Yes, the misjudgment is alway caused by thinking the other thinks the way we do...
Good split screen demos are easy to set up and gets the trained hearing out of the issue. Unless someone has a vision impairment I have not come across a pair of folks that disagree that a difference exists or not (preference aside).
That has been determined by those (more than one) qualified? I wish sometimes you guys would slow down a little and realize how extraordinary the claims are and realize how little a stir is being caused in the scientific community. Why isn't a larger community being engaged the sound of someone's audio system is not that high up on the list of importance everything considered? I just said it two days ago noise removal in preference to signal would turn the medical imaging industry on its head, Bybee up a diagnostic ultrasound machine and give it to real radiologists.
Remove Bybee from what you say and it could apply to Peter Belt or Geoff Kait at their most extreme. You will have no trouble finding folks that will swear that their systems went to a new level after paying $50 for the noise tape played over a cell phone into their listening space. There are plenty of forums that censor one side or the other on these issues I'm sure people who want that can find it.
BTW I would love to find an LP setup and even one LP with no surface noise, perfectly centered, perfect pitch, not a single tick or pop, etc. to actually do a blind CD vs. LP test.
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People are wired to be swayed by stories that seem compelling to them. Coherence of story helps too.
Engineers are not immune in areas outside of their technical training.
In addition, people are wired to have some spiritual sense, even it is for the mysterious powers of pyramids, whatever. There is a feeling or sensibility arising from System 1 what there must be something else besides what is known.
Why are people that way? The most compelling story to some people is that humans evolved with tribal mechanisms that make them extremely cooperative in times of need, functioning more like a hive than a collection of independent individuals. People can selflessly become willing to fight and die for survival of the tribe. That's a big switch from the more common state of self-preservation having higher priority. A collection of mechanisms help make it work when needed. Some of the mechanisms can also be exploited by predator individuals to sell stuff. Of course, some people might find the preceding story disagreeable for various reasons. But, there it is.
Engineers are not immune in areas outside of their technical training.
In addition, people are wired to have some spiritual sense, even it is for the mysterious powers of pyramids, whatever. There is a feeling or sensibility arising from System 1 what there must be something else besides what is known.
Why are people that way? The most compelling story to some people is that humans evolved with tribal mechanisms that make them extremely cooperative in times of need, functioning more like a hive than a collection of independent individuals. People can selflessly become willing to fight and die for survival of the tribe. That's a big switch from the more common state of self-preservation having higher priority. A collection of mechanisms help make it work when needed. Some of the mechanisms can also be exploited by predator individuals to sell stuff. Of course, some people might find the preceding story disagreeable for various reasons. But, there it is.
Here is something to consider for those hearing a difference with all these tweeks.
I prefer my audio on the cleaner and "flat" side, but
my father used to like the base and treble turned up.
Likewise I also adjust the colors on a TV so they are lifelike
whereas he preferred his colors turned up and fuller than lifelike.
So this leads me to believe that possibly the ones hearing a
"Improvement" are actually hearing the colorization of the sound.
They may simply just be preferring the colorized sound over the
original "Clean" sound that the equipment was designed with.
Maybe what they really need is just an equalizer set to their preference.
I prefer my audio on the cleaner and "flat" side, but
my father used to like the base and treble turned up.
Likewise I also adjust the colors on a TV so they are lifelike
whereas he preferred his colors turned up and fuller than lifelike.
So this leads me to believe that possibly the ones hearing a
"Improvement" are actually hearing the colorization of the sound.
They may simply just be preferring the colorized sound over the
original "Clean" sound that the equipment was designed with.
Maybe what they really need is just an equalizer set to their preference.
I don't quite agree with the idea that everything thing that goes in the direction of being more measurably accurate is in fact of higher fidelity. Back when speakers and recordings struggled to get up to 6kHz flattish response and amplifiers struggled to not sound mushy when trying to drive them, it was probably true since those parameters were so bad they dominated everything else for the listener. But when you get to where most technical things are pretty decent, other factors get into it. And a major one is the human brain that is interpreting the stimulation it receives and interacts with. With that included, shouldn't the effective "fidelity" better relate to what makes "a more believable illusion" to the listener?
