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Re: You were doing great right up until the end there...

Presto,

I find your post to be a very well worded version of what I've ben trying to say, but unfortunately cannot put into words sufficiently well. I have said many times before here on PHP that I'm a subjectivist who believes that there should be a measureable reason behind everything a subjectivist says they hear!

To address your two questions of: "Is the current corollary between what is measured and what is heard sufficient to make measurements really useful in the first place?" I've said many times I believe the answer is a definitive NO! (See my reasoning below)

This leads us to your other question of: are there measurements we are not bothering with that could reveal what seem to be secrects about the audibility of such effects like sound stage "dimensions" and perceived "size" and distance of performers? I believe the answer is a definitive YES!

My reasoning on these two questions is this. I myself, nor any serious music lover/audiophile I know has never, ever mistaken live music for recorded music. Neither have I nor any serious music lover/audiophile I know ever mistaken recorded music for live. This tells me the human ear/brain combo is very adept at recognizing live music and distinguishing the traits that makes it live vs recorded. It also tells me the human era/brain combo is also very adept recognizing and distinguishing when those traits are missing, as they are in recorded music.

Now if today's measurements as used in testing audio components were sufficient in and of themselves all some record company would have to do is measure a live performance and then their recording of that event. Then after comparing the two alter the recording's measurements until they are equal to the live performance. Doing that "should" make them indistinguishable, that is "if" today's audio measurements are sufficient in and of themselves! The very fact that's it's not being done tell's me it cannot be done or else some record manufacturer would be doing exactly that! Obviously there's something that either they don't know how to measure or they cannot measure or that they cannot isolate to measure.

Like you Presto I believe this doesn't have to be an objectivist/subjectivist war. I think the people who will end this "war" and come up with some useful corollary are those who know that human perception is not the opposite of science, but a science unto itself. In fact IMHO when that day arrives and science discovers what to measure that allows the human ear/brain to immediately recognize live music as live music, SET amps will be seen as measuring very accurate in that regard.

Unfortunately this war will continue to rage on until the day arrives when the objectivists will open their minds and stop simply playing lip service by saying they know some people can hear things you, I or they cannot, but the moment someone suggests they're hearing something you, I or they cannot hear, these same objectivists immediately accuse this person of deluding themself into hearing a sound that doesn't exist or claiming they have "super-hearing" capabilities!

Thetubeguy1954


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  • Re: You were doing great right up until the end there... - thetubeguy1954 07:20:38 02/26/07 (0)


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