Naim can sound exceptional for the money - a friend has a recent Naim integrated and speakers ... or truly appalling - the sound from the Naim room at the recent hifi show was the worst of the worst "hifi sound" I had heard in a long time ...
So it's a flute in California Dreaming? All these systems later, I always thought the bridge was a recorder.
The placebo effect is well documented in all areas of life.
We do tend to get, see , feel and hear what we expect to.
Whats interesting is that when you try and apply scientific analysis appropriately to the sensory testing, that too is apparently unacceptable.
To take your analogy further then, its like a race team claiming that they have tuned and tweaked to the utter pinnacle of F1 achievement using their superior senses and no other equipment, but then refusing to allow anyone with a stopwatch near the car, and, if anyone DOES measure the performance and finding it ordinary or worse, claiming the stopwatch isn't accurate enough, the stopwatch operator is blind, that the stopwatch itself impacts on the driver's ability to operate the vehicle at its peak, or that the stopwatch is entirely the wrong device for measuring the performance and no device yet has been built that can do so.
Except when we don't expect to ...
From the review:
That's what I heard many years ago, when I had my system at the time in good tune - which didn't use a $350,000 amplifier, 🙂. And the type of reproduction I'm always chasing, because I know it's on the recording - just waiting to be released ... 😀
But, if it wins the race ... what then ...? 🙂
It is a combination of application of the technical, appropriate measurement, and real world behaviour in the hands of, and assessment by the user that most likely will yield an optimum result. The trouble in the audio game is that those elements are not well sorted out, or co-ordinated ... 😱
No, the difference is that audio is perception. There is no first over the line (an objective measure btw...) that can be independently verified.
Hence you have to use appropriate sensory testing once your engineering work is complete. Like group listening perception tests. This generates the data that can be assessed and the probity of any claim for performance can be established.
Unfortunately, this is anathema to the subjectivists. They prefer handwaving and claims to hearing abilities of the Gods - abilities denied mere mortals.
I exaggerate, but only a little and only for effect.
Its not that these things are not well sorted - they are. Its that the people who should care to use them are in pompous denial, and the other camp don't care (not quite that bad - I suspect a continuum exists between these two extremes).
Hence you have to use appropriate sensory testing once your engineering work is complete. Like group listening perception tests. This generates the data that can be assessed and the probity of any claim for performance can be established.
Unfortunately, this is anathema to the subjectivists. They prefer handwaving and claims to hearing abilities of the Gods - abilities denied mere mortals.
I exaggerate, but only a little and only for effect.
Its not that these things are not well sorted - they are. Its that the people who should care to use them are in pompous denial, and the other camp don't care (not quite that bad - I suspect a continuum exists between these two extremes).
The 'appropriate sensory testing' is key - as luck would have it, we are also just talking about how a flute in an average pop recording comes across. I understand exactly what the difference between a normal, and an optimised system is, at a subjective level in how that sound is heard - as expressed in the quote above. So, how do we "measure" that ... an equivalent to "winning"?
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By using a large enough pool of listeners and asking them the correct questions for hte problem you are trying to analyse. Its pretty basic stats, well explained near a billion times at least (give or take a couple) just in this website.
One persons' unconstrained opinion isn't data. 100 people's unconstrained opinions isn't even not data, even if some of them are wives or SO's of any sort. .
Trouble is, this is an extremely awkward process to use - a "large enough pool of listeners" is not a simple device you can pull down from a shelf, somewhere. So, in real terms it is almost useless - because it is incredibly inconvenient ... this is a real problem that needs to be sorted: to find an effective, convenient replacement for that bunch of people ...
in reality, there ain't no replacement.
Remember, we are asking questions akin to "Which of these two primrose colour swatches is the best reproduction of the pink in Monet's "Water lilies"?".
It requires a large enough group to make the results statistically significant, and the experience has to be identical for all the participants to control for confounding factors. It also presupposes everyone identically understands the primrose colour in Monet's Water lilies...
As you point out, this is logistically unlikely.
Given that, the BEST anyone making claims based on sensory assessment can do is preface their statement with "In my opinion and having observed under these conditions..."
