Not denying quality. Just saying that 'better' in ears only listening has zero meaning. Couple of times I've mentioned how it would be nice if we tried to investigate an approach with a common vocabulary such as the soundwheel and everyone goes very quiet. It's almost as if the golden ears don't want there to be common ground.
As said I have no issues with people's preferences. I just don't like someone saying something is better when that person does not share a single piece of equipment with me, has a different room and listens to different music at a different volume. and has different sensitivities.
Loudspeaker designers have to make many assumptions about the average listening environment so compromises are inevitable. I don't see much similarity with DAC design?
Mindset has a lot to do with it.......if you go into a listening session predetermined that nothing you can do could possibly sound better then it never will. And the opposite is also true, if you go in expecting better then there’s a good chance you’ll fool yourself into it.
I find shutting your mind down allows perception on levels beyond the daily grind.
How far I can be carried into this state of separation from reality by the music is how I judge, so far I’ve found this several times by way of phase manipulation.....the window of focus is small but repeatable. It’s as though you become one with the music, and I’ve been screwing around with this long enough to know it’s not just random.
I know this sounds idiotic, but it’s true. (Also drug free for those wondering!)
I suppose a baseline of measurements would need to be documented (of equipment and sound @ lp) then rinse wash repeat with every change taking notes along the way, but my capabilities and measuring equipment are limited to say the least.
I get my Certificate of Occupancy this week for the house I’ve been building for over 3 yrs now and will finally start on my new stereo setup, the challenge will be to see if I can repeat this with the new system. I’ll have the other setup side by side as a reference (My biggest concern is I’ll go through all this only to prefer my old Frankenstein-system!)
Flame me all you want but from what I can tell there are people in this world more sensitive to sound than others.....just as some have better vision, better olfactory, better sense of touch etc....
Better is indeed a necessary word to describe the upper limits.
I find shutting your mind down allows perception on levels beyond the daily grind.
How far I can be carried into this state of separation from reality by the music is how I judge, so far I’ve found this several times by way of phase manipulation.....the window of focus is small but repeatable. It’s as though you become one with the music, and I’ve been screwing around with this long enough to know it’s not just random.
I know this sounds idiotic, but it’s true. (Also drug free for those wondering!)
I suppose a baseline of measurements would need to be documented (of equipment and sound @ lp) then rinse wash repeat with every change taking notes along the way, but my capabilities and measuring equipment are limited to say the least.
I get my Certificate of Occupancy this week for the house I’ve been building for over 3 yrs now and will finally start on my new stereo setup, the challenge will be to see if I can repeat this with the new system. I’ll have the other setup side by side as a reference (My biggest concern is I’ll go through all this only to prefer my old Frankenstein-system!)
Flame me all you want but from what I can tell there are people in this world more sensitive to sound than others.....just as some have better vision, better olfactory, better sense of touch etc....
Better is indeed a necessary word to describe the upper limits.
OK Bob, let's put it this way. How much do you care about stage width, height and depth when listening to your preferred music? All of these are illusory but the system and room can have a huge effect on how well the illusion works. As does the type of music.
Practical example. I auditioned the ATC SCM20 speakers in 1990. They did many things amazingly right given their studio heritage, but for some reason for ME in that room in the hifi shop the soundstage was around 8ft high in the centre and then curved down to instersect the speakers on the left and right extremes. For me this was not the illusion I wanted so would not have been able to live with them in that setup. Oh and they were too expensive for me! For others the detail, resolution and sheer max spl they could put out would put them high in 'betterness' but for my preferences they failed at the first hurdle.
In another room who knows. But I stand by the assertion that 'Better' means nothing in this context.
Practical example. I auditioned the ATC SCM20 speakers in 1990. They did many things amazingly right given their studio heritage, but for some reason for ME in that room in the hifi shop the soundstage was around 8ft high in the centre and then curved down to instersect the speakers on the left and right extremes. For me this was not the illusion I wanted so would not have been able to live with them in that setup. Oh and they were too expensive for me! For others the detail, resolution and sheer max spl they could put out would put them high in 'betterness' but for my preferences they failed at the first hurdle.
In another room who knows. But I stand by the assertion that 'Better' means nothing in this context.
But your assertion is not true. 😉
Better is just a subjective descriptor which implicitely says "there was a difference", which this listener prefers.
If one refuses already to accept the existence of and audible difference, then no refined description of the difference(s) will change the situation.
