Audiodiffmaker seems like a really cool program, thanks for mentioning it. I hadn't seen it before.
BigE
I agree but the problem is when the measurements say they are identical when they really aren't. For me, it's about the scope and integrity of the measurements. If we don't allow for the possibility that what we are reading is not the whole story, we lose any impetus of improvement. I haven't read any objection to the three main categories of sonic attributes I put forward on the first page. Is everyone reading in agreement that there is nothing in sound reproduction that doesn't fall into those three broad categories?
I agree but the problem is when the measurements say they are identical when they really aren't. For me, it's about the scope and integrity of the measurements. If we don't allow for the possibility that what we are reading is not the whole story, we lose any impetus of improvement. I haven't read any objection to the three main categories of sonic attributes I put forward on the first page. Is everyone reading in agreement that there is nothing in sound reproduction that doesn't fall into those three broad categories?
You're trying so, so hard to put forth the idea that the existence of these attributes are different in every single amplifier, where most of the individuals you run into on this forum, of those that design and build amplifiers, almost nobody will ever even acknowledge such things stand even a small chance of being successfully blind-A/B tested.
The terms you listed, in the eyes of an EE are probably as close as you can get to a religious debate when it comes to electronics, so as you can see, the presupposition of their existence is most always going to be met with
If you're looking for like-minded individuals to chortle about room-jewelery amplifiers and supernatural capabilities which can't be measured or even reliably detected in blind comparison testing, the first hurdle for you is going to be providing evidence or published A/B testing that doesn't have an atrocious failure rate.
DF96
Welcome. Everyone has a different understanding about things and this makes our aggregate knowledge that much greater.
DrDyna
On the contrary, I'm not looking for sycophancy but an agreed upon set of aural parameters. No one that has ever heard a sound stage reproduced in their home will deny some amps make a bigger, deeper and more stable one than others. It might be a better electrical symbiosis with the other components or intrinsic in the amp itself and I don't pretend to know but I have observed it and successfully A/B'ed it when double blinded in some cases. I imagine the same could be true for timbral accuracy and PRAT. Your point is well taken by me about the number of charlatans that abuse the fluffy environment of subjective impressions but subjective decisions are everywhere in the human experience and even engineers make subjective decisions on what they decide to measure and how much they decide to rely upon those measurements. In essence, I am trying to build a bridge where both the left side and right side brain can communicate about sound and I believe this can be valuable to the audio industry. The mind is a remarkable thing in its ability to fill in gaps and smooth away jaggies to get to the essence of something and I believe that is the reason why double blind A/B tests are so damned hard to pass. Similar A/B tests have been done with speeches of individuals where whole words and in some cases, entire paragraphs were omitted and the speeches were still deemed to be identical. That to me is proof that psycho-acoustics work both ways. We know what we want to hear in a musical piece so we correct what we hear to match what we remember. I understand this is probably an incendiary point of view but I believe I have found a way to reconcile these two strongly divergent camps. I presented three descriptions of sound that I believe are comprehensive and sufficiently objective to satisfy the engineers as real. The debate of whether or not these descriptions are audible will be addressed after we get this descriptive consensus. The result of these musings may be discoveries about how to obtain by design more fulfillment from what we hear. It's up to you whether you want to pooh upon this or participate.
There is still time for anyone reading to present a sound characteristic that doesn't fit into the three categories I've presented on page one.
Welcome. Everyone has a different understanding about things and this makes our aggregate knowledge that much greater.
