EnABL Processes

[auplater]

Originally posted by konut



You outright reject ANY subjective obseration regarding EnABL, yet are quite smug about submiting subjective evaluation when it suits you. You expect respect in this regard? Not doubting the changes that you prefer, just show the same respect for others.



Either you're not trying hard enough or its too late.

Ah yes..the ad hominem starts... if you dislike my posts, put me on your ignore list. You seem to be clueless... I don't reject subjective enabl observations... I just reject the position that they somehow prove the treatment is more than a tweak. Take your personal attacks to email, please. Better yet, don't make them in the ffirst place.

John L.

[BudP]

Well, based upon the relatively narrow changes in frequency response, most seeming to be a reduction of peak value with a modest change in position tied to some of those, adding an area wide peak, as the enhancement an EnABL'd driver provides, might not be the mechanism of change.

Again I have to point out that the subjective effect is an increase in downward information coherence and content. As if the energy that has gotten "loose" from the information packet, in an untreated speaker, and appears as energy to a microphone and noise to our correlator that is reconstructing the packet in our brain, has somehow stopped getting loose, in an EnABL'd driver.

I have no problem with John L's description of Dan's speakers. Most especially given the circumstances. He heard and described exactly what EnABL provides, more uncorrupted information, as opposed to more of any other quality or quantity. EnABL is not going to make any speaker it is applied to, the "BEST" speaker ever. It is only going to make it exhibit those very qualities he spoke of. The "sounded very good" part is the key here.

while they sounded very good, nothing extraordinary about coherence or clarity stood out due to the baffle and speaker EnABL'ing

EnABL'd drivers do not stand out. There is not a "breathtaking" quality to them in any way. The typical first response I see from folks, is one of cautious relief. The speakers don't sound worse, or the same, as what they have heard before. EnABL is about subtle information correctness, even when it is aiding the correctness of a loud blaring horn or drum, as apposed to a tiny chime. It is about the structure of the information presented, in time.

That John L caught enough of what they provide, in 10 minutes of listening, at the end of a long speaker demo program, shows me he is used to information rich speakers, with significant abilities in downward coherent information content. That his speakers appear to be comprised of primarily free ribbon and planar drivers does support that.

John K posted a pair of CSD plots of what appeared to be a troubled, 6 inch metal driver, with and without EnABL, that showed a general, across the FR from 100 Hz on up, lessening of lumpiness in decay. Also showing a distinct ordering of the ringing nodes, as they decayed, the elimination of one of the nodes and a general "tightening up and regularizing" of the shape of those prominent features. This is the first time I have seen a test result that looked like what I would expect to see, based upon what I regularly hear from EnABL.

The actual EnABL effect does not become an OMG event until your hearing has adjusted to the lack of masking and begins to listen, in detail, to the much less noisy and much better organized sound field. A lot of what EnABL brings about depends upon the subjective "learning" of the correlator. I cannot claim the alteration this CSD blink comparison shows is what EnABL is providing, in this comparative sequence, but it is the first hope I have, that we might actually begin to link audible changes in the wide band region EnABL affects, to equally wide band changes in a well done CSD test, that was not aimed at finding this exact result.

That first subjective impression spoken of by Chrisb and Dave /10 is just the relaxation brought about by realizing" oh, this isn't worse than the other speakers.... oh, this is really pretty easy to listen to... oh, nothing seems particularly wrong here". After that, the real EnABL event begins to become apparent. That people intimately familiar with the acoustic event, that is live music, respond more quickly and to a greater degree than an ordinary person, just reinforces my point, in my opinion.

Bud

[FrankWW]

Dave, dlr,

My point was not that subjective data is to be preferred.

I said before and I'll say it again. If you get a series of descriptions with commonalities - and we do in this case - then it is worth pursuing those commonalities as a direction for inquiry. I didn't say pursue homeopathic straw men.

I didn't say take it on faith.

For small differences, it's not claimed, it's been proven through studies

I never said otherwise.

I said more than just noticeable differences but of course, as I said, in this case somehow, it's claimed, "that's different."

If the speaker's whole aural presentation is changed, then that is more than a just noticeable difference. It's a big, fat difference every bit as strong as being able to tell the difference between singers. (Subtle difference: try and identify the trained singer from the oscilloscope trace).

