Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: just one word plastics
You're correct, I haven't heard your ampifier. It may well sound different that other amplifiers you've had in your system. Until you run a decent blind test, however, you'll never know the truth.
Well sorry if I implied anything about your amplifier in particular. I was only trying to say that some folks here accuse me of being the one who's wrong, when there's no objective evidence to support their position (and in fact a ton of objective evidence against it).Peter Daniel said:
You're correct, I haven't heard your ampifier. It may well sound different that other amplifiers you've had in your system. Until you run a decent blind test, however, you'll never know the truth.
Re: Re: NOPE...
Be careful with fdegrove, all he did last night was throw out ridiculous assertions, apparently in an attempt to get a rise out of me... that resulted it me asking if he was baiting me. I quote from post #297:mikek said:...do'nt get me wrong, if there is something you are attempting to teach me here, i am more than willing to learn , but please be gentle........i need to be taken from first principals....
So it's a bit hard to take him seriously.
mikek said:
That's all well and good from a purely objective, emotionless point of view.
However, the sole purpose of the amplifier is ultimately to serve the subjective, emotional human beings at the end of the chain. And their single most important criteria is their own subjective satisfaction. Which may be at odds with an amplifier designed by wholly objective criteria.
You seem to be saying that objective criteria is the only valid criteria to use when it comes to designing an amplifier. If that is what you're saying, then I'm afraid I will have to disagree. The equipment serves us, not the other way around.
se
We have to make a distinction here, as I and others tried to do a few hundred messages ago, between those who want accurate amplifiers and those who consider amplifiers more as "art" and prefer ones that add their own "euphonic distortions" to the signal.Steve Eddy said:
Obviously, if you start comparing amplifiers that have obvious distortions, they're going to sound different. Blind testing is still useful to see what sorts of distortions you most prefer, and null testing MIGHT be useful to a designer to help quantify exactly how the amplifier is distorting the signal, but otherwise, things get subjective fast when you WANT distortion.
But this still doesn't explain how a $250 receiver can sound as good as multi thousand dollar Bryston separates (both of which measure fairly well).
HIT.
Hi,
If you must put labels on people than put me into the objectivist category...
I want an accurate amp, you want one that measures to what you think measures correctly...and there's where you're wrong.
Circumventing problems never has been a solution, and all I've seen so far is mister Lazy at work, all possible excuses are good not to investigate further.
You are only fooling #1,
Hi,
If you must put labels on people than put me into the objectivist category...
I want an accurate amp, you want one that measures to what you think measures correctly...and there's where you're wrong.
Circumventing problems never has been a solution, and all I've seen so far is mister Lazy at work, all possible excuses are good not to investigate further.
You are only fooling #1,
nw_avphile said:
I understand that. I was simply responding to mikek's post where he seemed to be implying that objective perfection is the only legitimate criteria for amplifier design.
Well, we haven't really established that it does. As has been stated previously, a null result to a listening test simply leaves you with a null result, not any hard proof one way or the other.
se
Hmmm... we might need to clarify things here. Some of the earlier language was confusing. Planet10 tried to clear things up in post 57:Steve Eddy said:
Originally posted by Steve Eddy
Yes. That's called a null result.
I wanted to mention it because i am sure there are some reading who would erroneously conclude that if you heard no differences in this test, that there were no differences
Blind testing is used all the time to determine if there's a detectable difference between two things. If the person(s) involved cannot detect a difference, it is assumed there is no detectable difference.
You can argue the Onkyo/Bryston test wasn't double blind or especially rigorous, but that doesn't make it invalid. If you're saying that no blind test can prove that two amplifiers sound the same, please explain yourself further?
Re: ERRONYMUS BOSCH.
95+% of the recordings out there are made with mainstream studio equipment which is made with very mainstream parts and little regard for esoteric audiophile approved components and construction techniques. Wouldn't all these substandard parts destroy the audio signal beyond repair? Wouldn't those high NFB op-amps have introduced lots of cumulative "timing errors"?
