KeithR's "Dream Speaker" Search

ctydwn said:

I appreciate this post and mentioned before I have not heard the Fyne's and am quite curious to hear them.

Now of course I may be a bit biased, but I think where I struggle with the post above is how it comes off as factual rather than opinion or, at a minimum, dismissive of how the Hailey's may sound in other systems. For example, in my experience, I am in awe at the texture of string instruments (not mediocre), vocals are incredibly immersive dripping with in the room natural presence (not a vaguely inorganic "metallic" sound over everything), I listen for hours (I would say pretty darn musically engaged) strapped to my seat and am blown away by the explosive dynamics and elasticity (not sure I have heard a tight-sphincter). My audio friends have shared similar observations at my place. I can understand the smearing at high SPLs in complex pieces and would agree. That is not too surprising.

Now would the Fyne's sound better to my tastes? Definitely open to it. Do I think the Hailey's were enjoyable before I started upgrading components and cables? Absolutely, but not like currently, so again, this could be described as a 'weakness' of the Hailey and of course limit amp selection. Have I really reached the point of diminishing returns with improved components? Perhaps, but heir headroom is what has amazed me most about these speakers. Wonderful SQ bumps from network improvements, server upgrade, DAC, cabling etc. I do not have 50 years of audio experience, only 20, so I have alot to learn and experiment. But, I thought I would throw this out there as one person's opinion having lived w these speakers for 3 years. I do have the Sonja 2.2i's on order so will be eager to hear how they compare. Thanks again to all for this valuable thread.

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+2

I'm a YG owner and find their "Headroom" as you described almost limitless.

Or, least in my personal experience with my "entry level" Carmel

As an example, I recently added a Shunyata Everest and the effect was jaw dropping improvement.

I look forward to going up the YG line someday but, of course to each their own.

wil said:

Strajan, in his incomplete review, is happy with with how his 13r drives his 92db speakers in his 4x6m room. My 100watt 51r sounds great with my 86db Boenicke’s. It will be interesting to see how he ultimately compares the 13r to the 23r. I don’t know why Soo In chose to rebrand Bakoon to Enleum and I doubt there’s much sonic difference between the Bakoon 13r and 41r compared to the new 23r and 43r. I see that they have sold out of the remaining 13r stock but you might consider to see if they have any 41r’s. He also made a few 75 W 41r’s that could be available.

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Boenicke's are one of the few low sensitivity speakers I have heard that still sound pretty lively. Bakoons are probably a good match for them...but so was Aries Cerat when we demoed with them one year for a show. I also heard Bakoon sound not bad with the Swiss brand Sound Kaos.

213Cobra said:

In hifi, opinions are factual and facts are opinions because there are no objective absolutes. When I describe how I hear something, that is a factual assessment. Whether you will hear it as same is opinion. No way to know. Maybe your hearing is more acute than mine. But also maybe your mind isn't as well trained and experienced as mine to interpret the data being sent from the ears. I had a hifi customer 40 years ago who was the 2nd largest contributor to the NY Met Opera, but he required and wore hearing aids in both ears! Circa 1980 SOTA hearing ads. Nevertheless, he was an acute judge of musical authenticity within his bandwidth limits. I genuinely strive to be as objectively descriptive as possible, whether anyone agrees, or not. And I don't really care whether even one other person agrees. I get requests for advice from all over the globe. I have to outline what I hear and explain the context for it. I grew up in Amish country, with 10% of the population living a 18th century lifestyle surrounded by 20th and 21st century life. What I learned from that is that the rest of the army can be out of step. I am squarely planted in the view that most of the hifi army is out of step today and in the recent past. Put another way, if your guru is the likes of Robert Hartley for musical authenticity & nirvana, you will forever be searching (and spending) because down that path lies ever-elusive musicality just out of reach, and madness.

I don't doubt that you are in awe of string texture on YG Hailey. I can imagine a contained speakers context where I might feel the same. But until your context includes the scope of mine, I don't know how durable that perception is. You might still think the same even if our hifi experiences are common. I think many if not most of us here have had moments of revelation wherein some long held hifi loyalty or certainty has been upended by something new, or even something old not heard before. So you may certainly struggle with my sonic portrayal as "fact." But that's not really what I've written. I just don't precede every comment with "IMHO or IMO." Isn't that a foregone conclusion? No one here seems to accept anyone's commentary as "fact." But when I write a description, it's as close to fact as I can make it, deriving from a judgment filtered for pained objectivity. Put yet another way, generally, when I am in real-time evaluating gear, what I assess more often than not can be heard by others, once pointed out, but they still might disagree on whether or how important said phenomenon is. Or whether it's important at all. So when I describe a something like a vague metallic overcast on the part of a YG speaker on the music it's playing, many can hear why I hear that, and somewhere between a few to most may think that's not important at all.

I'm just giving you the musical reality as I hear it. I think if you have listened and coveted and prioritized the mainstream high-end crossover-intensive, linearity-over-everything speaker sound that dominates hifi today, your context isn't broad enough to reach your own musical goals, even if you exclusively rely on your own research and ears. And you'll probably disagree with me.

Phil

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Thanks for the reply. I don't disagree. I can even relate to some of your descriptions re: YG when I was first becoming familiar with them (owned the Carmel 2s for 3 years prior to the Haileys) - e.g. the Carmel 2s when I first started driving them with a Cary Audio Cinema 5 and earlier versions of Nordost cabling etc. What I currently hear is vastly different as my system has evolved quite a bit through a fair amount of iterations. I do think there is a correlation with what they are being fed. I have also enjoyed the benefit of sealed box design given proximity to back and side walls in my rather lively room. While I have owned/listened to a variety of monitor and floor standing ported speakers, I know I have only relatively scratched the surface of listening to the array of equipment many on this site have. In large part why I enjoy WBF and this thread. Really looking forward to hearing more systems as things hopefully normalize.