Bronx cheer, baby.

All one need to is take a system, any system, enhance some range such as the upper range of the tweeter ...

So what's your point? I wrote almost those very words here about a gazillion pages back. I didn't say take it on faith. I said a direction for investigation.

Despite your denial, the descriptions do very much imply diminution of masking phenomena which suggests a line of investigation....

You're making the same baseless charge as others have made periodically in this thread

No, I'm not. All data is imperfect. Weeding out and gathering commonalities from descriptions is good practice: it's the primary information - you have to stay faithful to first principles but you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you tackle a problem.

Look, everybody, regardless of their hearing, is an expert at listening to their own system, even as you are with your instrument:

Even as an amateur stringed instrument player (guitar and others) I can easily tell the difference between an old and a new set of strings. If tests were run, I highly suspect that the frequency response would show surprising differences. When I changed strings frequently, I noticed little difference, so I waited until I thought the change in tone was significant enough to warrant spending the money. Two new sets of strings pretty much always sounded the same. An aged set always sounded worse. Not JND.

No, wait! "That's different," right? ''

[FrankWW]

try proving scientifically that SET amps are more musical than transistor amps.

They're euphonic. They have an always on nice button. They produce whole number harmonics (distortion) which fit nicely with the structure of our ears and hearing.

A decent amplifier should not be producing "musical" or "unmusical" distortion.

Ya mighta noticed we got troubles enough with speakers!

[Alan Hope]

Originally posted by FrankWW


They're euphonic. They have an always on nice button. They produce whole number harmonics (distortion) which fit nicely with the structure of our ears and hearing.

A decent amplifier should not be producing "musical" or "unmusical" distortion.

Ya mighta noticed we got troubles enough with speakers!

I know (I also own a valve amp). But if we didn't have the subjective observation, it is not "scientifically" obvious that high levels of even-harmonics should sound MUCH better than low levels of odd-harmonics. And nothing I know of in the "structure" of our ears (they're essentially microphones), and the auditory pathways in our brains, suggests in any way that we would enjoy valve distortion over transistor distortion.

... A long way of getting round to saying that without "subjective anecdote" - we would not have EnABL to play with at all.

Blood and sand what a cr4p post. I'm tired.

[dlr]

Originally posted by FrankWW
Dave, dlr,

Despite your denial, the descriptions do very much imply diminution of masking phenomena which suggests a line of investigation....

No, I'm not. All data is imperfect. Weeding out and gathering commonalities from descriptions is good practice: it's the primary information - you have to stay faithful to first principles but you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you tackle a problem.

Look, everybody, regardless of their hearing, is an expert at listening to their own system, even as you are with your instrument:

I re-read your earlier post. My response was a bit too much on looking back. Not sure where my head was this morning.

Dave

[Daygloworange]

Originally posted by frankWW

You know what's interesting is an assumption that a description is necessarily flawed because a human, and therefore flawed instrument, produced it.

For instance, it's often claimed memory for audible events is too evanescent to be reliable, and other times it's claimed description is tainted by imagination, that the subjectivity of one person is not accessible to another, and so forth.

Interestingly, audible memory - a flawed instrument as claimed by many - seems quite reliable for certain things which rely on fairly subtle differences in the audible signal.

An opera freak or just perhaps even an experienced listener can often tell within one or two bars the singer is, say, Jussi Bjoerling or any of a dozen other singers, and he can tell you just about as quickly that he doesn't know who it is.

He can probably tell you who it is whether it's heard over a $10 plastic radio or a really good multi thousand $ system.

In other words, that "aural image", or characteristic sound, is really durable through time.

Originally posted by dlr

None of the differences you mention, such as voices, are in the small category as I see it. Most voices don't have small, subtle differences. Inflection alone can make the difference, we don't just hear the tonality. If an experience listener could NOT tell the difference between singers, I'd consider them to be practically tone deaf or at least just not able to focus on what makes the significant differences. That's not a valid argument.

The study of the human hearing/recognition mechanism is a fascinating and complex one.

Yes, humans can hear and recall better than most people in audio think they can.

The predominant recognizeable character in human voices are resonances known as formants. Each human has their own individual ones. Instruments have them as well. These resonances are independant of pitch (played or sung).

