Hans Van Maanen is a working physicist in fluid dynamics and a top published expert and designer in Audio with his own "temporal coherence" brand name speakers and amplifiers...
Who must we trust?
Someone who work with basic psycho-acoustic and design his audio components from it or Amir debunking "audiophiles" ?
As i already said, thanks to Amir for information debunking market specs of gear...But the bucks stop here... His bashing of audiophiles is not based on psycho-acoustic facts but on techno babble ideology ... Debunking is perhaps a field work because someone verify specs numbers thats all; but it is NOT SCIENCE NOR DESIGNING in audio it is only some technological tools choices applied for some NARROW goal ...
And bashing audiophiles is ridiculous enterprise... Why? Because there is too much difference between audiophiles themselves, and putting them in the same trash bin is RIDICULOUS... And bashing human hearing because of alleged limits in Hertz and Decibels is a common place argument ignoring the non linear nature and the time dependant dimension where the ears really work beating Fourier uncertainty principle; then bashing those who use their ears without even knowing psycho-acoustic basic facts it is ignorance and/or some marketing propaganda for some goal of his own ...
Now look at the article for the context about these remarks by Van Maanen ...
«Feedback seems like a miracle cure for all shortcomings of audio equipment. Yet, in the ‘high-end’ audio community, many critics on feedback can be found. It is beyond discussion that the specifications of many semiconductor amplifiers are far superior to those of loudspeakers and vacuum tube amplifiers, yet this correlates not well with the perceived quality of the equipment. How come? And why is it possible to hear differences between amplifiers with distortions two orders of magnitude lower than the loudspeakers one needs to listen to these amplifiers? Are certain phenomena overlooked and, if so, what can we learn to improve the perceived quality of equipment? This paper analyses some pitfalls and parasitic
effects of feedback and gives directions for improvement of the perceived quality. This was confirmed by designing amplifiers, derived from this analysis, using unconventional lines in which listening by music experts was regarded as more important than measurement results. It showed that parasitic effects occur in amplifiers with global feedback, which are often disregarded, because these do not show up with the usual derivation of the equations for systems with feedback. These parasitic effects lead to the introduction of artefacts, which are
specific for systems with feedback. This is surprising, as the common idea is that feedback only suppresses undesired phenomena, but is an unambiguous result from the analysis, presented in this paper, which also shows that the commonly used equations for feedback are flawed. On top of this, several (underlying) assumptions about the properties of the amplifier are also incorrect.
Suppression of these parasitic effects requires linearization of the individual amplification stages as much as possible and by designing the amplifier in such a way that other properties are as close to the assumptions as possible, in combination with a constant, but moderate, feedback factor over the entire audio range. The testing of equipment using continuous sinewaves does often not reveal these parasitic effects as these only show up in the dynamic response of the amplifier to music-like signals. The simplistic approach that the sinewave response enables the prediction of the behaviour under all conditions ignores the conditions under which the Fourier theory may be applied and leads therefore to incorrect results and conclusions. Which is why there is a great need for well-defined dynamic test signals, but as long as these are not available, human hearing
remains for the time being the best piece of ‘measurement equipment’ which can be used...»
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«The designer should realize that global feedback can only be applied to a limited extent and that the dynamic behaviour of the amplifier to music-like signals is (far) more important for the perceived quality than distortion figures, in line with the findings of refs. 3 and 4. These probably explain a part of the audible differences between amplifiers or other electronic audio equipment, which cannot be understood from the distortion figures and has given feedback a
bad name in certain high-end audio circles. Such artefacts are therefore hard, in many cases not at all, measurable using continuous sinewaves. As music is a textbook example of such a dynamic process, this is likely to be crucial for the determination of the perceived quality of an amplifier. So more complex test signals, which represent non-steady, multi-spectral conditions, as occur in music, are needed. As long as such test signals are not agreed on,
human hearing is still the best “measurement” instrument available.......<
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It can be remarked that critical comments from high-end audio enthusiasts are often scornfully put aside by technology experts as “non-scientific” small talk from freaks who do not understand the theory. The author strongly disagrees with this view as too often critical remarks from people with “golden ears” did make sense, albeit that it was initially absolutely nunclear what the technical or scientific background was. Such remarks did help the development team to further improve the equipment, even though it would have been very hard to show the effect of the individual steps in a scientific way. But the progress over the years is beyond discussion...»
https://www.temporalcoherence.nl/cms/images/docs/FeedbackFlaws.pdf