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In Reply to: Re: Interesting article. Most of it is over my head but ... posted by Dan Banquer on March 9, 2007 at 04:27:45:
I don't suppose "dysfunctional illiterate subjectivists" need to be discredited. After all, they're disfunctional and illiterate.But, IMO, the only people this article discredits are the mystics, those who believe that things happen in audio that neither have nor require a physical explanation. That's a pretty small group I think.
As for the rest, it suggests that 1. yes, measurements probably CAN ultimately explain everything we really hear, and 2. Just because you can't measure it doesn't mean they don't hear it.
The cautious empiricists win this round. The losers are the mystics and the greedy reductionists.
BTW: Dick, thanks for posting. A nice article.
Follow Ups:
As I recall, most of the info in the article is nothing new and may well be over ten years old if not older. This of course does not matter as many audiophiles who post here either have limited attention span, poor reading comprehension, or really just don't give a damn and prefer to rant.
This is old news Jim.
d.b.
I mean, other than to say "I already knew all that. So what?"--which doesn't really seem to be on point.
That's NOT my point! The point is Mr. Austin, is that high end audio is at least 10 to twenty years behind the rest of electronic technology, and going further into retro/antique all the time. AND THAT'S NO SECRET!!!!!! May I suggest a subscriprion to EE Times, or EDN? Can I recommend going through their archives for the past number of years?
d.b.
sorry for offending.There is much that I don't know, but I'm learning all the time. The reason I liked that article, by the way, is not because there's anything in it that I thought was new, but because it was written from an engineering perspective but with respect for what other techy types deride as "audiophile values." It acknowledges from the beginning that high-performance audio is indeed high-performance, rather than acting as if a Circuit City CD player is as good as it gets.
I'm not saying it's new, only that it's uncommon in this world. So it's refreshing.
In this case, I will do you a professional favor. A far as the magazines, such as 'EDN', 'Electronics Design', 'Design News' etc, etc are concerned, they would not teach you much more about audio design, with only a few exceptions. Dan is simply in a position to bamboozle you with his slightly better knowledge of electronics design. For the receord, I read virtually all the magazines, and have consistently read them all for the the last 40 years. IF you really want to read something about electronic engineering design, then get a copy of 'The Art of Electronics' by Horowitz and Hill, and keep it on your reference shelf. Unfortunately, even the IEEE or the AES don't do much for audio electronic design, these days. The old stuff from the 60's-80's was very good, however.
Now, perhaps you can return the favor by giving me the title of a definitive book on electrical flow through a wire. No simple approximations, please.
...in college. I'm sure it's a good book, content-wise, but it was absolutely the worst-written textbook I've ever seen. Intolerable. Hope they've hired an editor since then.
Jim, you are missing the point. It is the information that is important, not the way that it is presented in this case.
By the way, once again, what is your recommendation for a reference book defining the most precise quantum model for current flow in a wire?
Expensive though--got a good science library nearby?http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521855129
This is not a first-hand recommendation. It's probably pretty advanced, but the reviewer's comments suggest that it's accessible. Still, at best you'd need to do a lot of work to rigorously extract the implications of the physics to whatever problem you're currently working on.
This textbook looks very good. I'll check with Jack Bybee to see if he has it already. He picked up something similar a few years ago, and he might want to buy a copy of this book.
This is the sort of book that I have collected over the years, trying to find out why things do what they do.
As you know, I tend to believe my ears first, and then try to understand what I hear, through research papers or through measurement. I have found that this is essentially unappreciated on this website, for the most part.
> > By the way, once again, what is your recommendation for a reference book defining the most precise quantum model for current flow in a wire? < <Hi John. Sorry, I have no recommendation. That was never my area, and it's been 10 years or so since I've seriously studied a solid-state physics book. I would expect that any advanced textbook on the subject would be sufficient for your needs. I recall that Ashcroft and Mermin, a grad-level textbook, did a good job, starting with Drude theory then getting more sophisticated and dealing, in a reasonable way, with electron correlations and phonon effects. It's a slog, however. Took me two semesters to fight my way through it (though I'm pretty sure that metals were covered in the first term), even at a time when I was pretty good with the math.
There are some other folks on this board, I'm sure, that are more up to date than I am.
Thanks Jim, that is helpful. I have never heard of those authors before, and I have the graduate level version of text that JN likes so much, and some others, but they didn't tell me anything useful. That is why I initially wanted to look into Landau, but unfortunately I bought the wrong volume. If you ever get a copy of 'Electronic Properties of Materials' by Rolf E. Hummel, I think that you will be pleasantly surprised. Drude theory is not exact enough for me at this time.
As far as H&H are concerned, they did make a departure with their teaching style, BUT many of their topics are reasonably up to date, and can be useful. I even gave the late Bob Crump a copy for his reference, since it was readable by semi-technical people as well.
Thanks John. Re: Horowitz and Hill, I was in college at the time--still young--and something of a writing snob. Not that I could have done that much better, but I thought I could, and was appalled that a textbook could be so badly written. Actually, I know now it's not the writing but the editing. You don't necessarily expect electronics experts to be expert writers. But you DO expect publishers to be able to fix up the prose a little.I lost my copy of H&H (and the lab manual that goes with it) my senior year of college. I left my dorm room unlocked all the time, and someone went in and took it (along with some of my favorite records; I forget which ones. And some other things). I can't believe whoever took it really wanted a copy of "The Art of Electronics," but who knows. Anyway, I bet I could pick up a used copy cheap on amazon.com. I'll pick one up.
If you ever decide to do some serious investigation into electronic technology, you will probably come to the conclusion that audio is the bastard child of electronics. Marketing pays the bills, as many of us have observed.
d.b.
