If you are working on trying to figure out lyrics it better be really obscure, not just a normal tune. That would be sad.
Listening to BeeGee's and hearing the "Kiss my ****" comment before the song starts, or crowds on live plays, clapping sounding like real clapping is much more important than what an artist claims they said. Hearing the drums getting pounded, impact of bass notes, etc. There is clarity but so much more used to evaluate a system.
Tuning by ear is better than a mic and measuring equipment? Knock yourself out !
It would be interesting to see what new measurements are used in the future. The saga continues...
I am 70 and often run a frequency sweep on my headphones using the typical Munson curve set up on the SW equaliser APO on my PC, just to see how I am doing. Interestingly I can detect 14kHz as a pressure in my temples not necessarily as a high pitch "sound". When I set the overall volume level I set it at 1 kHz and at a comfortable level, not so my eyes water. Then I wait about 5 min before running a sweep. What I also find interesting is when I reverse the sweep (High to Low Freq) the temple pressure occurs at around 16 kHz. When listening to music on my speakers, I boost treble to +3 dB and I hear everything that I want to hear. cymbals, top hat, triangles, bells reeds, etc. Turning the treble to flat seems a little dull for my liking. I do have a problem with voices, particularly with my wife's of nearly 50 years though, she constantly shouting at me: "Are you F***ng deaf, answer me!". "Clean up that f****ing mess in the kitchen, I cannot hear at all.
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Thank you. This pretty much supports my position.
The Cashmere example shows the big difference between evaluating physical objects and sound. In the case of Cashmere there are many actual standard measurements that can be made to characterize the quality of the material.
These are not opinions by a person, but scientifically based actual measurements that have been documented in an industry wide standard. No equivalent system exists to measure or determine sound quality.
The problem here is that the audio equipment, whatever it is, is only a relatively small part of the total picture. The listener's side of the equation is vastly more complex and in a sort of cousin to the observer effect talked about in physics , the orientation and context of any listening session has a significant influence on the perceived results and the total condition is never exactly the same twice.
I think this is part of the reason so many of us take the road of test first worry about whether anyone likes it later. Rohde-Schwarz removes those nagging doubts.
I think part of the problem is that subjectivism is so often delivered in such absolutist language, forgetting that ultimately it's still just one person's opinion. However experienced or not.
I used to read a lot of record reviews. I quickly learned which reviewers had similar music tastes and would often just buy stuff based solely on what they said.
So subjectivism can work...
I used to read a lot of record reviews. I quickly learned which reviewers had similar music tastes and would often just buy stuff based solely on what they said.
So subjectivism can work...
Maybe, we should remove the person from the equation and objectively specify what the piece of equipment is good for. Look at an engine, it delivers 150 kW at p600 rpm, 300 Nm of torque, blah blah. Nobody subjectively test it, you either want it or look for another car.
Can we define audio equipment in the same way. Yes we have for decades. Now what is the actual complaint, that it does not do what is specified to do or I don't like it. Well simple solution, buy something that you do like. Why try and blame the equipment if it is not up to scratch, or your ear/brain that does not approve of it.
If you go to a music festival and it is not up to your standard, you leave. If food is not to your taste order something else. We audiophiles and I mean it, are in search of something that we cannot get, because we don't know what we want, but keep on saying what it should sound like.
I have been fortunate that after designing and building many amplifiers the second last one was what I kept, and use till this day. It was exactly what I wanted and do not care whomever tells me that it sound bad or the trumpet sounds like a sax or Steve Nicks sounds like Dolly Parton. I don't know either of these ladies but to me they sound different and that is good and I can tell them apart.
I can recognise what comes out of the system and pleases me. I build and bought many speakers, one day I listened to a pair that was lent me and I loved it and went out shopping and bought them. I still use them with my amp to this day I won't say what it is because I will be ridiculed here And no not the most expensive on the market either, in fact a lot less expensive than most that I still have lying in storage, but I like these, they appeal to my taste exactly. I can not decisively say that it is a particular instrument playing because I may never have heard it in real life, so it does not matter as long as the sound they produce is appealing.
My brother coaxed me to buy Jazz at the Pawnshop. We did, he explained all the things I will hear and each time he would say now listen to that, it is absolutely perfect. Strangely enough after he left I never listened to that again, I hate Jazz, I ended up chucking it away to reduce the number of CDs I had. That with Rick Astely that I also loathe. I bought audiophile CDs from PS audio, they were also binned, it is just not my scene can't care how audiophile it is supposed to be.
