Home Tube DIY Asylum

Do It Yourself (DIY) paradise for tube and SET project builders.

Voodoo and the 106 piece orchestra




I've been avoiding this forum lately because most of the discussion isn't very interesting. But for some reason I'm in the mood tonight, so here are some comments.

Jeff wrote:

> Are topics you (1) don't understand, and (2) have never worked with, and
> (3) have never directly experienced (heard).... "Voodoo".
>
> Did the narrow range of courses you took in college, sadly did not
> prepare your mind to think in unconventional, new, or unique ways??

I'd like to propose to you, Jeff, that the definition of "voodoo" in this case is "deceptive or delusive nonsense." I will propose that by your arguments and reasoning, you believe engineering to be "voodoo." And I will propose that your argument here can be turned right around and used against you, since it's clear you have neither understanding of nor experience with engineering.

I'd like to invite you to post a list of the courses you took in college and explain how they better prepared you to think in unconventional, new, or unique ways as opposed, to, say, the courses I took.

I will claim that you are the beneficiary of an explosion of unique new products and services, the majority of which were essentially unthinkable when you and I were children, and which, by and large, were thought up and brought to market by "conventionally trained" engineers.

In other words, by the abundance of counter-examples, I claim your argument holds no water. In fact, it's patently ridiculous, since it essentially amounts to a claim that knowledge makes you stupid, and ignorance makes you smart.

There is actually a formal Latin name for what you do: argumentum ad ignorantiam -- argument from ignorance. This is a type of logical fallacy, claiming something is true because it hasn't been proven false. Of course, no one will ever be able to falsify your subjective claims (although I think they could be substantially narrowed). In the end, what you hear in your head is yours alone. No one will ever be able to prove your subjective experiences are false, because they are yours and yours alone.

The real problem I have with your approach to the subject is that it is, in fact, so incredibly narrow as to defy rational discussion. "Petitio principii" (Ooh! You speak French!) -- "begging the question" -- is another form of logical fallacy where the conclusion is contained in the premise. "I am right because I am right." Another logical fallacy you employ is "argumentum ad verecundiam" -- argument from authority. "It's true because Dr. Halajik says so."

Phooie. The problem here is not even whether you're right or wrong. It's that the reasoning is so weak as to be laughable. No, painful, really.

(I just spent the day judging varsity Lincoln Douglas debate at our hometown speech and debate tournament. Guess that's put me in an argumentative frame of mind. To think, there is a whole discipline of framework debate, with all these rules and criteria, about which you know nothing. I suppose knowing something about the theory of debate just makes me a narrower thinker. Hmmm.)

Elsewhere, you wrote:

> What is the "signal" of a 106 piece orchestra, playing all at once??
>
> Is it the sine wave that comes out of the signal generator?
>
> HARDLY !!!!!
>
> Audio is FAR too complex to TOTALLY capture PROPERLY with existing
> measurement equipment.

Well, this is actually quite a contentious (and false, by the way) statement. To evaluate it, we'd have to agree on a number of things, for example, the definition of "signal" and "complexity."

It turns out (you wouldn't know this, of course -- argumentum ad ignorantiam and so on) that there is this highly developed branch of applied mathematics called Information Theory. In fact, it is possible to define just how much complexity there is in the "signal" of a 106 piece orchestra recorded in a theoretically faithful way. By taking as a given the bandwidth of the information channel, we can put an upper limit on the amount of information that can possibly be contained in that channel, and then demonstrate that existing measurement equipment possesses the capability to capture that information to a degree of precision that exceeds the resolution of the human hearing apparatus.

To give you a sort of layman's example (I'm not an expert on information theory), let us restrict ourselves to 100kHz channel bandwidth and ask how much signal complexity that can be transmitted through that channel. And the answer is, certainly not enough information to faithfully recreate the complete three dimensional sound field in the recording venue. We necessarily give this up when we mix down to one or two channels, and the sense of space we get from a stereo recording is just an illusory artifact of our sensory apparatus.

To wit: your ears tell you the sound comes from the 3D space surrounding the speakers when you know full well it's all coming from the speakers themselves. The fact that your ears so grossly misinterpret the spatial location of the sound sources is sufficient proof of just how poor they really are at "measuring" the sound field. I'll claim that if your ears were even close to "accurate" the stereo illusion would, in fact, be impossible.

Here's the real question an information theorist might ask you. Given the combined sound field from the entire 106 piece orchestra, is there enough information in the signal to isolate unambiguously the sound of each individual instrument? If so, if you were to increase the number of instruments from 106 to 10,600, would you still be able to pick out the signal from each of those ten thousand instrument? Or is the sound all mixed together, like coffee and cream, and therefore forever inseparable?

A signal processing engineer has the necessary knowledge and vocabulary to characterize and respond to these questions; you do not. My advice to you is not to ask questions and follow up with nonsensical answers in areas of study with which you have no understanding or experience.

A smattering of other pent-up advice:

1) Don't confuse science and engineering. Sometimes you use the two terms as if they are interchangeable, which they are not. In fact most of what goes on in this forum is neither science nor engineering, but is more akin to alchemy. Alchemy, at times, was a valuable precursor to modern chemistry, but the latter prevailed because it was much more repeatable and practical.
2) Don't trust your ears. There is a huge body of well-documented evidence, my example above about the stereo illusion notwithstanding, that points to the inherent fallibility of human hearing. Hearing is dependent on both the physical transduction that takes place in the ears and in the processing that goes on in the brain. If you expect to be taken seriously in your claims with respect to the measuring capabilities of human hearing, you need to characterize the brain. This opens up a whole world of science that is far more dimly understood than signal processing in general. I daresay you are even further out of your league in the field of neuropsychology.
3) Don't discount valid information that is inconsistent with your worldview. I have been building and listening to solid-state amplifiers lately. They actually sound pretty good. There are innumerable "credentialed" audiophiles who prefer the sound of transistors to that of tubes. If you really want to put together a serious theory of audio engineering, you need to account for all the testimony, not just that which fits your models.
4) Learn to play an instrument. I will argue that because I know how to play piano and you don't, I know orders of magnitude than you do about what is "musically significant."
5) Stop ragging on people who know more than you do about certain things. Knowledge makes you a better thinker. It doesn't make you stupid. Your attitude betrays your intellectual narrowness.
6) Quit taking yourself so seriously. It's undignified and makes you appear to be a buffoon.
7) Trust me -- I'm smart.

Have a nice day.

-Henry

P.S. Above a picture of a 30 year-old amplifier I'm rebuilding. No derogatory comments or design suggestions, please.


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Atma-Sphere Music Systems, Inc.  


Topic - Voodoo and the 106 piece orchestra - op48no1 17:14:25 03/17/12 (63)

FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.