IM Distortion, Speakers and the Death of Science


One topic that often comes up is perception vs. measurements.

"If you can't measure it with common, existing measurements it isn't real."

This idea is and always will be flawed. Mind you, maybe what you perceive is not worth $1, but this is not how science works. I'm reminded of how many doctors and scientists fought against modernizing polio interventions, and how only recently did the treatment for stomach ulcers change radically due to the curiosity of a pair of forensic scientists.

Perception precedes measurement.  In between perception and measurement is (always) transference to visual data.  Lets take an example.

You are working on phone technology shortly after Bell invents the telephone. You hear one type of transducer sounds better than another.  Why is that?  Well, you have to figure out some way to see it (literally), via a scope, a charting pen, something that tells you in an objective way why they are different, that allows you to set a standard or goal and move towards it.

This person probably did not set out to measure all possible things. Maybe the first thing they decide to measure is distortion, or perhaps frequency response. After visualizing the raw data the scientist then has to decide what the units are, and how to express differences. Lets say it is distortion. In theory, there could have been a lot of different ways to measure distortion.  Such as Vrms - Vrms (expected) /Hz. Depending on the engineer's need at the time, that might have been a perfectly valid way to measure the output.

But here's the issue. This may work for this engineer solving this time, and we may even add it to the cannon of common measurements, but we are by no means done.

So, when exactly are we done?? At 1? 2? 5?  30?  The answer is we are not.  There are several common measurements for speakers for instance which I believe should be done more by reviewers:

- Compression
- Intermodulation ( IM ) Distortion
- Distortion

and yet, we do not. IM distortion is kind of interesting because I had heard about it before from M&K's literature, but it reappeared for me in the blog of Roger Russel ( http://www.roger-russell.com ) formerly from McIntosh. I can't find the blog post, but apparently they used IM distortion measurements to compare the audibility of woofer changes quite successfully.

Here's a great example of a new measurement being used and attributed to a sonic characteristic. Imagine the before and after.  Before using IM, maybe only distortion would have been used. They were of course measuring impedance and frequency response, and simple harmonic distortion, but Roger and his partner could hear something different not expressed in these measurements, so, they invent the use of it here. That invention is, in my mind, actual audio science.

The opposite of science would have been to say "frequency, impedance, and distortion" are the 3 characteristics which are audible, forever. Nelson pass working with the distortion profile, comparing the audible results and saying "this is an important feature" is also science. He's throwing out the normal distortion ratings and creating a whole new set of target behavior based on his experiments.  Given the market acceptance of his very expensive products I'd say he's been damn good at this.

What is my point to all of this?  Measurements in the consumer literature have become complacent. We've become far too willing to accept the limits of measurements from the 1980's and fail to develop new standard ways of testing. As a result of this we have devolved into camps who say that 1980's measures are all we need, those who eschew measurements and very little being done to show us new ways of looking at complex behaviors. Some areas where I believe measurements should be improved:

  • The effects of vibration on ss equipment
  • Capacitor technology
  • Interaction of linear amps with cables and speaker impedance.

We have become far too happy with this stale condition, and, for the consumers, science is dead.
erik_squires
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Again, I come back to you are assigning "special" qualities to living creatures for which there is no evidence must be unique and exclusive from artificial intelligence.
Read about biological nano machines and molecular biology.... Be astonished! Plato said that being astonished is the first step of thinking....He is right, the phenomena that would make someone astonished are almost so varied than the difference between human characters...Without astonishment I dont think that the thinking process go very far.... By definition machine cannot be astonish at all...

My first astonishment and the most profound one were poetic experience at 15 years old and number theory at 24 years old.... For Darwin it was animals and flora... Many examples were anywhere to read about....


« Astonishment is contemplation without end, it is the reason why I miss the stop sign» Groucho Marx  
You have to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey 👨‍🚀 and Blade Runner 🦉 and Artificial Intelligence A.I. 🤖  to fully understand AI.
In their report, Scholze and Stix argue that a line of reasoning near the end of the proof of “Corollary 3.12” in Mochizuki’s third of four papers is fundamentally flawed. The corollary is central to Mochizuki’s proposed abc proof.
Perhaps your own opinion is dependent of other not mine :)


You exactly prove the point you accuse others to... To be slave of the official general opinion in newspaper or citing others like a proof of your opinion....

My understanding of this is not linked to these mathematicians opinions.... I think by myself …. :)


It is normal tough, because you have no way to know who is right in this debate, or even having a guess about who is right or who is not.... :) Like for the algorithm concept which you dont know the encompassing power believing that quantum computer would magically abolish the limit of algorithm thinking for A.I....

Do you think that I was not conscious of this debate about Mochizuki Theory that is not a simple proof of the ABC conjecture but a totally new mathematic like none before ? 

A proof can only be a proof if you can also understand the central vision in a theory....Without the right concepts no logical reasonings can works for "some" proof ….


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