Bumblebees can't fly and audio myths

If that's totally the case, why aren't we all listening through cans & eliminating room & speaker anamolies from the equation? I'm no engineer, but I've been a guitar player long enough to know that when someone is talking about 'warmth' they're talking about a quality of distortion they find pleasing. Sound, like color, is a subjective reality, & how could what someone likes ever be statistically predictable?
 
Lefty said:
Audio electronics is a well developed and engineered field. The performance and accuracy of the circuits can be measured and duplicated for a large volume production, even allowing for unit to unit variation ( you don't think every Pioneer SX-1980 has the same exact measurements do you, every electronic component has a tolerance spec you know?). However the customers, being human, required that they also design and install tone, loudness and volume controls so the user can make it sound best to their ears and that's how it should be.

I still feel that the electronic components get far too much credit and blame for good for bad sound, it's ones speakers and room layout the define the sound of ones system far and away....

Lefty


I think you've nailed it........ almost. One thing I've notice in my 30+ years of being an "audiophile" or was it fool, it is in the speakers. BUT here's the catch, once you get to a certain level of micro detail the components become far more important. An example: I had an old Lux CD player that died. I replaced it with a cheap Sony SACD carousel player. Spec wise it "looked" great, and the reviews concurred. People were "stunned" at how good it sounds. I then bought a Marantz SA 8260 player. The Marantz virtually "specs" the same as the Sony. Essentially the Marantz bitchslaps the Sony. Why? I have no idea, but it makes it sound like crap, and its VERY noticeable.
 
Bigugh said:
If that's totally the case, why aren't we all listening through cans & eliminating room & speaker anamolies from the equation? I'm no engineer, but I've been a guitar player long enough to know that when someone is talking about 'warmth' they're talking about a quality of distortion they find pleasing. Sound, like color, is a subjective reality, & how could what someone likes ever be statistically predictable?

A lot of people do listen through cans only! Check out http://www.head-fi.org :D There are a lot of great headphones, and great advancements in them that make listening through them great experiences.

Color is a subjective reality, however, we can still make good guesses about how others will perceive something. We are different humans, but we are all still humans, so educated guesses can be made. There are some things I could do to an audio signal that I bet nobody would think was an improvement, and some things I could do that I bet just about everyone would hear as an improvement, but there are also things that aren't as cut and dry. But at least the cut and dry things can be put aside as 'subjective, but not very'. ;)

peace,
sam
 
wineslob said:
One thing I've notice in my 30+ years of being an "audiophile" or was it fool, it is in the speakers.

My definition of an audiophile / audiophool ( ;) ) is one who appreciates well mastered music.

And to appreciate it, one must have a good playback system.

And to have a good playback system, every component counts, such as speaker cable, interconnects, power (receiver / pre amp / power amp / integrated amp), speakers, listening room, system set up, etc., etc., etc.
 
Please don´t forget that mathematics and engineering drove the audio business for more than 100 years !

All of today´s existing audio gear may it be speakers, amplifiers, CD players, recording mixers, microphones etc. was possible, because there was the possibility for the manufacturers to build audio devices to a certain standard and at least to the state of the art of their time.
Only a standard made it possible that millions of people were able to listen to radio programs and records.

These standards were established by physical properties, voltages, sound pressure levels, distortion levels, frequency bands and so on.
If such standards wouldn´t exist, it would be e.g. a nightmare to adopt MM phono cartridge of manufacturer A to a phono preamplifier of manufacturer B and so on.

Most of the subjetivism friends don´t see, that they hear their music through components, which are built to strict technical standards and specifications.
If these specifications are reflected by the sales specifications is a completely different story, because there are many, really many more things to think about, while designing e.g. a speaker like the specs you will later read in an advertisement. This is systematic science, but not known by the public, because a lot which goes beyond standards and common knowledge is a manufacturer´s secret. This science may also include the wisdom how the taste of an average listener is. No manufacturer would sell more than a single unit, if really everybody had a different taste. So if the average phool wants to buy heavily distorted amplifiers, the engineers will set up a standard to make them exactly like the phools want them ... :scratch2:

IMHO the way to Audio Nirvana goes only over the music and the people who make music themselves and not by judging technical components by means of taste. For me this is so important like judging the quality of a glass safe while seening da Vinci´s "Mona Lisa" presented inside ... :scratch2:
So judge your audio gear with sine signals or whatever, but not with the innocent music ... :D

As a amateur musician I can say, that nothing, really nothing in audio comes close to making the music yourself, sorry ! And that´s the kind of subjectivism I like ! :D
 
Wow, mucho pontification going on here. Good points all actually but personally specifications don't mean much to me. I should say that speaker specification and testing data help me in determining what I think its personality will be prior to listening to it but amp/pre/tuner/cd spec's don't help me much. Im not a tech. or a engineer, just a music appreciator.