213Cobra said:

In hifi, opinions are factual and facts are opinions because there are no objective absolutes. When I describe how I hear something, that is a factual assessment. Whether you will hear it as same is opinion. No way to know.

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I'm afraid that seems to at least imply a muddled epistemology. Why would hi-fi be some realm separate from the rest of empirical facts?

We should be careful not to mix up subjective claims with claims of objective fact. But this is often done in the audiophile world.

If you tell me "If I perceived a difference between my Ethernet cable after 300 hours of burn-in" that certainly can be a fact about your subjective
impression. But if it is meant to simultaneously claim an objective fact (that your perception of a change was caused by an actual audible change after 300 hours), then we can be rightly skeptical of that fact claim. It may be a fact that you had a subjective experience, but you could be entirely wrong about the cause of the experience. But audiophiles make this leap of inference all the time. "Hi-Fi is strictly subjective - if I had the subjective impression the sound changed, it's a fact the sound changed."

Audio, and human beings, exist in the factual empirical world, and facts about what a subject feels occurred can be quite separate from what actually occurred.

Nothing muddled about it. I wrote that reporting what I hear is a matter of fact. It's a fact I heard what I described. I'm unconcerned about whether anyone believes it or agrees. Additionally, you might believe my conclusion but also think it's not important to what makes reproduced music sound authentic to you. There are facts associated with what is emitted by an emitter in audio, but we are still too primitive about measuring audio to completely account for its properties. We know the human body is an audio sensor beyond the ear>earchain> brain connection, and we don't know what to measure to fully account for that. We don't , for example, have anything more than competing postulates for why supertweeters with response out to 100kHz affect sound down through the bass region. The most versatile instrument we have is the earchain-to-brain connection, augmented by an educated and trained audio mind.

What I describe I hear is a fact. Whether anyone trusts it is up to them. If objective analysis says something didn't happen and yet same is subjectively perceived, it is just as likely that the objective science hasn't caught up to the subjective perception in terms of measuring or testing with sufficient insight to explain it, or explain why what the person heard didn't actually happen and the listener is wrong.

The empirical world is limited by what we have in tools to measure and by our understanding of what to measure. Merriam-Webster, not counting the quackery definition, defines empiricism as:

* the practice of relying on observation and experiment especially in the natural sciences
* a tenet arrived at empirically
* a theory that all knowledge originates in experience

Empircal testing is necessary and worthwhile, but the empirical world is not static, nor is it the same for everyone, since qualities of observation vary hugely between individuals, even scientists and technicians; experiments are by definition iterative; we all have differences in experience. By definition, there is no such thing as "the factual empirical world." The empirical world, yes. The factual world, yes. Facts derived from the empirical world, yes. A "factual empirical world," no.

The very nature of the empirical world means it is constantly playing catch-up to the sensing & perceiving capabilities of people. Or whales, porpoises, octopi, horses, cats, orangutans and other intelligent animals with senses exceeding ours in certain ways. In some areas, the empirical world leapt and runs ahead of human sensing. Alas, audio isn't yet holistically one of them.

Phil

COF said:

If you tell me "If I perceived a difference between my Ethernet cable after 300 hours of burn-in" that certainly can be a fact about your subjective
impression. But if it is meant to simultaneously claim an objective fact (that your perception of a change was caused by an actual audible change after 300 hours), then we can be rightly skeptical of that fact claim. It may be a fact that you had a subjective experience, but you could be entirely wrong about the cause of the experience. But audiophiles make this leap of inference all the time. "Hi-Fi is strictly subjective - if I had the subjective impression the sound changed, it's a fact the sound changed." [tima: my emphasis]

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This is a general epistemology not tied to audio. (Maybe there is some notion of an audio epistomology; to me that is silly.) But we can discuss within the audio context.

Your mention of "an actual audible change" versus a perceived audible change needs a lot more fleshing out. Even if both occur the sceptic (represented in you response) might find that at best there is an association between one event and the other. A occurs (a physical change occured.) B occurs (I heard a change.) But, so the sceptic claims, there is no such thing as causality, no necessary connection between the two events. A may occur without B, and vice versa. That there is a necessary connection between the two events is not empirically discoverable. I cannot claim, says the sceptic, that because I heard a change there was a change.

First off, Phil is not making the claim that I believe you think he his (or you postulate he might be making, in a straw dog argument) - that's my reading of what he is saying. 'After 300 hours I heard a change.' I believe that is all that he is reporting and he is saying that his report is undeniable.

What is 'an actual audible change'? Is it a change to the physical structure of the wire? We pass electricity through a wire for 300 hours. Presumably we measure the wire before and after and reveal different measurements at different times. Is that measurement audible? I'm assuming you are saying we cannot attribute "an actual audible change" as the cause of what was heard.

Secondly, the notion of causality may be something we bring to what we call 'experience'. It is logically independent of experience and necessary to our way of understanding events. Supposedly the cause precedes the event - at least in our experience. The notion of 'precedes' means 'in time'. Perhaps we bring time to our understanding of what it means to have experience. Before and after. Serial ordination is not something empirically derived. It is a necessary condition for being able to empirically derive. (What occurs outside the bounds of what it means to understand or what it means for us to attribute objectivity, is not available to us.)

To deny a claim such as 'I heard a change caused by 300 hours of wire break-in' aa wrong-headed is to deny what is necessary for distinguishing an objective sequence of states in the world from the merely subjective sequence (association) of perceptions.

