Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?


It’s easy to make snide remarks like “yes- I do the opposite of what he says.”  And in some respects I agree, but if you do that, this is just going to be taken down. So I’m asking a serious question. Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything?  For me, I would say 2 things. I am a conservatory-trained musician and I do trust my ears. But ASR has reminded me to double check my opinions on a piece of gear to make sure I’m not imagining improvements. Not to get into double blind testing, but just to keep in mind that the brain can be fooled and make doubly sure that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. The second is power conditioning. I went from an expensive box back to my wiremold and I really don’t think I can hear a difference. I think that now that I understand the engineering behind AC use in an audio component, I am not convinced that power conditioning affects the component output. I think. 
So please resist the urge to pile on. I think this could be a worthwhile discussion if that’s possible anymore. I hope it is. 

chayro

It would seem that Amir is in fact a perfect example of the type of hobbyist that you describe here. A pure objectivist, who simply will not trust his ears regardless of what they are telling him, relying instead on what his vaunted measurements are showing. 

No.  Not true at all.  What you describing is a person like @soundfield.  He is the one that will ridicule you at mere mention that anything sounds different in audio.  He has no use for your ears or any possibility that technically something may have an audible effect.

Hey Amir, only one of us is an ex MS millionaire, I won't be able to afford it if you start charging me rent living inside your head!

Ok, so which is it, I have zero knowledge and do no measurements etc,like you claimed before, or all I do is measure and no listening like above??

Is there something called bipolar egomania? So essentially, these were based purely on measurements (which is actually true), but since I don't listen, got lucky that others are gobsmacked by the sound?

https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2019/03/17/florida-2019-soundfield-audio-vac-nad-big-sound-or-little-you-decide/

https://www.soundstageglobal.com/index.php/shows-events/florida-international-audio-expo-2023-tampa-usa/1060-fiae-2023-soundfield-audio-obelisk-t710-the-most-ambitious-loudspeaker-system-at-the-show

Is it possible that I do know what I'm doing and you have no clue what you're talking about? How many speakers did you measure prior to getting the NFS a year or 2 ago?

By the way when i spoke about "is our piece of gear the best well measured by technology, or is this piece of gear the best loved one by all listeners." i was speaking about amplifiers in the context of your criticism of Van Maanen opinion about circuits design and understanding, and the difference for testing when a piece of sine wave cross them or a bursts of music...Van Maanen insisted here on using more than just linear Fourier analysis of circuit but using also hearings experience and facts... Amplifier design evaluation is one thing... Speakers design another things, and speakers in small room acoustic one other thing and Speakers in great hall a complete different things... In all these case listenings as testing with measures are necessary... It is common place fact...
 
Anyway in speakers/room relation the link between subjective and objective is the HEART of the matter more so evidently than for amplifier design or dac design ... I myself already said multiple times, that subjectivists quarelling objectivists and the reverse are a war born from a misunderstanding of ACOUSTIC and psycho-acoustic with too much unilateral focus on gear design and not enough in psycho-acoustic ....
 
The fact that Dr. Toole research indicate a convergence between subjective and objective methods is then not at all surprizing and a fact long known from him ... Psycho-acoustic research is conducted by investigation about the difference and the convergence AT THE SAME TIMES...
Then your citation does not undermine my point about your way to deduce that all hearings qualities are measurable in a Fourier context here speaking about devices as dac and amplifiers...
I already own the bookof Toole by the way and consult it in the tuning process of my room ...
 