A big example I can think of is video/film. To a lot of (most?) people, watching on a large theater screen will seem to create a more believable illusion than watching the same content on a 27" TV, even though on the big screen human heads will be much larger than real heads ever get and on the 27" they are usually portrayed more accurated sized. I suspect that's because the big screen engages more of the viewer's field of vision, so that makes up for things on the screen being way bigger than life. But I don't know, just a guess.
Something similar happens in audio. If you play your stereo speakers outside or in an anechoic chamber, stereo recordings probably won't sound as convincing to you as in they do in a good listening room, hopefully yours (though the "imaging" to the front may well be tighter outdoors). The room adds delayed reflections from the sides and from behind which are technically distortions and objectively "wrong" -- but improves the illusion of being in a room where music is being performed, and allows you to perceive (inaccurate) depth. It's not the sound of the same room where the recording was done. More accurate reflections are already in the recording, but the objective flaw gives a more believable illusion than a dead sound all beamed from the front, so, wouldn't that make it the higher effective fidelity for the user? A lower fidelity (objectively) can make a higher experienced fidelity. Because a flaw of one kind can mitigate a more serious flaw in a different aspect.
I think one of the things that makes audiophiles more susceptible to weird "science" or snakey stuff is that the whole sound reporoduction things is based on illusion -- the whole point is to try to deceive an illogical part of your brain into feeling as if there's someone playing music where you are, even though your logical brain knows damn well that there isn't. Listening to and enjoying recorded music requires you to suspend disbelief and open your mind to being fooled when you start. It doesn't take much to extend that into all sorts of illogical things that also might seem to affect the illusion.
Once you're into illusions, a true reality (if it exists) stops being a fixed concept. When someone says they hear something, it is often said that you can't argue that they DON'T hear it. Because of the brain thing again, which is involved in "hearing" along with other senses, memories, wants, abstractions, preconceptions....
Of course when a certain guy that often wanders on Alberta Street (near where I live) holds an animated screaming argument with another person - who isn't there! - I also can't argue that he can't hear what he perceives either. He obviously does. It's just that his hearing it isn't relevant to whether I'd hear it unless I somehow were into a similar mental/believing state that he is. Different realities?
A big example I can think of is video/film. To a lot of (most?) people, watching on a large theater screen will seem to create a more believable illusion than watching the same content on a 27" TV, even though on the big screen human heads will be much larger than real heads ever get and on the 27" they are usually portrayed more accurated sized. I suspect that's because the big screen engages more of the viewer's field of vision, so that makes up for things on the screen being way bigger than life. But I don't know, just a guess.
Something similar happens in audio. If you play your stereo speakers outside or in an anechoic chamber, stereo recordings probably won't sound as convincing to you as in they do in a good listening room, hopefully yours (though the "imaging" to the front may well be tighter outdoors). The room adds delayed reflections from the sides and from behind which are technically distortions and objectively "wrong" -- but improves the illusion of being in a room where music is being performed, and allows you to perceive (inaccurate) depth. It's not the sound of the same room where the recording was done. More accurate reflections are already in the recording, but the objective flaw gives a more believable illusion than a dead sound all beamed from the front, so, wouldn't that make it the higher effective fidelity for the user? A lower fidelity (objectively) can make a higher experienced fidelity. Because a flaw of one kind can mitigate a more serious flaw in a different aspect.
I think one of the things that makes audiophiles more susceptible to weird "science" or snakey stuff is that the whole sound reporoduction things is based on illusion -- the whole point is to try to deceive an illogical part of your brain into feeling as if there's someone playing music where you are, even though your logical brain knows damn well that there isn't. Listening to and enjoying recorded music requires you to suspend disbelief and open your mind to being fooled when you start. It doesn't take much to extend that into all sorts of illogical things that also might seem to affect the illusion.
