Do you mean when someone posts extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence?
If the listener is critical indeed, he will feel the need to question his experiences on a regular basis, because indeed our hearing can play nasty tricks on you. Some sort of calibration can be obtained by repeated listening sessions on several days and comparisons with a wide variety of references.
When mastering recordings, I am always confronted with the question whether my choices are right or wrong. Without some self-doubt we will always be in danger to blindly pursue wrong paths. Self-doubt can be a hard thing to endure, but I think it gradually makes us better in our judgments.
That is great news, Soundbloke. You have apparently heard something that doesn't fit in the current models and isn't yet in any way proven by measurements (or it is considered that small that it should not be audible).
Nonetheless your curiosity makes you want to do further testing. That curiosity is invoked by our fallible senses… Isn’t that the beauty of our ears?
Yes, Barrows, that's exactly my view, and it's the reason why I think we are much better off to discuss this here in the lounge than in each individual thread, because otherwise it cripples the original arguments.
I'm not sure if it's the language barrier or something else but when time and money are spent for audible improvement but didn't get it or the result is a detriment, that would be considered "in vain". In other words, the time and money are wasted.
Perhaps you haven't read this before.
Electronic audio reproduction isn't everything goes. There is an industry standard term "hi-fi". If you or someone want to veer off of such standard, fine. Just expect challenges come your way. Why? Because this isn't a la-la-land where everything goes and everyone has a happy face.
Taking other ones views with a grain of salt is really necessary in any kind of forum or magazine. Whether it’s audio, music or any other subject, one would be stuck in endless discussions, irritations, and frustrations with it.
When reading for instance a music magazine without this healthy dose of relativism, I would probably suffer from high blood pressure, heart attacks, name calling attacks etc…
As the post you give a ++ too errantly references a statement of mine, I would refer you back to my original reply and my clarification of the term delusion.
Exactly the opposite. The work I referred too in that post is well over 25 years old and has been confirmed by objective measurements.
If you read back you will find that I asserted subjective assessments would always likely be the start of an investigatory process. It is not curiosity that drove me, but my engineering discipline. But each of us, no matter how good we might think our hearing is, are prone to delusion.
I would suggest the lack of validity ascribable to some posts it was cripples the arguments herein.
But disregarding errant claims has given rise to a whole arm of the audio "hi-fi" industry - something that I would argue has been (and is still) to its detriment. While even automotive audio developed active loudspeakers, the "hi-fi" industry was consumed by self-appointed "gurus" pontificating about which amplifiers matched best with which speakers, for example. The video industry subsumed a "hi-fi" industry that meant formats such as Ambisonics failed to find the favour they deserved. And such pontificating remains today, buoying an industry precisely because of the endless circles created by descriptions of ethereal sounds that cannot be measured. That is why I believe rigour is needed.
That is only valid if there would be stringent rules to audio, but then we should first agree what these rules are and how they will be checked.
It's nice to speak of High Fidelity, but that is a very lofty and abstract expression, that would go well with the PR people in Audio, but has very limited meaning in real life.
What about Vinyl lovers? That systems introduces incredibly levels of distortion and other anomalies, yet there is a serious movement that claims they sound more "real". Should we lock them all out, because some measurements seem to indicate that they are deluding themselves?
These people are not charlatans or villains. Their ears seem to like what they hear when they listen to Vinyl… Personally, I don’t care for Vinyl, but I wouldn’t belittle them because of their preference.
The whole chain from instrument or singer up to the waves that reach our ears includes such an intriguing bundle of variables, that I simply wouldn't know how to define any meaningful universal truths that would encompass this intimidating trajectory.
People that think in absolute terms in audio like to concentrate on SOME measurements within SOME pieces of gear, but that can never describe the whole chain mentioned before.
Since I was the one who used the term charlatan, please make sure you are not confusing the target of my original comment.
If you read back to my comments on higher-order spectral analysis and the like, you will find some clues how do exactly what you seek to encompass.
Methods that make the correlation between the cause and effect that you state?
I agree with the shortcomings in the audio industry, but as with political leaders, I am afraid that we do get what we deserve.
There is a strong division in audio. The mass market is entirely driven by convenience and design. When there is a choice to be made between quality and convenience, the latter will always persevere. The masses have fully abandoned serious audio systems. The convenience of loudspeakers with the size of a milk carton and stuffed with computer gear has made them so popular that most households don’t listen anymore to quality gear.
Outside this mass market there is this strange niche market and relict of the 20th century that still tries to reach for something “better”, but due to its nature it is slow in accepting changes, and it does concentrate too much on an old selection of details while ignoring innovative improvements.
While I agree on you here, it already becomes difficult when making certain choices. Active speakers with DSP have a huge range of benefits, and therefore should be a no-brainer. In an ideal world they should sound much better. In real life the active speakers that reach market have lost a lot of their appeal due to not so good sounding crossovers and/or amplifiers. I fear that this is the reason a lot of folks still hang to their passive speakers.
Now as to Ambisonics, I do agree that it is a shame that we still have not agreed on a practical use for it. Among colleagues, I am one of the very few that uses it in nearly every session (as an add-on to conventional techniques), but it was a long ride to make it good enough for recording classical music, because companies like Soundfield are not really interested in quality sound… The theory of the system however is beautiful indeed.
I am afraid that the audio world will always remain in limbo because of its highly elusive character. You nor me, nor anyone else on this forum is probably able to change that…
Hi Evenharmonics,
You have posted the above statement about time and money wasted, numerous times. It's almost become one of your signature lines, or so it seems.
It's just that there is no such thing and time and money wasted, especially with regards audio hobbyist ventures. While some things may not quite work out as successfully as intended, that does not mean the time and money were wasted at all. It's part of the process of the audio hobby. And one can never really know the success of a project without doing it.
You just completely miss that, or so it seems from your rather strident view on time and money wasted.
You are of course right, sadly. But this is a pseudo-scientific-ish forum and that "elusive character" appears to give free-range to those who think they sit above scientific rigour (and to some extent, as I have tried to show, that criticism applies to many on both sides of the "subjectivity" debate). Does it matter? Maybe it depends whether or not you can also foresee a self-appointed "golden ears" fraternity guiding this forum up the same orifice as the hi-fi industry.
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