objective vs. subjective rabbit hole


There are many on this site who advocate, reasonably enough, for pleasing one’s own taste, while there are others who emphasize various aspects of judgment that aspire to be "objective." This dialectic plays out in many ways, but perhaps the most obvious is the difference between appeals to subjective preference, which usually stress the importance of listening, vs. those who insist on measurements, by means of which a supposedly "objective" standard could, at least in principle, serve as arbiter between subjective opinions.

It seems to me, after several years of lurking on and contributing to this forum, that this is an essential crux. Do you fall on the side of the inviolability of subjective preference, or do you insist on objective facts in making your audio choices? Or is there some middle ground here that I’m failing to see?

Let me explain why this seems to me a crux here. Subjective preferences are, finally, incontestable. If I prefer blue, and you prefer green, no one can say either of us is "right." This attitude is generous, humane, democratic—and pointless in the context of the evaluation of purchase alternatives. I can’t have a pain in your tooth, and I can’t hear music the way you do (nor, probably, do I share your taste). Since this forum exists, I presume, as a source of advice from knowledgable and experienced "audiophiles" that less "sophisticated" participants can supposedly benefit from, there must be some kind of "objective" (or at least intersubjective) standard to which informed opinions aspire. But what could possibly serve better as such an "objective standard" than measurements—which, and for good reasons, are widely derided as beside the point by the majority of contributors to this forum?

To put the question succinctly: How can you hope to persuade me of any particular claim to audiophilic excellence without appealing to some "objective" criteria that, because they claim to be "objective," are more than just a subjective preference? What, in short, is the point of reading all these posts if not to come to some sort of conclusion about how to improve one’s system?

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The measurement does not exist alone...

It exist with all other actual, and others possible measurements...

I never say that audiophile can rival any measuring apparatus in his precise realm

of application...

I only say that objective measures and subjective appreciation must always be CORRELATED... It is the basic of psycho-acoustic...

Sound perception is a complex phenomenon measurable only in a complex array of measuring experiments and not reducible to them even today...Because we dont have a universal accepted theory of hearing but many one with their complete sets of unsolved problems...

And any acoustician know that it is sometimes more easy and more fast to use their ears to assess an acoustic situation than to measure...Then acoustic learning bias have a value which cannot be dismiss in favor of mere tools only for many reasons...

Ears and measures are not enemies they are allied...

I am not a pure subjectivist audiophile nor an Amir disciple...

And philosophy can help to understand why technology cannot replace science, nor our measures tools replacing the ears/brain way of "measuring" for now in the actual state of our many hearing theories...

I am a promotor of listening experiments at home to learn basic acoustic fact and experience... It is not science, even if based on some science, it is a playful art and the only way to learn how to listen by the way with musical training...Then i dont promote gear brand name like many audiophiles , i promoted acoustic listening experiments...

 

The only question that remains is can audiophile detect changes that measurements say do not exist. That is a yes/no question.

Sorry but your simplification is perhaps good when we face a specific technological problem in design to solve but in science complex situation are not always reducible to what our tool ask for...

For the time being some human listener can assess and evaluate complex acoustic situation which we only begin to discover few years ago...( my article on limit of usinbg only Fourier analysis to explain hearing for example)

 

Then dismissing the value of subjective experience is simplistic psycho-acoustically speaking...

I dont speak here about the design of amplifier and the measures that make them good design with a predictible potential good S.Q. i dont negate atmasphere psycho-acoustically informed thesis about measurements at all...

I spoke about a larger perspective including also psycho-acoustic which cannot be reduced to narrower and goal oriented technological objective attitude nor reduced to a mere and anecdotal subjective taste and stance......

 

Being a scientist you dont like philosophy perhaps, but being a philosopher i dont like technological short-cut when we face a complex problem.... 😁😊

 

 

More paragraphs. More ignoring the singular issue which is not even in the least bit complex. Either the two equal measuring components can be identified as different through listening alone or not. Stop complicating a ham sandwich. This is not a philosophical question.

We never listen to a SINGLE component...

We listen to a chain of events on different scale...

Then the set of measures which can make good design sound good exist yes, i never contested that, but nobody listen to an amplifier disconnected from a room /house/ system and without his own ears biases...

Then .....

The matter under discussion here is the objective/subjective rabbit hole...

It is a rabbit hole when subjectivist and objectivist are alone each one on their side...Not so much when we try to understand why two equal measured design components can be identified different indeed by listening alone, it is then a psycho-acoustic problem not a mere electronical problem...

It can be deceptive illusion yes, or it can be a more subtle perception linked to other factors than the measured design itself , which factors that this well measured design dont encompass or dont control... Than this question is way more complex than your simplistic alternatives yes or no, which is a challenge you tailor made to subjectivist hard core audiophiles here to put them in a corner...But i am not one of them...Neither a measuring zealots negating hearing experiments value .... Measuring the right things is way more complex that usually think anyway but being a scientist you know that already and better than me...

