The way that humans hear can be studied and our understanding is improving all the time. Some measurements can detect certain problems, but not everything. Improvements in the science of psychoacoustics are happening all the time, and yet many in the audio world have not even caught up with the old knowledge from that realm.
I submit that if music can be recorded and reproduced in a way that pleases people, then it can be measured. Or, to put it another way, if the goal of measurement is completely futile, then recording itself must be futile.
It is important that we get back on track with how to make better sounding audio equipment. There is nothing wrong with measurements, I use them all the time. I have a whole room full of test equipment, but it is not 'enough' to be sure that a specific passive component is the best. Also, it is quite possible that a single component might not be responsible for the 'sound character' of a particular piece of audio equipment. It might be the contributions of dozens of resistors, capacitors, connectors, wires, etc. that makes a passible performer into a marginal performer, yet most traditional measurements may not give enough of a result over the test 'residual' to make any meaningful evaluation. What this implies, is that with SPECIAL testing, with high signal averaging, for example 'might' show a measurable distortion, but at a level so low that one resistor alone, might not make a huge difference. But put a dozen similar resistors in the circuit, add a few ceramic caps, etc, and you might as well go to the nearest Walmart or its equivalent and buy something similar, off the shelf, saving you time and money, and getting the same sort of 'compromises' that I am warning about.
The ear-brain combination is quite the complex device, to say the least... and it commands the biggest chunk of the brain's wiring, as systems of sensing -goes. Then there is also the aspect of inherent wiring of the individual and the ability to learn with the ears, like all the the other systems of the human body/edifice. Each individual will have their given capacity (in whatever way, limit, and direction). Some will be better than others. Not a single one is the same as another.
For example, when I was working quite hard at loudspeaker development, I could separate, in the live response or sound... the given individual panel responses from one another within the overall presentation of the loudspeaker system. Simply as I had gone through the effort of learning how, as well as having the native capacity or wiring for this endeavor -in the first place.
The first step to being right about something -- is to discard the old or the wrong. But the discard, and thus the mental discord..must happen first, then the new can get in. So one must let go of the old, before the new can arrive.
It was just enough, John.
I won't do it any other way myself.
it goes back to those things I've said over and over again, regarding the ear vs electrical function at the quantum interface level. The noise is not at the bottom of the signal as a minor bit... it is at the top of the signal as a minor bit, and affects the entire signal's recognition by the ear. PERIOD.
Why can't some engineers understand that? in many cases it's due to how they were trained. That 'distortion' is minor bit and thus unimportant. This is wrong as the ear hears sum totals of signal, and the small bits of noise are modulating the sum...and the ear only hears the peak value of the sum transient positive edge, nothing else. so it does indeed hear and recognize the minor bits of noise.
As an effort to combat this ignorance (some of it apparently willful) i designed a method of conducting a signal that did away with the complex impedance function,and allowed the plasma aspect of signal to propagate naturally. to remove the noise, as it where.
You see, complex impedance is a result of the lattice polarization and alignment, how such a structure handles electron flow. Complex LCR is a mass aggregate measurement of this quantum function aspect.
When the complex fields integrate and interact with the given lattice structure, this becomes a notable component of what we call the 'sound' of a material.
i did away with all of that, which is why every time we've had our product at a show, we've gotten a review out of it (for some component in the room), or received a 'best of show'. every time, without fail.
People are so used to listening to the noise in systems, due to this quantum level of interference in conductive lattice structures...that they have no idea what signal transmission is like WITHOUT the noise.
Like trying to get people to understand that they are an animated meat puppet, something that is trapped in a body with an ego - they identify with the self so much that they cannot separate these aspects and make the distinction.
Similarly, differential is now provided, so the original problem can now be seen for what it is, seen as the problem that it is, and for some of you -for the first time. Even then, many have problems understanding that the noise they've heard all their lives is gone and it never was part of the music.
Thus, with nearly no noise caused by electron orbital jumping in an enforced manner (from a frozen lattice) and with plasma function in the static and dynamic sense, we get almost no impedance reflections... and the ability to transmit/transfer POWER square waves in the XX Ghz range.
And people get to hear signal transfer with no noise..for the first time in their lives.
People asked for white sheets, measurements, etc. I did what seems flippant but is instead... a real world test. I used our reference speaker cable (3 of the 4 pieces of a stereo pair), terminated with spades..to transmit 1080P component video from a bluray player to a monitor.
Last edited:
Or not.
Remember your disappointment, listening to the first Digital copy of old Beatles records.
Analog tapes, with they hisses, where a foundation to build solid and structured mixes on it. A ground zero. With the hours on long mixing sessions, with silent digital equipments, you can make serious mistakes, because the loss of this reference. You will be obliged to look more at the vu-meters.
Too, about our pleasure (and, did hifi and music something else than a research of pleasure ?) The curtain of noises in the vinyls where a place to seed our imaginations. And, yes, some disappointments when our dreams where killed by the analytic cruelty of the CDs.