...but I don't disagree. And I know a lot of people in the industry agree as well.Still, it's great fun, and I've got enough of a rebellious spirit to believe that, though 99% of the work that defies (willingly or unwillingly) scientific orthodoxy is likely to be worse off for it) occasionally the result is something brilliant and special--and something that would be inhibited by too much focus on scientific orthodoxy. I am NOT saying what many of the mystics around here often say: That cutting edge science and technology, beyond what's known by the scientific establishment, is to be found in that Chinese factory where they make the "intelligent chip". I'm just saying that sometimes really smart people can do better work when they don't pay so much attention to the rules, so it's possible for a boutique amp to be special. Not often, but sometimes.
Call me a romantic, I don't care. ;-)
> But, IMO, the only people this article discredits are the mystics, those who believe that things happen in audio that neither have nor require a physical explanation. That's a pretty small group I think.Personally, I think a sizeable number of those that refer to themselves as audiophiles fall under this category. These boards are littered with comments from folks that allude to such nonsense. Will blind tests ever become popular in the audiophile community, I doubt it as it will reveal a reality that much too uncomfortable many of those engaged in the hobby, as it will show many audiophile staples as fanciful mirages.
Music making the painting, recording it the photograph
"Will blind tests ever become popular in the audiophile community"Unlikely as they are really not much fun as a listening party.
> > Personally, I think a sizeable number of those that refer to themselves as audiophiles fall under this category. < <I admit that I get exasperated sometimes with people on these boards that reject scientific notions outright. But I think it's much more common for people to fail to understand that what they're proposing IS mystical. As I've written before, here and in Stereophile, I don't understand those who would reject what we know and trust only their ears.
> > Will blind tests ever become popular in the audiophile community, I doubt it as it will reveal a reality that much too uncomfortable many of those engaged in the hobby, as it will show many audiophile staples as fanciful mirages. < <
It's interesting to me that, as that article indicates, sometimes things that techy folks think are impossible end up being not just possible but demonstrable via blind tests. In other words, some of those audiophile staples proved to be things that the measurement folks couldn't measure. I think blind tests have problems, but I think we've given up on them too quickly. But clearly we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss something people claim to hear just because 1. we can't measure it, and 2. it hasn't (yet) been demonstrated in a rigorous test.
"It's interesting to me that, as that article indicates, sometimes things that techy folks think are impossible end up being not just possible but demonstrable via blind tests."Well here's the thing: people assume (including engineers) that numbers like 0.01% distortion or +- 3db Must be irrelevant or relevant, respectively when in fact it might very well be the other way around. The resaoning is that 0.01% is a SMALL number and 3db is a LARGE number but it all depends on its relationship to what we hear.
Engineers tend to see a small number for THD and assume that it must be inaudible because of its perceived smallness. By the same token +- 3 db is often thought of as a large amplitude deviation for a speaker; however in room measurements can vary easily by 10 db or more, especially in the bass, rendering the speakers "native" response to be relatively unimportant.
The point of my post is that unless the numbers are aligned to something meaningful then it is perception that governs people's opinions about their significance.
In my field I have a similar problem when I report a % of an impurity in a drug product. Not only is the amount an issue but its toxicological relevance must put the number into perspective. Otherwise you have no idea if it is a lot or a little relative to its effect. Dealing with managers who are not technically competent makes this correlation all the more critical so that they don't make silly decisions based on irrelevant data. I think audio suffers a similar problem. If a number looks small everyone (including a lot of engineers) assume that it must not be relevant. If it looks large it is assumed it must be relevant but this is by no means guaranteed.
that in audio there are known numbers that are widely assumed to be the limits of perception. But they're very hard to quantify in a simple way, so they can sometimes be misleading. So, among reasonably knowledgeable folks, it's not just a matter of "big" versus "small". It might, rather, be a result of relying on too-simple metrics in situations where they don't apply. Closely related to what you're saying but not exactly the same thing.
> I think blind tests have problems, but I think we've given up on them too quickly. But clearly we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss something people claim to hear just because 1. we can't measure it, and 2. it hasn't (yet) been demonstrated in a rigorous test.Well, I suppose the challenge will always be how to seperate the wheat from the chaff, how do we identify valid observations? Many audiophile claims do not stand up to any rigorous scrutiny. Ironically, Contrary to current audiophile thinking, I think it is the ear mechanism's much greater supsetibility to various biases not its sensitivity that make this a mammoth task and as such this will continue to make this fodder for mystic claims for years to come.
Music making the painting, recording it the photograph
> > Well, I suppose the challenge will always be how to seperate the wheat from the chaff, how do we identify valid observations? < <In the longterm, science. In the short term...know people with ears you can trust?
> > Many audiophile claims do not stand up to any rigorous scrutiny. Ironically, Contrary to current audiophile thinking, I think it is the ear mechanism's much greater susceptibility to various biases not its sensitivity that make this a mammoth task and as such this will continue to make this fodder for mystic claims for years to come. < <
You won't get any disagreement from me on this. But the problem is made harder still by the fact that sometimes those folks are right and the scientists are wrong. You can't just dismiss 'em (well, some of 'em you can, but not all of 'em).
I just don't quite believe that John Curl is hearing things when he says he hears differences between caps. Or--however kooky it sounds--when Charles Hansen claims to hear differences between cable supports made of different kinds of wood, I don't exactly believe him (that just sounds too crazy), but I don't dismiss it outright either. Call me gullible but it seems to me that these are serious people with obvious technical skills, and the idea that they're faking it just isn't consistent with what I know (or think I know) about their characters (I don't know either personally, beyond our exchanges on the Internet and by email).
Keeping a truly open mind while not being taken in by hucksters is hard. It's a very delicate balance.
> Keeping a truly open mind while not being taken in by hucksters is hard. It's a very delicate balance.So true... :-)
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