Where did I use the word "conducting"? When I say materials I am referring to all the materials associated with the audio system - for example, the plastics used for insulating and other purposes are part of the big picture.
My "strange ideas" always originated from direct experience - sometimes what happens in the real world is a bit of an indication that things don't always operate in the nice way that conventional theory predicts - and a lot of the time I wish it would go away, all these subtleties are one right pain in the neck! However, the research into this is pretty hopeless - often tossed off with a "wanna hear what they wanna hear" putdown ... and no progress is made.
Since I know, again from direct experience, how good audio reproduction can get, subjectively, if more effort is put into mitigating these irksome factors, I feel it's worthwhile pushing the points ...
What is ironic is that you've missed a vital 'clue' as what the big picture is - this company is pointing out, very directly, that conventional means of testing speaker drivers is poor at identifying certain types of misbehaviour; hence, human monitoring to improve the hit rate of isolating dodgy units. Not the smartest approach, so they've evolved a specialist method of driving the speakers in a way such that the aberrant behaviour can be picked up by measuring gear set up in the right manner - an intelligent approach to the problem.
Which is exactly what we don't have in general audio; the most general technique of measuring performance is considered good enough - why it hasn't happened is because speaker driver problems are very distinctive, they stand out, and make it obvious to someone paying reasonable attention that there is a problem - but the issues in normal audio are more subtle, they don't hit one in the face, like an annoying scraping noise would. Hence, they are generally ignored, treated as if they don't exist; it takes hearing a system working properly to understand that the sound is quite audibly defective much of the time on normal systems - but no-one considers it important enough to develop the techniques for measuring it ...
Frank you said
"We still have to deal with that strange animal, the ear, which can be remarkably perceptive of some sound related behaviour - I'm thinking here of loudspeaker driver testing, which needs a specialist "rub and scrape" (wrong wording?) procedure to catch the bad'uns- a defective driver will pass normal distortion tests with flying colours, yet a person listening will instantly reject it "
Nowhere in that Klippel post does it say that "yet a person listening will instantly reject it" Klippel testing has been around a long time now and is a useful tool but please don't imply things that aren't in the link. Plus if you can hear something isn't right in a driver then conventional measuring systems will show it in the frequency response, decay rate, distortion and impulse response. All that Klippel does is show what may be causing it. Saying that the human ear picks up everything is a fallacy.
"We still have to deal with that strange animal, the ear, which can be remarkably perceptive of some sound related behaviour - I'm thinking here of loudspeaker driver testing, which needs a specialist "rub and scrape" (wrong wording?) procedure to catch the bad'uns- a defective driver will pass normal distortion tests with flying colours, yet a person listening will instantly reject it "
Nowhere in that Klippel post does it say that "yet a person listening will instantly reject it" Klippel testing has been around a long time now and is a useful tool but please don't imply things that aren't in the link. Plus if you can hear something isn't right in a driver then conventional measuring systems will show it in the frequency response, decay rate, distortion and impulse response. All that Klippel does is show what may be causing it. Saying that the human ear picks up everything is a fallacy.
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The human ear doesn't pick up everything, but it certainly picks up artifacts which are irritating, disturbing, which don't allow one to be 'comfortable' listening to the sound. And this is what optimising audio is all about, or should be.
No, the document doesn't use the precise words "a person listening will instantly reject it", but if there is a problem in speaker driver manufacture where faulty units can slip through, and the purchaser demands a replacement or refund, then there are real issues here - otherwise Klippel wouldn't have a product, being a solution, to sell.
No, the document doesn't use the precise words "a person listening will instantly reject it", but if there is a problem in speaker driver manufacture where faulty units can slip through, and the purchaser demands a replacement or refund, then there are real issues here - otherwise Klippel wouldn't have a product, being a solution, to sell.
Thanks for the round about way of saying that your original statement was wrong.
Why bring up Klippel when you don't even bother making conventional measurements yourself much less using Klippel?
Why bring up Klippel when you don't even bother making conventional measurements yourself much less using Klippel?
They are an astonishingly tiny part of the big picture, as circuit theory will tell you. I seem to recall you ascribed some perceived issues to static electricity yet this is very unlikely to affect audio circuitry.fas42 said:
In the conventional, measurement sense they may be, but subjectively their impact can be quite substantial. Unlikely or not, an interaction occurs which is audibly significant - and the more capable the system is of very high quality reproduction, the more noticeable these factors are - IME ...
The most likely effect of fiddling with plastics is a modification of expectations.
Electrostatics can be measured, in quite a conventional way (e.g. electroscope). No measurements means no evidence of an effect.
Electrostatics can be measured, in quite a conventional way (e.g. electroscope). No measurements means no evidence of an effect.
I agree, hard evidence is hard to come by - at the moment. However, the vast majority of systems are assembled in a certain way because "it sounds good" - this is always the final arbiter for the majority of people. And right now I'm happy to proceed using this approach, because it gives meaningful results - for me. In the future, at some point, there will be a flash of inspiration in some individual and a bigger picture will emerge; and everyone will be able to improve their systems with more precise understanding of what's important - in the meantime, fiddling is a decent substitute ... 🙂.
Here we go again 🙄. So your subjective listening is way better than measurements? Hooray for Frank's golden ears 😱. I say you are fooling yourself but hey if you want to continue down the path of make believe then do so.
Meaningful results for yourself but no one else. Where's the science in that? It's years and years of subjective sighted bias with zero controls to see if anything actually changed or not 🙄
After what Frank, 20 or 30 something years of doing this you still can't show anyone any specifics to a particular circuit? 😕
Okay Frank here ya go
fiddling.
Um, subjective listening for subjectively-heard impact can be used as a measurement, too. You don't have to use yet-to-be invented analysers to do the first steps of it. Use ears as measuring tools. Just make sure that only listening is being used to sense with (yeah, that ugly "blind" word that sends people scoffing and scattering) and that valid statistics are used with the results to determine the likelihood of a real detection having happened. If it is very impactful, shouldn't it be pretty easy to measure for such a simple yes/no data point?
April | 2014 | Chord Blog
"Even better – we can carry out the same modification to our Prodac VEE 3 and Anthem Tuned ARAY digital cables. We used the Anthem Tuned ARAY to connect our reference transport to the Hugo DAC and then a pair of Anthem Reference analogue RCA cables (featuring ARAY technology) to our reference pre-amp. The end result? Pretty spectacular. The best part? Although the interconnects will be produced to order, there is no extra cost involved."
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