Remember, we are asking questions akin to "Which of these two primrose colour swatches is the best reproduction of the pink in Monet's "Water lilies"?".
It requires a large enough group to make the results statistically significant, and the experience has to be identical for all the participants to control for confounding factors. It also presupposes everyone identically understands the primrose colour in Monet's Water lilies...
As you point out, this is logistically unlikely.
Given that, the BEST anyone making claims based on sensory assessment can do is preface their statement with "In my opinion and having observed under these conditions..."
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actually an interesting tech artifact does exist that incorporates 10000s of hours of controlled DBT listening tests, 1000s of subjects - perceptual audio codecs
if a good lossy codec uses bits to encode a audio signal difference then it is more likely audible than if the (or several different?) codec's algorithms decide to drop the information in the compression
if a good lossy codec uses bits to encode a audio signal difference then it is more likely audible than if the (or several different?) codec's algorithms decide to drop the information in the compression
What is amazing is that Stereophile et al and the sort of people that knowingly sell and buy this sort of rubbish are, as the article states, building roads and wielding power. This is a microcosm, enjoy it for a good laugh until the gods of reality decide enough is enough. Attention Rudyard Kipling relatives, *know* that your ancestor called it right!
Those people aren't subjectivists and I really wish people would stop referring to them as such. They're what I call pseudo objectivists. No true subjectivist would ever attempt to pass off their subjective experiences as anything more than that.
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Actually, before we do that we need to ask "Are these two primrose colour swatches different or identical?" Only once we know that difference (and identicality) can be reasonably reliably determined by eye alone can we then turn to words like 'better' or 'worse' reproduction of an original.aardvarkash10 said:
In audio we are still at the stage where some people assure us that X is better than Y, yet measurements using known parameters tell us that X is significantly inferior to Y and when forced to use ears alone people cannot reliably distinguish X from Y.
I never considered London Calling from The Clash as masterfully recorded. My stereo is just not up to it, I have to assume. Seems I have to get one of those Wavacs, invite some audiophile punks to my house, and see what comes out of it.
The reason for the bad measurements is quite clear to me. He did the setup alone and did not call the Japanese guys for the setup service at his laboratory.
The reason for the bad measurements is quite clear to me. He did the setup alone and did not call the Japanese guys for the setup service at his laboratory.
London Calling can be quite useful.
If you've got a good stereo you can hear Guy Stevens (producer) banging on some plastic chairs and other assorted stuff on a few songs.
Guy also swung a wooden ladder at Joe Strummers head during vocal takes so he sings like he means it!
Never managed to hear that swoosh from the ladder though but some video footage exists.
If you've got a good stereo you can hear Guy Stevens (producer) banging on some plastic chairs and other assorted stuff on a few songs.
Guy also swung a wooden ladder at Joe Strummers head during vocal takes so he sings like he means it!
Never managed to hear that swoosh from the ladder though but some video footage exists.
The swoosh from the ladder was not mentioned in that review. Do you mean to say that 350 k$ amp is still not up to it? Or did they use the wrong speaker cable during the review?
They didn't mention Guy banging on the chairs neither so it MUST be a cable issue.
With a $350k amp I would have thought that the golden-eared Stereophile reviewer should be able to tell if the wine Guy poured into the piano was a Merlot or a Shiraz.
Although considering that we are talking Guy Stevens here it probably was Thunderbird or Buckfast.
With a $350k amp I would have thought that the golden-eared Stereophile reviewer should be able to tell if the wine Guy poured into the piano was a Merlot or a Shiraz.
Although considering that we are talking Guy Stevens here it probably was Thunderbird or Buckfast.
🙂 That would be unbelievable, but in fairness it did do something amazing.....[from page 3] "I heard something for the first time that amazed me. Pete Seeger can be heard tapping his foot at the right of the stage during "Guantanamera." I've heard those foot-taps for decades, but through the SH-833s, for the first time I could hear—and clearly—that Seeger was accentuating the third beat in each bar. I could also make out how far the vibration spread across the floorboard before dissipating." 😀
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