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

In terms of throwing out those "professionals", I would have to throw you out as well for your insistence on only your way when your luminaries don’t even say what you claim.

The luminaries not only say what I say, if you knew them personally as I do, but do as I say. Here is Dr. Toole’s California room (he is selling and moving to Canada):

Does this look like it has a bunch of crap acoustic products all over as you claimed people should put in their living spaces? It doesn’t right?It even has a TV in the middle!

Just like my room, standard furnishing is used to provide adequate overall absorption so that the room is not too live. That’s all. He uses multiple subs with advanced DSP (soundfield management) to get excellent bass across multiple seats. This is science. This is science in practice. This is science that doesn’t uglify your room to create great satisfaction.

@mahgister

 

"Doubting is not self doubting first and using blind test as childish thinking from Amir indicate, it is doubting what is taught and experimenting with it to LEARN IT OR TO REFUTE IT by experience and trust in ourself ."

That’s literally NOT what Feynman said. He wasn’t saying "doubt others" and "trust yourself.  His point was very specifically about YOU...the person with the hypothesis/experimenter.

Try actually addressing SPECIFICALLY what Feynman said in that quote:

FEYNMAN: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself

Why would that be the first principle? What are ways we can fool ourselves, mahgister?

and you are the easiest person to fool.

Why is Feynman so concerned to point out that YOU are the easiest person to fool (that is, fooling ourself)? WHY are we the easiest person to fool? What do you think Feynman means by that, and why it is so important to account for it in our method?

 

 

 

 

 

A living room is not a dedicated small acoustic room ... Toole dont need to experiment with acoustic in his living room, but that does not means that living room are ideal for musical soundfield... Some buy 15,000 costlier electronic piece... Some other experiment with room acoustic at no cost..

But how do you know that my acoustic room was screwed because it was only dedicated to my ears nothing else ? I dont need esthetic... for sure... i need immersiveness a good ratio between sound sources and my listening position..Speakers which disapear for ever and dont exist at all... We can tune a room for any relatively well design speakers of any type by the way and we can optimize them for our ears .. I cannot do that in a living room...😊 For sure we can have a good sound in a living room modulo some wise installation... but there is level of immersiveness...A living room cannot be a dedicated acoustic roomno more than a dedicated acoustic room could be an anechoic chamber..

You may be satisfy by a living room...i was not...my basic system is 600 bucks not 50,000 bucks...

And your claim reflected complete misunderstanding of acoustic : it is the ratio that matter, the ratio of reflected /absorbing /diffusing surfaces and volumes...This ratio exist already in ANY room ,but is different in any room , with or without acoustic tuning; the acoustic controls will only change it for the best and for your own ears filters...it is an INCREMENTAL process that take TIME... it is why a professional acoustician will charge you 100,000 bucks and it will be esthetical and more perfect than mine...but mine was astoundingly better after compared to before... At banana costs..

And this ratio between diffusion/absorbtion/reflection change from one room to another function of geometry, topology acoustic content and dimensions and time and timing and this ratio must be adapted to your ears..

I just go on ASR and read a discussion between a designer speaking about the non linear nature of the ears then he adressed that by the way he used second and third harmonics in his design , and ignorant and arrogant people attacked him immediately because as yourself they think that the ears process sound linearly ... It is incredible to be so ignorant about hearing theory and pretend to be a specialist...Their ears only like NO DISTORTION it seems ... very comical... the psycho-acoustic of their ears is different from us ordinary mortals...they have "golden ears" affected by distortion negatively... Us the great majority of human kind we are affected positively if the design is good... it was comical to read...

The soundfield we listen to for you come from gear with no distortion at all in a room with preferably no ACOUSTIC installation .... It is incredible for me it reflect ignorance about the psycho-acoustic basics, the soundfield is created mainly by the speakers/controlled Room/ ears acoustic TRINITY...And amplifier designer know that the ears listen non linearly then some harmonics matter more than others.. Consult non linear in wikipedia to guess why...

You are completely deluded by the gear design being so called "transparent" with no distortion, hypnotized by a set of linear measures who masked your complete ignorance of what human ears hears and how it decode it non linearly, meaning distortion at some levels are positive reinforcement at other level negative... And the fact that the ears live in a time dependant domain KILL all your pretense to reduce what we hear ONLY AND MAINLY to linear set of Fourier measures on the electronic chips...We need room acoustic too... Or a Choueri dac filtering system based on our personal ears filters measured to eliminate the room acoustic problem ... Guess why Choueri measure EACH PAIR OF EARS ?

i prefer Audiogon... Even if ASR is informative because all participants are not arrogant as many there ...

By the way:

Did i invent the ears non linearity working to win an argument ?

Did i invent the crucial observations about natural sounds qualities from ecological theory of hearings to complement Foourier theory of hearings and the advantage of this ecological theory suggesting different set of experiments  in research about hearing impairment for example  ?

Did i invent the concept that the laws of acoustic being the same UNIVERSALLY ; in Great Hall, audio studio, living room and small dedicated acoustic room, their APPLICATION differ completely ? They are specialized acoustic research field...Guess why ?

Did i invent that the way the ears process sound in his time dependant way had an impact on what we call "musical qualities" especially if by ignorance we reduce them to some narrow set of measures on some piece of gear  ?

Did i invent the concept that there is only one center and one focus  for  audio design and audio experience : acoustic and psycho-acoustic, not ONLY AND  MAINLY  the gear market of those who measure it as you, or those who design it ( with wise level of distortion for the benefit of our hearings) ?