Once you're into illusions, a true reality (if it exists) stops being a fixed concept. When someone says they hear something, it is often said that you can't argue that they DON'T hear it. Because of the brain thing again, which is involved in "hearing" along with other senses, memories, wants, abstractions, preconceptions....
Of course when a certain guy that often wanders on Alberta Street (near where I live) holds an animated screaming argument with another person - who isn't there! - I also can't argue that he can't hear what he perceives either. He obviously does. It's just that his hearing it isn't relevant to whether I'd hear it unless I somehow were into a similar mental/believing state that he is. Different realities?
HarryY, one thing to consider in the case of older people is hearing loss. Your father turning up the bass and treble may have been compensating for hearing loss, rather than colorizing the sound. What you perceive as colorized, he does not because of his deteriorating hearing.
Does vision (color) deteriorate with age? This seems to support that contention:
Color Vision Tends to Fade With Age: Study – WebMD
Does vision (color) deteriorate with age? This seems to support that contention:
Color Vision Tends to Fade With Age: Study – WebMD
Totally agree! I don't think most listeners look for a perfectly accurate reproduction. They look for what sounds good to them. I tend to prefer single-ended amps over push-pull despite their higher distortion. So any change in a system might be preferable to any given individual, even if it makes the playback technically inferior.
But I don't think it's necessarily about reproducing the illusion of a live performance or anything else in particular. I think people simply look for an emotional response to the music and how it's reproduced. It might be folk music for introspection, classical for full immersion emotions, head-banger or rap/hip hop with over-accentuated bass for anger/frustration. Obviously that's a simplification for illustration purposes. But in short, accuracy in terms of live performance isn't really the goal in my mind.
Again, totally agree. Reminds me of a guy in Seattle who used to walk the streets every once in a while shouting something like "subwoofer!" Don't know if it was shouting at a person not there or something like Tourettes, but it brings a smile to my face.
Yes I agree with that (Old ears), but he was like that as long as
I could remember, so I'm sure some was just his preference.
Is removal an interpolation?
This past weekend, I dusted off my homemade Onken 3 ways, and reconnected them as 2 ways, plus outboard sub.
The 511B horn with an inexpensive tweeter sounded a bit harsh.
Curious to see how a 500 hz crossover point sounds, I popped in a Selenium phenolic midrange compression driver.
First impression: nice and clean, breathtakingly good guitar harmonics, excellent on vocals, absence of treble.
These drop off rapidly after 8000 hertz.
Watched 2 movies with this setup, then listened to a selfmade mix and match CD.
The treble seemed okay.
I popped in a helper tweeter, 1st order filtered for -3db at 9000 hertz, and about 9 db less efficient. It was obvious even with this, that the playback had been missing a lot of treble, but it didn't seem to be until ab'd .
I've always assumed my ears were well calibrated for sound, and they may well be.
But they're the messenger, not the processor.
Now I think when a component has "burned in", this merely means our brains have internally reset our hearing to assume it now sounds better than new.
The only thing I will be relying on my ears for now, so far as audio goes, is:
I like this sound.
I dislike this sound.
Subjectively, I'll never be wrong, limiting my ears measurements to these 2 parameters.
This past weekend, I dusted off my homemade Onken 3 ways, and reconnected them as 2 ways, plus outboard sub.
The 511B horn with an inexpensive tweeter sounded a bit harsh.
Curious to see how a 500 hz crossover point sounds, I popped in a Selenium phenolic midrange compression driver.
First impression: nice and clean, breathtakingly good guitar harmonics, excellent on vocals, absence of treble.
These drop off rapidly after 8000 hertz.
Watched 2 movies with this setup, then listened to a selfmade mix and match CD.
The treble seemed okay.
