Same Frank - I thought that was clear. Are you OK Dejan?
In the other post you seem to accept that it makes a difference for the succes of audio products where it is build or manufactured. That's true of course but I hadn't seen it stated by you
jan
Quite to the contrary, Jan, I am locally under serious flack because I maintain that what interests me is who designed it and who does the quality control. Whether the robots soldering the SMD components, many of which are from the same Japanese manufacturer, are located in the heart of Amsterdam or in the middle of China means little to me.
As if we have any choice there - most mass produced items these days are actually made in China anyway. Never mind whether the company making it is from Britain, USA, Holland, Germany or wherever.
As for success, obviously if it's made in USA, it will be more expensive by default, but that might not be an unsurmountable problem if for the money you also get a better sound and a superior build quality. Place (country) of manufacture plays an ever smaller part in the world economy, unless it is accompanied by superior stadards of manufacture.
There's not even a conjecture there. No definition of "measurements" or "good sound." dvv has similarly refused to define his terms.
I will not claim that we know everything about how we hear things, but there is a LOT of research done on human perception.
That you don't know about this research or understand the results doesn't mean we know next to nothing about it. In fact we know quite a lot. I suggest reading the papers of the IEEE/AES on this subject.
Hi,
That's something I really don't understand.
Whenever I've improved my system over the years good records sounded even better, bad records sounded worse...
Ciao,
For me, the experience is that bad records sound better with improvements of my system, but it gets easier to identify what is wrong with them. Which makes them more listenable.
My idea of a better system is one that has less character of its own. The less speaker or amplifier you hear, the more you can hear the recording, for better or worse. To me this makes listening not only more informative when judging my own recordings when mixing or mastering mine or others, it is more fun when listing to recordings in general.
If a playback system has a strong "personality", it imposes that upon anything it is attempting to reproduce, the sameness making the process increasingly boring and ultimately leading to "upgrade-itis".
Re the first para: have you considered the application of logic as a possible source of refutation or confirmation?
Agree completely with what Tattoo wrote about the knowledge humankind has accumulated about the human perception of sound. There is also a lot known about the correlation between measurements and perceived sq. Furthermore, it is known that many differences that can be trivially measured, cannot be discerned by ear. And lastly, it has been demonstrated that appliences that measure within a certain bandwidth, cannot be identified by ear.
All this put together seems to indicate that our present measurement suite is fairly complete, and that there does not exist a hitherto unknown kind of measurement which would lead us to greener pastures, once discovered.
Experiments are the sole source of data to refute (logically sound) conjectures.
Glad to hear that we know everything there is to know about measurements for audio.
I guess audio designers can now get rid of their playback systems. They don't seem to listen to them very much, anyway.
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Conjectures, or hypothesis, are constantly refuted or confirmed on the basis of logical arguments. Mathematics comes to mind as a science where this is bon ton. But in all lines of science, conjectures are dismissed on occasion because of flawed logic. No experimentation required.
By means of example, let us take the alleged audibility of different conductors, which you will agree with me is nonsense. A basic grasp of the laws of nature at work, will quickly reveal this truth with the application of logic alone. No further experimentation required. Yet, enthousiasts have taken it upon themselves to seek experimental verification. An interesting one was done by Pano, with the help of the eager ears on this site. Please use the search function of DIYaudio to find this entertaining and educational thread.
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You need to get more up to date on test equipment.
There are people who realize that the issue is not audible differences that can't be measured, but rather that there's important issues that can be measured but the techniques and interpretation need to be extended. For example, Earl Geddes has a very nice thread about this running at the moment ("Measurement technology")- you might find it educational. He's got a very nifty and apparently novel way of extending polar response data.
Spoke with him about that in 83 at the CES . Little progress since then from my view.
Correct, that is what happens normally - I went through the frustrations of that happening years ago, but the "enlightenment",Hi,
That's something I really don't understand.
Whenever I've improved my system over the years good records sounded even better, bad records sounded worse...
Ciao,
, of realising that that stage was, in fact, only a "stage" on the way to getting optimum sound was, for me, a major step forward. So now if I'm trying to lift the standard of just an OK setup I know that there will be a phase where it will sound "terrible" - as in, extremely unforgiving of poorer recordings. Because I've been there many times I just ignore that happening, and keep driving forward with the optimising - to use a throwaway phrase, "no pain, no gain!", .What really is happening there is that the transparency of the system overall is improving, to the point where quite obnoxious, but relatively low level distortions are no longer being masked, are very obvious - and very disconcerting! I know they are distortions of the playback, because if I improve the system yet further, then those remaining distortions are knocked on the head and what is on the recording only is allowed to shine through, unencumbered by that disturbing unpleasantness added from playback misbehaviour. If this had happened to me only once or twice then I would be suspicious about what was going on - but it has been the formula for me, year after year, and it's never failed me. Which is a key reason why I fiddle around with cheap end stuff, just to see how far one can take the principle ...
...I'm sure it will vary per individual, but for me being able to hear the recording, and only the recording, is fun - I find that my brain then easily can filter away the "problems" within the recording itself, and just "see" the musical performance in front of me. Robert Johnson recordings are in terrible shape, extracted from a very badly worn 78 in many cases - yet when the system is "singing" there is the man in front of me, a real human being, playing a real instrument ... in no way is it merely observing a historical curiosity ...
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Yes, mankind's logic has taught us so many things without the need for experiments, like the number of angels on a pinhead,
the date of the creation of the world (4000 or 5500 BC, I forget which), the master race, the flat Earth, physics has reached an end
(except for the ultraviolet catastrophe, a minor matter), objects fall faster if they're heavier, heat is a fluid, time flows at a universal
fixed rate, the ether exists, the vacuum is empty.
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A lot has been said about good and bad sound, good and bad recordings. In this virtual world, it might be difficult to imagine what one means with "good" and "bad" sounding. If you do not mind and would be willing to participate, I have prepared two files of the same track
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a24yn9bwd3ao91c/recno41.zip?dl=0
Which do you find sounding better? The music is Mozart, Jupiter, last movement.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a24yn9bwd3ao91c/recno41.zip?dl=0
Which do you find sounding better? The music is Mozart, Jupiter, last movement.
I prefer the one named mov4a. "mov4b" sounds distinctly inferior as to the reproduction of the strings in the opening (from 0.01 to 0.06) and coarser in general. In "mov4a" the strings sound more realistic with a distinctly finer texture - silk vs. cotton, and cheap cotton at that.
Sure hope they're not the same and I'm exposing myself as a victim of auto-suggestion!
By the way, I'm judging this on my newish Beyerdynamic DT 1350 headphones, since the family's asleep and I can't use speakers.
Sure hope they're not the same and I'm exposing myself as a victim of auto-suggestion!
By the way, I'm judging this on my newish Beyerdynamic DT 1350 headphones, since the family's asleep and I can't use speakers.
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Hi Russell,
thanks for your opinion! Though I sometimes like to make jokes, these files are not the same. Your opinion is greatly appreciated and I am sure your headphones must be great.
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