One thing is claiming as Toole ask for it to improve mass market speakers productions for better measured standards, which no one in his right mind can oppose to , but the research of Toole proving that human hearings appreciation converge with better measurements, As Dr. Choueri demonstrated also in his own way with his BACCH filters, does not means that human hearings perceiving qualities of an amplifier can be reduced to Fourier bag of tools nor that human hearings is reducible to some measuring rod ... In the opposite it is in the investigation and studying of the way Human hearing subjects identifies objects in space and localize them and perceived them as NATURAL that Dr. Choueri designed BETTER filters... Measures are the floor which where start good design, nobody argue with that but they are not the END OF THE JOURNEY... The ceilings is the high qualities erxtracted from the environment by our ears/brain working non linearly and in his own time oriented dimension..This is the study of the way the ears do that whch can always reveal new set of BETTER measures tomorrow.. Exactly how we learned yesterday that Fourier method are not enough to understand the ears...
 
Then citing Toole give no argument to your claim that human hearings is predictable on all his aspects and perfectly understood today... it is not....It do not justify also to push all subjective opinions as non motivated, illusory and worthless.. There is plenty of things to learn about hearings and new design to be created and improved... the goal of Toole was not to suppress hearing activity for the sake of measures , it was to demonstrate their inevitable convergence, to those two opposing side, the subjectivist and the objectivist two sides which anyway has no meaning as OPPOSITE sides in psycho-acoustic, because any good set of measures is set around human hearings distinctive qualitative perceptive power to EMULATE IT and giving him pleasure but not to REPLACE IT by a NORM ...A norm is an abstraction not a subjective act...
 
As i said mutiple times, thanks for your informative output about mass market design specs ...
But keep for you the ideology that human hearings is understood completely by some set of measures ... it is not for now... Creating better speakers with measures is one thing , reducing all audiophiles qualities vocabulary and all acoustic conceptual vocabulary to only one word "transparency", it is an industrial interesting motto, it is not enough to end psycho-acoustic research nor audiophile listenings subjective learnings and experience...
 
Nobody tune his room with blind test,and if measuring tools can be more accurate and save time, an acoustician can do it BY EARS alone if in the obligation to do so.. I did it and i am not an acoustician ... It was not perfect but astounding for me and at no cost... I learned a lot in the process...If i had the money to pay for an acoustician to do the job for me i would have learned NOTHING...My lack of money was my luck here...
 
We need blind test to assert some subtle perceived difference in mass market products , we dont need blind test to train our ears in a tuning process or as an amplifier designer refining his art from psycho-acoustic knowledge in new refined design ... it is useless to oppose subjectivist and objectivist ... One group must learn technological aspects, the other groups must learn humility... We dont know all about sound qualities and what makes them appealing or not... We know much but not all....Then proposing to erase the world "musicality" to replace it by "transparency" or "neutrality"  is not a solution... It is an ideology that had nothing to do with psycho-acoustic ...Toole will not approve this ideology...
 
 

Where this distinction between objectivist and subjectivist come from in audio and why there is now a complete DIVISION ?

it come not from science but from the efforts by technology and audio market , divided about the GEAR marketing PUBLICITY complementary strategies: is our piece of gear the best well measured by technology, or is this piece of gear the best loved one by all listeners ?

Well, I have great news for you: we at ASR use science for both because they are actually quite interrelated. Science is our friend and not our enemy as is the case for subjectivsts who care about nothing but "what my ears tell me."

Back in 1967 a PhD graduate of Imperial College in UK with specializing in psychoacoustics named Dr. Floyd Toole joined the new National Research Council in Canada to investigate what made a speaker more appealing to listeners than another. At that time, it was thought that everyone was different in their preference so there was room to build any and all speakers with whatever response.

He organized controlled blind tests and tested multiple speakers against each other. You know what popped out? That there was strong commonality in what listeners preferred. With no reference to what is "real," listeners agreed with what was good sound and what wasn’t. That this was no wild west.

What was even more fascinating was that measurements could, to a high degree explain and predict listener preference! That a speaker which had flat on-axis and smooth off-axis correlated quite well with listener preference.

The above was quite reassuring. That even in absence of a reference, we prefer an uncolored sound. The coloration is obvious when viewed in a special set of measurements called Spinorama. And reflected in US ANSI CEA/CTA-2034 standard.