I popped in a helper tweeter, 1st order filtered for -3db at 9000 hertz, and about 9 db less efficient. It was obvious even with this, that the playback had been missing a lot of treble, but it didn't seem to be until ab'd .
I've always assumed my ears were well calibrated for sound, and they may well be.
But they're the messenger, not the processor.
Now I think when a component has "burned in", this merely means our brains have internally reset our hearing to assume it now sounds better than new.
The only thing I will be relying on my ears for now, so far as audio goes, is:
I like this sound.
I dislike this sound.
Subjectively, I'll never be wrong, limiting my ears measurements to these 2 parameters.
Interesting ideas here recently. So what's the bottom line for snake oil products and this thread? I tend to be a skeptic about most tweaks but in the end, if someone hears, or claims to hear, improvements in their systems - snake oil or not - should we really care? Placebo effect is sometimes real, meaning that when people are given sugar pills instead of real medicine, they sometimes get better. If their health improves simply because they believe in the cure, who are we to argue? If someone has a happier time listening to music in their system, and that improvement is worth the cost of the snake oil TO THEM, what right do I have to try to change their minds? Meanwhile, maybe on occasion there really IS something at play that the usual analyses fail to uncover? (no comment on Bybee products in particular)
The value of this thread to me is in the fascinating/absurd product ideas people come up with and their efforts to sell them. As a skeptic I am frequently amused. But personal attacks on people who are believers just seems silly to me. Let's get on with finding new products to gawk at.
The value of this thread to me is in the fascinating/absurd product ideas people come up with and their efforts to sell them. As a skeptic I am frequently amused. But personal attacks on people who are believers just seems silly to me. Let's get on with finding new products to gawk at.
I recall something I read in the Audio Critic years ago, about how a well known writer or editor of a "high end" audio mag said or wrote something about how some "tweaks" do not change the electrical signal in any way, but still change what we "hear". Think about that for a second. Some product you are asked to pay for does absolutely nothing to the signal, but changes the "sound". That can only mean that the tweak, and our knowledge that it was applied to the system, affected the way we hear the exact same sound waves. This was really an incredible admission by one of the apologists for the whole audio tweak industry that these tweaks DO NOT DO ANYTHING. And of course if you stick plastic dots on your equipment and hear a difference, the rest of us cannot deny what you heard; your ears, your brain. Just don't expect the rest of us to buy the dots.
Makes you wonder if some of those guys are working together to lighten the wallets of audiofools?
Of course they think my comments should be censored, they would find succor at the Asylum.
Awesome posts and comments, thank you all for your kind responses.
I started out to listen to music for my greatest enjoyment, but after a while pure enjoyment seemed pointless. Major factor was the DIY-bug, the need to tinker and take apart, and test new ideas was stronger than the desire of pure enjoyment.
Luckily, my DIY mentor placed stress on improving the most important instrument that we have: our hearing. While test equipment measure all sorts of well-known-and-controlled phenomena accurately, lab equipment usually make poor/disappointing audio sources. They are a wonderful tool, but the final judge are your ears. The difference between "it sounds nice but there's something funny with the singers voice" and "left channel tweeter is out of phase" is training. It is invaluable to have someone with trained ears guide you through the process - and such people are, unfortunately a rarity.
Instead of balancing the fine line of pleasure/addiction to perfect/magical sound, I chose to use audio as a tool for personal improvement. Improvement on my knowledge of what makes stereo gear tick, schematics, musical instruments, building musical instruments, music, learning to play musical instruments, learning about music, the history/life of composers, performers, famous performances... I also used it to re-train my hearing after I have lost most of it at one point of my life. (No we know he's not just a snake-oil peddler, he's deaf! : ) )
Bwaslo, I totally agree with you that listening to music is a purely subjective experience. Music is the interaction of instruments, ambience and listener. The sound of each instrument comes from two sources: direct sound from the source and reflected sound from the environment. Different instruments have different ratios of direct vs reflected components dominating their tonal qualities. This fine balance gets completely lost in studio recordings, where they record almost purely the direct sound. (That's why studio recordings sound "dry" and "artificial".)