"Everyone goes very quite" ?
I'm quite confident having posted (very quite) the opposite when promoting for example the EBU approach.
But altough imE and known from various studies, listeners are able to agree quite fast on a certain set of descriptos when listening together to a reproduction system. Afair Markw4 is constantly offering meetings at his home to make happen but the "not-so-golden-ears" (scnr) were very quiet about it.
The mentioned EBU sound examples offered for each parameter a track for "right" one for "too little" and one for "too much" which allows synchronization of vocabulary even in the case of potential disagreement about the "right" .
Trying to mimic this approach with equipment is unfortunately much more complicated, but if the synchronization with music samples was done before,there might be nevertheless a better mutual understanding, but I haven't heard from people across the forum doing it.
As said above (and I'm sure stated before) why don't you want accept it just as an indicator for perceived audible differnce?
The soundwheel I have seen doesn't have the required granularity, not every the right categories. It may seem like its fine and maybe it is for some purposes, but not for much of what we talk about here. It would need to be redesigned for me to be able to use it.
Maybe things went quiet waiting to see if anyone else could see a way to use it.
Audible differences I accept. The use of Better as a subjective descriptor I reject, especially as there are many words that can be used instead.
Jakob, you are obfuscating again. ON THIS FORUM everyone went quiet. And you can beat them with studies and they will still not accept. When burning amp has an open session on this approach we will be making progress!
Because its a very emotionally charged word 'My speakers are better than your speakers' is not a way to reach consensus but a way to start a flame war!
Beats the **** out of talking about decay tails? At least its an attempt to come up with a common language as opposed to terms almost no one understands.
@Bob: My current room is rubbish and compromised by an upright piano between the speakers. One of the sacrifices one makes to raise a second family.
No disagreement on that. My issue is a practical one: I need terms on the wheel that are descriptive of what I hear changing. I don't even think there was one box I could identify to put certain audible effects in. If we added another box that named 'other' then most of my changes for the better would have to go in that box. How would that help you?
The thing is, there are different things to listen for depending on what one is working on. For improving dacs it is one set of audible effects to focus on, for mixing music tracks to make a record its another set, for evaluating stereo illusion in a room yet another set. That's my take on it.
Jam has a very different system that is for evaluating one change in an entire system for overall better or worse, but there are limitations to it.
Last edited:
Agreement on adjectives is one of the practical issues, the other (IMO even more complicated) is that you need to have reference samples to show/illustrate the specific meaning of the descriptor wrt the difference.
I guess it was too "obfuscating" ( 😉 ) in my last post, so billshurv missed the crucial point. Knowledge about what equipment is in us alone does not help very much in this regard ...
Last edited:
So we end up with a wheel that is Mark specific and still means nothing to the rest of us. Surely a wheel designed by people who know what they are talking about and can explain (with examples) is the way to a common lexicon?
@Jakob: We will have to beg to differ on this one. I personally thing if more people said 'prefer' then we would have less arguments on here, other than from the people who only come on to cause one. But they can hopefully be ignored as a waste of electrons.
Bill, It is not a matter of simple preference. Its like saying being healthy verses being sick is only a matter of preference. (And please don't tell me we have diagnostic tests to measure the presence of every known illness, we don't.)
Last edited:
What a silly analogy Mark. At least you could have said pilsner vs IPA. Sick vs well is like saying a working amplifier is better than a broken one!
Now you understand. Beer is a preference. Some things about audio are preferences and some are more than simple preference.
The way I see it some dacs are much like software, they are already broken when you get them, you just don't know it.
More specifically, I know from first hand experience that how dacs measure and how they sound are two different things. I know that people can get distortion measurements way below what the chip manufacturers say on the data sheets. I'm talking about situations where the data sheet says -120dB THD and someone builds one that measures -127dB on an AP. They get noise lower too. The one measuring better sounds like ****. I heard it, and I know what the manufacturer had to do to make it sound right: raise the distortion and noise back up some. BTW, it was not JohnW either or anyone associated with him, even though he reports similar findings.
I think/believe that it means we are not measuring everything that matters. (and I don't think its the ESS time domain issue Mr Wurcer illuminated.)
Last edited:
By putting quotes around better you are showing that is up to the determination of the individual, not something that is common to 90% of listeners no matter where that "statistic" was plucked from.
Who are you referring to? It's not something I'm able to do, now, if he took his show on the road I wouldn't hesitate. 😉