Dr. Toole has risen to the level of top luminary in audio science for his incredible contribution to the field of sound reproduction rooms. His work (and that of his team) have hugely impacted how speaker are designed. Look at the response of this Genelec 8361A for example:

See the comments about flat on axis and excellent directivity? That is complying with this research. In case you don’t know who Genelec is, they are the top 2 or 3 brands in studio monitors (and likely the largest). Here is their German competitor, Neumann in the form of KH150:

See the similarity in the form of flat on-axis and controlled directivity?

These companies are no joke. The know the science and follow it. They know that a neutral measuring speaker is the right approach.

We are here due to generosity of Dr. Toole and his team in publishing everything they found in peer reviewed journals of ASA and AES. On the latter, AES bestowed the title of AES Fellow upon Dr. Toole. From this bio:

Dr. Toole’s research focused primarily on the acoustics and psychoacoustics of sound reproduction. Most notably, he established methods for subjective and objective evaluations which have been used to clarify the relationships between technical measurements of loudspeakers and listeners’ perceptions. All of this work was directed to improving engineering measurements, objectives for loudspeaker design and production control, and techniques for reducing variability at the loudspeaker/room/listener interface. For a papers on these subjects he received the Audio Engineering Society (AES) Publications Award in 1988 and, with Sean Olive, another in 1990.

So no, there is no dichotomy as you state it: " is our piece of gear the best well measured by technology, or is this piece of gear the best loved one by all listeners." Maybe not "all" but we know how to please vast majority of listeners with speaker measurements as a tool to predict that.

Now, if you haven’t been exposed to this science -- and i take it that you have not with that commentary -- I can see why this would be all a surprise. So I suggest getting started by buying Dr. Toole’s book and really getting educated in science of audio and preference:

Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms (Audio Engineering Society Presents)

It costs only $60 and will give an education that a million forum posts won’t. I suggest you put down those two silly papers on FFT which do nothing but confuse you and start reading this book.

We at ASR follow this science because we not only understand it, but also experienced it. I have attended the double blind test of speakers not once but twice at Harman. Dr. Toole is a personal friend and teacher. People who buy speakers like I show above have incredibly positive experience and satisfaction.

I have concluded from experience that there are things that I cannot hear. I don't hear differences in dacs or digital cables, or power conditioners. I don't hear jitter issues from digital sources, network switches and cables, or streaming devices, or distortion issues associated with feedback in solid state amplifiers. I don't hear the special magic in analog sources such as tape or vinyl, nor do I detect euphoric distortion from tube amplifiers. I don't hear differences from power cables or other expensive cables.

I'm not going to argue about whether other people hear these things or not. I only know with confidence that I can't hear them. 

What I'll claim I can hear clearly is shortcomings with the phantom center image when using only two speakers for stereo playback. Others claim they hear no problem with this in a properly setup system, and feel that it actually sounds superior to multi-channel systems or setups that employ some kind of inter-aural crosstalk reduction. I believe them. It's hard for me to fathom but they say they don't hear a problem even though they can hear all kinds of things I can't hear. 

I've been in a lot of showrooms over the years, several HiFi trade shows, and listened to high end systems in people's homes. To my ears, straight stereo two speaker playback ALWAYS has a particular sound to it, a degradation of the tone of center panned sounds that's unmistakable. It's a particular effect, and like Amir says about dipole planar speakers, I find it tiresome. 

So that's my problem. I have to deal with it. Those who don't hear it as a problem are lucky because they only have to buy two speakers and don't have to find a way to do any up-mixing. On the other hand, I'm lucky because I don't have to fuss over cables, dacs, streamers, power supplies and analog sources. 

It is like Amir and AJ own warring gas stations and throw matches at the other person. Neither of you answer. 

@soundfield I do not see measurements.

 

This whole thread is like watching a couple of old, slightly obese guys at a flea market arguing over whether the AMC Gremlin was a better car than the Pontiac Aztec.....either may or may not be right but it just isn't relevant.