DrDyna
On the contrary, I'm not looking for sycophancy but an agreed upon set of aural parameters. No one that has ever heard a sound stage reproduced in their home will deny some amps make a bigger, deeper and more stable one than others. It might be a better electrical symbiosis with the other components or intrinsic in the amp itself and I don't pretend to know but I have observed it and successfully A/B'ed it when double blinded in some cases. I imagine the same could be true for timbral accuracy and PRAT. Your point is well taken by me about the number of charlatans that abuse the fluffy environment of subjective impressions but subjective decisions are everywhere in the human experience and even engineers make subjective decisions on what they decide to measure and how much they decide to rely upon those measurements. In essence, I am trying to build a bridge where both the left side and right side brain can communicate about sound and I believe this can be valuable to the audio industry. The mind is a remarkable thing in its ability to fill in gaps and smooth away jaggies to get to the essence of something and I believe that is the reason why double blind A/B tests are so damned hard to pass. Similar A/B tests have been done with speeches of individuals where whole words and in some cases, entire paragraphs were omitted and the speeches were still deemed to be identical. That to me is proof that psycho-acoustics work both ways. We know what we want to hear in a musical piece so we correct what we hear to match what we remember. I understand this is probably an incendiary point of view but I believe I have found a way to reconcile these two strongly divergent camps. I presented three descriptions of sound that I believe are comprehensive and sufficiently objective to satisfy the engineers as real. The debate of whether or not these descriptions are audible will be addressed after we get this descriptive consensus. The result of these musings may be discoveries about how to obtain by design more fulfillment from what we hear. It's up to you whether you want to pooh upon this or participate.
There is still time for anyone reading to present a sound characteristic that doesn't fit into the three categories I've presented on page one.
Emphasis added.
This is pretty much the sum total of what I'm saying. The entire discussion requires what you said in this sentence to be true, when in fact, it is very much false.
So..what happens when an entire discussion requires something to be true which isn't true?
Sy
Welcome, your posts cross my mind whenever I drink wine. I've always had a sense of pride about my deductive reasoning but if there were other possibilities in DrDyno's post, I couldn't imagine them. Would you be so kind as to enlighten me and state what they might be? I believe I remember reading how liberated you felt not being able to discern the differences between amps but that was years ago. Do you maintain this mindset today?
Welcome, your posts cross my mind whenever I drink wine. I've always had a sense of pride about my deductive reasoning but if there were other possibilities in DrDyno's post, I couldn't imagine them. Would you be so kind as to enlighten me and state what they might be? I believe I remember reading how liberated you felt not being able to discern the differences between amps but that was years ago. Do you maintain this mindset today?
Yep.
Every day.
Nope, merely suggesting that most people, especially 'round here will have the opinion that sonic differences like this between two amplifiers means one of them isn't working properly. That's just the nature of the beast.
Most well designed amplifiers are sonically neutral - and should be. If we're going to make claims like "The Krell has a deeper soundstage than the Mark Levinson..." then you'd better be prepared to show that this is 100% repeatable with no margin of error, by using double blind ABX testing.
The truth is, proper blind AB testing can even show that people can't reliably tell the difference between a coat hanger and $17,000 Kimber speaker wire.
My whole point is, before any discussion can take place, we have to have some sort of data that even begins to show what we're talking about even exists in the first place. Simply assuming something is so doesn't just automatically make it so, it needs to be shown to be true first.
It's like if I said "Wearing red makes people smarter. Let's talk about how different shades of red enhance which brain functions." I'd be more than happy to wax poetic about shades of red and their effects, but only after a statistically significant and verifiable percentage of the population could actually be proven to be smarter while wearing red in the first place.
Assumed facts that can neither be measured or reliably tested are garbage facts, the end.
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That's not quite what I said, but no matter.
3) The difference is due to different frequency response from amp source impedance interacting with speaker impedance.
4) The difference is imaginary and vanishes when listening evaluation is done by ears-only.
5) At least one of the amps has unusually dreadful crosstalk performance.
6) Your head is in a slightly different position in the soundfield after doing the swap.
There's probably more.
edit:
7) Small gain differences during the comparison.
3) The difference is due to different frequency response from amp source impedance interacting with speaker impedance.
4) The difference is imaginary and vanishes when listening evaluation is done by ears-only.
5) At least one of the amps has unusually dreadful crosstalk performance.
6) Your head is in a slightly different position in the soundfield after doing the swap.
There's probably more.
edit:
7) Small gain differences during the comparison.