My hi-fi is for my enjoyment, no one else. It makes the noises that I enjoy listening to and I can do this for hours and days without end. I don't show it off and tell anybody, hey you got to listen to this, I don't care. I used to lay 10 LPs on the carpet and listen to only a few seconds of a track each, I twiddled the volume, bass and treble with each cut. That I stopped it drove my wife nuts. My wife nowadays calls me a lazy sod, who cares, I do what I enjoyed my whole life, you cannot expect me to change now. There is a saying after you get married your wife wants you to change but you want her to stay the same..
Can we define audio equipment in the same way. Yes we have for decades. Now what is the actual complaint, that it does not do what is specified to do or I don't like it. Well simple solution, buy something that you do like. Why try and blame the equipment if it is not up to scratch, or your ear/brain that does not approve of it.
If you go to a music festival and it is not up to your standard, you leave. If food is not to your taste order something else. We audiophiles and I mean it, are in search of something that we cannot get, because we don't know what we want, but keep on saying what it should sound like.
I have been fortunate that after designing and building many amplifiers the second last one was what I kept, and use till this day. It was exactly what I wanted and do not care whomever tells me that it sound bad or the trumpet sounds like a sax or Steve Nicks sounds like Dolly Parton. I don't know either of these ladies but to me they sound different and that is good and I can tell them apart.
I can recognise what comes out of the system and pleases me. I build and bought many speakers, one day I listened to a pair that was lent me and I loved it and went out shopping and bought them. I still use them with my amp to this day I won't say what it is because I will be ridiculed here And no not the most expensive on the market either, in fact a lot less expensive than most that I still have lying in storage, but I like these, they appeal to my taste exactly. I can not decisively say that it is a particular instrument playing because I may never have heard it in real life, so it does not matter as long as the sound they produce is appealing.
My brother coaxed me to buy Jazz at the Pawnshop. We did, he explained all the things I will hear and each time he would say now listen to that, it is absolutely perfect. Strangely enough after he left I never listened to that again, I hate Jazz, I ended up chucking it away to reduce the number of CDs I had. That with Rick Astely that I also loathe. I bought audiophile CDs from PS audio, they were also binned, it is just not my scene can't care how audiophile it is supposed to be.
My hi-fi is for my enjoyment, no one else. It makes the noises that I enjoy listening to and I can do this for hours and days without end. I don't show it off and tell anybody, hey you got to listen to this, I don't care. I used to lay 10 LPs on the carpet and listen to only a few seconds of a track each, I twiddled the volume, bass and treble with each cut. That I stopped it drove my wife nuts. My wife nowadays calls me a lazy sod, who cares, I do what I enjoyed my whole life, you cannot expect me to change now. There is a saying after you get married your wife wants you to change but you want her to stay the same..
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when we want to construct the perfect audio devices, this is not possible.
every sound machine is only an approximation. It is also not possible
to recreate a live concert at one's home.
every sound machine is only an approximation. It is also not possible
to recreate a live concert at one's home.
Absolutely true in some cases, but what about a sound machine like a synthesizer, or electronic organ, is its sound an approximation of what. It is just a bunch of electrics and amplifier playing through a speaker. Pink Floyd was famous using a synthesiser, okay now what. Can I have one in my lounge? Besides they used a bunch of Crown amplifiers, probably not the best hi-fidelity on the market.
J. Gordon Holt of Stereophile did this in the 1960s, and later it became a book.
https://www.stereophile.com/reference/50/index.html
Brother ChatGPT says:
Challenges to Objectivity:
- Subjectivity and Perspective: Philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and later postmodernists (e.g., Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida) argued that knowledge is always influenced by the perspectives and power structures of the observer. In their view, true objectivity is elusive because our perspectives are conditioned by culture, history, and language.
- Thomas Nagel: In The View from Nowhere, Nagel discussed the tension between subjective experience and objective understanding. He argued that while humans can strive for objectivity, we cannot entirely escape our subjective point of view.
Quality is exclusively subjective in the realm of sound reproduction. Omitting reliability and aesthetic metrics, and focusing solely on 'sound quality', there is only subjective experience. You can talk about flattish frequency responses, but who's to say that translates to quality for any given listener.
The problem is one of language, borrowed from folk psychology. Quality, in this sense, is measured by 'happiness' or 'satisfaction' or 'ecstasy', whatever these terms mean.
