Hello Pano
I am speaking specifically about the kind of measurement/anti measurement debates we see all over the on-line forums. It was too new, there was no high end, where the argument got it's roots. Your average person in the street had no common knowledge of how these systems worked.
Rob🙂
I am speaking specifically about the kind of measurement/anti measurement debates we see all over the on-line forums. It was too new, there was no high end, where the argument got it's roots. Your average person in the street had no common knowledge of how these systems worked.
Rob🙂
I wouldn't be so sure about this. A calibrated condenser mic, oscillator and meter will allow a manual plotting of frequency response but it would be a laborious process. Without an anechoic chamber you would need a lot of points and some sort of smoothing. Warble tones were the only practical early approach. Automatic curve tracing also requires good log conversion of level, a log frequency generator and a means of synching it all together.
I know that Altec had a system working in the 40's. JBL had a home-made unit in their museum, complete with a circular plotter for polar curves. Briggs of Wharfedale had no automatic plotting when writing his books, and used frequency sweep tones off of records. I don't know of any commercially available units prior to the post war Gen Rad and B&K units.
Don't discount the usefulness of automatic response plotting in efficient loudspeaker design.
David S.
Hello Joe
Exactly! This is why they would support
You need to do some reading if you think otherwise. DBT testing is based on pier reviewed papers published through the AES and other groups. It doesn't have it's root in the High End press as a comparison. It's based on carefully controlled and documented experimentation which they would be quite at home with.
Rob🙂
Exactly! This is why they would support
You need to do some reading if you think otherwise. DBT testing is based on pier reviewed papers published through the AES and other groups. It doesn't have it's root in the High End press as a comparison. It's based on carefully controlled and documented experimentation which they would be quite at home with.
Rob🙂
As long as non-technical people have used technical equipment, I think there have been debates like this. But (correct me if I'm wrong) I think the debate really took off when the first transistor amps came. That's at least my impression from what I've read.
Perhaps not exactly on topic, but here is a little anecdote about the introduction of the Ortophonic phonograph, the first mechanical phonograph that had wide and flat(ish) frequency response (this was also an invention from the Bell Labs, btw) (Source: the Historical Context chapter of Electroacoustics by V.F. Hunt, 1954).
Regards,
Bjørn
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I pitty the poor junior engineer who gets his long-labored-over prototype rejected by marketing for lack of "touch and phrasing".
Back to the wine analogies, some describe wines with phrases like: polished, austere, brooding or elegant. Others use terms like citrous, glassy, oaky or vanillaish. I can imagine there is a link between chemistry and the second group. I'm not sure the first group is anything more than flowery marketing.
How do we, as engineers, tackle " touch, phrasing, and texture". Is there a connection between these and the parameters we might measure (or by any means optimize)? Are they even properties of loudspeakers, or should they remain in the province of the musical performance?
I am once again picturing the wise old men of Western Electric sitting in front of a coiled horn saying "Its good but still lacking something in touch and phrasing".
David S.
It may amuse you even more to know that some fans of this strange old gear are also fans of blind testing. Gross differences rarely need a blind test, subtle differences do. Non-audio clues can (and do) influence our perception, but I find that influence to be over stated in threads like this. I've mentioned that several times.
Really, is the argument so lame that it boils down to "I heard it and they've never made anything better - progress be damned!." vs. "You just like it because it's old and looks cool - plus you were told it sounds good."
Is that all there is to it?
Ever run an exhibit room at an audio show? I have, RMAF, LSAF, Montreal and others. There are always a few blind guys who stop by. They are no different than the sighted listeners, despite what you might think. Except maybe friendlier and happier to be there.
Point taken. But I'll wager there were already the same debates in the Victrola era. Would be fun to find out. By the 1930s they were already complaining that your new radio was obsolete before you got it home and tuned it in. 😀
Bostwick (designer of the WE596 tweeter) had a long article in Bell System Technical Journal in 1929 on "Acoustic Considerations Involved in Steady State Loud Speaker Measurements". The measurement method was manual, and the level was measured by comparing with the input level to the loudspeaker, using a calibrated attenuator.
