If ya can’t stand the heat get outta the kitchen. 🥵
The invention of measurements and perception
This is going to be pretty airy-fairy. Sorry.
Let’s talk about how measurements get invented, and how this limits us.
One of the great works of engineering, science, and data is finding signals in the noise. What matters? Why? How much?
My background is in computer science, and a little in electrical engineering. So the question of what to measure to make systems (audio and computer) "better" is always on my mind.
What’s often missing in measurements is "pleasure" or "satisfaction."
I believe in math. I believe in statistics, but I also understand the limitations. That is, we can measure an attribute, like "interrupts per second" or "inflamatory markers" or Total Harmonic Distortion plus noise (THD+N)
However, measuring them, and understanding outcome and desirability are VERY different. Those companies who can do this excel at creating business value. For instance, like it or not, Bose and Harman excel (in their own ways) at finding this out. What some one will pay for, vs. how low a distortion figure is measured is VERY different.
What is my point?
Specs are good, I like specs, I like measurements, and they keep makers from cheating (more or less) but there must be a link between measurements and listener preferences before we can attribute desirability, listener preference, or economic viability.
What is that link? That link is you. That link is you listening in a chair, free of ideas like price, reviews or buzz. That link is you listening for no one but yourself and buying what you want to listen to the most.
E
Let’s talk about how measurements get invented, and how this limits us.
One of the great works of engineering, science, and data is finding signals in the noise. What matters? Why? How much?
My background is in computer science, and a little in electrical engineering. So the question of what to measure to make systems (audio and computer) "better" is always on my mind.
What’s often missing in measurements is "pleasure" or "satisfaction."
I believe in math. I believe in statistics, but I also understand the limitations. That is, we can measure an attribute, like "interrupts per second" or "inflamatory markers" or Total Harmonic Distortion plus noise (THD+N)
However, measuring them, and understanding outcome and desirability are VERY different. Those companies who can do this excel at creating business value. For instance, like it or not, Bose and Harman excel (in their own ways) at finding this out. What some one will pay for, vs. how low a distortion figure is measured is VERY different.
What is my point?
Specs are good, I like specs, I like measurements, and they keep makers from cheating (more or less) but there must be a link between measurements and listener preferences before we can attribute desirability, listener preference, or economic viability.
What is that link? That link is you. That link is you listening in a chair, free of ideas like price, reviews or buzz. That link is you listening for no one but yourself and buying what you want to listen to the most.
E
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- 175 posts total
Erik, Thank you for your most excellent question, and subsequent persistent follow-up questions! Thank heavens I bothered to read all of them (and even scan a bit of others, uh, posts) before posting or I might have made a codenamegeoff of myself. Whew! Close one! The incredibly rigorous tome that definitely answers all your questions from first principles can be found here: https://archive.org/stream/PrincipiaMathematicaVolumeI/WhiteheadRussell-PrincipiaMathematicaVolumeI_... But that seems a bit much. Made my eyes glaze over. Even with 400 level courses in symbolic logic and philosophy of science. Which I enjoyed. And aced. But still. A mans got to know his limitations. But when you say, " Volta, Watts and Ampere all started from not having a number, to having a number. Those numbers made math and engineering possible. I love numbers, but just because I have a number, does not mean I have a quality associated with it." Actually, in layman’s terms, I have to say we do have a quality associated with it. Volta had the quality of electrical pressure. Ampere has the quality of electrical volume. The Principia goes exhaustively into the logical foundations of these but in plain language it comes down to there being genuine physical realities underlying observation. There is the quality of distance. We may measure it in inches or meters, that part is invented and arbitrary. But the reality of distance, the irreducible quality we are after, that much is not invented. That quality is inherent in the universe. It wasn't invented. It was discovered. How we understand and use measurement, there’s the rub. Measures are tools. Helps to know how to use them. A hammer is a great tool for driving a nail. Not so good for repairing a helicopter. Now some codenamegeoff will pipe up with some helicopter hammer repair story. Whatever. You get the point. Buying a new Herron VTPH 2A recently led to a few conversations with Keith Herron. Keith is a terrific example of the intelligent and appropriate use of measurement. He both listens and measures. One thing he found, people are unbelievably sensitive to frequency response. He found in double-blind testing that he could influence listener preference by changing frequency response as little as 0.03 dB. No that is not a misprint. Three one-hundredths of a decibel! Now you may well wonder why we measure sound pressure in these particular units, why log not linear, etc. Fair enough. But present before the measure was the reality of pressure. Had to be measured one way or another. Come at it from another direction. World famous psychologist Jordan Peterson has hours of lectures available on YouTube. A recurring theme is the Big 5 personality traits: extraversion,agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Fascinating subject, fabulous speaker. Anyway, point is, one could be forgiven for thinking there are a near infinite number of human personality traits. Rigorous statistical analysis of thousands of studies across dozens of nations and cultures demonstrates they are all reducible to only these five. Nature somehow seems to have limited us to these 5 measures of the psychological world. My bet would be we are roughly no more free to invent measures in the physical one. |
Thank you for the kind words. quality associated with it. Clearly, these numbers represent specific physical things. What i meant was, is 4 Volts warm? Is 0.8A precise imaging? Do 30 watts sound hard? Inventing a measure, such as your cholesterol level, is not yet the same as being able to ascribe a quality or desirability to it. Now we clearly use certain limits to describe healthy, at risk, and unhealthy cholesterol levels, but that did not just come into being the moment the cholesterol could be measured. That took a lot more work. Best, E |
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Well, of course nothing would exist if you were not here. That’s pretty obviously. On the other hand people see reality differently. While people may sometimes agree on what that reality is, especially for subjective reality like hearing and vision, they oft disagree. When I visit hither thither and yon and listen to people’s systems, or I’m going around to bug systems at shows, I’m oft tempted to say something unkind as regards the sound quality. Usually I hold my tongue or bite my tongue. 😛 I must hear things they don’t. I know I see things they don’t. I find that audiophiles as a general rule are 1) very high on the sound of their own systems and 2) get quite offended at any suggestion that their system sound is in any way lacking. So, sometimes silence is golden. |
- 175 posts total