Quality can only be quantified after the false theory of folk psychology is displaced by completed neuroscience, and we have the ability to scan and measure neurotransmitter activity in response to any given sound system.
The problem is one of language, borrowed from folk psychology. Quality, in this sense, is measured by 'happiness' or 'satisfaction' or 'ecstasy', whatever these terms mean.
Quality can only be quantified after the false theory of folk psychology is displaced by completed neuroscience, and we have the ability to scan and measure neurotransmitter activity in response to any given sound system.
Maybe you should read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" for a different view.
It's interesting that many music producers try to emulate the sound of old samplers, when that sound was characterised by a need to compromise due to low memory capacity.
https://www.loopcloud.com/cloud/blo...Sampler-Techniques-in-Modern-Music-Production
Modern samplers obviously have massive memory storage but in the 80s and 90s memory was very limited, and the vintage sound of great tracks was often made by a lack of extra memory. Most would consider this a compromise of sound quality, but that 'crunch' is now something that modern producers seek to emulate with modern samplers.
A clear demonstration that metrics like memory capacity has nothing to do with 'quality'.
https://www.loopcloud.com/cloud/blo...Sampler-Techniques-in-Modern-Music-Production
Modern samplers obviously have massive memory storage but in the 80s and 90s memory was very limited, and the vintage sound of great tracks was often made by a lack of extra memory. Most would consider this a compromise of sound quality, but that 'crunch' is now something that modern producers seek to emulate with modern samplers.
A clear demonstration that metrics like memory capacity has nothing to do with 'quality'.
Well, there's the rub! On a forum where the discussion is regarding the technicalities of objects we want to make, the focus is generally oriented "out there" and not "in here". Practically speaking, if you want to do it in a forum thread, you might have to simply remove all nay saying posts in hope that over time those who keep at it will start to develop a common vocabulary that works. Given the wide variation in level of interest in one's own personal mechanisms I think it might take some time to get everybody calibrated.
Yes, but you can learn to be objective about that. Matter of fact honesty plays a part. About what? Well, watch yourself like you watch TV and you'll see the script play out.
Everyone here has something they are experienced in and good at. Whatever your field, you know that there are people out there who have read a book or heard a story about it and can spout off lots of stuff as though they know what they're talking about while you know full well they don't. Reading about and actually experiencing are not the same thing. So it's the same with the internal mechanisms of sensing and perception . We can gab about the latest discoveries in Neuroscience others have reported or use personal experience of our own workings, and for that we have to take an interest in how we ourselves function and have a better look at it.
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There is no contest, and there is no winner.
They are two elements of the same thing that must coexist.
There is no alternative: they must coexist and one must accept the fact that someone shares their listening experiences with reasonable reliability.
For now, that is the point.
And that is all the point.
I do not know if I make myself clear enough.
No, not in terms of good or bad.
But in many other ways.
Yes, but this is not an Engineering Forum.
This is an Audio Forum.
Audio involves listening.
There is no way to escape this.
Exactly, and it is not possible, beyond the limitations of current technology, just because even an engineer will make personal choices.
It is simply wrong to think that a measuring instrumentation is enough to design good-sounding audio devices.
Instrumental impartiality as some engineers/designers would like simply does not exist because it too is subject to errors, interpretations and choices of many kind.
Just look at what happens in other threads: even the most expert engineers/designers sometimes do not notice the bad/ignorant interpretations and choice that they themselves have done until someone more expert points it out to them.
This is why current technology, however advanced, sometimes still seems primitive to me.
One way would be to use a panel approach, scoring different characteristics.
Panels could be people with systems at home, they listen to a fixed playlist.
They undertake to keep their listening system and environment as static as possible except for the DUT.
They submit their rating. you get to see overall, and filter on, say, preamp, etc, to get a rating for a system most like your own.
The downside would be the sheer variability in people's systems and the number of people required...
I think it's impractical TBH. But perhaps that illustrates the knotty nature of the problem we're discussing.
Panels could be people with systems at home, they listen to a fixed playlist.
They undertake to keep their listening system and environment as static as possible except for the DUT.
They submit their rating. you get to see overall, and filter on, say, preamp, etc, to get a rating for a system most like your own.
The downside would be the sheer variability in people's systems and the number of people required...
I think it's impractical TBH. But perhaps that illustrates the knotty nature of the problem we're discussing.
That is not my goal.
We are not here to identify a possible absolute methodology that leads to a result of absolute value.
And even less so that of identifying or recognizing the "good sound".
I wish to attribute to the listening experience a value other than zero.
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