These are the kinds of things that can only muddy up any discussion of audio. Terms that cannot be defined that allude to some personal taste that no one else necessarily understands or shares.
I'll stick to objective, definable science and what it CAN tell us.
Member
Joined 2009
Paid Member
hmmmm, I use the word perception to means my personal understanding/interpretation/feeling about what my senses are sensing. Hence, it's more than the science of how my ear works as a sensing element. My perception of things is actually very difficult to define, I don't think I can quantify it. My enjoyment of music through a replay system goes beyond what I can define. This is an ancient issue, the inability to quantify beauty baffled the Greeks.
Of course you can stick to objective science but it will struggle to address that last mile of the journey, your perception. You may not like the 'muddiness' in such discussion but it's part of what we experience. Those that understand it may be more successful in marketing their audio products. Unfortunately, there are those who take such marketing to the extreme and we end up with audiophoolery.
Last edited:
Things become trendy and are copied. Someone stumbles across something that sounds good...etc
Yes, you are right, but this guy was particularly pernickety on all others parameters.
Sometimes people seems to crush the world with their paradigm... very often in fact 🙂
I was never more pernickety than when I've been unsure. You know, like an obsession with box volumes, little bits of felt behind the driver, inductor resistance, getting acoustic phase to within an inch of its life.
You used the word, not me. I tend not to use words that I don't know the meaning of.
If none of us know what the words being used mean then how is it possible to carry on an intelligent conversation?
I did, and I was asking about it, I could search for a definition like this Gestalt principles - Scholarpedia and maybe understand some of it, but I'm not going to pretend to understand all of it. I was hoping you or someone else may be interested in how it affects perception and be interested and knowledgeable enough to shed a little light
Then we might as well be speaking different languages. The adjective "intelligent" wouldn't even apply.
In my opinion, the best source of background on how people make judgments and our perceptions is the work of the Nobel laureate Dr. Kanneman. His book "Thinking Fast and Slow" is a foundation of how our biases shape our perceptions. In audio this is crucial when it comes to judging sound quality. Many will say that sound quality is a personal thing and I can accept that to many it is, but it's not to me. When I listen to judgments of sound quality I have to ask if all the biases have been controlled, because if they weren't then experience, by myself and many many others, would suggest that the evaluations had little to do with sound quality and much more to do with biases. I want data that is free of someone else's personal biases as it is highly unlikely that we would have the same ones, and even if we did, why would I want bias to direct my judgement?
I don't think it's about perception of sound quality, more the construction of an auditory image that we can make sense of as if it was a real sound event not purely a single (dual for stereo) constantly changing pressure wave derived from a single (dual) constantly changing voltage. In this regard our learned experiences are largely common and not personal biases.
Well you lost me here since, to me, this is sound quality. If you can't make sense of an auditory event then the "quality" is not very good.
Fair enough, although I listen to some very poor quality recordings, reproduced in a high quality manner, that my brain has no problem making sense of. 😉
Hence, the need to always separate the quality of the playback from the quality of the recording. They are two completely separate issues.
I think Dr, Klippel has nicely separated the source of distortion to components of a driver; however, how to integrate that info to designing a better driver is a critical issue.
One of the things I have been considering for years is to use the voice coil former as a shorting ring, but recently I finally got down to some experiments and found that the thickness of the walls are not enough to have much effect. However, I am considering combining this concept with the normal shorting ring. Any thoughts on this arrangement?
One of the things I have been considering for years is to use the voice coil former as a shorting ring, but recently I finally got down to some experiments and found that the thickness of the walls are not enough to have much effect. However, I am considering combining this concept with the normal shorting ring. Any thoughts on this arrangement?
I do not see any difference in a conductive voice coil and a plated pole piece, which is quite common. They would both do the same thing, but since the plating is copper, which has the highest conductivity, I would think that the pole solution would be better.
The question about the sources of distortion begs the question of how important they are. That cannot be resolved with THD measurements.
The question about the sources of distortion begs the question of how important they are. That cannot be resolved with THD measurements.