 

I understand that you dont like my observations but they are related to the matter of this thread anyway...

But i agree about my too numerous use of many words and i apologize.... But it is an another matter...

Stop to reduce psycho-acoustic problems to tool design or to amplifier design only... 😁😊

 

My deepest respect for you....In spite of my  annoying posts...

 

More paragraphs. More ignoring the singular issue which is not even in the least bit complex. Either the two equal measuring components can be identified as different through listening alone or not. Stop complicating a ham sandwich. This is not a philosophical question

 

 

Wow. Although I am a philosophy professor, and I have started "philosophical" discussions on this site before, I didn’t intend this one to be. "deludedaudiophile" is not deluded about this: all I was suggesting is that, if a forum like this exists to share informed opinions about the quality of gear (and I think that is its main purpose), then those opinions should be "informed" by more than just personal preference. They should be supported by "objective" "facts." The quotation marks are made necessary because of comments from mahgister (as usual), teo_audio ("the OP asked [for] it"), and several others. If you come here just to vent spleen or enthuse about your enthusiasm, fine; do that. But if you’re going to advocate for some audio technology, whether it be a brand, vinyl vs. digital, tubes vs. solid state, or whatever, I am open minded enough to be convincable. To convince me, however, you will have to make an argument of some kind. That is going to appeal to some set of values we hold in common as rational beings with bodies. These sorts of things are what I meant by "objective."

Of course, the objective is really just what a plurality of subjects agree about, as teo_audio was, I think, trying to say. We don’t experience the world itself, we experience a certain kind of sense input from the world which we process in our brains in a certain way. Different sorts of animals will experience the "same" reality differently. But there are, of course, features of our experiencing mechanism that we all share in common, if we are humans. That's why we all agree that it's "true" that 2+3=5 and that a straight line is the shortest path between two points. That shared reality is what we call "objective." It's really more like subjectively universal.

FWIW, and to placate mahgister, let me quote his beloved Goethe once more (I’m copying this from a previous thread that was deliberately "philosophical"): Goethe: "...it is possible to say that every attentive glance which we cast on the world is an act of thoerizing.... Theorizing is inherent in all human experience, and the highest intellectual achievement...would be to comprehend that everything factual is already theory." Goethe’s Faust ends with these great lines, which also conclude Mahler’s Eighth Symphony: "Alles vergängliche / Ist nur ein Gleichnis." Untranslatable, but basically the same idea expressed in prose in the words I just quoted—so, something like "Everything that passes / Is but a symbol [or parable]."

First, do not confuse my posts with teo-audio...Answer each one of us separetely we are not a GROUP save in your head perhaps...

Second, when Goethe was speaking about "every glance is a theorizing act" remember that he spoke about a totally grounded incarnated act from the onlooker BODY and MIND united not from a theorizing position outside the world...Goethe is an embodied mind philosopher BEFORE this philosophical position exist in science ( he read Spinoza and like it more than Kant)...I only insisted in my post about this embodied mind position of Goethe , which do not negate that every glance is a theorizing act but pointed to his body grounded origin ... It is the meaning of this deep maxim of Goethe : "history of science is science"... This is phenomenology before Husserl...Any theorizing act must be grounded in history and in the body....

 

 

Third if you teach philosophy you know how to read? no?

 

This is my post and this is yours side by side ... I say the samething as you in different words...

my post :

«

The external part of consciousness is our own body, the internal part of our consciouness appear to us or is reflected as the external world through our body....Think about colors and sound sensation and perception and judgement...

Objectivity is not an individual thought experiment "of a monkey in a meat body" but first and last a COLLECTIVE thought experiment...

It is the reason why science need, democray, freedom, and education to replenish itself from individual freedom and creativity...

If not, science will be impossible task...Objectivity is not an "illusion" it is a "meaning" focusing intentionality operated by a consciousness...Behind objectivity there is also an ETHICAL challenge...

Science is in no way reducible to technology...»

 

your post :

We don’t experience the world itself, we experience a certain kind of sense input from the world which we process in our brains in a certain way. Different sorts of animals will experience the "same" reality differently. But there are, of course, features of our experiencing mechanism that we all share in common, if we are humans. That’s why we all agree that it’s "true" that 2+3=5 and that a straight line is the shortest path between two points. That shared reality is what we call "objective." It’s really more like subjectively universal.

My post in no way contradict yours...

Then why attacking me with NO ARGUMENT save amalgamating my post with another poster ? my post is a correction and an answer to teo_audio post, which correction go in the same direction as you... Then why mixing me with teo-audio in your rant?

If you dont like me say i dont like you... But dont twist my argumentation linking it to another poster perspective , it is ridiculous...And dont try to use Goethe against me you will loose the argument...

Be ethical ...

I adress each poster individually and specifically... Try the same...