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A little off base...

You misunderstood my point.

Engineers working on consumer electronics do not, in general, have a free hand to seek optimum subjective performance. They are designing to a spec derived from market segmentation studies and focus groups. If the Marketing dept. calls for an amp with 100W/ch and less than 0.001% THD, that's what they get. Sound quality is secondary. Obviously, a good engineer will try to design for better sound quality within the design guidelines, but it is a secondary consideration. If the sound quality is inconsistent with the design spec, the design spec will win.

The engineering deliverable is then to deliver a product at minimum cost that meets the desired performance target, AND NO MORE. This is the essence of many of Soundmind's posts; once you reach the agreed-upon limit of audibility, any further improvement is wasteful. In many contexts, that is the right and proper answer.

Simple example: When I was at Engineering School 25 years ago, part of the reason for studying things like component MTBF was to be able to predict failures rates of complex systems. One of the applications was realte these failures to warranty periods and claims. In other words, we were being taught how to design things that were just good enough, rather than the best possible. In price-sensitive markets, this is unavoidable.

Most of the large consumer electronics companies have demonstrated that they can build great-sounding gear; much of the time they simply choose not to.

Obviously, people designing high-end audio equipment are operating from a different design brief; one in which ultimate SUBJECTIVE performance is the goal. The THD number has been replaced by the subjective experience as the design spec.

Why did I bring this up? There are continual references here to mainstream engineers as if they are somehow closer to God than humble high-end audio designers. The commercial reality is a little different. They are trained in a just-good-enough mindset.

There are certainly plenty of engineers working in environments where maximum absolute performance is the goal, but not all of them.

And yes, I do read things like the AES journal, blah blah blah....

Peter

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