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In Reply to: RE: A note on the O'Toole research. posted by unclestu on September 04, 2014 at 16:26:50
All research should be and, among scientists is, taken with skepticism. Replication and confirmation are necessary before acceptance.
That said, you imply a lot without actually addressing the work. That is unethical. Until you can point to specific findings that have been influenced by factors other than the work, itself, you are just making noise.
Follow Ups:
Interesting that a lot of the research Floyd Toole (not O'Toole) performed leans toward establishing metrics for preferences of loudspeakers. Very keen on holding a smooth diffuse response (directivity index) as important as a flat direct response.
In the asylum we are very wary of someone imposing their preferences on us. But for a company, optimizing the product to appeal to their target audience is just plain smart business. This is true regardless of the size of the company or the size of the audience.
"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat" - Confucius
Yes but so is the Big Mac. Doesn't make it good or correct because more people prefer something. And is that even the goal? Or is the goal to have the impressive looking research to pre bias people into believing the product is better. How many potential customers ACTUALLY involve themselves in a blind level matched test? No they rely on the fancy looking white papers from a company selling stuff. No conflict of interest there.
But then the test is not fully explained and you find out that apparently only ONE loudspeaker in the pair is auditioned by the blind listeners. One speaker middle of the room (where that may or may not be the correct or manufacturer's recommended position). The listeners are pre trained as to what to deem good or correct sound ahead of time.
Needs to be done by someone with no skin in the game.
Some would object to Toole's research on "listener preferences" because he chose pedestrians (mostly college students, AFAIK) instead of trained musicians and/or "serious listeners" (audiophiles?) to evaluate speaker performance. The implication is that, had Toole chosen a group of more experienced "critical listeners", the results of his research on listener preferences would have shown different trends.The analogy often presented goes something like this: "McDonald's food is more popular than more expensive gourmet food but gourmet food is better tasting, healthier, and more nutritious. Just because more people *prefer* McDonald's does not mean that McDonalds's is better food, or that it is better for you."
Speculative? Elitist? Factual? True? You can decide for yourself...
I've eaten "gourmet" food that seemed neither tasty or nutritious, and I've eaten McDonald's food that seemed both tasty and at least fairly nutritious. I guess we'll never know for sure if musicians and "serious" listeners (middle-aged audiophiles?) would have shown different listening preferences than the young (presumably healthy) college students that Toole selected.
My speculation is that "experienced" listeners and musicians might be middle-aged (or older) and far more likely to have quirky listening prejudices and/or diminished hearing capabilities. Maybe this is one reason why Toole wanted to recruit young, healthy, *open* ears for his experiments.
Edits: 09/05/14 09/05/14 09/05/14
might require too many steak eaters than can be recruited.
There are only so many of us.
Yup, but the man is a manufacturer. Please don't drive him away...
I misread seems it is "dealer". Oh well...
Long boring story anyway.
At any rate, Dr. Toole did (does?) great work and the NRC is (was?) a great institution.
.., but a "large dose"? Who eats large doses of salt?
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