I've posted a number of times already, but I thought I'd take a few minutes to introduce myself to this fine community.
By background, I'm an engineer (MSME) by education, and a software person by career. I was involved in Computer Aided Design software from '84 - '05, as an application engineer, software developer, entrepreneur, and finally a CTO my last six years at Autodesk, Inc. I left that industry in order to stop living on airplanes and in hotels, to get a bit of time with my two boys before they became teenagers and flipped the "Bozo bit" on me. I also thought I'd switch to the non-profit sector, and try to work on various "good government" initiatives. You can see by the current state of the world how successful I've been.
I became involved in high-end audio in college, when I had a couple of audiophile room mates. Before that, music was something you listened to on your radio. Our first really good system was a collaborative effort, put together from a JVC table, Magnepan Arm, Grado cartridge, NAD 1020 pre, Hafler DH100 kit, used Dalquist DQ-10s. I spent many a late night listening to that setup, with the limited LP collection we had. It sounded terrific, especially when the final link in the listening system was tweaked with certain organic intoxicating substances discovered long ago by people who were not even audiophiles.
Through the years, I developed an appreciation for a broad range of music, and unexpectedly became a major classical music listener. I listen to everything from Pink Martini to Puccini, but when I'm looking for a transcendent experience, its likely I'll put on late Beethoven quartets or sonatas, or 20th century symphonic works from Mahler, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Dutilleux, Lindberg, et al.
Family and work limited the time and energy I had to spend on audio, and I became a primarily digital listener just for the pure convenience. Analog has its charms; cleaning records and swapping sides in the middle of a compelling performance are not among them
I've gotten a bit tweakier since quasi-retiring, but my sole source is now a music server. My main system is now Blue Smoke/AlphaDAC/Spectral/Magico, and my headphone setup is Ayre QB-9/Headroom Amp/Senn HD800, both driven by PCs with J River Media Center referencing a common library.
I'm fundamentally objectivist in the sense that sound is a physical phenomenon, and differences in sound must have a physical cause. I'll go further: modern test instrumentation is more than sufficiently sensitive to measure any sound difference that is actually audible, provided we know what to measure for. Modern test equipment can measure near the resolution floor of the universe itself (defined by the random motion of air molecules, in this case), and what we can observe about the mechanisms of human hearing indicate that they are not that sensitive.
But I'm also skeptical of objectivist cant that seeks to "prove" that some anomaly or another is inaudible based on some (invariably, double blind) test. I've posted on other fora before about the issues with applying DBT to audio testing, and in particular, its dependence on auditory memory. Humans make lousy sonic test instruments, because they can never hear the identical thing the same way twice. In other words, they are unreliable witnesses as to what they actually can and cannot hear. Notice, this is actually the same reason used to (legitimately) justify DBT in the first place. Life is not simple.
So I also put considerable weight on the opinions of those folks, like the experts in this community, who have spent many years in critical listening (recording engineers, audio engineers, audiophiles). And I also enjoy, from my time as a CTO, trying to explain technical subjects in a way that is relevant to a non-technical audience. All of which is to say, this community feels like home to me.
Scott
By background, I'm an engineer (MSME) by education, and a software person by career. I was involved in Computer Aided Design software from '84 - '05, as an application engineer, software developer, entrepreneur, and finally a CTO my last six years at Autodesk, Inc. I left that industry in order to stop living on airplanes and in hotels, to get a bit of time with my two boys before they became teenagers and flipped the "Bozo bit" on me. I also thought I'd switch to the non-profit sector, and try to work on various "good government" initiatives. You can see by the current state of the world how successful I've been.
I became involved in high-end audio in college, when I had a couple of audiophile room mates. Before that, music was something you listened to on your radio. Our first really good system was a collaborative effort, put together from a JVC table, Magnepan Arm, Grado cartridge, NAD 1020 pre, Hafler DH100 kit, used Dalquist DQ-10s. I spent many a late night listening to that setup, with the limited LP collection we had. It sounded terrific, especially when the final link in the listening system was tweaked with certain organic intoxicating substances discovered long ago by people who were not even audiophiles.
Through the years, I developed an appreciation for a broad range of music, and unexpectedly became a major classical music listener. I listen to everything from Pink Martini to Puccini, but when I'm looking for a transcendent experience, its likely I'll put on late Beethoven quartets or sonatas, or 20th century symphonic works from Mahler, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Dutilleux, Lindberg, et al.
Family and work limited the time and energy I had to spend on audio, and I became a primarily digital listener just for the pure convenience. Analog has its charms; cleaning records and swapping sides in the middle of a compelling performance are not among them
I've gotten a bit tweakier since quasi-retiring, but my sole source is now a music server. My main system is now Blue Smoke/AlphaDAC/Spectral/Magico, and my headphone setup is Ayre QB-9/Headroom Amp/Senn HD800, both driven by PCs with J River Media Center referencing a common library.I'm fundamentally objectivist in the sense that sound is a physical phenomenon, and differences in sound must have a physical cause. I'll go further: modern test instrumentation is more than sufficiently sensitive to measure any sound difference that is actually audible, provided we know what to measure for. Modern test equipment can measure near the resolution floor of the universe itself (defined by the random motion of air molecules, in this case), and what we can observe about the mechanisms of human hearing indicate that they are not that sensitive.
But I'm also skeptical of objectivist cant that seeks to "prove" that some anomaly or another is inaudible based on some (invariably, double blind) test. I've posted on other fora before about the issues with applying DBT to audio testing, and in particular, its dependence on auditory memory. Humans make lousy sonic test instruments, because they can never hear the identical thing the same way twice. In other words, they are unreliable witnesses as to what they actually can and cannot hear. Notice, this is actually the same reason used to (legitimately) justify DBT in the first place. Life is not simple.
So I also put considerable weight on the opinions of those folks, like the experts in this community, who have spent many years in critical listening (recording engineers, audio engineers, audiophiles). And I also enjoy, from my time as a CTO, trying to explain technical subjects in a way that is relevant to a non-technical audience. All of which is to say, this community feels like home to me.
Scott
