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In Reply to: RE: Class D designer speaks posted by AJinFLA on February 10, 2008 at 09:22:47
Reading all of the above over the last hours made me think of an argument that might be relevant to the discussion.
Previously given was given a good hypothetical example where a given set of data detailing measurements of a person's body couldn't answer the basic question of whether he could swim. The answers given didn't address the relevant question, perhaps an argument for a totally subjective approach to audio. Good example.
A similar hypothetical example could be made as an argument for a more objective approach. Say my system can do a really stunning job. When I play Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, the sound is stupendous and amazingly realistic. I tell all my friends. Good thing, right? And when I put on Jacques Loussier "playing Bach", the imaging and quality have the feel of a real performance: its as if Harry Belafonte is right there in a big room with me. And when I put on Frank Zappa, the sound the system makes causing tingling up my spine -- there's Harry again, in the room again, just as if I were at one of his concerts, sounds great.
Is this ok? Well, obviously not, because the output that the system made is sometimes not being relevant to the purpose of playing a record: to best represent the sound that is on that record. I don't want it to just play beautifulness, I want it to play what was recorded, or at least some semblance of the two.
There are certainly problems with an objective approach. But the totally subjective approach can easily lead to something that just plays back what you're used to (why many people like the Bose sound -- subjective audio at its best!). There can't be a replication of "the sound of live, unamplified music", because what works will depend on the person listening and some trickery is involved in fooling the listener.
Which is the same problem as with the totally objective approach. Given the issues with loudspeakers, I'm pretty sure there will never be an exact replication from stereo recordings. All of the information to do that isn't even on the recordings(!), and what information is there has the effects of all kinds of recording technique issues permanently applied to it. So having a complete description of what an amplifier does may not be enough to know what makes the best compromise to make an illusion, if the amplifier is helping the illusion for me.
So much of it comes down to what tricks my ears (or mind) the best. It might be that a certain amplifier effect, untrue to the input signal, or even just the psychological effect of glowing tubes sitting on a rac, does it better than other things I've got, keeps me from noticing something wrong that is better left covered up. If so, there's no "correct" equipment that is true to the music. What works for likely won't work for someone else (isn't that what "subjective" means?), and it may not even work for me anymore tomorrow, or after I start listening to new music tomorrow. No wonder there's such an upgrade cycle.
Even tabulating all conceivable measurements and having the deepest understanding of psychoacoustics won't describe how well something will affect me as a listener, because it's going to be different for every person. Are audiophiles likely to ever all agree on something sounding the best? Not even possible. Statistical data will likely be as relevant as relating measurements-to-sound can get.
But that doesn't mean that I want to just want to blindly go after something that only sounds beautiful. It does matter to some extent if it is faithful to the original, at least to me, because I'm trying to get what's on the recording as much as I can and maybe stretch my tastes a bit. I'd rather not put an Aural Exciter or a Reverb or Direct Reflecting radiators in my setup, because after a while I'll get to recognizing the effect and it gets old. Same reason I don't have tube amps anymore, they got to always sounding like tube amps. Don't work for me anymore.
while I'm on a diatribe, I'll go ahead and offend some people with this: stating that measurements "don't matter" is simply an ignorant position too often held by people who are proud of their ignorance. Yeah, I'm a measurements guy, even if I know that merely having a perfect reproduction of a bad approximation isn't going to always do the trick. The guy looking at the oscilloscope was doing exactly the right thing, I think, in view of the fact that a historical problem with switching amps has been switching hash -- gotta fix that before going on, right?. In a lot of cases measurements DO matter and some things measured are known to have a common effect on lots of listeners with lots of music, and a designer can wisely take these into account if only to know what he might be adding or compromising.
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