even when it does not produce long-term listening fatigue, it tends to provide detail that you literally never heard before—in a concert hall, in a studio, or standing next to a musician. Certain aspects of the highs are emphasized relative to others, passages of music acquire unusual high frequency emphasis, a triangle will triple in size, the cymbals change character, or the female voice acquires new sibilants.
This can be fascinating—and even musical—but far too often it is not natural. Audiophiles raised on electronic sound may not be as impressed by the virtue of the natural highs heard on tube equipment—since they may have grown up listening to nothing but transistor equipment—but the best tube units have highs that do not surprise you when you come back from listening to live music.
and J. Gordon Holt also in 1984
Perhaps, then, the main reason why the vacuum tube persists in audio (when the transistor has replaced it in every other area of electronics) is that it continues to provide the kind of listening pleasure that every audiophile envisioned in his mind's ear when he got into audio in the first place. I can't think of a better reason
Aren't most of us looking for it?
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