KeithR said:

In Fyne amplifier land, I have ordered a Linear Tube Audio Ultralinear+. I felt obligated since I own their preamp already and unlike most tube amps, this one isn't unwieldy- shipping weight is 24lbs!

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A Berning design - presumably transformerless thus the lower weight. Cool. Looking forward to your impressions. Did you hear it with the Fynes before ordering?

tima said:

A Berning design - presumably transformerless thus the lower weight. Cool. Looking forward to your impressions. Did you hear it with the Fynes before ordering?

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Yes, Berning ZOTL. I installed this for Keith. It predictably sounded fairly terrible on first turn-on and then burned in. I heard it a couple of days ago now that it''s stabilized and it is of course vastly-improved from first turn-on.

Positives:
Highly articulate and the Berning/LTA is fleet-footed, tone-dense but objective. Its not a "warm" tube amp, nor is it a transistor-sounding tube amp. It uses TV sweep power tubes. Like other OTLs, (I had original Julius Futterman OTLs for about 15 years from mid-70s through 1990) it is fast, highly transparent, projecting, harmonically extended.

Where there is deep bass in the source material, the LTA can reach low to blast it or float it out in the gentlest way. The amp has contrast. It can reveal and portray big and subtle dynamic contrasts.

No tube roll-off up top or at the bottom end (within the bandwidth of the Fyne). True extended bandwidth.

Naturally energetic beyond what one expects from 20/20w on a 96db speaker.

Keeps its composure during complex music in crescendo with very many simultaneous events. This LTA is exceptional in that respect compared to many vastly more expensive and powerful amps of various topologies I've heard in Keith's systems over the last 15 years or so. Even when near clipping, one can hear all the distinct threads in surging full symphonic music.

Cost is approachable. No nonsense with Berning nor LTA.

Tubes are used conservatively; long tube life is a consequence.

No hot-running; low stress design.

Negatives:
Keith really needs a 2nd one to run monoblocks for the high SPL music he listens to. The system with one amp sounds midrange-strained. 3-4db headroom would make the amp sound substantially more relaxed.

On large scale symphonic music and other bombastic sources, as on every other OTL I've heard, there's a "lightweight" or "underweight" aspect to their sound presentation that stops short of making a convincing scale and shove impression. I hear this as a common thread through Futterman, NYAL, Transcendent, Atma-Sphere, and Berning. There's always something to give up, isn't there?

Did I mention that LTA says you only need one, but you really need two in mono mode. They must be listening in tiny, lively rooms in Maryland.

Overall, a highly-credible, objective amp that happens to use vacuum tubes, with certain scale and subterranean mining limitations I think can be mitigated, even overcome, by using two in monoblocks configuration. It will never have the most weight for scaled, surging, complex music but it will do better than amps that do, on articulation and agility.

***

Musical agility (events agility) sets the LTA amps apart. Practicality extends their appeal. Lightweight, compact, long-lasting tubes, low-heat, practical glass helps. Low service likelihood. The main thing is removing the midrange vocal strain, lifting the headroom (Two, 2, Double), give yourself time to adapt if you've never had a tube amp before, and particularly if you have.

Keith can write for himself. He likes the amp; has to figure out what the "on-balance" factors are for him. Other contenders are pending.

Phil

Another great synopsis, Phil. Your writing is very clear and I get a good sense of what you are hearing. I look forward to reading more from Keith.

213Cobra said:

Yes, Berning ZOTL. I installed this for Keith. It predictably sounded fairly terrible on first turn-on and then burned in. I heard it a couple of days ago now that it''s stabilized and it is of course vastly-improved from first turn-on.

Positives:
Highly articulate and the Berning/LTA is fleet-footed, tone-dense but objective. Its not a "warm" tube amp, nor is it a transistor-sounding tube amp. It uses TV sweep power tubes. Like other OTLs, (I had original Julius Futterman OTLs for about 15 years from mid-70s through 1990) it is fast, highly transparent, projecting, harmonically extended.

Where there is deep bass in the source material, the LTA can reach low to blast it or float it out in the gentlest way. The amp has contrast. It can reveal and portray big and subtle dynamic contrasts.

No tube roll-off up top or at the bottom end (within the bandwidth of the Fyne). True extended bandwidth.

Naturally energetic beyond what one expects from 20/20w on a 96db speaker.

Keeps its composure during complex music in crescendo with very many simultaneous events. This LTA is exceptional in that respect compared to many vastly more expensive and powerful amps of various topologies I've heard in Keith's systems over the last 15 years or so. Even when near clipping, one can hear all the distinct threads in surging full symphonic music.

Cost is approachable. No nonsense with Berning nor LTA.

Tubes are used conservatively; long tube life is a consequence.

No hot-running; low stress design.

Negatives:
Keith really needs a 2nd one to run monoblocks for the high SPL music he listens to. The system with one amp sounds midrange-strained. 3=4db headroom would make the amp sound substantially more relaxed.

On large scale symphonic music and other bombastic sources, as on every other OTL I've heard, there's a "lightweight" aspect to their sound presentation that stops short of making a convincing scale and shove impression. I hear this as a common thread through Futterman, NYAL, Transcendent, Atma-Sphere, and Berning. There's always something to give up, isn't there?

Did I mention that LTA says you only need one, but you really need two in mono mode. They must be listening in tiny, lively rooms in Maryland.

Overall, a highly-credible, objective amp that happens to use vacuum tubes, with certain scale and subterranean mining limitations I think can be mitigated if not overcome by using two in monoblocks configuration. It will never have the most weight for scaled, surging, complex music but it will do better than amps that do, on articulation and agility.

