Why is science just a starting point and not an end point?

Thank you Atmasphere. 

Listening is important only as it applies to the individual. I know what I like to hear but that might not be what you want to hear. 

An amplifier that measures beautifully in the lab might sound very different in different installations due to interaction with the speaker's impedance curve. These interactions result in frequency response changes that are easily measured.   My ESLs will change dramatically with different amplifiers and all of them measure well. The ESLs will go from 30 Ohms down low to 1 ohm if you are lucky at 20 kHz. There is no surprise here at all. You have to get an amp that matches your speakers. Some speaker will sound the same with practically any amp, a high impedance speaker with a steady impedance curve. 

Subtle changes are just as likely to be imagined as real. It takes careful AB comparison to be sure. You have to know the limitation of human hearing and proceed with caution. You can not just declare that one amp sounds better than another when the changes are subtle. When an audiophile makes a bombastic , declarative statement they are more likely wrong than right. Intelligent listeners do not make statements like this. Any obvious difference has a reason that can be measured and usually occurs in the realm of frequency response. 

There is always a reason a piece of equipment sounds better. If your ears can hear it than it can be measured. Measuring devices are quantitatively far more accurate than your ears. I did not say measuring equipment is more sensitive than your ears. I suspect it is but I do not know for sure.

Can anybody please tell me what Magister is talking about? He lost me several posts ago. Must be my dyslexia.

Can anybody please tell me what Magister is talking about? He lost me several posts ago. Must be my dyslexia.

Dont make  of a possible useful tool a UNIQUE solution for all acoustic problem and for all people....

Helmholtz mechanical equalization work differently than electronical equalization without the SAME limitations ...

Instead of a tone frequency response for  static walls and for a microphone feedback....
Imagine a large bandwith response (an instrument timbre) crossing different dynamic  pressure zones of the room FOR YOUR EARS feedback

Now instead of the buttons and dials of your E.E. imagine the tuning by mechanical modification of the ratio volume/neck lenght-diameter of each Helmoltz resonators....

 Instead of listening to the  electronically modified frequency response of the speakers

imagine you listen to the tweeters and bass driver of each speakers marked out by many resonators mechanically modified so  and localized so to  help each ear to compute the direction of the sound and the way each eraly and late reflections will constitute each firt wavefront for each ear....

Then instead of creating a sweet spot which have an accuracy in millimeter with total chaos and no more usefullness out of this narrow spot which become no more sweet at all,

Think about a modification of ALL the room resonances with  the introduction  in many well choosen spots of a set of different pressure engines (helmholtz resonators).

The results: acoustic controls at will of imaging,soundstage,listener envelopment and source width and more importantly a control of the timbre experience which is music itself and no more only "sounds"....



BUT nothing is perfect.... It may be not practical for a living room BUT it is acoustically superior to control the room for the speakers instead of changing the speakers in relation to the room... 

We can use the two for sure, but advising people about electronical equalization ONLY AND MAINLY without speaking about his limitations is not the way....

And human ears dont listen TONE, they listen TIMBRE.....In music for eaxample a "tone" is a pitch perceived by the ears listening to a singer voicing it with his unique timbre....

Electronic is not acoustic and cannot replace it and acoustic is not music experience and cannot replace it ....They can be only relatively translated in one another...

Also mechanical equalization is more natural and less costly....


Then instead of making fun of me instead of arguments try to think out of your user manual booklet....

- Listenings experiments is the ONLY way to tune and fine tune the quality we ask for and which qualities are IMPOSSIBLE to deduce only from any set of measurements nevermind how big it is and how precise...


Why ?

Because many dimensions are at play which no limited measuring tools in their range of application can take into account simultaneously when what is designed is designed FOR ANOTHER HUMAN EARS....

All humans use the same hearing perceptual rules. For example, to sense sound pressure all human’s ear use the higher ordered harmonics. All human’s ears have a masking principle and so on.


Because there are a good number of measurements that never make it onto a spec sheet, IMO/IME the above quoted statement is false. If you understand the human hearing perceptual rules and design for them rather than a spec sheet you can easily design a circuit that will sound good the human ear.

All humans use the same hearing perceptual rules. For example, to sense sound pressure all human’s ear use the higher ordered harmonics. All human’s ears have a masking principle and so on.

You are absolutely right....

And it is IMPOSSIBLE to contradict that...

But the way human ears INTERPRET and PERCEIVE the sound experience in a specific room with specific gear is different for each of us...

It is the reason why in the publicity of the marketing of electronical equalizer company recommend it to make any consumers free to use it for different kind of music, different room, different TASTES....


Then affirming that there is a precise CORRELATION between electronical design and human perceiving experience is one thing and very true, but true also that no ears/brain will interpret exactly in the same qualitative terms all the conditions of a sound and musical experience...

This is why there is so good choices between so many different types of gear...

In my post then i was speaking about ALL factors and parameters in an audio experience not about the correlation between gear measurements and sound experience ONLY which is a fact of engineering like you had explained it very well in another post about amplifiers....

Perception of a color is the same for all human by law of physical optic, but many other parameters are at play that make the experience transcending optical physical law.... Psychological and neurophysiological laws and personal histories add also their weight...

It is Goethe who created neurophysiology of perception arguing against some limititations of Newton approach...The 2 goals of these 2 geniuses were DIFFERENT more than contradictory....

This is the same here....We have physical acoustic and psychoacoustic and the listener personal history....My post was about all that and were not a negation of the correlation bewtween measures and perception which is the basis of all audio technology...

On the other end reducing human perception to electronic design is NOT possible for the time being....Correlating is not reducing....In a word all factors pertaining to the audio experience and interpretation cannot be put in the design...

Bob Carver accepted the amplifier challenge from Stereophile, many years ago, and won. He showed that he could duplicate the sound of an expensive amplifier chosen by Stereophile with one of his amplifiers appropriately modified to sound the same. The staff of Stereophile could not identify any difference by extended listening tests over a couple of days. Bob didn't use a trial-and-error method and judge by listening to achieve his win. He used what he knew from experience and from scientific principles.

Bob used his extensive knowledge and experience in amplifier design to duplicate the transfer function of the expensive amp in his amplifier, to a sufficiently high degree to win the challenge. The "transfer function" is well-known to scientists and engineers.

He also knew that if a difference between the two amplifiers is made sufficiently low to be inaudible by human ears, then the listeners could not identify any difference between the two amps. He used science and knowledge of human hearing, thresholds of hearing.

@Millercarbon said it first in this thread, that science is a method. Bob used the scientific method, and technology by measurements of the amplifier to make both amplifiers sound indistinguishable from each other by listeners, without having to listen to either amplifier. 

The ears can be fooled. Scientists, composers, and musicians know this. That's why in a controlled scientific study, the interfering variables are either eliminated or controlled in a test. Sighted auditions of equipment without the proper controls are invalid to make scientific conclusions. Of course, one could make judgements and opinions of the sound - that's a starting point, not an end point.