It is with great trepidation that I enter here, lest I seem to ignore the warnings...
But earlier you said:
Those look like measurements. What did you use to measure them? How did you determine those "percentages". A percentage is a fraction or ratio; when you say "soundstage 28%", what do you mean? 28% of what? How did you arrive at that number? What would 29% sound like, or 27%? In short, how can you ascribe any meaning to those numbers?
No, we don't. It seems to be something you want to do, but nobody else "needs" that at all. "Audio postulates"... I think you mean that you want to use those three "parameters" to describe, and quantify, sound. You apparently are unable or unwilling to look at the existing literature on psychoacoustics and learn to use the vocabulary that has been built up over many ears to describe sound. Why should the rest of us join your little crusade of ignorance?
I'm not even going to address your use of marketing terms like "PRAT" to try to describe audio performance.
Its because of the environmental factors,
That all you can do is try to get maximum information through the equipment and reproduce that at the transducer.
However the trick is to not "add or remove" anything in the process.
Capture everything from the source and reproduce it as power into the transducer.
Now this is where the argument takes place..how much is lost or gained in the system..😀
The impact of imaging etc is the result of the system with all factors. Speaker type, environment, amplifier and source.
(Synergy of the system) and how it matches the environment.
Regard
M. Gregg
That all you can do is try to get maximum information through the equipment and reproduce that at the transducer.
However the trick is to not "add or remove" anything in the process.
Capture everything from the source and reproduce it as power into the transducer.
Now this is where the argument takes place..how much is lost or gained in the system..😀
The impact of imaging etc is the result of the system with all factors. Speaker type, environment, amplifier and source.
(Synergy of the system) and how it matches the environment.
Regard
M. Gregg
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How is the notion of not measuring soundstage any different that not measuring the number of angels in the room?
Recently, I swapped in a different pair of speakers from the one's I have been using. Did it sound different? You bet. The originals are dipole, the new ones are ported dynamic drivers. This "soundstage" collapsed.
Which leads me to suggest that such psychoacoustics are far more based on room/speaker interaction than on the signal coming out of my amp. If you are going to go down that road, you first need to make sure you are going to measure the right thing.
And yes, measurements are critical here. Without them, we are lost in a world of confirmation bias, placebo and suggestive thinking. We are the weakest link.
Recently, I swapped in a different pair of speakers from the one's I have been using. Did it sound different? You bet. The originals are dipole, the new ones are ported dynamic drivers. This "soundstage" collapsed.
Which leads me to suggest that such psychoacoustics are far more based on room/speaker interaction than on the signal coming out of my amp. If you are going to go down that road, you first need to make sure you are going to measure the right thing.
And yes, measurements are critical here. Without them, we are lost in a world of confirmation bias, placebo and suggestive thinking. We are the weakest link.
nezbleu
Welcome. Admittedly, those are completely subjective measures provided primarily to appease a members request for an example. Your assessment of that equipment in that environment may be quite different and that is fine as long as we communicate with the same terms. You may very well be right about my ignorance of all the psycho-acoustic research data I may be unaware of so I will prompt you to provide me some links to those publications, either publicly here or privately to my email, which is accessible to other members. The mechanisms and terminology to describe an audible pressure wave are numerous and fairly precise but hardly accessible to everyone. I don't believe there exists a framework specifically describing sonic impression resulting from electrical changes and that is what leads me to believe this could be important but please correct me if I am mistaken about this. Therein lies the need in my opinion.
Welcome. Admittedly, those are completely subjective measures provided primarily to appease a members request for an example. Your assessment of that equipment in that environment may be quite different and that is fine as long as we communicate with the same terms. You may very well be right about my ignorance of all the psycho-acoustic research data I may be unaware of so I will prompt you to provide me some links to those publications, either publicly here or privately to my email, which is accessible to other members. The mechanisms and terminology to describe an audible pressure wave are numerous and fairly precise but hardly accessible to everyone. I don't believe there exists a framework specifically describing sonic impression resulting from electrical changes and that is what leads me to believe this could be important but please correct me if I am mistaken about this. Therein lies the need in my opinion.