***

Musical agility (events agility) sets the LTA amps apart. Practicality extends its apeal. Lightweight, compact, long-lasting tubes, low-heat, practical glass helps. Kiw service likelihood. The main thing is removing the midrange vocal strain, lifting the headroom (Two, 2, Double), give yourself time to adapt if you've never had a tube amp before, and particularly if you have.

Keith can write for himself. He likes the amp; has to figure out what the "on-balance" factors are for him. Other contenders are pending.

Phil

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Great description of the LTA. I hope Keith is able to compare to one of the Bakoons (now Enleum). Both agile, but the LTA sounded slower to me in comparison. The LTA had a bit more density, however.

213Cobra said:

Nothing muddled about it. I wrote that reporting what I hear is a matter of fact. It's a fact I heard what I described.

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Ok, so it seems you are indulging in the muddy epistemology I suspected.

213Cobra said:

There are facts associated with what is emitted by an emitter in audio, but we are still too primitive about measuring audio to completely account for its properties.

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Lots of people who say "Science doesn't know X" are really admitting "I don't know about the science."

Science knows plenty about the limits of our senses. It's why we build instruments to augment our senses, to detect what we know we can not detect on our own. Your personal view of "facts" does not change this.

And the appeal to "what 'we' don't know yet' is, unfortunately, the calling card of every crank, fringe belief system in existence.

213Cobra said:

We know the human body is an audio sensor beyond the ear>earchain> brain connection, and we don't know what to measure to fully account for that.

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You keep saying "we" when it appears to mean "you." There is a huge body of research, psychoacoustics, that has documented the characteristics and limitations of human hearing - everything from the frequency limits of our hearing, to masking effects, to perception of timbre, spatial relationships and on and on. People are generally unaware of just how much of this research is involved in the technologies they use all the time. I work in pro sound and have tons of audio plug ins that produce a huge range of sonic effects. The reasons such technology is even possible is due to how well our perception has been understood, such that people can use technical formulas to produce the expected perception in a listener for how something will sound. Every time you listen to music or watch a movie, you are the beneficiary of just how much "we" actually know about human hearing.

213Cobra said:

What I describe I hear is a fact. Whether anyone trusts it is up to them.

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That's literally the logic used by many cult leaders.

It's a way of "Never Admitting You Are Wrong."

This epistemic claim becomes an article of faith. Impervious to confirmation or refutation. My claim I hear angels singing through my new cables has the same status. There is no need to turn audio in to a religion. It's not in some epistemic bubble from the rest of empirical reality.

213Cobra said:

The empirical world is limited by what we have in tools to measure and by our understanding of what to measure. Merriam-Webster, not counting the quackery definition, defines empiricism as:

* the practice of relying on observation and experiment especially in the natural sciences
* a tenet arrived at empirically
* a theory that all knowledge originates in experience

Empircal testing is necessary and worthwhile, but the empirical world is not static, nor is it the same for everyone, since qualities of observation vary hugely between individuals, even scientists and technicians; experiments are by definition iterative; we all have differences in experience. By definition, there is no such thing as "the factual empirical world." The empirical world, yes. The factual world, yes. Facts derived from the empirical world, yes. A "factual empirical world," no.

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Epistemology necessarily employs some level of pragmatism. We immediatley run in to our lack of omniscience. It means we could be wrong about things we believe, and there can be things unknown. So all claims of knowledge are contextual; within a certain level of limited experience and uncertainty.

The realm of the mere "logically possible" - that is propositions that don't involve immediate self contradiction - is vast. "I am a married bachelor" is logically impossible based on the meaning of the term "bachelor." But "I have a working Perpetual Motion Machine in my garage" is not logically contradictory formally speaking, and can not be dismissed simply on the basis of internal contradiction. Hence we need a way to navigate through the vast realm of the "logically possible propositions" in order to justify beliefs in one or the other. We do this by giving credence to the PLAUSIBLE not the mere "logically possible." And we build the plausibility of propositions/facts via evidence and logic.
In other words, since anyone can claim any damned thing, the epistemic burden of proof is on THEM to show their claim is plausible and evidence-based, NOT on others to take it seriously before then.

And all this applies to our individual epistemology. If you are not applying the same pragmatism to the propositions you believe, you are no better justified "just because you think it's true" than anyone else is in accepting your claims.

It requires being "epistemologically responsible." Part of which is acknowledgint "I could be wrong" at the heart of any inquiry - which your statements of personal "fact" seem to leave out. And acknowledging the problem of variables in causation and our explanations.

An example:

You tell your doctor you have a sore throat, headache and fever. But you also make the claim "I have the common cold."

The doctor asks why you believe this. You reply "Because the common cold is known to cause sore throats, headaches and fever. So it's a common cold."

Should the doctor accept your Personal Diagnosis as fact? Of course not! Why? Because we know OTHER diseases can cause those symptoms. For instance COVID 19, also running through the community, can cause those symptoms. Since both diseases would explain the symptoms, unless you can justify (typically by additional evidence) putting more confidence in one explanation (common cold) over another, then your conclusion is unjustified. It's arbitrary. It's not being "epistemologically responsible." That's why doctors do tests to help justify concluding "X is the more likely cause than Y."

It doesn't matter how much you insist on your "personal experience of having a common cold," you are no more epistemologically coherent and justified accepting that fact YOURSELF than anyone else would be. You really don't get your own 'facts' in this very important sense.