They measured the loudspeakers outdoors, on poles. The article also shows a comparision with indoor measurements in a damped but not anechoic room, to demonstrate how different and uneven the response becomes.
I found the JASA article (just an abstract, actually), it's from 1932, by Stuart Ballantine. He was not at Bell Labs, but it shows that it was possible at the time. "Automatic Logarithmic Recorder for Frequency Response Measurements". JASA vol 4 no 10, 1932.
What's commercially available is a completely different thing than what you may find at one of the largest research institutions, owned by the company operating what was probably the world's largest telephone network at the time. If they didn't have what they needed, they invented it. Who else would have an impedance bridge for measuring mechanical impedances in 1926?
I don't, it is extremely useful. Efficient is the word here.
It's not my point to discount later efforts, but it is interesting to look at what capabilities actually existed at the time. When we look into it, it was much more advanced than we are used to believe. That it didn't filter down from the research institutions to the commercial manufacturers until much later, is another story 🙂
Regards,
Bjørn
Excuse me, but I have some words of wisdom once removed from my acquaintance Mr. Natural.
In our discussion he relates this to me, and he may be old enough to have seen things first hand, it is difficult to say...
The performance of the WE 555 and the horns they made may well have been a lucky outcome. So what?
_-_-bear
In our discussion he relates this to me, and he may be old enough to have seen things first hand, it is difficult to say...
The performance of the WE 555 and the horns they made may well have been a lucky outcome. So what?
_-_-bear
That I highly doubt, show me where those sort of people have even bothered with a DBT. How do you find sighted tests influence to be over stated when that is all that is being done? ZERO DBT being done in the high end community is MY experience. What you state doesn't make it true.
Really, is the argument so lame that it boils down to "I heard it and they've never made anything better - progress be damned!." vs. "You just like it because it's old and looks cool - plus you were told it sounds good."
Is that all there is to it?
Sadly, yes. Those that rely upon sighted belief systems are doomed to prefer the costlier, prettier component.
And I'm betting some one told them and described to them in detail WHAT they were listening to, hence they were also getting a "sighted" bias experience.
Oh it's a fact that the Victrola was being marketed as being "lifelike" and "like being there". Do you still think it lived up to it's hype? Hardly.
So what?????????😕 I would hope that speaker design would rely upon much more than "we got lucky" in the future. I see this discussion being divided among those that think the golden age of speaker design was ages ago and those that think it has either arrived now or will in the near future.
I am sure that years from now after we have perfected direct audio implants into the brain so that outside audio gear is no longer needed, that there will STILL be "audiophiles" arguing over which neural transmitter sounds more "natural" with heated debates going on online about it.
Dead horse City? Yep......adios.
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DavidL, if ur not interested in the subject, why do you participate?
Do you wish to "prove" that DBTs can indicate which speakers are the "best"?
If so, please, by all means do so - in a thread about that subject?
And, if at all possible please, please, please help me and others to know which of these speakers are truly the "best" so that we can stop mucking about with them? In that thread.
There is no "division" as you put it. You have mis-framed this to fit a "black & white", right or wrong way of thinking. I sure don't think that way at all.
What we have is an old system that was short lived for its intended application, was supplanted by successively newer drivers and horns over a period of many decades and essentially abandoned. BUT, when in more recent times, with much improved signal chain and source material, when some have tried and revisited this "dinosaur" it turns out that it has abilities and qualities that are unexpectedly fine. Is this not clear?
You could also share with everyone what your system consists of, and exactly how and why you made your choices. This might help us learn something. I'm not kidding. If you have something to share, why not share it?
Of course this is a discussion of the merits or lack thereof of Western Electric gear, not some other subject.
Dear DavidL, the fact remains that ALL hi-fi reproduction at this time is a crude approximation of a sonic event - especially in the case of a live recording as compared to a multi-track mono studio creation. So with this in mind what is being discussed is NOT the results of some DBT, but the fact that the WE horns being discussed appear to be providing some sort of cue/information/qualities that is not conveyed well or at all in most other speaker implementations. The discussion revolves around this point, not some other factors or belief systems.