Yes, even adjusting the positions of a given pair of (decent) speakers in a room can cause the apparent sound field to be either expansive, or a diffuse mess.
We're kinda still stuck at "amplifier" rather than a whole system, which we can't move on from until it's addressed.
"Voicing an amplifier" indicates that a person is actively listening to an amplifier and adjusting "something". I'm pretty f------ stupid, but it seems like we can't even talk about that until someone overcomes the first problem, which is the fact that the overwhelming majority of the evidence says amplifiers are largely indistinguishable from one another anyway. We have to solve that issue first, it's unavoidable, even if two or three of you pipe up that you can tell amplifiers apart, but then quickly disappear, hiding behind weak rhetoric attacking the scientific method.
People need to be more open to the idea that not everything is as you suspect it is, and some people have spent years doing research which you can't simply ignore or belittle because the results make you feel uncomfortable.
"WhAT? Amplifiers largely sound the same? What are these people, crazy? I spent $18,000 on this amplifier and I'll be damned to think it doesn't sound better, hell, where is this forum so I can scream about how much better it is and how crazy all those science folk are over and over and over and over."
It is perhaps useful to understand 'voicing' from a real time audio designer's point of view.
When I designed the Parasound JC-3 phono preamp, I was challenged to make the design from existing IC's, rather than the discrete jfets that I still use for more exotic phono stages. This did not mean that I could NOT use any fets, but just not the Toshiba jfets that became almost impossible to purchase a few years ago. So, what to do? Well, I copied the basic block diagram of what I normally made, like the Vendetta Research phono preamp, but replaced the discrete jfet gain stages with IC's. Still, I kept the power supply buffers to separate the channels, as well as the best bypass and RIAA caps that I know works. So, I designed a phono preamp that was as close to a Vendetta as possible, except for using IC's for the gain stages. Now, what happened? On personally listening to the first full prototype, I was disappointed, when compared to a Vendetta phono stage. In fact, it was almost unlistenable, and I got very concerned. What I found is that the case and backplate material were made of steel, and I could hear it. To test for a difference, my tech and I separated the 'steel' from the circuit as much as possible with bubble-wrap, and the sound improved. Then we swapped out IC op amps, trying different companies version of a 1nV/rt Hz input, and again heard differences, between EVERY IC type we inserted at the input. We were able to select between two IC's and chose the less expensive one, because even though it sounded as good as the other IC, just a little different.
Finally, I did some extended listening tests with another prototype with an aluminum backplate and found that it was successful, even for me, although the Vendetta did sound somewhat better.
Measurements to -100dB or better, did not change in any case. Finally, we put it on the market and I hoped for the best. It has been very successful, according to the reviewers. This is how it works.
When I designed the Parasound JC-3 phono preamp, I was challenged to make the design from existing IC's, rather than the discrete jfets that I still use for more exotic phono stages. This did not mean that I could NOT use any fets, but just not the Toshiba jfets that became almost impossible to purchase a few years ago. So, what to do? Well, I copied the basic block diagram of what I normally made, like the Vendetta Research phono preamp, but replaced the discrete jfet gain stages with IC's. Still, I kept the power supply buffers to separate the channels, as well as the best bypass and RIAA caps that I know works. So, I designed a phono preamp that was as close to a Vendetta as possible, except for using IC's for the gain stages. Now, what happened? On personally listening to the first full prototype, I was disappointed, when compared to a Vendetta phono stage. In fact, it was almost unlistenable, and I got very concerned. What I found is that the case and backplate material were made of steel, and I could hear it. To test for a difference, my tech and I separated the 'steel' from the circuit as much as possible with bubble-wrap, and the sound improved. Then we swapped out IC op amps, trying different companies version of a 1nV/rt Hz input, and again heard differences, between EVERY IC type we inserted at the input. We were able to select between two IC's and chose the less expensive one, because even though it sounded as good as the other IC, just a little different.