The same goes for any empirical claims in audio. If you take a hearing test, and fail reliably detect any tones above 15 kHz, yet still claim to have heard 20 kHz and above...your claim can be dismissed. Not just by other people, but you yourself have no basis to think it is true.
Because we know there are variables involved like "imagination." People can image things that don't exist - we all know this as an obvious fact about human beings, how we can be in error, and it's been demonstrated countless times in experiments in perception as well. (E.g. put the same wine in a different bottle, some will report they are tasting different wine and we can KNOW they are in error...it's not some 'personal fact.'
Again, the fact they had a different experience of the wine can be factual, but it does not entail their INFERENCE that the wine REALLY WAS DIFFERENT is factual. We need to keep these separate, when being justified in our beliefs.

Same goes for the ethernet cable example I gave (and many others in high end audio).

213Cobra said:

The very nature of the empirical world means it is constantly playing catch-up to the sensing & perceiving capabilities of people. Or whales, porpoises, octopi, horses, cats, orangutans and other intelligent animals with senses exceeding ours in certain ways. In some areas, the empirical world leapt and runs ahead of human sensing. Alas, audio isn't yet holistically one of them.

Phil

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That's smoke and mirrors. There is enough known about how certain technologies work, and about human perception, to know that some claims are more plausible than others, and that someone making an implausible claim ought to be able to provide much better justification than "I'm sure I heard a difference."

There was someone on the Steve Hoffman forums who tested out two different HDMI cables, both purportedly working and to proper spec for the use case, yet he reported the $1,000 (iirc) boutique HDMI cable produced better sound and more sharpness, detail, color depth, contrast etc in his TV image. The phenomenon as he described it was literally impossible based on how HDMI actually works. It could therefore be rightly dismissed as implausible, and since human bias and imagine are known variables, it's much more plausible he imagined it (or misunderstood something in his set up). He doesn't actually get his Own Set Of Personal Facts when it comes to interpreting his experience. If he'd just said "I seemed to see X" that would be fine. But it's never just that, it's always assumed "X really happened and it is what caused me to see X." THAT immediate inference, especially in regards to implausible propositions, is the muddled epistemology many use in high end audio.

Audio is not separate from the rest of the empirical world.

tima said:

This is a general epistemology not tied to audio. (Maybe there is some notion of an audio epistomology; to me that is silly.) But we can discuss within the audio context.

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Yes, exactly.

tima said:

Your mention of "an actual audible change" versus a perceived audible change needs a lot more fleshing out.

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Sure.

In distinguishing between "actual audible change" and the "perception of audible change" I'm speaking to identifying cause and effect, where misattribution often occurs in explaining a perception. By "actual audible change" I'm talking about objective changes in the signal, carefully established as dectable by human hearing, not merely subjective changes in the listener. How do we determine "objective" changes? It's pragmatic. We can use things like measurement tools that reliably detect physical changes. Appeal to our evidence-based theories of electronic engineering and psychoacoustics. And we can use human hearing, but strictly speaking if we are trying to justify our confidence, control for variables like sighted bias.

Our perception can change, the issue is making sure not to misattribute the cause of the change. We know that certain "objectively measurable" changes in a signal can be reliably detected by many people, but we also know people's perception of change can occur in the absense of that stimulous (of the signal actually changing), due to various bias effects.

tima said:

Even if both occur the sceptic (represented in you response) might find that at best there is an association between one event and the other. A occurs (a physical change occured.) B occurs (I heard a change.) But, so the sceptic claims, there is no such thing as causality, no necessary connection between the two events. A may occur without B, and vice versa. That there is a necessary connection between the two events is not empirically discoverable. I cannot claim, says the sceptic, that because I heard a change there was a change.

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Again, I'm alluding to pragmatism, of the sort we all recognize to be useful (except, sometimes, when it intrudes on our pet belief systems).

We can discuss the problem of causation (and Hume and other people's skepticism) until the cows come home. But if someone drives their car in to your car and damages the hood, we are not going to take their excuse seriously "Look, it may seem like my driving in to your car caused the damage, but don't blame me, ultimately all this cause and effect stuff is really mysterious."

As per my second reply to Phil, it's reasonable to assess claims based on their plausibility and evidential basis, rather than on whether someone can raise some logical proposition we can't formally disprove, or appeal to some wider problem with our lack of omniscience.

tima said:

First off, Phil is not making the claim that I believe you think he his (or you postulate he might be making, in a straw dog argument) - that's my reading of what he is saying. 'After 300 hours I heard a change.' I believe that is all that he is reporting and he is saying that his report is undeniable.

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Again: it depends on what specifically Phil would actually be claiming. If by "I heard a change" he means he perceived a change, that can certainly be a subjective fact. But if by "I heard a change in the signal after 300 hours" he means he DETECTED an objective change in the signal - in other words, that his perception was CAUSED by a CHANGE IN THE SIGNAL...then that's another kettle of fish. And not only would we have reason to doubt that attribution, so would Phil himself. For roughly the same reason we should doubt our perception that a woman is being sawed in half on stage and put back together with no harm.

The problem is many audiophiles don't seem to distinguish between those two propositions.

tima said:

To deny a claim such as 'I heard a change caused by 300 hours of wire break-in' aa wrong-headed is to deny what is necessary for distinguishing an objective sequence of states in the world from the merely subjective sequence (association) of perceptions.

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Problem there is that, insofar as that is meant as some justification for some of the subjective claims we are talking about, you are tearing down knowledge proper to do so. The excuses you are giving can be, and are, used to maintain countless mutually incompatible, logically contradictory belief systems.

Back to my reply to Phil - we are stuck with the fact we aren't All Knowing. We always have to consider that we could be wrong. Therefore it's just important epistemologically to determine when we are wrong as when we are right. So every time you, or Phil, may wish to appeal to the arguments ask yourself, "How would I discover that I'm mistaken?"

I've asked this of many people espousing the purely subjective audiophile paradigm, and have yet to be given an answer. It's usually some form of "My subjective experience is the ultimate standard, and that's that."

