I have a realtor who has sent me hundreds of listings of homes sold in my area and I am totally amazed I have yet to see one home with pictures showing two speakers standing in one room of their house. I have also seen only a few where they have a built in surround system when watching TV and movies. How can people purchase a $5,000 entertainment center and listen to the TV speakers. Why don't they realize 80% of the the experience watching movies is sound? A good example of this is the new movie, Ford Vs Ferrari. What is the audio industry doing to make people aware of a good sound system as a new platform for entertainment? Why aren't they running TV commercials to promote their gear and to promote sound? No wonder this industry is in trouble. It is their fault and they should not complain about how bad business is.
Maybe being discerning isn't that good for us?
A topic I touch on now and then, I think about what the average person hears, what I hear, and what it means to be discerning. What good is it for us, our community, and the industry?
I’ll touch on a couple of clear examples. I was at a mass DAC shoot out and spoke with one of the few ladies there. To paraphrase her, she said this:
I never had that problem, but we both experienced a significant improvement in sound quality at about the same time. Lets take her statement as 100% true for this argument.
On the other hand, I am completely insensitive to absolute phase issues which some claim to be. I’m also VERY sensitive to room acoustics, which many fellow audiophiles can completely ignore.
Lets assume the following:
I’ve also found the concept of machine learning, and neural networks in particular truly fascinating. In areas of medical imaging, in specific areas such as breast cancer detection, neural networks can be more accurate than trained pathologists. In the case of detecting early cancer, discernment has an obvious advantage: More accuracy equals fewer unnecessary procedures, and longer lives, with less cost. Outstanding!!
Now what if, like the trained neural networks, I could teach myself to be sensitive to absolute phase? This is really an analog for a lot of other things like room acoustics, cables, capacitors, frequency response, etc, but lets stick to this.
Am I better off? Did I not in fact just go down a rabbit hole which will cause me more grief and suffering? Was I not better before I could tell positive vs. negative recording polarity?
How do you, fellow a’gonner stop yourself, or choose which rabbit holes to go through? Ever wonder if you went down one too many and have to step back?
I’ll touch on a couple of clear examples. I was at a mass DAC shoot out and spoke with one of the few ladies there. To paraphrase her, she said this:
Only with DACs made in the the last few years can I listen to digital music without getting a headache.
I never had that problem, but we both experienced a significant improvement in sound quality at about the same time. Lets take her statement as 100% true for this argument.
On the other hand, I am completely insensitive to absolute phase issues which some claim to be. I’m also VERY sensitive to room acoustics, which many fellow audiophiles can completely ignore.
Lets assume the following:
- The lady really did get headaches due to some issue with older DACs
- There really are people very sensitive to absolute phase.
I’ve also found the concept of machine learning, and neural networks in particular truly fascinating. In areas of medical imaging, in specific areas such as breast cancer detection, neural networks can be more accurate than trained pathologists. In the case of detecting early cancer, discernment has an obvious advantage: More accuracy equals fewer unnecessary procedures, and longer lives, with less cost. Outstanding!!
Now what if, like the trained neural networks, I could teach myself to be sensitive to absolute phase? This is really an analog for a lot of other things like room acoustics, cables, capacitors, frequency response, etc, but lets stick to this.
Am I better off? Did I not in fact just go down a rabbit hole which will cause me more grief and suffering? Was I not better before I could tell positive vs. negative recording polarity?
How do you, fellow a’gonner stop yourself, or choose which rabbit holes to go through? Ever wonder if you went down one too many and have to step back?
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- 60 posts total
larry5729, When you read some of the extravagant claims made regarding the audio of some of the latest high-end LED and OLED screens you can't really blame the owners for not realising that these plug and play products may not be the last word in sonics. Whether we can blame the ultra conservative audio industry is another matter. For sure there are some awful sounding TVs out there. |
Larry,it is all a matter of priorities. Geoffkait, look in the mirror:) Absolute polarity does not matter much. I can change it at will by remote control and as hard as I try I can not hear the difference. But, delay a subwoofer 0.3 ms (about 3 feet) and yikes! Changing the absolute polarity of the subwoofers vs the satellites is an interesting subject. Some people prefer it this way but I think that is because their subwoofers are not phase and time correct with the satellites. With corrected subs same absolute phase as the satellites is always better and I'm pretty sure if everyone here could here it they would agree. |
larry5729 ... I spent 40 years in the residential real estate business. As a result, I have been inside thousands and thousands of homes. It always amazed me how many homes contained no music and no books. Big-screen TVs? Yes. Video games? Yes. But no music and no books. In that entire 40 years, I only saw two high-end systems. One contained a pair of Maggies, and a Linn turntable with a Koetsu Rosewood cartridge. The other one had a pair of the big Apogees with all-digital, no vinyl. Go figure Frank |
- 60 posts total