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In Reply to: RE: A list of sonic properties "un-measurable" (or, not easily measured)? posted by middleground on July 30, 2014 at 06:59:26
I second that.
Follow Ups:
Sorry, I keep doing this, that is confuse people with my wonky irony!
I think that emotion stems from the music itself and not the quality of the equipment we hear it on. I have been moved to tears by some piece of music played on a table top radio or in the car and bored to tears by "audiophile" recordings played on high-end systems in shops and at shows.
What exactly do you mean by "un-measurable"?
I think that very little cannot be evaluated in a quantifiable manner.
There are basically two ways of going at it for audio equipment:
1) you measure with a calibrated instrument,
2) you use properly set-up panels of humans with valid tests and get results that are quantified.
Qualitative analysis is something you do until you have a proper system allowing you to turn it into quantitative data.
Subjective audiophiles believe in the superior acuity of the human ear over the accuracy of proper measuring instruments, saying that instruments can never duplicate the wholeness of human hearing and, when confronted with the use of human subjects to evaluate a system or components, immediately proceed to say that no such endeavour can can work as "we all hear differently".
Not much room left for discovery and discussion there right?
So, at this stage, we are all victims of the Sea Cliff school of audio reproduction holding that reproduction of music is one of life's greatest mysteries.
Audio is now mostly a faith based avocation.
I both agree and disagree with that statement. And, if that's not ironic enough, the reasons that I have come to my conclusions are exceedingly easy to understand.Agree: We cannot measure "emotion" very well and/or very completely.
Agree, sort of...: We can measure certain things having to do with our playback system pretty well. But, engineers are telling us that measurements don't tell us everything and our ears tend to agree with that conclusion. So, we attempt to push forward in the only way that makes sense by "fine tuning" our systems during setup USING OUR EARS.
Disagree, sort of...: The quality of the gear does matter in many ways. High quality gear lets us hear more of the music in a recording and also helps to eliminate annoying distractions (noise, distortion, etc...). I will try to use everything that manufacturers can give me (or, everything that I can afford) while trying to make my system sound more like music. The reason I do this is because, as you say, music is what stirs our thoughts and emotions. The more of the music I hear, the more emotional I get.
If I could afford much better gear the quality of my listening experience would most likely improve. Maybe not by leaps and bounds, but incrementally I'm sure...
Edits: 07/30/14 07/30/14
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