It's not an argument, it is a free wheeling discussion that includes opinions, experiences, as well as science and engineering.
Please keep in mind that for decades there were people who talked about "engineering and science" who claimed that it was a FACT that amplifiers with sufficiently low distortion, like 0.001% were all transparent, and all sounded the same. Turns out that this was, ummmm... NOT TRUE, right??
Science and engineering can carry you as far as they have progressed, and only that far at the time that you employ them. It's limited to the present understandings. Breakthroughs come when people notice things and try to figure them out after noticing them first... some discoveries are also serendipitous, accidents that happen in the course of looking for something else... so throwing up science and engineering as being dispositive is not entirely correct.
_-_-bear
Do you wish to "prove" that DBTs can indicate which speakers are the "best"?
If so, please, by all means do so - in a thread about that subject?
And, if at all possible please, please, please help me and others to know which of these speakers are truly the "best" so that we can stop mucking about with them? In that thread.
There is no "division" as you put it. You have mis-framed this to fit a "black & white", right or wrong way of thinking. I sure don't think that way at all.
What we have is an old system that was short lived for its intended application, was supplanted by successively newer drivers and horns over a period of many decades and essentially abandoned. BUT, when in more recent times, with much improved signal chain and source material, when some have tried and revisited this "dinosaur" it turns out that it has abilities and qualities that are unexpectedly fine. Is this not clear?
You could also share with everyone what your system consists of, and exactly how and why you made your choices. This might help us learn something. I'm not kidding. If you have something to share, why not share it?
Of course this is a discussion of the merits or lack thereof of Western Electric gear, not some other subject.
Dear DavidL, the fact remains that ALL hi-fi reproduction at this time is a crude approximation of a sonic event - especially in the case of a live recording as compared to a multi-track mono studio creation. So with this in mind what is being discussed is NOT the results of some DBT, but the fact that the WE horns being discussed appear to be providing some sort of cue/information/qualities that is not conveyed well or at all in most other speaker implementations. The discussion revolves around this point, not some other factors or belief systems.
It's not an argument, it is a free wheeling discussion that includes opinions, experiences, as well as science and engineering.
Please keep in mind that for decades there were people who talked about "engineering and science" who claimed that it was a FACT that amplifiers with sufficiently low distortion, like 0.001% were all transparent, and all sounded the same. Turns out that this was, ummmm... NOT TRUE, right??
Science and engineering can carry you as far as they have progressed, and only that far at the time that you employ them. It's limited to the present understandings. Breakthroughs come when people notice things and try to figure them out after noticing them first... some discoveries are also serendipitous, accidents that happen in the course of looking for something else... so throwing up science and engineering as being dispositive is not entirely correct.
_-_-bear
Rob, I have two and a half degrees in social science, so I wore out my eyes reading. Above I tried to share the wisdom of a meta=approach to the entire institution that produces this kind of thinking and how their goals are not necessarily those of music listeners.
The sort of clinical experimentation that underlies DBT is some primitive, blindered stuff in my estimation. Ignores reality of life. Talked about this above. The test destroys the subject.
Peer review is about keeping people on the team. It has nothing to do with establishing truth. Radical and alternative views are squashed by this process. It is about self-preservation and maintenance of the status quo.
Perhaps the WE engineers would approve? In any case, I am thankful that they worked on design instead of philosophy of science and cultural anthropology or else we would be poorer by a couple great horn topologies!
This discussion does not come down to some who think the golden age is past and some who see the golden age in the future, I think both can be true, The reason I advocate for WE is in hope that we can recapture some of that quality in the 21st century. .Education for the future.
Actually, in the past ten years we are moving in that general direction more and more. I may be an archaeologist/historical anthropologist and a fan of certain antiques, but I am mainly interested in and enthusiastic about now and the future.