Some (usually trained) people can recall pitch strictly from memory. This is commonly called "perfect pitch".

However, nearly all humans have what is known as "relative pitch". We recall the proper intervals between pitches (tones). An example of this is when you hear someone sing the National anthem and you hear them go "off key" when singing acappella. We all know when someone's intonation is off, because our ear has been conditioned (also known as "tempering") to (in Western culture) a diatonic scale.

Well versed (in audio or music) people can recall frequency/amplitude from memory as well. Engineers can do it in recording sessions, musicians can re-adjust settings on their gear by ear with great consistency.

Although I tend to favour objective quantification as a means to assurance of repeatability and validity, I cannot simply eschew the fact that humans can most certainly be keenly persceptive to minute details to the senses.

This is where the work of true experts should be reviewed by those wishing to learn more. We are all rank amateurs here with regard to valid tests of audibility.

A couple of things in that article stood out to me, as I have often debated them with other audiophiles.

What does all this mean? Well, one thing it means is that good sound quality is not so much a matter of individual taste as was previously thought. It is not totally subjective, as is wine tasting. It was found that there are objective criteria that people with good hearing and decent analytical capability can agree upon. Loudspeaker design is, to a large degree, a science, and as a result, scientific measurements can be a predictor of loudspeaker preferences.

Neutral sound: Listeners assess a neutral, accurate sound reproduction as the best sound quality rather than an enhanced, exaggerated sound, as some used to think.

This has been my position all along. I come from a pro audio/studio background, and as such, greatly value transparency.

I find (surprisingly) that not a lot (I would even venture to say, not the majority) of audiophiles prefer neutral. They tend to like exaggerated sonic reproduction.

In a lot of cases, I can't say I fault them (per se), as a lot of recordings are less than Hi-Fidelity. So I take it as (for them) a means to and end, to try and mitigate the fidelity of lackluster recordings with an exaggerated playback chain.

Another study done in Ottawa, Canada, at the NRC (National Research Council) drew some similar findings the study that dlr linked to earlier.



Cheers

[JacquesToo]

Maybe all this unbelieving banter is worth something, but it sure is boring. The only important issue here, IMO, is that Bud has come up with something valuable regarding the functioning of loudspeaker surfaces that has to be understood better. Whether he is an erudite physicist is besides the point. It surely is much less tiring to read his speculative posts than wading through the emotional faux scientific filler posts in this thread.

As to anecdotal evidence: before gravitation was formalised, not falling off the earth was anecdotal. Some folks expanded rather wildly upon this, certainly stifling the shipping industry a tad at first. In retrospect this speculation might as well have provided the boost that world exploration required. It all boils down to being scared.

Consider: isn't subjective evaluation the actual object of study here? Deriding/dismissing it is surely not going to make it go away. And is it really trying to stand in for proper scientific method in this thread? I don't think so.

Another thing here that bothers me is the constant deus ex machina of frequency response. So what? Sure, Fourier provided a handy tool. And everybody loves to transform to the frequency domain. Works just fine for digital audio too. After a while everything looks like a nail.

It appears that Bud is proposing a kind of allpass behaviour for his spots. And that is audible, ask Linkwitz. Why not stick to this part of the problem for a while? It might aid understanding. And keep the FR mongers at bay.

[JacquesToo]

Amen, Daygloworange

[Alex from Oz]

G'day All,

Just back from a relaxing weekend away.

We stayed in a house that had a Teac MCDX10 Mini Hifi which is a satellite + sub woofer system.

The driver for the subwoofer is completely contained in the box and all the bass exits from a single bass port with a flare at its end.
The bass sounded boomy and boxy so I wondered if EnABLing the port might make an 'audible difference' similar to what I reported in post #2428.

I didn't have any double sided tape with me so I thought about it for a while and decided to try cutting up the sticky sides of a bandaid with scissors to make the EnABL blocks.
I applied the ENABL pattern to the inside of the bass port on the straight part of the port just before the flare at the opening.

EnABLing the port did not improve the overall balance of the system.
However, the bass did become cleaner, more detailed and less boxy. And this was also clearly heard by a friend who is deaf in one ear and has no 'audio' knowledge whatsoever.

Don't believe it? Good place to start. Try it on your own system and let me know what happens.

Cheers