About measurements, i believe that is the only way to work, when you're about designing some equipment. Because it is objective , neutral and reproducible, because it indicate the direction to go between a magma of informations. And because our ears do exactly the contrary: Our feelings depends on our memory, culture, moods, auto suggestions.
The only problem is we have to correlate what we measure with the means it had when ears comes in the story. To resume: a long run to know what we measure, how to do this, and what each change in measurement will mean in our sensations.
We still have a lot to learn about the way our listening system works (ears and brain witch treats the information). When changes can be noticed in megahertz and our ears not able to notice sines waves upper than 16000hz ?
The only way is to design with our experience, improve with measurements, and listen listen listen, then changes, measure again and listen... Till you're satisfied. Till we understand how this difference in measurements had changed the listening experience. Agree ?
And even here, each engineer is looking for something witch is very personal. One is fighting for sound-stage, or warm, an other for dynamic....
One will mostly compare components quality, an other schematics...
(apologize for my poor English.)
Last edited:
Add noise and your headache would disappear. That's paradoxical reality.
I agree that measuring a unit is important and I agree that different combinations of parts are contributing ...
Ok, that's it, and assuming if we measure the same circuit in different parts combination we will get nearly the same results (within a given tolerance).
But why sound these circuits different, which is the better one? And diferent listeners will choose or prefer different circuits. Some of them will choose the same, but what, or better how, can I measure such sonical results?
Unless I totally misunderstand what you're saying, here, your statements are completely at odds with the extensive testing done in the psychoacoustics realm by, e.g., Bell Laboratories.
Distortion is not unimportant. Otherwise there would not be competition amount guitar amplifier distortion variations. Granted, certain levels and types of distortion are euphonic, but it isn't accurate to lump all kinds of distortion into the same category of 'unimportant.'
On a similar note, there are many kinds of noise, too. Some noise is unimportant, so long as it is uncorrelated and sufficiently low in amplitude. But I wouldn't say that noise is unimportant categorically, because correlated noise, especially digital quantization noise, can be quite harsh.
This is important.
When I say "noise", I mean something close to white noise, not something like quantization noise.
Sometimes the fight for noiseless recordings leads to technical, non-natural sound, and small amount of added noise in fact helps.
I think that what you are saying is not at odds with the vast research that I refer to. I do not recall any specific tests with such low levels of noise, but what you say is not inconsistent. (They did notice that humans have a hard time in an anechoic chamber because it's impossible to gauge the distance to a sound source - i.e., it's super easy to sneak up right behind someone even if you're talking to them the whole time!).
I will add that white noise is usually Gaussian, which is a mathematic pattern found throughout nature. I'm not surprised that adding it can help.
Who says that ? There is no more problem about space localization that in a snowy day, outside. In fact, what is hard to suffer is the silence. So we used to bring a little radio with us as one of the measuring instruments, and to reduce our time in the chamber.
capacitors with noise
Fallout from the vacuum microphone discussion. This is a plot of noise vs f for a 5G resistor in parallel with a 50pF polystyrene and then a 50pF silver mica capacitor. The DA being a loss has noise, quite dramatic, and explains a lot of mysteries in some of my measurements over the years.
Note the PS cap with its thin bouncy leads is picking up a little fan vibration. You saw it here first.
Fallout from the vacuum microphone discussion. This is a plot of noise vs f for a 5G resistor in parallel with a 50pF polystyrene and then a 50pF silver mica capacitor. The DA being a loss has noise, quite dramatic, and explains a lot of mysteries in some of my measurements over the years.
Note the PS cap with its thin bouncy leads is picking up a little fan vibration. You saw it here first.
Attachments
Last edited:
No, I never had analog copies of Beatles records, but I know what you mean. Doesn't anyone here know the the spectrum of noise matters? Is really something new. The dynamic range of LP increases with increasing frequency, and IMO it's one reason the LP has a pleasant sound.
The CD has a flat noise spectrum and other problems. Many old analog recordings can sound really great on CD.
I agree, lots of things affect how we hear. And there is this thing called misophonia (dislike of sounds) that also affect our tolerances to sounds. People are naturally misophonic to some sounds like nails scratching a chalk board. Some sounds are more natural than others and easier to habituate to.
White noise (flat spectrum) is harder on the ears and harder to habituate to.
Many people with decreased sound tolerance, caused by either hyperacusis or phonophobia, can't tolerate white noise at all. Listening to pink noise (1/f noise) is much more tolerable, as it decreases with increasing frequency.
Frequency modulation can explain that.
There is much more understood about how we hear, and the whole sensory system for that matter, than many would have you think. Some people understand this better than of course.
Having had misophonia and hyperacusis, I've had to learn how to retrain my auditory system to respond normally to sounds through exposure densitization and the use of a wideband noise. My story and brief explanation of the Jastreboff model for hearing is in the link in my signature.
That's the way I do it.
Yes, people have different preferences.
John
- Status
- Not open for further replies.