Indeed, when you play back such a recording in an anechoic chamber, you can measure close to 100% correlation between source and playback after very careful speakers and mike positioning. However, at the listener's position it is impossible to achieve 100% fidelity, as the recording/playback process compresses sounds from multiple sources in the space to a number of single point sources (mono, stereo, quadro etc). Current measurements measure the waveforms in a single spot, and not in space. Indeed, a certain degree of fidelity can be reached at a singled out lmeasuring spot in an anechoic chamber, but not not in the entirety of the listening space.
By reaching measuring perfection at the singled-out spot all you do is create a perfect, but entirely artificial experiment in an entirely artificial setup (studio).
Why is it artificial?
Because real world acoustics is left out. Our brain identifies this as fake - no reflections, no radiated sounds, no noises - that condition happens only when you loose or damage your hearing. Quite unnatural. While such phenomena register to measuring devices as distortion, and they can't differentiate between spatial acoustic distortion vs equipment distortion, our ears/brains can tell that instantly.
In addition, while machines detect with accuracy, their scale/sensitivity/range does not correlate linearly with human hearing. So, what we measure is accurate but not necessarily correlates with what human hearing registers as good sound.
Sure, accurate reproduction is a noble path and I encourage everyone to do their best at it. But we have to step further. Physchoacoustically-accurate reproduction should be our goal. That's a tough cookie as the brain is pretty much a grey matter escaping scientific modeling at our time.
In my experience measurements are invaluable tool to aid product development and to build knowledge-base, but they are just a tool, not the means. Question is whether we want a system optimized for yourself or for your measuring mike? I want it for myself, others want it for their mikes. These are 2 sides of the coin, and either camp ignoring the other sees only half the truth.
"Demagnetising an LP is not possible, because it was never magnetised in the first place. Thank you for alerting us to treat the rest of your remarks with due caution."
Big smiles. Yes, it is possible, take a demagnetizer and turn it on.
Joking apart, I urge everyone to try this experiment out at home: listen to a record, then take the LP, demagnetize it, put it back on and listen again. If you have a revealing system, you will hear quite a difference. It lasts for 1 play. The stylus moving over the groove removes the effect - that is, play the same track twice, and second time it will be less dynamic / less detail, unless you demagnetize it again.
Do not believe me (no religion allowed on forum! ), try it out. We did this at our audio club and 80% of the 15 or so people who were in the room could tell it. Many jumped up and shook their heads in disbelief, it was so apparent to some, while osome just shrugged their shoulders. It was just as noticeable to most of us as changing the cartridge.
Try it out, and if it works for you - then you have one more method to bring out more from your cherished recordings than you had before. Please share your experience. Cry wolf after.
VenusFly -sorry. I wrote a lengthy description of what I think can be written down about how the Quantuum Stack works (both components and theory). Deleted it. I leave it up to my friend who is the lead on the development if he decides/allows to share details online. Not my place to tell.... but not much to loose for the DIY community, it has components that cannot be bought off the shelf.
I started out to listen to music for my greatest enjoyment, but after a while pure enjoyment seemed pointless. Major factor was the DIY-bug, the need to tinker and take apart, and test new ideas was stronger than the desire of pure enjoyment.
Luckily, my DIY mentor placed stress on improving the most important instrument that we have: our hearing. While test equipment measure all sorts of well-known-and-controlled phenomena accurately, lab equipment usually make poor/disappointing audio sources. They are a wonderful tool, but the final judge are your ears. The difference between "it sounds nice but there's something funny with the singers voice" and "left channel tweeter is out of phase" is training. It is invaluable to have someone with trained ears guide you through the process - and such people are, unfortunately a rarity.
