Stop the trolling Doug, it's un becoming and you are derailing the thread....
I thought you were trolling, sorry... You post sweeping comments, but when people ask you for clarification you ignore questions. Let's go back on topic, to the basic definitions? Can you answer my question, please, I posted in my previous message in response to your comment with almost zero semantics?
True but the they supply the race car and space industries amongst others so I wouldn't expect all of their products be suitable for audio.
On the other hand when it comes to top quality consoles their market share in pots and faders is practically 100%. At least all the ones I touched used P&G (SSL, Neve, Midas).
My own Soundcraft uses top-of-the-range ALPS which are quite nice too though.
Designing a proper tone control of equalizer is certainly a tough task, especially doing it for anything approaching a sensible price. Doing it in software (for digital sources) seems to be more sensible approach.
IMO Freq response is right up there with the room and speakers as a factor in listening to recorded music, the differences are larger than those typically found in different electronic components (not saying they all sound the same).
So as onerous as it might be a good tone control for a system is a very important component.
Well, you started to paint Toole & associates into the corner of cultism and you introduced the r-word yourself. The thing for me is that you may harbour all beliefs you want, even those based on your own perceptions. But that is just what they are, untill you device a way to objectify these experiences so that they become verifiable and can be classified as knowledge.
What is with the strawman's arguement?
Those that enjoy audio from a scientific point of view have no beliefs involved. Its those who let their imaginations control their decisions that tend to come from the "belief stance".
If you or others actually had valid controlled listening tests then there wouldn't be 100 page debates over silly products (ie Bybee quantum purifier)
As Yoda would a say "Imagination is strong with you....."
FWIW, I have done ABX testing enough to know that there can be differences sometimes BUT we can also show that difference with a good measurements. There is nothing you can hear that does not exist in the original soundwave measurement.
I saw a lot of people who believe in certain things because their beliefs were formed by scientists and misinterpreted scientific experiments.
We sometimes forget that empirical knowledge counts for a great deal. You are assuming J Curl is operating in a vacuum and in some fashion does not "objectify" his experience. It might do to ask him what procedures he uses to evaluate his own work.
Evaluations rely on good descriptions. Some of these descriptions are measurements which are quite easy to display and which on the face of them seem unambiguous, but they can become so when it's time to correlate them with subjective experience, which is an ultimate criterion if you are making sound reproducing equipment.
Curl is successful with his designs and they measure well. So the question you might put to him is what does he do once the new work is "finished" but before he lets it go to the manufacturing process.
You might ask him why he thinks the good measurements are a necessary but not sufficient condition for releasing a product.
You might ask him what his listening procedure consists of and who, besides himself, might be involved.
That could be a more useful way of discussing the subject with him than telling him what he knows is not knowledge. Such an approach tends to make people stubborn and confrontive.
What is with the strawman's arguement?
Those that enjoy audio from a scientific point of view have no beliefs involved. Its those who let their imaginations control their decisions that tend to come from the "belief stance".
If you or others actually had valid controlled listening tests then there wouldn't be 100 page debates over silly products (ie Bybee quantum purifier)
As Yoda would a say "Imagination is strong with you....."
FWIW, I have done ABX testing enough to know that there can be differences sometimes BUT we can also show that difference with a good measurements. There is nothing you can hear that does not exist in the original soundwave measurement.
I have a friend that I met through audio circles that does psychological research for a major university in PA. I was very much of your mindset prior to meeting/discussing with him. I have a new appreciation for the subjective side of the audio business as well as the limitations of double blind testing after spending quite a few hours discussing things with him. Don't get me wrong, there is value in ABX tests and they often show that what audiophiles sometimes describe as vast differences are so minute that they are hard to identify, but they are decidedly biased towards null results. So, the question becomes, if ABX tests aren't the best method to get accurate results, do methods of testing exist that work better. My researcher friend strongly believes there are testing methods that would allow average people to readily identify minute environmental changes.
Unfortunately, such tests are prohibitively expensive and difficult to perform but I wish someone would do it to try to bridge the gap from closed minded thinking on both sides of the audio spectrum.
Just to be clear on this, I understand that there will be some way to get a measurement that would be able to identify the minute differences that people are capable of picking up, but I don't know that I've seen it, yet. It seems we've got a scientific community that is mostly satisfied with the status quo and 15-20 year old research and another group that couldn't possibly be less interested in measurements.
good point, no one is immune to beliefs but I would hope using some sort of validation would help us form better conclusions.
Frank, very well said. I have always appreciated the level of technical discussion at DIYaudio and the ability for both sides to discuss their POV rationally. It seems that recently, both sides are becoming less tolerant of one another and far more confrontational and it's slowly taking a toll on the site.
I'd guess he was referring to this one:
Anyone using tone controls or eq have a bad audio system......
And that is the point exactly. It is about correlating measurement with subjective, but objectified, perception. That is what helps the art progress.
Now, to come back to the topic of this thread, loudspeaker designers who know what they are doing, know which measurable parameters to optimize in order to get sound that is also subjectively optimal. However, this can only be done for one kind of environment. It will just run out of optimal alignment in another kind of setting. This has nothing to do with the quality of the equipment, but rather with the fact that especially loudspeakers can only be optimized for one set of conditions. Put these loudspeakers in another listening environment, and what once was a straight frequency curve, suddenly has a heavy peak at 120 Hz, and a couple of dB extra around 1250 Hz, plus a roll off on the high end. That give a boomy, dull and coloured sound. So, to take matters in your own hand and equalize it back to straight is a sensible thing to do.
This is not to say that EQ should be applied lightly. It is always better to improve the acoustics of the listening environment as much as possible. And it also makes sense to work with components with competent measurements to begin with. But, in the end, in real life situations, EQ is the only way to restore a loudspeaker back to as close as possible to the designers intentions.
^^ Vacuphile with all due respect i find the above response very naive, have you ever voiced a speaker in a room before ? any speaker with the peaks you described was very much out of wack to begin and with so much questionable measuring devices being used .. who knows ...
IMO An eq will never make it sound right , regardless of how pretty you think the graph is ....
regards,
IMO An eq will never make it sound right , regardless of how pretty you think the graph is ....
regards,
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