Finally, I did some extended listening tests with another prototype with an aluminum backplate and found that it was successful, even for me, although the Vendetta did sound somewhat better.
Measurements to -100dB or better, did not change in any case. Finally, we put it on the market and I hoped for the best. It has been very successful, according to the reviewers. This is how it works.
In the minuscule fashion audio niche, yes. None of that is relevant to actual sound, though, and specifically not to the timing of music, which you might notice is the topic of this thread.
DrDyna
Even though all the audio system components are symbiotic, I focused on the amplifier primarily because it had the greatest potential electronic signal management. Loudspeakers and room effects may be a greater contributor to the final result on the whole but electrical changes there still come back to the amplifier relationship.
Even though all the audio system components are symbiotic, I focused on the amplifier primarily because it had the greatest potential electronic signal management. Loudspeakers and room effects may be a greater contributor to the final result on the whole but electrical changes there still come back to the amplifier relationship.
There's all kinds of anecdotal evidence like this, pretty much everywhere, and audiophiles..and even EEs and amplifier designers, if they're steeped in audiopsychobabble will never hesitate to tell you things just like this, but then leave off the part where they tested themselves to see if they just imagined the whole thing, but I guess that would be too much of a self-deprecating thing to do, no matter how wonderful it would be for the audio industry if we actually applied some of the methods that make pretty much every other area of science better. I guess that's what happens when people drown in their own psychoses for decades.
In fact, you can usually just tell people that are listening to your gear that you've now replaced the "thing" with some fancier high end "thing", and while having actually changed nothing at all, you play the track again and the listener is like "Oh, yeah, holy crap, that one is so much better, listen to that silky smooth midrange".
The protagonists in the "I'm going to change the soundstage with a screwdriver" camp really have a hell of a job to do, completely disproving the scientific method along with all of it's results. Then, when we're done, we can pass on our new audiophile inspired, psychotic, evidence-ignoring scientific method to the medical community maybe, so they can use it to test new drugs with the same fantastic results because we just pretended half the results didn't exist.
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I can change the soundstage with a screwdriver. Might take me 5 or 10 seconds. The speaker diaphragms won't be happy about it, though...
I explained how it works, guys. I made the circuit and fab changes before anybody else had access to the phono stage. I did have a very good phono stage to compare to though. That was my basis of comparison, as well as my previous listening experience.
The proof of what I did to make the JC-3 a successful product comes both from really good design, in advance, AND fine tuning the result by listening and comparing to a higher standard, if possible. OF COURSE, it's anecdotal! The test equipment results are almost impossible to use, except for an accurate RIAA curve.
Whiplash.
And again, what does this have to do with musical timing? Any actual data about the topic at hand here? Or is this just advertising for Parasound?
But, what would you say if it was a simple gear swap that I had done for you, and you experienced the same thing, when in fact I changed nothing, as many people have claimed. While I'll admit that a phono stage has more room for engineering choices, like RIAA strictness, compensating for MM/MC and so forth, but bubble wrap vs not bubble wrapped?
Edit: Brain got ahead of fingers again.
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I subscribed to a hi-fi magazine for a year because it had a diy audio supplement included, and I thought it might bridge the gap between electronic engineering and esoteric hi-fi.
I learnt that you had to use expensive stuff to make good hi-fi.
Exactly what stuff, and in what way, was never made clear; lots of conflicting opinions.
So to get an amp with 100% PRaT, fill it full of expensive stuff.
I later found the writing of Doug Self to be such a breath of fresh air, I concentrate on the engineering now, and leave soundstaging and PRaT for others to worry about.
I learnt that you had to use expensive stuff to make good hi-fi.
Exactly what stuff, and in what way, was never made clear; lots of conflicting opinions.
So to get an amp with 100% PRaT, fill it full of expensive stuff.
I later found the writing of Doug Self to be such a breath of fresh air, I concentrate on the engineering now, and leave soundstaging and PRaT for others to worry about.
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PRAT ?
where I come from a Prat is a good description for some of the contributors here (me included!) 😀
where I come from a Prat is a good description for some of the contributors here (me included!) 😀
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