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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Last thing I heard was last year's freak (for us) snowstorms damaged the roof, but it's in the process of being restored. Orchestral and symphonic music works pretty well in the SME room, as does big-band jazz. It has a fantastic sense of stage (as you'd expect for opera), but the stage can't...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    I hope I didn't cause offence here. It was not my intention at all. And it's not my intent to suggest the methodology you describe lacks validity. Far from it - it stands us in good stead for evaluating, building and installing good systems. Nevertheless, I stand by what I said. An increasing...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Not AFAIK. It's not dramatically compressed, but it is cut a lot hotter than the LP.
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    I'n not so convinced by this argument anymore. I think it's too reductionist. Benchmarking against unamplified music in an acoustic space gives us an anchor point, but it should be considered just one anchor point to define musical reproduction, not the process entire. Three fairly big...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    The simple answer is that it isn't that relevant. The listener's emotional connection should be with the music, not with either the devices used to play that music or the format that it's carried upon. The more complicated answer is it isn't that simple. The emotional baggage that goes into a...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    This does highlight the confusion and the problems faced with any kind of test like this. In part because it's an attempt to meet both subjective and objective concerns, forgetting that these are often so polarised as to be functionally irreconcilable. I agree that the results of a large group...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Typically these were complete round-ups of a given category, as best as we could run it. So for example, you'd have a group of 20 integrated amplifiers, the cheapest being a NAD, the most expensive a Gryphon. The survey was originally conducted without obvious winners (if a product performed...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Unfortunately, the simple blind test often suffers from 'shot from both sides' syndrome. I can understand the reasoning on both sides (a blind test can be seen to give a false veneer of 'science', while people who consider themselves experts are reluctant to admit what they heard was actually...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Sadly, for the audiophile there is no easy answer or resolution to these questions. A lot can be dismissed out-of-hand as 'wishful thinking' or 'delusion' by those who dismiss much of the audiophile canon. But that puts you in a netherworld, between 'there is no answer' and 'there is nothing to...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    No. The increased time and expense involved in making DBTs were the main killer from an editorial perspective. You can just about perform one well-constructed DBT in the time it takes to perform sixteen regular blind tests, which meant (at our best estimate) we would need to factor somewhere...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    When I began working for Hi-Fi Choice (1992), we were typically blind testing between 16-20 products per month. These would be from a single category (CD players, for example) and not limited to price band. The test group would be played to a panel of listeners (typically between three and five...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    For the record, I spent most of the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s either running, administrating, overseeing or occasionally being one of the listener panel on blind, level-matched tests. At a rough guess, I'd say that means I've been directly involved in level-matched, blind testing of...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Well, not really. The same debate about testing rages through the wine trade too. From a sensory science perspective, the blind tests cited don't really point to anything robust at all. By removing the visual element and the opportunity to see the label in the test, you remove some elements of...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Make your case, but if you find what you say is not received with thanks, be prepared to walk away. People out there in the real world make claims in all walks of life that are not predicated on any form of objective background. We buy expensive water and fancy bottles of wine based on...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Not quite the reaction I expected to what I said, but OK. Personally, I think both sides of the debate could do with a bit of a reality check. The subjective side should remember that not everything is audible. The objective side forgets that in the world of buying things, human nature will...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    I have to say, the 'only a theory' concept should be very squarely put to bed. The fact that any scientific theorem is inherently subject to verification doesn't make it putative. A theory is our best way of defining the scientific evidence at this time. If something better fits that evidence...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    I've often said that the audiophile spirit is alive and well and living between the ears of a twentysomething with a pair of Audeze headphones. However, that is not universal; the central European and Far Eastern markets still have a comparatively buoyant body of enthusiasts in the 18-49...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    That seems like a good way of doing things. I think people are still willing - and if anything, actively keen - to see updates to products, in part because they are used to their software going through regular updates. And I also think people are disposed to accept those hardware updates will be...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    I don't view the situation with such scepticism, but I can see why this can be viewed that way. The upgrade path (I live in a country that has Naim Audio... we are well versed in upgrade paths as a result) is not designed to sell someone the same product twice. It's more like an electronic...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Yes. But with regard to the relevance of those measurements to what we should be able to hear... we should be in gilding the lily territory. And it's difficult to go from "should be" to "is", even if independent anecdotal reports of the results of the implementation of those changes...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    I entirely agree, which is why the type and nature of a given listening test remains a sticking point, and is perhaps hidebound by years of argument causing a hardening of the orthodoxies. My take on this is a pragmatic one. There is no one-size-fits-all listening test, because there is no...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Yes, but that is not necessarily the case. The listening test to product design loop should be empirical. Try A. If A works, use it, if it doesn't, don't use it. Repeat with B. Nothing about that process is inherently impossible to implement, although that depends on the repeatable nature of A...
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    Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

    Micro's position is a fairly nuanced, First-World-Problem one that doesn't quite hold water under close scrutiny. Although there are some high-end products that seem to have been thrown together with no regard for the objective performance, they are - relatively speaking - rare (interestingly...
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    Should you have to pay to audition speakers

    Unfortunately, the old adage about a few bad apples seems to apply. I understand that it takes time to properly set up a demonstration in store, but that's all part of being an audio retailer. In fairness, I think very few dealers do charge for demonstrations, and fewer still are in a position...
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    Michael Fremer podcast: Wow!!!!

    Have it with my blessing. But I will probably use it again, when I'm not channeling Malcolm Tucker.
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    Michael Fremer podcast: Wow!!!!

    Sensational and fantastical... or possibly just international? I think we're saying the same thing from different sides. The music business is run by idiots who should not be allowed to play with crayons without supervision. Which means not only does it repeat the mistakes of the past, but...
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    Michael Fremer podcast: Wow!!!!

    The record label makes a profit if enough CDs sell in good number. This is oversimplified, but if that label has 100 acts in a month that each has a 10,000 CD run, that's a $250k investment in CDs. The change in the CD market means currently maybe five or ten of those acts will sell well, and...
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    Michael Fremer podcast: Wow!!!!

    Even I'm not totally convinced CDs will stop being made completely any time soon. Radically scaled back, yes. But stopped altogether? I think that's unlikely. Global CD sales have gone from a 2000 peak of 2.5bn to last year's figure of 833m (source: IFPI), so the market has dropped away by about...
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    Michael Fremer podcast: Wow!!!!

    My point wasn't so much about MD, but DCC. Philips touted it to us as a replacement to compact cassette and CD in one. Philips had an odd half-right/half-wrong view of music in the 1990s. Music was all about digital portability (DCC having the advantage of not skipping like a portable CD player...
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    Michael Fremer podcast: Wow!!!!

    Because I have encountered this problem several times already, and my sources tell me this is going to get a lot worse. Sources such as the former head of one of the major record labels, who showed me a 2012 route map that put CD off that map before the end of the decade. Because currently...

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