I invent nothing of that , they are facts...

 

Some people want to make it their life project to screw around with their room acoustics. That is not me. I have function and aesthetic needs that they do not have.

Claiming that people should go and absorb reflections as you claimed is simply wrong advice for huge swath of audiophiles. It is misinformation that leads to people agonizing the sound of their room, wasting a ton of money and often arrive at too dead of the room.

 

 

“Why these continued personal remarks?  Why not stick to the technical topic and leave it at that?  Every one of you is doing this.  How do you not sit back and realize that is bad ...”

 

Because of your attitude and attacks on anyone that disagrees with you.

Your elitist, snobby, insulting and personal attacks on people.

 

As I said, this is how I perceive @amir_asr both from the way he runs his site and his, often lengthy and/or contemptuous posts: 

 

“Insects have been measured to be superior to cattle for human consumption. {insert copy/pasted 2000 line post with “proof of claims” here}

If you don’t eat the Insects, it is because you have not “trained your palette ” to like what measures best. So your “opinion” of what is pleasing to your palette is not only vulgar, but dismissed. You are obviously nothing more than a plebe”

just the facts. That seems to be Amir. 

 

And he will make 1000 line posts that are, maybe, tangentially, relevant.  The old, “if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit” routine, coupled with his insulting, belittling and “excommunicate the bourgeois” postings attacking any who refuse his “wisdom from on high” just makes my skin crawl.

Prof this is my post above reduced to the essential part :

«Then this quote means this : for being able to not fool himself a man must LEARN when it is right to trust himself and not others and vice versa when it is right to trust others not himself..Not knowing that TIMING MOMENT explain why we are the easiest person to fool... "

This is my exact sentence above...

Any hypothesis/experiment must be created by ourself and with trust in ourself to BEGIN WITH , then dont fool yourself, think if it is about time to go with your trust in yourself or to go with some trust in other advice, ideas, hypothesis or new experiment... The hard task is KNOWING if it is the time to trust you or others... If someone dont learn that he will always fool himself because we are the easiest to fool when we dont know better and never learn to listen the TIMING signs around us ...

I did not contradict Feynman claim AT ALL about the fact that human fool easily themselves...

You use this in a Barnum simplistic way to criticize Rodman about his ideas...

I dont like the way "objectivist" mind or tool obsessed people use this sentence OUT OF ANY CONTEXT...

Feynman never intended his public to doubt themselves or loose confidence in themselves or stop to trust themselves...He means that we fool ourselves any time if we dont LEARN if it is the time to trust only ourselves or the time  trust an other... THIS TIMING  MUST BE LEARNED THE HARD WAY...It is the reason why people fool themselves easily , they did not learn this timing  lesson...Feynman dont means common place fact he means serious thinking by his sentence ..

Any other interpretation is meaningless because instead of being a serious advice it will be reduced to a simplistic evident  common place fact as a Barnum motto : a sucker is born every day... A genius is born everyday too mr. Barnum ..

We can fool ourself in two way : trust only in ourself but also trust only in others... The difficulty is to learn if the moment is right to trust ourself only or right to trust instead another advice.. Anyway it takes more faith in ourself to listen other that to go always in our own way... But there is no creativity without absolute faith in ourself...

We are the easiest person to fool because we dont know why it is time to go alone or to listen others... Simple...

You cannot fool wise man... Why ?

And wise man dont fool themselves .. Why?

They had learned to listen to the MOMENT, but also to others and to themselves , what is this MOMENT about in my life, hypothesis, experiment etc is for, ?

Why are we the easiest to fool ourselves ?

Because we dont want to learn and listen the MOMENT ...What this moment is for ?

Any other interpretation is trivial... A common place fact...

Feynman was not in the gear debunking market and his advice is not for a customer 😊 and he learned how to trust himself or his fellow physicists when it was the right time to do as a bull or the time to listen as a owl...If you dont learn that your fool yourself ALL THE TIME...

i dont see how my interpretation diminish his sentence... Why wise men never fool themselves ? It is because  they listen not only themselves and others they had learn how to listen and READ the MOMENT in time...

 

The best example ever of someone who never fooled himself and was never fooled by others  is Salomon judgement about the two mothers and the only one baby... What did Salomon did ?

Instead of fooling himself in picking what seems to be  the more trustful mother by questioning them but risking to be fooled by the most crafty of them; he decided  suddenly to cut the baby in two and look at the mothers face  and spontaneous reaction ..." Give him the baby Majesty said one "... The real mother for sure...

Salomon did not fool himself ever, he listen the MOMENT and acted the right way letting the moment speak instead of deciding the mothers quarelling speech..

Feynman is like Salomon character in physics not a Barnum character especially if we read the story of his path integrals ...

 

«Let not fool ourself, there is no difference between you and me, we must just pick the right one at the right time »--Groucho Marx 🤓

 

That’s literally NOT what Feynman said. He wasn’t saying "doubt others" and "trust yourself. His point was very specifically about YOU...the person with the hypothesis/experimenter.

Try actually addressing SPECIFICALLY what Feynman said in that quote:

FEYNMAN: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself

Why would that be the first principle? What are ways we can fool ourselves, mahgister?

and you are the easiest person to fool.

Why is Feynman so concerned to point out that YOU are the easiest person to fool (that is, fooling ourself)? WHY are we the easiest person to fool? What do you think Feynman means by that, and why it is so important to account for it in our method?