Most spec's of a tube piece that Im sure I would like, would more than likely be trounced by a well designed SS piece. I have owned Tuners with great specifications that leave me high and dry and also CD players that have done the same.

You can tell me about the specifications of a certian piece of gear and I will smile and say "lets give her a listen". Also, with the understanding that its more than likely going to sound different in my set-up.

I really feel that specifications are a good place to start but do not insure whether or not you will like the sound it produces or what it will do for you in your system. Personally, I seem to thoroughly enjoy tube preamp/amplifiers that dont bench test well and very efficient speaker drivers that are "colored" to many ears. I gave up a long time ago trying to impress others with my system so if it sounds good to me that is all that counts and measurements be damned.

Good Post R.

RC
 
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Great post doucanoe, I was going to post essentially the same thing you did here but didn't want to wade into another round of subjective vs. objective.

It always seems so futile when all I care to do is listen to music on my 'test-bench-challenged' tube, high-eff speaker and vinyl based system (with a little SACD simply because it sounds good).
 
I have some experience with sound reinforcement & FOH mixing. I worked for a fella for a while who would ring out the mains with pink noise & a spectrum analyser. "Statisically," that PA was dead-flat perfect. When the show would start he would lean over to me & ask "What do we need to fix?" & I would re-tweak the system until it sounded good. Dead-flat wasn't musical. I contend that the situation with hi-fi gear is relatively similar. Tube gear is cherished for the musical quality of the distortion that tubes produce. When I sold hi-fi gear in the late '70's the shop owner was an audiophile who probably had the best ears of anyone I've ever met. Switching distortion in A/B amps drove him nuts & he kept trying to teach me to hear it, too. I've gotta be honest & say if I've ever heard notch distortion in an amp it would be news to me. But I got to audition all kinds of gear in a well-controlled audio environment. There is a great deal of gear that is highly prized by people that I wouldn't have anything to do with for love nor money. Conversely, the stuff I've got is found to be lifeless & uninspiring to others. Why? The specs are good. Ears can be trained, but beyond a certain point what is good is what sounds good to you, specs be damned. I wouldn't be writing this if all of us were a bunch of fools jabbering about whether or not we should be pointing our Electrophonic speakers towards the walls. We're all listening, tweaking, improving our systems & we're listening to this broad array of gear because it sounds good to us, and that's as it should be. What a boring place this would be if we all liked the same things, eh?

My very humble opinion.

Don
 
Great thread! Ray and Sam, your first post are both well written and seem well thought out to me. I couldn't have said it better myself.

I personally love vintage gear, but I know that some of my little (pre-spec war) era peices, such as my HK430 and my Sansui 5000x, not to metion my tube Scott 299B sound much better to my ears (at least with my Klipsch speakers) than my larger super spec monster receivers do. I know this is a generalization guys, and please don't get me wrong. The big SX Pioneers, the G series Sansuis, and many of the other big boys sound great. They just don't sound as great to me as their specs would sugest.

I do think specs have their place. I'm just not sure if we know yet what to specifically measure.
 
Very well put Ray! I have tried to get something like this point across in other threads and it seems like it just gets drowned in the momentum of the latest propaganda.

Also, looking at this from another angle...

From the point of view of an EE in the audio field (I'm a SWE, and an ASET, so I can only give a good educated guess here - but somebody more qualified may be able to tell me if I'm wrong), when he or she creates a new product, all they can start with are the numbers. It HAS to start there - no other choice. And there would have to be quite a bit of measuring and tweeking along the way.

Then, I would presume that if the engineer cares at all about what he is producing he eventually gives his prototype a listen (after taking some measurements), notes some subjective observations, then thinks about what he needs to tweek - again, based on the NUMBERS (micro-farads, ohms, volts, phase shift, slew rate, rise time, etc., etc...), and goes for another design iteration. This process, I would imagine, repeats until his boss yells at him and says "good enough already - ship it!" At which the engineer mumbles about his evil PHB and concedes.

There is an inescapable interplay between the specs and the outcome, which will likely have a huge subjective component to how it is judged. (i.e. somebody's brain interpreting what their ears are telling them.) It's like a two-horse carriage; you need both objective and subjective information to get realistic results.

Pure subjectivity is an over-simplification, probably promoted mostly by people with some latent bitterness about their high school math scores.

On the other hand, I think that pure objectivity is another form of over-simplification, with more of an ego component to it. After all, we know all there is to know about sound waves and how the human brain interprets them...right?? :no:
 
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