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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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In Reply to: How Do We Have A Technical Conversation When We Have So Many Vocal Unrational Objectivists & Unrational Subjectivists? posted by thetubeguy1954 on March 29, 2007 at 11:08:36:
Hi TubeguyAm not sure you can have this conversation, as one needs a common language or frame of reference in order to have one view make a coherent picture to the other.
At the fringe of each side, Like the chemist and alchemist meeting to openly discuss there crafts, there wouldn’t be much common ground.A reoccurring theme here is the apparent failure of measurements to describe what you hear.
I am curious where that came from anyway, it is not a position held in engineering, I suppose such references come from the voodoo marketing as an effort to increase the mystery and plausibility of some products.
Measurements are a measure of some property, not a “quality†judgment, unless specifically designed to align with human perception, they do not even try to make such a judgment.
For example, THD is the sum of the Voltages of all the harmonics compared to the fundamental signal. One percent THD means that the difference in the sum of the Voltages is 20dB or the differences in power 40dB (like if you used an RTA).
These were “important†as a sales tool back when all amplifiers made audible distortion of a similar type. Important now as the distribution of the harmonics and level can be an aid tracking down the non-linearity, which is the source of it.On the other hand, what you hear is Level and frequency dependent AND dependent on the harmonic number because of masking AND with music ones ability to detect distortion is much less than with a pure sine wave.
I suppose it would be nice to have a measure correlating to “quality†but there are too many variables, even from person to person there is a large variation on masking levels, distortion detection and so on. Personally, I believe that hearing is maybe like vision, it is different from person to person and where one person may be especially annoyed by time errors, they may be happy with wide fluctuations in frequency response and vis versa. Some may be bothered by room effects and reflections more than others.
Among serous listeners, there remains a relatively wide variety of loudspeaker systems used, all of which have different yet large, significant flaws when compared to a straight wire to sound conversion.Perfection.
For the engineering type, a perfect amplifier is one that is a straight wire with gain as is said often. As such, there is no difference between the input and output signal in any way other than its magnitude with any signal.
This is a relative thing as there is always some degree of difference between the input and output so the issue is where does reducing the difference further stop being audible.Perfection.
For the end user, perfection is the best reproduction of some source material.
This has gone through many stages of recording, mix down and mastering and of which the listener wasn’t present at the original. Thus the listener is judging the sound based on what they expect or want to hear.
As each stage adds some “character†to the sound and the balance was made by an engineer, listening / mixing down through speakers other than yours, the odds of you hearing what the mix engineer and musicians heard the studio, as intended, are extraordinarily small.
By listening alone, at best, one can arrive at a system coloration, which compliments the source material, and so, it sounds great with some things and worse with others.An example of dependency on source material is on how even vs odd harmonics sound with difference source material. Studios often add even harmonic distortion to fatten up the sound at final mix, it makes things sound more full. If I recall the Beatles Abbey road was the first album where intentionally modified electronics were used to produce this.
This worked because even harmonics are all partially chord fragments of the fundamental and being music, this is nice.
Odd harmonics are discordant, sound bad because they do not blend in with music.
With natural sounds, which are generally not harmonically structured, adding either even or odd harmonic sufficiently, changes the sound.From this it becomes clear that a gage of “perfection†based on the lack of any difference between input and output is a much less vague target to shoot at than the typical approach, listening to the sum of potentially much coloration, of a source which you didn’t hear first hand.
Listening depends on loudspeakers, I can tell you with certainty that loudspeakers are by far the weakest link in this chain, they have so many problems that it is hard to quantify how many ways they can be wrong.
Even if everything at your end was actually perfect, your source material has been filtered through the taste, skill of an engineer, listening to speakers with problems, artificially contrived into “stereo†added to the sum of the effects of everything in that chain.I think the real problem here is that there are some genuine “mysteries†and some unexplored territory but they are $hard$ to get at. Part B of the problem is the companies who sell things nearly entirely define what is “known†now in the “hifi†market. While this was the case all along I suppose, what was known was entirely based on what the engineers said interpreted by the magazines who are the educators for the market.
Food chain:
All hifi business’s are about making money.
The hifi customer is where it comes from, both ends of the food chain are clearly defined.
Taking advantage of the gap between the companies with something to sell and the customer are the magazines. They are a for hire marketing agent, they charge a small price to subscribe to make you think your buying information but the real money is in selling advertising space to the manufacturers. Thus the primary allegiance is to the manufacturers, if the advertising helps sales, the mfr will grow and advertise more etc.
Think of the largest of all audio companies, their size is never based on a superior product; it is based on superior marketing and image building fronting a mediocre or even crappy product.
It is sad but simple, a dollar in marketing produces more sales than a dollar in R&D, especially in a mostly mature area..The consumer end, the “batteries in the matrixâ€, aren’t aware that magazines are the main channel for this “education†and so the BS level has risen to an astonishing level.
It used to be that they had technical writers, engineers who could spell, now many are not technical at all and ability to write an attractive review counts most and a whole new concepts and a new vocabulary has sprung up to help it along.
I have to say, not all go this way but the most successful ventures always seem to be the ones who throw reality out the window and run it like a cold “for profit†business.
Truly now in hifi, we are were the new age movement was some years ago.
Like that area trusted figures rise to offer profound relationships and wisdom, always directly or indirectly tied to selling something. Like healing stones, pyramid power and such, there are those users who just as firmly declare that a magic dot, little stones, small wood blocks and so on have some actual effect. They grip the belief that here, science doesn't apply or that somehow a great sounding explanation can't be wrong.For the engineering type, they say, ok to rule out the power of suggestion, a real problem in every other area of human perception, prove it. Show me you can actually hear this effect when you don’t know if it is there or not using a “without knowledge†listening test.
They say show me how in this area, that electronic principals and theory if sufficiently detailed, still don’t predict an effect that is large enough that you can hear it in hifi.While the engineering view is based a history of proofs, on sound reproducible logic, they are often proud humans, also have a tendency to feel that “everything†is within their personal book of knowledge.
This gives them a clear map of the known territory but are sometimes unaware the map has edges or how to deal with them other than to stay away..Actually a potential weakness of all sides is an excess of confidence that you personally have it “all figured outâ€, both sides, everyone really, wants it to be simple black and white.
I leave you with that warning which also covers what I wrote.Best,
Tom Danley.
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Follow Ups
- You can't without a babblefish - tomservo 09:54:55 03/31/07 (1)
- "This gives them a clear map of the known territory." But THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY! - clarkjohnsen 10:20:48 03/31/07 (0)
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