COF said:

Yes, exactly.



Sure.

In distinguishing between "actual audible change" and the "perception of audible change" I'm speaking to identifying cause and effect, where misattribution often occurs in explaining a perception. By "actual audible change" I'm talking about objective changes in the signal, carefully established as dectable by human hearing, not merely subjective changes in the listener. How do we determine "objective" changes? It's pragmatic. We can use things like measurement tools that reliably detect physical changes. Appeal to our evidence-based theories of electronic engineering and psychoacoustics. And we can use human hearing, but strictly speaking if we are trying to justify our confidence, control for variables like sighted bias.

Our perception can change, the issue is making sure not to misattribute the cause of the change. We know that certain "objectively measurable" changes in a signal can be reliably detected by many people, but we also know people's perception of change can occur in the absense of that stimulous (of the signal actually changing), due to various bias effects.



Again, I'm alluding to pragmatism, of the sort we all recognize to be useful (except, sometimes, when it intrudes on our pet belief systems).

We can discuss the problem of causation (and Hume and other people's skepticism) until the cows come home. But if someone drives their car in to your car and damages the hood, we are not going to take their excuse seriously "Look, it may seem like my driving in to your car caused the damage, but don't blame me, ultimately all this cause and effect stuff is really mysterious."

As per my second reply to Phil, it's reasonable to assess claims based on their plausibility and evidential basis, rather than on whether someone can raise some logical proposition we can't formally disprove, or appeal to some wider problem with our lack of omniscience.



Again: it depends on what specifically Phil would actually be claiming. If by "I heard a change" he means he perceived a change, that can certainly be a subjective fact. But if by "I heard a change in the signal after 300 hours" he means he DETECTED an objective change in the signal - in other words, that his perception was CAUSED by a CHANGE IN THE SIGNAL...then that's another kettle of fish. And not only would we have reason to doubt that attribution, so would Phil himself. For roughly the same reason we should doubt our perception that a woman is being sawed in half on stage and put back together with no harm.

The problem is many audiophiles don't seem to distinguish between those two propositions.


Problem there is that, insofar as that is meant as some justification for some of the subjective claims we are talking about, you are tearing down knowledge proper to do so. The excuses you are giving can be, and are, used to maintain countless mutually incompatible, logically contradictory belief systems.

Back to my reply to Phil - we are stuck with the fact we aren't All Knowing. We always have to consider that we could be wrong. Therefore it's just important epistemologically to determine when we are wrong as when we are right. So every time you, or Phil, may wish to appeal to the arguments ask yourself, "How would I discover that I'm mistaken?"

I've asked this of many people espousing the purely subjective audiophile paradigm, and have yet to be given an answer. It's usually some form of "My subjective experience is the ultimate standard, and that's that."

Click to expand...

This philosophical discussion is really interesting. I tend to relate to it on a simple practical level.

I’m a lazy audiophile. I don’t spend a lot of time comparing cables, fuses and footers. On items like these I might try something recommended by someone I respect and if it at least doesn’t sound worse, I won’t sweat it. This approach seems to be working pretty well for me.

On speakers, amps and dacs I will carefully compare because the differences are obvious, I’m confident in what I hear and the differences can be explained by the technology used in the components.

But on the more tweaky side of things, I already assume any conclusions I might reach are doubtful and prone to sloppy expectation bias. If a difference is not strikingly obvious I won’t trust it unless done with a fairly disciplined blind A/B process.

>>Science knows plenty about the limits of our senses. It's why we build instruments to augment our senses, to detect what we know we can not detect on our own. Your personal view of "facts" does not change this.

And the appeal to "what 'we' don't know yet' is, unfortunately, the calling card of every crank, fringe belief system in existence.<<

Agreed, science knows plenty. I did not write nor imply science is bereft of knowledge about human senses. It just doesn't yet know enough in the audio domain to answer everything. I agree that fringe elements warp the application of "what we don't know" questions for nefarious purposes, but that's not me.

>>Lots of people who say "Science doesn't know X" are really admitting "I don't know about the science."<<

Lots of people might. Just not me.

>>You keep saying "we" when it appears to mean "you." There is a huge body of research, psychoacoustics, that has documented the characteristics and limitations of human hearing ...Every time you listen to music or watch a movie, you are the beneficiary of just how much "we" actually know about human hearing.<<

Again, what you cite is known to me and, I suspect, most people here. I'm not disputing the phenomena we can explain. I know many in the pro audio community believe the large body of what's known about psychoacoustics and human perception is complete and close the door on critics contending our knowledge of the matter is incomplete, evidenced by the continuing dissonance between what you say and what large numbers of us hear. No point arguing with a theologian.

>> Epistemology necessarily employs some level of pragmatism.
The same goes for any empirical claims in audio. If you take a hearing test, and fail reliably detect any tones above 15 kHz, yet still claim to have heard 20 kHz and above...your claim can be dismissed. Not just by other people, but you yourself have no basis to think it is true.
Because we know there are variables involved like "imagination." People can image things that don't exist - we all know this as an obvious fact about human beings, how we can be in error, and it's been demonstrated countless times in experiments in perception as well. (E.g. put the same wine in a different bottle, some will report they are tasting different wine and we can KNOW they are in error...it's not some 'personal fact.'
Again, the fact they had a different experience of the wine can be factual, but it does not entail their INFERENCE that the wine REALLY WAS DIFFERENT is factual. We need to keep these separate, when being justified in our beliefs.

Same goes for the ethernet cable example I gave (and many others in high end audio).<<

Epistemology is not an absolute. There are many competing and complementary branches asserting theories of knowledge. You present it as one thing. It's not. There are many breakdowns, but essential corner points are Authoritarian, Intuitive, Logical, Empirical knowledge. Most research uses a mix, but some individuals are led by a reverence for one. Language between two people has to be very precise to bridge these differences.

