Oh, now that was a hell of an objective assessment in the first sentence. The poor, harassed objectivists are mistreated by the subjectivists, a nice, clean black & white division, monsters whose only aim is to plunge the world into darkness, or some such.
Personally, I sit right in between those two opposing camps not to be the local Ghandi, but because I believe that's where the truth really lies. I accept and use measurements in development, I find them to be a tremendous help, but I vehemently disagree with say Pavel's view that we already know everything we need to know to get it right, because if we did, we'd have a lot more of truly excellent amps. Which we don't.
Extremes of any kind, left or right, I never saw as the truth.
That's is what I was saying, the quote I replied to (from the subjective camp) paints a hard unbroken line between both, but there isn't, you listen you measure, it is the listen only who have this view of objective based people, the ones with the almost religious fever in their beliefs of magic cable, magic stones and use Discworld physics to back up their claims, almost Ludditian in their beliefs...
Me I'm just a lawnmower, you can tell me by the way I walk. Actually I do sometimes perceive a difference but instead of claiming the newest super tweak I step back and look at all variable, especially the weakest link in the chain, perception....
Me I'm just a lawnmower, you can tell me by the way I walk. Actually I do sometimes perceive a difference but instead of claiming the newest super tweak I step back and look at all variable, especially the weakest link in the chain, perception....
...While designers who tend to use their listening experience as the ultimate judge, use it to back-up the measurements result and try to correlate both of them. The exact opposite approach.
And the right one, on my opinion, as everybody knows so many amps with glorious measurements numbers witch don't sound so accurate ;-)
Did this imply those "listeners" believe in magic or snake oil, and do not work in the most scientific way they can ?
No. On the contrary. Like Mrs Jung & Marsh, noticing differences in the way caps were coloring the sounds, had made a nice scientific study, useful to all of us, to explain the 'physical' sources of those differences.
In fact, it is the natural scientific approach. Perceive, try to explain, remain skeptical about both the current science"state of the art" as well as our own senses.
As an example of this "war", after a long life in the audio worlds, i'm one of those convinced by some benefits of current feedback topology in audio reproduction. I was lead to this, not because i had been influenced by some papers or advertisement, but, slowly, by correlated experiences, listening to hundreds of equipment gears.
To try to figure it out, i had made several serious studies in real world to compare both VFA and VFA topologies, while VFA (with LTP) was leading the market.
When i tried to share my experience here, I had to suffer a very aggressive opposition from some contributors (always the sames). Mostly from so calling "objectivists"... which had even never tried to listen to any CFA device
Same thing when i tried to enlighten the benefit to add passive networks to speakers filters, in order to get enclosures with a flat impedance curve (get rid of this snake oil cables rumble and more). Notice that some contributors had tried-it and report the same benefits i had found, while others, not trying-it at all, tried to negate those benefit by...words. (Pseudo scientific argues, ). I still have one of those "naysayers" in my skirts, behind near each and every of my posts, my fan club ;-)
Oh, Hifi is not a "make believe" game ?
Measurements instruments, just eyeglasses to add little added slices of "perceptions" to our limited sense of audition?
When we look to the starry sky, we do perceive a VERY little part of the whole story ;-)
Telescopes of all kinds just add little small additional slots to our...weakest perception.
The source of theories witch tend to explain the universe is... our intuition.
More subjective, I do not know.
They are considered as valuable as long as the results of calculations made from them seems to work accurately... until a new one appears, explaining better and giving more accurate results.
I think we are far from perfection in musical recording and reproduction. We have still a lot to learn and discover. We have to continue to try by all the way we can, including looking at the things upside down ;-)
My second name is England actually... and you can have me for £2,170
That's a tenner a pound, but the same deal as Shylock...Got to generate money for a new lens some how
Excellent input, Esperado. I too am someone who believes what I hear openly.
IF I did not, then I would not continue toward making better audio products, at any price point. Why bother, if everything sounds the same?
I have actually fallen into this 'trap', for example, about 15 years ago.
In this case, my basic power amp design was 'taken over' by some well meaning Taiwanese engineers, who ignored a few guidelines that I had made a few years earlier. Heck, I didn't even measure the amp, until after it was released, and when I did, I found nothing wrong with the measurements.
This is where it all 'hit the fan'. My closest associates also listened to my personal amp, independently of me, and rejected it outright! Now, how can something that measures very good, sound lousy?
