If a "taster" thinks something is wrong with a fine audio product how is it fixed? By changing a random electrical parameter that feels good due to his human experience?
Exactly. Read any of the reports of any of the high end manufacturers building and testing gear and you will usally read reports of how they will engineer something and then go and do final tuning by ear.
What's so hard to believe about that?
We do all our listening by ear, not by reading needles or traces on a scope with earplugs stuck in our ears, don't we?
I think the scope of his examples are very limiting and mainly off subject. The subject here is not perception or preference but measurement of audio.
You cannot separate listening to audio gear from subjective observations...our experience of listening to music is one of the most subjective pursuits we can undertake when we do it in earnest, so why in God's name would you even want to?
Many of the parameters can be measured, but not all, not the ones that make a difference in any kind of quantifiable theorem that can be looked at as some kind of equation to plugin into a "problem" to solve it and tell us what it will sound like...such as:
Flamethreower 1000 amp x (MATHEMATICAL GIBBERISH) X Smegmata 300 MkIL cables X (MATHEMATICAL GIBBERISH) x Wind in my Shorts Deluxe Speakers divided by (MATHEMATICAL GIBBERISH) + (EVEN MORE GIBBERISH) = Sonic Quality
That's kind of like saying because a woman is 38" X 24" X 36" and 5'8" tall, then she's gorgeous....it makes no mention of her one stumpy leg, her goatee, her "manhands", or the hereditary baldness....
You can measure all you want, but until you actually look at her you have no idea if she's good looking or a butterface, or has green teeth...and yes, you can take such minute measurements that you can digitially reproduce her image, but, that's not life and what does looking at the numbers, the raw data, really tell you?
Same with audio, measure all you want, but what do you listen to?
Meters and o-scopes or speakers?
I will agree that some measurements are necessary, like knowing that if you have a set of speakers that are 87dB efficient, you're going to need something more than a 2.5 Watt SET 2A3 amplifier to drive them in any area bigger than a closet...but sheer wattage figures does not tell me why even listening at very low volumes and with amps of similar power and gain, why (or, especially, how to predict) a Bryston sounds different from a ModWright, a Pass, a Spectron, or any of a variety of tube amplifiers...none of which are even being driven to any more than a few watts output at the very most...there aren't any measurements today that can do that, that can tell us what things are going to sound like when combined, that can predict good or bad sound depending on pairing of components and cables, or how we on a more subliminal measure feel about what's being delivered by our system...or why each and every amplifier paired with different speakers of similar efficiency will sound different...
Or why preamps of such impeccable pedigree and superb measured performance, such as a Herron VTPS-3 vs. a Parasound JC-3, each have different strengths and change the total character of a system that they are used in....
It's like Grado Prestige cartridges, many out there think they're great, I don't, and totally agree with Art Dudley's subjective evaluation of the Grado Gold1....I knew the sound of this cartridge before I ever read his article as I have had one for a while, but he summed up in words all the things about the Grado that I thought were wrong...I could have looked at a graph of the cartridge's plot and seen nothing of why the things sound so bad in the subtle parts of songs or why it sounds like they shave texture off the music when compared to better cartridges...how do you measure that and make a universally understood display of just what is happening and show us how one cartridge portrays texture without being bright, while still portraying warmth, yet delivering tons of detail vs. one that doesn't?
Having someone who can listen critically and distill what they hear into universally understood terms is how we get the information that allows us to match components to our systems with a much greater chance of success...when you start spending real money on stuff beyond the mass market crap it is important to understand the sound characteristics of each and every piece to get an idea of how each component's strengths and weaknesses can be combined into something that is greater than just the sum of their parts would suggest...
After hearing this same argument over and over for the better part of three decades, only the actors have changed, not their cacophony of disbelief in anything that they can't quantify...and, very few new measurement techniques have been developed, and none that have any real universal system matching quotient ability...
Like I tell all neophytes and naysayers, suck it and see....IOW, try it and see if it makes a difference to you...if it doesn't then go about your merry way and leave alone those of us who care more about what we hear than what someone else measures...I will not tell you of all the one time non-believers that have taken home cables, etc., tried them on their own without having to buy them, and been astonished that something so simple could have such profound effects in their systems...
But, if you can't leave well enough alone, and just won't believe what your ears will tell you, then why don't you stop your bitchin' and go out and develop the measurements and instruments to finally deliver the great "Audio Equipment Unified Field Theory" that is unfailingly accurate and will always predict exactly how a collection of gear is going to sound, and be totally accurate, no matter what pieces and parts are used, in every instance...then all the measurements will actually mean a whole lot more than they seem to today.
As it is, the measurements we have today are only good for gross generalizations and can not be counted on to give us an accurate portrait of the subtleties that a trained observer's ears can discern.
It's like doctors looking at X-ray films...when I look at them, I don't see anything, but to them, and their trained eye, the world that is hidden is observed and laid out to them and they know what each little part of the image and it's anomalies mean...same thing with an ear that has been trained to listen critically..it really is tiring work to listen that intently, that carefully, that deeply into the music to hear the subtle clues that separate the good from the mediocre, but it can be done by just about anyone with patience and halfway decent hearing, and hopefully someone to help coach them in the earliest learning stages...
Trouble is, that if you do listen for enough years to get really, really good at it, then time and your aging is no longer your friend as hearing deterioration just due to getting old will be taking it's toll...
Then I guess it's time to sell all the good gear and buy some of the modern mass market crap that's horrible sounding, but measures good, from Best Buy...you won't hear the problems anyhow....
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