As I have said before, there to busy listening to the music. The one exception is when they listen to themselves, then they seem to have a lot of comments about the sound, but not always worthwhile.
Certainly,
With regards to this statement:
I have repeatedly observed wildly varying opinions on the sound qualities of the same source, particularly in the case of distortion. As distortion content rises, some will notice it first. Your statement is false.
Markus - is the the classic joke about beating your head against a wall because it feels good when you stop?
In their test there are only students that are untrained and at the same time are out of the hifi world. The others are people of the hifi world: trained (by them), marketing sales, reviewers, audio retailers. There are not common untrained people with good experience with music, especially live music, and very little experience with hifi.
They conclude that students are not reliable because are untrained while I think they are reliable because, being untrained, they are completely unbiased. In fact Toole himself is not sure about this. It is speculation and I completely agree on this conclusion.
That training, IMO, means that people are biased because there is no demonstration that the parameters they use for judging are exhaustive.
If they add other parameters more likely the error bars will increase and preference curves (each one related to a specific loudspeaker) will overlap (because of the bigger errors) and you will not able to conclude anything.
They just use trained persons because that way they save money (as clearly written). So my conclusion is: it is just their standard.
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Your argument comes down to one thing "sound perception is subjective and whatever sounds good to someone is their reality". That this is true we all know, but its beside the point in this discussion because we are talking about "accurate reproduction" which is an entirely different thing. That your perspective is true in the general population is certainly the case and the reason that mediocre audio is also the norm. As long as the "personal subjective impression" is the goal things will remain this way. Until people realize, as Toole and Olive and many here do, that accuaracy IS quantifiable and lies above the simple personal subjective impression, marketing will "rule the roost" because truth is irelavent and reality is perception. The one problem that I have with Floyds and Seans work is a little too much emphasis on "preference" as opposed to "accuracy".
Your argument comes down to one thing "sound perception is subjective and whatever sounds good to someone is their reality". That this is true we all know, but its beside the point in this discussion because we are talking about "accurate reproduction" which is an entirely different thing. That your perspective is true in the general population is certainly the case and the reason that mediocre audio is also the norm. As long as the "personal subjective impression" is the goal things will remain this way. Until people realize, as Toole and Olive and many here do, that accuaracy IS quantifiable and lies above the simple personal subjective impression, marketing will "rule the roost" because truth is irelavent and reality is perception. The one problem that I have with Floyds and Seans work is a little too much emphasis on "preference" as opposed to "accuracy".
But accuracy is uniquely related to their initial assumptions (the choice of the parameters for judging). Until there is no demonstration that those assumptions are necessary and sufficient it is nothing more than their standard.
On the other hand music (except some horrible, IMO, modern musical tendencies...) has a common language and shared values. It is totally subjective only for people with little musical experience. It would be hard this way, too. However it is the best way, IMO, because I am interested in music first of all. The hifi itself, without music, is meaningless for me.
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So, the goal of all these hairsplittings here is to get an accurate and objective replay of a completely subjective thing.🙄
The musical sound and its "scripture" is a "product' whose aesthetics has
been built, accepted, shared and handed down within a myriad of distinctions and with its full critical analysis!
The re-produced music should be a new "product" whose aesthetics has NOT been built, yet. Starting from the recording.
However it looks like they are not interested in this subject. They want to pass over non-demonstrated assumptions (and thus subjective opinion) on the sound and establish their own standard. In the end a highly subjective way to break the vicious circle and standardize the hifi market.....
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lol, Experiencing music is completely subjective no matter how much experience you have 🙄 Heck, few actually measure to confirm accuracy and most like non-flat curves. Im cool with that but they are not reproducing music accurate so please do not cite experience = SQ knowledge!
Its nice you like music, its nice that for you hifi without music is meaningless. Its obviously a good thing you are a minority and that fact still remains HT setups/design product improves is the future.
I care really little about the term "HiFi" actually because its old guy 20th century meaningless stuff in the 21st century. The discussion on this thread proves it too when we have post talking about outdated processing like AC-3 thinking its the only option 🙄
The future is all about Sound Quality of any source and if you can not understand this you simply are stuck on your old ways and have no vision of the future and as I said before through attrition that type of opinion dies off.
The driver choice will be based on requirements, specs and measurements not labels! The new world will not try to separate Seas drivers from PHL or B&C drivers calling one choice "HiFi" turning their noise up and calling the other side "PA" drivers.
Geddes, Danley, Seaton Sound, JTR and many other designers understand this and their products will be the future in the higher end HT arena where music becomes just a part of the over all sound experience.
So music - as we play it, listen to it and talk about it today - is a random subjective phenomenon arrived to us from an unspecified planet?
There are critical and universally accepted parameters in the music world in addition to subjective matters. This made and makes the history and aesthetics of music!
If you want to use flat curves you have to demonstrate they are the right ones and then, only then, they can be one of the objective parameters to establish accuracy. Where is such demonstration?
It is just assumed when the listener is considered hence it's opinion!
HT vs Hifi is not the point. Has nothing to do with this.
You just look for measurements..... Are you able to be critical about the validity of a certain type of measurement?
You can do infinite types of measurements about anything (in general, not only hifi) in principle but not all of them make sense!
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...because we need to break the "Circle of Confusion" to advance not only sound quality but the art:
Audio Musings by Sean Olive: Audio's Circle of Confusion
Best, Markus
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Audio Musings by Sean Olive: Audio's Circle of Confusion
Best, Markus
Critical and universally accepted parameters in the music world? Please identify those so you make a little sense.
Its not about flat curves being right or wrong either so again you are confused about having an accurate setup. If you are altering the signal (its called distortion), you have to have flat response if you really want to play content accurately. There is no subjectivity in that at all. Send pink noise or whatever to ensure your system is not colored and you will then know that your system will accurately reproduce whatever content is sent to it even if the content itself isnt very good. If your system is not flat then you have introduced coloration that will effect the playback of content.
You are subjective on this, especially if you are posting "history and aesthetics of music", thats 100% subjective mumbo jumbo talk and has zero to do with audio science (heck I didnt even know music could have aesthetics 😱). Im also not sure how this discussion has anything to do with choosing pro drivers like B&C or PHL vs "HiFi" choices like Seas or Acuton drivers.
Like Seas drivers know more about "history and aesthetics" then B&C drivers do 🙄
Several posts from the so called "HiFi" crowd have inaccurate tried to protray HT as just less accurate in terms of SQ then 2 channel. They are simply wrong. If they choose to not care about their SQ in HT that is fine but overall there is simply no reason HT would have lessor SQ needs then 2 channel. Maybe they just mean they do not care about SQ in HT but I would bet if they went to a Movie at a local theater they would cringe at the sound or if they had a friend with one of those BOSE systems they would again cringe at the sound during any movie. If that is true they they DO care about SQ in HT.
In the end some people like me care as much about SQ in Movies as they do with Music and when we pick/design our speakers those speakers have certain requirements and in our case Pro audio drivers exceed those requirements better then "HiFi" choices.
We are now back to what I think everyone agrees on. The choice of drivers depends on the application and requirements.
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Of course we are critical of measurements, many experts (Im not one) will point out that certain measurements are meaningless or extremely flaw. In the end you do have to make sense of them.....some people do that better then others.
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Nothing turns a half-truth to fact faster than expressing it poorly using PaintBrush. The arrows going in a circle especially opened my eyes.
I don't think so. You miss the difference between a standard for sound reproduction and the reproduction of the musical sound.
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