To me DBT and wafer-thin scientific overlays stand in the way of development, I think we have to trust our ears first to point the way and if accumulated prejudices and habits of thought block the path, crush them.
Part of my overall "act" is to point out the dangerous nature of these prejudices and how they constrain growth and development of better music listening equipment. Tough job but somebody's gotta do it.
History also holds a lot of important lessons. Things have. not in fact changed that much! We are talking 80 years of electrical reproduction...a blip in time.
WE approached their job with a fresh outlook because nobody had done it before. I think there are lessons for us in that historical moment. We are not working with the blank slate they had, and there are significant drawbacks as well as advantages in that.
If you want to understand America read the thoughts of the founders-- Federalist Papers, diaries, etc. and compare with where we are now. Do the same to understand the trajectory of the development of audio--but don't just read, listen!
So yeah...where are the modern drivers and horns that can do what WE systems did? That's what we should be asking and working on. Knowing the past is part of this enterprise.
While I was at PSB we had three competent designers (Mark Mason, Paul Barton and myself) and more than a little politics in the organization. As we all listened to each others designs the politics became obstructive and so we started to do single blind testing of new prototypes. The designer would put his work behind a curtain and typically two other units would be compared. We could sit in issolation and a-b-c the units at our leisure, then compare notes later.
Not a perfect system but it worked for us.
Now I would swear that my ears are good and I am free from bias (right!) but it really made a difference when you didn't know which model was which: who designed it, was it the older model or the new prototype, etc. As we started to institute the test, I had to re-evaluate some models that I had previously formed an opinion on. I couldn't support my previous opinions.
This was a real eye opener, as my previous opinions where quite strong. I don't think the differences between models were changed at all, that is the difference at switchover between the voicing of one and the next was real and everpresent, but the way you would characterize the goodness of one vs. the next, the presumption of which was right, was heavily influenced by knowing. It really is the wine bottle with the expensive label.
Someone lamented that this is becoming another subjectivist vs.objectivist thread. That was inevitable. In the end we have become a nation of those who do and those who do not believe in science.
David S.
Hello Joe
So your done and you have no intention of reading first hand what it's all about. Your loss.
So you have been through this first hand so you an informed opinion?? I know several people who have been in the Blind test facilities at JBL in Northridge and in all cases the blind testing was a real eye opener for them. All considered it a positive experience and they were glad they had a chance to partcipate.
Again you have been through this process first hand??
I can't respond to that because it is absolutely ridiculous. Wow back to the Flat Earth of the middle ages.
Hello David
So true but in an age so full of technology it's just plain amazing. Yes science is the true enemy the devil in disguise. Anybody have some kindling?? I have a computer loaded with Clio and LEAP that needs burning.
Rob🙂
So your done and you have no intention of reading first hand what it's all about. Your loss.
So you have been through this first hand so you an informed opinion?? I know several people who have been in the Blind test facilities at JBL in Northridge and in all cases the blind testing was a real eye opener for them. All considered it a positive experience and they were glad they had a chance to partcipate.
Again you have been through this process first hand??
I can't respond to that because it is absolutely ridiculous. Wow back to the Flat Earth of the middle ages.
Hello David
So true but in an age so full of technology it's just plain amazing. Yes science is the true enemy the devil in disguise. Anybody have some kindling?? I have a computer loaded with Clio and LEAP that needs burning.
Rob🙂
David, your conclusion is unwarranted and does not flow from what you said at all.
When you say "nation" that is a backwards way of painting all those who you do not share the same views with in this thread. It is also unsupported if your intent was literal. It may be true, but that's a mere assertion, and irrelevant to the discussion.
really.
The problem with all tests, blind or not, is that they may or may not be generalizable outside of the actual test conditions! The next problem comes when those who base their views on any "test" or "DBT" limit themselves to that test or tests to form an opinion or viewpoint.
At least for myself, I'm fine with the way you described listening to the speakers.
I agree that sighted vs unsighted listening is different.
That doesn't mean that one or the other is solely preferable or yields better results all the time.