SY
I will not bother to search and pull up what I attributed to you above. I will make the assumption that your ears have come to hear more now than they have in the past. Feel free to refute this characterization if you feel it is false and I will apologize. As for your list of alternative interpretations of DrDyna's post, I will leave it to the readers to assess their merit.
DrDyna
You have made the subjective decision to discount the psycho-acoustic results that I presented above which discredit blind ABX testing as infallible. Again, readers will make their own determination. If a person can completely miss an entire paragraph of a speech, I have no doubt they will not identify the difference between a wire hanger and gold plated silver braid.
I will not bother to search and pull up what I attributed to you above. I will make the assumption that your ears have come to hear more now than they have in the past. Feel free to refute this characterization if you feel it is false and I will apologize. As for your list of alternative interpretations of DrDyna's post, I will leave it to the readers to assess their merit.
DrDyna
You have made the subjective decision to discount the psycho-acoustic results that I presented above which discredit blind ABX testing as infallible. Again, readers will make their own determination. If a person can completely miss an entire paragraph of a speech, I have no doubt they will not identify the difference between a wire hanger and gold plated silver braid.
Not really, I'm just saying a meaningful discussion can't assume facts not in evidence.
ooo...sick burn.
Not a good assumption. As with all other humans over the age of 20 or so, exactly the opposite. When we age, we lose acuity and spectral range, and I am no exception.
Amusingly, I would make the same statement.
You're making a claim. Before any discussion of the results thereof, all parties have to at least agree that the originating claim is true (non-broken amplifiers sound different).
I'm imagining it's going to be very, very difficult, especially on this particular discussion forum to convince anyone that they should assume a fact that they don't believe, in order to humor your desire to have a conversation about compound-fake things that happen due to said fake fact.
We don't even get to the point of discussing or interpreting what anyone hears as long as the entire discussion is teetering atop a huge logical fallacy.
As various things cross my test bench, both great and modest, I sometimes think I hear differences. An Audio Research amp comes to mind, where I thought, "wow, there really is something to this grainless phenomena that their marketing people talk about." It sure sounds better than my diy and other amps.
Well, it took me quite a while to figure out all the biases in my comparison, but eventually the differences completely disappeared, even in a non-blind test. There are just so many pitfalls in making these comparisons that it's no wonder people believe the things they do. You can hear some really obvious things that are still non-existent when you remove the biases.
When it comes to electronics, we can measure far better than we can hear. Identical signals sound identical.
When it comes to very complex things like speakers and 3D sound fields, no, I don't think our measurement capability is quite as good, but without the guidance of measurements there'd be no progress at all.
Well, it took me quite a while to figure out all the biases in my comparison, but eventually the differences completely disappeared, even in a non-blind test. There are just so many pitfalls in making these comparisons that it's no wonder people believe the things they do. You can hear some really obvious things that are still non-existent when you remove the biases.
When it comes to electronics, we can measure far better than we can hear. Identical signals sound identical.
When it comes to very complex things like speakers and 3D sound fields, no, I don't think our measurement capability is quite as good, but without the guidance of measurements there'd be no progress at all.
Conrad Hoffman
Please reread my post about the mind filling in the void and smoothing out the jaggies to better understand how the difference may have disappeared.
SY
'more amps' = better quality amps which brought you closer to the sound of the original recording and showed you the better quality is audible.
DrDyna
Where do you see a huge logical fallacy? I presented three sound attributes that I believe to be universally descriptive and offered up the opportunity for anyone reading to amend them. If you can't show how they are not universally descriptive then the logical fallacy is yours.
Please reread my post about the mind filling in the void and smoothing out the jaggies to better understand how the difference may have disappeared.
SY
'more amps' = better quality amps which brought you closer to the sound of the original recording and showed you the better quality is audible.DrDyna
Where do you see a huge logical fallacy? I presented three sound attributes that I believe to be universally descriptive and offered up the opportunity for anyone reading to amend them. If you can't show how they are not universally descriptive then the logical fallacy is yours.
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