How much difference can one more cheap part make when the signal has already been through dozens or even hundreds of them? At the least, wouldn't the "substandard parts" mask anything we can do with our tiny piece of the pie?
I'm genuinely curious about your honest thoughts on this so please try to focus on the questions above rather than attacking me, ignoring the question or changing the subject as you've done in the past when I've asked you questions.
fdegrove: Given the above, what are your thoughts then on all the cheap ops-amps (most running huge amounts of NFB), $0.01 resistors, $0.05 capacitors, cheap connectors, cheap plain old copper wire in all the interconnects, cheap power supplies, and yes, cheap fuse holders that were present at the studio? Some estimate, in terms of electronics, the entire playback chain is as little as 1% of the total signal chain the audio has been through on many recordings. By any standard, the playback electronics are in the minority.fdegrove said:
95+% of the recordings out there are made with mainstream studio equipment which is made with very mainstream parts and little regard for esoteric audiophile approved components and construction techniques. Wouldn't all these substandard parts destroy the audio signal beyond repair? Wouldn't those high NFB op-amps have introduced lots of cumulative "timing errors"?
How much difference can one more cheap part make when the signal has already been through dozens or even hundreds of them? At the least, wouldn't the "substandard parts" mask anything we can do with our tiny piece of the pie?
I'm genuinely curious about your honest thoughts on this so please try to focus on the questions above rather than attacking me, ignoring the question or changing the subject as you've done in the past when I've asked you questions.
nw_avphile said:
A blind ABX test -- i haven't seen a ststistical analysis on different methodologies* -- tells you nothing if a person cannot hear a difference. The only thing that is can prove statistically is that something is different.
* i did recall reading about an extensive double blind test done somewhere in Europe (The Netherlands?) where 3 systems were used. An analogue, tube system, a digital, tube system, and a digital, SS system. Each participant was measured before and after for the level of "relaxation/stress". System 1 left people more relaxed, Ssytem 3 left people less relaxed , and System 2 was in between.
This kind of test is probably MUCH more meaningful -- and requires no effort on the part of the subject -- than any blind AB test.
dave
nw_avphile said:
That's a poor assumption.
I'm saying that a null result does not prove anything. That's why it's called a null result. Null means, according to Webster's Ninth Collegiate:
2 : amounting to nothing : NIL 3 : having no value : INSIGNIFICANT
All you can say is that the test didn't turn up any discernable differences. Which is not to say that there are no discernable differences. Anything else is simply speculation.
se
planet10 said:
I beg to differ. A well designed experiment can provide evidence either for or against the audibility of a difference (I wouldn't say one test, by itself, could "prove" anything). Of course, a poorly designed experiment tells you nothing, but that's true regardless of the outcome. In statistics, I believe the practice of only recognizing the result of an experiment if it turns out the way you expected is called "cheating" (that's a technical term
)I'm not sure where this idea that you can't prove a negative comes from. You most certainly can, and it happens all the time. Otherwise every time you got sick, you'd need to take a bucketful of pills that no one had ever been able to prove didn't work.
Rob M said:I beg to differ. A well designed experiment can provide evidence either for or against the audibility of a difference (I wouldn't say one test, by itself, could "prove" anything). Of course, a poorly designed experiment tells you nothing, but that's true regardless of the outcome. In statistics, I believe the practice of only recognizing the result of an experiment if it turns out the way you expected is called "cheating" (that's a technical term
You will note that i am only refereing to the ABX test. As designed it is unable to conclude that 2 DUT sound the same.
dave
$$$$
Hi,
My thoughts?
Well, expenses expressed in $$ do not equate to sonics at all, you can use cheap components and still achieve good, but probably not exceptional results.
My thoughts are quite simple really, every single detail matters, it doesn't have to equate with money spent, not at all really.
Whatever happens, or has happened at the studio is of no or little concern to us, you can't change that but whatever mistake they made does not justify the attitude that we just can add to the same way of error.