I would go one more. If you had spoken to me a bit more than 20 years ago I would have told you that there is NO WAY that horns can EVER be any good, that they were all flawed and had engineering issues that were overwhelming. Forget about horns, no good. ( mostly old worthless crap too, btw..)
Until I heard, quite by serendipitous accident a driver + horn that was just plain great, and sounded NOTHING like all the other horrific sounding horns that I had heard for the previous 30+ years before. Whoa! So, I changed my views and tried to figure out WHY this ONE was different.
I am always up for learning a new trick, or discovering something new, even finding out that what I argued strongly was just wrong. No problem. For me that's great!! Nothing much could be better! 😀
_-_-bear
When you say "nation" that is a backwards way of painting all those who you do not share the same views with in this thread. It is also unsupported if your intent was literal. It may be true, but that's a mere assertion, and irrelevant to the discussion.
really.
The problem with all tests, blind or not, is that they may or may not be generalizable outside of the actual test conditions! The next problem comes when those who base their views on any "test" or "DBT" limit themselves to that test or tests to form an opinion or viewpoint.
At least for myself, I'm fine with the way you described listening to the speakers.
I agree that sighted vs unsighted listening is different.
That doesn't mean that one or the other is solely preferable or yields better results all the time.
I would go one more. If you had spoken to me a bit more than 20 years ago I would have told you that there is NO WAY that horns can EVER be any good, that they were all flawed and had engineering issues that were overwhelming. Forget about horns, no good. ( mostly old worthless crap too, btw..)
Until I heard, quite by serendipitous accident a driver + horn that was just plain great, and sounded NOTHING like all the other horrific sounding horns that I had heard for the previous 30+ years before. Whoa! So, I changed my views and tried to figure out WHY this ONE was different.
I am always up for learning a new trick, or discovering something new, even finding out that what I argued strongly was just wrong. No problem. For me that's great!! Nothing much could be better! 😀
_-_-bear
David,
I would say that testing you describe is valid...not because it is "scientific" but because it was a group of knowledgeable practitioners working to pin down issues and bracket out biases. Sounds as though you were doing this to instruct and convince yourselves...we can all use such reality checks now and again.
The inevitability of subjectivist vs. objectivist debate is one of the destructive habits of thought I mentioned earlier.
It is really not that clearcut.The listening subject is never objective and the subjectivist uses the same powers of objective observation as the objectivist.
Mostly I reject objective testing because it is really not that well thought out, especially in how it relates to what we use stereos for, i.e. music listening.
The scientific process is a lot trickier than a lot of scientists think it is, because it is a cultural behavior that has a lot of embedded non-objectivities in it. Scientists are people and act that way. Philosophers of science are coming to terms with this notion but the audio forums lag well behind the curve.
If we want an objectivist/subjectivist debate, it would be useful to study up and reframe it in a more penetrating and sophisticated dialogue.
OK this is becoming a broken record! I made my point. yada yada yada. I came to talk about WE, not DBT--total snoozer in my opinion.
I would say that testing you describe is valid...not because it is "scientific" but because it was a group of knowledgeable practitioners working to pin down issues and bracket out biases. Sounds as though you were doing this to instruct and convince yourselves...we can all use such reality checks now and again.
The inevitability of subjectivist vs. objectivist debate is one of the destructive habits of thought I mentioned earlier.
It is really not that clearcut.The listening subject is never objective and the subjectivist uses the same powers of objective observation as the objectivist.
Mostly I reject objective testing because it is really not that well thought out, especially in how it relates to what we use stereos for, i.e. music listening.
The scientific process is a lot trickier than a lot of scientists think it is, because it is a cultural behavior that has a lot of embedded non-objectivities in it. Scientists are people and act that way. Philosophers of science are coming to terms with this notion but the audio forums lag well behind the curve.
If we want an objectivist/subjectivist debate, it would be useful to study up and reframe it in a more penetrating and sophisticated dialogue.
OK this is becoming a broken record! I made my point. yada yada yada. I came to talk about WE, not DBT--total snoozer in my opinion.