Now, I don't go to a doctor and say I have a cold if I have common cold symptoms. If I were certain I merely have a common cold I wouldn't be visiting a doctor in the first place. I'm at the doctor because I have reason to not be certain of that self-diagnosis. In which case I can tell him or her what I sense or know about my symptoms experientially, and anything I've measured, like temperature, heart rate, etc. I'm there to tap the doctor's expertise.

I'm 67 years old and male. I don't hear to 20kHz or beyond, anymore. But that doesn't mean my audio perceptions are unaffected by ultrasonic content. I can establish as a subjective fact that I can reliably sense a difference between the presence and absence of ultrasonics I can be measured to not hear. Do I rule out being wrong about that? Pretty much. However, if I then declare why, I have to be quite open to being wrong about the stated why. I have respect for what can be measured, but not everything affecting sound perceptions is yet measureable, nor does measurement explain everything audiophiles sense in music reproduction.

One of the essential conflicts in social sciences 50 years ago was the competition between normative (observation, intuition, experience, historical context) and empirical (statistical) methodologies. Normative was the standard; empirical the up-and-comer. Rapidly-expanding availability of computing drove the latter and by the late '80s, the empirical school was the new default. But in the realm of a now massively-measured universe, the remaining normatives tend to be proven more often right than the empiricists, once an event passes and you can match methodologies to results. The empiricists can give me a lot of individual measurements, which then have to be interpreted. Conclusions can vary widely (even wildly). The best normatives are more efficient. They often achieve more accurate results without the massive statistical effort, though they may factor in what empirical efforts reveal granularly. In audio, normatives and empiricists are still competing.

Now, if one is grounded in physics or any other aspect of audio and sensory sciences, there can be a lot of elasticity between interested parties in placing the boundary between what's credible and not credible among audiophile claims. We all have our limits, certainly including me, and we can argue about them, or just not do that, instead vetting claims and watch the boundary shift with results.

>>That's smoke and mirrors. There is enough known about how certain technologies work, and about human perception, to know that some claims are more plausible than others, and that someone making an implausible claim ought to be able to provide much better justification than "I'm sure I heard a difference.".......

....There was someone on the Steve Hoffman forums who tested out two different HDMI cables, both purportedly working and to proper spec for the use case, yet he reported the $1,000 (iirc) boutique HDMI cable produced better sound and more sharpness, detail, color depth, contrast etc in his TV image. The phenomenon as he described it was literally impossible based on how HDMI actually works. It could therefore be rightly dismissed as implausible, and since human bias and imagine are known variables, it's much more plausible he imagined it (or misunderstood something in his set up). He doesn't actually get his Own Set Of Personal Facts when it comes to interpreting his experience. If he'd just said "I seemed to see X" that would be fine. But it's never just that, it's always assumed "X really happened and it is what caused me to see X." THAT immediate inference, especially in regards to implausible propositions, is the muddled epistemology many use in high end audio.

Audio is not separate from the rest of the empirical world.<<

Audio isn't separate from the rest of the empirical world but a normative analyst accepts that audio may not be or is not fully captured by the empirical world. Empiricists show great resistance to this. I'm not going to change your mind by arguing a normative methodology. And you're not going to change mine by trying to convince me that the empirical world is complete. I'm a normative who was, way back, an empiricist in most things. I know both sides.

In your HDMI example, a normative would consider or evaluate the general expertise and experience of the listener/watcher. If the person is deemed generally credible and what he reports is repeatable, then the starting assumption would be that what he sensed did happen and now we have to find out why. Put another way, plausibility is affected by context. True, HDMI's TMDS data transmission technique considered alone makes it unlikely the observer's claim reflects what actually happened. The normative says, "well I understand the technology but much of what was once said to be "impossible" about digital has fallen by the wayside so I'm not ready to rule out the observer's report just yet." Digital certainties have sometimes proven elastic.

It's unavoidable that your HDMI comparer indeed gets his own set of "personal facts" in interpreting his experience. That's the nature of interpretation. Your job is to change his interpretation, and just saying "HDMI bars the phenomenon you saw & heard" is likely insufficient for that. I haven't spent any time, ever, comparing HDMI cables, but I have to say that getting a group of people to see the same things in a display image is far easier than getting a group of people to agree on what they heard from a hifi.

Technical certainties are subject to further investigation. In audio, "It can't" has so often yielded to "...oh, yeah, we found something else.." that the strict empiricists, like "strict constructionists" in constitutional law, inevitably end up sometimes violating their own convictions by elevating the subjective over the allegedly objective. In audio, how many people reporting something how many times is enough to prompt you to shift from "impossible" to "maybe there's something else at play here" and reassess? What's the number?

Phil

tima said:

A Berning design - presumably transformerless thus the lower weight. Cool. Looking forward to your impressions. Did you hear it with the Fynes before ordering?

Click to expand...

Tim,

Typical Berning's are not tranformerless - they simply operate the transformer at high frequencies outside the audio band and the transformer is consequently much smaller and low weight.

microstrip said:

Typical Berning's are not tranformerless

Click to expand...

My understanding is they are, but perhaps you have expertise. The model Keith said he is acquiring is transformerless according to the manufacturers description. The model I had in my room a few years back was also. Perhaps this is a word issue.

"Berning turned tube amplifier technology on its ear: In 1996 Berning invented the the ZOTL (Zero hysteresis Transformer-Less) architecture. Radically different, it was and is still considered the most significant improvement to tube amplifier technology since the 60s."

microstrip said:

Tim,

Typical Berning's are not tranformerless - they simply operate the transformer at high frequencies outside the audio band and the transformer is consequently much smaller and low weight.

