thezaks,
Ah, we're coming to a common understanding about objectivity and subjectivity, great. A few minor differences, though. We both agree that people hear differently. This is OBJECTIVELY true, demonstrable by basic hearing tests. See how agreement is easy when you have objective facts and measurements to back you up? However, at age 65, I have hearing deficiencies above about 10 Khz, so I don't claim to be as objective and revealing as a good microphone. Even in 20 year olds, I have measured hearing deficiency at 18-20Khz compared to 9 year olds. I try to be as objective as possible within my limitations, and acknowledge that there is quite a lot of subjectivity/uncertainty in my perceptions. So audio is not about total subjectivity vs total objectivity, it really is some combination of both. And charles1dad, pure subjectivity is completely unreliable, since the reviewer doesn't understand what he is listening to and doesn't have the basic vocabulary to describe it intelligently. On the other hand, pure objectivity in reference to lab measurements only may not tell you completely about how a system sounds. We are trying to do more measurements to get more info, and the challenge is to combine the measurements in some way to correlate better with everything we hear. John Atkinson in Stereophile often does a good job of correlating his measurements with the sound the reviewer describes. WC doesn't have test equipment, but he nicely describes objective and subjective characteristics, since I believe he has a great ear and is articulate about his findings. So let's try to get more value from our comparative listening and reporting by doing both objective and subjective analysis.
Individual preferences is another subject. Someone might LIKE that bass bump, but should be honest and objectively admit that there is that bass bump and he just likes it. As minorl said above, the bass bump is probably unnatural--I agree with his objective observation that the bass bump is there in some systems I have heard, even though it is a certainty that he and I hear differently in some ways, and my opinion matches his that it is unnatural. On one level, this opinion is subjective, since we weren't at the recording session and don't know objectively what the engineer really did. But you can play numerous recordings through such a system and objectively say that in most cases, it is an objective fact that the system has a bass bump. The more knowledgeable you are about natural, live music and the more informed is your listening, your subjective statement becomes more authoritatively objective, although not completely so.
Ah, we're coming to a common understanding about objectivity and subjectivity, great. A few minor differences, though. We both agree that people hear differently. This is OBJECTIVELY true, demonstrable by basic hearing tests. See how agreement is easy when you have objective facts and measurements to back you up? However, at age 65, I have hearing deficiencies above about 10 Khz, so I don't claim to be as objective and revealing as a good microphone. Even in 20 year olds, I have measured hearing deficiency at 18-20Khz compared to 9 year olds. I try to be as objective as possible within my limitations, and acknowledge that there is quite a lot of subjectivity/uncertainty in my perceptions. So audio is not about total subjectivity vs total objectivity, it really is some combination of both. And charles1dad, pure subjectivity is completely unreliable, since the reviewer doesn't understand what he is listening to and doesn't have the basic vocabulary to describe it intelligently. On the other hand, pure objectivity in reference to lab measurements only may not tell you completely about how a system sounds. We are trying to do more measurements to get more info, and the challenge is to combine the measurements in some way to correlate better with everything we hear. John Atkinson in Stereophile often does a good job of correlating his measurements with the sound the reviewer describes. WC doesn't have test equipment, but he nicely describes objective and subjective characteristics, since I believe he has a great ear and is articulate about his findings. So let's try to get more value from our comparative listening and reporting by doing both objective and subjective analysis.
Individual preferences is another subject. Someone might LIKE that bass bump, but should be honest and objectively admit that there is that bass bump and he just likes it. As minorl said above, the bass bump is probably unnatural--I agree with his objective observation that the bass bump is there in some systems I have heard, even though it is a certainty that he and I hear differently in some ways, and my opinion matches his that it is unnatural. On one level, this opinion is subjective, since we weren't at the recording session and don't know objectively what the engineer really did. But you can play numerous recordings through such a system and objectively say that in most cases, it is an objective fact that the system has a bass bump. The more knowledgeable you are about natural, live music and the more informed is your listening, your subjective statement becomes more authoritatively objective, although not completely so.