Guys, let's return to the topic of the thread, if you want to continue to debate DBT testing in detail that is probably better done in a thread of its own.
Rob, you are not reading what I am saying or not getting it.
The test is not real life--and that is what makes it work. It is not clearcut how to bridge this gap.
I offer this up as an observation that should help people who do this kind of testing. You have to know the limits of your knowledge conditions and DBT advocates are missing a big lacuna in the scheme.
I am not just making this up to be contentious and a forum cowboy. There is a library of very advanced thinking and literature in several disciplines behind my statements, but I am talking about Ludwig Wittgenstein and other philosophers and anthropologists most people never heard of, not Toole and GA Briggs...although I read a lot of that stuff also in coming to my position.
I'm never finished studying...I am in grad school again at age 52.
I think that long term listening in natural circumstances is the best way to evaluate gear. If this tends to color perceptions...does it matter?
PS: I'm with kevinkr...let's talk about something else!
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Well one way would be to start quantifying how each small change in a single measurement changes the sound and attribute that to "touch,phrasing and texture" words. Although many people go overboard with those words, the fact is that they are just trying to create a lexicon for the qualities they hear, when there isn't a predetermined quality attributed to what they are hearing.
A lot of those flowery words (not all) have some sort of quantitative quality attached to them, when discussing wines, beer, food, etc. Engineers are just not the type to do such things, unless it is in a controlled manner.
Here is how this problem is fixed:
Take an amplifier that is of an average build quality, performance and sound. Have group give a listen to it using the same source, preamp and speakers every time. Modify the amp to change only one characteristic, ie. slew rate. Listen again, notice the difference if there is one, and attribute a word to what you are hearing. Now do this over and over until we have a lexicon for how each single change affects the sound. We actually already have a lot of this done but nobody has taken the time to write down each term and it's definition in one place. Another problem is that you cannot understand a lot of these terms until you have experienced them. It's like describing the taste of chocolate to someone who has never had it. Because of this lack of a universally understood lexicon a lot of audiophiles are now looked at as audio-fools. From there we could create a wiki so when someone sees the word bloom when discussing an amp, they could look it up and see an entry like this.
Bloom - Bloom is the word attributed to the soundstage opening up, or growing larger then the room a sound system is playing in. It is caused by (fill in blank), the measurements that affect this are (fill in the blank). Generally this is more noticeable as an amplifier moves from it's initial operating temperature, to it's optimal operating temperature.
Now I am not sure if that is an accurate description but assuming it is, everyone in the world would now know what bloom is; what causes it, and how they might recognize it when they hear it. The reason this hasen't been done is that it requires a lot of work, a lot of agreement on how to measure and describe things and the fact that by doing this it will remove some of the magic of this hobby for some people. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done however.
*rant warning*
To me there is one simple fact that tells me that everything can be measured in audio. One that I cannot conceive how any rational person could ignore. OUR EARS ARE INSTRUMENTS. They can detect the smallest of changes, some which may not be able to be measured with current techniques. Can there be a placebo affect? Of course! Is every change able to be attributable to placebo affect? Hell no! Just put it in perspective, if you barely notice a change, your mind might just be trying to fill in the blank on its on. If you notice a small change or a change or a big change, chances are it is a big change. The fact remains that if you are hearing a change, you are measuring a change.
Personally I think that there needs to be some new measurement protocols that need to be designed. For one, we generally measure only one aspect of an amplifier at a time. This is due to the nature of an oscilloscope, and related tools, only being able to do one thing at a time. Well it is 2012, we have computers and can use them to measure multiple aspects at once if we set them up properly. I would not be surprised to see that many of the things we hear, that have not been able to be attributed to to a single measurement, might be attributable to the interaction of multiple measurements working at once. I am willing to bet that if you took two amplifier, replaced one with the same spec but higher quality components, and measured it on a 3d plotting computer or oscilloscope, we would discover a whole new world of things to measure. This is where creativity and science have not truly been developed as much as is needed.
*rant off*