In my country, Belgium, I was lucky enough to have a number of contacts in the recording world and I think we have some fine studios which allowed me to compare what I heard in the studio and at home.
Having a couple of mastertapes really made me realise that domestic hi-fi, even High-End is a far cry from what it can be.
Indeed, once it's lost, it's lost forever.That doesn't mean that you need to add to the loss though by adding even more of the low cost parts and cheap components.
The better recording studios I know of are still using Pultech EQs and similar equipment, use Arthur Blumlein's crossed mikes techniques and to top it off to my ears the best recordings date from the late fifties, early sixties.
In recording just as in hi-fi reproduction, I have one word of advise: keep it simple, keep the signal path as short as possible, don't use feedback to impress others or the datasheets, try to be faithful to the music and yourself.
Cheers,
Hi,
My thoughts?
Well, expenses expressed in $$ do not equate to sonics at all, you can use cheap components and still achieve good, but probably not exceptional results.
My thoughts are quite simple really, every single detail matters, it doesn't have to equate with money spent, not at all really.
Whatever happens, or has happened at the studio is of no or little concern to us, you can't change that but whatever mistake they made does not justify the attitude that we just can add to the same way of error.
In my country, Belgium, I was lucky enough to have a number of contacts in the recording world and I think we have some fine studios which allowed me to compare what I heard in the studio and at home.
Having a couple of mastertapes really made me realise that domestic hi-fi, even High-End is a far cry from what it can be.
Indeed, once it's lost, it's lost forever.That doesn't mean that you need to add to the loss though by adding even more of the low cost parts and cheap components.
The better recording studios I know of are still using Pultech EQs and similar equipment, use Arthur Blumlein's crossed mikes techniques and to top it off to my ears the best recordings date from the late fifties, early sixties.
In recording just as in hi-fi reproduction, I have one word of advise: keep it simple, keep the signal path as short as possible, don't use feedback to impress others or the datasheets, try to be faithful to the music and yourself.
Cheers,
Hmmm... do you have references on that? I have a feeling we're talking about a different definition of "the same"? I agree a blind test cannot prove two things are the same IN ALL WAYS. It can only prove they're the same in the ways the test is measuring (or judging) them.planet10 said:
For example, in double blind drug studies they compare the drug to a placebo. If the results of the study don't show a statistically significant effectiveness for the drug, it flunks the study. But that doesn't mean that some new diet pill is the same as a sugar pill. It does seem to mean, that it has a similar EFFECT ON WEIGHT LOSS compared to a sugar pill. The "effect on weight loss" being what the test was geared to monitor.
So in the case of amplifiers, if a person can't detect any audible differences in a blind test, doesn't that mean that there is no difference in what you're measuring (in this case audible differences)? I agree it doesn't mean the amplifiers are the same in every way, only the same in the areas the test was evaluating (sound).
You (planet10) said earlier:
I would think that if you take enough people who ought to be able to tell the difference between two amplifiers, and put them through enough carefully controlled listening tests, and still are left with no evidence that the two devices can be distinguished by sound alone, that would start to look to me like proof.
And, if in many experiments carried out by many different labs, no one had ever been able to show that anyone, however skilled, could tell the difference between two particular amps when all other factors are controlled for, then that would look a lot like proof.
Why do really large numbers make a difference in this case besides the study gradually becomes more reliable the more samples you have? Do we have any statistical/logic experts here to help out with this part of the discussion?
Rob M said:
But how do you know there are no flaws in the test? What test do you use to test the test? And what test do you use to test the test you use to test the test?
Starting to get the picture here?
That's why when nw_avphile said that if your test returns a null result, you assume there is no difference that I said that was a poor assumption because it assumes the test is flawless.
Again, the reason they call listening tests which fail to turn up discernable differences a "null result" is because the result proves nothing.
Now, you can go on and speculate about things all you want after a null result, but all your null result proves is that a given test failed to turn up any discernable differences. Which again is not the same as saying there are no discernable differences.
se
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