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
Only if you count exclusively with prime numbers.

geoffkait21,251 posts04-23-2020 7:21amWell, looking on the bright side, we can create artificial atoms. That’s got to count for something.

Only if you count exclusively with prime numbers.
Educate yourself P-adic numbers are another kind of numbers than the real with a non Archimedean metric instead of an Archimedean one...We can "count" with numbers like some apes, but we can also "think" with the idea of numbers... :)

Shai Haran : the mysteries of the real prime

https://www.amazon.com/Mysteries-London-Mathematical-Society-Monographs/dp/0198508689

This is an introduction to non additive geometry....
By the way there is 2 parts in Godel proof of incompleteness...

The first brilliant idea THE MORE PROFOUND ONE is Godel numberings, with the PRIMES, which is a way to represent any formal system in a perfect non arbitrary way with natural numbers and speak about it in term of the properties of natural numbers...

The second part is the brillant and more spectacular construction of the famous formal sentence that is analogous to the Cretan paradox...The more well known part ...The first part being only a preparation mostly it seems to this second crucial part...

The first part is the more illuminative but underestimated one.... Guess why?

If you guess right you will begin to understand why Roger Penrose is right in spite of some illustrious logician critics that has attacked his argument rightfully it seems at first look, when he plead for the non- algorithmic nature of consciousness...

Even Godel, a mystic, has affirmed that we cannot distinguish between a robot and a living consciousness, using ONLY his result...( I was surprised that you dont used that like an objection when I speak about Godel-Penrose argument, this is on Wikipedia easy to spot) :)

Then why Penrose is and will be right about it in spite of Godel affirmation?

Try your brain (neural networks) on that ….

hint: the answer is not on Wikipedia.... :)


All that enigma is part of my own perception of the absoluteness of Primes existence and consciousness...

Atoms are almost vapour compared to the hardness reality of primes..

The human brain or a black hole has almost zero measure complexity compared to the prime numbers distribution which is of complexity almost measure one.....

And Consciousness is the only phenomenon there is ultimately....
Call it God if you are an atheist or a believer, which are only that: men of different faiths; call it also the most unknown part of yourself and of all that exist if you think and perceive it....

I am a constructivist Platonist.... :)

I am perhaps a fool... But you can guess that I think by myself at least.... My best to you.... Sorry for my arrogant rant.... But....it was not against you it was against arrogant "scientism"....
Getting back to the original subject for just a second the only way I would get really interested in philosophy of science or mathematics is if it could improve the sound. Unless AI or quantum computing or whatever has some direct or even indirect audio application that I can hear forget about it. Artificial atoms I can use, though, for improving sound. So I’m down for artificial atoms, AA as I like to call them.
«At the same time Godel himself, in his lecture [3], and after him many professional logicians
have criticized the anti-mechanist conclusion of Penrose as unjustified. Godel made the now famous, if often
insufficiently understood, remark that it is not excluded by his results that "there may exist (and even be
empirically discoverable) a theorem-proving machine which in fact is equivalent to mathematical
intuition, but cannot be proved to be so, nor even be proved to yield only correct theorems on finitary number
theory." »

Topics in Logic, Philosophy and Foundations of Mathematics and Computer ScienceIn Recognition of Professor Andrzej Grzegorczyk by S. Krajewski, p.174


If someone ask for the reason why Penrose is right in spite of that... I will explain it....I dont want to annoy anybody and it seems my times is overdone.... :)