Click to expand...

LTA explains it this way:

"...OTL (Output Transformer-Less) amplifiers manufactured by other companies are a completely different technology than ZOTL amplifiers.

ZOTL technology involves a linear amplification process using a carrier frequency as well as not having a traditional audio output transformer, instead using air-core Impedance Converters.

Noted pioneer of amplifier technology, Julius Futterman, has inspired many different amplifier designs over the years. Based on Futterman’s principles, other OTL amplifier designs incorporate two separate banks of parallel-connected tubes. The two banks are joined in series by connecting the effective cathode of one tube bank to the effective plate of the other tube bank, and driving the loudspeaker in a push-pull fashion directly from this junction point without a transformer. There are alternatives to Futterman’s principles that use low-impedance triodes, but the basic principles are the same: given a sufficient number of parallel-connected tubes in each bank, enough drive current can be obtained to drive the speaker.

The output impedance of other OTL amplifiers is nowhere near the actual speaker impedance. In an OTL amplifier, a large amount of negative feedback is required to force the push and the pull to work together properly in order to provide sufficient damping for the speaker. Even with the lowest impedance triodes available, there is still a basic impedance mismatch between the tubes and the speaker in the OTL circuit.

Traditional OTL technology requires a large number of power tubes which need to be driven hard to obtain the required output. This results in drastically reduced reliability and tube life and generating lots of heat. Fans or additional room air-conditioning may be required. Power consumption is typically very high for OTL amplifiers, often exceeding one kilowatt for a stereo pair...."

So their "transformer" is an air core impedance converter,

They add elsewhere further details, contrasted with OTLs:

"...Audio amplifier design engineers have long sought to eliminate audio output transformers because of the restrictions they impose on amp performance. Leakage inductance and interwinding capacitance limit the high-frequency response of transformers while core saturation and magnetizing current limit their low-frequency response. Transformer-core hysteresis causes specific distortions of non-symmetric and transient waveforms that are characteristic of musical reproduction. Audio output transformers simply cannot achieve the correct turns ratios as they only max out at 25:1 due to saturation and hysteresis effects. This leaves much to be desired, which creates and issue that needs to be resolved.
Enter the solution: ZOTL.

First, the audio signals “ride” a carrier frequency, on which they are amplified by the tubes (it is not a hybrid amplification design), then the carrier is removed by the Impedance Converters and the remaining audio is delivered to the speaker, similar to how a radio station and receiver work. This changes the impedance plane to match the impedance of the speaker, so the audio output transformer is no longer required to match the tube to the speaker. An Impedance Converter accomplishes this match up. This super linear amplification process allows the amplifier to have a flat frequency response from 8hz to 50Khz, which is nearly impossible with an output transformer.

However, the real advantage is in the transformer turns ratio. Output transformers are limited to a maximum of about 25 to 1 in turns ratio. This turns ratio does the matching between the tube output and the speaker. It turns out that the theoretically correct turns ratio for most tubes is typically 100 to 1 and even as high as 300 to 1. The ZOTL can use the impedance converter to effectively create the ideal turns ratio. The microZOTL has a 300 to 1 ratio and the ZOTL40 has around a 150 to 1 ratio. This results in the detail and accuracy of the sound."

The key is having the audio band ride a carrier frequency until that is stripped out in the converter, leaving the audio band to drive speakers.

Berning's patent on ZOTL is here:

Phil

tima said:

My understanding is they are, but perhaps you have expertise. The model Keith said he is acquiring is transformerless according to the manufacturers description. The model I had in my room a few years back was also. Perhaps this is a word issue.

"Berning turned tube amplifier technology on its ear: In 1996 Berning invented the the ZOTL (Zero hysteresis Transformer-Less) architecture. Radically different, it was and is still considered the most significant improvement to tube amplifier technology since the 60s."

David Berning Company Audio Equipment

Vacuum tube audio equipment since 1974.

davidberning.com

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The key question of language is: Is the air core impedance converter an air core transformer? I think technically yes. But it uses antenna coil principles so the hifi community will not recognize it as a transformer-output amp, and in fact the Berning doesn't operate like one. So he terms it an air coil impedance converter and you get an amp that weighs less than other OTLs because the PT doesn't have to be sized to light up and supply high B+ to series-connected banks of paralleled output tubes.

Phil

213Cobra said:

The key question of language is: Is the air core impedance converter an air core transformer? I think technically yes. But it uses antenna coil principles so the hifi community will not recognize it as a transformer-output amp, and in fact the Berning doesn't operate like one. So he terms it an air coil impedance converter and you get an amp that weighs less than other OTLs because the PT doesn't have to be sized to light up and supply high B+ to series-connected banks of paralleled output tubes.

Phil

Click to expand...

Yes, it is a transformer, including primary and secondary coils. It is not however an audio transformer, as it operates out of the audio band.

Any transformer is an "impedance converter" unless the ratio between the primary and secondary is just unitary. Fortunately this particular "impedance converter", as other transformers, is also an insulator ...

The Berning design is technically brilliant and very well considered by many audiophiles.

And as you say, in audio the question is mainly a semantics and marketing affair.

213Cobra said:

So their "transformer" is an air core impedance converter,

Click to expand...

Phil, thanks for your explanation.

Edit: I will add that your earlier characterization of sound using Keith's Ultralinear+ amp jives with my aural memory of a Berning Quadrature Z stereo amp. That was the most analytically detailed yet sonorous sound I've ever heard - I used to say you could tell that Dusty brushed with the Ipana and not the Colgate.