Well, we decided to find out, and by the time we had found the problems in the amp, Parasound was discontinuing the product, apparently from poor sales. Heck, we could not even get a B rating from Stereophile with this piece, yet the previous model, that was similar in topology, did get a B rating which is what we designed it to.
If I had been so stubborn as to IGNORE my colleagues assessment of the stock amp, I would probably not be designing amps today. We did, in fact, find how to upgrade the stock amp, and we even made a dozen or so for ourselves and a few customers, by rebuilding new units to our findings. To me, it is absurd to think that nothing changed when we made the modifications that we did, yet, I doubt they could be easily measured by a standard audio test.
IF I did not, then I would not continue toward making better audio products, at any price point. Why bother, if everything sounds the same?
I have actually fallen into this 'trap', for example, about 15 years ago.
In this case, my basic power amp design was 'taken over' by some well meaning Taiwanese engineers, who ignored a few guidelines that I had made a few years earlier. Heck, I didn't even measure the amp, until after it was released, and when I did, I found nothing wrong with the measurements.
This is where it all 'hit the fan'. My closest associates also listened to my personal amp, independently of me, and rejected it outright! Now, how can something that measures very good, sound lousy?
Well, we decided to find out, and by the time we had found the problems in the amp, Parasound was discontinuing the product, apparently from poor sales. Heck, we could not even get a B rating from Stereophile with this piece, yet the previous model, that was similar in topology, did get a B rating which is what we designed it to.
If I had been so stubborn as to IGNORE my colleagues assessment of the stock amp, I would probably not be designing amps today. We did, in fact, find how to upgrade the stock amp, and we even made a dozen or so for ourselves and a few customers, by rebuilding new units to our findings. To me, it is absurd to think that nothing changed when we made the modifications that we did, yet, I doubt they could be easily measured by a standard audio test.
John are you really still stuck with "standard audio tests" - and call your self a engineer, commercial product designer
you products never see RF spectrum analyzers, have to pass modern CE tests? don't even exercise a fraction of a modern AP canned analysis - including your DIM, 30 log ratio multione FastTest...
the problem I have is the lack of Blinding, the "subjectivist" faith that gurus do "hear through" their own unconscious influences and the rest of the system to diagnose "by ear" that "there's too much global feedback" or other literally incredible claim to actual mature, non strawman knowledgeable professional EE and Psychoacousticians
you products never see RF spectrum analyzers, have to pass modern CE tests? don't even exercise a fraction of a modern AP canned analysis - including your DIM, 30 log ratio multione FastTest...
the problem I have is the lack of Blinding, the "subjectivist" faith that gurus do "hear through" their own unconscious influences and the rest of the system to diagnose "by ear" that "there's too much global feedback" or other literally incredible claim to actual mature, non strawman knowledgeable professional EE and Psychoacousticians
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Of course we sometimes have to pass CE tests. I don't do them, but they are done when necessary. I personally work with a 350MHz oscilloscope that gives me almost anything that I really need. The 'fixes' that I found did not necessarily cost more, but just defied finding with standard tests. We actually REMOVED parts, rather than added them, etc. Of course, I have do make a 'good sounding' product if I want to continue in this business. Name recognition, amp size or weight does not appear to have that much effect, especially with my colleagues, or serious audio reviewers. My experience is completely different from what I am told 'should be' by many here. I am often surprised when things do not work out, sonically. I just keep an open mind about why, so that I can address the problems, rather than ignore them.
JCX, you should actually check out the MEASURED performance of my amps. You might be surprised how good they measure: You know, fast, linear, quiet, and low impedance. I use quite a bit of negative feedback in the Parasound amps, but I try to have a pretty high open loop bandwidth as well.
They do, Siegfried L was just showing some measurements on one of your amps to Nelson and myself after a listening session at Sea Ranch. Very respectable low in high order harmonics like you advocate and good sound no doubt. the Parasound products look to be built to CE/CSA standards hard to ship quantity these days without approval.
Sounds fine to me. I realized today that John has not changed his ideas on design one iota (not even the slightest in any aspect) during this entire thread.
From my POV the "solution" is in improving measurement techniques. As Dejan strongly points out, the subjective hearing does not correlate well with the current, objective measurements, and until the two can be brought closer together the "fight" will continue. John knows that measurements won't give him the answers for better sound, so he has to rely on subjective evaluation - he, and I, would be happy if a meter was available to immediately point out "what's wrong". Lacking such, I rely on the characteristics of audible distortion to tell me what's going on - and, it's quite an effective approach ...
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