Instead of balancing the fine line of pleasure/addiction to perfect/magical sound, I chose to use audio as a tool for personal improvement. Improvement on my knowledge of what makes stereo gear tick, schematics, musical instruments, building musical instruments, music, learning to play musical instruments, learning about music, the history/life of composers, performers, famous performances... I also used it to re-train my hearing after I have lost most of it at one point of my life. (No we know he's not just a snake-oil peddler, he's deaf! : ) )
Bwaslo, I totally agree with you that listening to music is a purely subjective experience. Music is the interaction of instruments, ambience and listener. The sound of each instrument comes from two sources: direct sound from the source and reflected sound from the environment. Different instruments have different ratios of direct vs reflected components dominating their tonal qualities. This fine balance gets completely lost in studio recordings, where they record almost purely the direct sound. (That's why studio recordings sound "dry" and "artificial".)
Indeed, when you play back such a recording in an anechoic chamber, you can measure close to 100% correlation between source and playback after very careful speakers and mike positioning. However, at the listener's position it is impossible to achieve 100% fidelity, as the recording/playback process compresses sounds from multiple sources in the space to a number of single point sources (mono, stereo, quadro etc). Current measurements measure the waveforms in a single spot, and not in space. Indeed, a certain degree of fidelity can be reached at a singled out lmeasuring spot in an anechoic chamber, but not not in the entirety of the listening space.
By reaching measuring perfection at the singled-out spot all you do is create a perfect, but entirely artificial experiment in an entirely artificial setup (studio).
Why is it artificial?
Because real world acoustics is left out. Our brain identifies this as fake - no reflections, no radiated sounds, no noises - that condition happens only when you loose or damage your hearing. Quite unnatural. While such phenomena register to measuring devices as distortion, and they can't differentiate between spatial acoustic distortion vs equipment distortion, our ears/brains can tell that instantly.
In addition, while machines detect with accuracy, their scale/sensitivity/range does not correlate linearly with human hearing. So, what we measure is accurate but not necessarily correlates with what human hearing registers as good sound.
Sure, accurate reproduction is a noble path and I encourage everyone to do their best at it. But we have to step further. Physchoacoustically-accurate reproduction should be our goal. That's a tough cookie as the brain is pretty much a grey matter escaping scientific modeling at our time.
In my experience measurements are invaluable tool to aid product development and to build knowledge-base, but they are just a tool, not the means. Question is whether we want a system optimized for yourself or for your measuring mike? I want it for myself, others want it for their mikes. These are 2 sides of the coin, and either camp ignoring the other sees only half the truth.
"Demagnetising an LP is not possible, because it was never magnetised in the first place. Thank you for alerting us to treat the rest of your remarks with due caution."
Big smiles. Yes, it is possible, take a demagnetizer and turn it on. Joking apart, I urge everyone to try this experiment out at home: listen to a record, then take the LP, demagnetize it, put it back on and listen again. If you have a revealing system, you will hear quite a difference. It lasts for 1 play. The stylus moving over the groove removes the effect - that is, play the same track twice, and second time it will be less dynamic / less detail, unless you demagnetize it again.
Do not believe me (no religion allowed on forum!
), try it out. We did this at our audio club and 80% of the 15 or so people who were in the room could tell it. Many jumped up and shook their heads in disbelief, it was so apparent to some, while osome just shrugged their shoulders. It was just as noticeable to most of us as changing the cartridge.Try it out, and if it works for you - then you have one more method to bring out more from your cherished recordings than you had before. Please share your experience. Cry wolf after.
VenusFly -sorry. I wrote a lengthy description of what I think can be written down about how the Quantuum Stack works (both components and theory). Deleted it. I leave it up to my friend who is the lead on the development if he decides/allows to share details online. Not my place to tell.... but not much to loose for the DIY community, it has components that cannot be bought off the shelf.
The McGurk Effect is another interesting one. It's about how our visual perceptive stream affects our auditory perception.
Here's an example: YouTube
Tom
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